Emika Chen Nominated for Wardraft

 

From Penniless Glitch to Wild-Card Star!

Details in This Week’s Issue

 

HENKA GAMES STOCK JUMPS WITH EMIKA CHEN

 

ADDITION

 

Seeing my face cover eighty stories is enough to make me nauseous. I force myself to look away from the madness outside and instead press my trembling hands together firmly in my lap.

Think of the ten million, I repeat to myself. I glance outside again to see another billboard rotate onto a photo of DJ Ren, who’s wearing his giant headphones and hunched over his DJ equipment. Suddenly, it occurs to me that the other two bounty hunters, whoever they are, will probably be watching me at the Wardraft. Investigating me. Are they wild cards, too?

 

By the time we pull into the roped-off section of the Tokyo Dome’s side entrance, I’ve almost calmed the butterflies wreaking havoc in my stomach. In a blur, I look on as men in suits open my door, help me out of the car, and usher me down a red carpet that leads into the cool, dark recesses of the stadium’s rear. Think badass thoughts, I tell myself. My guides lead me into a narrow corridor with a ceiling that gradually slopes higher and higher. The sound of fifty thousand screams grows near. Then, as I enter the main space, the roar turns deafening.

 

The stadium is bathed in dim blue light. Dozens of colored spotlights sweep back and forth across the space. The aisles are jam-packed with viewers, waving homemade posters of their favorite wild-card players, all gathered here to see us in the flesh. With my contacts on, I can see enormous holographic screens lining the edge of the central arena. On each of these screens, footage plays of the wild cards in action during some of their most popular in-game moves. The players look like they are lunging right out of the screen as giant, three-dimensional figures, and each time they make a good move, the crowd screams at the top of their lungs.

 

A bubble pops up in my view. My level jumps by two.

 

Official Wardraft Participant! Congratulations!

 

+20,000 Points. Daily Score: +20,000

 

You leveled up! You’re on fire!

 

Level 28 | N30,180

 

You earned a treasure chest!

 

The front rows of the stadium are half full of wild-card players. As the guides usher me into a row, I scan the crowd around me and try to match up

some of these people with their Warcross personas. My eyes register a few faces. Abeni Lea, representing Kenya. She’s ranked in the top fifty worldwide. Then there’s Ivo Erikkson, representing Sweden. Hazan Demir, a girl from Turkey. I swallow, wondering if it’d be silly to ask for their autographs.

 

Time to work, I remind myself. Quietly, I make an up-swipe gesture with two fingers and bring up my shields, then hunt for the security that blankets the dome. Hideo gave me a special ID to get past it all, offering me access to the basic information that Henka Games stores about each user, but using the ID will also allow Hideo to track me more easily, something that might leave me vulnerable to hacking from Zero or another bounty hunter. So instead, I’ve edited my access to keep me off the grid. It’ll help me work better. If Hideo has a problem with that, he’ll just have to take it up with me later.

Soon, numbers and letters appear in random places around the dome, highlighting the areas where the code is generating bits of virtual reality over the actual scene. An overlay of the stadium’s blueprint hovers faintly over everything. Most importantly, basic data appears about every person in the arena, in tiny blue digits over each of their heads, so many that the data seems to blur into streaks.

 

Finally, I get to my seat. Behind us, the stadium lets out another piercing round of shrieks as the giant screens show a montage of Team Phoenix Riders’ best plays from last year.

 

“Hallo.” I turn as a girl nudges my side. She has reddish-blond hair tied back in a low, messy tail, and a smattering of freckles across her pale skin. She gives me a lopsided grin. When she speaks again, I see the transparent English translation in my view. “Are you Emika?” Her eyes wander up to my rainbow hair, then down to my arm of tattoos. “The one who broke into the opening ceremony?”

 

I nod. “Hi.”

The girl nods back. “I’m Ziggy Frost, from Bamberg, Germany.”

 

My eyes widen. “Right! I know you! You’re one of the best Thieves out there. I’ve watched so many of your games.”

 

I can tell she’s rapidly reading the German translation of my words that’s showing up in her view. Then she brightens until I think she might pop. She reaches forward and shoves someone sitting in the row in front of us. “Yuebin!” she exclaims. “Look. I have a fan.”

 

The guy she shoved gives an annoyed grunt and turns around in his seat. He smells faintly of cigarette smoke. “Good for you,” he mutters in Chinese as I read my translation of his words. His eyes shift to me. “Hey—aren’t you the girl who glitched into the opening game?”

Is this how I’m going to be known forever? The girl who glitched? “Hi,” I say, stretching a hand out. “I’m Emika Chen.”

 

“Ah! The American,” he replies, shaking my hand once. “You speak Mandarin?”

 

I shake my head. My dad knew exactly five Chinese phrases, and four of them were swears.

 

He shrugs at my response. “Ah, well. I’m Yuebin, from Beijing.” I smile. “The top Fighter in the rankings?”

 

His grin widens. “Yes.” He reaches over and nudges Ziggy once. “See? You are not the only one with a fan.” Then he looks back at me. “So, you are a wild card now? I mean, congratulations, that is really great—but I don’t remember seeing you in the top rankings this year.”

 

“That’s because everyone wrote her in at the last minute,” Ziggy pipes up. “Hideo himself approved the nomination.” Yuebin lets out a whistle. “You must have really impressed him.”

 

So, the rumors about me have spread. This is not how I want everyone in Warcross to know me—the girl who glitched into a game out of sheer stupidity, then got into the Wardraft as a wild card because my stunt got me written in. What if Yuebin suspects that I’m in this draft for another reason?

 

Don’t be so obvious. To him, you’re just here to play Warcross, I remind myself. I force a smile back at Ziggy and shrug. “It probably doesn’t matter. I bet I’ll be the last one picked.”

 

Ziggy just gives me a good-hearted laugh and pats my shoulder. “What is that saying? Never say never?” she replies. “Besides. Do you remember one year when that player—Leeroy something—actually got drafted into the Stormchasers, even though he always just charged in and messed up his entire team’s play? My God, he was terrible.” Too late, she realizes she’s accidentally insulted me again. “I mean, not that you are as bad as Leeroy! My point is that you never know. I mean—well, you know what I mean.”

Yuebin gives her a wry look before smiling at me. “You will have to forgive Ziggy,” he says. “She never says the right thing at the right time.”

“You’re never the right thing at the right time.”

As they forget about me and fall into bickering, I quietly review what data I can see about each of them. Their full names and addresses, their travel schedules, anything that could help me notice something suspicious about their behavior—I download all of this and store it away for later analysis. But even from a quick glance, neither of their profiles seems odd. No basic shields of any sort to protect their data. Yuebin even has a virus installed on his Link that’s slowing it down.

Then again, maybe they’re both hiding behind this façade. It’s hard to tell without breaking into all of their info—personal emails, private messages, stored Memories—encrypted things even Henka Games isn’t allowed to have access to. I need a way in, a weakness, like how I’d stolen the power-up during the opening ceremony game. I need another break in the pattern.

 

The stadium’s main lights dim, and the sweeping lights change color. All of the seats are filled now. The audience’s cheers grow louder. I look down the line of seats and follow it around the edge of the central arena, trying to recognize some of the other wild cards and match them up with the top-ranking players I know. Beside me, Ziggy and Yuebin finally stop arguing and sit up straighter in anticipation.

 

“Ladies and gentlemen!”

