Arena (4 page)

I gave him another practiced smile. “I'm fine for now.”

He blinked. “Really? You sure?”

I raised my glass to him. “The night's young.”

“Okay.” He rapped his knuckles against the bar as he left. “Just let me know when you're ready for a fix.”

I nodded as I brought the glass to my lips. The liquor went down smooth, unlike most American alcohols, and left behind a clean, refreshing taste, sort of like sushi. Not half-bad, but not coffee, either.

Music blared from the wallscreen, even louder than the club's techno beat. The Virtual Gaming League's theme song. My gaze flicked up as the screen went black. White lettering appeared along the bottom edge.

THIS IS A REPEAT OF TONIGHT'S EARLIER BROADCAST.

The screen faded in to a pair of young men sitting behind a news anchor's booth with the VGL green-and-white symbol pasted to the front of it. Neither looked a day over twenty-five. The announcers, I mean.

“Good evening. I'm Marcus Ryan.”

“And I'm Howie Fulton. And this is
Saturday Night Gaming
.”

Radio voices. Perfect teeth. Tanned skin. Both wore small headsets with microphones, meant as a tribute to the original sets gamers wore decades ago.

“We're coming to you live from Los Angeles, home of the VGL national championships.” Howie turned to his counterpart. “Well, Marcus, you know what month it is.”

“Yes, I do. It's August, and that means the RAGE tournaments.” He rubbed his hands together. “I'm excited. Are you excited?”

“You bet I'm excited.”

Tweedledee and Tweedledum on TV.

Howie beamed. “Tonight's Death Match round certainly lived up to its name. Let's start off big and check out highlights from the most anticipated match of the night: InvictUS vs. Defiance.”

The Death Match was the final round of the preseason, and had earned its nickname for a reason. Mostly, the preseason was just there for warm-up, so the teams could get to know each other, and the players to know themselves. But the Death Match was where most teams found their groove, and the gameplay found the true depth of its brutality, which we'd learned firsthand ourselves. It also divided the teams into two brackets, the winners' and the losers', and set the rest of the tournament in motion.

The screen cut to the match. Four of InvictUS's players crouched at the outer edge of the fields.

“They're fighting with four forwards? I've never seen anything like this.”

“That's pretty bold. If anyone from Defiance gets through, they'll only need to defeat one at the tower to win the game.”

“I'm not so sure anyone from Defiance is going to get through. Look at this.”

Nathan and Derek moved through the fields, unaware, running straight for the trap. Just as they exited the stalks, the enemy lashed out, slicing through their calf muscles as they ran past. They both cried out and fell to the ground. InvictUS jumped on them, holding them down as they sliced them to bits. Looks like neither of them had died first. It was both their faults.

InvictUS took off through the fields.

“Wow.” The announcer's voice overlaid the footage. “These guys are fast.”

The screen flashed to Hannah, playing the middle man halfway between the two towers. InvictUS crouched low, moving through the fields like snakes weaving through the stalks. They flanked her and attacked from behind. Two stood back and watched, grins on their faces, while the remaining two baited her, swiping their blades through the air. Hannah held them back with jabs of her massive two-handed battle-axe.

One of the watchers circled the fight, and once at her back, he sliced across it, ripping her skin open. Hannah screamed, and the memory of it resounded in my mind. She fell to her knees, and another sword skewered her neck. Her scream cut off into a gurgle, then into nothing, as she collapsed to the ground.

“Three down already. This is unbelievable. Defiance doesn't have much hope now.”

“I wouldn't say that just yet, Howie.”

The footage cut to Lily, perched high in the sycamore tree. She watched the fields below, waiting for the enemy to appear.

One of the men emerged, followed quickly by another. They ran past her, under the branches. When no more emerged, Lily descended the tree. Looping between branches, she hit the ground with a soft thud.

Once she landed, two more men sprang out from the fields. They'd been waiting for her, knew her exact position and techniques.

“Oh, no. I hope they know what they're doing here.”

They bolted for her. Lily turned, darted up the tree three steps and pushed off. As she rotated in air, she brought down her axe, slicing their leader from eyebrow to jawline. A tear of blood dribbled down his neck.

“She's a little tiger, isn't she?”

“I'm not sure about that, but I'd love to know what makes her purr.”

She landed smoothly on the ground just as the original two runners circled around.

Surrounded. They closed in. With an axe gripped tight in each hand,
Lily's arms moved like a cyclone through the air, keeping the enemies' weapons at bay.

It didn't last.

A sword impaled Lily's shoulder. She grunted, refusing to scream. Another blade ripped through her right hamstring. She fell to her knees. In unison, the foursome pulled back and plunged their swords into her abdomen. Lily seized as her body went rigid. Then, she crumpled. The men pulled back, still in unison. Perfect. These guys had practiced their fighting techniques as much as the rest of us did our smiles.

