My jaw clenched. “If this is about the Taoist thing, just leave it alone.”
He turned to me then, sitting cross-legged, so he faced my profile. “Look, I only mention it because I’m interested.”
“You mean because you’re nosy.”
“No. Because I’m interested,” he stressed.
I glanced at him. He stared back, expressionless, like a blank slate. Like he really was just interested in what I’d say.
“I just don’t practice it anymore.”
“Why?”
“It doesn’t have a place in my life now. I’m in the sport of the future, and I believe in the philosophies of the past?”
He blinked. “Isn’t that what a yin yang represents?”
Smart-ass.
“My father taught it to me as a child, okay? I really admired my dad as a kid. I tried to do everything like him. But living in America and practicing Taoism, it’s just . . .”
My words trailed off as a knot formed in my throat. As if growing up half and half wasn’t hard enough at times. But then, add in anything that made me non-American? Forget about it. Maybe as a kid I didn’t care, but as a teen—no way was I keeping Taoism in my life. Try being different in high school. Noticeably, physically different. To everyone. My friends just didn’t understand even when they tried, let alone the bullies who seized every opportunity to point out the color of my skin or shape of my eyes—until I’d punch them in the mouth.
Is that American enough for you?
“You know what most people think of meditation?” I began, my voice higher and shakier than intended. “That it’s New Age mysticism. That it’s magical bullshit. They don’t realize it’s as old and sacred as prayer.”
I met his eyes then, and we just stared at each other for a while. His expression went hard until he was all jaw and cheekbones. But his eyes looked distant, foreign, as if he’d just peeked at the world through mine, and it was a place brimming with shadows and hate.
“People are stupid,” he finally said. “But not being yourself because of their ignorance is worse.”
My lips split apart, and my insides went cold. He was wrong. So very wrong. In this life, no one was themselves. We were whoever the media and the masses decided we were. In this world, so plastic and fake, what did it matter, anyway?
“If your beliefs came from your father,” Rooke began, eyeing my pendant again, “is the necklace from him, too?”
I glanced down it. The golden pendant shimmered in sunlight, reflecting the brilliance of the sky above us. There were no engravings marking the necklace, front or back. He wouldn’t know.
I tucked it in my shirt.
Rooke looked me over, but didn’t push it further. Hmm. Arrogant but intelligent. Point for him.
One point.
Rooke turned his attention back to the sky. “I’ll admit I have an ulterior motive—”
“Here we go.”
“I got into Asian philosophy when I started studying martial arts, but I’ve never had someone to talk to about it.” He glanced at me. “I was kinda hoping you were it.”
Given the recent deluge of books at my door, I wasn’t that surprised by this little admission. But reading Asian philosophy and playing virtual golf for fun? This guy was as interesting as my grandfather.
“Not all Chinese people care about philosophy,” I told him.
“They’re not all Taoists, either. I know.”
I drew a deep breath, one that came from my belly.
“I’d be open for discussions,” I began, “if you’re really that desperate.”
He opened his mouth, and I held up a hand.
“Not now. This is about as much coolness as I can handle for one night.”
“Can I ask something else instead?”
“No.”
“You said you’re only half-Chinese.”
I blinked. “That’s not a question.”
“You said no.”
A scoff stifled the laughter rumbling in my chest. This guy was a pro at getting to me, in a good way.
A good way?
Finally, I sighed.
“My mother’s American,” I told him. “My father immigrated here as a teenager and enrolled in the same high school as Mom. Mom said she just couldn’t resist helping the cute, foreign boy with his English.”
“And did she?”
“No. Dad spoke English better than she did. But,” I stressed, “that didn’t stop him from pretending he didn’t speak English just to keep her attention.” I winked at him.
Rooke made a sound at the back of his throat, like he was trying to stifle laughter—if he was even capable. “So, what do they do?”
“They’re both in engineering. They own a firm back home in San Diego.”
“Do they watch the tournaments?”
“Not really. They’re not much for violence, even if it is all virtual. Do yours?”
He nodded. “Yeah. They watch, back home.”
“Which is where?”
“Never mind.”
He grinned one of those grins that stretches from ear to ear. An honest-to-God, wholesome grin. I think it was the first time I’d genuinely seen him smile. Oh, now I had to get it out of him. I nudged his shoulder, hoping to coax out this suddenly playful side of him. “Tell me.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“You’ll laugh.”
I gave him an incredulous look. “Oh, no. It’s one of the square states, isn’t it? Which one? Wyoming? Nebraska?” I cringed. “Utah?”
“Canada.”
CANADA? I pressed my lips together, as if it would restrain my giggles. It didn’t. I snickered through my nose and had to slap a hand over my mouth to contain the rest.
He frowned. “I told you.”
I giggled more, wiping my eyes. “So, are you from the whole country, or . . .”
He frowned some more. “I’m from Vancouver, okay?”
“Aren’t there pro tournaments in Canada?”
“Yeah, but not like here.”
