The fallen walker was smoking and charred as I saw it through the scope of a sniper rifle I’d scavenged. The tank shell seemed to have punched straight up through the Strider’s gut and blasted everything inside of it. Even as I watched, a Hacker approached the crippled machine. Once within a few paces of the monster, he shot the thing with a pistol, and then suddenly the machine was upright and as good as new again. I was amazed and terrified at the same time. It had taken a massive effort to down only one of the machines, yet only a moment to put some custom made computer code to use and have it on its feet again. No wonder we were doomed. But that wasn’t the only revelation I had at this time, I saw how the Hackers deployed their artillery amongst other things. While hunting for me or any other survivor still roaming about, Hackers on foot switched to a weapon that, on the outward appearance, looked like a shotgun. But when it fired, that black, arcing blob went flying towards its own destruction. More and more often, the Hackers resorted to using it to blast out the interiors of buildings, throwing plumes of black flames and smoke out of the windows and hurling even heavy cargo containers around inside. Not only that, but they seemed to find the restrictions of gravity were beneath them. It quickly became commonplace to see individual Hackers zipping around at high speeds in mid air like hover cars from some 1950’s prediction of the future. These Hackers would zoom around, peer into a room through an opening, dart away or move closer to inspect something. They were the eyes and ears of the Striders, pointing out targets for decimation. They were as equally invulnerable as their monstrous metal comrades though, and I saw from a distance many Players fire accurate shots only for the Hacker to nimbly dive aside. Such measures made matters particularly stressful and harsh for all of us struggling to survive, especially considering we had no counter-measures to match them. We couldn’t make ourselves levitate, become completely undetectable or have weapons capable of atomising half of a planetary body in one shot. That had been our problem all along, yet it was never more highly stressed than it was now. These obvious inadequacies made me think in the few times I could stop and rest. Perhaps it was only natural that we should be swept aside like dust. Perhaps this was just natural selection taken to a digital level, and that it was perfectly right that we should be destroyed and replaced by our superiors. I retreated to a dark corner of the map and pondered this despondently for some time. [b]The Map under the Hackers.[/b] I forget when I exactly emerged after contemplating the fate of our place on these matches. But when I did, I had the distinct urge to move on, as a Strider had been grinding its way over. I moved slowly through the shadows to a staircase built into the wall, dreading the possibility of being seen. Outside, the Strider continued clanking and stomping along. I proceeded down the stairs to an open doorway that coincidentally led onto the very same back alley that the Baptist had scampered down earlier. (The map, as big as it was, couldn’t truly replicate the authenticity of a sprawling metropolis.) It was there that I noticed a change in the scenery. The difference was subtle, and lay in the colours and tone of the surroundings. It was a small change, yet one that I perceived as surreal. All of the colours had apparently been toned down, as if someone had decided to change the colour settings. The usual bright copper colour of this map, cast from a blazing African sun above, seemed muted and paler than before, and the vibrant tone looked darker. I drew the simple conclusion that now the Hackers had conquered our world, they intended to change it to their liking. I imagined that soon, these ruins would be the weird and lurid landscape of another planet. It underlined what I had thought on just before, a sense of dethronement and dejected defeat. For a time I felt that I stood there alone, the last Player left alive. I was convinced that the extermination of our kind was complete, save for myself. But then I snapped out of the reverie and listened: There was no monotonous clank and grind of Strider footfalls. The machine had stopped. I gingerly backed into a corner and waited. Then, with growing volume I heard a persistent and bizarre [i]“lolololololololololol”[/i] noise, and I realised something was approaching. For what seemed an interminable age, the noise grew louder and louder, until I saw a black metal tentacle, obviously one from a Strider, emerge into view. I bit back my fear and stood stock still in the corner, if I tried to run then I would surely be spotted. [i]“lololololololololol”[/i] The tentacle was through the doorway now, and facing up the way I had come. It had no clearly visible camera mounted onto it, but it was doubtless like a fibre optic cable that a modern day soldier might use on the battlefield. The tentacle swayed away from me, looking in the opposite corner. I gulped, hoping it wouldn’t turn around to find me. But then I noticed a grenade sitting alone on the floor, and my only hope for getting out of this. I scooped up the explosive, pulled the pin and tossed it out the doorway where it bounced off a wall, settled on the floor by the extended tentacle and blew up. Immediately the tentacle whipped backwards out of the doorway to the source of the disturbance, leaving me alone. I sighed with relief, then took a risk to peer around the corner and see what was actually going on. Further on the alleyway to my right, a Strider was crouched low at the mouth of the alley, much like the one that had caught the Baptist unawares. Now joined by more tentacles, the original helped pick up crates to throw them away so that a possible survivor would have nowhere to hide. They continued like this for about half a minute until they ceased their frenzied search and retracted to their normal length underneath the main Strider body. I was then surprised to see a Hacker emerge from this towering construct. I ducked back into the shadows as it passed by, but kept an eye on the Hacker regardless. It stopped within sight of its war machine, then drew a pistol. Fascinated, I watched as the Hacker fired a single bullet at the floor in front of it, and on that point an exact replica of it appeared. I was barely able to understand what had happened before my very eyes when the first Hacker promptly vanished. Almost like the Deletion Gun had been to work, nothing was left. Dumbfounded, I was only left with more questions to ask when the replica stirred into life and headed back to its Strider. Now, while the change in the surroundings that I mentioned earlier was subtle, the one I talk of here was verging on unnoticeable. Somehow, I picked up on a slight change in the Hacker’s movement. It seemed slightly more jagged and jerky than it had been only moments before. Of course, I did not know this at the time, but Microsoft online teams were working feverishly to ban the Hackers before they could make this disaster even worse. What the Hackers were doing-as I had seen here-was creating new accounts on the spot with a modified weapon, then logging on under that alias before the Microsoft workers could nail them down and stop them from going online again. So, not only were the Hackers numerous and invulnerable, they could operate almost without fear of retribution. Against that, it was a wonder we managed to hold on for as long as we did. The Hacker returned to its Strider and the behemoth lumbered away, and once more I was alone with my thoughts. Once confident I would not be seen, I continued travelling the map and spotting more and more differences as I went. Outside, a traveller was kept under the constant scrutiny not of the sun that I had become accustomed to on this map, but a great, black disc hanging serenely in the sky like a total eclipse, the faintest rays of light escaped its edges, though that was all. Colours quickly lost all vibrancy, and soon I felt as if I was trapped in an old-fashioned monochrome film. More Striders than I care to remember came and went through their vast Teleporter, the ground quaking with each step they took while cohorts of Hackers marched in ordered columns through the same portal. Above them, more Hackers flew around freely on a constant hunt for any Players still alive. When I had a moment to stop at a place with a good view, I witnessed Hacker industrial prowess. There was no long and arduous assembly line, no heavy parts that needed to shipped in from miles away, just a modified gun. Hackers merely had to fire a shot at the floor, and a monstrous Strider would spontaneously appear, apparently ready for combat. Another Hacker would immediately clamber into the cockpit and pilot the Strider away for whatever purpose. But despite the constant threat of danger-and most likely because of the stress it caused, too-I could feel myself slowly slipping away to sleep. My eyes were getting heavy and movements sluggish. I knew what might happen if I left my Player in one spot for too long, but the lure of rest was too great. I stumbled, desperate to stay awake, to a storage area with plenty of crates and barrels for me to hide behind. The walls were splashed with dried blood and spent shell casings were everywhere, but I couldn’t care less. The cacophony of marching Hacker Striders and their indefatigable industry resounded around me, but nevertheless I drifted off into a troubled, restless sleep.