Ryan scanned the theater to see who else had been eliminated. All four members of Ours is the Glory were still there. Sad Cake Binge Gaming was still there, except for the Lyfe Jay had killed earlier. Phoenix was missing its Clypeus. All of We Rise as One and Dying Gravity were gone.

Ryan thought about going back into virtual reality to watch the rest of the match, but there was something the lobby had that virtual reality didn’t: food. Ryan had left his plate of pastries on the table down there, and he needed to get back down to them before anything happened to them. He couldn’t let those go to waste. He left the theater and headed for the lobby. As he walked, he pulled his phone out of his pocket and pulled up a stream of the Battle Royale match.

Breach-bot’s technology allowed a more cinematic streaming experience than you could get from any other game. Ryan held his phone’s microphone up to his mouth. “What’s going on with Unbroken,” he asked. He held his phone up as he walked downstairs. The screen showed him a beautiful view of the fight. Breach-bot was framing the shot for him. Breach-bot piloted the camera anytime anyone streamed Breach. He was a talented little director and showed every viewer a different version of the broadcast, depending on what he expected them to like.

Even though it had been a few minutes, he chose to start Ryan’s playback at the moment he had died. Breach-bot’s frame showed silhouettes of the remaining members of Unbroken, in stark shadow from the bright light of the fireball that had claimed Ryan and Joss’s lives.

//////////

Like everything Jayden saw through Dash’s eyes, the explosion happened in slow motion. First, thin streaks of fire shot like bottle rockets over the wall Avaggdon had made. A cloud of dark gray smoke billowed up after them. A fraction of a second later, the cloud ignited into a fireball.

“Fuck,” Sophia said, slowly. Not really. Really Jayden was hearing her more quickly. Dash’s perception of time was different from everyone else’s. To everyone else, he was fast, but to him, it was everyone else who was slow. Every second felt like ten to him, allowing him to run, dodge, shoot and think faster than anyone else could ever hope to. Sophia’s voice was deep, and she seemed to take ten seconds to say that single word, yet Jayden had no trouble understanding her, and so long as he was in Dash’s body, it was easy to match the speed of her speech himself, ensuring that he’d sound natural to her.

“We need to retreat,” Jayden said.

Before turning to run away, Mitch tossed a bomb at the wall. It fell at the wall’s foot. Mitch held onto the detonator as he ran. In the likely event that Reigning Fire lowered the wall to pursue them, they’d get a nasty surprise. Hopefully, Mitch’s three remaining bombs would be enough to destroy the dam.

Sophia gave herself a speed boost. She was the slowest of the three, even after having her speed increased. The other two had to slow down to avoid leaving her behind. Jayden looked over his shoulder. Ichaboth had flown over the wall and was chasing them. Behind them, the wall lowered. Ichaboth blocked Jayden’s view of the other two members of Reigning Fire, but when Mitch detonated his bomb, their monstrous slow-motion shrieks proved it had managed to harm them. The shockwave even damaged Ichaboth as it impacted him, blowing him forward. Jayden could capitalize on that. He pulled out his mini-flamethrower and ran up to Ichaboth.

As he approached, Ichaboth reshaped itself to try to envelop him, yet it did so with a listlessness that made it easy to avoid. Jayden fired his flamethrower into the monster and dashed away from it before it could retaliate.

He ran with his team for several seconds, then dashed back to the Ichaboth, and shot it again. The monster retreated. Jayden could have pursued it, but it would have made it back to its team before Jayden could kill it. The monster ran back to his teammates. Huel-drark wasn’t among them. He probably hadn’t split off from the rest of the team as part of some stratagem, so there was a good chance Reigning Fire was down a teammate. Had Ryan managed to take Joss down with him? If that turned out to be the case, Jayden needed to buy Ryan a drink or something for managing that. Once you were down a teammate, you weren’t likely to win a Battle Royale match.

Of course, that applied to them too, but if they could destroy the dam, that wouldn’t matter.

Unbroken ran until they were sure Reigning Fire wasn’t following them, and then stopped. “So that was a bust,” Sophia said. “Where do we go from here?”

