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Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death.
Mickey Barnes, or Mickey7, lies on his back in an ice crevice on the planet Niflheim. He was exploring a cave when he saw a rock that looked like a monkey, which distracted him and led him to walk right into a hole. His body aches, and his wrist is sprained. He uses his ocular implant to scan for any way out, but he’s lost. He checks in with Berto, his friend, handler, and pilot, via the chat function in his ocular implant. Berto says that Mickey7 is too deep in the hole to retrieve, so he’s going to leave him there to die.
Mickey7 is an Expendable, a person whose job it is to do dangerous work that often leads to his death. When he signed up to be an Expendable for the Drakkar colonization mission to Niflheim, scientists uploaded his consciousness. Now, when he dies, he wakes up in a newly printed copy of his body with all his memories intact. He uses the numbers in his name to indicate what version of himself he’s on.