Soon, numbers and letters appear in random places around the dome, highlighting the areas where the code is generating bits of virtual reality over the actual scene. An overlay of the stadium’s blueprint hovers faintly over everything. Most importantly, basic data appears about every person in the arena, in tiny blue digits over each of their heads, so many that the data seems to blur into streaks.
Finally, I get to my seat. Behind us, the stadium lets out another piercing round of shrieks as the giant screens show a montage of Team Phoenix Riders’ best plays from last year.
“Hallo.” I turn as a girl nudges my side. She has reddish-blond hair tied back in a low, messy tail, and a smattering of freckles across her pale skin. She gives me a lopsided grin. When she speaks again, I see the transparent English translation in my view. “Are you Emika?” Her eyes wander up to my rainbow hair, then down to my arm of tattoos. “The one who broke into the opening ceremony?”
I nod. “Hi.”
The girl nods back. “I’m Ziggy Frost, from Bamberg, Germany.”
My eyes widen. “Right! I know you! You’re one of the best Thieves out there. I’ve watched so many of your games.”
I can tell she’s rapidly reading the German translation of my words that’s showing up in her view. Then she brightens until I think she might pop. She reaches forward and shoves someone sitting in the row in front of us. “Yuebin!” she exclaims. “Look. I have a fan.”
The guy she shoved gives an annoyed grunt and turns around in his seat. He smells faintly of cigarette smoke. “Good for you,” he mutters in Chinese as I read my translation of his words. His eyes shift to me. “Hey—aren’t you the girl who glitched into the opening game?”
Is this how I’m going to be known forever? The girl who glitched? “Hi,” I say, stretching a hand out. “I’m Emika Chen.”
“Ah! The American,” he replies, shaking my hand once. “You speak Mandarin?”
I shake my head. My dad knew exactly five Chinese phrases, and four of them were swears.
He shrugs at my response. “Ah, well. I’m Yuebin, from Beijing.”
I smile. “The top Fighter in the rankings?”
His grin widens. “Yes.” He reaches over and nudges Ziggy once. “See? You are not the only one with a fan.” Then he looks back at me. “So, you are a wild card now? I mean, congratulations, that is really great—but I don’t remember seeing you in the top rankings this year.”
“That’s because everyone wrote her in at the last minute,” Ziggy pipes up. “Hideo himself approved the nomination.” Yuebin lets out a whistle. “You must have really impressed him.”
So, the rumors about me have spread. This is not how I want everyone in Warcross to know me—the girl who glitched into a game out of sheer stupidity, then got into the Wardraft as a wild card because my stunt got me written in. What if Yuebin suspects that I’m in this draft for another reason?
Don’t be so obvious. To him, you’re just here to play Warcross, I remind myself. I force a smile back at Ziggy and shrug. “It probably doesn’t matter. I bet I’ll be the last one picked.”
Ziggy just gives me a good-hearted laugh and pats my shoulder. “What is that saying? Never say never?” she replies. “Besides. Do you remember one year when that player—Leeroy something—actually got drafted into the Stormchasers, even though he always just charged in and messed up his entire team’s play? My God, he was terrible.” Too late, she realizes she’s accidentally insulted me again. “I mean, not that you are as bad as Leeroy! My point is that you never know. I mean—well, you know what I mean.”
Yuebin gives her a wry look before smiling at me. “You will have to forgive Ziggy,” he says. “She never says the right thing at the right time.”
“You’re never the right thing at the right time.”
As they forget about me and fall into bickering, I quietly review what data I can see about each of them. Their full names and addresses, their travel schedules, anything that could help me notice something suspicious about their behavior—I download all of this and store it away for later analysis. But even from a quick glance, neither of their profiles seems odd. No basic shields of any sort to protect their data. Yuebin even has a virus installed on his Link that’s slowing it down.
Then again, maybe they’re both hiding behind this fa?ade. It’s hard to tell without breaking into all of their info—personal emails, private messages, stored Memories—encrypted things even Henka Games isn’t allowed to have access to. I need a way in, a weakness, like how I’d stolen the power-up during the opening ceremony game. I need another break in the pattern.
The stadium’s main lights dim, and the sweeping lights change color. All of the seats are filled now. The audience’s cheers grow louder. I look down the line of seats and follow it around the edge of the central arena, trying to recognize some of the other wild cards and match them up with the top-ranking players I know. Beside me, Ziggy and Yuebin finally stop arguing and sit up straighter in anticipation.
“Ladies and gentlemen!”
The lights now sweep to the center of the arena, where an announcer wearing a Warcross logo T-shirt stands. “Warcross fans around the world!” he says in a booming voice. “Welcome to the Wardraft! We’re about to add some wild cards into the mix of your favorite Warcross teams!”
The audience roars with approval. My heart is beating so fast now that it leaves me feeling weak.
“Let’s introduce the most important person in here!” he points up at the same time the colorful spotlights shift to focus on a roped-off section of the stadium, a fancy seating area encased inside a glass box. Hovering over the box is a virtual sign that says Official Seats, meant to be for Henka Games studio executives. Inside, a young man watches, one hand in his pocket, the other holding a glass. Two bodyguards flank him. Around us, the holograms change to show his face. “The one who made it all possible—Hideo Tanaka!”
The stadium explodes into the loudest cheers I’ve ever heard, followed by a thunderous chant of “Hih-day-oh! Hih-day-oh!” that makes the arena tremble. Hideo lifts his glass to toast the crowd, as if this level of insanity were perfectly normal, and then sits back down to watch. I force myself to look away.
“There are sixteen official Warcross teams,” the announcer now goes on. “And each team gets a total of five official players. We’ve already chosen the returning veteran players, but every team tonight has at least one open spot—and we have forty wild cards for them to choose from. By the end of the draft, all forty will belong on a team.” He waves a hand at our front-row seats. “Let’s do a quick introduction!”
The spotlight changes to focus on the first wild-card player, and the music in the stadium shifts to a new song. The player is a boy with brown hair, who blinks at the sudden light on him. “Rob Gennings, representing Canada, Level 82, who plays as a Fighter. He is ranked sixty-sixth in the world.” Cheers erupt from the audience. When I look up at the crowds, I can see posters waving enthusiastically, with Rob’s name scrawled on them.