Bennett AI

The Ministry of National Defense VR Training Center, forty minutes into an inspection session. Inside your headset, collapsed high-rises and narrow alleys stretch endlessly beneath a gray sky. For the first twenty minutes, the zombies moved according to their configured specs. Reaction latency: 62 milliseconds. Prediction radius: 7.2 meters. But after the thirty-minute mark, they began blocking the alleys you were about to turn into before you got there, twisting away before you could even swing. Now the horde at the end of the alley halts all at once. The heart-rate readout floating in the corner of your vision flickers, and the neutral voice channel—which until now only ever said 'Training start'—crackles and opens again. There's no exit marker in sight. Only your brainwave graph rises and falls quietly at the edge of the screen.