The lights now sweep to the center of the arena, where an announcer wearing a Warcross logo T-shirt stands. “Warcross fans around the world!” he says in a booming voice. “Welcome to the Wardraft! We’re about to add some wild cards into the mix of your favorite Warcross teams!”

 

The audience roars with approval. My heart is beating so fast now that it leaves me feeling weak.

 

“Let’s introduce the most important person in here!” he points up at the same time the colorful spotlights shift to focus on a roped-off section of the stadium, a fancy seating area encased inside a glass box. Hovering over the box is a virtual sign that says Official Seats, meant to be for Henka Games studio executives. Inside, a young man watches, one hand in his pocket, the other holding a glass. Two bodyguards flank him. Around us, the holograms change to show his face. “The one who made it all possible—Hideo Tanaka!”

The stadium explodes into the loudest cheers I’ve ever heard, followed by a thunderous chant of “Hih-day-oh! Hih-day-oh!” that makes the arena tremble. Hideo lifts his glass to toast the crowd, as if this level of insanity were perfectly normal, and then sits back down to watch. I force myself to look away.

 

“There are sixteen official Warcross teams,” the announcer now goes on. “And each team gets a total of five official players. We’ve already chosen the returning veteran players, but every team tonight has at least one open spot—and we have forty wild cards for them to choose from. By the end of the draft, all forty will belong on a team.” He waves a hand at our front-row seats. “Let’s do a quick introduction!”

 

The spotlight changes to focus on the first wild-card player, and the music in the stadium shifts to a new song. The player is a boy with brown hair, who blinks at the sudden light on him. “Rob Gennings, representing Canada, Level 82, who plays as a Fighter. He is ranked sixty-sixth in the world.” Cheers erupt

from the audience. When I look up at the crowds, I can see posters waving enthusiastically, with Rob’s name scrawled on them.

 

Through my own view, I scroll through some basic data on Rob Gennings. Full name: Robert Allen Gennings. Valedictorian of his high school. Last flight: Vancouver to Tokyo, on Japan Airlines.

 

“Next, we have Alexa Romanovsky, representing Russia, a Level 90 player known for her lightning-fast Thief attacks.” Another round of cheers. The music shifts to a song that she’d chosen for herself. I study a scrolling list of her info. Full name: Alexandra Romanovsky. Birthplace: St. Petersburg. A former competitor in the Paralympics. She was disqualified for picking a fight with a fellow teammate, so she switched her obsession to Warcross after that. She lifts her head high now and nods at the dome’s crowd.

The announcer continues down the row at a rapid pace. The spotlight inches around the opposite end of the arena, the music changing with every player. All of these players are well-known and highly ranked. I’m only at Level 28, because usually I’m logged in as an encrypted, anonymous account, and none of my activity or wins get properly recorded.

 

“Renoir Thomas, from France, is better known as DJ Ren—”

The audience bursts into a deafening round of cheers. I search for him—but the spotlight lands on an empty seat. The music playing for him is one of his own tracks: “Deep Blue Apocalypse,” a song with a soul-shaking bass and addictive beat. There’s no question that he’s the most popular.

 

“—is currently busy preparing to host the first Warcross party of the year. But rest assured, you’ll see him soon!”

 

The introductions go on. There are a couple of other wild cards dressed up in gray-and-white outfits—Demon Brigade fans, probably hoping their clothes will warm them up to the official team. Others are wearing shirts declaring their favorite professional players. Still others look nervous and out of place, lower-ranking players or players that will probably be drafted last. I fly through the reams of data for each of them, downloading and storing, organizing them into folders. Be careful of those nervous ones, I remind myself. It could be a disguise to hide a hacker—

 

“Emika Chen, Level 28, hails from the United States of America!” the announcer shouts. I jump as the spotlight swings to me, and suddenly everything is blindingly bright. A burst of cheers comes from the stadium. “She plays as an Architect. You may remember seeing her in the opening ceremony game— although you probably didn’t expect to! In fact, she was so popular that our viewers wrote her in as a wild-card nominee!”

 

I wave hesitantly. When I do, the cheering turns louder. Look genuine, I

remind myself. I widen my smile, trying to show some teeth, but from the giant projection of me in the dome, I look like I ate a bad batch of oysters. I wonder if it’d be noticeable if I crawled under my chair right now.

 

When the announcer finishes introducing the wild cards, the spotlights sweep to the area of the stadium where the official teams are sitting. Screams go up as the announcer introduces each of the teams. My eyes stay fixed on them. I recognize the Demon Brigade’s distinct, white-and-gray outfits. Far from them sit the Phoenix Riders already chosen for this year’s team, led by Asher Wing, their flaming red hoods and jackets prominent. They utter a bunch of howls and whoops when the announcer says their name. Then come Team Andromeda, in hues of green and gold, and Team Winter Dragons, in ice-colored blue. Team Stormchasers, in black and yellow. Team Titans (purple), Team Cloud Knights (sapphire and silver). Even as I continue downloading information, I find myself distracted as the spotlights sweep over each team, hardly able to believe that I’m in the same space as them.

Finally, the announcer finishes. The stadium turns hushed as an assistant hands him a sealed envelope. “This year, the team who gets first pick of the wild cards is . . .” He pauses while he tears open the envelope in as dramatic a fashion as he can. His microphone picks up the sound, magnifying it until the entire dome sounds like it’s tearing apart. He pulls out a silver card, holds it up, and smiles. The holograms shift to show what the card says. “Team Phoenix Riders!”

 

In the official team section, the Phoenix Riders let out another round of whoops. Sitting in the middle of them, Asher Wing is looking down at our arc of wild-card seats with quiet concentration. My heart is hammering so hard now that I’m afraid it’s going to break my ribs.

 

The announcer waits for a moment as the Phoenix Riders exchange a few words between each other. The silence seems to stretch on forever. I catch myself leaning forward in my seat, eager to hear who they pick. Finally, Asher waves a hand once in front of him and submits his team’s pick to the announcer.

 

The announcer stares at their pick in his view, blinks a few times in surprise, and then waves his own hand once. The selection appears in enormous letters over his head, rotating slowly. Every hologram broadcasts it at the same time.

It’s my name.

 

 

10

 

“Emika Chen!”

 

A chorus of surprised gasps echoes around the arena. There are people cheering around me, someone’s shaking my shoulders, and someone else is shouting enthusiastic words in my face. I just stare in shock. I know Hideo wanted to hide me in plain sight—but I didn’t think he would make me the number one draft pick. This has to be some sort of mistake.

 

“This is no mistake!” the announcer calls out, as if answering the thoughts in my head. He turns in a circle with his arms outstretched. “It seems this year’s number one draft pick will be an untested, untried, unranked wild card”—he pronounces each word slowly, with huge emphasis—“who nevertheless impressed us all with her disruption of the opening ceremony game!” He rambles on, joking that perhaps Asher Wing of the Phoenix Riders—well-known for unconventional draft picks—has figured out something that the rest of us haven’t.

 

I just find myself staring blankly in the Phoenix Riders’ direction. Asher has his eyes trained on me, a smug grin spreading across his face. He’s one of the most intuitive captains out of anyone—he would have selected someone he could count on, experienced players who are ranked high. He wouldn’t pick me just for the spectacle. Would he? Did Hideo force his hand?

Is he Zero?

 

My gaze shifts up to the private box, where Hideo is still standing, looking straight toward me. Maybe he’d given the Phoenix Riders a command to choose me as the first pick. Maybe it really is for ratings. Maybe it’s to throw the hacker Zero off my scent, because I’m so publicly exposed. Or maybe it’s to throw off the other bounty hunters. Whatever the reason, I find myself wondering when I’ll get to talk to him again, to ask him the reasoning behind this.

