No sooner had the two traipsed their soggy footprints into the apartment than Wil was on his phone again.

“You go ahead; Wash and dry off,” he said, waving a hand without looking at Yeung-Sung, “You’re the guest.”

Yeung-Sung gratefully grabbed a towel and headed towards the bathroom. Then stopped.

“Wil?”

“Uh-huh, yuh? What’s up?”

Yeung-Sung gestured to where Wil was sitting; namely his bed. “Those sheets are going to be soaked, how will you sleep?”

Willing himself away form the phone, he took a reluctant step away from the bed. “There.”

Yeung-Sung threw the towel at him. He sighed. “You go on first,” he said, “It’ll look bad when everyone is depending on you to run victory after victory and you’re sneezing your way through it with a fever. That doesn’t inspire confidence.”

Wil ran past him without debate -without a second of thought about the ‘guest’ idea he brought up before- and Yeung-Sung had to snatch the phone off him too, lest he waterlog it right before this campaign.

Trying his best to contain his own damp drips, Yeung-Sung soon heard Ah-choo ring from the bathroom and groaned. Sitting with legs crossed over a primrose towel, Yeung-Sung compressed all of his clothes -except his underwear- into a moist ball, holding it to in the nook between his thighs. Its smell was starting to tear on him, but one whiff of the stale air of Wil’s apartment made him appreciate the camouflage that it offered. The room was exactly as he and Sykes left it -except for the door, fixed now. Seeing the mess in front of him made Yeung-Sung reconsider if there might have been another person that could be trusted to run the Gauntlet.

Unfortunately, though, he’s indispensable.

Even the Champions knew that. The two of us could never compete alone; We need every piece of equipment medals can buy, every bit of influence faction can afford. And most of all we needed the resource that Airgead was built upon -time.

For Stage 5 I was able to use the Player’s Market resources to secure a win. And even then, it was a gamble, even then we had setbacks and losses that wasted valuable resources; and therefore time. This time around we don’t have the luxury of waiting two days for a smith and blessings reader to level up their mastery to meet a requirement.

And that was only 40 barbs. Soon we’ll have to face the final count; 50, and MEDB is not getting any dumber, or any more lenient. Every trade will need to go through word of mouth to have a chance of being concealed.

That AI is far more worried, more certain of her death than most of the coloners. Hmmph, how human of her…

No. The same strategies we have been using with me won’t bring us through the final Gauntlets. So, we really are dependent on getting the help form every faction, every coloner. But how do we unite them?

How can I get them to treat Airgead with the utmost certainty -like MEDB?

Fingers of steam floated into the room accompanying Wil’s entrance. Yeung-Sung unfolded his legs, unsteady and numb from being locked in position for far longer than it should take a normal person to shower, and handed Wil his phone.

The redness of Wil’s cheeks drained.

“You’re naked,” he stated.

Still entrenched in thought, he didn’t have time to think through and hold back his feelings for Wil’s sake.

“I’m not naked, I’m ready to shower.”

He bumped Wil’s shoulder on the way into the bathroom.

Maybe it will help me think.

Scrubbing himself raw helped his nose awaken something, alright. The shower strummed emotion into him. It was his acid sunlight; burning in him the lessons needed in order to progress.

When he left the shower, he flinched as the cool air greeted him like a freshly divorced bouncer.

“Wil?” he called, to no response.

He hurtled around the wall only to find him ogling forward at his desk next to the open window.

Yeung-Sung groaned. “Why is the window open? Are you trying to make yourself sick, Wil,” he yelled, “Why are you so stupid?”

As Yeung-Sung fed on the rage inside of him, an idea dawned.

How can we demonstrate that Jordan’s threats are real except by showing them an example?

Stalking towards Wil, he slid the window firmly back into place and smiled, looking at his friend who sat in his hands, innocently shrugging.

And what’s more noticeable than a missing limb?

“What hand do you type with?” Yeung-Sung asked.

“Either. It depends, replied Wil, “I use a two-thumb approach. I can’t imagine doing it any other way. One hand?”

He popped his hands out from underneath and flexed them out, then shook his head.

“It’d be so slow.”

My choice, then. Yeung-Sung even opened his mouth to suggest the idea when Wil said,

“Actually, while I was in the shower, I had an idea -shower thought, you know- that I can use my capture to get sympathy from the factions.”

