Arena (12 page)

I followed the hallway to the pod room. My new programmer sat at her workstation, typing on the screen. She smiled as I walked up to her.

“Hey, Kali.”

What was her name? Elise. It was Elise.

“Hey. Do you think you could plug me in?”

“Really? It's early.”

I faltered for a second.

“Uh, I know. I just . . . I need some extra practice.”

She shrugged. “Okay. Sure.”

She tapped a few buttons on the screen. The pod doors opened, and I climbed in as they closed around me. In the darkness, alone, I smiled to myself. In here, there were no flashing cameras. No tabloids. No fake relationship. The virtual world was becoming even more real than this place.

The wires crawled across my skin, sending little jolts of anticipation running through me. I took a breath, pressed back against the pod, and disappeared into the place where there were no magazines, or sponsors, or bullshit. The place where anything was possible.

The place where I was a god.

“T
eam Defiance really took a beating last night. It's a wonder they survived.”

I sat on my bed watching the VGL's
Sunday Morning Highlights
on my tablet. During our latest Saturday night matchup, Lily and Hannah had bit the virtual death. By some miracle, Rooke and I managed to hold on to our tower, and Derek had taken the enemy's by himself.

“What was once the heavy favorite to win the tournament is now just barely scraping by in the losers' bracket.”

“Looks like Kali Ling should be focusing more on her team than her love life.”

I pulled the covers over my head and groaned. The week had been a disaster.

I wasn't sleeping. The team was still fighting. If it wasn't Hannah and Derek in the training room, then it was me and Rooke in the pod room. Despite our talk on the roof and daily exchange of books, we still hadn't broken through the differences between us—namely his arrogance and my stubbornness. Luckily, there hadn't been any new injuries, but Lily still limped around on her ankle, and Rooke gripped his stomach and grimaced when he thought no one was watching.

I looked over my tablet again, reading the names of the teams still left in the tournament. In the winners' bracket sat InvictUS, their name glowing
in red as if the computer itself was trying to make them even more ominous. They'd crushed every opponent the tournament could throw at them. They kept winning. If, somehow, we kept winning, eventually our paths would cross.

And explode.

Every week was another step up, a harder fight, as the weaker teams got knocked out of the tournament. If I couldn't get the team working together soon, InvictUS would be the least of my worries. So when the third round of the tournament was announced on Monday morning, and I had our opponents for the week, something solidified within me. I hadn't fought my way into the pros just to be out in a few rounds. We had the skills to be one of the best teams in the league. It was my fault that we weren't. Having to switch in a new player right before the start of the tournament hadn't helped, but I was the one who was supposed to make us into a team again.

Inside my bathroom, I propped my tablet up on a few towels and watched our opponent, QuickZero, in their preseason fights as I dried my hair and brushed my teeth. We had five days to cream them in the arena.

When I turned to leave my bunk, and the door slid open, I halted at a sight I never expected to see.

Nothing.

No book sat waiting for me outside my door. My heart sank. If there was one thing Rooke and I had in common outside the game, it was those books. Maybe we'd had one fight too many, or something I said had really pissed him off. Whatever the reason, the sticky-note battle was over, and possibly our only chance at rapprochement. I chewed my bottom lip and sighed. For the first time in my entire life, winning a game didn't taste so sweet.

Whatever. I'd have to find another way to make things work with him. With the entire team, really. And I'd have to coordinate a plan for our opponents this week. Something that didn't result in our fighting each other or nearly wiping out.

Nose pressed to my tablet, I walked into the cafeteria and groped
around the counter for the coffeepot, and landed on a hard, thick cover instead.

You have got to be kidding me.

In front of the coffeepot sat
The Inner Chapters
waiting for me. Sticky note? Of course.

In his teachings, Chuang Tzu often refers to wandering in a world beyond life or death. Could the virtual world constitute such a place?

Shut. The. Front. Door.

Rooke was comparing Taoist philosophy to the virtual world? Wow, what a hell of a way to get my attention. In all my years of reading Taoist texts and playing video games, I'd never thought of one in comparison to the other. Interesting. Even better, it looked like he hadn't given up on figuring out our differences. But he'd tapped my competitive side now. Did he really think he could beat me at video games or Taoist references, let alone both together?

