Mini-cap: Harsh Realm E4 "Kein Ausgang"

Google German translation: Kein ausgang = no output

Seriously, I hate these voiceovers.  Someone needs to goose Tom, get a little energy into his voice.  Anyway, the gang is looking for a certain assassin, one of the first men sent into the game to take out Santiago: one Captain Wolf.  They're out in the boonies somewhere and Dexter runs off into the woods.  When Tom and Pinnochio chase after him, they encounter some weird computer code/glitch so that Mute Girl/"Florence" and the car are gone when they go back to the road.  Also, they seem to be back in World War II.

A troop of U.S. GIs, including Doug Savant, desperately trying to butch it up, captures our boys, thinking they're German spies.  Tom notices something weird[er] right off, however, when he catches Doug Savant reciting the VCs' lines before they speak.  The soldiers lock Tom, Pinnochio and Dexter in a storeroom where they find a little VC boy hiding in the woodbox; Pinnochio finds a pinup of Betty Grable and tucks it into his vest (ha!).  He explains to Tom that this is a battlefield simulation, an early version of Harsh Realm, that apparently someone forgot to delete.

The boys try to escape but there's no way out of the simulation.  Doug Savant/"Scott Somer" tells them that he's been stuck in here for 18 months.  When Pinnochio learns his name, he nearly rips Somer's throat out because Somer was in Desert Storm with him and got four of his men killed.  When everyone settles down, they brainstorm that since the objective of the simulation is to capture the bridge over the river, maybe the simulation will end if they blow the bridge up.  Or, another option is the simulation crashes and kills them all.

That night, they sneak out and set the explosives on the bridge.  Dexter and the VC kid wander out onto the bridge after them and Tom gets captured by ze Germans as he's shooing them to safety.  The kid makes it back to Pinnochio; Dexter scurries off the side of the bridge in a hail of bullets.  Some wants to blow the bridge anyway - nearly frantic to get out of this simulation - but Pinnochio won't let him.  He's going after Tom.

Tom is beaten/interrogated by ze Germans for a while until the ranking officer comes in: it's Captain Wolf, the assassin they've been looking for.  Wolf says that he actually prefers the simulation to Harsh Realm (it helps that he speaks German).  He also says that the boys shouldn't blow up the bridge - which Tom takes to mean that the jump-port (the escape switch out of the simulation) is located there.  Wolf leaves, giving Tom a knife with which to cut himself free.  Shortly thereafter, Pinnochio shows up and Tom takes him to see Wolf.  Meanwhile, Somer can't stand it any longer and tracks down another detonator, determined to blow the bridge since he doesn't know about the jump-port.

When Tom, Pinnochio and Wolf get to the bridge, Somer has lit the fuse.  Pinnochio goes for the fuse while Wolf and Tom cover him, but Pinnochio gets tagged and falls off the side of the bridge.  Wolf gets shot and killed, but before he expires, he tells Tom that the jump-port is off the side of the bridge, right where both Dexter and Pinnochio went over.  Tom makes a dash for it, falling into the jump-port just as the bridge explodes.  Somer tries to follow but gets caught in the explosion instead.

In the aftermath, Tom, Dexter and Pinnochio have made it back to Harsh Realm where Florence is patiently waiting by the car.  Somer, however, reawakens back in the simulation.  There is no escape for him (except doesn't he now know where the jump-port is and can go there since the simulation seems to have reset?).