by Natalie Grey
And all of her cooldowns had been used up on Harry’s fire. They would be coming back up in about a minute, but that was a long time in a duel.
She faced Thad down and narrowed her eyes. “I knew there was another reason you hadn’t left yet.”
“How does it feel?” Thad’s tone was tight. He feinted left, then followed her when she dodged right, slamming his shield against hers. His character’s face was almost more frightening given its utter blankness. “To know you’re outmatched, to know your opponent has an impossible advantage?”
“Tell me one goddamned time you knew that,” Gracie spat back. Rather than back away, she threw a stun at him and a heavy blow with her axe, then slid into the darkness. Her team scattered behind her. “You went into the last Month First with inside information and your own gear. You have all your expenses paid for you. You train in a high-end facility. Tell me you ever went into a matchup with me where you didn’t have the advantage.” Fury was making her breath come short. “Like right now—waiting until I was almost dead and then striking.”
Something cold resolved in her chest. She was not going to die here. Not like this.
Not to Thad.
Like hell would he take this from her.
Across the hallway, she saw Jamie give her a nod. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to.
Gracie began to dance. She rushed Thad and slid sideways at the last moment. She kited him. She ducked under his swings and stunned him when he tried to follow her. She was always moving, never still, never in range. It was intense, and she was already coated with sweat, but she shoved that to the back of her mind.
Who you are is best defined by what you do when you think you have nothing left.
Thad, driven to react rather than push his offensive, began to lose his temper. He got her once, a strike that took hit points she didn’t have to lose, but he wasn’t as fast as she was, and he wasn’t as used to fighting without a team.
Gracie had done this before. He hadn’t.
“You know how this ends,” Gracie said. “Cancel the challenge, and you get to stay in the game. Keep going, and you’ll be gone forever.”
“Oh, I’m not losing this one.” Thad’s tone was triumphant. “You know time’s up for you, and you’re trying to bargain. There’s nothing you can offer me.”
“I’m not trying to bargain,” Gracie said. She slashed at him, attacked, and—when he waited for her to slide away—kept the attack going with a shield bash. “I’m trying to save something that’s important to you. What quarrel do we really have with one another?”
Other than the fact that he was a douche canoe, of course.
“You made me look like a fool,” Thad hissed. He had recovered from the shield bash, and he threw his shield at her but missed. He was so assured of his win that he didn’t seem to care.
“If you wanted to play a competition-based game without ever losing, you set yourself up for failure,” Gracie informed him. “Everyone loses sometimes.”
“Like you. Right now.” Thad attacked with a feral smile.
But Gracie’s cooldowns were back up. She sank into a crouch, each hit giving her health as her first timer counted down. Then the time was up and she set her other two in motion, increasing her block chance and absorbing damage. She went on the offensive, hitting with her shield, blocking his strikes with her axe, ducking out of the way, and dancing back in for a strike.
She didn’t have to fight the whole battle right now, after all. She just had to be a little better in this one encounter—a little faster, a little stronger. She just had to come out of this encounter better off, and the next one, and the next one. She had to trust her instincts to keep her away from the traps he was trying to maneuver her into. As long as it took, she would do it. She wouldn’t throw her entire time in this game away for one useless strike.
And the tide began to turn.
How long it took for Thad to realize it, she didn’t know, but he began to get sloppier. He was running, backing away down the hallway. It was sinking in, the truth of what he’d done.
And the possibility of failure.
“Cancel. The challenge.” Gracie followed him, her ultimate flashing to let her know it was ready. “You can still walk away from this. Cancel it.”
“Fuck. You,” Thad spat back. “Fuck you, you self-important bitch.”
Gracie yelled her anger. She didn’t want to be the person who banned him, so she didn’t.
But she couldn’t cancel it, she could only concede, and like hell was she going to do that.
He was the one who’d made it zero-sum, not her.
She unleashed her ultimate and watched as his body thudded to the ground.
Cheers came to her ears, and she turned to look at the rest of them.
“The others?” she asked.
“Not willing to die for Thad,” Jamie said. “They all logged out.”
Several top-tier heals hit her the next second, and Jamie and Alan said in unison, “Just in case.”
Gracie laughed, then the shaking started. She stared down at Thad’s body and felt her chin trembling, then her gaze went to Harry’s body, small and still.
“It’s done,” Alex said from her shoulder. She leaned against him, then realized he must have come up to her in the real world as well. They all had; her entire team crowded around her, and Gracie broke down as they held her up. Some of them had glitched out of their VR areas and their characters were shimmering in midair, but she felt them join the giant group hug.
It was over. It didn’t seem real, but it was over.
The game could finally face a new dawn.
Finally, she pulled away and wiped her face. “You know the ridiculous thing?”
“What?” Jay took her hand, both in the real world and in Metamorphosis.
“No one knows,” Gracie said. “Almost no one has any idea this happened.”
“I’ve always thought that’s how most of the great battles are fought,” Ushanas said. “A small group risking everything, and everyone else blissfully unaware. Makes you wonder how often it happens.”
Gracie looked around herself. “So, what do we do now?”