“These guys really know their opponent.”

“InvictUS is just destroying Defiance. They never saw this coming.”

The screen cut to me, crouching on the stone floor as the foursome appeared at the tower's entrance. My eyes went wide.

“Now, this is gonna be a hell of a show.”

Their leader stepped forward and signaled for the others to wait behind.

“Nice. Very bold.”

“Ling's one of the top-rated fighters in the tournament. They really should have used all of them to take her out. But—”

“They're giving us a treat.”

“That's right.”

Metal clanged together as our swords met, again and again. The footage transformed into slice-and-diced images of the fight. Flash. He knocked the weapon from my hand and me to the floor. Flash. In a sweeping arc, he brought the dagger down to my throat. Flash. I caught his arm with both hands and strained against him until my arms shook. Teeth gritting together, I grimaced. Sweat beaded along my forehead.

“Look at the way her hands are trembling. Ling's fighting like it really is for her life.”

I grunted and squirmed against him as the blade dug into my skin. My eyes went wide as the fear seeped in. Blood oozed from my neck. I clawed the wound and gasped for air. Christ, it looked real. No wonder people were more addicted to this than porn.

“Hey. You okay?”

Nathan nudged me, his pale blue eyes narrowed in concern. He motioned at my neck, where my hand clenched the spot I'd been virtually cut. I dropped my hand, and a heavy breath passed through my lips. Just how long had I been holding it in?

On the screen, the footage cut back to the announcers.

“This was by far the biggest upset of the night, possibly of the entire preseason.”

“Defiance is really going to have to work if they have any hope of getting back into this game.”

“Okay, next up . . .”

The footage cut to another fight of the evening. Keep feeding the masses.

I smiled at Nathan, hoping the expression reached my eyes. “I'm fine.”

“You, uh”—he brushed a hand over my hip—“wanna get out of here?”

His finger looped through my belt, and he tugged me against him. Heat flashed inside, where our bodies met. Over his shoulder, I scanned the club. Lily stood in the far corner, playing a VR-arcade machine. At the end of the bar, Derek chatted up two sets of fake double D's. Which would he take home? Probably both. Hannah danced in the middle of the floor with some guy grinding against her, as if he actually had a chance. Did they all think she kissed Lily for fun? The flirt. It was her image.

I turned back to Nathan.

“Yeah. Let's go.”

B
ack at the facility, my back hit the metal wall. Rough hands grappled my thighs as Nathan's breath panted in my ear. The edge of his jaw, sharp with stubble, rubbed like razor burn against my cheek. Same as any night. I raked my hands up his back. Every muscle from shoulder to hip was taut, clenched with tension. Saturday was supposed to be the best night of the week, even for those who lived in reality. But tonight couldn't get any worse. In either world.

I curled my fingers through his hair and my legs around his waist, forming my body to his. His breath caught. The rocking hitched, a momentary pause, before he slammed into me. He needed to work off the loss. The frustration.

So did I.

I drove my fingers through his hair, and his tongue assaulted mine. I tasted everything he'd done that night, a bittersweet mix of soda, vodka, and traces of HP.

HP. Nathan wasn't the only one wishing he was still in the virtual.

I closed my eyes and envisioned the tower, surrounded by stone and grass. The metal against my back turned to earth. Warmth spread through my body as the sunlight caressed my skin. The sweetest scent, like a thousand wildflowers, wafted against my nose, carried by the thick
mountain air. It filled my lungs and breezed across my face. Reality was the game. Plastic. Metal. People. All fake. The game was real—tangible, sweet, and warm—and the only place I was alive and free.

Nathan released inside me, and the tension in his muscles melted. I moaned softly and murmured in his ear as pulsating shocks coursed through me, and my vision danced with black spots. The cold nothingness of the facility's walls and sterile air pressed against my skin, pulling me back to the present. Nathan held me, panting, shaking, then carried me to the bed, where we collapsed across it.

I sank into the foam mattress as it morphed around my body. Staring up at the ceiling, I surveyed the green-gray metal, same as the walls, floors, and everything else in the room. Only the bed and its sheets provided any color or softness. Every drawer and shelf was built into the walls, so they were perfectly smooth, broken only by the occasional seam or handle where a compartment opened. Save for the bed, only our scattered clothes took up any floor space.

Nathan's ragged breaths beside me slowed as he recovered, and grew even slower, descending into soft snores. I pressed my side into his, and the heat from his skin radiated against mine. I smiled and shut my eyes. Done. This sorry excuse of a night was finally over.

The taste of sake lingered at the back of my mouth, while sweet tremors still rippled through my nerves. If sake and sex could make a buzz together, then I was nestled comfortably on the clouds of oblivion. But no amount of sex or alcohol could ever compare to hours of REM.