Standing in the bath towel, Yeung-Sung crossed his arms where over the line where his torso met the light-purple fabric. “I’m listening.”

Wil scratched along his neck with a nail. “Umm, so they’re not gonna believe that Jordan will kill us without good reason, yeah?”

Yeung-Sung nodded. Kept his face firm. This may be easier than I thought. He’s going to talk himself into it.

“So, tell them that I was captured by GLI instead,” Wil suggested, “That they held me hostage until you stopped joking around with the AI. What do you think?”

“Right, but how –”

Wil slapped the back of the chair over and over as more of his thoughts came to light.

“Oh! Oh! And we can say that the price of all this tech is life -no, listen- you remember what happens to our phones when we take them outside the colony border?

“We tell the colony that the same thing applies to people,” Wil finished, presenting the idea as an invisible trophy between his upturned hands. He looked at Yeung-Sung with the first sign of life since they had been reunited at the lake.

Wil saw that Yeung-Sung was not as eager as he was, and thought for another moment. He tapped his sock on the floorboards, almost falling out of the chair as it slid with the unbridled energy eking out if him.

“We can… we can-,” he continued, “Oh! We can explain it to them like, uh, our bodies are ‘addicted’ to the power surging around inside us.”

Leaning into the window, Wil opened it out again and took a great sniff.

“That’s why I have to be sick, you see?”

Smiling back to Yeung-Sung like a jack-in-the-box, he had already lost all colour in his face.

“Because the scientists kept me outside the boundary, experimenting on me,” he explained, “And these are the effects of short-term withdrawal.”

His confidence shrank and so he did, the chair seemingly growing bigger around him.

“Like cancer…but do you think it would work? To motivate them?”

“Yes.”

Yeung-Sung gripped the furry lining of the towel as Wil pumped his fists in the air, scared at where his mind had gone to.

I’m becoming just like Jordan. Of all the ideas that I could have come up with, I came up with that? Mutilation…what the hell is wrong with me?

Noticing Wil’s questioning stare, Yeung-Sung felt the pressure of time, of what to do next. Even if Wil came up with the idea, he looked to Yeung-Sung to figure out the details and execute it. He snapped out of it with a cough.

“Alright, leave it open, then,” he said, “Just not near me.”

Closing the window, Wil looked at him again with those awaiting eyes, holding on to the arced back of his chair and playfully swinging off it, unaware of the sick thoughts that had gone through his friend’s head.

Yeung-Sung noticed that for the first time, Wil was not on his phone. It hung off the lip of the desk behind Wil, dark.

“We should tell the regulars first,” he said.

Wil lit up his face and grabbed the phone to illuminate it in the same manner. “Good idea! They can help us spread the word.”

Following the flash of the Airgead’s initializing animation, Wil hesitated. The light died in him.

“Something wrong?” Yeung-Sung asked.

“I’ve lost track of time, out there,” Wil said. “Had a lot of opportunities to space out and think -you know, my idea didn’t exactly come out of nowhere, either.” He squeezed his chest through the fresh tee and coughed. “I feel different. Have done ever since I decided to – since I was taken, and now that I’m back…”

He stared past his phone screen.

You are different from the Wil I know.

Yeung-Sung tugged up his towel, just in case, and gave Wil a one armed-hug. “It’s okay, Wil, you’ll make it through this”, he whispered into the scruffy postulating-mullet at the back of Wil’s neck.

I’ll make sure of it,

With a sparkling grin, Wil entered the Wick chat.

Hello idiots

That’s how you introduce yourself? Yeung-Sung thought as he headed towards the wardrobe at a scorned pace.

“Remember, Wil, the point of this is to establish trust.”

He could hear him twisting childishly in his seat at his comment. “Well no-duh!” he exclaimed, “And how’re they gonna do that if I start acting different?”

Parsing through the line of hangers, Yeung-Sung snorted. Fair point.

“Whatever…any replies? What are they saying?”

The clacking of the shirt-baring hooks as they grated over the metal bar covered up the noise of Wil’s incompetence as Yeung-Sung decided on what to wear. Not that there was much choice; purple.

With most of the outfit on, Yeung-Sung began to hear the obnoxious giggling of Wil trying to hide his reaction to his own ‘humour’.