I tucked the book under my arm and filled a mug until it was brimming with the good stuff. In the lunchroom, Rooke sat alone at the end of the table. He glanced up from his breakfast, noticed the book in my arms, and grinned.

“How's your coffee?” he asked.

I narrowed my eyes at him.

Oh, it's on, recruit.

It's on like Donkey Kong.

Before morning practice, I snuck back into my room and scribbled a reply on a sticky note.

The virtual world is not beyond life and death.

You always wake up, eventually.

It goes hand in hand with reality.

Isn't THAT what a yin yang represents?

I walked briskly through the halls to the pod room. Elise glanced at me when I entered.

“Plugging in
again
?” she asked.

I waved her off. I didn't plug in
that
much. I scurried over to Rooke's pod, entered a command on the screen to open the doors, and left the book inside before they shut again. I winked at Elise as I headed back out of the room.

“I wasn't here.”

She watched me go with a furrowed brow but didn't protest.

In the training room, I continued to watch my tablet on breaks, trying to learn everything I could about our opponents. QuickZero had four decent players plus one seven-foot ogre who made the members of InvictUS look like gnomes. He wielded an axe the size of me, sending people flying into the walls with sickening smacks. His swings, while powerful, were slow, almost labored.

I looked up and scanned the training room until I spotted Lily climbing off the treadmill. No one seemed to pick a fight with her, and she was too laid-back and quiet to go looking for one herself. Maybe centering this week's matchup around her would work. I waved her over.

“How's your ankle?” I asked.

She glanced down at it, shifting her weight side to side. “Still tender, but it's getting a lot better.”

“Do you think you'll be recovered by this weekend?”

She shrugged. “Maybe. Why?”

“Check this out.” I held out the tablet for her to watch as Zero's ogre crashed through the tower's door and started slaughtering his opponents. Lily's eyes went a touch wide.

“He's a freaking beast.”

“I think you could take him out easy.”

Her eyes went wider. “Really?”

“He's huge, but he moves slowly. You're faster than anyone I've ever seen in the arena. You could get the drop on him before he can take anyone else out. Think you could handle it?”

She considered it. “Yeah. Might be good if I could practice against someone that size.”

No one here was even close to seven feet tall. I spotted Rooke across the room and waved him over. He'd have to do.

“You're the tallest one here,” I told him, as he stopped in front of us. “Do you mind sparring with Lily for the week? She needs to work with a larger opponent.”

He nodded. “Sure.”

They paired off on the mats. Lily's gift was her speed, and against Rooke, she was a Tasmanian devil with a pair of short axes. Even with the practice weapons, Lily moved like a hurricane, spinning and whipping faster than Rooke could keep up. Looked like my plan might work.

After lunch, I laid out a potential strategy for the coming matchup.

“I think three on defense and two on offense would work best against QuickZero,” I said with my teammates huddled around me. “Hannah and Derek will go for their tower while Rooke, Lily, and I guard our own. Lily will be the one to take out the ogre. If something goes wrong, Rooke and I will be there to back her up.”

Derek stepped forward. “Still going two on three? Kali, let's be serious. No pro team keeps three on defense. It makes us look weak.”

“Lily's still recovering from her sprain. Plus, Zero always goes three on offense and two on defense. It's their style. If we mirror them, it'll be one-on-one. Since we've replaced a player, and we're still not used to each other yet, I think it's best if we play it safe for now. At this point, we're not here to show off. We're here to survive.”

“And what if they try a different formulation to screw us up?”

Good question.

“I'll think about that,” I said. “We'll go with this setup for now.”

Everyone agreed, but Derek had a good point. What if they changed up their format? How could we prepare for that?

The next morning, a hardback copy of
The Art of War
sat waiting outside my door with a new sticky note on its cover. Guess he wanted me to find it right away today.

Which of the thirteen chapters do you think best applies to the virtual battlefield?

Is that all you got, recruit? I was going to own his ass. The thirteen chapters in
The Art of War
each dealt with a different aspect of warfare. It wasn't a Taoist text in the strictest sense, but employed many of its concepts and ideals. Tapping a pen against my bottom lip, I flipped through the pages a few times to refresh myself on the material.

