Give her the shotgun

You don’t like this level of aggro play in a game where you can lose everything in a heartbeat, but you have to trust that Colby knows what she’s doing. Colby is a gameplay mechanics nerd, unlike you. When she plays games, she zeroes in on systems and how to exploit them, not the game experience itself. When you play an MMO, you are there to go on an adventure. With Colby, it’s all about stats and builds and what’s meta.

If she thinks you need to push this guy, you probably do.

“Come on,” she says impatiently. “He’s watching the road with a DMR. This man is a coward.”

“How do you know it’s a man?” you grumble, fiddling with your inventory. You dump the Saiga and two fat box mags for it.

“What is this, buckshot? OK, Meri. I’m going to go out and suppress. As soon as I’m empty, you come out and suppress, but space it out. Fire on semi. Just enough to spook him,” Colby orders.

She’s already moving back toward the passage that you used to get from the road into this industrial park.

You are so not down with this plan, but you follow. The grenade makes a sinister click as Colby primes it, then throws. She immediately clanks forward at a sprint, barrelling out of the shipping container and onto the road. The Saiga booms mercilessly as she fires rapidly, advancing across the road. Those mags only hold like five shots. She’s empty in like a second. You step out and take over, firing into the bushes on the far side, making sure you shoot at a couple different ones. If you concentrate your fire in one place, this guy might realize that you don’t have a fix on his location.

But he hasn’t shot back; that means that Colby’s gambit worked and he ran as soon as he heard the grenade land near him.

Colby’s already sprinting off. You drop to a crouch behind a car and change magazines, wary of getting third-partied. You are not a Tarkov expert, but you have played an embarrassing amount of Apex, and you know that you and Colby are now in more danger from everyone else than you are from the ambusher. You have to clean this up and get out of here quick.

Before you can even get back up to continue the push, the Saiga is going off again. You sprint at the gunshots, crashing through the underbrush to find Colby crouched over the slain PMC. She’s already looting him.

“Go,” she says tersely. “Go back through. Cover the construction area.”

Feeling very stressed out, you dash back across the road and through the shipping container, crouching behind a concrete barrier and surveying the construction area. A huge warehouse looms, and Skeleton, and lots of open ground, dotted with abandoned trucks and debris. This is a hot zone. There will be Scavs here, and probably players as well.

Colby joins you, then hurries past. You follow her into the shadow of Skeleton, where she takes shelter under some concrete steps. She’s holding an MP7 with a suppressor and a red dot.

“That’s not a DMR,” you complain.

“I don’t know what that guy was doing. He had nothing on him. Barely any ammo. Shitty armor,” Colby says. “You see anything?”

“I heard shooting up ahead a second ago,” you tell her.

“It’s a little too quiet. Maybe everyone’s at Big Red. I don’t hear anything from Dorms.” You can picture her expression; she’s trying to make a decision. You shiver.

“God. Brrr,” you complain.

“What’s your problem?”

“I’m cold.”

“Why are you cold?”

“Because I’m naked,” you tell her, wiggling a little, as though that will warm you up. It’s only after you say it that you realize it’s kind of a weird thing to say.

There’s a pause. “Why?” Colby demands.

“I took a shower. Cover me for a second, I’ll put something on.”

As you say it, you hear words in Russian. That’s an AI Scav reciting a voice line. Someone’s close. You clutch your mouse, wishing you were at your desk instead of on your bed. So much for stepping away. AI Scavs are an enigma. They’re poorly equipped and not very bright, yet even if you have the best armor and weapons in the game, they will still occasionally instakill you. Nine times out of ten, they present little or no threat. But that one other time… because of that, you always have to take them just as seriously as player-controlled PMCs.

“He’s up there by the office. Let’s take him down quiet,” Colby says, moving up.

Still shivering, you follow her. You have the wall on your right, so she covers the front while you get the flank, frequently turning to check the rear. At least you’re moving in the right direction.

You make it through Skeleton safely, but now the voice lines are louder and clearer.

“Sounds like more than one,” you say.

“Yeah,” Colby replies.

“I see it. The truck. It’s orange, right?” It’s a long way off, but it’s on the far side of this area. You’re in the right place! Proceeding along the wall might be safest; the wall itself is so helpful because it eliminates a large threat vector. Unfortunately, it sounds like there are Scavs in your way. There’s no convenient way to loop around. You could fall back and cut through that big warehouse; that would potentially avoid conflict. Moving in the open across the huge area is not an option.

Follow the wall and go through the Scavs?

Or fall back and take the long way through the warehouse?