Someone cleared their throat, and they looked around to see Yaro standing there. His bow was very courtly.
“Might I suggest you get some sleep?”
They all exchanged looks.
“And then we have a party,” Dhruv said. “Obviously.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
When Gracie woke up the next morning, Jay was snoring gently on the bed, one arm flung out. They had gotten back to the hotel too tired to do anything except stare at the ceiling and fall almost instantly into a deep sleep.
Judging by the state of things, she had forgotten to brush her teeth.
She took a long shower, brushed her teeth more than once, and came out to find Jay still dead to the world. Her stomach, however, was anything but dead, and it informed her that it wanted to be fed now.
When she got downstairs, only Jamie was there. Gracie paused at the edge of the buffet area and watching him push eggs around on his plate. Finally, she gave up trying to divine what it was and walked over. He jumped when she pulled out a chair and sat, and gave her a vaguely hunted look.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Gracie asked him. “Or is that the last thing you want to do?”
He swallowed. “I did something dumb.”
She frowned. “Look, if this is about what you told Thad, I get why you did it. I’m not mad. Harry was cheating, and Thad certainly took advantage. If you fight people like that head-on, you get steamrolled, and then they take over.”
“Not that.” Jamie sounded almost sick. He leaned his head into his hands. “Oh, God.”
Now Gracie was actually concerned. She leaned forward and reached out to touch his arm lightly. “Jamie? Are you okay? Is something wrong?”
He started to laugh while shaking his head. “It’s stupid, and it’s nothing important, I’m jus
t… I don’t know how to deal.”
“Okay.” Gracie made a decision. “How about this? I’ll go get some food, you figure out if you want to talk about it right now, and if you don’t, we’ll just have a lazy breakfast and then go for a walk or something.”
He gave her a grateful smile and nodded wordlessly.
At the buffet, she piled her plate with eggs and bacon and chowed down on a yogurt while her bagel toasted. Armed with all the fixings for an epic breakfast sandwich, she headed back to the table and began assembling it, assiduously not looking at Jamie while she did so.
She was just trying to figure out how to take a bite of the damned thing when he blurted, “I think I’m in love.”
Gracie put the sandwich down. “That’s so sweet!”
“No!” Jamie looked panicked. “It’s not!”
Gracie blinked as she tried to parse this. “Uh…is she underage?” she asked delicately. “Oh, God. She’s human, right? Tell me she’s not a pillow.”
Jamie sank his head into one hand. “She’s not a pillow.” At the raised eyebrow, he threw up his hands. “She’s not underage, either, Jesus. She’s also…” Gracie made a faint anxious sound, “not a she.”
It took Gracie way longer than it should have to put it together. “Huh,” she said and picked up her egg sandwich again. “I mean, I’m sorry. I guess I just assumed you were straight.” She took a bite, mostly for something to do.
“So did I,” Jamie said in a very small voice.
That was when it clicked. Gracie choked on her sandwich, dropped it, and stared at him with a mouthful of egg and sausage. “Ke-then?”
“Shut up,” Jamie hissed, looked around desperately, as though he would be found out. He waved his hand. “Don’t tell anyone. Oh, God.”
Gracie clapped a hand over her mouth as she stared at him. It all made sense now—the way he would laugh and joke and get so invested in the conversation, then look totally blindsided and unsure of himself. The way he hadn’t wanted to tell anyone what was going on.
“Oh,” she said finally. She took his hand. “How are you doing?”
“Not great,” Jamie said. “My parents are gonna lose their shit. I mean, probably not. I just… A lot of stuff makes sense right now that I kind of wish didn’t? And, like…oh, God.” He dropped his head onto his arms. “He’s perfect,” he said, his voice muffled. “You’ve seen him now. He’s perfect. He has everything.”
“Does he?” Gracie asked gently. “Because I don’t think he’s dating anyone, and I know he’s trying, so it’s not like he wants to be single. And he talks a lot of shit about being a disappointment to his parents, but from my own experience, that’s the sort of thing that isn’t exactly easy. And…” She weighed whether to say this, then shrugged and gave up. “You’ve seen how he looks at you, right?”
Jamie’s head came up. “Really?”
“Really,” Gracie said. She hunched her shoulders. “If you want my take, I’d say he would never make a move while you were staying with him because he’d feel like it was creepy. You know, you didn’t realize you were gay—or bi, or whatever—and you didn’t have anywhere else to go. But you make him laugh. He’s been happier in the past couple of weeks than I’ve seen him before.”
She let go of his hand and took another bite, looking away to let him process this in relative privacy.
“I’m still kind of shell-shocked,” Jamie said finally. “Is there a word for when you just always assumed you were one thing and then you realized you weren’t, and all of a sudden a lot of dots start connecting?”
Gracie gave him a commiserating look. “There definitely should be.” She sighed. “Look, this is more complicated than Jay and me. I get that. I think it’s always terrifying to tell someone you’re into them.”
“I feel like I shouldn’t tell him,” Jamie said in a small voice. “Until I know…what I am.”
“Hot take,” Gracie said, putting her sandwich down. “Does it matter?”
Jamie stared at her.