“Not much has changed,” Jayden said. “If anything, stealth has gotten easier for us. We’re headed for the dam. Hopefully we can get to the top of it without Ryan.”

“I’m not sure we should be headed toward an obvious landmark,” Mitch said. “Other teams may have had this same idea.”

“All the more reason not to waste any time getting there,” Jayden said. “We can’t let another team destroy the dam before us.”

//////////

“Not much has changed,” Jay said. “If anything, stealth has gotten easier for us.” That statement made Ryan realize that knowing they were safe was enough, and there was no need to continue watching. He turned off his stream as he entered the ballroom. A dozen television screens scattered around the room, each with a group gathered in front of it, showed footage of the match. Before doing anything else, Ryan walked over to the couches where his team had had their strategy discussion. His pastries were still there. He grabbed them and shoved one into his mouth.

Each of the twelve TV screens had a smaller screen above it that indicated which version of the stream that screen showed. Breach-bot normally made a custom stream for every viewer. Most of the time, someone would watch a stream on their own phone or computer. When that happened, Breach-bot would use the information on those devices to figure out what content would most interest them, and how they would most enjoy having it shown to them. At a party like this, though, people wanted to watch the game together, which meant they had to be looking at the same stream. Because there needed to be multiple screens regardless, having different version of the stream on each TV was a compromise. Each stream was set up to conform to a different set of tastes. There was one set up for fans of each of the remaining teams. Epidemic’s was in the corner. Three middle-aged couples watched that screen intently, along with a handful of other fans. Unbroken’s screen was next to it. It had a few fans in front of it. One of them was cosplaying as Dash. No doubt it would be a pleasant surprise for them if Ryan were to stop by. Ryan started to go over there, but he stopped in the middle of the room. He should go get some punch first.

Sad Cake Binge Gaming had a large crowd in front of their screen, though they were paying less attention to the stream than they were to the eliminated Lyfe, who was mingling with his fans. Pheonix’s screen had a lot of people in front of it, including two members of We Rise as One. The screens for Ours is the Glory and Reigning Fire were on opposite sides of the hall. Ryan was pretty sure Ours is the Glory’s screen was a bit bigger than the others, and Reigning Fire’s was a bit smaller. Luciana Turner, the CEO of Thunderware, and her husband, were watching the Ours is the Glory stream.

The other streams were organized around interests other than specific teams. Two screens were dedicated to the General stream, the one Breach-bot constructed to be viewed by default, without making any assumptions about the viewer. Another pair of screens was dedicated to the Cinematic stream. This one was like the General stream, except in Cinematic, Breach-bot was instructed to sacrifice realism for entertainment. He could alter the lighting in an area, speed up and slow down the action, and alter the order of events, all with the aim of making the stream more entertaining. He would also replace the player’s in-game chat with dialog fitting the personas of the characters they were playing. Many people found the existence of Cinematic mode abhorrent, but the crowds in front of those two screens testified to the stream’s popularity.

For those who couldn’t stand the thought that what they were watching was anything less than the pure, unaltered truthful light of truthfulness, Realistic used non-cinematic filmmaking, wider, blander shots, no color alteration, and minimal cutting. Only one screen showed this version. Three people were watching it.

Ryan headed toward the less crowded of the two Cinematic screens, punch and pastries in hand. There were two couches in front of this screen, both full. In front of that, there were some beanbags. Ryan plopped down onto one of those.

