Point of Origin (War Eternal Book 4) Read Online Free PDF Page A

moment later. "Do you think I've risen to the occasion?"
    Steven stopped walking, turning to face Mitchell. "You shouldn't need me to tell you that you have. The last time I saw you, I saw an arrogant, cocky, immature Marine jock who would rather get laid than visit his family. Now, I see a leader. A man that soldiers look up to and respect. A man that they're willing to follow to their deaths."
    Mitchell froze, unsure how to respond. He hadn't given much thought to his actions while he was taking them. He was doing as he had seen the people he respected do; that was all. To hear that Steven had noticed it, to have his brother praise him for it was enough to leave him speechless.
    "Don't worry," Steven said, saving him. "I'm sure you're still an asshole when the uniform comes off."

6

    They reached Tio's home a few minutes later. The door had been shredded by gunfire, hanging from its hinges as a mess of punctured metal and slag. Just inside the entrance rested two of the machines Watson had built to attack Asimov - simple four-legged things with an assault rifle mounted on top and a mechanism to carry and change the magazines. These two were in pieces, torn to junk by rifle fire, though there was enough battery power and functional parts that they twitched and skittered in place on the floor.
    "Freaky," Steven said, watching them move in a repetitive motion. "I think I saw a horror stream once that was kind of like this."
    "I think I saw that one, too. Who ever thought it would turn out to be a documentary?"
    Mitchell felt his stomach clench when he saw the drips of blood on the floor beyond the machines. Thomas had told him how Millie had fought her way out of the house, losing enough blood that he was sure she was going to drop any second. That she survived for days after only proved how tough she had been.
    "The study is this way," he said, leading Steven through the home.  
    Watson's machines hadn't gotten the chance to destroy the equipment Tio used to query the data he had collected over the years, which was good for them. It was a second bit of luck that the system hadn't locked when Tio never returned to it. He could only imagine Tio didn't bother with anything like that because he never forgot to lock it.
    Except when he was under attack and his daughter's life was at risk.
    Of course, the system would detect them as unauthorized users. The good news was that Digger knew the key code to get them through that bit of security.
    They entered the room in silence. The whole house was still dark, with only emergency lighting active anywhere on the base. Watson's efforts had burned the reactor down to dangerous levels, and without supply lines running to refuel them they had to conserve until they could get off the site.
    "How does this thing work?" Steven asked, looking down at the ring on the floor.
    "From what Digger told me, it's like a p-rat, but everything is external. The projectors give a full view of the interface, and it responds to voice commands and motion to control it."
    "Didn't dad have something like that in the basement?"
    Mitchell laughed. Their father had been into classic VR gaming, and he had owned an ancient machine he'd salvaged from a recycling yard somewhere and managed to repair. The system originally had over a thousand games published for it, but he had only been able to find one that still functioned properly.
    A war game.
    Fighting aliens.
    Truth really was stranger, and often shittier, than fiction.
    "I don't think we need to worry about any giant eyeballs or tentacle monsters," Mitchell said, entering the circle.
    "Not inside the circle, anyway," Steven said.
    "Unauthorized users detected," the computer said. "Please authorize."
    Mitchell approached the touchscreen and typed in the code Digger had given him.
    "Users authorized."
    "It sounds like that gaming rig, too," Steven said. He mimicked the stilted, synthesized voice. "Ready, Player One?"
    "Look at this," Mitchell said. The folders