“Wil?” he called out.

The giggling was stifled further, yet somehow came out louder, like the hissing of a deranged duck. HaaaassssshhhhHaaaasshshs

Slamming the wardrobe’s meat-slab door shut, he ran back over to Wil and grabbed his wrist away from his phone.

“Wil! I know you want to ‘act natural’, but we have to be careful about what we say to them,” he said, “Think about the Champions.”

Not just for your own sake.

Wil opened his mouth, ready to complain in his childish way, but surprisingly held it in. He scratched behind his ear, waving his burnt almond locks. “Alright.”

“Fine,” Wil said, dragging his hand back through his scalp, “What should I say?”

Yeung-Sung pulled Wil’s phone closer to him so he could read the chat.

Where have YOU been?

You should have told is if you were going hermit mode

Wil! Are you okay, are you safe? Where are you?

Others chimed in with similar sentiments, but Wil hadn’t said anything back. They needed to act respond quickly to avoid suspicion.

Pa-king!

My phone? But I’m banned from the Wick chat.

“Tell them where you are and that you’re safe,” Yeung-Sung ordered Wil. And off his fingers went, while Yeung-Sung backed away to check his own message.

What happened? It was the Champions after all, wasn’t it?

Yeung-Sung went white and looked out into the morning haze. He took another step back while Wil was occupied, concealing the light of his phone up against his heart.

Can I tell Sykes the truth?

The bigger question is, if I do, could I trust him and Wil to hide the secret of our plan?

Yeung-Sung watched his friend fling out words without pause just like before.

If it was my choice, I wouldn’t entrust Wil with this; lying is not in his nature. But Sykes, there’s something odd about him that I never understood. Here is a person not connected to any faction, yet still retains constant earnings. Like he can predict the future.

And he hangs around the Wick, but unless the attention is on him or he is talking to Aisling, he relegates himself to the outlines. He acts like a complete robot.

Still, I should tell Wil. He’s pushing himself out of his comfort zone, albeit not by much. Then I should look past my insecurities and work together with him, honestly.

Wil stopped typing and kept his mouth open in a drawling ‘Uhhhh’.

“I did what you said,” Wil started.

I do not like the way you said that.

“But,” he continued, “I also got a lil’ carried away.”

Hiding his phone away behind his back, Yeung-Sung skipped past his conscience to read what was written.

I am alive and got my phone back. But boy have I seen some shit. Also, what date is it -the UN coming around soon?

There’s 6 days left. Wait, I got to contact everyone

You do that

@WilHelmet, what do you mean you have seen some shit. Where the hell were you?

It was those Duners, wasn’t it! They’re crazy, but I didn’t think they’d harm any coloners, just GLI!

Watching the chaos in the chat, Yeung-Sung couldn’t believe it.

He’s good at this!

He bowed slightly, and backed away from being in Wil’s face like an overseer.

“My respect, Wil,” Yeung-Sung said, “You know how to set people off. You...may be the perfect person for this job. They don’t suspect a thing!”

“That is…hilarious,” said Wil.

Oh? How mature of him. He really has changed.

“But also fuck you, bud,” he followed up, “I’ve always been a ‘socialista’!”

Yeung-Sung swivelled his eyebrows at the drastic change, until the groove in his shoulder woke up and clobbered him back to reality.

“I have no idea what that means,” he told Wil.

Sighing, Yeung-Sung felt the prickle of goose bumps on his freshly washed skin pound down on the stale cotton of his colony-standard hoodie. But perhaps that was just the bitter air of the outside coming in through the window.

Why am I always scared for my life or too self-conscious to be seen with Wil? I miss normal people -I miss Woo-Yi.

Wil glanced down at the chat again and rubbed his hands together. “Time for the big reveal.”

You’re not a magician.

“Could you wait?” he asked, strolling away from the window, “An in-person meeting would be more convincing, wouldn’t it, so they can see your ‘sickness’?”

“Why?”

Yeung-Sung spun away, attempting to hug some heat into himself. “I’d like to -I want you to get me back in the group. If you can?”

Wil thought, whittling a finger about his nose, as Yeung-Sung continued to plod away the biting chill, bare feet suction slapping the banana wood; floop -floop -floop. He decided never to offer Wil a choice ever again.

