Alec took a deep breath to steel his nerves and, after a brief pause, he stepped through the final door his compass was pointing towards. He didn't know what he had expected to find on the other side, given that there was still a large number of virtual environments inside Helix the teachers could have used, and possibly more he had never even seen, but he found himself somewhat relieved as he saw what it actually was. A vast plot of open desert land stretched around him in all directions, orange rock gleaming under the artificial light cast from the ceiling, which was much higher than it had been in the metal labyrinth. There was no sun in the sky, but the area was as bright as any of the scorching days of the summer only three months ago.

It was an improvement, no doubt. Level 4 had been mostly inconvenient restrictions — narrow corridors that hindered mobility and the ever-present risk of simply turning a corner and walking dead into a new opponent with no warning. Here, there was space to work, and in an open stretch of land there were very little options for concealment. It was quite simply an open field to promote direct, unencumbered violence, and he liked it.

The first thing Alec did after his preliminary observation of the land was to test the floor. It would be tremendously inconvenient for him to be trapped in another environment he couldn't make use of again, but he was pleasantly surprised to find that the rock proved responsive to his mental commands. A small chunk of rock broke free, crumbling into a cloud of bright tangerine dust as he closed his fingers into a fist, and he let the dust sail away into the breeze. Definitely an improvement.

He rested his fingers against the ground, which was uncomfortably warm. Despite the fact that it was an entirely man-made environment, he appreciated the lengths they had gone to to make it more realistic. It made the experience all the more indulging.

Orange stone slipped smoothly over Alec's skin, distorting his features. Since the land was a uniform colour, it could also work in his favour with camouflage. He glanced around at the door he had progressed through, and found that it was gone. Only a large boulder stared back at him, completely smooth, with no signs that a door had ever been opened within it.

A beeping noise disturbed his reverie. He looked down to find something happening within his compass. A new slot had opened up, completely empty, showing only three spaces as opposed to the five from earlier.

The sight brought him back to his senses. He was here for a purpose, not sightseeing. Stowing the compass, he set off.

He looked around cautiously as he walked. It would be easier to spot an incoming enemy in this field, but he knew his classmates to be crafty and dangerous. Underestimating them would be a quick, surefire way to be eliminated.

The first thing odd about this new environment came into view a few moments later. Alec's jaw fell as his brain struggled to process what he was seeing. He had arrived at a literal break in the land; some fifty feet of distance separated the plateau he was perched on from the one directly in front of him, but the most shocking thing was what was underneath them. Nothing at all.

The two platforms hovered hundreds of feet above a turbulent sea, completely unsupported in midair. It was as if the rocks had decided all of a sudden to terminate their contracts with gravity and simply stopped at whatever height they felt was acceptable.

The space between the two platforms was more than jumping distance, but Alec wasn't worried. His hand pointed at the ground, he willed several large blocks of stone out of the floor and laid them out in front of him, one in front of the other, until a makeshift bridge lay in front of him connecting the estranged pieces of land.

As he attempted to cross the bridge, still marveling at how Helix had managed to pull off a feat this huge, something slammed into his back without warning, bearing enough force to push him off the bridge.

"Wo-oah!" he yelled, as he lost his balance and tumbled downwards. The bridge collapsed with him, the huge blocks racing to place themselves underneath him, once again forming a hovering rectangular platform that broke his fall. While his Earth Mimicry was active, his durability was increased tenfold, but he still felt the brunt of the fall. He looked up from his makeshift hammock and his eyes immediately locked onto the aggressor.

A dark-haired Zeus girl was hovering above the platform he had been a few feet away from crossing onto, her hair whipping about as if caught in a high wind. Two long wings stretched from her back, made entirely of what Alec realized was actually paper, so that she looked like some kind of origami angel. More paper was fluttering around her body, zipping with such speed that they looked as if they could slice through even metal. A Flier with long-ranged abilities. Great.

Even from this distance he could see she was smiling, but her assault did not waver. More paper projectiles came raining down upon him with lightning fast speeds. Alec leapt to his feet, shifting his feet to stand on two of the blocks while he set the remainder to orbit around him, shielding against the attacks.

There was a minute pause between the attacks, as small as the space of time it took for a shotgun to be reloaded. Alec seized the opportunity: he hurled the blocks into the air with the same impossible speeds she had used with her own paper attacks, but she had obviously had much experience with aerial battles. She twisted and turned out of the way so effortlessly, with so much grace, that she may have simply been dancing.

Then, taking Alec completely aback, the papers sliced through the blocks of stone as easily as his previous opponent's lances of electricity had gone through the metal walls.

"That's not possible," Alec said, though his tone was more of awe than disbelief.

"You're literally a walking statue and you want to talk about what's possible?" the girl asked, and beside her the floating paper actually formed a question mark.

