4. The Spectacle

The remaining qualifiers go by in a flurry. The Argon Cup and CRMP Crucible are titles my brain barely processes. We have done this before. We are professionals. This is all prelude to the main event.

Angela takes a different view. She tells us we must capitalize on every moment in the spotlight. She says we must not forget how every action is a form of content. She gives me lessons on how to talk at cameras.

“Be relatable,” she says, which she later clarifies is not the same as “be yourself.” Collecting retro tech is relatable, she says, but talking about how that tech led to the audio equipment of today is grating. I learn to exhibit only surface-level eccentricities. I practice my smile in our mock interviews and teach my tongue to speak in the lilting accent of social loops. I mask my suspicion that Angela is an auton. If Barley and Sonnet harbor similar ideas, they’ve done a good job of masking too. I don’t know how it would affect things anyway, if at all. I found Angela’s Ranzio documents after our first meeting. She’s a contractor with her own PR agency, which means she’s not a company agent. She seems to have free will to the same extent any of us do. So, does it matter? My grandparents would spin at this question. In their formative years, AI described an assortment of disparate automated processes. Tools. By the time the question of personhood came up, they were already set in their ways.

In the end, I mostly try not to think about Angela. Not only for the thorny questions around her identity and what it means, but also for the way my thoughts around her turn to fluster.

Outside of Ranzio’s own media, we have not done a single bit of press when May ends and with it, the last of the qualifier tourneys. Ranzio put me on paid leave after qualifiers to provide more time. I use it. We train hard, the three of us content with our obscurity. We are not yet a team people are watching. This will change with time, Angela assures us. For now, my Bank It! fanfeeds are chock full of the Overdogs and the Hellions, last year’s grand champions and near-victors. There’s also buzz around Iseul-T’s new team, handpicked by CEO Yun Beom-seok. He’s calling them the Vogues.

Other teams generate a handful of niche threads apiece, interest usually driven by either sponsor brand recognition or well-known contestants. I tag a thread on the Screensavers, a team Volpe’s sponsored over the past few years. More for personal interest than anything else, I pull up their promos from past years. More meatspace loops than most, which tracks. Gives them a chance to show off their top-of-the-line Volpe headsets. I recognize the V12 MegaLotus Sensorium. I don’t recognize the contestant runes from any current threads, which means they’re running new blood for the centenary. During post-basic co-op, I’d interned with Volpe. Same kind of audio engineering position I started out with at Ranzio, only without the salary. Not that I minded, being engrossed with my chance to peek at the guts under my second skin. Anyway, it didn’t go anywhere, and then I ended up getting scouted. But now part of me wonders if the Screensavers would have had a place for me.

The new arena is unveiled one week before the first round of semis. Century Stadium, they’re calling it, a sprawling labyrinth of branded cathedrals with a colosseum at its core. More interiors than last year’s arena, looks like. That means more close quarters combat. Less use for snipers and the like. I don’t expect it to change our loadouts. We don’t engage much at a distance. Still, we download a bootleg fifteen minutes after the reveal teaser drops. The assets are a little blurry, indicative of AI swiping on the dev’s part. No matter. They got the layout right. We drill, timing travel between team spawns and potential cashout locations. Sonnet maps out the flank routes. Between the hours of 09:00 and 23:00 standard net time, we’re together. Day in, day out. Yet the more our training totally consumes my waking hours, the less I understand. I can feel myself regressing. What were once grand aspirations to dominate the greatest game show on the planet melt down to animal aggression. I become a creature of reflex and intuition. Bank It! loses all meaning beyond numbers and violence.

It is the eve of the first round, and I am frustrated because I want it to mean something. I want to feel gravity tugging at me from the weight of tomorrow. No such luck. Instead, I am numb in the brain and aching in the body, where numbness would be preferable. I lie in bed searching for a positive spin. My eyes sting, craving moisture. My temples throb.

