—Chapter 29—

—Seek and Destroy—

Kellan stared at the bodies of the two kids, his mind numb and his body icy. There had been several times in his military career that he had to deal with corpses, but ever since his last mission, he really couldn’t stand the sight of them.

Especially when they had been people he had known.

“Brenner did this?” Kellan whispered as he turned away from the gruesome sight. Blood had soaked into the rugs and dried into a dark color. “Why? How did he even know them?”

Husker snorted and then growled, “These are the children the Arbiter showed on the viewscreen…”

Everyone had seen it—Kellan helping the children. Had Brenner singled them out specifically to agitate him?

“Can other teams attack us between rounds?” Kellan asked as he carefully turned his gaze to the gory message written on the wall.

“Once the games have started, the only official way to kill people is in the games itself. Or, I suppose, with the Arbiter’s blessing.”

“And the Arbiter doesn’t outlaw the killing of his own… offspring?” Kellan had no better term for them. The residents of the Nexus were his family, weren’t they? How could the Arbiter allow them to be killed?

“The Arbiter has no rules against killing the inbred mages,” Sen stated. “Only against harming his machines.”

Xiang stepped into the hallway, her attention lingering on the dead children for only a moment. Then she headed for the stairs, no indication she could even smell the horror show around her.

“Why do this?” Kellan demanded.

Sen hurried after his sister. “To get under our skin, no doubt. Brenner has a way of agitating everyone.”

He’s taunting us, Kellan realized with a dark chuckle. That arrogant SOB. He’s planning on torching everything until we come to him.

“Shouldn’t we bury them?” Kellan wasn’t sure of the etiquette in the Nexus. Leaving them in the hallway seemed disrespectful.

Husker shook his head. “The Pestbyters handle all dead bodies. Leave them.” He turned to face Kellan. “And don’t worry. The Eyes of the Arbiter miss nothing. He saw what happened here.”

Mavis placed a hand on Kellan’s shoulder. He flinched and wheeled on her. With half a smile, she gently asked, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he said, his voice raspier than he wanted. Kellan ran a hand down his face, clearing away the sweat. “Let’s go. Let’s just… go.”

He hated the idea that he could’ve been tangentially related to the death of the Hua and Twi. They had been so helpful, and forthcoming with information. And so young. Did Brenner really have no compassion or empathy? Kellan wanted to speak to Xiang about the matter, but she seemed aggressively uninterested in discussing the topic.

Husker followed closely behind as Kellan and Mavis made their way to the stairs. Mavis kept her eyes on her legs most of the time, feeling her upper thigh and marveling at how well she walked.

Kellan just focused on holding his breath until he was down half the flight of stairs. Anything to distract him from the fact he was leaving a trail of bloody footprints behind.

Xiang had already headed off for the Arbiter, leaving the whole group behind. It was her modus operandi at this point—leave the team and isolate herself. Kellan didn’t understand why.

“The keys,” he said, trying to steady his voice. He glanced over his shoulder at Husker. “There are forty in the PvP version of Seek and Destroy. Since we only need five, couldn’t we just play that game until we had them all? And win the Nexus Games instantly in that case?”

The werewolf man snorted. “You don’t understand. We need five different keys. The forty found in Seek and Destroy will be the same key. All Seek and Destroy games will be that way, even if they’re offered in future rounds.”

“So, we just can’t collect a million keys in one round?”

Sen hopped down the last of the stairs. Then he came to a halt. “We can gather extra keys if we want to prevent other teams from getting them. That’s happened several times in past games.”

“What a delta-bravo move,” Kellan muttered.

“Delta-bravo move?” Mavis lifted an eyebrow.

“D-B. For douchebag.” He shrugged. “Just a nicer way of saying it.”

With an amused smirk, Mavis patted his shoulder. “You don’t need to worry about your language.”

“It’s just a habit.” He shrugged off her touch, hating the idea of human contact. “Listen—I just want to beat this game as quickly as possible. I’m not accustomed to madmen threatening me four to five times in a single day. It’s only a matter of time before one of them sticks.”

