The games were simple. A series of ten had been devised, each slightly different than the ten last year. Participants would be unable to adopt an upper-year’s strategies for the current year. That was the marketing, at least. How many variations of the same game could they have?

Her roommates were deep in discussion when Lyssa returned home. She had put away her shopping before anyone noticed.

“Lyssa, have you seen the line-up for this year?” Carrie asked her.

Lyssa retrieved the pamphlet from her pocket.

“I haven’t looked at it yet,” she said.

“No, no the details are on the student portal.” Carrie pulled her towards the laptop they had all been sharing. “This may be the biggest year yet. I mean, every year is the biggest yet, but this one is on another level.”

“Might be related to the grant M.A.G.E recently received,” Amelia said.

“Jeez are their coffers bottomless or what?” Penny remarked. “Building-sized robots for the entrance practicum, now this.”

The first game was an obstacle course. A hundred kilometer stretch from point A to B, taking the students through forests, low mountains, and even skimming the edge of New Langshir.

“Students will be equipped with sensors embedded on their FASE suits that will add a counter every time they are hit. If three are accumulated, you’re out.”

“Hit?” Lyssa read a little closer. The military was a part of the game. While the students had their obstacle course, the soldiers would have a training exercise, equipped with high-velocity paintball guns.

“Those killed a guy last year,” Penny said. “An ungifted civilian, I mean. Got shot in the throat.”

“The Army will be involved, the Marines… the Air Force?” Carrie scrolled down. “Nope. That’s it.”

“But we have a map, and a route to plan,” Amelia said. “There are no teams, no other objectives. We just have to make it.”

“Which means they’ve prepared a hell of a defense,” Penny said. “What’s the rule for what kind of gifted are allowed in the Army?”

“Cat-2 or below,” Carrie said. “Higher and you have to join their Spec Team. Guess you’d be wasted serving rank-and-file if you’re cat-3.”

“We would be allocated unique gear the M.A.G.E mainframe has designed based on data from Tobias’s Gift Application tests,” Amelia said. “Whatever that entails.”

“So it’s a bunch of kids fresh out of high school with gifts against trained soldiers who may or may not be gifted themselves,” Carrie said. “And we get one mystery tool each.”

Lyssa looked through the rest of the pamphlet. The other nine games were vaguely described. It looked like they would slowly unveil them as time went on. Forums loved the suspense. Thousands of anonymous folk piled own their own headcanons and strategies. Comment sections filled with extrapolations from previous tournaments, then speculation, followed quickly by vitriol.

The second game was a closed environment test administered by the teachers. And there weren’t all that many teachers compared to the number of participants. M.A.G.E must have expected the first game to filter a lot of people.

Only now did Lyssa fully grasp what time she had left. The games began this Saturday.

“I’m going to go train,” she said.

There wasn’t much point in training so close to the event. The students that cared had been training ever since their gifts manifested. People like Amelia or Penny lived the hero childhood, and likely trained for all of it too. What did Lyssa do with her childhood?

The memories were not enjoyable. She channeled the burst of anger into her running; she was the sole patron of the school’s track that afternoon. After two laps she was already ragged, but it did nothing to slow the racing in her mind. She thought of the games again as she filled her lungs with sharp air.

One hundred kilometers.

She glanced at her arms and legs. Two pairs of thin appendages attached to a modest torso. The appropriate physicality of a girl who regularly skipped meals and only ever walked to places. This frame would have to move a hundred kilometers. And that was just for the first game.

“Why does that matter?” Sethlana’s voice spat through the open door of her room in the mansion. “Remember the way we were treated. Get angry. That’s all we need.”

“We can’t rely on brute force. It’ll only tire us out and wear us down.” Mercurial’s smoky visage leaked from the paintings in the mansion’s halls.

Izanami stayed silent, doing nothing more than radiate regret that they had joined this tournament. The emotions and opposing opinions hung on Lyssa’s every thought, for she was all of them, and they were all her.

She forced herself to run again, ignoring the dullness in her calves, the pleading in her thighs, the burning in her lungs. Her ears rang. Sweat stung her eyes. Her whole body was ready to give up. But she did not mind. In that moment she did not care about the voices within. As Lyssa laid on the grass beside the track, panting, squinting from the afternoon sun, she felt nothing but the pain in her body. An ache she had a choice to inflict, and one that would leave her stronger after it had faded. She basked in the sheer tranquility of the running high and smiled, content in that moment from this most mundane of experiences. She was too distracted to notice the world around her twist and bend at the seams—the barest amount—like the edge of a magnifying glass, her fingertips alight with pink energy.

--

“Can I see your permit?” The foreman of the moving company asked with restrained impatience. The young man before him handed him a piece of paper that had seen much folding and unfolding. He skimmed it briefly.

“Pablo Ramos,” he muttered. “Alright then. How are you doing so far?”

“Just fine sir.”

“Your English is quite good.”

“I went to a good school.”

“Can I count on you to translate if need be?”

Pablo glanced at his compatriots waiting by the warehouses. An assortment of folk from all walks of life, here with but a few intentions. Opportunity. Family needs. Fine reasons. Reasons Pablo understood all too well.

“Sure thing, sir,” he said.

“Alright.” The foreman began to address the rest of the workers. “We’ve got a lot of equipment to move by Friday night. All these crates need to be in those trucks by the end of the day so we can ship it to M.A.G.E in time for their tournament. People who perform well will be paid a bonus. In cash.”

That seemed to get them motivated. Though without the bonus they were being paid 18 an hour. A livable wage in the 2020s sure. But a lot has happened since then, and taxes had never been higher. High enough to indirectly fund M.A.G.E’s gladiator games, or pay for America’s increasingly horrifying defense projects.

Pablo remembered having a different name. A whole world of his own. A warm house. A blue flash. Then nothing.

“Hey!”

He left his waking nightmare to see a shelf begin to fall. He did not think, he simply moved. There were a few workers in the way, yelling out in alarm. They would not be fast enough to leave the shelf’s shadow. With a loud rattle, the boxes slipped off the shelves, scattering on the floor, but the shelf landed on no one. Pablo had stopped it. Grunting mildly, he pushed the whole frame back into place.

“Are you alright?” He asked in Spanish to the workers behind him.

They could only nod.

The foreman rushed over.

“Is everyone good?” He asked. He searched for the one responsible for the accident, catching a man on the other side of the shelf who had just woken into the realization as to what he had done. “Get the fuck off the forklift! Wait in my office! I’ll deal with you at the end of the day.”

Pablo watched the dejected worker leave, his face hung in shame and exhaustion.

One of the men he had saved approached him.

“You’re gifted,” he said, his mouth open in awe. “And you look younger than my son. Why are you working a job like this? You should be in school, maybe even that hero school.”

“I’m not here for that.”

“For what, then?”

“Family.”