100 Systems Invasion

22. Systemist 38

Invasion Day 1

4Games Headquarter, Salt Lake City, UT

“It’s just this way, Ms. Dooley,” the game developer told a woman in her mid-twenties, moments before the world begins to change. “You know, you’re the second person that’s asked to be a beta-tester of Kaiser Hunt–“

Behind them, something thuds hard against the glass wall of the exhibition area.

Beatrice turned towards the sound and saw a man with a bloody ashen face take a step backward and throw himself against the glass again, pulverizing his nose against it in a spray of brown blood.

Then, there were others, a dozen at least, all trying to break through the glass wall, and Beatrice had just begun to register the ghastly wounds that mar their bodies when three of them found the revolving door.

The game developer moved past Beatrice, defended only by the paper shield of his own masculinity, and the fastest of the crazed people tackled him. Her hands clawed clumsily at his face, and as she wrenched the game developer’s head upward