Moriarty wiped his mouth and leaned back against the unforgivingly hard and uncomfortable cobblestone wall. This whole situation left a bad taste in his mouth, moreso than the bitter bile which didn't seem to want to go away. There was something about being here that made his stomach turn; something was not right, and it was horrible knowing what it was but not being able to bring it into his conscious thought. What was it?
He had probably been awake for less than 45 minutes but already it felt like an eternity. That dying man -- he still couldn't think of it as a bio-enhanced machine -- had been so real. All of this was so real. Too real. Those guys at the Institute knew their stuff. This was not virtual reality. It was total, unadulterated, pure reality. Manufactured nonetheless...but his mind couldn't tell the difference. And that's all that mattered, right? His body was in a totally different plane of existence while his mind hovered in another one, absolutely distinct from his body. Wait a sec...That wasn't totally true, was it? He reached up and felt the ear pieces which told him that yes, he still was in a VR simulation, generated by a computer and imbued into his brain by some sort of hocus-pocus brain wave emitter. He tugged on one of them, and again, a sharp pain from inside his head made him grimace.
If I was really in a simulation, why would they put these things on me? They're cumbersome, don't really make much sense, and look pretty delicate. Seems like a conflict of interest to make me think I'm wearing them, doesn't it? At that point he almost realized what was bothering him, what the conflict between what he was existing in and what he was told beforehand. At that point, his mind also shut down and his instincts kicked in.
Jameson had been getting restless, and was pacing the room while babbling some codewords about a squad meeting which was to take place soon. He inadvertently walked too close to the door, and like a Star Trek show, it opened silently. Moriarty could see a man dressed in heavy armor, carrying a launcher of some sort look over at them and level his weapon towards the door.
"Get the hell down!" he screamed.
Immediately a rocket floated in at an angle, striking the opposite wall and throwing a great deal of mortar, chipped stone, and shrapnel at high speed towards the two men. Moriarty was close enough to the body of the dead man-bot that he had time to roll it on top of himself for protection. He felt the vibration of every impact against the limp flesh, and it made him want to heave again. The sound was reminiscent of a rock hitting mud. Jameson, despite his less advantageous standing position, managed to leap out the door to avoid the explosion, hike up his badass gun, and loosed twenty rounds or so at the attacker. His shots went wide (he was shooting in the middle of his dive) but it forced the rocket-bearing attacker to take cover around the corner. Immediately Jameson looked back, checked on Moriarty (he gave the "OK" sign), pulled a grenade out of his vest, yanked the pin, let go of the lever, and bounced it off the opposite wall so it would roll right next to the attacker's last known position and detonate immediately. The explosion was deafening, despite its distance and the fact that there was a wall between them and the mini-bomb. The wave of energy smacked him in the chest and knocked the wind out of him. Small pieces of material (Moriarty couldn't tell if they were shrapnel fragments or fingers) radiated from the explosion, and a horrific scream immediately erupted from the small room the man was hiding in. He cringed. Jameson didn't react. The screaming was something he imagined while reading Milton's Paradise Lost, tortured with the despair of pain and fear. He could smell it. He didn't know what "it" was, but he could smell it. Pain. Hate. Anger. But most of all, Fear. Fear with a capital "F". This place, this reality, stunk of fear of the fight, of injury, and of death. And it was coming from this thing, probably disfigured beyond recognition by that tiny little ball of metal and explosives. Overwhelming pity welled up inside him. He knew what was going to happen. Jameson would get up, like he's doing now. He would cock his gun, just like he did now; he would painfully lumber over to the little room, trying to block out the screams which were now mixed with gurgling but showing how hard it was on him by the way he walked, just like he's doing now. He knew it was just a simulation. No, he thought it was a simulation. This is not virtual reality, Moriarty told himself again. This is it. I am watching one man kill another. I always thought I would stick up for the weaker guy in something like this. What is wrong with me? Scream! Help him! He can't die!
Is this what war is all about? What the hell is the point of this Wally? Do I have to sit here and listen to a man die? Is this fair? Is it right? And why am I having to go through this? Should any man have to be on either side of that gun?
He couldn't take his eyes off Jameson robotically plodding towards the source of the diminishing screams. The man knew someone was approaching. The screams quickened again, both in intensity and frequency. Jameson paused just before rounding the corner where the injured man lay. He thought for a moment, shook his head, and stuck the gun around the corner without looking himself. He turned his face towards Moriarty and pulled the trigger.
As the gun had rounded the corner, the screams ceased starting and stopping and formed one long terrific note of Fear. He knew Death was coming, and he didn't think death looked like four barrels circling in mechanical and unemotional efficiency. Since Jameson wasn't actually aiming at the defenseless man, he swept the room slowly. Over the whirring of the barrels and report of the pneumatic mechanisms launching projectile after projectile, he heard the nail-like bullets striking the concrete in rapid succession. As he swung the gun clockwise around the room, the tink tink tink of the nails hitting concrete changed to the thwock thwock thwock of them hitting body armor, and then quivering flesh. The scream continued through it all; but when the thwock thwock thwock began, his scream vibrated from the massive impact velocity of the nails. It reminded him of his mother giving him a back massage, so long ago as a small child, where he would hum a constant note and she would rapidly pound on his back with the bottoms of her palms, punctuating the solid note with vibration from the jolts. As the scream changed, so did Jameson's face. The squinted eyes, with the painful emotion behind them, changed to the coal black beams of anger. His nostrils flared. He stopped biting his lip and set his jaw in fury. It seemed like he had to continue pounding the man for a agonizingly long time. The scream began to weaken, and it was starting to gurgle when blood began pouring into his lungs. The torturous sounds lasted for a few more seconds, and then with one final thwock thwock THWACKthe scream stopped. The staccato of the nailgun stopped soon after.
Jameson let out a gasp, gripped the gun by its barrels, and howled with rage as he threw the gun against the wall with all his strength.
It didn't break.