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  Rogan laughed as Ranger unleashed a wicked side kick from a series of preprogrammed combat moves. He felt his foot connect with the wall, watched the bricks fly away, opening a hole in the building he was standing in fourteen stories up. He backed up to the other side of the room, tossing away the smoking remains of a desk he’d laser-blasted. By now, the surprised or delighted outbursts from the rest of his fireteam had died down, and he imagined they were all, like him, getting serious about figuring out how to function as laser vipers with this new system. This was important business, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t have fun.

  Rogan always felt more himself, more free, when he logged into a game or other parts of digi-space. But with the realism of these game suits and the arena, he was more alive than ever.

  With his Ranger’s recent upgrade to level-six armor, the lightest class of Energy Absorption-Transformation (EAT) armor available, and with both NLEP and CHEL emitters on either arm, he was one of the most powerful laser vipers in the game. Ranger wasn’t as big and bulky as Tank or Engineer, but wasn’t as light as Flyer or Healer—a sleek blue and silver, more streamlined, all-robot version of Halo’s Master Chief.

  So far, everything had worked even better than Rogan had expected, but he hadn’t yet tested his other latest upgrades. He looked out over the ruined city through the hole he’d busted in the wall—there would never be a better time. He sprinted forward and leapt out of the building, loving the completely real feeling of the fall. His onboard sensors picked out a number of targets ahead of him—he tucked his thumb inside his fist, squeezed, and his grappling cable launched. The end of the cable hooked onto a building down the street, and Rogan descended into a perfect, graceful swing. He felt the fall, the slight increase in tension on his arm at the bottom of the swing, the sensation of being weightless as he soared up into the air again. Another cable fired. Connection. Another swing. Rogan had played a Spider-Man game before, and he’d become pretty good at web-slinging, but that game was child’s play compared to this.

  He scream-laughed as he tucked into an awesome aerial flip at the top of a high swing. Rogan swung over the rubble of ruined streets, practicing firing his various weapons in the air. His scanning and targeting systems helped out a lot, stabilizing his arm and his aim. As bright ruby-red lasers exploded into the ground below him, he thought about all the years he’d been gaming and how much he’d played Laser Viper in particular, practicing to become the best ranger, working hard to level up and score upgrades. He felt as if all that had culminated in this moment, and as he launched into another swing, he felt more prepared than ever.

  Beckett loved the feeling of power as he thudded down the street in a fast jog to test Tank’s speed, his heavy feet shaking the pavement with each hard step. He leaned down and swung one massive robot arm to backhand a small sedan, sending the car flying out of his way.

  He was a max-level tank with level-twelve EAT armor, heavy enough to stop bullets as large as .50 caliber. NLEPs couldn’t hurt him, and he was resistant to EMP weapons. Every upgrade he’d earned had increased the size and strength of his armor. He could stay in any firefight longer than the others, absorbing a huge portion of the energy fired at him, channeling it to one of several glowing green energon cells throughout his body to convert the power for his own use. On both arms he packed NLEPs, DEMPs, CHELs, and plasma cannons, the latter weapons strong enough to blast heavily armored vehicles. Weapons pods could fold out of his shoulders, with three Hellfire missiles ready in each. All Tanks had bulkier backs, housing extra quadithium batteries to power their weapons, but Beckett was also equipped with one medium-range, high-explosive, avenger-class cruise missile. He packed an arsenal. He was a devastatingly powerful walking weapons platform.

  Beckett wasn’t like Flyer. He wasn’t about to blather away to the others about every little thing he did. It was better if they didn’t know all about Tank’s capabilities. When the time came for him to show what he had, he would come out hard, surprising them all and playing to win. No mercy. He punched through the side of a parked delivery truck, gripping the metal hull in either hand and peeling it back like a candy bar wrapper.

  Takashi Endo wouldn’t have admitted it to anyone, but he was a little bored. He kicked a half-flat basketball down the street as he followed Tank. Healer’s primary function was repairing other vipers, and Tank seemed like the best bet for finding him damaged units.

  “Why are you following me?!” Beckett called as he threw a motorcycle through an abandoned restaurant. Takashi laughed.

