Everything surrounding Johan fell dark for half a second, then large letters in a thick and rough font grew in the thin air before a winter wonderland appeared behind it. A calm, though stern female voice spoke the words that were written out to make up a long and slightly cheezy game title.
"Welcome to 'Death by Stealth: Snowfall'. Start Campaign?"
"Yes", he stuttered, in nervous anticipation.
"Which difficulty? Rookie, Normal or Stealth Expert?", the voice replied.
"Eeehā¦ Normal?", he said.
"Activate full Augmented Reality experience?", the voice asked.
"What are the, ehā¦ Features of this experience?", he asked back.
"Wind and smell, simulation of cold weather, vibration in floor and wall panels from explosions", the voice summed up.
"Ok, yes. Activate", he said, a bit more confident, getting a grip of the FRA function, which had been added to this release.
"Activate Pain Simulator?", the voice asked.
"Pain Simulator? Eh, okā¦ Yes", he answered, shivering from the blowing wind, and beginning to pick up a scent similar to pine forests.
"Starting Campaign."
ā¦
The sun rose above pine trees fully dressed in coats of snow. There was a light sprinkling of miniature snowflakes, and they laid on top of the snow that was already resting on every surface; then a tiny, cautious gust of wind would brush the white off some branches. A squirrel darted up a tree and was gathering a couple of pine cones, perhaps as a last snack before a long winter.
The narrow valley was as painted on a canvas, emanating with an inexplicable sort of magic, as if an angered troll could pop up from behind one of the small hilltops. The sun warmed and melted snow and ice that was strewn across the deep grooves in the hillsides, and it was polished by the wind to highlight sparkling qualities in the billions of falling snow crystals, breaking and reflecting the sunlight in thousands of different angles.
Then, footsteps could be heard if one listened closely. The hardest, crystallized snow layers made crunching sounds under the weight of something heavier than one of those scrawny little squirrels. Then - silence, or this someone or something had found a path powdered with lighter, softer snow. It could suddenly be seen in a clearing, fenced in by some trees - it had seemingly humanoid features and was covered by a suit of rags as white as the snow. The humanoid form had a slight bend in the knees, almost crouching all the way down, still moving slowly. Sunlight hit its white, matte automatic assault rifle. It boasted a cylindrical sort of nozzle, perhaps a silencer. Its hands were wearing gloves, with the right hand on the grip but the index finger just off the trigger, though it was ready to pull it. The left hand was closer to the end of the rifle, resting on a supporting grip sticking downwards out from the gun.
It began traversing a slim elevation, and made increasingly longer and slower strides the further it got to the top - the camo-wearing humanoid did not let go of its gun at any point, then laid down on the cold surface and spent all its might crawling through the snow on its elbows and knees until it laid itself flat at the top of the hill. It then pointed its rifle over the top of it and pulled its camo hood back to reveal an unshaven chin and laser-focused eyes, and got to installing a scope on top of its rifle, which it used as binoculars to inspect the entire landscape that was ahead and to look for any suspicious movement in between the trees and shrubbery. It could now see a valley stretching out behind the open woodlands - a crossroads, where one road led up the side of the mountain, and the other would take him around it. And still, no one else to be seen. Johan kept watching all this unfold.
It kept crawling down a bit on the other side of the small hill and stood back up in a low crouching position until it snuck slowly down towards the foot of the valley. There! A human-sized silhouette shifted its stance behind some trees, appearing to be smoking a cigarette. It seemed to keep its eyes on its targets and took slow and silent steps across the powdery snow, and took cover behind a close-by cluster of shrubbery. The unknown other had its back towards the scout - whom Johan then came to control after having witnessed everything up until then in a third-person perspective. He suddenly felt the solid parts of the gun in his hands, the modest winter breeze flowing along his cheeks and penetrating his camo outfit.
He then saw the unknown from his own perspective, who he could see was wearing a leather strap from over his shoulder across his back - supposedly connected to a type of firearm. Smoke was rising from a newly lit cigarette, or so it looked when he turned around. He took a last drag from the cigarette, prematurely disposing of it to move off to another position. Another moved in to take his comrade's position. He was younger, wearing all white with grey army boots. This guy did not smoke anything, and he was clearly armed with some heavy automatic monstrosity that likely could fire quite a couple of bullets per second. He was chatting and snickering in reply to something his predecessor had said as he seemed to take his post, as a jeep came along, struggling with the loose snow and run-down tracks on the road. They both waved and signed for it to drive up the road.
While focusing on the guards through his scope, he heard a low bark and sunk as low as he could get down in the snow. Then - a series of sequential aggressive, loud barks, growing louder and louder as they were approaching him fast from a direction he did not know. Johan turned in an abrupt fashion to look behind him, but he was jerked backwards violently before he felt a tearing pain in his leg. The perpetrator was a giant, rabid German Sheperd dog that had bitten down on his entire lower calf. Loud, foreign slurs sounded, and gunfire opened, hitting rocks and trees around Johan, while he was fighting with the dog, trying to wrestle it away from him to no avail. He tried grabbing for his own firearm to shoot the animal, but it rolled and shook its jaws viciously and kept Johan away and out of reach from his gun. Blood spurted out of the rags on his foot, and Johan felt every jagged tooth clamping down on his calf, as the dog managed to keep him turned away from itself, snarling and forcefully trying to drag Johan out of his coverage that was behind a couple of trees and a patch of dense shrubbery.
Another loud gunshot followed, and the devilish hound whimpered and let go of Johan before it sank lifelessly down in a sort of fetal position. Johan looked around him in frantic confusion, as he himself had not gotten to fire off any shots at the dog. His adrenaline levels were sky high, as he was still just laying down in a pool of blood and snow and pine needles and twigs, clutching his rifle and instinctively remembering to aim at the bushes for any incoming contact with those guards - or possibly even more dogs or any kind of demon. Another gunshot sounded, and an explosion went off just some 30 feet away from him. It knocked out his hearing, and the shock wave from it made his entire body slow down to a point where every second felt like an hour. He got back to himself, as a voice sounded from somewhere close by.
"Come in, 'JoJohan007'! I got the dog for you. On your six!", someone said directly in his ear. He was too confused to notice the guard that had spotted him and was running towards him. A shot sounded from somewhere up high again, and the enemy guard fell hard to the ground.
Johan immediately realized someone had to be watching over him, armed with a precision weapon of some sort. "Thank you so much! Who is this?", Johan replied while out of breath and realized he probably was talking to someone via some kind of a walkie-talkie he did not know he was equipped with. Radio silence for a while, time Johan made use of trying to get on his feet and calming his breath and regaining his focus.
"I am your eye in the sky, baby!", the voice said in an overly jolly and good-hearted fashion and seemed to not be willing to give up his identity or location. "Look out, RPG!", the voice suddenly screamed in his ear. Johan then heard a strange, whistling sound, before a gigantic second explosion went off right by him. He fell out of consciousness and came back to himself for a second as he felt his entire body throbbing and thumping. He had giant gashes on his torso, a rib was slightly exposed. Then he blacked out.
"GAME OVER", it said, in big red bloody letters. He got back to the starting screen, and then decided to have a breather, as he went into his kitchen to have a glass of ice-cold water - pondering over who could have been talking to him in his newly downloaded game. He thought 'I could swear I did not enter a multiplayer mode', and he opened the fridge to look for any stray snacks or something else to bite down on while trying to control his nerves, and marvelling at how lifelike and realistic that game had felt. He would reconsider playing with that 'pain simulator' function again, and sat down by his kitchen table while staring out in the streets in front of his small condo.