Arena (20 page)

“You had enough?” Rooke asked.

“Hell no.”

The boys spun around each other, snapping staffs and breaking apart. Derek never got a hit in, but he never gave up either. At least, until he held up his hand and took a knee on the mats, panting. When he caught his breath, he looked between us.

“You guys ever try this virtually?”

Rooke looked at me. Since my little meltdown at the club, I hadn't
plugged in at all except to run virtual simulations with the team, and even that was kept at a minimum. But if I was going to overcome the virtual world, I needed to start facing it head-on. I took a breath and nodded at him.

It was time.

—

It wasn't real. That's what I kept telling myself.

The three of us stood on the edge of a cliff that plummeted a hundred feet and ended in a desert garden of rocky shards and spikes. A purple-pink sky swirled overhead as the dying sun crested the horizon. It was stunning but engineered. The sky was too impeccable. The wind was too perfect. Imperfections were far more beautiful. A blemish on the skin. An extra five pounds. That was real life.

That was true beauty.

“Ready?” Derek asked, swirling the staff in his hand.

Rooke and I nodded.

Three warriors materialized on the sands and bolted for us. As my opponent reached me, I ducked and maneuvered around his sword as it chopped through the air. One too many steps back and my foot slipped half off the edge. I pushed forward and dove low, knocking my opponent off balance. He tumbled over me, and off the edge. His scream descended down the cliff and cut off abruptly when a spike punctured his stomach. A single warrior among a forest of miniature mountains and corkscrews of rock.

He wasn't alone for long. My teammates' opponents ended up impaled beside him.

Derek motioned at the sky, and shouted, “Too easy. Send us something different.”

Oh, the programmers would love this.

Six new opponents phased into view. Rotting flesh peeled away from their faces, revealing gray muscle and stringy innards beneath. Zombies. Wonderful.

They came for us.

Two grabbed my staff and pushed in, snapping teeth in my face. My back bowed against the onslaught. Strong little fuckers. I shifted my weight to the side and they slid off the staff. One hard whack against their backs, and they joined the growing collection of opponents at the bottom of the mountain. I leaned over the edge and surveyed the potluck mix of gladiators and zombies on spikes. Hunters had antlers on their walls. Pffft. I had this. So. Much. Cooler.

Derek jousted his staff at the heavens.

“Come on,” he baited. “I could program better than that.”

I laughed at him. “Don't be too full of yourself or anything.”

“I tell no lies,” he said with a grin. “I can program anything.”

Just then, three giants materialized on the sands and bolted for us. I nodded at them.

“Could you program a way to beat that?”

Derek closed his mouth and backed up to the edge.

The sands pounded as the titans closed in, one heading straight for me. He swung his sword. I danced, ducking and swirling around the blade. He cut through the air with such strength and precision, he could have sliced molecules in half.

The sword came down on top of me, aiming to split my cranium in two. I dropped to one knee, and a sickening crack echoed above me.

Shit.

I stilled, listening to my body. But there was no pain. No sudden jolt to reality. I glanced up. My staff had been split in two, not my head. Grinning, I drove one jagged end into the giant's throat and twisted in. He gasped. A pinwheel of blood gushed out around the staff.

Bull's-eye.

I ripped the staff out of his neck and stepped aside. The giant fell to his knees and tumbled over the edge. A hop, a skip, and a jump down the cliff, and he face-planted into the shards below. Sweet victory. Turning to Rooke, I held up my now dual short staffs, dripping with blood.

“How come we haven't trained like this?”

Rooke held a hand up toward the sky. “Cancel the opponents for a while.”

The boys flanked me. I positioned myself evenly between them, back to the cliff.

They attacked.

Staff met staff and clacking wood echoed through the rocky basin. The same basin I grew closer and closer to with each hit. Smack. An inch. Smack. Another inch. The strength behind their blows left me teetering on the edge.

I closed my eyes, and focused. Yes, with the boys smacking me with sticks, on the edge of a cliff, I dropped into a meditative state. Every muscle relaxed. All the tension evaporated. With a deep breath, I moved with the wind.