“What do you mean? What’s different?”
“It just is,” he snapped, and looked away.
The shimmering mirage of a friendly Rooke faded in an instant. Like the illusion in the desert, apparently I’d gotten too close.
So, leaving home was a sore spot for him. I tucked it away for future consideration. Maybe I’d be able to use it at some point. To my advantage.
If Rooke hadn’t snapped, I wouldn’t have thought twice about his reason for coming here. Most gamers came to Los Angeles to play. This was the home of the championships. Sure, people played in their own states and countries. They could plug in and join from anywhere in the world. But this was L.A. This was Hollywood. If you wanted to be noticed, you had to be here.
I turned away and gave him space. Usually, I might have enjoyed pissing him off, but he’d given me an ounce of respect regarding my necklace. If I paid it back now, I wouldn’t owe him anything more.
I looked back over the facility again, counting the insects scurrying through the tunnels. In the background, the sun glistened in the sky just over the horizon, highlighting the thousands of vehicles driving themselves through the streets. The warm, morning breeze picked up, pricking at my skin, but stopped suddenly, as if even it couldn’t cut through the tension in the air between us.
“I suppose L.A. is the best place to be if you want to go as far as you can,” I tried, “especially in the RAGE tournaments.”
Nothing.
No response. Not even a nod. Okay. I tried. This was over. I threw one last glance out at the city and started to push myself up when he spoke.
“Sorry about your friend.”
His tone was hard and unemotional, and he kept his gaze fixed on the sky, but at least he w
as talking and trying to keep things civil.
I lowered my butt to the roof. “What?”
“Your teammate. The one who died.”
Nathan. My stomach sank, and I let a slow breath pass between my lips, hoping Rooke wouldn’t notice.
“Were you close?” he asked.
What was I supposed to say to that? Tell this guy I was screwing Nathan when we weren’t even dating? No. That didn’t match my image.
I clicked my fingernails against the roof as I searched for an answer and eventually settled on a neutral one.
“Close enough.”
“Will there be a memorial for him?”
I scoffed. “Didn’t you just hear what Clarence said about the whole thing? The sponsors will never go for that. Can’t do anything that might upset the perfect world of gaming. People might realize it’s as fake as the worlds we fight in.”
Rooke stared at me for a minute. Maybe it was the first he’d known of it. Sure, there were whispers in the amateur tournaments. Gamers still lost their marbles at that level, too. Not as often, given they didn’t put in the same number of hours or deal with the same level of stress. Looked like Rooke was unaware of the dark side of virtual gaming.
Finally, he blinked and shook his head.
“You know, the original gladiators fought for honor.” He waved a hand out at the facility. “Is this honor?”
I smiled at the error in his words. “The original gladiators were slaves and forced to fight. We’re not slaves.”
“You signed a contract, didn’t you?” He met my eyes, and that dark stare pierced through mine. My stomach turned, though I wasn’t sure if it was because of the weight of his words or the weight of his stare.
“Were you surprised when Clarence named you captain?” he asked.
My stomach turned again. Definitely the weight of his words.
“A little, yeah. Knowing him, it’s just some marketing scheme.”
“So you don’t really care?”
I gnashed my teeth together and pushed down the burning sensation in my stomach.
“Yes,” I strained. “I do care.”
He didn’t say anything more. It was silent again for several more minutes before I decided I was done.
“Well, I’m heading in. You?”
“No. Think I’ll sit out for a while.”
“All right. See you in the training room.”
He nodded, though he kept his attention on the cityscape. I walked away. A foot from the door, he called out to me.
“Aren’t you going to kiss me good-bye?”
I missed a step and stumbled into the door. After steadying myself, I glanced back at him. “Not even if I got that million dollars myself.”
“Some guy could put his kids through college, you know.”
“Yeah, and not much else.”
“Still, you could give someone a chance at a better life,” he continued. “Seven figures is a lot of money to some people. You don’t know what kind of impact it could have on another person—”
I left the roof and closed the door on his words. There was no point to returning to the cafeteria now, and I still had half an hour before I had to meet the team in the training room. With all the bullshit of the morning, I was left craving one thing, and it wasn’t coffee.
I followed the hallway to the pod room. My new programmer sat at her workstation, typing on the screen. She smiled as I walked up to her.
“Hey, Kali.”
What was her name? Elise. It was Elise.
“Hey. Do you think you could plug me in?”
“Really? It’s early.”
I faltered for a second.
“Uh, I know. I just . . . I need some extra practice.”
She shrugged. “Okay. Sure.”
She tapped a few buttons on the screen. The pod doors opened, and I climbed in as they closed around me. In the darkness, alone, I smiled to myself. In here, there were no flashing cameras. No tabloids. No fake relationship. The virtual world was becoming even more real than this place.
The wires crawled across my skin, sending little jolts of anticipation running through me. I took a breath, pressed back against the pod, and disappeared into the place where there were no magazines, or sponsors, or bullshit. The place where anything was possible.
