Ryan spent the flight to New York on his phone. Airplane design had advanced since the days of his ancestors, who would have had to deal with annoying interruptions in their ability to access the internet. Ryan did not face the same inconvenience but felt like he was wasting that privilege. He’d much rather watch a fucking movie, but he hadn’t been following the professional Breach season, and if he showed up to New York not knowing precisely who his opponents were, Jay would either be mad, or, worse, begin an exhaustive explanation of each and every one of them. So here he was, about to spend two hours looking up information on professional Breach teams, wading through a lot of information he already knew from being a professional player to get to the parts Jay might quiz him about.

Reigning Fire had won last year and was the favorite to win this year. They played the Gray Fungus faction, which, in the lore, was an infectious hive-mind which had invaded the Milky Way through an interdimensional portal. They now traveled the galaxy assimilating all life they encountered. It was their evil that inspired the Terran Naval Marines to the extremes which sparked Red Arachnia to rebel against them.

Unrelatedly, their Captain, Joss Turner, was the son of Thunderware’s CEO.

Reigning Fire was an old team, and one Ryan already knew a good deal about. Joss played as Huel-drark, an eight-foot monster whose right arm was a laser cannon. He fought alongside an Avaggdon which was a spiky mushroom barnacle with the power to manipulate the terrain around it, a Xig’zah which was a spindly ball of arm-knives that set explosive traps, and an Ichaboth which was an amorphous cloud of fungal spores. There was a link to some footage of them in action. It was them picking on an enemy they’d isolated. Ichaboth descended on the area, buffing the three of them with beneficent spores while they passed their poor foe back and forth like a rag-doll.

Oh, by the way, they were probably cheaters. At least, that’s what Maximillian Turner, who they’d fought against in last year’s final match had accused them of. The footage of their battle, where Joss unexpectedly pulled out the perfect counter to one of Max’s items, had been torn apart and scrutinized by the internet. No one had found a smoking gun, nor had anyone, including Joss, been able to explain why he happened to make such an odd item choice at the start of the match. He claimed he was following a hunch. Others thought it more likely that he’d used malicious software to smuggle in one or more “generic items,” which he could turn into whatever he needed when he discovered he needed it. Breach-bot had detected nothing to indicate cheating at the time, but it wouldn’t be the first time the bot had been fooled. One of only a handful, but not the first. The fact that Joss was the CEO’s son made it seem just a teensy bit more likely for him to get away with this sort of thing

But then again Maximillian, his accuser, was the CEO’s son too, so maybe that cancelled out. He was the Captain of Ours is the Glory, who’d gone undefeated last year until their possibly illegitimate loss in the finals. They played as the Legion of the Iron Star, who had invaded the galaxy through yet another interdimensional portal, one which led to a universe so old that all that remained within it were black holes and stars which had turned to spheres of iron over the course of a trillion trillion years. Their society had long ago advanced past having needs of their own, so they dedicated their existence to traveling from dimension to dimension, distributing helpful technologies, destroying evil empires and rescuing galaxies from pernicious races like the Gray Fungus.

Ours is the Glory had an odd team loadout. Max played Occilo who was the second-biggest member of Iron Star, but had the biggest sword. They also had a Terraemotus, who was a big magic user. That was orthodox enough. The other team members, though, were a Nullum, which was a strange bull-like thing on which other members, in this case Max, could ride, and an Armigeri, another support character, who would enhance Occilo’s fighting power. It’s odd to have multiple support characters when you only have one real fighter. Most teams had either three fighters and one support or two fighters, one support, and one utility character. Then again, Nullum was a fighter in his own regard. Mount or not, he did have the ability to breathe fire.

Probably the third most discussed team was Pheonix. They played Iron Star too, with a more orthodox team setup. The notable thing about them, in the eyes of the public, was that they were assembled from a cancer support group. Some friends who met at the group started gaming, and then entered a tournament, and things evolved from there. They went up against Ours is the Glory and lost, but Max stayed in touch with them, and wound up using family money to pay for their treatments. Intricate medical testing had since confirmed that they were cancer-free. Their Captain could be seen praising Max to high heaven in interviews. One piece written by an oncologist claimed all four of them would have been very unlikely to survive without the high-quality treatment they received, though a disclaimer at the bottom made it clear that this was native advertising.