Sleep. The sweetest escape outside the virtual world. A middle finger at reality.

Tomorrow would be back to training. During the preseason, the RAGE matchups had taken place every Saturday night. On the days between, we trained and promoted our sponsors, the latter taking up more time than the former. But now, we'd be grinding our asses into the mats, and hopefully, the tournament's matchups would go better than tonight's.

No, it had to go better than tonight's. One loss in tournament play, and we'd be eliminated.

I shifted to my side, listening to Nathan's deep breaths. Air filled his
lungs, expanding his chest, and left on an exhale. The calming rhythm brought forth my own drowsiness, and I drifted toward sleep.

A soft ping dragged me back from the edge of slumber. Grumbling, I ground my fist into the mattress. Peeking out from beneath the scattered clothes on the floor, my tablet blinked.
New message.
It pinged again.

With a heavy sigh, I pulled myself out of bed, dug my tablet out from the pile of clothes, and tapped the screen. The message opened.

Kali,

Meet in my office at 01:15.

Clarence

My gut twisted. What did he want? If it was about our loss tonight, wouldn't he message the entire team? I glanced at the current time above the message—01:07. Shit. I scrambled for my clothes. A zip of my pants and a clasp of my bra, and I was halfway dressed. Then I located my shirt and one shoe. Great. I knelt next to the bed and lifted the overhanging blanket to peer beneath. The bed shifted as Nathan leaned over the edge toward me.

“What are you doing?”

I groped around the shadows beneath the bed until I landed on the soft, velveteen lining of my missing high heel.

“I gotta go,” I said, pulling my shoes on.

“Why?”

“Clarence wants to meet with me.”

I looked up and met Nathan's cold expression.

“Why's he asking for you and not all of us?”

I slid my arms through the sleeves of my shirt. “I don't know.”

“What does he want?”

“I don't know.” I glanced down as I fumbled with the last few buttons. There. Decent.

“Why—”

“I don't know,” I snapped. “He wants to meet. That's all it says. Read
it yourself.” I motioned at my tablet on the bed, where the message still blinked across the screen. Nathan glanced between it and me a few times, then waved me off.

As I headed for the door, the bed shifted as Nathan stood. Was he following me? Then I heard a drawer pulled open and the sound plastic makes when it crunches between fingers. When I looked back, Nathan was cutting lines of white powder on a shelf he'd pulled out from the wall.

“Are you stupid?” I spat. “How much did you already do at the club?”

He sent me an incredulous look. “How else am I supposed to get to sleep?”

If he needed it to get to sleep, that meant only one thing: heroin.

HP was a stimulant and could keep you up all night if you did enough hits. Most gamers did enough to enjoy themselves at the club but not so much that they couldn't relax after. Nathan lacked such control.

“We have testing tomorrow,” I reminded him.

He shrugged. “Bought and paid for.”

Bought and paid for. That was one of the first things we learned about the life of a pro gamer, when Clarence had assembled the five of us in his office for the first time.

“You'll be expected to be in the public eye at all times,” he'd said, after basic introductions and some other drivel I'd tuned out. “There are clubs in L.A. that cater exclusively to the gamer scene. Be there every night. If you drink or do anything else there, the cost will be covered. Just make sure you're seen by the cameras, and you're sober enough for training in the morning.”

“What?” Hannah had asked. “Don't we have to be clean for testing?”

Clarence chuckled to himself, one of the only times I'd heard him laugh. Even then, a smile hadn't touched his face.

“They're cute when they're new,” he'd said, speaking to no one in particular. He shook his head and looked back at us. “Like I said,
anything
you do at the clubs will be covered.”

It didn't take an expert in reading between the lines to know what he meant. The technicians had been bought off, and no matter what we did, our drug tests would always read clean.

I glanced between Nathan and the shelf a few times but couldn't think of anything else to discourage him.

“Whatever. Just, for God's sake, take it easy.”

I exited the room and turned back to the door to enter the lock code on the keypad. The door slid shut as Nathan sniffed the first line up his nose.

—

“I hope I didn't interrupt anything.”

Clarence stood with his back to me, in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows of his office. The team's facility lay sprawled beneath, mimicking the outline of a steel-and-glass sand castle. Or a prison. Half-sunken tunnels ran between several central hubs. An outdoor workout yard and running track took up the north end. Cinder-block walls surrounded it all. No barbwire, though, or manned guards. At least, that I knew of. Beyond it lay the city of Los Angeles. If I squinted, I could make out the U.S. Bank Tower and the Aon Center among the collage of glowing skyscrapers. Darkness bled through the rest of the city, between the thousands of twinkling lights, as if a galaxy had nestled itself into the ground.

Clarence gazed out the window, overlooking the facility as a god does its own creation. He owned the entire compound. The training rooms. The virtual pod center. The bunks. Even us.

