Woooooo first chapter

Chapter 1:
After hours of waiting, the final virtual match ended and the last of the victors were escorted into the waiting room. However, before they even had a chance to sit or mingle among the others, Ralph burst in through the doors.

"Congratulations winners!" he said with a large smile on his face. "You have all passed the first phase of testing, now if you all will follow me we can brief you on phase 2." Motioning for everyone to follow him, he turned and walked back into the hallway and waited expectantly for the various people in the room to follow. Once everyone was more or less in the hall, he led them down the long hallway and around several corners. Soon he stopped at a large set of double doors which opened to reveal a fair sized auditorium.

On the far wall, directly across from the double doors, sat a large stage with small spot lights hanging above it. At the back of the stage, embedded in the wall, was a large, unfurled, white, projector screen. Before the stage were numerous rows of plush theater chairs, many more than there were winners.
"If you will all find a seat," Ralph said, " we will begin the presentation shortly. With that he turned and left the room.

Gideon was ready for a break. He had enjoyed the opportunity to get to know some of the other contestants over punch – and the chance to get a couple phone numbers from the cute ones – but it was time to relax. He found an unoccupied spot near the middle and propped his feat up on the seatback in front of him. There were enough chairs to seat the entire audience at least three times over, he reasoned; it was unlikely that he would encure anyone's wrath with this moderate lack of good manners.

And wow.

This was quite possibly the most comfortable chair he had sat on in the whole of his existence. It was a gentle beast, with a gorgeous amount of give but not so much as to lack support. Like sitting on a marshmallow stuffed in a barritone saxaphone descended from Heaven. It had all been worth it. The planning, the explosions, the running through rocks with a live grenade tying his hands. It had all been for this. This moment. This was the life.

Upon entering the auditorium, Amber scanned the room and quickly realized that the room contained many more seats than necessary for the comparatively small group entering it. She quickly found herself a seat close to one of the exits but not so close as to be suspicious. She watched quietly as the others found their own seats, she noticed one of the others, who sat only a few rows in front of her, seemed to be enjoying his cushioned seat wayyyyy too much.
Best keep an eye on that one. Amber thought to herself.
As subtly as she could, she drew her phone out of her pocket, switched it on silent and slid the top of it between her seat and thigh so that only its keypad was poking out.
[N auditorium] she texted without looking down [will keep updated. B ready]
She hit the send button and leaned back in her seat to wait.


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Suddenly the lights throughout the room began to darken while the stage lights lit up. Approaching the center from stage left was a tall red-haired woman wearing a long white lab coat and large round glasses.
"Hello everyone," the women said once she reached center stage, "and congratulations on passing phase one. I am Doctor Bianca Fabri, the head researcher and resident mad scientist here at Incandescent. Now, we had another special round of testing planned for you all, but special situation has occurred and we would be idiots not to take advantage of it"
The woman turned and the large screen on the back of the stage lit up, displaying a large map.
"This is the border of Ferrum and Stibious." Bianca explained. "Approximately 30 minutes ago, a small Ferrum military convoy moving through an unpopulated section of the border region was attacked by Stibian terrorists. This convoy was carrying a hazardous chemical agent to a disposal site in Stibium. It is believed the Terrorists intended to secure the agent for their own use, however, whatever their intentions were, the chemical was released. Because of this, it will be hours before the military can prep and deploy a rescue team and the convoy personnel are badly outnumbered. It is the intention of Incandescent Laboratories to take advantage of this opportunity to field test our current prototypes. We already have a cargo transport helicopter en route to the attack site with a hold full of proxys equipped with nonlethal weaponry. We intend for you here to utilize these proxys to defeat the terrorist forces and extract the military personnel. Any questions?"

...what?

Questions? Yeah, there were questions alright. Questions like "were these people out of their radiation-exposed minds?"

Gideon elected to present his inquiry a spot more tactfully. He raised his hand, and, without waiting to be acknowledged, shouted across the auditorium.