“Wouldn’t it be sorta suspicious?” Wil asked.

Pa-king!

“Wait, who’s messaging you? You just said you were banned from the Wick?”

Without reading the message, he slowly extended it to show Wil, hanging his head.

“Maybe know you’ll be wary.”

“Sykes?” Wil exclaimed. “Oh, sheet, he’s going to bust our nuts.”

“-do what?”

Wil warbled his cheeks and corrected his wording. “He’ll ruin our plans, Pak!”, he explained, grabbing a lock of his hair and tugging on it like rotten weeds.

“The Champ warned us, very clearly and with a gun, not to tell anyone it was them!”

The haze outside swirled around spots of red brick and twinkling wet roof-tiles, and with the occasional spark of something else; maybe he was seeing thing’s after being told about the colony’s hidden power.

“I have to deny it,” Yeung-Sung decided. He turned the phone back over. Ever since he saw how the power affected it, its black cover looked menacing to him. A symbol of undeath. Perhaps if he knew what GLI’s power source was he wouldn’t be so scared, but for the moment, it might as well have been made with necromantic microchips. Who knows how it affected his body, his fingers as he used it?

We were wrong @pSykes, It was Jordan all along

He nodded to Wil. “You tell the Wick the same, too. Let’s cover our trail, wipe away any inconsistencies with our stories.”

“Right,” agreed Wil. From across the room, he made an infuriating popping sound while he thought how to type it out.

“Quickly!”

I don’t believe you. I was there with you at the apartment, we both know the Champions did it!

I don’t know what you’re hiding, but blaming Jordan is too convenient. Even if everyone else readily accepts it.

But I trust you. I’ll keep it quiet, for now.

Yeung-Sung sunk down against the footboard of Wil’s bed. His shoulder blades cracked as the tough wood forced him into rigid posture. As he dropped, he wiped aside crumpled shirts and shorts and whatever crinkling items that were mixed with them.

“He’s not buying it,” he mumbled.

Like a stabilizer to a sapling tree, Yeung-Sung put his fingers to his head to help him think.

I need to find a way to convince Sykes or he’ll come forward with his side and -and they’ll kill Wil.

Pa-king!

Wil scraped his chair on the floorboards, sending buzzing all the way to the ends of Yeung-Sung’s toes.

Pa-king!

“Tell them it’s because of the AI!” Wil suggested.

“What?”

The semblance of an idea was obvious in Wil’s enthusiasm, but he had not threaded it together. He waved his hands frantically as if the answer was inside a dusty scratch card somewhere in the air. “Jordan, right…he was worried…. about you cheating with the AI, so…he held me -as a hostage- and when I lost, it was a sign…that…. uhh, that…”

“That our relationship had ended,” finished Yeung-Sung, “Wil, that’s brilliant! So that’s why he let you go.”

“Yeah. What I said.” Wil scratched again. “Also, you said the Champs are gonna kill me?”

Oh shit! Did I say that out loud?

Avoiding Wil’s eyes, Yeung-Sung furiously typed in the explanation to Sykes and waited. Wil caught his attention with another cough, and Yeung-Sung swung a frown at him. He cupped his hand to his mouth, smiling. The window had long been closed and Wil seemed dry and his hands -they were bright red.

Wil groaned, looking at the chunks tangled in the mucus. When he noticed Yeung-Sung watching, he hid the evidence behind his back and quickly said,

“If they do, I’m not concerned.” He chuckled.

Yeung-Sung continued to stare wordlessly.

“Look, you don’t have to be so protective of me,” said Wil, clearing his throat like someone being chased would shove down a ladder. “I don’t know what’s happening to me -I was outside for days, maybe weeks, I don’t know- but I’ll survive. Beating the Gauntlet is more important.”

Leaving the comforts of his chair, Wil knelt down beside Yeung-Sung awkwardly, like a transformer asked to do yoga.

“Trust me man,” he continued, “I can do this. We’re going to escape this place, and go home.”

Phone still in hand, Yeung-Sung watched the name’s flush down as Wil scrolled.

Yo. There’s more.

At GLI, they did something to me.