The place where I was a god.
CHAPTER 10
“Team Defiance really took a beating last night. It’s a wonder they survived.”
I sat on my bed watching the VGL’s Sunday Morning Highlights on my tablet. During our latest Saturday night matchup, Lily and Hannah had bit the virtual death. By some miracle, Rooke and I managed to hold on to our tower, and Derek had taken the enemy’s by himself.
“What was once the heavy favorite to win the tournament is now just barely scraping by in the losers’ bracket.”
“Looks like Kali Ling should be focusing more on her team than her love life.”
I pulled the covers over my head and groaned. The week had been a disaster.
I wasn’t sleeping. The team was still fighting. If it wasn’t Hannah and Derek in the training room, then it was me and Rooke in the pod room. Despite our talk on the roof and daily exchange of books, we still hadn’t broken through the differences between us—namely his arrogance and my stubbornness. Luckily, there hadn’t been any new injuries, but Lily still limped around on her ankle, and Rooke gripped his stomach and grimaced when he thought no one was watching.
I looked over my tablet again, reading the names of the teams still left in the tournament. In the winners’ bracket sat InvictUS, their name glowing in red as if the computer itself was trying to make them even more ominous. They’d crushed every opponent the tournament could throw at them. They kept winning. If, somehow, we kept winning, eventually our paths would cross.
And explode.
Every week was another step up, a harder fight, as the weaker teams got knocked out of the tournament. If I couldn’t get the team working together soon, InvictUS would be the least of my worries. So when the third round of the tournament was announced on Monday morning, and I had our opponents for the week, something solidified within me. I hadn’t fought my way into the pros just to be out in a few rounds. We had the skills to be one of the best teams in the league. It was my fault that we weren’t. Having to switch in a new player right before the start of the tournament hadn’t helped, but I was the one who was supposed to make us into a team again.
Inside my bathroom, I propped my tablet up on a few towels and watched our opponent, QuickZero, in their preseason fights as I dried my hair and brushed my teeth. We had five days to cream them in the arena.
When I turned to leave my bunk, and the door slid open, I halted at a sight I never expected to see.
Nothing.
No book sat waiting for me outside my door. My heart sank. If there was one thing Rooke and I had in common outside the game, it was those books. Maybe we’d had one fight too many, or something I said had really pissed him off. Whatever the reason, the sticky-note battle was over, and possibly our only chance at rapprochement. I chewed my bottom lip and sighed. For the first time in my entire life, winning a game didn’t taste so sweet.
Whatever. I’d have to find another way to make things work with him. With the entire team, really. And I’d have to coordinate a plan for our opponents this week. Something that didn’t result in our fighting each other or nearly wiping out.
Nose pressed to my tablet, I walked into the cafeteria and groped around the counter for the coffeepot, and landed on a hard, thick cover instead.
You have got to be kidding me.
In front of the coffeepot sat The Inner Chapters waiting for me. Sticky note? Of course.
In his teachings, Chuang Tzu often refers to wandering in a world beyond life or death. Could the virtual world constitu
te such a place?
Shut. The. Front. Door.
Rooke was comparing Taoist philosophy to the virtual world? Wow, what a hell of a way to get my attention. In all my years of reading Taoist texts and playing video games, I’d never thought of one in comparison to the other. Interesting. Even better, it looked like he hadn’t given up on figuring out our differences. But he’d tapped my competitive side now. Did he really think he could beat me at video games or Taoist references, let alone both together?
I tucked the book under my arm and filled a mug until it was brimming with the good stuff. In the lunchroom, Rooke sat alone at the end of the table. He glanced up from his breakfast, noticed the book in my arms, and grinned.
“How’s your coffee?” he asked.
I narrowed my eyes at him.
Oh, it’s on, recruit.
It’s on like Donkey Kong.
Before morning practice, I snuck back into my room and scribbled a reply on a sticky note.
The virtual world is not beyond life and death.
You always wake up, eventually.
It goes hand in hand with reality.
Isn’t THAT what a yin yang represents?
I walked briskly through the halls to the pod room. Elise glanced at me when I entered.
“Plugging in again?” she asked.
I waved her off. I didn’t plug in that much. I scurried over to Rooke’s pod, entered a command on the screen to open the doors, and left the book inside before they shut again. I winked at Elise as I headed back out of the room.
“I wasn’t here.”
She watched me go with a furrowed brow but didn’t protest.
In the training room, I continued to watch my tablet on breaks, trying to learn everything I could about our opponents. QuickZero had four decent players plus one seven-foot ogre who made the members of InvictUS look like gnomes. He wielded an axe the size of me, sending people flying into the walls with sickening smacks. His swings, while powerful, were slow, almost labored.
I looked up and scanned the training room until I spotted Lily climbing off the treadmill. No one seemed to pick a fight with her, and she was too laid-back and quiet to go looking for one herself. Maybe centering this week’s matchup around her would work. I waved her over.
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