 

Someone’s shaking my shoulders so hard that I can almost feel my brain sloshing around. It’s Ziggy.

 

“Do you understand how big this is?” she shrieks in my face. I'm unsure of how to respond. “It means you will get used to being followed everywhere for the next few months and being on every news outlet. Heilige Scheiße!” She shrieks the phrase so wildly that the translation doesn’t even try to interpret it.

“Some people have all the luck.”

 

I finally manage to give her a faint smile, then settle in to try to watch the rest of the draft. My thoughts whirl as the announcer pulls a second set of cards and reads them out. The Demon Brigade chooses Ziggy, while the Phoenix Riders nab DJ Ren. The Titans get Alexa Romanovsky. The show continues, but I feel as if the spotlight is still on me. The flashes of light going off in the audience make me dizzy, and I wonder how many people have their glasses trained on my profile, hunting and digging for anything they can find out about me.

 

“Hey.” Yuebin nudges me. “Look, up there.” He nods toward the private box. I follow his gaze, ready to see Hideo.

 

But Hideo is gone now. Only the rest of his company heads are there, chattering among themselves. Hideo’s bodyguards have left, too.

 

“It’s like he came here just to see where you would land,” Yuebin murmurs, clapping absently as another draft pick happens.

 

Just to see me drafted, the way he wanted me to be. My thudding heart sinks a little, and I feel a strange sense of disappointment without his presence in the arena. I’m about to look back down—but something shifts in the corner of my vision. My eyes dart up to the ceiling.

I freeze.

There, crouched high in the ceiling’s maze of beams, is a dark, virtual figure.

 

I can’t see anything else about him except static. The silhouette of his head is turned down, watching the draft take place. No name floats over his head. Everything about his posture looks tense, alert.

Like he’s not supposed to be here.

A chill runs down my spine, turning my hands ice-cold. At the same time, my bounty hunter instincts kick in—screenshot, record a screenshot. I blink, right as the figure vanishes from sight.

 

“Hey,” I blurt out, looking over at Ziggy, who is cheering on a wild card drafted by the Stormchasers.

“Hmm?” Ziggy replies without looking at me.

“Did you see that?”

“See what?”

 

But it’s too late now. The figure is gone. I scan the ceiling again and again —perhaps the lights have blinded me so much that I can no longer see him—but he’s nowhere to be seen now. The lattices of metal and lights are empty.

 

He wasn’t actually here. He was a part of the virtual reality, a simulation. And only I could see him because of my hack. Either that, or I just experienced

an insane hallucination.

 

Ziggy frowns, squinting skyward. “See what?” she repeats with a shrug. “I—” I stop myself, unsure what to say next without sounding crazy. I force

a laugh. “Ah, never mind.”

Ziggy’s attention has already strayed back to the draft. But I keep my eyes on the ceiling, as if he might reappear if I look long enough. Did I catch him? As the others applaud another wild card, I bring up a small, secret panel of my screenshot.

Sure enough, there he is. I didn’t hallucinate it.

 

• • • • •

 

THE REMAINDER OF the draft passes in a whirlwind. When it ends and the rest of the stadium starts filing out, guards come to usher the wild cards and the professional teams out through special exits. I walk in numbed silence, even as everyone I pass watches me and as some of the other wild cards occasionally come up to congratulate me. I smile back at them, unsure what to say. In the back of my mind, I still keep thinking about the figure.

 

Maybe it was one of the other bounty hunters. Or . . . maybe it was Zero.

 

My target.

“Miss Chen,” one of the ushers calls to me, holding his hand out in my direction and waving. “This way, please.”

 

I follow him automatically. Behind me, Ziggy and Yuebin wave farewell as they hurry off toward another usher who is rounding up the new Demon Brigade and Stormchaser drafts. “Bye! See you in a game!” Yuebin calls to me. I wave back.

 

I’m taken to a waiting car, one of a dozen sleek black vehicles in a line outside a private side exit. A cluster of fans have figured out where to wait, though, and as several of us step outside, they raise their posters and scream at us, holding out pens and booklets. Behind me, Asher Wing emerges from the exit with two handlers at his side. In virtual reality, Asher looks like a standing avatar; in real life, he is paralyzed from the waist down and sits in what must be the world’s most expensive wheelchair. Now that I’m close enough to him, I can take in the details of the chair’s solid gold rims and customized engraved leather.

 

I look back at his face, wondering whether I should go up to him and say a proper hello, but stop myself from interrupting as he winks at a blushing fan and scoots his chair back into the crowd for a bunch of photos. The crowd nearly swallows him up before his handlers push everyone off. Then I’m ushered into a car, and my moment passes. I’ll have to catch him later, when our team

convenes.

 

The cars take off one at a time, each heading in the same direction down the same road. I know where we’re going—I’ve watched it play out on TV a dozen times. In the heart of Tokyo is the secure neighborhood of Mejiro, where a gated estate of luxury quarters house Warcross teams for the duration of the tournament. It doesn’t take us long to get there. As we pull up to the gate, reporters and fans cluster on the sidewalks, flying little drones in the sky to take as much video as they can. Several of the drones hover too close to the gates— when they try to cross over, they hit an invisible shield that disables them, sending them clattering to the ground.

 

“No cameras, no drones,” the guard at the gate repeats over and over in a bored tone.

 

We enter the campus. Patches of green lawn dot the space, and sprinkled between them are individual buildings surrounded by trees. Through my contacts, a virtual layer of bright colors adorns the buildings, painting each one in the colors of their respective team. Team names and logos hover helpfully over each dormitory, along with a cheery Welcome! message that rotates in different languages. Approved delivery drones fly in and out of each dorm, busily dropping off packages.

 

The car pulls to a stop at a dead end. Someone is waiting for me on the curb as my door swings open.

 

I find myself looking at Asher’s grinning face. I hadn’t even noticed that his car was ahead of mine. Over his head floats his name, level, and Phoenix Riders Captain. “Hey,” he greets, holding a hand out to me. Behind him, clusters of other players are already making their way down the paths toward their buildings. “I’m Asher, repping Los Angeles. Call me Ash.”

I shake his hand. “Yeah, I know,” I reply, trying not to think about the fact that this is someone I’ve watched in Warcross games for years. “I’m a fan of your brother’s movies. Didn’t think I’d get to talk to you today.”

 

His expression flickers cold for an instant at the mention of his brother, but then he’s back to normal, giving me a little laugh. “Sorry,” he replies. “I wanted to greet you when we were heading to our cars, but you know—fans first.”

 

I smile. “Well, thanks for picking me.”

“Wasn’t doing it out of charity.” Asher shakes his head. “The Phoenix Riders have been struggling for years. We need some good fresh blood. There’s nothing generous about wanting the best for my team.” His wheelchair turns away, and he tilts his head at me to follow him. “This is where you’ll be staying for the next few months,” he says as we turn a corner. I look ahead to see a stunning building painted virtually with swirls of red, gold, and white. “I heard

Hideo himself approved your nomination into the draft. After the stunt you pulled in the opening ceremony, it’s a pretty interesting move.”

 

I smile again, a little more hesitantly this time. “I guess I’m good for the ratings,” I reply.

“I guess you are.”

