This story takes place at a college that is deserted for the plot device, yet still has enough students to hold several parties, art classes, the indoor pool is open, the gym is open, and a paintball game in the woods. Almost everyone who is still on campus is male. There's a secret society that has access to magic and somehow manages to field assault teams against the invaders. You'd think that someone, anyone, would call the cops after hearing gunshots, or seeing men in tactical gear, but curiously, the assault team they sent in first never managed to get a shot off. Basically, the so-called story is an excuse for the Very Specific subject matter.
Anyway, this chapter starts with the society managing to disrupt the connection between the interdimensional invaders who have been turning people into monsters throughout the series, and the college. This knocks out the victims and changes them back to semi-normal. The team we're following enters a building and realizes the bad guys are using tunnels, and they may be at the command post. They want to purify the joint, and their command tells them to sweep the first and second floors of the tunnels to see if they can capture an enemy officer before deciding whether to perform the ritual.
Naturally, they don't see anything suspicious about command knowing how many floors the tunnels have. In fact, we're not even sure their radio's been compromised. They may just be commanded by idiots.
They don't split up entirely, just into two teams. The wizard, call him Alpha, goes with Bravo and Charlie. At some point during the sweep, Bravo finds a handheld video game system, and plays with it, with the assistance of Charlie.
In the middle of an operation where their very souls are on the line, without checking it for magic.
Alpha tells them to cut it out, and they ignore him. A few minutes later, he finds them completely engrossed in the game, and yells at them for not protecting him, threatening to report them. Even after they turn off the game and hand it to him, they still keep talking about it. He doesn't call them on it because he doesn't want an argument.
I want to make this clear. The expert they're with. Did not want. To give them a command. When they had obeyed his commands before.
When they stop and Bravo steps around the corner to take a leak, Alpha realizes Mac is staring, and scans for any magic. It's clean. He turns it on and begins to play, out of "curiosity".
Naturally, it turns him into one of the monsters. Apparently, the invaders have hax.
Since the secret society of societal secrets has already lost one team of high-speed low-drag tactical operators operating tactically, and there are several other teams, I'm going to assume those were the guys who were actually competent, and what we were seeing in this chapter is the equivalent of the special class.
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