He reached the bottom of the stairs and stood next to Sen. When the others reached them, they just milled around, standing in the lavish hall of the AVU Palace. Soft music played in the halls, and the place smelled like a casino in Vegas.

Kellan didn’t like it.

He was about to voice his concerns when the 101 numbers on his left hand shook around on his skin. He lifted his arm and stared at the black mark. It practically vibrated, and then went still.

“It’s time,” Husker said, eyeing his own mark. “Xiang must’ve chosen.”

Kellan touched the mark on his hand. It was a tattoo. Never moving. No texture. How had it moved?

“She spoke with the Arbiter already?” Mavis asked, her brow furrowed. “But she’s barely been gone and—”

Kellan lost his breath.

A strange feeling jolted through his body.

Like the Lightning Lift.

He closed his eyes, and the mark on his left hand burned for only a moment.

Then Kellan was teleported, along with the others.

***

Kellan stumbled forward, his breath returning to him like a wave hitting a beach. He gulped down air and steadied himself. Then he opened his eyes, surprised to see he was standing in an urban jungle of skyscrapers and mismatched technology.

Large pipelines were jutting out of the streets—huge metal tubes, as if the sewer had gone haywire and decided it wanted to be above ground.

Trains—all kinds of trains—were scattered about the roads. Coal-powered trains. Bullet trains. Trains Kellan had never seen in his life. Steam powered? The engines were tipped over and the box cars were wide open.

The shadows of the skyscrapers stretched over the roads, creating a dark shadow of civilization. But the sky… It wasn’t blue. It was red. A web had been “thrown” over the city, creating a dome with a checker-like pattern of webbing. The dome had to be more than a mile above them, arching down to the ground, creating a playing arena.

The Net.

Kellan stared at the red sky, his eyes wide with disbelief. Bitso had explained everything. Any living thing that touched the Net would die. And it would start closing.

“Kellan?”

He glanced around, surprised to see the rest of his team on the same devastated street.

No one else was around, just Sen, in his long robes, Husker in a coat and pants, Mavis in her new jeans and jacket, and Xiang…

She wore something different. A white pantsuit with all the authority and legal flare of a high-powered attorney. Her black button-up shirt matched her shiny heels. Her long hair had been tied in a bun, secured in place with decorative butterfly pins.

The 101 on her left hand was prominently displayed.

“Sister,” Sen said as he approached her. “The Arbiter was fair with you?”

“He was.” Xiang glanced to her side. A shop with a broken window display had several TVs facing the street. They flickered to life, seemingly for no reason, only to display Bitso’s messed up news program. “The Arbiter has given me his blessing.”

“It’s 9am,” Bitso said with a laugh, his voice haunting and echoed with so many TVs playing the same thing. “And the first games have begun. Of the one hundred and one teams participating this year, fifty-one of them have decided to play it safe and go with PvE Seek and Destroy.”

Bitso motioned to the screens behind him. Several videos were cutting in and out of all the teams in the same bizarre city-train-sewer playground as Kellan.

“Forty-three of them decided to take the risky path and play the PvP version.” Bitso smiled wide. “I like these ones. They’re already my favorite.” Then he snapped his fingers. “And seven teams decided to go the fast route. They get to open doors. Who will get lucky? Who won’t? It’ll be fun to see!”

The sounds of gunshots rang throughout the broken city.

Kellan glanced around. He didn’t see anyone. He could see several blocks in each cardinal direction, but the trains and sewer tunnels were everywhere. He saw no signs of people, just the war-torn cityscape.

“The first game has officially begun,” Bitso said over the many TVs. “Will people find the bunnies? Will we see helpful doors? Let’s find out!”

Kellan watched the screens long enough to see a video screen displayed a nightmarishly dark room with four freakish doors made of metal and coated in rust. A person, some man, stood in front of the door, dressed in apocalyptic armor scraped together from the dumpster of a military supply store.