When Jordan made his threats, did you guys wonder how he’d kill us? Seems unlikely, right? It’s not how you think. The stuff that powers Airgead, the Wi-Fi and the autocars -their stupid fast construction teams? It only works inside of this colony. If you take a step out, it’s gone. And it doesn’t feel good, either. The shit is in our bodies, so all Jordan has to do is flip a switch and we go into withdrawal from it, the energy.

It’s like crack in the air. So what I’m saying is help me. Help me beat this stupid game, before we all die.

[…Anita, Shane and 5 others are typing]

And now we wait…

That might be the stupidest speech I’ve ever ever read. But I’m fucking scared.

I’ll help. I guess I’ve got to talk to my husband. But if we can prove this, then they’ll have to listen.

Me too. I should clear the air.

Yeung-Sung pushed himself up onto his haunches. “It’s working.”

“No shit.” Wil kept his shoulders tense and continued to stare at the screen with a heavy frown, strangely, even though all of the lines of text from the Wick regulars held good news.

Darnes vouched for the fact that he could get in good with the Finers again. Anita would try t salvage her reputation with the Players Market after another schism had occurred. Fenrick would spread the word through Airgead itself, flooding the market with a call to action on his labels. Sykes, one of the last ones to offer their help, but he had a condition.

Yeung-Sung is with you, right? Tell us, @WilHelmet, do you think we can trust him after he walked out on us?

No

Yeah…no.

Not a hope.

Nein

Nope

Not yet, anyway.

I don’t know…

Guys, he put the guarantee of saving the colony’s lives and being the big dick in all this, gave it all up to free me. I think the least we can do is allow him back into the chat, and allow him to defend himself.

[Woo-Yi entered the chat]

That was the last thing on Yeung-Sung’s mid, but, regardless, it didn’t change how he felt. He couldn’t shut out the screaming in his head that told him something was wrong.

The pain is gone, the comfort of their company is a warning!

He pounced past Wil towards and out of the window.

This is ridiculous.

Why am I even here? Wil can do everything without my help. Once I tell him about my way of receiving specific blessings -which is based off something he himself made me aware of- then what use am I? To act as a babysitter and talk him into shutting up?

It’s not right. Jordan, Simon, Luke, the Champions, they all only want to use me.

“Get away from there!” It was Wil, shouting at him on the other side of the window, through the translucent prickle of the morning light. Opening his eyes, Yeung-Sung found that he had nestled himself into the position of a foetal gargoyle in the little alcove at the balcony.

Yet he was better. He felt safer.

But Wil kept talking, kept blabbing on about his own sob story.

“I’m sorry,” he made out through the nauseating cry.

“No one believed you when you were attacked because things were all hunky dory. All of us optimistic of the future.”

Cracking open an eye, and in cam his awareness of the height, the danger. He felt the sway of the drop -his mind nudging him into it. Below, the pavement sparked with the auditorium of tiny energy fragments.

“And now that we can’t buy what we want, and there’s in fighting between everyone, suddenly,” he sobbed, “Suddenly I can make up a lie about Jordan, and all of them believe me.”

“There’s something I didn’t tell you -about how I ended up with the Champions.”

Yeung-Sung mouthed ‘what?’, but he was still hidden behind his picket fence of knees.

“Truth is, I was never kidnapped. I’d looked up to the Champions my entire time at the colony. They were so frickin’ cool; always ahead of the curve; I knew that they were my kind of gamer.

“When the medals started drying up and we hit a wall, I reckoned that it was my chance to show them what I could do. I saw what you had done on your first Gauntlet attempt, the poison trick, and I had to admit it was ingenious. I know you asked me to share that information, but I never did. I kept it to myself, coming up with my own strategies -I bought a few bottles off Sykes- and hey, presto, it worked.

“But I couldn’t just up and become a Champion. At the time, I didn’t know why and I didn’t even think to ask questions. I thought I had done it; I was to be the Champion’s secret strategist.

“I took your ideas as my own, Yeung-Sung. And got you involved in this mess. They ain’t gamers. They’re government.

“It was always too good to be true. Games are supposed to fun, Pak. This is not a game.”

It was impossible to tell if he was lying -he’d proven to be a good at it. He was only trying to get Yung-Sung’s trust. The pain beckoned to him. Down below, it called to him and promised to lead him to a resolute path.

Yeung-Sung craved that relief, that closure. A real sense that he could confirm, that he understood how to relate to. He accepted the call with open arms and let himself fall.