"Touche." In one swift movement Alec redoubled his grip on the platform and jumped back onto the floating rock, looking up at his interlocutor. No sooner had he straightened up than the assault resumed. A new wave of paper weapons flowered from her wings, shooting down at him. There was an entire arsenal of them: knives, arrows, hammers, even spears.

Alec's hands rose instinctively, ready to summon a wall of earth from the platform to shield against it, then realized that would leave him wide open for her to ambush him from behind. He had already seen how fast she could maneuver through the air, and he had a strong feeling that if he lost sight of her at this point it would be a swift disqualification. Instead, he ground his feet deeper into the floor and pulled up another sheet of rock, hardening it over his already armoured skin to form a secondary layer.

Still, despite the reinforcement of the armour, he felt each blow as the weapons sank into his stony hide. The impact was dulled, but far from nonexistent. As the new wave came to a head, Alec pushed off from the ground with as much force as he could muster.

It was so much that the rock actually shattered beneath his feet. As he soared upwards, he shed the outer layer of his armour, which was chock full of various kinds of weaponry. The stone crumbled and slid off as easily as if it were dust and not solid rock, and as he went further upwards he molded it in the air. With a practiced hand movement he fired several balls of stone at her. She swept aside as effortlessly as if she was skating on ice, completely at ease and smiling in a way that stated quite plainly this was merely simple entertainment to her and not a real challenge. That was good. Overconfidence could be anyone's undoing, no matter how powerful they were, so long as their opponent knew what they were doing.

Her wings fluttered like an angry bird's and more paper flowered at the edges, bristling like blades of grass. Another hail of paper rain came launching down at him, like lethal confetti. He didn't have time to dodge, nor could he maneuver that well in the air anyway, but he wouldn't have dodged even if he could.

All he knew was this was probably going to be his only opening to defeat this target and he had to take it, regardless of how much pain he had to endure. Besides, he tried to console himself, she, like everyone else, had to dial down the scale of her abilities to ensure she didn't cause fatal harm to her opponents. That sole comforting thought was quickly expunged from his mind, replaced by the realization that this was still, in fact, going to hurt like hell.

The confetti wave pierced his skin like a flock of oversized needles; each one felt as if it had run three feet deep. But still he endured it, continuing to push himself upwards as if sailing on a rocket. Each paper trail embedded itself into his rocky armour like porcupine quills, and still he rose, his mental will pushing his earthen body farther up.

Through the haze of paper strips he saw her, ruffling her wings, preparing for a second assault. And he smirked. Something thick and viscous splattered onto her left wing and she looked up, startled; a little scream of shock erupted from her mouth as huge splatters of something dark orange and sludge-like rained down all over her body. Alec's eyes trailed upwards, to the spots above her where the stone armour he had shed was now melting into mud.

Now it poured all over her like thick, viscous, reddish-brown rain, coating her entire body in it. And as it ran over her he hardened it, forming a cage of earth all around it. Within moments she was entirely restricted and she began to fall, no longer supported by her angelic origami wings, and that was when he jumped towards her, slowing her descent as he gripped the falling rock tomb in midair. He ensured that she touched down as lightly as possible, though he couldn't resist bumping her slightly against the ground as they landed; he was aching all over.

"How did you do that?" she demanded.

"Something I've been working on recently," Alec said as he started walking towards her. "Partially altering the state of matter of rocks. Grinding them to make them more sludge-like. Only problem is it takes a while because I haven't perfected it, so I jumped towards you as a distraction while I molded the mud behind you."

"Clever," the girl admitted in a grudging tone.

"Thanks," Alec said sincerely as he bent down and removed her chip, which was secured in her hair by a paper clip. He hadn't expected to obtain one so easily on this level, but if all of his next matchups were as swift as this, he'd be advancing to Level 2 in no time.

The girl cleared her throat, very loudly and very pointedly below him. "Um, hellooo? Up to my neck in mud casing here!"

"Oh, right," said Alec, who had been marveling at the spoils of battle. He reached down and lightly tapped the earth coating surrounding her. Huge cracks immediately ruptured along the body of the stone casing, then it broke apart like an abnormally solid cocoon, and the paper butterfly emerged, dusting herself off and looking slightly cranky.

She eyed him for a moment, then said, "You look like a porcupine."

Alec looked down at himself. That much was true. Paper strips were sticking out all over his body. "Yeah, should probably do something about that."

He brought his hands together and jerked them apart, and the strips were launched out of the cracks of his armour at breakneck speed. The girl had instantly raised her wings to cover herself, shielding against the sudden onslaught of deadly paper.

"Doesn't that hurt?" she asked curiously.

"It does. It'll be even worse when I change back though."

"Huh. . . . Well, you better get going. More easy matchups await."