He went to the first door, his hand shaky, and then pulled away at the last moment.

Then he went to the second door and pulled it open in dramatic fashion.

Nothing happened.

There was nothing behind the door. Just an empty room of darkness and sadness.

“Oh, unlucky,” Bitso said, shaking his head. “Of the four doors, there are two with nothing behind them. One has the sweet release of death, and the last a key. I guess Team 65 gets nothing this round. Now they just have to wait.”

Kellan tore his gaze away from the TVs. He didn’t want to watch the other teams pick doors. One of them would find the death door, and Kellan had no interest in seeing it.

“They’ve released the Kuji into the city,” Husker muttered, his nose twitching. “We should get going. I don’t want to have to use my ability if we can avoid it.”

Xiang held up her hand. Everyone went silent, but the gunshots and sounds of distant war still rang out through the empty streets.

“Husker, you take one of our warriors and search the east side of the city. The bunnies… They’ll be small. Perhaps dead, I’m not certain. In the last Nexus Games, the Arbiter had them find ducks, and all the ducks had been different. One was alive, one was a wooden carving, another was a sign…”

Husker nodded along with her words. “I’m glad we have someone who knows the ins and outs of the competition.”

“I intend to win,” she firmly stated. “What you need to do is pay attention, and travel quickly. I picked the PvE route so we wouldn’t have to worry about attacks just yet. Once we’ve gotten a bonus round, things will be different for us… But for now, just search. We must have a key by the end of the first round. Must.”

Must?

Kellan didn’t understand. Didn’t they have multiple rounds to try for keys? Her urgency seemed panicked. Or desperate.

Husker motioned for Mavis. “Will you help me?”

Her eyes went wide, and for a brief moment, she hesitated. Then Mavis stepped forward and nodded once. “Yeah. I’ll help.”

“Good. You have the reliability of a mercenary soldier. I worked with several when I lived in Aracor.”

“O-Oh. Thank you?” Mavis gave Kellan—and then Sen—an odd glance. She said nothing else, though. She took her place next to Husker.

“Sen, you will search the city and look for something to puppet.” Xiang glowered down at him, her voice filled with the sting of irritation. “You and some sort of golem can search the south.”

Sen said nothing. His small shoulders slumped, and he stared at the street. When Kellan stared for a moment, Sen shot him a glare, as if this was his fault.

“Kellan, you’ll search with me,” Xiang said. “We’ll head north. Throughout the day, we should all move west until we meet at a place closest to the Net. Don’t worry about staying in contact throughout the game. The moment we find the key, we’ll all be teleported out of the Net and back into the AVU Palace.”

Husker snorted. “What if we run into yami? Even if this isn’t the PvP arena, the monsters will be hostile. And some of them are large.”

“Avoid them,” Xiang stated. “They’ll be weaker this round. The Arbiter is merciful that way.”

“Shouldn’t we stay together?” Kellan asked.

Xiang shook her head. “There are only five keys here. We can’t afford to dawdle.”

“What if the other teams find them first?”

For the first time since the game began, Xiang smiled. She turned to Kellan with a hint of amused confidence. “The other teams will find nothing—at least, not while I’m here.”

She waved her hand.

And then hundreds of bunnies appeared. Hundreds. Some of them alive. Some of them toys. Some of them signs. And when Xiang waved her hand a second time, they scattered around, littering the entire city. The “live” bunnies hopped away, jumping into the sewers and boxcars, and the toys and signs were placed around like the whole city was a book of Where’s Waldo?...

All illusions.

Xiang had filled the city with a million red herrings, likely to drive the other teams insane.

“You will know when you see an illusion,” she said to Husker. “Trust me. I’ve made them so that you’ll recognize the difference. The other teams will not be so lucky. While they’re distracted, find the real ones.”

“How will I know the difference?” Kellan asked.

Xiang gesture for him to follow. She walked down the broken street, her heels clicking. “I know the difference. Come. The sooner we find it, the sooner we can return to safety.”