The last team that attracted a lot of public discussion was Sad Cake Binge Gaming, who Ryan and most others knew, first and foremost, as a group of comedy streamers. They played the Pickciez, the creatures who emerged from the third and final inter-dimensional portal in the game’s universe. The Pickciez were a comic relief faction conducive to the kind of performance Sad Cake Binge Gaming normally engaged in. The fact that they could go out of their way to prank their enemies in matchmaking and still consistently win attested to their skill. Of course, when it came time for tournament play, they got more serious, hence why they were also the current European Regional Champions.

The rest of the teams were less notable. We Rise as One played as the Terran Naval Marines and had the worst win record of any team in the championship despite marketing themselves on the fact that three of them were real soldiers. Of course, having the worst win record of the eight teams in the world championship still meant having one of the ten best win records worldwide. About twice as good as Ryan’s team had back when he was on it. Dying Gravity were the South African regional champions. They played the Pickciez and had a reputation for unconventional and inventive strategies. Epidemic played Gray Fungus and had been the world champions of Breach’s junior league last year. This was their first season in the senior league, and they were doing better than anyone had expected of them.

Last, and probably also least, was Ryan’s team, the ironically named Unbroken. They played Red Arachnia, and according to most of the coverage Ryan saw, consisted of Jayden Reece, a Dash, Sophia Jones, a Boost, Mitch Atkins, a Spark, and Lisa Dodson, a Zap. There was only one article on the car crash, posted a few hours ago. It ended by saying that “what this tragedy means for Unbroken’s championship bid is also unknown at this time.” ‘Also’ because the article had just explained that no one knew if Lisa would ever wake up from her coma.

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Ryan’s plane would be landing soon. Jayden looked through his phone. Prior to such an important event, he spent almost all his time researching, mostly combing through footage of the enemy teams at work. He wanted to know their style, how they’d react to his choices, and how he could best react to theirs. None of the teams in this tournament were new to him. Most of them, he’d played before. He’d lost matches against Reigning Fire, Ours is the Glory and Sad Cake Binge Gaming earlier this season. The others he’d faced at some point in the past, except Epidemic. He’d never looked into them that much until now but had been making up for that in the last few days. Their style was polished, but with vestiges of what you might expect from a group of children. They had a bias toward flashier tactics and over-relied on infection and other debuffs to prevent their enemies from countering bold moves.

An announcer told Jayden that Ryan’s flight had landed. A few minutes later, people spilled from the appropriate terminal, Ryan among them. Jayden had started to forget what it was that drew him to Ryan, back when he felt drawn to him, but the sight of him was enough to remind him. Ryan was tall, lean and tan-skinned, with adorable curly brown hair. His eyes were green, and always alert, as if afraid to miss something important. Jayden wished Mitch and Ryan weren’t the sort of men you had to choose between. Ryan was a lot of fun.

Jayden stood, and Ryan saw him. They walked to each other. “Hey,” Jayden said, waving, trying to sound cheerful.

“Hey,” Ryan said, not bothering to sound anything but bored.

“You said you wanted to go straight to the hospital?”

“I’m glad you remembered.”

Jayden was already working hard to hold in his irritation at Ryan. At least he had the decency to hold it in. “Alright.” Jay had already ordered an auto to arrive a few minutes after Ryan was due to land, so by the time they got to the parking lot, it was waiting to pick them up.

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It suited Ryan that he didn’t speak with Jay on the way to the hospital. Ryan just listened to music and looked out at the city while Jay watched endless footage of either Epidemic or Reigning Fire matches, staring at the phone with intensity that should have summoned lasers from his eyes to melt it. Ryan tried to recall what he’d seen in Jay, years ago. Where it concerned literal sight, that was an easy question. Jay was diligent about his health and had the muscles to prove it. But Ryan had met plenty of men with delicious muscles and none of them had kept his attention for long. Jay had been so nice at first, so quick to quip back and forth with him, so interested in everything that caught his interest. He’d been a furnace of passion, but now he seemed to have frozen over.

Ryan was dwelling on Jay too much. Just because he was right there didn’t mean there was any need to think about him. Was this what Jay wanted? Did he take pleasure in Ryan’s annoyance with him? No, that couldn’t be. He’d want Ryan in tip-top psychological shape for the competition tomorrow. Maybe Ryan should have shared that goal. Maybe he should have taken this seriously. This was the championship, after all. Didn’t the prospect of being the champion have at least some appeal?

Eh, not really. Ryan was looking forward to playing with Sophia again, though, and he had missed some of the trappings of tournament events. Audiences were fun, even when they were against you. Unbroken had a few fans. This must be terribly exciting for them. An old favorite was stepping up to stand in for his fallen comrade. It would be a shame to disappoint them.

