The rear section of the bunker was separated from the main room by a corridor the original architects had decided should be exactly wide enough for one person to walk through without turning sideways. Proxy moved through it with his attention split between the physical corridor and the network node he was following deeper into the bunker.
Somewhere inside that divided attention the bunker's architecture formed in his mind. The single entrance, electromechanical lock he already controlled, concrete walls thick enough to belong to a time before anyone here had worried about the sort of rounds currently in circulation on this island.
"You have the face," Nyx said from behind him.
He kept walking. "Again?"
"Not the thinking one," she said. "The other one. The one that shows up before you say something interesting."
He stopped at the end of the corridor and turned to look back at the space they had crossed.
The door opened inward through a frame narrow enough that anything coming through it had to enter before they could properly judge the room.
"The bunker has one entrance," he said. "The lock is on an old node, which means it is on my node. Anyone who wants to come in comes through a door I control, in a frame narrow enough that they come through it one at a time."
She was quiet for a moment.
Then she ran the tip of her tongue slowly across her lower lip and said, "That sounds very good."
"It's a thought," he said.
"I like your thoughts," she said, simply and without elaboration.
He turned back toward the cache signal and moved.
The back room was smaller than the main chamber, the walls closer together, the ceiling lower, the emergency lighting slightly brighter, as if the original designers had decided this particular space deserved the extra power.
In the far wall, set into the concrete at floor level, was a container unit with the same corporate lock signature as the cache in the resort's east wing, the patient, waiting vibe of something installed for a purpose and left untouched since.
He crouched in front of it, interfaced through the deck, and the architecture was familiar enough that the bypass took seconds.
The lid released with a clean mechanical sound.
Nyx crouched beside him.
Inside, beneath the standard ration blocks and water units and a sealed trauma kit, two items sat in cut foam.
The first was small enough to fit in a closed fist, a module with a deck interface port on one end and a suppressor chip visible through a transparent housing panel on the other.
He picked it up and turned it over.
The chip was designed to mask hacking signatures, specifically the residual access marks a netrunner left on a node after intrusion.
He had been thinking about the viral-hack netrunner who had been tracking his access in the resort before he left it.
This module was not a solution to that problem.
It was the start of one.
"What does it do?" Nyx said.
"It suppresses the marks I leave when I access a network," he said. "It makes my work harder to trace back to the source."
He looked at her for a moment.
"The netrunner we left behind in the resort was learning the habits of my access. If she is still following those, this makes the trail harder to track."
Nyx understood the implication with the directness she reserved for threats.
"That's pretty good," she said.
He pocketed it.
The second item was a pistol.
Compact, slightly overengineered in a way that implied the manufacturer had ideas about this weapon beyond the purely functional.
It was a smart weapon, the guidance array integrated directly into the barrel assembly, the targeting system built into the frame rather than mounted over it.
It was smaller than it had any right to be, given what the engineering implied was inside it.
Nyx picked it up.
The moment her hand closed around the grip, the weapon said, cheerfully and without preamble.
Hello! I'm Clippy. I noticed you're attempting to hold a firearm. It looks like you may be preparing for a combat engagement. Would you like some tips on how to get started?
Nyx looked at the gun.
She looked at Proxy.
She looked at the gun again.
Excellent grip pressure.
Clippy continued, at the same volume and with the same pleasant confidence.
I'm detecting a high-stress environment and possible atomic era architecture in the surrounding area, which suggests you may be in a bunker or secure location.
I have seventeen situation-specific recommendations preloaded. Shall I begin?
"Sure," Nyx said.
Proxy looked at her.
"Why did you say yes."
"It'd be rude to say no," she said, which, in her view, was a complete explanation of the decision.
Wonderful.
Recommendation one: when engaging targets in confined spaces, aim for the thoracic cavity for maximum stopping efficiency.
I can project target highlight overlays through my guidance system if you'd prefer visual assistance. Would you like visual assistance?
"That's fine," Nyx said.
Recommendation two: I am detecting that your heart rate is within normal parameters, which suggests excellent stress tolerance.
You may be an experienced combatant. Is this your first time using a smart weapon?
I am designed for users at every experience level.
"It's my first," Nyx said.
I'm very glad you told me.
Clippy said warmly.
I'll adjust my recommendations for new users. Shall we begin with firearm safety, target identification, or optimal breathing technique?
"Firearm safety," Nyx said, and looked at Proxy over the barrel of the gun with a teasing smile.
"I'm going to say," Proxy said, "that you are not unfamiliar with firearms."
"Obviously," she said. "But Clippy doesn't, and it is being very thorough."
Clippy began the firearm safety module.
Proxy distributed the remaining supplies into the packs, rations, water, the trauma kit, and listened to Clippy explain the basic function of a safety mechanism to someone who had killed multiple people with guns in the last two days.
Nyx listened with the attentive patience she reserved for things she found genuinely interesting, which apparently included this.
He shrugged that away with resignation.
She holstered the pistol against her pack strap when the safety module concluded, in the position the SMG had previously occupied.
The SMG itself she left on the sling without explanation, and he did not ask for one, because the explanation was straightforward. SMG ammunition existed on this island, and the sling was simpler to keep than to rebuild.
Holstering detected.
Clippy said, as the pistol settled into position.
Thank you for keeping me properly stored between engagements. I will continue monitoring the ambient environment and will alert you to any identified threats. This service is complimentary.
"Thank you," Nyx said.
You're very welcome.
Proxy looked at the gun.
He looked at Nyx.
She looked back at him eyes turning into half-moons.
He let it go and pulled the RAM chip from his pocket and looked at it in the amber light.
The slot it needed was built into his cyberdeck port housing.
The installation required fine-motor precision on a scale the bunker's pre-cyberpunk construction offered no support for, and he had not yet solved that particular problem.
"If only," he said, mostly to himself.
"I can do it," Nyx said.
He looked at her.
"... since when?"
"Mm, that's not important" she said, and held up her left hand, palm facing him.
The tips of her fingers shifted, a barely visible reconfiguration, the nanoscale actuators living there becoming recognizable as the precision tools they actually were.
She held it up long enough for him to look at it, then lowered her hand.
He looked at her hand.
Then at her face.
Then at her hand again, in the absent way he had when his mind was updating a file it had already considered complete.
"That's a new one," he said.
She smiled the smile she had been wearing since the start of this, when she said 'Little secrets.'
Before he could say anything, the wall spoke.
A speaker grille set flush with the concrete above the hardwired panels, one he had noted without assigning function, made a sound that washed through the corridor with the tinny quality of old infrastructure carrying a signal built for better equipment than this.
"Good afternoon, contestants."
The warm voice. The annoying pause.
"Two additional eliminations to confirm. Contestant designated Sermon, terminated. Contestant designated Ironclad, terminated. Twenty-seven competitors remain."
A shorter pause that preceded a specific point.
"And to our friends in Bunker 7, Mountain Ridge sector, we see you. The audience sends their regards."
The speaker returned the bunker to silence.
Proxy looked at the ceiling, which was what he did when the voice came from everywhere and nowhere, and held the RAM chip in his hand and thought about the shift from jungle-approximate to grid-coordinate precise.
And what that meant in terms of how much time they had before the next person looking for a free exit arrived at the ridge with a map.
He looked at Nyx.
"If you can do it," he said, "we should do it now."