On the stream, the three remaining members of Phoenix were fighting Epidemic. Ryan bit a pastry open and squeezed its chocolate filling into his mouth. The screen showed a close-up of Phoenix’s team captain, playing as Tharthan Azotum, a twelve-foot muscular tank of a humanoid who wore intricate white armor and wielded a glowing white Warhammer large enough that even he had to hold it two-handed. His teammate, a Canticum, sang behind him, empowering him with her magic song. Tharthan charged at Epidemic’s Mog’Inub, his hammer in the air. Behind him, his other teammate, Terraemotus, who could manipulate the ground like Avaggdon could, stomped, causing the ground below Tharthan to shoot upward and launch him into the air. He flew forward pulling his hammer back for a strike. He landed on Mog’Inub and slammed his hammer into one of her countless eyes. He dropped to his knees and grabbed the now-blinded eye’s lower lid. He was right to do so. Mog’Inub began to shake, and rock from side to side, trying to force its foe off its body, but the monster was less mobile than he was strong, and he maintained his grip. Terraemotus tried to summon forth spikes of earth to pierce the monster, but Epidemic’s Avaggdon was plugged into the ground, and held it in place. Ichaboth rushed toward Tharthan and settled on top of him. Breach-bot cut to a tight shot of Tarthan’s face, smirking. He pulled out a cleansing light and crushed it. The explosion of light summoned shrieks from both Gray Fungi, causing Ichaboth to shrink to a fraction of its former size, and making Mog’Inub fall limp. In a panic, Ichaboth expanded, which, because he was a cloud caused him to rocket upward.

The camera shifted between Terraemotus and Avaggdon as they abandoned their psychic battle over the ground. Aveb-heth, Epidemic’s support character, fled into the woods. Terraemotus summoned a wall to stop Aveb-heth from escaping, while Tharthan Azotum charged Avaggdon as it slowly waddled away. He smashed his hammer into the monster. A huge chunk of the soft creature’s flesh was ripped away. Canticum, while continuing to sing, charged at Aveb-heth and grabbed her by the neck. The monster squealed and kicked as Canticum spun around and tossed her into the wall. Tharthan took another swipe at Avaggdon, but the monster jumped out of the way, only to be impaled by an unexpected spike from Terraemotus. The spike pinned it in place, and before Avaggdon could plant itself to remove it, Tharthan smashed it to pieces.

Tharthan dashed over to the wall, where Aveb-heth had just stood up. She ran to the left, but Tharthan caught up to her in a single stride and grabbed her, throwing her against the wall. He leapt forward and smashed her head in. It splattered, spraying the area with infectious fungal juices. Terraemotus lowered his wall, and Phoenix looked around for Ichaboth. He was nowhere to be seen.

Breach-bot cut to Ours is the Glory. They were in a cabin. Max’s Ocillo stood in front of a brown leather couch. Armigeri stood beside him. Their Terraemotus was behind the couch, connected to the ground via a hole he’d torn in the flooring. Nullum was outside, visible through a large window that reminded Ryan of the glass walls of Max’s mansion. On the floor, a Terran Navy Admiral, was tied up and gagged with dark blue, glowing rope. Was that the Admiral from the mission briefing? The cabin was wrecked from a fight. The remains all four members of Dying Gravity were scattered around the room. That team’s Lyfe was impaled on Max’s sword.

Max was speaking. Perhaps he was really talking about something else, but dialogue Breach-bot assigned him for the purposes of Cinematic mode revealed that Ours is the Glory had been sent to capture the same man Ryan’s team had been sent to kill. It seemed they had actually bothered to do so. They intended to take their prisoner to a rallying point near the dam, where they expected an Iron Star ship to be ready to pick him up.

Outside, Nullum snorted like a bull and looked around. The rest of Ours is the Glory abandoned their conversation and looked out the window at him. Something startled Nullum, and he leapt backward, his long, reptilian tail crashing into the window and shattering it. He was staring at something in the distance, but the others couldn’t see what. Max walked toward him. “Easy, boy,” he said, holding out his hand. Armigeri left the cabin through the front door. Nullum screeched and bucked backward. “Eas—” Max began. Nullum turned around and jumped into the cabin through the broken window. Max dodged to his left, toward the front door, and Terraemotus dodged to the right, toward the back of the cabin. The camera panned to reveal the cause of this disturbance. In the distance, Spukee’s maggot-infested raven. Nullum stampeded through the room and crashed through the opposite wall, blowing a massive hole into it. As he ran into the distance, the building creaked, and before Max and Terraemotus could stand, the building fell on top of them, not killing them, but trapping them under the rubble. Outside, as Armigeri ran away from the raven, Sord appeared behind him and stabbed him in the neck. This broke the fear debuff, but right as Armigeri turned around to retaliate, a hole opened underneath him and he fell in. Sord flew off, and Spukee flew into the hole. Spukee wasn’t normally worth much in combat, but if he was alone with a single victim, out of sight of everyone else, he received a buff that made him much more powerful.