I sat in the chair across from his empty desk, tapping my foot against the floor. The carpet was so wiry and dense, it scratched at my shoe with every tap. The office was one of the few rooms with drywall instead of steel, and it was painted to match the sullen green shade of the carpet. Only the white border of the baseboard separated them. High in the ceiling overhead, dim lighting shone down but failed to reach the floor, as if trying to hide the imperfections of the room. There weren't any. Clean lines. Perfect spacing. All as rigid and unyielding as Clarence himself. Why is it when people decorate they splatter more of themselves over the walls than paint?

“No,” I said, shifting in the chair. I stopped tapping my foot and watched his back. “You didn't interrupt.”

“There was a problem tonight.”

Though the dim lighting in the room left our proprietor masked in shadows, it failed to hide the subtle heaviness in his tone. Did he expect us to win every match?

I shrugged. “Yeah. We lost one. They were prepared. We weren't.”

“And why do you think that was?”

“Maybe because we spent the last three weeks promoting our sponsors more than practicing.”

Clarence cleared his throat, the same way my teachers used to whenever I'd shoot my mouth off. How some of them didn't end up with throat cancer is beyond me.

“Promoting the sponsors is essential to electronic sports,” he said. “They're the ones who pay for the tournaments and prizes. Without them, the gaming league would fall apart.” He paused, still gazing out the window. “I know my team. The problem is with your leader. You don't have one.”

I suppressed my scoff. “Actually, we have two. Unless you missed the after-arena fight.”

He nodded. “I was in the observation lounge. It was hard to ignore.”

Located above the pod center, Clarence always watched us through the tinted glass—before, during, and after the fights. Though I never saw his image on the other side, I had always felt him there, like the monster that hides under kids' beds.

“Could you smell the testosterone up there, too?” I asked.

He clucked his tongue at my comment. Guess that was his version of laughter.

Around the office, posters hung at regular intervals, three feet above the floor and one foot between. The flexible LED screens shimmered with life-size images of the team. First of Nathan and Derek, both shirtless, their chiseled abs glistening with sweat.

WE DRINK PROTEIN ENERGY BOOSTERS®.

One of Hannah. Perfect, tanned skin. Model height. Posed with her hands on her hips while a wind machine whipped her waist-length,
strawberry blonde locks around her hourglass figure. She wore training gloves and a sports bra that jacked her breasts up to her chin.

I WEAR GIBSON® TRAINING GEAR.

Clarence left his post at the window and strolled toward his desk, finally revealing himself from the shadows. He wore a suit so crisp and stark green, he blended into the walls behind him, only to reappear when he crossed in front of a poster. His blond hair was just long enough to pull into a low ponytail. With tight skin and hard features, he was one of those people born looking plastic, even without the surgery. A Ken doll, and not in a good way—if there was one.

“Two leaders?” He nodded. “Yes, but neither will back down from the other. So, how do I choose?”

He sat at his desk, steepled his hands against his lips, and stared at me. Silence fell over the room, leaving the hum of air-conditioning as the only resonance. On the wall behind him, our logo shimmered on another screen, though this one was much wider than the individual posters of my teammates.

I took a breath through my lips, as if it would break the tension. The taste of antibacterial soap invaded my mouth and nearly bleached my tongue. I coughed, clearing my throat. “Are you asking my opinion? I'm not exactly an impartial judge.”

“Why? Because you're fucking Nathan?” he quipped, raising an eyebrow in my direction. A shudder quivered up my spine. How did he find that out? God, was he watching the bunks like he watched over the facility?

“Like I said,” he continued, “I know my team.”

He narrowed his eyes and stared so intensely, I had to look away. My gaze landed on a poster of Lily dressed in her battle gear, pigtails curling over her shoulders. Lily. The tiny one. The blond one. Delicate and sweet until she cut you into a dozen pieces before you could blink. People really do love irony.

“Normally, the owner chooses the leader of the group,” I said, managing to meet his eyes again.

“I was waiting to see if one naturally rose out of the ranks before the start of the tournament.”

“Look, if you're asking me to choose—”

“I'm not asking you to choose,” he said. “I know who I want.”

“Who?”

“You.”

Laughter gripped me, and I doubled over in the chair. Since when was Clarence funny? When I recovered, I met the tight lines of his mouth. My smile faltered.

“You're serious?”

He nodded, one swift jerk of his head. I should have known he was. Clarence never cracked a joke. He was a businessman to the core.

A businessman . . .

Wait. This was a ploy. A way to force a truce between Nathan and Derek. Of course, he couldn't choose either of them to be the team's leader. They'd rip each other's throats out. I was just the pawn he'd decided to stick between the warring knights.

“I'm not getting in the middle of this,” I said. “Someone else can do it.”

“I'm not picking someone else.”