  Healer vipers were easily the quickest and stealthiest of the viper mods—they needed to be so in order to reach their team members in any situation, fast, no matter the danger. They were armed with an NLEP too, and while they didn’t pack a lot of bulk, it was what was on the inside that counted. Takashi’s red max-level Healer was filled with interior compartments containing critical spare parts for other vipers as well as specialized tools to repair them. Within his body, he carried extra power cells to restore vipers that had exhausted their own energy supply. In absolute emergencies, Takashi could disconnect his Healer’s own limbs and install them on others. No laser viper teams ever took on missions without a Healer.

  Beckett didn’t seem to grasp the importance of viper repair support.

  “I’m a Healer,” Takashi said. Duh.

  “You’re weak,” Beckett said.

  “I can’t test my repair abilities in this training round with no damaged vipers to fix.”

  “How ’bout I blast you? Can you fix yourself ?”

  “Why are you so mad?” Takashi asked. This guy was really something.

  “I get it,” said Beckett. “You’re supposed to fix vipers and keep the fireteam going.”

  “Yeah!” Healer said. “It’s pretty cool, and—”

  “It’s pathetic!” Beckett shouted. “I’m not mad. I’m just here to win, not to play nice and make friends.” Beckett opened up with both CHELs, full power, cutting into the stone front of a bank and then slicing through the steel I beams in the shell of a building like a hot knife through a block of ice cream. The building collapsed behind him. “You cowards use me as a shield, there’s nothing I can do about that, but I’m not going out of my way to protect or fight for you or the rest of the team.”

  “Okayyy … maybe I won’t go out of my way to fix you if you’re damaged,” Takashi chuckled.

  Beckett laughed back. “You’re learning, dude! But you don’t gotta worry about that. I’m a max-level Tank. I won’t need help.”

  A pair of small explosions lit up the intersection ahead at the cross street. A steel cable lashed out and grabbed the high corner of a building, Ranger swinging behind it. Takashi watched him swing. He looked cool enough soaring from cable to cable like that, but sooner or later, something would go wrong, and Ranger would need serious repairs.

  Tank seemed to be reading Takashi’s mind. He leaned forward and opened the missile compartment in his back.

  “What are you doing?” Takashi asked. “He must be a hundred feet up!”

  “You want me to shoot you with this thing instead?” Beckett replied. “Anyway, X said nobody could really get hurt in the game, so he’ll be fine. He just needs to learn who’s best in this tournament.” Beckett fired the cruise missile. It roared away, trailing white smoke. An instant later the top quarter of a building exploded.

  “Whoa!” Ranger yelled as his cable disconnected and he fell out of control. “Who’s shooting?!”

  Takashi watched the falling Ranger desperately fire his grappling cable, catching himself before he crashed into a wrecked city bus. He was relieved Ranger had avoided full impact, because digital simulation or not, it looked like crashing full speed into the ground could hurt.

  But on the other hand, Takashi was happy to have a chance to do what he did best. He moved instantly, running full speed toward the chaos to help Ranger. Finally a chance to get to work.

  “Ranger! I’m on my way!” he called out.r />
  But Ranger had used his cables to catch himself and slow his fall before he hit the bus, and he walked out of the broken vehicle with only a few scratches.

  “Not bad, Ro!” Flyer swept down toward them out of the gray sky above. She whipped her hands out in front of her and flew to a hovering halt about twenty feet off the ground. “Bet you wish you could fly.”

  Ranger disengaged the cable and dropped smoothly to the ground. “I can fly. This game is awesome and I am awesome at it.” He shook his head. “I only wish I knew what just happened back there.”

  Engineer and Tank entered the intersection. “I saw it,” said Engineer. “Tank blasted the building with his cruise missile.”

  “What?” Flyer said. “This is a training round, Tank, not a melee.”

  Tank held up his big robot hands. “I had to test the missile! Why you whining about it? He’s fine.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Ranger. “Even if he was trying to take me out, he couldn’t. I’m fine.”

  “I guess that’s good,” Takashi said. “But I’m Healer, and I can’t really test my viper repair abilities when nobody’s been damaged.”

