As the team look onto this floor that looked like a smaller and brighter version of one of the earlier floors, a small concrete mess of debris and rebar with a flat floor and barriers as well as the addition of a turret, they're filled with a shared sense of dread. "The game masters are just fucking with us at this point, aren't they?" Drake asks.
"It does feel that way, doesn't it?" Ziya asks.
"Think you can hit that turret from this distance, Chris?" Judy asks. "You know... before we get in range of it's camera?".
"Well, luckily wind speed isn't a factor in Pyramid..." Chris says, "however, that's also bad at the same time. Wind speed can help lift a bullet if there's enough force pushing upwards from the ground on the bullet. Since the air here is still, that's not happening".
"So..." Judy says, "long story short-".
"The bullets are prone to losing altitude quicker" Chris interrupts, "falling faster to the ground. I can try arcing the bullet in a way to hit the camera, but I can assure you that there's no way to arc this shot from here without hitting the ceiling or shooting just below the turret".
"Then we need to get closer" Ziya says. "How confident are you in your ability to duck behind cover before getting shot?".
"Not very" Judy says.
"It'll have to do..." Ziya says.
"Wait a second!" Judy argues.
"Quick! Run for it!" Ziya shouts as she charges behind the nearest concrete barrier. Chris and Drake quickly follow behind her, then the others charged in as well. Gerald and the others chose to hid behind a separate barrier, since the one Ziya chose already had too many people hiding behind it, as Judy runs after Ziya. "Think this is close enough!?" Ziya asks as she turns to Chis.
Chris peeks around the corner of the barrier, at the turret tucked away at the corner of the ceiling by the stairs. The ceiling was too high, and the fact that the turret was in a corner between the ceiling and the wall made it harder to hit it. "Tch" Chris says, "I doubt this'll do any good, but I can try it if you want".
"I need a little more confidence than that, Chris!" Ziya yells. "We don't have an infinite supply of ammo, you know!".
"Yeah yeah, whatever" Chris says. "Want me to move up real fast?".
"Alone?" Drake asks.
"I don't see why not?" Chris says with a shrug. "I don't actually need you guys to follow me for this".
Chris begins to stand up and takes a deep breath before Ziya says "Hold on!".
"What is it now!?" Chris asks.
Ziya walks up to Chris then says "Prepare to tuck and roll!".
"What are you-" Chris begins to ask before he was interrupted by Ziya suddenly shoving him out from behind the barrier with all of her might. Chris instinctively ticks his arms into his chest, lands on the tip of his toes, then forcibly kicks after his knees began to fold. After kicking the ground, he created enough force to jump behind the next barrier to the right of where Ziya and the others were hiding. Upon landing, he rolled on his side, and stopped himself from continuing to roll with his left hand. Now leaning his back against the next barrier, he looks over at Ziya and gives her a thumbs up. Ziya hesitates, but eventually gives Chris a thumbs up back. When Chris peeks around the corner of this barrier, he notices that he was now really close to the pile of concrete rubble. "I have an idea!" Chris shouts to the other. "Just stay put and wait for the turret to be knocked out of commission!".
"Make it quick!" Ziya shouts back.
"We still need to consider our escape!" Judy shouts. "We don't have much time to wait around, since we don't know what lies beyond the walls of Pyramid! We have no idea how far from home we are!".
"Right!" Chris says. "Don't worry! I'll get us through this!". Chris leans against the barrier, takes a deep breathe, then stands up. He runs around the corner of the barrier and dives behind the giant pile of rubble, narrowly dodging the bullets from the turret. Laying on his stomach, he crawls around the edge of the rubble until he was no longer in sight of the rest of the team. Eventually finding a spot barely large enough to look through, he takes his sniper rifle off of his back and mounts it on the rubble. Keeping his head behind the rubble, he takes a deep breath, and holds it in as he quickly raises his head and looks through the scope of his gun. He quickly pulls the trigger before the turret could stop him, and the bullet pierced right through the infrared sensor of the turret. Chris ducks his head behind cover before taking the time to see if his bullet hit. He takes another deep breathe, and looks through his scope to see the broken down turret. Chris then stands up and lets out a deep sigh of relief. After he catches his breath again, he whistles to the rest of the team and climbs on top of the rubble, signaling that its safe to move.
"Nice one!" Drake says as they come out from behind the barriers.
"That was some swift work" Gerald says. "You definitely seem like you've had experience in this sort of thing".
"Well, not against turrets" Chris says, "but I've had experience. The turrets are definitely nerve wrecking though. I was so nervous that I forgot to breathe slowly while aiming. I kept holding my breath, expecting something to go wrong!".
"Well, good job either way" Ziya says.
"Thanks, Sunshine" Chris says.
"Don't let that go to your head..." Ziya says with a stern look. "We still have a lot to do before we can relax".
"Yes, but at least we now have our method!" Chris says.
"He's right" Gerald says. "If the next floors are any similar, then we can repeat this method to proceed".
"How much .338 ammo do you have, Chris?" Ziya asks.