Careful, I remind myself as I hear the curiosity in Asher’s voice. So, Hideo hadn’t forced him to draft me. Or, perhaps he knew that the intrigue he’d create over putting me in the draft would be enough to interest any captain. Whatever the real reason, at least Asher doesn’t sound like he suspects Hideo’s plans, and I intend to keep it that way. The less everyone here knows about what Hideo hired me for, the better chance I’ll have at catching our guy.

 

“And it looks like it’s good for your ratings, too,” I say, shifting the topic. “The Phoenix Riders are trending online over every other team. I bet the Demon Brigade’s unhappy about that.”

 

At the mention of a rival team, Asher rests his head back against his wheelchair and taps his right hand against his armrest. He smiles in a way that flashes one of his canines, turning the grin vicious. “The Demon Brigade’s always unhappy about something. Glad it’s because of us this time.”

We reach our building. Asher rolls up the access ramp and spins his chair once in a flourish at the top. He stops at the towering main entrance, a sheer glass door painted with stripes in our team colors, and pulls aside as the panels slide open. “Wild cards first,” he says.

 

I step inside, into an open space three floors high. Into a dream. The sun pours into this central atrium from a pyramid-shaped glass ceiling, flooding the place with light. Directly beneath the glass ceiling is a heated turquoise pool, perfectly square and ready to be jumped into. Brightly colored couches—all red, gold, and white—and thick white rugs dot the living room space. The walls are made out of screens from floor to ceiling. Even as I take in the luxurious interior, I scan the corners of the building, already searching for how the dorm gets online. I’ll need to find my way into the system and into everyone’s accounts.

 

Something nudges me hesitantly on my calf. I look down. Standing there, blinking up at me, is a boxy little robot as tall as my knee. Its eyes are bright blue and the shape of half-moons, its body painted a cheerful yellow, and its belly is covered with a clear glass panel, through which I can see a tray of sodas being chilled inside. When it sees me staring, it sticks its belly out, pops open the glass door, and pulls out the soda tray for me.

 

“His name is Wikki,” Asher says. “Our team drone. Go ahead, take a soda.” I don’t know what to say to that, really, so I pick a can. “He’s still staring at

me,” I murmur to Asher.

“He wants to see if you like the drink.”

 

I take a sip of the soda. It’s delicious, a fizzy strawberry flavor that tickles my insides. I make an exaggerated sound of joy. Wikki seems to take note of this, and over his head, a virtual set of info pops up:

 

Emika Chen | Strawberry Soda | +1

 

“He’ll record your food and drink preferences throughout your stay,” Asher adds.

 

A robot that tracks everyone’s info. I smile at Asher, but not for the reason he thinks. This is my ticket in. I make a mental note to figure out how to break into Wikki’s system later.

 

Wikki offers a soda to Asher, too, then pops its belly shut and rolls off to where a boy is sitting on the couches. As I look on, the boy moves his hands in midair as if turning a steering wheel, and every now and then he makes a flinging motion. On the wall is a track winding through candy-colored hills, populated by giant mushrooms. He whips down the path, outpacing other players easily.

 

“Mario Kart: Link Edition, as you can see,” Asher says. “It’s a tradition around here.”

“A tradition?”

“We play for an hour every night during training to improve our speed reflexes. It gets pretty competitive.” Then he claps his hands together loudly and raises his voice so that it fills the dorm. “Riders! Who’s here?”

 

The boy hears Asher first, pauses the game, pops his earphones off, and turns around on the couch to look at his captain. I recognize him right away: the world-famous Roshan Ahmadi, with his brown skin and head of thick, dark curls, representing Great Britain.

“Guess who I’ve got with me?” Asher says, pointing to my hair.

“You’re so subtle, Ash,” Roshan replies in a dry British accent that sounds more casual than Hideo’s. He nods once at me. “Hello, Emika. I’m Roshan.”

 

“He’s returning as our Shield this year,” Asher adds. “And he’s also the world’s top-ranked Mario Kart player, in case you’re curious.”

 

“Hey.” I take one hand out of my pocket and give him a single wave. “An honor to meet you in person.”

 

Roshan seems pleased by that. He offers me a brief smile. “Likewise, love.” “We’ve all claimed our rooms already,” Asher says, nodding toward the hall that branches away from the main atrium. “Roshan wanted the one with the largest windows. I got the far end, which has some custom upgrades detailed specifically for me. Captain’s privileges. Ren’s back at the end of the hall. And

as for you—”

 

“Hey!”

A voice calls down at us from one of the floors overhead. I look up to see a girl leaning her elbows over the balcony, loudly chewing gum. Her hair is a jumble of beautiful black curls that frames her round face, and she’s dressed in an oversize, white sports jersey that contrasts with her brown skin. On second look, her shirt isn’t a sports jersey at all—it’s a T-shirt that says QUIDDITCH TRYOUTS in giant sports lettering.

 

I like her immediately.

“That’s Hamilton Jiménez,” Asher tells me, loudly enough so that she can hear him. “Or just Hammie. She’s our Thief.” He winks at her. “And my right-hand girl.”

She grins back at him. “Feeling sentimental today, Captain?”

He looks at me. “Fair warning: don’t let her talk you into playing chess.” “Don’t hate just because you can’t win.” She blows an enormous bubble

and then sucks it back in. Her gaze jumps to me. “Your room’s up here. Second floor. I took the larger bedroom, since you’re a wild card and I’m not. Hope you don’t mind.”

 

I wait to see a fourth player show his face, but the house falls into a moment of silence. “Where’s DJ Ren?” I ask.

 

“Won’t see him until later,” Asher replies. “Ren’s prepping for the party tonight. It’s the only free pass he’ll get from me, especially since I’m counting on him to be our new Fighter. And let that be a lesson for you, too, Emi. We’re here to win.”

“Of course,” I say.

“Good.” He nods, considering me. “Hope you’re as good an Architect as I think you are.”

 

Hearing this from him sends a jolt of excitement and anxiety through me. An Architect’s job is to manipulate the world of the level in favor of her team. If there’s an obstacle, like a bridge, I would collapse it to let us through. If there are floating rocks, I’d push them together to create a bigger platform. An Architect is a designer of the level, dedicated to changing the world on the spot in favor of her team. It’s one of the most important jobs on a team. Last year, the Phoenix Riders lost their Architect because he’d been caught gambling away millions on Warcross games. The entire team was punished heavily, too—knocked down to the bottom of the rankings and stripped of their top two players.

 

“I’ll do my best,” I say.

“Tomorrow,” Asher continues as I follow him into an elevator leading up to the second floor, “we’ll catch you and Ren up on how things work in the

championship games. I’ll walk you both through an official game. Although you”—he pauses to spin around and give me a calculating look—“may already know more than you let on.”

I hold my hands up. “It was an accident,” I say, feeling like I’ve repeated this forever. “I didn’t know what I was doing.”

 

“You did know,” Asher counters without hesitation. “In fact, you’re a much better Warcross player than your level suggests. Aren’t you?” He nods up at the numbers above my head. “After your name went viral, I looked up your Warcross account. I studied the few games that you did play. Those are not the skills of an Architect who is only on Level 28. Why are you so much better than your level suggests?”

 

“What makes you say that? I just play against other beginners.” “You think I can’t see through that?”

 

He has been paying attention to me. It’s true—I stream my plays live, when I’m actually linked in under my public Warcross account. But my encrypted, anonymous self is the account I use more often. All the hours I rack up under it don’t count into my leveling. Still, I’m not about to tell Asher that.

 

“I just haven’t had the money or time to play as often as I want,” I say. “But I’m a pretty fast learner.”

