They’d be fools to attack in the same place again. I’ll be fine.

 

I already know there’s nothing I can do to talk him out of it.

Well, be careful, ok?

 

Keep your eyes peeled.

 

My eyes will be on you, I’m afraid.

 

A nagging worry lingers in my mind, but his words still pull a smile out of me. I head downstairs.

 

The other Phoenix Riders chat animatedly on our way to the stadium this morning. I feel strangely disconnected from it all. Ren doesn’t seem to act any differently toward me, but his nonchalance bothers me even more. Maybe I should have told Hideo about him after all. Maybe he would have been disqualified from today’s game. I narrow my eyes as I watch Ren crack a joke with Asher. No. Hell if he’s going to force me out of my element. I’m going to keep using him to get to the bottom of this.

 

The stadium feels like a blur today, and as we enter the arena and go to our individual terminals, I feel like I’m walking in a fog. The announcer sounds far away, and the cheers from the audience turn into a mess of background noise. I keep my head turned up to the balcony seats. Sure enough, Hideo is there, surrounded by bodyguards.

 

Then the world goes dark, and I find myself transported into another realm. “Welcome to the Lost City Level!”

 

The echo of the announcer’s voice fades away as the virtual world materializes around us. Dim light filters down from the ocean’s surface far above. I find myself floating above a spectacular, ruined city surrounded on all sides by walls of colorful coral. Stone pillars tower up toward the surface. Piles of rock are everywhere, looking like once-grand theaters and bathhouses. Turquoise light shines from within some of their crevices, forming glowing lines that seem to point out pathways to take. The ruins stretch as far as I can see, dappled sunlight dancing against their surfaces, and drifting over them are a field of shining, jewel-like power-ups. The only thing keeping us from feeling completely immersed is the sound of the crowd’s cheers all around us.

I look to either side. My teammates are all here, dressed in outfits of bright white with flippers on our feet and fins on our arms. I look down at my hands. They are equipped with buttons in my palms. When I experiment with pressing

them, my avatar jerks forward a bit. This will be how we get around.

 

Far on the other side of the ruins appear our rivals. The Cloud Knights. They are dressed in outfits of bright yellow, standing out against the blue tint of this place. All of our eyes are turned toward them—all except Ren’s. I glance at him to see him staring down at the ruins already, as if searching for something. My jaw tightens. Follow him.

“Game! Set! Fight!”

The game starts. Asher barks orders at us through our comms, and we split immediately. On the other side of the ruins, the Cloud Knights dive down for the ruins, no doubt ready to lose themselves inside the maze of crumbled structures. We dive, too. I clench my fists down on the buttons on my palms, and I jerk forward through the water in a blur of motion, slicing a trail behind me. A bar appears in the center of my view, showing how much oxygen I have left.

 

As we get to the point where we start splitting up, my teammates reappear as tiny dots on a small map in my view. But the only person I’m paying attention to is Ren. He swims away from the others and toward a series of collapsed columns that form a cave. Considering what had happened after our first round, I change course from where Asher tells me to go and instead trail after Ren.

 

“Emi,” Asher calls through our comms. He sighs. “Can you follow my lead for once? I said go center, toward that collapsed amphitheater.”

 

“I see a better route,” I lie, continuing in my direction. “Don’t worry.” Asher makes a sound as if to argue, but then he stops, as if he’d

 

remembered my successful moves from our last game. “Your only solo move,” he says. “Hear me?”

“Yes, Captain.”

He flickers out. The light grows dim around us, with only faint rays of blue and silver dancing against the stone formations. I keep my gaze on Ren. He’s moving at a good pace in front of me and has just rounded a corner. Where is he going?

 

“And it looks like the Cloud Knights have secured the first rare power-up of the game!” the announcer’s voice comes on all around us. “The silver-and-gold Invisibility!”

