Zone A -- Lowlands

[Sterling Archer]

I continued my march through the sun-soaked hills, at this point not even bothering with the illusion of stealth. Any form of foliage in which to hide seemed few and far between anyway, and crawling through the grass seemed like the quickest way to snag and rip my turtleneck. I’d sooner catch a bullet.

The sounds of the scuffle to my rear had now faded to almost nothing, with only the occasional holler reaching my ears. I wondered how many, if any, of the combatants would survive the encounter. I hadn’t taken a very close look in passing but I could swear most of them looked more like cartoon characters than actual people. Imagine that, fighting a cartoon character? Completely ridiculous.

A sharp ping from my backpack drew my attention from my musings, momentarily directing my attention to my anklet. Having confirmed that it was not in-fact primed to explode at any moment, I shifted my assumption to the tablet I’d been afforded. “Has Syntech finally loosened the purse strings and dropped something for me?”

I tugged the device out from under the various bags of trail mix and protein powder I’d been ‘gifted’ and took a quick scan of the immediate area. From what I could tell there were a few locations that would soon be graced with some kind of event, the squares bearing a flashing red outline with a lowercase letter ‘i’ in the middle. The shitty map application lacked any kind of key in the corner, instead emblazoned with a large flashing banner advertisement along the bottom of the screen, depicting a faceless silver man proudly holding a bottle of Pepsi. “Couldn’t spring for the Premium version, huh? Just stuck with ‘KarlyMaps FREE TRIAL’. If I end up tripping into a ravine I’m going to be pissed.” Sighing, I set my destination and launched navigation.

A10 -> A11