Perhaps this is a cure to anxiety. If I can’t muster any excitement for tomorrow, I can’t worry about the uncountable ways it might go wrong. I take some solace in my overstimulated indifference. Satisfied, I would like to say I fall promptly asleep. That I do not lie frozen and awake in bed until the wee hours, then crash until the rising sun fractals through my porthole window. Unfortunately, I’ve gotta be honest. Otherwise, this is all for nothing.

After a scarfed breakfast bar, I’m back in the bleed by 12:15 SNT. Our game doesn’t start until 20:00. Still, I should’ve been here. I join Sonnet and Barley in a chat room, which the log says has been open for two hours already. They’ve chosen a war room with hard sci-fi trappings. A table in the center holds a diorama of Century Stadium constructed with foam, clay, and plaster. Painted resin figures dot the scene, all convincingly textured. I swallow half-considered, wasteful apologies and ask for an update.

“What’s there to say?” Sonnet laughs. “We’ve done what we can. Tonight’s the night, isn’t it? We’ll see how it goes.”

“He’s right,” Barley says, “I’m glad you got some rest. We all need that.”

“So, what?” I say, “Any news on what the others are running?”

“The Thrill Seekers are the only other team with a caster, and, as you know, she cut her in-game streams two weeks ago.” Barley almost sounds bored. I wonder if she’s numb too. “We know what we knew yesterday.”

“Can we go over the teams again?” I ask, because I can’t stand the idea of spending the next seven hours doing nothing. If I stay busy enough, maybe I’ll forget to stress. The growing pit in my stomach might say otherwise, but I’ll ignore that for now.

“Sonnet, can you refresh us?” Barley wants him to know it’s a quiz.

Sonnet smirks. “The Thrill Seekers are two zephyrs and a maven who plays like one. Mobility’s maybe their biggest strength. Minimal downtime between respawns, since they can get back to the point in, like two seconds. Kill-hungry, based on past streams.” Sonnet pauses briefly, gauging Barley’s reaction. She’s inscrutable as always. “Uh, I think that’s about it for them. Then we’ve got the Boundless, with their maven triple-stack defib chain bull—”

“Who are the Thrill Seekers?” Barley asks like she just got here.

“I just explained it again.” Sonnet doesn’t even sound all that irritated. He just sounds tired. I wonder if my exhaustion is so apparent.

“You explained how they play Bank It!,” says Barley, “you didn’t tell us who they are.”

Sonnet scoffs. “They’re rich guys. Self-funded. Middle-upper management for some corp or another.”

Barley nods. “Jiangsu Romagna. Google, how does this information help us?”

Now it’s my turn. “Self-funded means they’re playing for fun,” I say, then frown, “except they made it to the semis, which means they’re good, which means they’ve played a whole lot. Well past fun. So it’s fame and glory, then.”

Barley nods again. “They are good, that’s true. But they have a weakness. What’s that?”

I see where she’s going. “Ego.”

“They’re each playing for themselves,” Barley says, “If we clash with them, we put them in situations where they need to self-sacrifice to win. Make them choose between kills and cash.”

Sonnet taps his brow. “That’s why you’re the captain, Barley. Got any mindblowing insights on the other teams?”

“I couldn’t find much on the Boundless. Not even a sponsor. Still, we’ve seen how they play. Defibrillator chaining means they’ll be able to sustain more damage than the others. We’ll need to start engagements early and make sure to be thorough. Team wipe every time. That leaves the Chaff. Sonnet?”

“Two stalwarts and a maven. Maven runs a support kit, heals the other two. And oh, I know this one, they’re Peruvian farmers, so they’re humble, patient, and attentive.”

“They’re farmers, so they’re prodigies,” Barley corrects, “Have you ever met a farmer? Do you know how hard it is to—” She seems to stop herself, deciding on another tack. “They’ll have more stamina than most teams we face. These are people who spend their days working and sweating in the real world. They’re not going to be winded by the third cashout.”

“And they’ve got a sense of humor,” I say, referring to the self-deprecating team name.