 

Asher doesn’t seem to buy this at all, but he lets it slide. “Every other team is going to underestimate you. They’ll say I’ve lost my touch, that I picked you just for the news coverage it’ll get the Riders. But we know better than that, don’t we? I don’t waste my time on players with no potential. You’re a weapon in disguise—and I intend to keep it that way until our first game.”

It seems I’m becoming the weapon in disguise for more people than I’d

 

like.

We reach the second floor. Asher spins to face me, leans his head against the back of his chair, and exchanges a look with Hammie. She just nods at him, bunches up her curls on her head, and lets them go again. “Hammie will show you the rest,” Asher says. “We’re heading out in a few hours to the opening party.” He starts rolling back toward the elevator. “All the players will be out in force. If you’ve never seen an opening party before, brace yourself. It’s a wild one.”

 

Hammie looks me over the instant Asher leaves. She’s the same height as me, but somehow, the jut of her chin makes her look taller than she is. She motions me forward and heads to the door closest to us. “This is your room,” she says over her shoulder at me.

 

I half expect the door to swing open like a regular door, but instead it slides to one side. The room is enormous—even larger than the penthouse hotel suite

that I had. One entire glass wall opens up to my own private patio, half of which is taken up by a shimmering blue infinity pool that goes all the way to the edge of the balcony. A waterfall cascades into the pool from somewhere on the roof. The rest of the walls are virtually painted by my lenses with ivory and shimmering gold. When I reach out to touch the colors, they ripple under my fingers, sending waves across my room. At the same time, three small buttons right above my hand hover against the wall. One says Off, another says Switch Scene, while a third says Customize. I decide to turn off the colors for now, then press the first button. The walls are replaced by blank space. I look around. My bed is huge, piled high with furry cushions and blankets, and my rugs match the ones downstairs. A work area dominates the rest of the space—chairs, a clean desk.

 

Hammie grins at my expression. “And yours is the smallest room,” she

 

says.

I turn back to the space. “This place is ridiculous.”

 

“Everything in the dorm is gameified,” she explains. “Like the rest of Tokyo. You’ll earn three notes every time you customize your walls, and one note for switching the scenery. The room’s preprogrammed to your Warcross account. If you’re logged in, then the house system knows you’re the one who’s coming inside.”

“How does this work?” I ask.

She walks over and nods at an On button hovering near the surface of the desk, but doesn’t try to touch it. “You’re the only one who can turn on your work area,” she says. “Press that.”

 

I touch it. The instant I do, the previously blank desk lights up soft stripes in our team colors, with a welcome message for me over it in white text. A second later, a holographic screen rises up from the desk. It’s a standard desktop display—except it’s floating in midair. These types of desktops have only recently started shipping in the States, and they’re, of course, way out of my price range.

 

Hammie smiles at my expression. “Swipe the screen toward your walls,” she says.

 

I touch the screen with two fingers, then make a swiping motion toward the wall we’re facing. The display on the screen follows my fingers, flying from the screen onto the wall, where it fills up the entire space, fully magnified.

“The downstairs living room has the best work area, of course,” Hammie adds. “But this is in all of our rooms. Good for any impromptu team meetings.”

If the same system is installed downstairs, then each room’s desktop isn’t nearly as secure as she thinks it is. I can work my way into the main system, and

then I’ll be able to get into each of their individual systems, too, regardless of who the work area is tailored for. I smile at the gorgeous, wall-size display. “Thanks.”

“I was starting to think no American would ever be the number one pick.” Hammie tucks a curl behind her ear. “Nice to have you on the team. Maybe I’ll stop teasing Ash and target you for a change.” She winks and turns away before I can respond.

 

I stay where I am until she steps out of my room and the door slides shut behind her. Then I put my hands on my hips and admire the room. My space. In the Phoenix Riders’ official house. I walk over to where my few belongings have been delivered and placed by my bed, then take out my Christmas ornament and Dad’s painting. I prop them carefully up on the shelf. They look small there, too simple for this luxurious room. I imagine Dad standing beside me.

 

Well, Emi, he’d say, pushing his glasses up. Well, well.

At the thought of my father, my attention goes to my closet. With a tap of my finger against the door, it slides open, revealing a space as large as the studio where Keira and I lived.

Holy hell.

The closet is already filled with an assortment of clothes, every single one of them a high-end brand. I stare in disbelief before I walk inside, running my hands along the hangers. Each item is easily worth thousands—shirts, jeans, dresses, coats, shoes, purses and clutches, belts and jewelry. My hand stops at the shoe rack, where I pick up an exquisite pair of white, red, and green kicks that smell like new leather, the heels decorated with gold studs. Like everything else in the closet, the shoes still have a tag hanging on them, accompanied by a small greeting card.

 

GUCCI

 

Official Sponsor of

 

Warcross Championships VIII

 

Sponsored gifts. No wonder every professional player always looks like they just stepped off a runway. I slip off my well-worn boots, tuck them carefully in one corner, and then try on the new shoes. They fit like a glove.

 

An hour flies by while I feverishly try on everything in my closet. There’s even a shelf dedicated to face masks in all colors and patterns, an accessory I’ve seen worn all over Tokyo. I try a few of them on, pulling their straps over each of my ears so that the mask covers my mouth and nose. Might be a good thing to

have if I need to go around the city unrecognized.

 

When I’m done, I stand there, still decked out in lavish items, breathless and uneasy. Each thing in here costs more than my entire debt before Hideo erased it.

Hideo.

I shake my head, put everything back, and step out of my closet. There’ll be plenty of time later to admire all of this—for now, back to work. Hideo had made sure that I would be drafted onto a team, but now it would be up to me to make sure my team won each round. The longer the Phoenix Riders stay in the championship tournaments, the more time I have to investigate the players.

 

At this very moment, other hunters are probably hot on Zero's trail, reporting their findings to Hideo while I gape at my new wardrobe. They would have been at the Wardraft, too. What if they also saw the dark silhouette perched in the ceiling’s scaffolding? Right now, somebody else might be earning ten million dollars; I might already be doomed to return to New York. And here I am, playing around in my new closet.

 

I jerk into motion.

First, I bring up my shields and switch to the anonymous, invisible version of my account. Then I sit down on the edge of my bed and pull up the screenshot I’d taken earlier of the dome’s scaffolding. The image is a 3-D capture, one that I can rotate from its point of origin. In addition, it’s caught all of the data and code running in the dome at the moment of capture.

I squint at the static silhouette in my 3-D screenshot. Zooming in on it only makes it blurrier. I can see the code running the virtual simulations around the dome—but I can’t see any code or data on this shape. I type in a few commands and strip away the visuals of the screenshot, so that I’m now immersed inside reams of code. Where his silhouette is, I can only see a patch of static.

 

I sit back, pondering. He is hidden from me, in every single way—except that I could see him. He probably didn’t expect that. If this is Zero, then he’s not disguising himself as well as he should be. But the Tokyo Dome is on its own network of connections for the Wardraft. The easiest way for this person to have hacked his way up there is if he was already approved to enter the arena, and had already physically cleared security. Someone in the audience, then. Or a player, like Hideo suspects. Or a wild card.

I lean forward again and switch back to the visuals, then zoom in to break down the code that generated the image of him. A stripped-down view of the code pops up. I read through it as I chew absently on the inside of my cheek.

 

Then I see something that makes me pause. It’s just a line. Not even a line —a pair of letters and a zero, lost in the code. A clue.

