Firestorm Online

Shotgun guy once again moved to the front of the team and brought out a flashlight augment for his gun. This kind of thing came free with most guns and was exceptionally useful in this situation, seeing this we all did the same.

"The server room is at the end of this corridor, Desert Eagle guy, Dex right? We'll need you to throw your flash on entry, hopefully the enemies won't even see it till it's gone off in that dark room. After that we move in and clear the room before planting it on the main console. Any questions?"

Silence followed, it was a good plan.

"Alright, let's go."

For a second time we jogged towards a door, this one though was far more high-tech. It required biometric recognition to open the door, thankfully our backstory's employers arranged for our identities to be added to the system.

Shotgun guy leant forward to start the verification process. At this time he raised his hand, counting down on his fingers.

'Three, two, one!' I flung open the door and threw a flashbang high into the air before slamming it closed again.

'Two, one…' Bang! The flashbang had gone off, this was our que.

The clearance off the room was fairly quick, the single enemy that was defending this area was stumbling about as if he was drunk making him an easy kill. He managed to get one lucky shot off at our P250 wielding teammate which took him out of the game but it was a fairly good trade.

'The poor bugger must've have caught that one directly' I thought as I saw the scorched flashbang casing by his feet.

You've got to understand something, a flashbang is incredibly disorienting. If you're caught out by one then it will blind you entirely for at least 5 seconds, not only that but it will give you a concussion and temporarily ruin both your hearing and balance. Hence you end up stumbling about like a headless chicken.

As we planted the bomb amongst a nest of wires I had a thought. It was currently 3v3, what if we added a few more people to our team?

With this idea in mind I quickly detached my flashlight and got my team to do the same, we then placed these around the room. These flashlights scattered around the room had three effects, firstly of all they were extremely bright. While they couldn't blind an enemy they could at least reduce their effective vision. Secondly they lit up the enemies for us, we would get a clearer view of them. Finally they provided false targets for the enemies to shoot at.

Having got in position we waited. 1 minute had ticked by before the remaining enemies made it to the room, their heavy breathing indicated that they'd had to sprint across the map.

They slowly opened the door and entered; silence. No one made a sound, no shots were fired, no words were said. As the enemies passed row after row of blinking servers a tension filled the air. As soon as they passed that final row we would turn on the flashlights.

'Three rows left, two, one' I flicked the switch.

Shouts of alarm along with a multitude of shots barrelled towards my position as the enemies began to see our bright lights.

Shotgun blasts and a fast firing pair of pistols could be heard over the commotion, an enemy collapsed to the floor.

"Throw them now!" one of the enemies shouted.

Hearing this I unconsciously retreated a few steps, this quick reaction was probably a life saver on my part as a grenades exploded by my flashlight. Shrapnel tore through the air and plunged into my body, the pain was immense. FO reduced pain but it didn't eliminate it, the burning hot metal caused me let out a muffled grunt.

'System, shift all available points to endurance!'

[Re-distributing X-Factor points]

[Displaying statistics]

Agility 1.7

Acceleration 1.7

Balance 1.7

Endurance 1.7+0.1

Speed 1.7

Strength 1.7

Reactions 1.7

X-Factor 0

The Kevlar vest managed to stop the shrapnel reaching my vitals but my teammates weren't so lucky, my twin pistol wielding comrade was torn apart by the shrapnel and shockwave while our shotgun enthusiast was thrown the ground a few feet away, still breathing but clearly on his last legs.

"Screw you!" he screamed through the pain and fired into the darkness, a high pitched shriek was followed by a loud crash as one of the enemies was literally blown off of his feet and impaled on the twisted metal of what used to be a server rack.

He was swiftly avenged by his surviving teammate who promptly shot back at the location of the previous muzzle flash.

It was now a 1v1, I was bleeding heavily but luckily I didn't need to survive for much longer, I just needed to prevent them defusing the bomb. There was only 50 seconds left, with an estimated defusal time of 30 seconds this guy would need to reach the bomb in the next 20 seconds if he wanted to win.

I pulled myself onto the bottom of an empty server shelf, it wasn't comfortable but that didn't matter right now. The final enemy had no idea where I was and I just needed to delay him, I could do this!

"Shit!" a faint voice muttered. "Where is it… here!"

A couple of sparks flew as the room's lights came on. A figure was standing a few feet away from me with a horrified expression on his face as he looked down at me.

We both brought our guns up to aim at each other.

Bang!