Barley looks at me, and I could swear there’s a glint of some import in her eyes. Is it respect? Recognition of a shared familiarity with agriculture? Or am I weaving a narrative from pixels made to resemble someone wearing an outdated headset with shitty facerec? I go with that last one. Didn’t get this far as a sound engineer without keeping Occam’s razor sharp and blooded.

“Anything else?” Sonnet asks, oblivious to any real or imagined nonverbal communication.

“Stay calm, stay fresh,” Barley says, “drink plenty of water.”

Sonnet laughs, failing to hide his tension. “Alright, so now we just wait and try not to think about it.”

“Yes.”

“After this, whatever happens, let’s get together.” I am saying the words before I have arranged them in my head. They spring from my mouth fully formed. “Outside of training, I mean. We should talk again.” There is a chasm in time behind our last real talk in Sonnet’s memory. In that chasm, I have spent more time with my teammates than ever, and yet somehow I feel they are distant. We have welded ourselves into a fine Bank It! machine. We are perfectly in sync under fire. We speak in our own shorthand. All of this, and I know next to nothing about them. If we can infer so much from the meatspace lives of our opponents, surely we could learn so much more from one another.

A goal for later. We say quick farewells and go off in search of ways to bear the wait. I select my meditation app from a pop-up menu, and the harsh lights of the war room dim to a pleasant backlit darkness. A soothing voice fills my ears, telling me to breathe. In the background, raindrops go plop-plop.

---

As we load into the Ready Room, Edmondo sends a message: “Remember the spectacle.” I shrug it off. Distractions are costly. The aggressive glow of the Ready Room fades into gray stone splashed with neon. We spawn at the far end of a boulevard. I recognize the architecture enough to place us in the southeast quadrant of the map. This road cuts between the academy and the market, with a straight shot to the colosseum. Though I have memorized the layout of this map, its appearance holds surprises. The buildings are raygun gothic, all arrowhead rooftops and frozen explosions of stone and glass. Sickly pastels strewn across the boulevard mock fashions well over a hundred years out of date. Swooshing geometry shadows the street, designed to evoke nostalgia for a world that no one alive could possibly remember, a world of high-arched fast food glyphs and chrome diners that blind in the sun.

The first two vaults spawn. Barley pings the one nearest us. Seventy-eight meters away, nestled in the academy’s dining hall. Sonnet grapples ahead to nab the cash bonus for hatching. Barley and I are just over thirty meters from the dining hall when the vault starts to hatch. Fifteen seconds until the vault spits out a cashbox ripe for depositing. The first wave isn’t worth much, but it can make the difference in a close game.

Barley breaches the dining hall first. The front door’s out of the way, so she uses her body as a battering ram to cave the nearest wall. I don’t see Sonnet across the open, skylit cafeteria, which means he’s cloaked. I chirp shorthand in our comms to get his location. As I suspected, he’s gone invisible to watch the rear entrance, which is the most likely point of entry for any opponents.

A maven holding an AK so much like my own is the first through the door. Sonnet halves their health in a moment. The next, I dispatch the contestant with a rapid salvo. Can’t let our guard down. The maven was in the Boundless, our triple-stack opponents. The coined contestant won’t be down long. Sure enough, a smoke grenade tumbles through the rear door from the balcony. As smoke fills the area, I hear the acidic sizzle of defibrillators going off. Sonnet makes a tactical retreat to our line. Three seconds left on the box. We wait, tense. No one comes through the door. They’ve revealed too much, and they know it as well as we do.

“The Boundless will try to intercept,” Barley says, “Head for ‘B’ and stay close.”

Century Stadium is made up of four wedges, like the limbs of a cross, split apart by wide blacktop roads. In the northern wedge basilica, the Chaff have just wiped the Thrill Seekers. Not the first contact outcome I was expecting. Based on their location, they’ll likely go for cashout station “A.” We can pass like ships in the night. With luck, the Boundless will strike at them instead.