  Tank held out his big arms toward Ranger and, in seconds, fired three DEMPs before unleashing a full barrage of CHEL and plasma bursts to tear the viper up. With his EAT armor fried by the DEMPs, Ranger’s chest superheated and ruptured. His arms were blasted clean off, and the wreckage of his body was thrown back against a wall.

  Ranger let out one short scream. He hit the street hard, the V-shaped line of his visual sensor barely glowing blue.

  “What are you doing, idiot?!” Flyer shouted.

  “Don’t be such a baby.” Tank shrugged. “Healer needed to practice healing.”

  Takashi knelt down next to Ranger’s torn-up body. “Um. I can fix that.”

  Time’s up, gamers,” X said, just before Healer had reassembled Ranger enough to grant Rogan full movement. The game environment digi-scrambled and then re-formed into the empty black arena. The micromotors in Rogan’s game suit unlocked so that he could move freely again. Shaylyn was slowly lowered to the floor. Harnesses disengaged automatically and were hoisted up near the ceiling. X, Sophia, Mr. Culum, and several technicians entered. A half dozen cambots followed to film it all.

  Mr. Culum flashed a bright smile and clapped. “Great job, gamers! Absolutely wonderful. You may remove your VR headgear now.”

  Rogan took off his helmet and glared at Beckett. He wanted to tell the guy off right then, but X stood with his big arms folded, watching the two of them, his expression a little stern.

  “What did you all think of the new system?” Sophia called. She was the opposite of stern. Cambots rolled up in front of each gamer, zooming in to film the best angles.

  “Awesome,” Takashi said. “When I play at home, I use my hands to reach out and grab whatever tools I need or to adjust some parts on the viper I’m fixing, but it’s all digital. I can barely feel it if I have to crank a wrench or something. Today the motors in my gamer gloves and suit made it all feel real. This is the greatest game ever!”

  Mr. Culum laughed. “I’m glad you think so. I’ve worked in computers since I was twelve years old, but I’ve never been satisfied with just the way things were. Why would I be? Why, when technology can take us so much further? When it can make life better?”

  Mr. Culum started walking back and forth in front of the gamers, his pace quickening and brow furrowing as he became more excited.

  “You were talking about the game suit allowing you most of the physical sensation of using the tools to work on that laser viper. But right now, Atomic Frontiers is developing a similar system where a doctor, say, in America, can conduct surgery on a patient in VR, actually manipulating a robot that is carrying out the surgery on a real patient elsewhere in the world. Advanced medical care, anywhere. Anytime.”

  He clapped his hands and his voice raised even louder. “Technology breaking down the walls that divide humanity, moving us toward the end of injustice and inequality and bringing hope and order to a chaotic world!”

  Mr. Culum stopped and seemed to remember he was in his own gaming arena, not on the stage at Atomic Frontiers’ annual tech reveal show touting his company’s newest advancements. He looked about as if surprised to see people around him. “But, ah, yes,” he finished quietly with a wink. “Well done, gamers, too.”

  Sophia jumped in with the smooth, even tone of a professional interviewer. The cambots zoomed even closer to the gamers at the sound of her voice. “Rogan? Beckett here shot you pretty hard. He did some real damage. How do you feel about that?”

  Rogan glanced at the single lens on the long teardrop-shaped cambot in front of him, heard the faint whir as it zoomed in on him. He saw the smirk on Beckett’s face but refused to let anyone think Beckett had rattled him, not in a video game tournament that was his to win.

  Rogan laughed and gave Takashi a high five. “No big deal. Glad our Healer had the chance to practice.”

  “There should have been another way,” Jacqueline said.

  “Yeah, kind of a cheap shot,” Shay said.

  Rogan couldn’t decide if he wanted his old gamer rival backing him up or not, but he wasn’t going to let Beckett, and eventually the reality show audience, think he was upset about this. “It was just a practice round,” Rogan said. “He’d never pull that off in the real game.”

