by Mary Weber
The scene became a rocky landscape set at eye level from where he was standing, pushing the players up out of the water and splaying them out on dry land.
He watched them flail and lie flat on their backs, attempting to ditch their breathing gear and catch up with their wits. Even Matthers seemed thrown off.
“Cripe!” Shilo said.
“Language,” Sofi uttered.
Except Miguel was thinking the same as his gaze caught the massive spider that scuttled up over one of the rock crevices. The thing had to be twenty feet tall and, even Miguel had to admit, gorgeously impressive.
Dude, that thing is awesome, Claudius texted.
Also, how’re Sof and Shilo doing?
Keeping their mom alive so far, Miguel swiped back.
“Claudius, unless you’re sharing tech tips, stop distracting us,” Vic said.
A scream ripped through the air and for a second Miguel thought it was a player—until it happened again.
The sound erupted from the spider.
“Yeah, that’s not creepy,” Shilo said. “Okay, so, Mom—”
Zain suddenly stumbled, then fell. Miguel leaned forward, swerving his gaze from Zain to Ethos to Hart and Gaines.
“C’mon, move,” Ranger said in the earcoms. “Get up, guy.”
“Mom, if you reach down into your suit, I’ve created a virtual knife,” Sofi said. “Grab it and slip under the spider’s stomach when it goes after—”
The spider was on Zain before Inola could get over there. Twenty feet in front of Miguel, a dribble of foam ran from the VP’s lips just before the stinger plunged into him. The audience screamed. Miguel frowned. The guy was already done for before he’d even stepped into the arena.
Inola slipped her hand to her side and retrieved the blade.
“One of us is down, two to go,” Nadine muttered.
“Nadine, move!” Ranger yelled.
A cry rang out from her lips as a crossbow arrow plunged into her arm. Another whizzed by Inola, who dropped to the ground in preparation to knife that spider. It landed square in Matther’s back and elicited a cry.
Miguel peered over to see who’d shot them. “Sofi, it’s Gaines’s men. At the base level. Security,” he said louder into the com. “Take them out.”
The spider scuttled toward the players at full speed, stinger prepared.
“Okay, you know what? Forget this,” Sofi said in his com. “This is over. Watch my back, Shi and Vic.”
Miguel watched Sofi swing over the side of the arena and start running for her mom, Nadine, and Matthers.
35
INOLA
What the—?
Matthers?
Inola swung around to see where the arrows were launching from, but it all blended together. The faces. The crowd. The voices.
She turned back to the kid. This wasn’t supposed to happen. He was Corp 13’s—the one supposed to lose but not by being killed.
Another screech from the audience and the spider was descending toward Nadine. Inola looked around, rose, and, terror flooding her veins, headed toward the giant black arachnid with the blood-red belly.
A commotion went up in the stands to Inola’s right. A number of audience members erupted, and Inola glanced over to see Sofi running across the landscape toward her and Nadine.
She was gripping a blade of her own.
The beast let out that eerie scream and attacked Nadine. The i-reality star attempted to duck and roll but got caught on its spindly leg just as the stinger bore down. Suddenly Sofi was there with her blade skating beneath the spider’s belly, slicing it open from front to back.
The animal disintegrated into thin air and Sofi stood, dusted herself off, and looked toward Inola, who let out a choking sound. The girl she’d loved, even when she didn’t know how to love better, had come.
Sofi turned to the audience and murmured to Shilo in their earcoms, “Wanna hook me up?”
Abruptly, her face and voice were being blasted over the loudspeakers and telescreens. “We’re done here. This isn’t a game today—this is a murder match.” Sofi spread her hands and slowly turned in a circle. “And these aren’t real players like the FanFight gamers. These are ill-equipped people being tossed in for your entertainment. Except this time there are already deadly consequences.” She pointed at the curled-up dead body of Zain.
A shocked hush fell over the audience. Showing their surprise at the confirmation that Zain was actually dead, but even more so at seeing Sofi, the number one terrorist in the world, standing in front of them. Lecturing them on murder.
“You want to see a fight?” Sofi continued. “Then I’m here. And I’ve just fought one of the biggest battles against Delon on behalf of you all. So stop wasting my time with . . . this.” She spun around with an expression of disgust. “And get on to doing something worthy of your spines.”
Inola swallowed and stared up at the stands full of people who were suddenly gasping.
“What?”
“What’d she say?”
“A battle with Delon? What kind of battle? Check the news!”
Inola stared into Corp 30’s cabana, at the faces that appeared frozen in time. As it slowly dawned on her that, out of everything, this was the one thing their political finagling had perhaps not counted on—the thing she and Gaines and Hart and the Delonese had not understood in all of their technology and science and regenerative experimentations. You could control technology and agendas and public impression, but you couldn’t control human conviction to interrupt a game—let alone an entire planet apparently—to care for their fellow man. Especially in the face of a messed-up world.
It was the thing that separated humans from AI, flesh from prosthetics, Sofi from the genetic replications they’d sought to create.
Inola nodded at Sofi, then turned to the wounded kid as the crowd in the stands began clapping and the announcer cleared his throat. “Gamer Sofi Snow, everyone. Apparently back from the ice-planet.”
