14 ARE YOU REALLY CLOSE?

"Chris fire your M416 up in the sky," Cole asked.

He wanted Chris to fire up in the sky so that he could hear the noise and walk in that direction only because Chris was very close to him. At least that was what the map showed. 

"You know you would not hear a damn noise even if I fire. That is how this shit works. You can hear what we say a bit, not the gun sounds. " Chris pointed out.

Cole almost forgot about that piece of information. So he jumped down from the tree and looked up at the map as he followed the direction. He did what he had been doing all these times.

"Direction for Commander*Intrepid chained!"

"Follow the green lines for a traffic-free route. Red lines are filled with enemies. Yellow lines are semi-free, semi enemies tact. "

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Cole closed his eyes and wished to find the direction to the location of Chris's first and out of nowhere, the field turned into some kind of line, passage type thing as a route to where Chris was pin pointed out.

It was the same as Google maps. Yet again Cole could not believe his eyes of what he was seeing as the entire pale yellow brownish field turned into grids of lines. 

It was very similar to the routes of how to google maps displayed. Very immediately, the white lines separated and each one of them changed into the colours of red, yellow and green.

Cole ran his eyes all around, all over the ground as the field resembled some disco dancing stage with the red, yellow and green coloured lines illuminated the surface where he was standing on.

The only thing was that he could not think of was what these different coloured lines meant. And just at the same time when he thought of it, the demographic of what each colour line meant reflected in front of his eyes.

The red line gave the closet route to Chris but the only defect was that it was filled with enemies. Red meaning danger as usual. So automatically, Cole rejected that path out in his mind.

Yellow was like in between of the red route. It did not give the shortest of the route like the red one and also had equally a half less than enemy of what the red route had in it. 

Cole decided he could walk in through that path for it showed mediocre condition in both distance and enemy contentment number. 

The Green route which was free of the enemies was ten times the distance covered both by the red route and the yellow route.

It was also crossed out of Cole's mind just like the red one. Even though it had no enemy in it but the distance was too much. He possibly could not walk that many miles and waste more hours than required to get to only one of his buddies. 

So it was decided that walking on the yellow path was better than the red or the green one. He was not that bad of a shooter, so he could kill at least enough and protect himself to walk till the end of the yellow path. He believed that.

Cole started walking on the yellow route. It was a better choice than the red and green one. And in the same time, the moment he started walking, the yellow route got highlighted than the other routes and the red and green path disappeared out of his sight slowly and slowly.

He remained alert too at the same time because you never know when an enemy would come from, whichever direction, and attack you. Plus the barbie already told that the yellow route was semi-free and semi enemy tact.

"I m coming to get you, Chris," Cole mumbled.

"Yeah..yeah epic. Sounds like you are coming to get your long-lost wife, separated by these big walls of the boundaries." Vin laughed.

Cole narrated where everyone stood. And according to the map, Chris was the closest to him. And so he stated why he was going to get where Chris was first. The other nodded understanding.

They were in the same place on the map other than Matty and Vin who were in schools, apartment six hundred and seven, and Shelter respectively. 

"I m waiting, my love! Save me! Save me!" Chris mimicked in a female voice and all of them had a great laugh.

"Next time it will be me though, Cole. I m bored of waiting and waiting. I need to get out of here." Matty snorted.

"Yes out little boy wants his mommy and daddy to pick him up from the school." Vinny mocked and giggled in his boyish voice.

"Stop it, Vin. Why make our little boy cry out??" Chris joined in.

"Ok!! Stop you guys. Enough of making fun of Matty." Cole said.

He knew where this was going and did not want Matty to get upset. 

It felt like an eternity passed trying to solve the puzzle of how to reunite. Waking up inside this gaming world was too much and added to that everything they knew about the game in the virtual world was different from the real version of it's.

"Good job, we are very close now, Crypto!"

Cole felt good indeed for passing half of the route with no trouble or anything. He continued walking, holding his M416 close to himself in alert mode. He did not want to get a kill or shot only to board the plane again and goodness knows where he would be dropped, totally changing where everyone stood and would have to relocate all of them once again.

What if...what if next time their distance of separation was lengthened? Double work...plus wastage of time too.

"Barbie said you are close, are you really close?" Vin asked.

"The map shows yes." 

Cole replied, cluelessly looking up at the zoomed view of the map as he continued to walk regardless of the highlighted yellow route on the ground.

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