  Beckett frowned. “I wouldn’t be so—”

  “In any case.” Mr. Culum spoke loudly, with his arms spread toward the gamers. “We at Atomic Frontiers are so pleased you enjoyed our revolutionary gaming experience. This is a prototype that we plan to replicate in hundreds of abandoned shopping malls and other former retail spaces across the country, helping to reduce brick-and-mortar blight as we provide more people with state-of-the-art gaming. Thank you for helping us showcase this amazing system and for participating in the Laser Viper Final Challenge.”

  “Which begins tomorrow!” Sophia chirped. “So it would probably be best, gamers, if you all headed back to the dorms to get some rest. X will make sure you find your way back. Mr. Culum and I will see you all in the morning for the first gaming round.”

  “Right,” X said, leading them out of the arena. “Follow me.” Each of his steps were like two normal-person steps, and in moments he was pretty far down the hallway. Takashi and Jacqueline jogged to keep up with him, but the other three fell behind.

  “Dude,” Beckett laughed. “You should have seen how you went flying. At first you just kind of shook, freaked out while the DEMPs fried you. Then, boom! I nuked you, Ranger! Your head whipped back, arms shot off, and you went flying! I hope they’re recording game footage. I gotta see that again.”

  A lesser gamer would have been mad, said something back. But Rogan was better than that. Let the guy blather on all he wanted. That practice stuff didn’t even count. Real bragging rights came from winning the games.

  Shaylyn pushed her streak of blue hair out of her face. “That was a real loser move, Beckett.”

  Rogan couldn’t tell if she was putting on a show for the cameras or if she meant what she said, but he did know that he didn’t want to be the guy on the reality show who couldn’t stand up for himself, who had Shaylyn do his fighting for him.

  Rogan was about to say something, but Beckett beat him to it. “See? This is why girls shouldn’t try to be gamers. They can’t handle the action.”

  Oh no. Rogan didn’t like Shay. She was annoying. But she was definitely not weak. Or timid.

  “I’m not trying to be a gamer! I am a gamer!” Shay fired back. “And I’m pretty freaking great. That’s how I earned my spot in this contest.”

  “See? There she goes, freaking out. They just can’t handle this.” Beckett looked at Rogan like Am I right?

  Rogan knew Beckett was way off base, but he didn’t want to get caught up in this. Shaylyn spun to stare down Rogan, as if daring him to be foolish enough to side with Beckett, then turned back. She wasn’t
done. “Ever since I was old enough to slip on gamer gloves and a headset, it’s been the same thing from guys like you. You’re insecure about your own gaming abilities, and you know you have no reason to complain about my play, so to make yourself feel better, you go after me because I’m a girl.”

  “That’s not it at all!” Beckett started. “I’m just saying—”

  “I’ll enjoy seeing you lose,” Shaylyn said before she sidestepped a cambot and hurried ahead to join the others.

  Rogan still said nothing but watched Shaylyn go. He looked at Beckett. Wow, Rogan thought. For the first time in my life, there might be a gamer I hate worse than Shay.

  “I’m not your babysitter,” X said when they had all returned to the commons. His sharp stare surveyed the gamers. “I won’t set your bedtime, but I will wake you up to be sure you’re ready in time for the first round of gaming. You’ll find full menus on the tablets we’ve provided. Feel free to order whatever you want, but I suggest you get some real sleep tonight.”

  “Can we get any information about what the game will be like tomorrow?” Takashi asked.

  Jacqueline nodded. “It would help us prepare.”

  Takashi smiled like he was glad to have an ally, but X quickly shut them down. “I can’t tell you anything. Part of the contest is seeing who thinks the fastest and adapts most quickly. Good night,” X said as he left the commons through the double doors.

  Silence fell on the room, and the gamers stood around the big central table. Cameras watched them from all angles and nobody knew what to do or say.

  “Well, this is weird,” Takashi said. “Just left here with a bunch of strangers. No idea what to expect in the game tomorrow.”

  “I’m not worried,” Beckett said. “It’s just Laser Viper. I can handle anything they throw at me.”

  “Yeah, but this isn’t just any Laser Viper game.” Takashi took a seat on one of the ends of the couch. “So much depends on how well we play.”