“Okay, you’ve now mixed those eggs and ketchup into a paste and it’s really grossing me out.” She put a napkin over his plate. “Where was I? Right. Look, you know you like Kevin, right?”
Jamie looked faintly like a deer in the headlights but he nodded.
“Maybe that’s all you need to figure out right now,” Gracie said and shrugged. “As long as you’re honest with him…”
Jamie had stopped paying attention. He was looking across the room to where Kevin had just emerged from the elevator bank and now looked a bit queasy.
“Should I go?” Gracie asked delicately. “Or would you rather I stay?”
“I don’t know yet,” Jamie said, looking at her with mute appeal.
Gracie smiled and took a sip of her coffee.
It was going to be an interesting few days.
That day was a lazy affair, punctuated by people slithering out of bed at intervals, lying next to the pool, and winding up draped over the couches in the main suite. Chowder straight-up bought a coffee maker for the group, along with several boxes of pastries, and people lay around talking, laughing, and—in Jamie’s case—studiously not looking at Kevin.
Gracie tried to keep from looking at Jamie. If she did, she knew her face would be a picture, and then she’d have to explain it to Jay, and she wanted to give Jamie time to figure it out for himself.
“Well,” Chowder said, sometime around dinner, “what do you all say I get some pizzas and we bring that tequila out again?”
There were some cheers.
“I’d wait a few moments on the alcohol,” said a new voice. Everyone turned to see Dan and Dhruv, as well as Sam.
Gracie felt exhausted suddenly. This had been such a good day, not worrying about the game, but now she was worried all over again.
“We have an offer to make,” Dan said, “and I think it would be best if we at least presented it while you were all sober.”
Gracie looked at Jay, who shrugged. Whatever this was, he didn’t know about it. She looked back and found the rest of the team staring at her, so she nodded to Dan and Dhruv.
“All right.”
Dan came to lean against the window, apparently unconcerned about the steep drop behind him. “Very well. As I think you all know by now, Gracie’s quest was created without our knowledge and has boosted her ranking in ways we cannot control. We believe that she, however, can.”
Gracie swallowed. She wasn’t sure she liked where this was going.
Dhruv picked up. “One of our main mechanics in the game is that we pay the people in the top-ranked spots. Everyone in Red Squadron has experienced a boost that they otherwise would not have had. While this is technically a game mechanic, it is also something most players do not have access to.”
Gracie folded her hands in her lap. Jay’s eyes were narrowed, and Alex was chewing on his lip.
“We would like to make an exchange,” Dan said finally. He had his businessman smile on, which didn’t necessarily make things better. “Right now, you receive considerable compensation for your rankings. We would like to increase that by offering you employment at Dragon Soul.”
“You would still have a place in the game,” Dhruv said, “but not in the rankings. Like our other GMs, you would resolve player problems and give us feedback on how the game might be improved.”
“We’ve researched.” Dan looked around at all of them. “If you don’t want to be GMs, all of you have skills we can use as Dragon Soul expands. We need accountants, software developers, department coordinators…” He waved his hands. “Relocation costs could be negotiated as necessary.”
“Why are you offering this?” Gracie asked bluntly. To her surprise, tears were stinging her eyes, although she didn’t know why. She was almost angry.
Dan took his time before answering. “We have heard a lot recently,” he said finally, “about fairness.” He gave Jay a wry smile. “And about people loving the game, and doing what they did because they wanted
to protect it. We have to look out for what’s best for all of our players, and having a bug in the rankings isn’t best for them. But we’ve seen how much every one of you cares—for each other and for the game. Gracie spoke to us about what the game meant to all of you, which is something we had lost sight of over the years.”
“We could use you on the team.” Dhruv didn’t have a way with words, Gracie reflected, but he was very to the point, and there were worse things. “We knew Gracie would never agree to take you all out of the rankings unless you got something in return.” He smiled at all of them, and then at Gracie. “So we thought about what she would want for her team.”
Gracie swallowed hard. “That’s nice, but it’s not just my call.”
“Proposal,” Chowder said. “We have a few days to decide. All of us. One way or another.” He looked around at people. “I know I wouldn’t mind heading out here. I don’t have much going on in San Fran.”
Alex looked at Sydney, and Gracie’s heart squeezed.
“Chowder has a good idea,” she said to everyone. “And not everyone would have to relocate, either, even if they took the offer—right?”
“Right.” Dan nodded.
“We’ll think about it,” Gracie said.
Both men hesitated, then nodded and left quietly.
In the silence that followed, everyone looked around. Gracie crossed her arms over her chest.
“Jay? You’re the only one who actually works there.”
“Drinks first,” Lakhesis interrupted, “decisions later.”
“Nope,” Gracie said, uncompromising. “Facts, then drinking, then decisions. Well…drinking, then hangovers, then recovery, then decisions.”
“I’ll be around to answer specific questions,” Jay said, “but I think you should consider it. It’s a pretty good team.”
“Anything else we should all think about?” Gracie asked. When everyone looked at her blankly, she laughed. “Okay, it’s a big decision. Chowder’s right: let’s hang out and decompress, and we’ll take some time to decide. Chowder, pop that bottle.”