 

I should be concentrating on the game right now. But I find myself continuing on my hunt. My oxygen level starts to deplete. Warning: 25% left flashes in my view. Up ahead, I see a spot between the rocks where bubbles of air are coming out in a steady stream—but if I stop now, I might never catch up to Ren. So I skip it, then propel myself onward. I’m so close.

 

Then—suddenly—everything around me shifts. The underwater ruins vanish.

I’m no longer floating in an ocean, but standing in a cavern encircling me, trapping me in. Dim, scarlet light illuminates the space. The sounds of the audience’s cheers abruptly go silent. I blink. What had happened? In real life, I reach up to adjust my earphones. Did they glitch? It’s as if I’d suddenly been taken out of the game. I can’t even see my teammates on a map anymore.

 

“Hello?” I say, shifting around. My voice echoes.

If my game has glitched, then I should take off my lenses right now and alert the authorities. The game would be paused as they fix it. But instead I continue looking around, my heart beating faster now. No. This is not an accident. The red hue of this space looks too similar to the Dark World.

When I blink again, a tall figure is standing in front of me. He’s clad in the fitted black armor I’ve become so used to seeing now, and his face is completely hidden behind a dark, opaque helmet. His head is turned directly toward me. For a moment, we just stare at each other in silence.

Zero’s proxy. Or his follower.

Or, maybe, himself.

 

I find my voice. “You’re who Hideo is after,” I say, taking a step forward. “And you’re the one who's been trailing me. Hideo’s little lackey.” His

voice sounds deep and distorted in this cavern.

 

This is really him. He knows who I am. He knows what I’m doing. Instantly, I think of the moment when I’d seen him appear in the last game. Had he set that to test whether or not I could see him? And now he has sabotaged this game in order to speak directly to me.

 

“My teammates will see that I’m trapped,” I say to him. My words come out forceful and frustrated as memories of Hideo’s near-assassination flash back at me. “You can’t keep disrupting every world.”

 

Zero walks closer to me, his muscles shifting underneath the black armor, until we are separated by a mere foot. He stares down at me. “Here’s what your teammates currently see.”

 

A window pops up in the center of my view, and I see the underwater ruins. I see myself, ignoring Asher’s repeated commands and idling in an area away from the others, collecting simple power-ups. I see myself getting trapped in an obvious airless pocket.

 

“Right now, as far as they’re concerned, you’ve managed to seal yourself in an underwater cave in the ruins. And you’re running out of air fast.”

“Why are you here?” I say. “What do you want?”

 

“I’m here to give you a fair offer,” he replies. His voice echoes around me. “A fair offer?”

 

“How else should I say it? A deal. A proposal. A suggestion. Take your

pick.”

 

My temper flares. “I’ve been causing problems for you, haven’t I? You were forced to speak to me directly? What’s this—are you angry that someone has finally managed to get close to bringing you in?”

 

“Do I sound angry?” My words make him laugh once. It’s a low, quiet sound. “You’re too good to be working for him. How much does Hideo pay you to keep you so loyally at his side? To come when he whistles? Or is something else drawing you to him?”

“Your charm overwhelms me,” I say in my driest voice.

“And what if I overwhelm his number?”

 

I narrow my eyes. “Are you honestly offering to hire me?” “Everyone has a price. Name yours.” “No.”

 

Zero shakes his head at me. “Choose carefully.” “I am careful.”

 

“Are you?” He looks down at me so that I can see my own avatar’s face reflected in his helmet. “Because, as far as I can tell, you’ve been living a risky life in New York City. Because you’ve been risky in choosing your . . .

relationships.”

 

A shiver runs through me. Has he been researching my past? Has he been watching me? Does he know about Hideo and me? “And you are messing with the wrong person,” I say through gritted teeth.

“I was giving you a compliment.”

“This is your idea of a compliment?”

 

“I’m not known for making offers, Emika. Interpret that however you’d like.”

 

My hands clench into fists. “Well, you can take that generous offer,” I say in a low voice as I move toward him, “and shove it up your virtual ass.”

He leans close to me. “Everyone always thinks they’re so brave.”