A circular wall of earth shot up from the ground around the buried Terraemotus and flew outward, forcing the rubble away from him. This worked, until a wall of force appeared in the path of one part of the wall of earth reflecting it and the rubble it was carrying. The rock and rubble hurdled toward the still-buried Terraemotus, striking the creature, damaging it heavily, and launching it into the air.

Spukee’s fear effect lost its grip on Nullum, and the beast turned around and charged toward the rubble of the fallen cabin. When it reached it, it lit it on fire. That wouldn’t harm Max, because members of the Legion of the Iron Star were immune to fire, but it might help clear the rubble. The beast then turned its attention skyward, in search of a Pickcei to assault with its fire breath.

Terraemotus lumbered to its feet and also headed toward the rubble. There was a close-up shot of Max struggling beneath it, and then another close-up on a small section of the rubble moving to betray his location. Terraemotus summoned a pillar from the ground at that spot. Max was lifted into the air, along with the small portion of the rubble that happened to be right on top of him. Some of that fell away, but he was still trapped under what remained. Sord appeared near the pillar, on the opposite side from Nullum. Terraemotus made a spike shoot out at Sord from the pillar, but the creature ducked below it. Nullum charged the other side of the pillar, managing to knock some rubble off the pile. Sord darted out of the way of that too. Nullum stepped back a few paces, preparing another charge. Spukee emerged from Armigeri’s hole, cackling and holding the creature’s helmet. He flew toward Nullum.

“Nullum, close your eyes!” Terraemotus shouted. Both Nullum and Terraemotus did so. Spukee summoned another raven, but neither of them saw it and it faded away after a few seconds. While Terraemotus’ vision was obscured, Sord teleported away from the pillar and appeared above him, then stabbed him through the top of his head. By the speed of his reaction, that must have been what Terraemotus was expecting. He reached up, grabbed Sord, and broke the Pickcei over his knee. The fairy went limp. Terraemotus tossed his remains aside.

With one final heave, Max forced the last of the debris off himself. He stood and looked around, drawing his sword. He saw Nullum below him. “Hold on, boy,” he said. He jumped onto the beast, settling in his saddle and riding away from the rubble. He rode his steed around the clearing, keeping his eyes skyward. He hadn’t found anything by the time Terraemotus made it back to where they’d been.

“Brother, I think they have escaped,” Terraemotus said.

“I don’t want to give up yet,” Max said. He searched the clearing for a few minutes more, before letting out a cry of frustration. He rode Nullum back over to Terraemotus, and conceded the fact that the Pickceiz were, indeed, gone, then lamented that their mission to capture the Admiral had been thwarted. He had, of course, not survived the collapse of the building he was in. They had a fresh conversation about what to do. The subject of the dam came up. Apparently, Unbroken hadn’t been the only ones to speculate that it could be destroyed. “It would be an impressive thing to accomplish,” Terraemotus said.

“Reason enough by itself to do it,” Max said. He dismounted Nullum and allowed Terraemotus to mount him. Having the slower Terraemotus ride Nullum would allow them to make better time.

The camera cut to the fleeing Cloun and Spukee. They were both badly hurt. They’d lost their Lyfe during their encounter with We Rise as One and Unbroken, and so neither of them had healed since that first match. They knew they wouldn’t be around much longer. Their conversation was about how to go out on a suitably amusing note.

“We haven’t done anything to the Gray Fungi, yet,” Spukee said. “They’re easy to find, what with the trail of mushrooms they leave everywhere.”

“Yeah, and they’re pretty powerful,” Cloun said. “It’d be awesome to take them down a peg.”

“Definitely. Let’s do it.”