I tucked, rolled, and sprang to my feet, spinning out with my staffs, snapping kneecaps and thighs. I was a flash. A bolt of lightning. Both men landed on their backs, groaning, gripping their legs. As he recovered and pushed himself up to sitting, Derek grinned and looked around my legs at Rooke. “That's why they call her the warrior.”

I smiled down at the men at my feet. “I also answer to the Goddess of Gaming.”

They laughed.

I turned to the cliff, letting my toes hang off the edge. I lifted my face to the sky, closed my eyes, and outstretched my arms, like I was ready to sacrifice myself to the gods of the virtual world. Except, I wasn't. I wasn't giving myself to anything.

Rooke grasped my arm.

“Hey.”

I turned to him. A look of concern masked his face as his eyes searched my own. I smiled.

“I'm okay.”

His concern didn't falter. I rested a hand on his arm.

“I'm not lost.”

“Really?”

I drew a deep breath and slowly let it out. “No. Not anymore.”

I wasn't naïve. I knew I had a ways to go before I'd kick my addiction.
Maybe it was something I'd have to be wary of my entire life. But I wasn't a prisoner of the virtual world now. It didn't rule me.

I ruled it.

The next morning, Hannah slapped her breakfast tray down on the table across from mine. I jumped, dropped my spoon, and peered up at her.

“What?”

“Derek says last night you guys fought zombies and giants on a mountain with bo staffs.”

Lily stood beside her, arms crossed. I glanced between them and grinned.

“What?” I asked, feigning innocence. “Did you wanna play?”

They answered in unison.

“Hell yes.”

—

Fourteen hours a day. That was our minimum. Now, even the rest of the team was ducking out of the clubs. Outside of the media events, 110 percent went into training. Code practically bent around us. Whether in the cool starchiness of the training room or under the pink-purple sky and golden rays of the virtual battlefield, we fought with staffs in hand. We mastered our opponents. We mastered each other.

We mastered ourselves.

No one was drained. We were in the cafeteria earlier and earlier, scarfing down our breakfasts so we could rush to the training rooms. Eight to ten hours of physical training. The rest went to the digital world.

We took turns fighting each other, all of us. Both in the real world and the digital. We noted our strengths and weaknesses, both in ourselves and each other. We worked. We worked harder than we ever had in our entire lives.

And then we worked even harder.

When the staffs transformed to blades in the virtual arena, the blood spilled was never our own. One-on-three, two-on-four. Not a scratch. Nothing the programmers formulated could touch us. InvictUS was still
the invincible team in the tournament, patiently waiting for the losing bracket to play out.

We were gaining.

That Saturday, we huddled together in the pod room, moments before the semifinal round.

“Are you sure we're ready?” Hannah asked.

I smiled. Not the fake one.

“We're more than ready.”

I felt it. In every nerve, in every fiber, we were more prepared than ever. Not just because we'd practiced more or had fun while we were doing it. Because I'd begun to appreciate the virtual world in response to the real, and vice versa. Inside the facility, I noticed the grooves in the walls, the inconsistencies. The dust along the tabletops. Even the whooshing sound the doors made when they opened and closed around us. Reality and virtual were becoming one. They were two halves of a whole. Before, I'd only treasured the virtual side, and even then, I'd never really gotten everything I could out of it. Because I'd never gotten everything I could out of reality.

Now I was beginning to understand it all.

Inside the game, Hannah and Derek flew through the fields while the rest of us guarded the tower. Three men burst through the entrance door and charged.

I smiled.

They bolted for us, screaming, swords raised over their heads. We waited, bringing them to us. At the last second, just as they brought their weapons down, we ducked and stepped aside. One rolled over Rooke's shoulder and landed hard on the ground. The other two went soaring past. In unison, we whirled around, plunging swords into backs, throats, and chests.

The match was over in seconds.

“That was incredible,” Marcus practically shouted, bouncing in his chair. “Wait a minute.” He placed a finger against his headphones, as if listening to something. Howie glanced offscreen and made a waving motion with his hand, as if to say,
Come on, tell me
.