The applause turned to thunder, until the entire stadium was echoing the fierceness of Sofi’s impassioned face.
And for a moment Inola felt it. The pride of a mother who knows she’s had many failings, and yet knows she’s also succeeded. Because her children have outgrown her and outperformed her in all the areas it truly matters.
Compassion. Even in the midst of her hatred for Inola, Sofi had maintained compassion.
And that was her greatest weapon.
A person could change history with that kind of thing.
Inola looked over just as someone yelled, “Nice speech, except you’re a traitor!” from the direction of Corp 30’s cabana.
Sofi swung around and laughed.
“I’m not the traitor. Not by a long shot.”
Time’s up, something whispered inside.
Her daughter was about to undo everything. Including Inola herself, along with her position, her power, and her career.
And for the first time in her life, Inola wouldn’t stop her. She’d watch her daughter rise as she herself surrendered.
Sofi raised her hands and pointed to the stands. “But I’m about to introduce you all to some.”
36
SOFI
Sofi pointed up to the screen .
“Do you have that video ready, Ranger?” she heard her mom say.
“You know it, Mama CEO.”
“Play it.”
The next moment the face of i-reality star Nadine flashed across every tele in the Colinade. “Ever wonder what your Corps are up to behind the scenes?” Her smile flickered just as catty as ever. “Well, let me show you.”
Sofi turned toward her mom. “Mom—?”
“It’s fine. I’ll be fine.”
But it wasn’t fine. Something moved in Sofi’s mind. An image—a force—a feeling that jolted her nerves like electrical wires. She glanced up at Delon. It looked the same, but every neuron said the planet was shifting inside. She could sense it—as if it had assessed the data
regarding her hacking, and Ethos’s reading of the situation, and made a decision. Its system was gearing up. The thing was weaponizing.
An alarm began blaring in her head at the same moment she caught the look in Ethos’s eyes as he edged from the shadows, moving toward Inola with his wide, unblinking gaze. Ah, cripe. Stop him, Sof.
“Shi, see Ethos?”
“I’m coming.”
“No, just head off his tech options. I’ve got Mom and the others.” Maybe if she stopped Ethos, she’d stall the planet too.
“Mom and Nadine, get Matthers and head for Miguel,” she said aloud in the coms. “Miguel, can you grab them?” She looked around for the knife she’d used only to realize it was sitting back by the now nonexistent spider. Too far. “Don’t, Ethos,” Sofi said, using her mind to try to reach the alien telepathically.
If he heard her, he wasn’t listening. He was simply staring at her mother with a look that said, from one leader to another, he considered her betrayal of him the highest level of offense.
Sofi branched her thoughts out and felt around, as if pressing with one’s skin into the dark until it brushed against something that triggered goose bumps. In this case she mentally stretched for the closest Delonese technology she could control.
A spear.
On the sidelines twenty feet from Sofi, left by one of the gamers for Matthers. Keeping her gaze on Ethos, Sofi wrapped her thoughts around the weapon and flipped it up, then centered it thirty feet in the air above her, mentally holding it pointed upward at the Delonese lead ambassador.
“I’ll not say it again, Ethos. Don’t do this,” she said in her head again.
“Sofi, to your right!”
Ranger? She swung to see what he was yelling about in her earcom—
Another crossbow arrow. It skimmed her arm, then crumbled. Sofi winced.
“Sorry. It was only partly Delonese,” Shi said.
But Ethos’s hand was already moving. Sofi saw Miguel leap for him, but even from here she could see he’d be too late.
Sofi let her spear launch. And in her mind’s eye the pace was slow. Like swimming. At the same time her senses felt the ice-planet above prickle and react—an image flashing into mind of weapons being raised. The glittering piece of silver leaving Ethos’s hand suddenly curved a different direction. A closer direction.
It curved for her.
Sofi blinked, and out of the corner of her eye caught her mom’s expression.
Perhaps it was the glint in her mother’s gaze, or simply that she knew her mother’s heart far better than she’d ever realized—that the love inside the woman was the same love and blood that ran through Sofi and Shilo. Even if it’d not always been easy to find or well shown.
Sofi started to swerve.
Her mother stepped in front of her. Sofi reached out and shoved her mom away, only to see Shilo running to intercept.
While Sofi’d been watching Lord Ethos and the others, so had Shilo. And he’d already been on his way.
“No,” she said to him through her mind. “Don’t you dare—”
Sofi’s spear hit Ethos. She heard the thump into his chest—straight and true.
Followed by the faint sound of her brother’s cry beside her.
She glanced over to find blood pouring everywhere. On Shilo’s hands and knees as he went to catch his mom, his fingers already pressing in around where Ethos’s blade had buried into her chest. Ignoring the arrow that’d just swiped his calf. Their mother crumpled to the sand.
“Wait a minute, folks.” The announcer came on, interrupting Nadine’s vid. “What’s happening in the arena? What’s going on here?”
A second arrow swiped Sofi’s arm and landed in the dirt, barely missing her brother.