"Yeah, question, right here. Guy with the tats,” he said, designating himself. “I'm wondering why, seeing as our country was just attacked by terrorists – like real, rabid, terrorists here – your brilliant solution is to hit them with a bunch of lucky nerds armed to the teeth with pellet guns?"

He turned to his fellow audience members. "No offence."

"None taken." Adrian called from the back of the auditorium, having been unable to fit into any of the rows of seats. He gave a sheepish smile and a small wave as several pairs of eyes turned to face him. He heard a few soft chuckles. He believed that the his new friend's inquiry had missed the mark, though. An independent laboratory didn't have access to military resources, so it was this or nothing. What concerned him was that this woman was crazy enough to propose such an insane idea in the first place. When he stopped to think about it, though, the answer was obvious.

"Um, Miss Doctor Bianca?" He spoke up, unnecessarily putting a hand up in the air. "That was a very funny joke. I think we can move on now, though."

“You know mom?”

That had been the boy’s reply. Not a “She works for my folks” or even a simple “Money, how else?” No. The boy had referred to Albright as his mother. His mother! There was a chance that woman was in this very building! The mere possibility of such an unsavory character being in such close proximity was enough to shut Jean up for a good while, and he said precisely nothing else to the wheeled boy (or to anyone else for that matter) for the rest of the waiting period. And so the remainder of the phase 1 matches came and went, with a disappointingly low amount of noteworthy stratagems.

When it was finally time for “phase 2” - whatever worthless exercise this was supposed to be - the mechanic rushed his way to the front of the line of contestants. The new room appeared to be some sort of auditorium, which suited Jean just fine. He didn’t feel like talking to anyone, but he was bored out of his skull watching amateur robowarriors beat each other up. From the looks of the room, it sounded like they were at the very least prepared to give a presentation. Perhaps a demonstration, if the mechanic was lucky, but Jean didn’t get his hopes up; he and luck had apparently had a falling out this morning.

Unfortunately, what followed was neither presentation nor demonstration: It was an insult to the mechanic’s intelligence. Incandescent Laboratories had to have at least some brilliant minds on board in order to build their robots, but they obviously had some dolt design their recruitment process. It was bad enough that they had simply allowed anyone and everyone to apply, but then they had the audacity to lie to the applicants too? This was ridiculous.

The worst part was that the other audience members seemed to be buying it up. Jean had no particular interest in being reassuring, but he wasn’t going to miss an opportunity to share his thoughts on the lab staff, so he spoke up too.

“Relax, punks. You really think these Incandescent idiots could plan far enough ahead to have terrorists conveniently attack on the same day they begin their recruitment process? It’s just going to be another simulation.”

Shocked at the cacophony of voices, Bianca attempted to speak over them.
"Now everyone please calm down and i can explain everything." However her words made little impact on the crowd. Seeing this, she first turned off her microphone head set and took it off. She then bent the mike boom around until it was touching the ear piece, then flipped the on switch. A deafening screech blasted from the speakers around the room, forcing everyone but the mad doctor to cover their ears in pain. Once she was certain she had everyone's attention, Dr. Fabri returned the headset to normal and began speaking again.
"Now that everyone is finished. I assure you I am being quite serious. This will be no simulation and the fate of those soldiers depend upon your actions. Now if everyone will fol-"

All of the sudden all of the doors to the auditorium were throw open and several metal cylinders were thrown through. upon hitting the floor they detonated with an explosion of ear ringing sound and blinding light. While the people in the room were stunned, a dozen men armed with automatic weapons and wearing black tactical suits and balaclavas burst in surrounding the victors and the stage. At the back of the room, the raven haired, cyclops rose and joined the men, taking hold of an offered pistol, before nodding to one of the others.
"Nobody move," exclaimed the aforementioned masked man as he climbed onto the stage. " We are with Her Majesties Special Operations and Intelligence Battalion. As of right now you are all under arrest until we sort this out. Except for you Doctor Fabri." He said turning toward the woman, "By order of Her Majesty the Queen, you are under arrest for possession of classified intelligence, conspiracy, and treason."

Bianca smirked at the man, "Fine arrest me." she said, "But you do realize that without us, your little solider boys in that convoy are going to get killed right?"