"I've still got about ten more" Chris says.
"Great" Gerald says, "one for each floor, plus one...".
"Don't get your hopes up" Ziya says. "There are still eight more floors to go, which means eight chances to change up the game on us. We need to split up and search this floor before we go, in case we find anything that we might need".
"Especially food..." Judy says. "With the large amount of people we have now, we're burning through rations like crazy, and the lack of opposition is leaving us with little water".
The team splits up and searches. When they rendezvous, all that they had found was some .357 ammo for the revolvers, and some shotgun shells for Judy. "No water, no rations and no sniper ammo..." Ziya says in disappointment. "Anyone want to rest here before moving on, or do you want to keep up the pace?".
"I'm good to keep going" Chris says. "These floors aren't very big at this point. I'm sure we can make it past at least one more!".
"Yes, let's keep moving" Gerald says. "If the man doing all of the work wants to keep moving, it'd be disrespectful to decline".
"You could always pitch in a little, you know?" Ziya asks.
"With what? Our pistols?" Gerald asks.
"Yeah... fair. I get your point" Ziya replies.
The team moves up to Floor 8. When they arrive, they see this floor was just like the last one. Large pile of rubble, barriers, and a turret. However, the barriers and rubble were so far apart this time. The rubble was on the opposite side of the floor, almost directly under the turret. Trying to run behind it without being shot would be impossible to accomplish. The team quickly takes cover behind the barriers as they try to come up with a plan. "I won't be able to make that run!" Chris says. "How do we get close enough this time? The game masters made these last two turrets harder to hit than the first one! This distance won't cut it!".
"Think harder!" Ziya says. "How can we get Chris closer to that damn turret!?".
"Why not try pushing to the next barrier?" Judy asks. "Maybe we can slowly move up?".
"Hmm... maybe" Ziya says. "It'll be very risky, but it might work. Let's keep thinking for now...".
"Maybe risky is the angle the game masters are wanting us to take..." Drake says.
"Then that's all the more reason not to do it..." Judy says.
"What if we-" Ziya begins to say.
"Why don't we have someone distract the turret so Chris is guaranteed to get closer?" Drake interrupts.
"Why would we want to directly throw away some of our Respawns for this!?" Judy asks. "We're trying to avoid risky moves here!".
"Well..." Ziya says, "that's probably the only way we can guarantee our way out of here".
"And who is crazy enough to deliberately get shot for me?" Chris asks with skepticism. "That's asking entirely too much!".
"Well..." Ziya says as she hesitates to say it, "since I have the most Respawns, then-".
"I'll do it" Drake interrupts as he stands up.
"What!?" Ziya panics. "You can't! Drake, look at me! I have more Respawns than-".
"Get ready to move, Chris" Drake says as he ignores what Ziya is saying.
"Listen to me!" Ziya shouts.
"No, I get it..." Drake says as he looks down at Ziya. "But it's my turn to save you from having to do such things. You've been doing more than enough this whole time, Zizi". As Drake gets ready to run, he thinks to himself "Borrowed time, huh? I bet whoever this Chronos guy is, it'll really piss 'em off if I give that borrowed time to the others". Drake runs around the barrier as fast as he can. It doesn't take the turret long to shoot him down, but by the time to turret could aim at Chris, he had already taken cover behind another barrier.
"It's not enough!" Chris shouts. "I need to get a little closer!".
"Oh for the love of- it didn't work!" Ziya says as she stands up and prepares to run into the open. Suddenly, the sounds of a pistol being shot could be heard. As everyone looked, Drake got back up and was shooting at the turret.
"Go! Now!" He shouts as he draws the attention of the turret. The turret didn't seem the least bit bothered by his pistol. Instead, it slowly turned to him, and shot him down again. The infrared sensors detected Chris as he ran, and shot at him too, but couldn't hit him before he took cover behind the rubble.
"Chris! Hurry and take the shot!" Ziya yells. "Drake is still out in the open! It'll kill him as soon as he revives if you don't hurry!".
"On it!" Chris shouts, briefly followed by the sound of his sniper rifle firing. The first shot missed, and Chris ducked behind the rubble as he reloads his rifle, with bullets from the turret flying over his head. "Shit shit shit shit shit!" Chris says to himself. After loading the next magazine into his gun and pulling back the bolt of his sniper rifle, he stands up again, slowly releases his breath, then fires. The bullet hit the camera this time, just as Drake began to get back up.
Ziya was focused on Drake, staring in worry at him. It took her a while to realize that the turret was no longer firing at either of them anymore. After she came to the realization, she exhaled deeply in relief. "That didn't go well" she says, "but it could've gone worse...".
"Those boys are insane!" Judy says. "Why do they feel the need to do such... reckless crap!?".
"Who knows at this point?" Ziya asks. "I'm just relieved by the fact that Drake's still alive...".
"I'm impressed though, I'll be honest" Judy says.
"Yeah, same..." Ziya says. "I'm still going to slap the shit out of him for that...".