WC0

 

In most of the Warcross code, players are referred to by their Warcross IDs, written as WPN. WP stands for Warcross Player. N is a randomized, scrambled number. So, if I’m looking at code about my own avatar, I’d probably see myself referred to as WP39302824 or something like that.

The only time a different ID is used for Warcross players is at the Wardraft. During the draft, players aren’t referred to in the code by their regular IDs. They don’t use WP. Instead, they are WC—Wild Cards. My ID in the Wardraft was WC40, because I was the last entry added into the draft.

WC0. Whoever the silhouette was, it was someone physically cleared to be there in the Tokyo Dome. A wild card in the Wardraft. Hideo’s suspicions were pretty close.

 

I chew idly on my nail, my eyes narrowed in thought. I need another moment where every wild card is in the same space at once, and I’ll get to be physically close enough to them in order to study their info.

 

Tonight’s party. Asher’s last words to me echo in my mind. The players will be out in force. That will be my chance.

I bring up a virtual menu and tap on the call button for Wikki.

A minute later, the little drone comes rolling into my room, his half-moon eyes turned expectantly toward me. I wave him over, then turn him around so that I can study the panel on the back of his head. At the same time, I bring up his settings.

 

“Aren’t you just the cutest thing,” I murmur to him as I carefully remove the covering for the panel. Inside is a maze of circuits. “Wikki, turn off all recording.”

 

The robot obeys, switching off its data gathering. As I fiddle, I realize that it’s not made by Henka Games—it’s by some other company, with weaker security. Everyone had thought to install protections on everything else, but no one had thought much about the security needed on this little drone that just serves us food and drink, quietly storing information about all our habits as it goes.

 

An hour later, I’ve cracked through its shields. It records a lot more data than I thought it did. Not only does it store information about the Phoenix Riders, but it also seems preset to serve the other teams, which means it has optional connections to everyone else’s NeuroLink accounts. I smile. Everyone in the world is connected in some way to everyone else.

 

I run a script to overwhelm Wikki’s security. While it’s working, I worm my way into each of my teammates’ accounts. I crack into their emails, their

messages, their Memories. From there, I set up my hack to penetrate each of the accounts of the other teams.

It’s going to take a while to download everything, but it’s running now.

 

I replace Wikki’s panel, double-check to make sure I leave no trace of my presence behind, and then reboot the robot. It turns back on, its eyes blinking, its data gathering set back to normal. I pat it once on the head, then accept another strawberry soda.

 

“Thanks, Wikki,” I say, winking at it. It records my preference, then rolls out of my room again.

I pop open the soda and take a sip. By tomorrow, I should be in.

 

 

11

 

By the time the sun sets and we arrive in the heart of Shibuya, the neon lights of Tokyo have already lit up, casting the city in a glittering rainbow of color. Security guards swarm around our limo as we pull up to the nightclub’s entrance. The streets are fenced off, so that no cars other than ours can come through, and a red carpet lines the sidewalk.

 

We are all wearing our lenses. Through them, silver and gold sparks fly on either side of the club’s glass doors, while a Warcross logo hovers over the top of the building. The sidewalk’s pavement is aglow with a kaleidoscope of bright, swirling colors. The club’s name, Sound Museum Vision, hangs over the glass doors as a giant, glowing logo. Even from out here, I can hear pounding music from inside—the deep beats of a DJ Ren track.

The only people allowed inside the club tonight are the official Warcross players, the employees of Henka Games, and a smattering of Warcross fans who were picked by a lottery system to attend. Now they’re clustered outside in a haphazard line, waiting for the security to let them in. As our team approaches the entrance, the fans let out a chorus of screams.

 

The four of us are wearing matching black face masks tonight. Hammie is first, her curls loose, long, and full, her outfit a yellow-and-white dress paired with black heels. Asher comes behind her, looking sleek in a bold red suit, while Roshan is dressed from head to toe in black.

 

My hands fiddle constantly with the hem of one of my new dresses. It’s layered in soft white chiffon, which contrasts nicely with my tattoos and rainbow hair, but it rides up higher than I thought it would. I’ve never been inside an upscale club like this one, and as we walk past the crowd of fans, I wonder if maybe I should’ve picked a different outfit. Hideo will be here tonight, after all. The last thing I want to look like in front of him is uncomfortable.

 

A commotion farther down the fans’ line makes me look over my shoulder. Sure enough, Hideo is there, flanked by a bevy of bodyguards. They’re giving him some space tonight, though, and when I look closer, I realize that he’s kneeling to sign a poster for a little girl. She says something to him excitedly. Even though I can’t make the words out, I hear him laugh in return. The sound surprises me—it’s genuine and boyish, so unlike his distant demeanor from our

meeting. I find myself lingering there for a moment before I finally turn back around and follow my team into the club’s main lobby.

 

The club is underground. As we step out of the elevator, the music suddenly turns deafening, the beat shaking my body through the floor. Hammie sidles up beside me as we go, taking off her face mask and folding it away in her purse. I follow her lead. “Sound Museum Vision’s got the best sound system in the city!” she shouts. “All custom-made. They revamped the space a few years ago, too— it’s double the size it used to be.”

We reach the bottom of the stairs, where another group of security guards lets us in. I step into a yawning cavern of darkness, flashing lights, and a pounding bass that shakes me deep in my chest.

 

Even without my lenses, this space would be impressive. The ceiling is at least three floors high, and lights of neon blue, green, and gold strobe the room, blinding us with color. A sea of people fills the room, their arms thrown up, their hair tossing wildly. A faint mist hugs the air, giving everything a surreal haze. Enormous screens stretching from floor to ceiling line the walls, as well as the backdrop of the main stage, rotating through an animatic of each Warcross team.

 

But with my lenses on, the space transforms into something magical. The ceiling looks like a night sky covered by a sheet of stars, with green and red streaks of what look like Northern Lights dancing from one end to the other. Some of the stars move toward us, showering us with sparks, as if stardust is raining over us. Every time a deep bass drops, the ground glows in a symphony of light. Official players on the floor shine in the dark, their outfits lit up in neon, their names, team affiliation, and level hovering over their heads like golden trophies. Around them cluster heavy crowds. Everyone’s trying to get a moment of their time on the dance floor.

 

Maybe Zero is here, watching, I remind myself. Maybe the other bounty hunters, too.

 

My eyes dart to the stage itself. The space is enormous, as big as a concert hall, and a live orchestra is sitting in the pit right below. Against the stage’s backdrop is a towering screen with an ice-blue dragon’s head breaking out through it. Fire appears to shoot out from its mouth in a spectacular display. It takes me another second to remember that the dragon itself is also virtual—it moves as if it were real, twisting and turning its head at every dropped beat, its growl echoing from somewhere deep in the sound system.

 

Standing in front of the dragon’s mouth is a singer with short, artificially blond curls and clothes in neon shades of blue. Frankie Dena! She’s singing the chorus to one of her collaborations with DJ Ren: “Hey Ninja / Gangsta / Dragon Lady / Hey, where you from, no, where you really from, baby / Hey, how ’bout /

you cut all that shit out / Yeah!” Dancers pump their arms to the rhythm.

 

Then she sees us and pauses.

“The Phoenix Riders are in the house!” she shouts. The strobe lights shoot toward us, and suddenly we are drenched in a red glow. Cheers erupt around us, loud enough to shake the floors. Frankie grins and points up to a figure standing high at the top of the dragon wall. “Show your team some love, Ren!”