New record. It had to be. We gathered in front of the screen. My
breath snagged in my throat as the announcers waited for the signal. Say something, damn it.

Say it.

“New record.”

We screamed and tackled each other in the center of the pod room until we became a pig pile of gamers and pod suits.

“Defiance, welcome to the finals.”

We were in the finals.

Was this real? It had to be. I'd never felt so alive.

The next week was an onslaught of interviews and television appearances. We quit going to the clubs, so we could train every spare moment. Bo staffs. Endless opponents. Real and virtual. In the moments in between, I'd thumb my necklace and reflect, a moment of quiet in a swirling vortex of chaos and action. Now, in the virtual world, I looked forward to the real one. To the mats and staffs, and training with my teammates.

The week soared past, moving as if time were stuck on fast forward. In a good way. Before, it felt like life was slipping me by. Now, I was living every minute, breathing every breath to its fullest.

On Friday, while the rest of our teammates had retired for the night, I slinked across the mats, attempting to bring Rooke to his knees with nothing but a bo. Maybe I really was a ninja. Tonight in particular, I was kicking his ass.

I swept the staff under his foot. Rooke went down on his back hard, catching my bo between his ankles. Both staffs scattered. I rolled on the mat, retrieved the closest one, and raised it high over my head, ready to slam it down on his head. His eyes went wide.

“Okay, okay,” he said, holding up a hand.

“You forfeit?” I teased, grinning.

“It's nearly three
A.M.
”

He motioned toward the clock, nestled high in the wall where it met the ceiling. The time flashed across it—02:49. Even when I'd partied this late, I never felt half this good.

I bounced on the edge of my toes. “I could go all night.”

He grinned. “Really?”

Shock coursed through me as I realized the sexual connotation behind my words. As my eyes widened, so did Rooke's grin. I slammed the staff down. He rolled just in time, and the staff hit the mat with a thud. Rooke turned back and clamped down on the staff, keeping it pinned against the mat. Then he jerked it toward himself, pulling me with it. I tumbled forward and nearly landed in his lap. Catching myself on my hands and knees, I looked up at him, our faces now parallel and only inches apart.

“I think we should call it quits for tonight,” he said. “With training, at least.”

He inched the staff back, pulling me even closer. His gaze surveyed my lips, as if trying to memorize the color. Gradually, his eyes drifted up to mine. A chill shot through me under the intensity of his stare. Goose bumps peppered my skin despite the heat curling low in my belly. Memories flashed across my mind of the time we'd kissed, when I'd thrown myself at him in my bunk to distract him over the pills. That night had been a low point for me, filled with darkness and misery. But now, all I could think was how soft his lips had felt.

I looked down to the curves of his mouth, and the stubble along his jaw, grown since his early-morning shave. I closed in, wondering what he'd taste like. His hand grazed against my hip and I snapped back to reality. What was I doing? We weren't in the clubs now. No one was watching.

Since when wasn't this just for show?

I pulled away.

“Call it quits,” I repeated with a shaky breath. “You're right.”

Inside the women's locker room, I wrenched the shower tap on. After washing my hair, I stood directly under the cascade. The steady stream pelted my back. Comforting, even when it hit a fresh bruise.

I pressed my hand against the cool, tiled wall of the shower. Was Rooke on the other side of this very wall, in the shower, water slipping down his skin. Maybe I could sneak into the men's locker room for a peek. You know, just one warrior admiring another, all those ripples and planes.

I took a breath and closed my eyes. Calm, Kali. Remember calm? Okay,
I couldn't deny it any longer. The attraction I'd felt toward him had grown. Twofold. No, times ten. I'd gotten involved with a teammate once already, and it had ended in the worst way imaginable. While I doubted either Rooke or I would have any difficulties now with our grip on reality, mixing love with work wasn't always the best idea. What if it didn't work out? What if we broke up and were stuck on the team together, hating each other?

What if it was worth it?

When I left the changing room, Rooke was leaning outside the door.