"It doesn-" was all the man said before he jerked his head around as if responding to a new voice. He brought his hand up to his ear. "But...Yes...OK....Yessir....I understand....Roger, Out"
"Lieutenant, get up here!"
Amber, looking surprised got up on the stage and conversed in quite with the man for a moment, the man turned back for a moment until Amber grabbed his shoulder and started talking softly to him again, gesturing to the people in the auditoriums seats. Then man looked then nodded, before both of them turned towards the doctor, clearly furious.
"Fine doc, you win." said the masked man, "We are going do your mission, but when those men and women are safe, your coming back to HQ with us to answer some questions." Turning towards the testers he continued."Now i hate to say this but if we are going to have a chance at success, we are going to need your help. We don't have nearly enough men with us to man enough proxys to save those troops. And frankly you all here have literally the most experience of anyone else in the world with using proxys. So heres your choice, help us save those soldiers, or get shoved in the back of a truck and be taken to for questioning. Talk it out among yourselves if u must but decide quickly."
Once he had finished the voices began again screaming questions and demanding answers.

It was not too long after Jessica made her way into the room. She had figured the powers that be would be late putting on this presentation too and judging by the rowdiness of the crowd she had been right. Passing one of the members of the audience clad in a black military-esque outfit she nodded, respecting his taste as she too had chosen black today to wear, and took a seat near the back.

After a moment she noticed the all black outfit was pretty common today, so she decided to ask the guy who was now giving her the strangest look, "Oh, excuse me, but have they given us any idea of when we are going to start?"

As Jean spoke, Adrian gave a shrug that went unwitnessed from his little corner toward the rear of the auditorium. The comment clearly hadn't been intended for him; he hadn't fallen for the ploy, after all. Simulation, joke. Same difference. Still, the older gentleman had shown himself to be very abbrasive, and his response to learning that Andrea Albright was the boy's mother had been quite unusual. He made a note to ask the man about that later.

Adrian covered his ears as a loud squeal permeated the auditorium, then turned his attention back to the speaker. Having recaptured everyone's attention, the woman continued to insist that this was neither a jest nor another simulation, leaving the boy unamused. He had half a mind to walk out of the room that very moment, but the fact of the matter was that he couldn't. Like, literally couldn't. And if he passed up this opportunity, it was possible he would never get a chance to walk again. He'd just have to be patient and wait for this madwoman to drop pretenses.

Unfortunately, that would never happen. As the rear auditorium doors opened, Adrian had scarcely enough time to turn his head toward the noise before a small, cylindrical object flew in, landing not five feet from where he sat. Then his ears were assaulted for the second time in as many minutes as the cylinder released a burst of concentrated light and sound. The boy tried desperately to cover his ears once again, but it did nothing to assuage the ringing. The damage had been done. He felt like he might throw up.

When his vision eventually returned, he was greeted with a terrifying scene. Several men dressed in black combat gear had flooded the auditorium, carrying what looked to be large rifles. If any words were exchanged, the boy didn't hear them over the ringing, which had yet to subside. Reflexively, he grabbed the wheels of his chair and shoved them backward, but all this accomplished was slamming his back against the wall. With no recourse, he just stared blankly at the armed men, his hands trembling.

Whatever it was that was going on, it had gone on long enough. Jean had little patience in general, but his tolerance for this farce was nil if it came with blinding explosions. Whether the black-clad men were in on the joke or were simply a group of really incompetent terrorists didn’t matter; the mechanic wanted nothing to do with it. He reached into his back pocket, took out a boxy cellphone, and dialed 911.

“911, what is the location of your emergency?”

“Hello, yes, I’m being held hostage at Incandescent Laboratories. I’m not really sure what their deal is at all, but I should probably hang up before they shoot me.”

He ended the call.

The drummer raised his hands, intent on making it transparently clear that he was not a threat. Terrorists, Incandescent labs, military, it was all the same, man. These dudes could continue whatever insane charade they were playing; Gideon wasn't leaving his chair.