"Come on, it wasn't that easy, you just weren't being very aware of your surroundings."

"Wow, you really know how to sweet talk a girl." She walked off, but there was a faint smile playing on her lips.

She set off, her wings rustling as she took flight, and then she was gone, a large blip across the unnatural citrine landscape growing fainter every passing second until it was gone from sight. Alec shook himself mentally, returning to his surroundings. He fixed his newly acquired chip into the compass and turned to seek a new target.

"Well done."

Alec froze. The voice had seemingly come from nowhere, materializing out of the deserted landscape as if from thin air. Sharp, femimine and remarkably familiar.

"A little sloppy at the end there, but well done nonetheless."

Maddison was stalking across the landscape towards him, her hair pulled back into a neat ponytail, a few scratches across her face and dirt streaks along her uniform.

"It's funny though, to think your entire strategy would have fallen apart if she'd just . . . turned her head slightly to the left."

"I had a backup," Alec said, in a mock defensive tone.

Maddison raised her eyebrows at him.

"Well, I would have figured one out."

"Oh, no doubt. The question was how many time she would have to chuck you off the platform first before you did."

Alec rolled his eyes. "How long have you been standing there, anyway?"

"Practically the entire time," she said casually.

Alec looked at her, shocked, sure he had misheard. "The entire time? As in, you saw her sneaking up on me?"

"Pretty much." She shrugged.

"And you didn't think you should have said something?"

"If it was a real life battle and you were genuinely in danger, absolutely I would have. But this is a test. The teachers are all watching to see how we perform in different scenarios, and if I bailed you out you would have been marked down. Letting you deal with it yourself was the best outcome."

Alec opened his mouth to respond, then paused to consider the point. He had to admit that it made some sense, not to mention it was exactly the kind of thing Professor Elliott would berate him for if it actually happened in his classroom. "Thanks," Alec said sincerely. "For not doing anything."

"It was quite literally the least I could do," Maddison said. She pointed to the west. "This is the direction we should be heading."

"How do you know?" Alec asked, even as he set off behind her.

"I levitated on top of a boulder after I popped out somewhere near here. Took a look around and saw signs of a few fights in that area. Explosions, big bangs, screams of agony — you know, typical school stuff."

"Sounds fun. Have you seen anyone other than that girl since you got here?"

"No. I expect we'll be seeing less people going forward since a lot of them got cut already. Which explains why this new environment is a wide open field. To make enemies easier to spot since there's a huge reduction in class size."

Silence fell between them as they walked, Alec taking care to look around more cautiously, determined not to let anyone get the drop on him again.

"How about you? You seen anyone else since we took the swan dive?" Maddison asked him.

"No, you're the first. I wonder how the others are doing."

"I wouldn't be too worried about them. Reya and Charlie had pretty good auditions. And of course the only thing holding Ethan back is Ethan."

"Yeah, I know, but Javon —"

"Doesn't have any offensive abilities, I know. But he knows that too, so I doubt he would have come down here without at least some form of a strategy. We won't know until the test is over."

Alec sighed. It was true, in this scenario they were completely cut off from the rest of their peers until they either stumbled across them in the wild or joined them among the ranks of the eliminated, but it was still frustrating to think any one of them could have dropped out already and there was no way to confirm. All of them ran across his mind as he weighed their chances individually, and it was as the image of Ethan popped up in his mind's eye that something she said finally registered in his mind.

"Wait, what do you mean Ethan's holding himself back? You mean like he's restraining himself to not hurt other people? I mean I've heard about the kind of damage psychic powers can do."

Maddison gave a mirthless chuckle. "If only. No, that's the case for a lot of people in this school, but Ethan isn't one of them. He's not holding himself back out of worry for anyone else, he's doing it because he's just lazy. Plain and simple. We all saw him at the entrance exams. He doesn't put a lick of energy into anything. But when he's properly motivated, well . . ."

"What are you talking about?"

"Oh that's right," Maddison said carelessly. "You weren't here to see his testing. You missed a lot, you know."

"So I've heard, and somehow, every day I find out I missed even more."

"All I'm saying is, don't worry about them. All of them have it in them to pull through."

"Sound advice. You should be more worried about yourselves, anyway."

Alec barely had time to register her movements; one moment she was walking alongside him, her demeanor relaxed, the next she was standing a few feet away, hands filled with short swords and poised for battle. The voice, an unfamiliar male one drenched in a mocking tone, had come from nearby, but even now as they looked around they couldn't see anything. Maddison's dark eyes swept the area, then flitted across the ground. She did a double take then let out a small gasp and looked up. Alec imitated the movement and his eyes widened; there, floating tens of feet above them on a semi-transparent whirlwind, was a boy from the Zeus Dorm. His hair was thick, dark brown, and curly, glinting in the artificial sunlight, and he was smiling easily down at them.