A few minutes later, the book somehow ended up in the men's changing room of the training area, tucked in Rooke's locker.

Chapter Seven speaks about adapting to the fluidity of the battlefield.

The virtual world is programmed. Therefore, it is more fluid than any.

As I walked toward the cafeteria for a cup of my personal poison, I thought about
The Art of War
. I'd never considered the virtual battlefield as fluid before, but the programmers could reformat standard programming to do almost anything they wanted.

I stopped dead.

That was it. The answer to the question Derek had posed the day before. We could run various scenarios of QuickZero's possible attacks in the virtual world and master any format they threw at us. As fate would have it, Elise turned a corner and started coming toward me. I jogged up to her.

“Hey. I'm going to need you to plug us in later.”

Her face fell, and she sighed. “Look, Kali, I'm going to lose my job.”

“What?”

“The other programmers said you got the girl before me fired for letting you plug in off-hours.”

I shook my head. “No, no. This is practice for the whole team.” I smiled as I lied through my teeth. “Clarence already approved it. You won't get in trouble.”

She brightened. “Oh. Okay then.”

In the cafeteria, I hurried over to the team as they sat eating their breakfasts.

“We're going to spend more time in the virtual world,” I told them. “I'll get the programmers to create simulations with opponents similar to QuickZero's size and skill. Then, they'll run the different ways they might attack. Three on defense, three on offense, four on offense. If at any point we wipe out, we can rerun the same scenario until we figure out how to beat it. That way, we're prepared no matter what they do.”

Everyone exchanged glances and nodded in approval.

“That sounds . . . perfect,” Derek said. “Good idea.”

“Well”—I glanced at Rooke at the end of the table—“someone reminded me how fluid the arena is and how fast we need to adapt.”

Rooke smiled but said nothing.

The rest of the week, we fell into a pattern. Mornings in the training room, afternoons in the virtual, and nights at the clubs, intermixed with media events and my ongoing sticky-note war with Rooke. Sometimes I'd find a book outside my door, waiting for me in the mornings. On other days, I'd stumble across one in my pod, on the roof of the facility, or on top of the gaming consoles in the facility's rec room.

The gaming consoles. Now that gave me an idea.

Like Hannah had said, I was good at finding ways to make this fun. So, on Friday night, after an entire week of nonstop action, I decided I needed a break. We all did. After returning from the clubs, I led the team through the hallways of the facility.

“Where are we going?” Hannah asked too loudly, obviously still feeling the effects of the shots she'd done earlier.

“Shhh, you guys,” I warned. “Quiet.”

“Where are you taking us?” Derek asked in a hushed voice.

I smiled. “To fight.”

“Oh, God,” Hannah whined. “We're going to practice, aren't we?”

I ignored her and led them past the training room and into the rec room. When the door slid shut behind us, I quickly entered a lock code on the keypad and turned back to my teammates.

“With the amount of training we go through, I think sometimes we forget that this is a game.” I grinned. “I have a surprise for you.”

I walked over to the television. The rec room consisted of a wall-sized television screen, all the modern gaming systems, and an oversized couch, long enough to seat a dozen people. I grabbed one of the systems, booted it up, and started searching through the menus. When I located the spot where I'd downloaded a few classic video games, I clicked on one. A remake of Super Smash Brothers popped up on the screen. It wasn't the original game, but a tribute with updated effects and graphics. The original only ran on old systems, and almost no one had those anymore. At least, not ones that worked.

“Yes!” Hannah screeched, practically diving for a controller. “I'm Peach!”

Derek scooped up the second controller. “Who in their right mind picks Peach? What is wrong with you?”

She giggled as she tapped a few buttons. “You're about to have your ass kicked by a princess.”

“Just to be clear: Are we talking about the character or you?”

The trash-talking had already begun. I couldn't stop a smile from spreading across my face. Lily snatched the third controller, and I motioned for Rooke to take the last. He hesitated for a second before joining the others in front of the wallscreen.

I sat on the couch behind them all and watched. As they chose their characters and set up the fight, the trash-talking continued between Derek, Hannah, and Lily. Rooke sat at the end, somewhat excluded from the conversation. After joining the team late, he was still on the outside looking in. Now, that just wasn't right.