And when I look down, I notice with horror that the arm of my suit, originally bright white like my teammates’, is turning black. Plates of dark armor clip into place around my wrist, then cover my forearms, then creep up to my shoulders. They line my chest and neck, my waist and legs. I choke out a gasp and step away from him, as if this will stop it. But in this moment, I no longer look like an Architect. I look like his hunter, dressed entirely in black.

“Get away from me,” I snarl. “Before I kill you.” “It is you,” he replies, “who came to me.”

His words just make me angrier. “I’m going to give you one more chance to turn yourself in. It’ll make life easier for everyone.”

He just watches me, his silent calm unnerving. Finally, he starts to turn away. “You’re going to regret this,” he says. Then, before I can shout anything else at him, he vanishes. So does the scarlet cavern.

Suddenly, I’m thrust back into the game. The roar of the audience abruptly returns, followed by the announcer’s shocked voice and the jumble of my teammates’ voices all ringing in my ears. I look frantically down, expecting to see myself still encased in black armor that resembles Zero’s—but it’s gone, as if it were all a hallucination. My white game suit is intact again.

“Emi? Ems!” Asher shouts. “What the hell are you doing?”

 

“Forget her—” comes Hammie’s voice, frantic. “She’s out. I’m going for the Artifact now!”

 

I realize I am floating, frozen, trapped inside a set of ruins with only a small eyehole through which I can see the rest of the game unfolding. Asher is trying in vain to fend off three Cloud Knights. He’s going to lose his Artifact. I try to ram myself through my underwater cage, but I can’t—and then I realize it’s because I have no more oxygen left. My reserves are red. That’s what Hammie had meant. I’m dead, struck out of the round until I can regenerate. What had happened?

 

“I don’t believe it!” the announcer is shouting now. “After their incredible first win, the Phoenix Riders may be disqualified early this year if they don’t do something soon—”

 

Hammie appears at the last second, flickering into view like a phantom in the water. She lunges for the Cloud Knights’ Artifact before they can register her presence, right at the same time as the Knights lunge for Asher’s. Both teams seize the other’s Artifact at almost the exact same time. The crowd screams.

 

A few seconds pass before the final score appears in our views.

“The Phoenix Riders manage to hang on to victory by a millisecond!” the announcer shouts.

 

As the world vanishes around me and the real world—the arena and the screaming crowds—comes back into view, I see Asher roll out of his station in a furious mood. His face is twisted in anger. He’s glaring at me. So are my other teammates. I look up at the enormous holograms in the stadium that are replaying segments of the game, only to see myself, ignoring the others and sabotaging their moves. Boos are mixed in with the cheers in the crowd. Some are shouting for a replay, that we hadn’t won this round at all.

“What the hell happened?” Asher demands as he approaches me. “That was the most embarrassing, shameful display I’ve ever seen from a pro player. You tried to throw that game on purpose.”

 

What can I say? Zero’s figure is still hovering in my mind, ominous and

silent. “I’m sorry,” I start to say, “I—”

 

Asher turns his head in disgust. “We’ll talk back at the dorms.” From the corner of my eye, I see Roshan shake his head at me in confusion, while Hammie looks away in disappointment. We had won, but it didn’t look like it at all. My gaze goes to Ren, who’s watching me. The edge of his lips tilts ever so slightly. My jaw tightens. He knows.

 

Suddenly, the holograms in the arena change. The crowd goes still for a moment. I go still. My teammates all pause in unison.

 

Then, everyone bursts into gasps and shouts. As they do, I can only find enough strength to stare in stunned silence at the grainy screenshot that is now publicly broadcast to everyone in the arena, and probably to everyone watching this game. Everyone in the world. I don’t know who had taken it, or how. But somehow, I know Zero is involved. This is the beginning of his attack on me.

 

The holograms display a giant photo of me stepping out of Hideo’s home at night, of him leaning in to kiss me, of his hand still holding on to mine. It’s unmistakable.

The news is out.

 

 

25

 

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