 

The figure at the top looks up only briefly from behind a cage of ornate gold bars. He is decked out in his classic DJ attire—a black, well-tailored suit, gold shades, a gold face mask and a state-of-the-art set of headphones with gold metal wings embellishing both sides, as if he were the messenger god Hermes wearing something designed by Hermès. The track shifts in one smooth measure —the sound of electric violins, cellos, and a deep, reverberating beat fills the space. At the same time, the room around us bursts into flames, and the dragon head on the wall morphs into a red-and-gold phoenix. I gasp as the floor seems to move. When I look down, I see bits of it crumbling away to reveal molten lava beneath our feet. The audience screams in delight as each of them remains standing only on islands of rock floating in the lava.

 

DJ Ren bows his head over his instruments. He raises one arm up high as the music’s tempo increases to a fever pitch, until I can hardly bear it. Then he brings a punishing bass down on our heads. The room trembles, and the crowd bursts into a mass of jumping limbs. Music fills me to the brim.

For a moment, I close my eyes and let the beat carry me away. I’m tearing through the streets of New York City on my electric board, my rainbow hair streaming behind me. I’m standing at the top of a wind-whipped skyscraper, arms outstretched. I’m flying through the skies of Warcross, the outer reaches of space. I’m free.

 

Asher already looks distracted, his attention fixated on the players of the Demon Brigade, who have stepped into the club. Frankie announces their presence, and DJ Ren’s wall changes from our phoenix to a horde of skeletal beasts in hooded cloaks riding on horseback, charging through the audience with swords drawn.

 

“Go talk to the Demons tonight,” he mutters to me. “You’re our new recruit, so they’re going to do everything they can to intimidate you. They want you to go into your first game feeling unsure about yourself.”

“They don’t scare me.”

“I should hope not.” Asher blinks at me. “But I want you to look like it. Make them underestimate you. I want them to think they’ve got you cornered and fearful, and that we made a huge mistake choosing you as the number one pick. Let them feel smug. Then we’ll destroy them in the games, and leave them

shocked.”

 

Roshan gives Asher a sidelong look. “A little early to be sending our wild card into the line of fire?” he says.

 

“She can handle it.” Asher grins at me. “You’ve got line-of-fire written all over your face.”

 

I decide to smile back, hoping things aren’t written so clearly on my face that Asher figures out what I’m really doing here. My attention turns back to the Demons. They’re gathered close to the stage where DJ Ren is performing. It’s a good-enough excuse for me to go gather data on all of them. “Will do, Captain,” I say.

 

As we begin to cut through the mass of elbows and shoulders, Roshan hands me a drink. “You’ll need it,” he mutters. “Ash always feels like needling our rivals a little before the games. But if you don’t want to talk to the Demons, you don’t have to.”

 

Almost everywhere I look, I see official players that I recognize. They’re looking back at me, too, noticing me, talking to one another without taking their eyes off me. What are they saying? What do they know? Are any of them bounty hunters, too? For someone used to being off the grid, the attention on me feels a little unnerving. But I just grin back each time.

 

“Let’s go,” I say to Roshan. “People are going to be talking about me anyway. I might as well get used to confrontation.”

 

Roshan leans over to me and nods in the direction of the Demon Brigade’s Max Martin and Tremaine Blackbourne chatting in a corner. “Well, if we ever play the Demons,” he says into my ear in a low voice, “you’ll need to deal with that pair. Max is their Fighter, Tremaine’s the Architect. And Tremaine is going to gun for you in the game because you’re the number one pick. Come on.” He puts a hand on my back and leads us forward.

Beside Max, Tremaine looks thin and pale, almost ghostly, in his black-and-white suit. He and Roshan exchange a cold stare as we approach him. Then he raises a skeptical eyebrow at me.

 

“Hey!” I say to him, planting a wide, naïve smile on my face. “Tremaine Blackbourne, right?” At the same time, I tap my fingers subtly against my leg and start downloading info on both him and Max. “It’s so exciting to be in the same space as the teams, isn’t it?”

 

“She’s excited to be here,” Tremaine says to Max while his eyes stay on me. “Guess I would be, too, if I cheated my way into the draft.”

 

You wish you were smart enough to cheat your way in, I want to spit back— but I take a deep breath and force my reply down.

 

At my tense expression, Tremaine’s smile stretches thinner. “Look at this

peach. They bruise so easily, they need a Shield to escort them.” His eyes actively avoid Roshan in a way that lets me know that’s where his attention really is. “Ash must be losing his edge, picking you first.”

Max sizes me up. “Well, maybe Ash just wanted to pick someone who matched his team’s pedigree. Isn’t that right, Ahmadi?” he says to Roshan. Even as both Demons’ stares linger on me, they still don’t speak to me directly. Roshan’s hand tightens a little against my arm. “Can’t even get into a fancy restaurant with a Level 28 rank. She looks like she came from a used clothes bin.”

 

I pretend to lose my balance and stomp down hard on Max’s shoe with my heel. Max lets out a yelp. “Oh God—I’m so sorry!” I blurt out, pretending to be shocked. “It’s impossible to walk in these used heels.”

 

Roshan glances at me in surprise. A small smile hovers on the edge of his

 

lips.

“Look, I know we haven’t started off on the best foot . . . literally,” I say to Max as he glares at me. “But I thought that maybe we could start over, you know, to show good sportsmanship.” I hold my hand out to them, waiting for a handshake.

 

Tremaine is the first one to burst out laughing. “Wow,” he exclaims over the music. “You’re as wild card as they get.” He makes a point to ignore my outstretched hand. “Look, Princess Peach, this isn’t how things work in the championships.”

 

I give him an innocent look of confusion. “Oh? Then how does it work?” He holds up a finger. “I play you.” Another finger goes up. “I beat you. And

 

then, if you ask nicely, I’ll sign an autograph for you. That’s pretty generous sportsmanship, don’t you think?” The fans around them smirk at me, and even over DJ Ren’s music, I can hear their snickers. It takes all my self-control to not ball up my fist right now and knock the smile off Tremaine’s face. I’ve gotten in plenty of fights over less.

 

Instead, I bring up all the info I can on both players. By now, my hack has worked its way into the Demons’ accounts. But nothing about the data on these two seems suspicious. I turn my attention to Max Martin’s info. His is surprisingly sparse, too. No odd security shields. Nothing useful.

 

Roshan comes to my aid before the Demons can add anything else. “Save your mouths,” he says coolly, his gaze lingering on Tremaine. “They won’t help you in the arena.”

 

Tremaine casts me a dismissive glance. I’m glad to see it—they are going to underestimate me. “Big words from the lowest-ranking team.” His eyes dart briefly to Roshan. “Go back to your Riders.” Then he starts to walk away, and

Max follows in his wake.

 

“Who drove over their pets this morning?” I mutter to Roshan, my eyes on Tremaine’s back.

 

“It’s just a part of the Demons’ strategy. They talk the ugly talk and hope that some of it gets under the skin of their opponents, that it sticks there. Sometimes it works. Repeat an insult enough times, and anyone will start to believe it.”

 

A faint memory of past tournaments comes back to me, and suddenly I recall seeing Tremaine and Roshan frequently together, laughing and smiling. “Hey,” I say. “Tremaine used to be a Phoenix Rider, didn’t he? Weren’t you friends?”

 

Roshan’s expression darkens. “You could say that.” “What happened?”

 

“Tremaine wants to win. Always,” he replies. “Simple as that. So when the Demon Brigade became the hot new team, he wanted out of the Riders.” He shrugs. “It’s just as well. They suit his personality better, anyway.”