"Took you long enough."

To Alec's slight surprise, Maddison let out a groan of exasperation beside him. "Of course it's you."

"You know this guy?" Alec asked. If she did she likely had information on his abilities, which would make it easier to defeat him.

"Yes. And if I'm right, his partner in crime should be around here somewhere." Even as she spoke Maddison looked around as if expecting the mysterious partner to jump out at any moment. She was half-right. Something did come, but it wasn't a person. A bright burst of neon green energy streaked across their vision, shooting towards them. Even with reflexes borne of months of training, Alec still only had the barest amount of time to erect a shield of rock. The lightning slammed into the wall, igniting an explosion of steam and stone and sending both of them skittering across the landscape.

"I knew it," Maddison said bitterly, pushing her hair out of her face as she got to her feet. Alec looked up and found what she was glaring at. Through the haze of orange dust, they could see another person. It seemed to be the same person, in fact, but he was standing level with them instead of floating. And something was different about his facial features too; the differences were slight, so small they could have been categorized as negligible, yet they stood out clear as day. Eyes slightly further apart, nose a bit crooked. Even his hair seemed to have been brushed differently. Alec wondered how he had managed to get around them so quickly, when a slight movement behind him caught his eye and he looked around to find that the boy hadn't actually moved. His eyes shifted from one location to the other, then it dawned on him.

"Another set of twins?" he asked.

"There are around seven different pairs of them currently enrolled," Maddison said. "Some of them are worse than others, though." She threw a nasty glance at the one in front of them, whose eyes lit up bright green as his smile widened, as if he had gotten an excellent compliment.

"You know, I think we've got the makings of a proper two-on-two match up here. If you're game," the floating twin said with a smirk.

Alec and Maddison, who had unintentionally ended up back-to-back as they surveyed their opponents, now looked at each other through the corner of their eyes. They were both grinning.

"Why not?" Alec said. "Two chips, one for each of us."

"And since the Olsens couldn't be here, I suppose knocking your teeth out would be the next best thing," Maddison chimed in.

"You got yourself a deal, gentlemen," Alec said. The twins exchanged a look of their own, though theirs was longer and deeper, as if they were sharing more than a grin. Alec supposed it was simply due to the familial bond they had developed over the course of their lives, an intimate understanding of each other's thoughts and mannerisms. The fact that they had found each other despite all two hundred odd students being dumped at different points across both levels was proof that they were either really lucky, or their bond was far deeper than the normal eye could see.

"Well . . . Ding ding, I guess," said the twin with the green eyes. He snapped his fingers and a sound like thunder tore through the air, so forceful Alec felt the sound reverberate through his very chest.

Clearly the sound was meant to signify the start of the match, because all at once the other three burst into motion. The floating twin leapt up, hovering atop his semi-visible spout of air. Another column of violently spiraling wind erupted from his hands and came soaring towards them, stirring up a cloud of dust that dyed the whirlwind a violent shade of tangerine.

Maddison and Alec both took off in different directions, her aiming for cover and him aiming for the other brother. Behind them the twister drew closer, a raging column of orange. Maddison charged to the left, occasionally boosting her steps with a minor burst of levitation every now and then. When she had secured a good enough distance, she spun gracefully in midair and launched several knives at her target.

The boy didn't move to dodge or block. Instead, the vortex shifted drastically, moving to the right to block the knives' path; the daggers were pulled towards its center by the powerful suction force, sinking into the column of air as easily as a stone broke the surface of a river. The surprising thing was what happened after. In the blink of an eye, the vortex's rotation reversed. All at once the inward spiraling winds shifted to a violent outward storm, and the knives it had sucked in burst out like torpedos, sailing towards Maddison, who was still in the air.

"Oi! Eyes front!"

The voice broke into his thoughts like a sledgehammer, drawing his attention in front of him. Alec didn't get the chance to see whether Maddison countered the incoming knives, but knowing her she undoubtedly would. No, he didn't have time to worry about her. His issue lay in front of him, crackling all over with emerald lightning, like several thin green snakes dancing along his body.

"You have your own dance partner, buddy boy." Lightning blossomed at the tip of his fingers and shot forward. This time Alec wasn't nearly as quick to respond. The blast hit him full force, directly in the chest. He flew backwards, skidding across the luridly coloured landscape. When he had finally come to a halt, he shook his head, his vision foggy. The boy was approaching him slowly, while another whirlwind raged in the background behind him.

"What are you smiling at?" he asked, as Alec pushed himself upright.

"Ah, nothing," Alec said. "Believe it or not, this is the most fun I've had in weeks."

"That so?" the boy said, an eyebrow raised. "I look forward to changing that."

"I look forward to seeing you try," Alec said. With that, he took off, already preparing his counterattack.