Outside the window, it was just starting to get dark, and some of the city’s lights had come on. In the distance, there was a giant arch, tall and skinny and sticking up over the skyline. The lights covering it were blue at the peak, green near the middle, and faded toward red as they disappeared behind the closer buildings.

They passed a giant Christmas display. The tree was something spectacular: big enough to rival the city’s smaller skyscrapers. On its tip, an eight-pointed golden star. The tree was covered trunk to tip with bands of lights that shifted hues gradually and independently of one another. Occasionally, two adjacent band’s colors would happen to match for an instant, and they would merge into a single band of color twice as thick as the others.

Ryan changed songs. Jay was still watching footage. It was Epidemic. There was a Mog’Inub onscreen, and Reigning Fire didn’t have one of those.

The auto arrived at the hospital. Ryan and Jay got out and hurried toward the entrance. It was freezing.

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The hospital lobby was gargantuan and ornate, dominated by a central fountain where water trickled over a twelve-foot formation of sharp black rocks. Jay knew the way to Lisa’s room from having visited her once before. He led Ryan to the elevator, which they rode to the sixth floor.

Lisa’s room wasn’t far once they got off the elevator. It was whiter than white, and brightly lit. On the far side of the room, a large square window overlooked the city. Ryan could see the same Christmas tree they’d passed on the way here.

Lisa was on a metallic bed. An apparatus of six robotic arms hung above her, ready to respond to any sudden medical needs with swiftness and skill no human surgeon could have ever achieved. Behind her bed, an apparatus of monitors beeped and buzzed.

Lisa herself was clothed in casts. A thick white brace held her neck in place, and a larger brace which reminded Ryan of a strait jacket seemed to be doing the same for her spine. Purple casts covered her limbs from base to tip. A bandage covered the right side of her face. A bruise ringed her left eye.

“Her spinal cord is severed in two places,” Jay said. “They don’t know if they’ll be able to fix it.”

Ryan approached the bed, not acknowledging him.

“I’ll step outside, if you’d like,” Jay said, in an unusual moment of consideration.

“I would. Thank you,” Ryan said. Jay left.

It’d been Lisa that first learned what Mitch and Jay were doing. With the benefit of hindsight, the signs were obvious. Mitch was spending a lot of time around the team, and Jay was spending a lot of time alone with Mitch. The possibility of what turned out to be true had occurred to Ryan, but Lisa had found it more difficult than Ryan had to suppress her suspicions. After Mitch and Jay had been behaving suspiciously for a few months, she did some investigation. Once she was convinced there could be no innocent explanation, she decided to confront Jay to hear his side of things.

“I won’t deny it,” Jay had later admitted to saying. “You know how things have been between me and Ryan. Do you honestly think he’d even be that upset?”

“Then why don’t you tell him?” Lisa asked.

“I will, after the tournament,” Jay said, meaning that year’s U. S. regional championship qualifier.

“Is that really what’s important to you?”

“I thought it was important to all of us,” Jay said. “Do you really think it’s a good idea to break up with him right now? If Christmas or Valentine’s day were coming up, I’d wait until after those events to break up with him. This is definitely more important than that.”

Lisa pretended to be convinced by that line of reasoning but relayed the situation to Ryan later that day. Ryan’s confrontation with Jay wasn’t as calm as Lisa’s had been and led to him leaving the team. The others had been on his side. If he had asked them to kick Jay off, they would have, but at that point, he’d already started having doubts about whether competitive Breach was something he really enjoyed. Part of him welcomed the excuse to leave behind the stress, the scheduling, the intense practicing, and Jay’s constant nagging.

Ryan decided it was better that he forfeit his spot to Mitch than to usurp Jay as team captain.

Lisa approached him later, offering to give up her spot to Mitch instead, or leave along with him in protest, but Ryan told her not to do either of those things unless she really wanted to. It seemed she didn’t. Maybe she didn’t want to abandon Jay and Sophia. In either case, their team was shuffled around to allow Mitch on, and the resulting version of Unbroken was creamed in the qualifier. Ryan believed it was due to the switch, and that he would have won it for them if he’d been there. He did have to admit, though, that this new team had found their stride since he left. Never had his version of Unbroken made it to the World Championship. Maybe Ryan was in over his head.

Ryan reached out to hold Lisa’s casted hand.

A loud buzz made him jump. “Do not touch this patient,” said a speaker above the surgeon-bot. “She has sustained injuries throughout her skeleton and moving any part of her body could exacerbate those injuries or cause internal bleeding.”

“Sorry,” Ryan said.