And then I remember that Roshan and Tremaine were both wild cards in the same year. Roshan had been the number one pick. I want to ask him about it, but the look on his face tells me that he’s eager to change the subject. Maybe they had been more than friends. So I just nod and let it drop.

Hammie waving to us from the other side of the dance floor catches our attention. She’s pointing to a cluster of people gathered around someone. It takes me a second to realize that it’s Hideo, with the sleeves of his tuxedo shirt rolled up to his elbows and his blazer slung over one shoulder. Kenn walks beside him, greeting fans and players alike with his huge, animated grin. Hideo is more reserved, his expression as serious as I remember it, even as he gives polite greetings of his own.

 

Hammie pushes her way over to us and grabs us each by the arm. “Let’s go say hi.”

 

We end up jumbled in the back behind a group of Cloud Knight players and Team Andromeda, while ahead of us, Max and Tremaine shake Hideo’s hand in turn. Tremaine is saying something rapidly to him, while Hideo nods patiently without smiling.

 

I bite my lip, tugging self-consciously at my dress and cursing my decision to wear this thing.

 

Then Hideo’s gaze lands on me. My breath hitches. He bids a brief farewell to Tremaine and heads toward us. A moment later, he’s here, and Roshan is stepping forward to greet him.

 

Hammie slaps my wrist. “Stop fussing,” she says, glancing pointedly down

at my dress.

 

“I’m not fussing,” I mumble, but then Hideo’s before me, and my hands freeze at my sides.

“Miss Chen,” he says. His eyes linger on my face. “Congratulations.”

Were you responsible for my number one draft pick status? I want to ask, but instead I smile at him and shake his hand politely. “Believe me, I was as shocked as anyone else,” I reply. Behind him, Tremaine and Max stare at us. If Tremaine could stab me with his eyes, he would be doing it right now.

“Every draft has at least one surprise,” Hideo replies.

“Are you saying you didn’t expect me to be drafted so quickly?”

 

A ghost of a smile appears on Hideo’s lips. “Were you? I hadn’t noticed.” He leans closer to me. “You look lovely tonight,” he continues in a low voice, so that no one else hears. Then he’s already nodding farewell, passing us by with his entourage, bodyguards, and a trailing, screaming mass of fans.

“Damn,” Hammie says in my ear, her eyes still fixed on Hideo. “He looks even better in person than he does in the news.”

 

Roshan is looking straight at me. “Did he just tease you for being first pick?”

“I don’t think he likes me very much.”

“It’s enough to put you in the tabloids,” Hammie says. “You know that, right? Hideo doesn’t talk like that to his players. It’s all business.” She elbows me hard enough to make me grunt.

“It’s not a big deal.”

Hammie laughs once, sending her curls bouncing. “I don’t even care. The way Tremaine was seething in the background will fuel me for the rest of the championships.”

 

As several fans line up for autographs from her and Roshan, I glance to where Hideo had disappeared into the crowd. He’d been watching me carefully during the Wardraft. I think back to him standing in his private box as the announcement of my number one draft pick status rang out. He doesn’t talk like that to his players. How does he talk, then? Hadn’t he exchanged words with everyone he met tonight? In the crowd, I catch one final glimpse of his figure as his bodyguards usher him down a hallway.

 

A name appears in my vision, and I look up instinctively. I’d made my way close enough to where DJ Ren is still standing up behind his mountain of instruments, spinning a fast-tempo beat, the gold wings of his headphones reflecting the neon strobe lights. I’d almost forgotten that he’s also an official player in the game—but now I’m close enough to him to pull his data.

I reach out discreetly and bring up DJ Ren’s info. Immediately, I halt.

His private information is walled behind a mass of shields—not just one, but dozens. Anything I’ve managed to download from him is encrypted. Whatever the reason, Ren is no amateur at dealing with his security, and he knows how to protect himself in ways far beyond the average player. In too many ways. I stare up at him, thinking. The figure I’d seen in the Tokyo Dome is one of the official wild cards.

 

And there’s only one wild card who was absent from his seat during the Wardraft.

HAS PRINCESS ADELE

 

 

12

 

The next morning, I hear Asher’s voice driftng up from the atrium as I step out of my room, yawning, my hair tangled in a messy bun. As I go, I run right into Hammie. She grunts in a half-asleep voice.

“Downstairs,” she mutters.

“What’s going on?”

 

“Matchups are in,” she replies, then stumbles off in the general direction of her bathroom.

 

Matchups. Today we find out which teams are playing each other. The thought quickly wakes me up. I brush my teeth, splash some water on my face, and put in a new pair of my Warcross contacts. Then I head down to the atrium. Asher’s already there, talking in a low voice to Roshan on the couches. Dark circles ring our captain’s eyes this morning, but otherwise he looks alert and ready. I glance down at the coffee table. The magazine on the top of the stack features a photo of Hideo at a banquet, seated beside a completely smitten blond woman who is whispering something intimately into his ear.

 

FOUND HER PRINCE? screams the caption.

 

Hammie files in moments later, followed shortly by DJ Ren. Ren looks the most frazzled out of us all, with his short brown hair sticking out in every direction and his eyes hidden behind a pair of white sunglasses. His winged gold headphones are still on his head, one side in place and the other shifted slightly off his ear, so that he can hear what’s going on. He sits down on the farthest couch from me, leans back, and waves a lazy greeting to everyone. The only one who wasn’t in his place during the Wardraft. Maybe because he was hiding somewhere, perched virtually in the rafters to spy on everything.

 

Maybe he’s actually Zero.

No. Zero should be better at hiding himself than this. And surely Zero isn’t tacky enough to wear sunglasses indoors.

 

Hammie reaches an arm out in front of Ren’s face and snaps her fingers twice. “Hey,” she says. “Rock star. You’re not at the club anymore.”

 

Ren just bats her away. “I’m sensitive to light in the morning,” he says in French, while I read his translation.

 

Roshan raises one brow at that, while Hammie rolls her eyes. “Yeah, I’m

allergic to mornings, too, wild card,” she replies.

 

As Hammie talks, I quietly begin to sort through my teammates’ data. It looks like Roshan sent a bunch of emails last night, while Hammie’s amount of notes has gone down by a significant amount since the night before, indicating she had made some huge purchase. I turn to Ren. Just like yesterday, he has a wall of shields on over his data, set up so that anyone trying to break in would automatically be redirected to a shield instead of to his data. I start to run a program to bypass them.

 

Roshan sighs. “Ash, tell him to take his headphones off,” he says in his patient manner.

 

Asher crosses his arms. “Lose ’em, wild card. I’m not in the mood for it this morning.”

 

Ren lounges for a moment longer. Finally, he pulls his headphones down and loops them around his neck, then reaches up to take off his sunglasses. His eyes are such a light brown that they look gold.

When we’re ready, Asher says, “Wikki, turn on the announcement.”

Our team drone blinks in one corner, and when it does, a live broadcast appears across one of the atrium walls. Hideo is standing before a podium and facing a barrage of flashing lights.

 

“Matchups are in,” Asher says, confirming what Hammie had told me. “And we’re going to play the first round of the championships.”

 

Hideo had wasted no time making sure I will be in the first game. “Who are we playing?” I say.

 

Asher brings up a pair of virtual images for us to see. It’s our team crest— our red-and-gold phoenix—hovering in midair next to a black-and-silver image of hooded skeletal figures on horseback. Above our crests are the words:

 

Round One

 

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