I wait to see a fourth player show his face, but the house falls into a moment of silence. “Where’s DJ Ren?” I ask.
“Won’t see him until later,” Asher replies. “Ren’s prepping for the party tonight. It’s the only free pass he’ll get from me, especially since I’m counting on him to be our new Fighter. And let that be a lesson for you, too, Emi. We’re here to win.”
“Of course,” I say.
“Good.” He nods, considering me. “Hope you’re as good an Architect as I think you are.”
Hearing this from him sends a jolt of excitement and anxiety through me. An Architect’s job is to manipulate the world of the level in favor of her team. If there’s an obstacle, like a bridge, I would collapse it to let us through. If there are floating rocks, I’d push them together to create a bigger platform. An Architect is a designer of the level, dedicated to changing the world on the spot in favor of her team. It’s one of the most important jobs on a team. Last year, the Phoenix Riders lost their Architect because he’d been caught gambling away millions on Warcross games. The entire team was punished heavily, too—knocked down to the bottom of the rankings and stripped of their top two players.
“I’ll do my best,” I say.
“Tomorrow,” Asher continues as I follow him into an elevator leading up to the second floor, “we’ll catch you and Ren up on how things work in the championship games. I’ll walk you both through an official game. Although you”—he pauses to spin around and give me a calculating look—“may already know more than you let on.”
I hold my hands up. “It was an accident,” I say, feeling like I’ve repeated this forever. “I didn’t know what I was doing.”
“You did know,” Asher counters without hesitation. “In fact, you’re a much better Warcross player than your level suggests. Aren’t you?” He nods up at the numbers above my head. “After your name went viral, I looked up your Warcross account. I studied the few games that you did play. Those are not the skills of an Architect who is only on Level 28. Why are you so much better than your level suggests?”
“What makes you say that? I just play against other beginners.”
“You think I can’t see through that?”
He has been paying attention to me. It’s true—I stream my plays live, when I’m actually linked in under my public Warcross account. But my encrypted, anonymous self is the account I use more often. All the hours I rack up under it don’t count into my leveling. Still, I’m not about to tell Asher that.
“I just haven’t had the money or time to play as often as I want,” I say. “But I’m a pretty fast learner.”
Asher doesn’t seem to buy this at all, but he lets it slide. “Every other team is going to underestimate you. They’ll say I’ve lost my touch, that I picked you just for the news coverage it’ll get the Riders. But we know better than that, don’t we? I don’t waste my time on players with no potential. You’re a weapon in disguise—and I intend to keep it that way until our first game.”
It seems I’m becoming the weapon in disguise for more people than I’d like.
We reach the second floor. Asher spins to face me, leans his head against the back of his chair, and exchanges a look with Hammie. She just nods at him, bunches up her curls on her head, and lets them go again. “Hammie will show you the rest,” Asher says. “We’re heading out in a few hours to the opening party.” He starts rolling back toward the elevator. “All the players will be out in force. If you’ve never seen an opening party before, brace yourself. It’s a wild one.”
Hammie looks me over the instant Asher leaves. She’s the same height as me, but somehow, the jut of her chin makes her look taller than she is. She motions me forward and heads to the door closest to us. “This is your room,” she says over her shoulder at me.
I half expect the door to swing open like a regular door, but instead it slides to one side. The room is enormous—even larger than the penthouse hotel suite that I had. One entire glass wall opens up to my own private patio, half of which is taken up by a shimmering blue infinity pool that goes all the way to the edge of the balcony. A waterfall cascades into the pool from somewhere on the roof. The rest of the walls are virtually painted by my lenses with ivory and shimmering gold. When I reach out to touch the colors, they ripple under my fingers, sending waves across my room. At the same time, three small buttons right above my hand hover against the wall. One says Off, another says Switch Scene, while a third says Customize. I decide to turn off the colors for now, then press the first button. The walls are replaced by blank space. I look around. My bed is huge, piled high with furry cushions and blankets, and my rugs match the ones downstairs. A work area dominates the rest of the space—chairs, a clean desk.
Hammie grins at my expression. “And yours is the smallest room,” she says.
I turn back to the space. “This place is ridiculous.”
“Everything in the dorm is gameified,” she explains. “Like the rest of Tokyo. You’ll earn three notes every time you customize your walls, and one note for switching the scenery. The room’s preprogrammed to your Warcross account. If you’re logged in, then the house system knows you’re the one who’s coming inside.”
“How does this work?” I ask.
She walks over and nods at an On button hovering near the surface of the desk, but doesn’t try to touch it. “You’re the only one who can turn on your work area,” she says. “Press that.”
I touch it. The instant I do, the previously blank desk lights up soft stripes in our team colors, with a welcome message for me over it in white text. A second later, a holographic screen rises up from the desk. It’s a standard desktop display—except it’s floating in midair. These types of desktops have only recently started shipping in the States, and they’re, of course, way out of my price range.
Hammie smiles at my expression. “Swipe the screen toward your walls,” she says.
I touch the screen with two fingers, then make a swiping motion toward the wall we’re facing. The display on the screen follows my fingers, flying from the screen onto the wall, where it fills up the entire space, fully magnified.
“The downstairs living room has the best work area, of course,” Hammie adds. “But this is in all of our rooms. Good for any impromptu team meetings.”
If the same system is installed downstairs, then each room’s desktop isn’t nearly as secure as she thinks it is. I can work my way into the main system, and then I’ll be able to get into each of their individual systems, too, regardless of who the work area is tailored for. I smile at the gorgeous, wall-size display. “Thanks.”