She looked over to find Ms. Gaines’s thugs—the ones who’d attacked her and Miguel back at his house three nights ago—standing beneath the overhang by an empty game room.
“Vic,” Miguel was yelling in the earcom, “I told my security to take those guys down. Why are they still—?”
“They did! Gaines must’ve had more in place.”
The lead was crouched with his arm still midair. Security was rushing in again, yanking them down. Others were going for Lord Ethos while even more headed for her. But it was too late.
She was too late. She had been a second too slow in shoving Inola aside. Her mom’s face widened as Sofi dropped to the ground beside her. Beneath Shilo’s shadow as he leaned over, saying, “Mom, no. Mom, please don’t go.”
But the blood kept flowing. Like flowers blooming in red patterns on her mother’s suit, only to drip, drip, drip to the sand and become rivulets around where her body fell.
The announcer kept blabbing. “We’re getting a report confirming what you and I are all seeing with our eyes! If you’re wondering if that’s Shilo Snow we’re seeing down there—in fact, it is! Back from the dead apparently. Inola’s own child stepped into the arena to protect his mother, but something appears to have gone horribly wrong. As you can see, he and his sister are both hovering on the ground with what looks like blood from possibly fatal wounds. The question is—were those wounds inflicted due to the plotting of her own children or—”
The vast crowd was screaming, rising from their seats and cabana couches and stepping into the fading sunlight. In excitement. In burgeoning awareness of what had just happened. The video above him had just been explaining who’d been behind the bombing—and they were ready for a fight.
Their voices picked up a united, supportive cry. “Shilo! Shilo! Shilo!”
But the look on her brother’s face said he’d stopped listening to anything but the slowing patter of their mother’s heartbeat.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick . . .
She was gone.
With Shilo bent over the body of the only mother they’d ever known.
Sofi gripped his chest and pulled him tight.
Shilo peered up and simply uttered, “Why?”
37
MIGUEL
The place broke into chaos. The crowds screaming— Their delighted thrills at the twists the event had taken were now turning to cries of betrayal and dissent. They’d seen what happened—and the teles were already giving split-screen slow-motion replays of a daughter and mother and son all running to save one another, as Nadine’s interview finished up in the background.
Cameras had caught Ethos flinging his blade—apparently forgetting that nothing was beneath the eye of technology. Even in a private cabana with the curtains mostly closed.
And that was enough for the anti-Delonese rioters.
Ethos’s tent was now surrounded by a swarm of security, fighting off a stampede of citizens. Except something told Miguel it was already too late. The spear’s aim had been true. The Delonese ambassador wouldn’t make it out of here alive.
Miguel turned to find Sofi in the arena, kneeling beside Shilo in the blood as the crowd picked up her and her family’s names.
He started for her, Sofi’s lashes fluttering as she slipped her hand around Shilo’s shoulder and held it there. Embracing her brother, who was too young for any of this.
Because at the end of it all—despite the years of rejection and pain—this was still their mother.
Miguel reached their side with no idea what to say—what to do—how to fix any of this.
So he did nothing except push away the officers and med personnel, asking them to give them room. Then kneeled and held her up as she held Shilo.
38
SOFI
Shilo was right—why? why to any of it?
Sofi’s arm tightened around her brother while he curled over and laid his head on Mom’s chest. This sweet, Earth-scented, sweaty twelve-year-old boy who was Sofi’s person—who’d belonged to her and she to him more than any other.
She felt his body shake as he began to weep uncontrollably. Then break into a hundred little-boy pieces. Because his question of “why” had been a bit more than his
young heart could understand.
Her throat swelled up and her chest went cold.
Until a movement beside her—and suddenly Miguel’s strong hands were on her shoulders. He said nothing. Just sat with her. And whatever it was inside that had always been fine, that had always needed to be fine—for Shi. For her mother. For herself—wasn’t fine anymore.
The space around her heart broke.
And then broke again. Over and over again, cracking wide open.
For this life and Shilo. For the memories and years of nightmares and visions that had nearly destroyed her. For the children who weren’t as lucky as they were—who’d been used and thrown away and no one would ever know their names. She wept for her past. For what had been. For what could’ve been.
For the dad they’d loved and lost. The mother they’d needed and hardly known. The half sister she couldn’t even remember.
Sofi wept for herself.
The person she’d tried to become when left on her own, and the boys and choices she’d used in hopes of becoming better. For the girl she’d been before Miguel’s silly rejection confirmed what her mother had always shown—that Sofi was never worthy enough.
Sofi wept because all the codes and data sequences and information streams in the world could not fix this.
She heard Hart’s voice bellowing somewhere over the chaos. And Ms. Gaines’s right behind him. The lower sections stampeding to leave. Or stay. Or join them on the rock slab scenery—she couldn’t tell. She didn’t care.
She hated them all as she sat there holding a brother she couldn’t help because she couldn’t even help herself.
Humanity. The Delonese. There was no difference between them. They all killed their own, and the only time they cared was when others did it to them. Ethos had been right.
You’re not finished yet.
She shut her eyes and let her heartbeat take over all sound. As if the only music worth hearing now was that of reality—the refrain of one life still surviving while another died for nothing more than political games.