Cashout station B sits behind the front desk of the Vein Reserve, a bank in Century Stadium’s eastern market district. All is quiet until we reach the bank. The crackle of a long-range rifle rings from the pillared portico. Toxic gas ‘nades pop around us. They block the bank entrance and the alley behind us. We’re left sitting out in the open. Sonnet curses. Moving together was smart, but kept us slow. The Boundless got here before us, and with enough time to set up an ambush. Maybe we should have pressed our advantage in the dining hall.

Barley throws down a dome shield, but not before the rifle locks on and sends a bullet through her head. She survives, because this is Bank It! and not meatspace, but she can’t take another shot like that. I’d love to pivot, take our chances at A. We do not have this luxury. The long-range rifle is joined by the AK and a revolver, all spattering against Barley’s dome. The dome goes from blue to red. Maybe a second ‘till it goes down. Sonnet says something. My brain doesn’t register his voice in words. It’s more like his plan is transmitted into my mind’s eye. We’re agreed. The only way out is through.

It all happens at once. He tosses a flashbang at the portico. Barley tosses a frag. I drop a jump pad. When the grenades go off, we’re at the height of our arc above the bank. Sonnet lands first, crashing on the flat main length of the rooftop. Barley’s RPG whizzes by my head. The projectile hurtles toward the portico faster than simulated gravity can drag our bodies down. Half the portico collapses, taking two Boundless with it. Sonnet dispatches the rifle-toting straggler, who is completely ineffectual at close range. We’ve flipped them over and stolen the high ground.

“Go ahead with the box,” Sonnet says to me. The box has tumbled a few meters across the rooftop. I snatch it up and sprint for the roof access door. I slide down stairs a flight at a time. Sporadic gunfire echoes up from the street level. The remaining Boundless firing up at my allies on the roof. I hear no return fire. Not a surprise. I wouldn’t be able to hear Sonnet’s throwing knives from here, and Barley should be tucked away behind an AC unit waiting for her health to replenish.

Despite the violence, no one else has made it to the lobby. I suppose the Boundless are sticking to the street. Or perhaps they plan to climb an adjacent building to regain their lost vantage.

I slide the box in, nice and easy, initiating the two minute timer, then set about securing the point. Two gas mines, each around a meter from the cashout station on opposite sides. My turret is tucked behind the teller’s desk and aimed at the cashout. It’ll take anyone a good chunk of time and a great deal of inconvenience to clear my defensive clutter.

The gunfire in the streets has stopped. I expect the fallen Boundless to spend a token and get back in the game. They don’t. Fair enough. You only get five tokens apiece for the whole season. Be a shame to burn one in the first round of the first game. They’ll have plenty more chances to make back the cash, I’m sure they’re thinking.

Thirty seconds after depositing comes the rumble of nearby detonations. A recovered Barley shells the commercial tower across the street. Someone returns fire. I prepare for company. If I were the Boundless, I’d be diving for the objective while I know it’s protected by a single contestant. Are they that committed to pushing us off the roof and rezzing their third?

I get my answer in the mechanical whip of steel cable lashing across the street. They’re ziplining over, and they’ve timed it with Barley’s reload to keep her from dropping them in the street.

“You want me up there?” I ask into the air, suddenly feeling desperate to do something.

“We’re good.” Sonnet in my speakers, his voice unmuffled by proximity. “Right, Barley?”

A grunt I take as affirmative.The grenades start rolling again. Another name ticks into the killfeed. One to go. The other AK player, if I’ve got the names sorted right in my head.

“You’re up,” Sonnet says. I don’t ask for clarification because the context comes hurtling down into the room with me at half health. I put two bullets in his shoulder before he slides behind a desk and duck-walks toward the nearest door. Two paths form ahead of me: stay with the cashout and maybe let this guy slip away, or temporarily abandon my post to secure the wipe. A split-second survey of my defenses makes my mind up. I hop the teller’s counter and sprint after the survivor.

He’s slippery, never moving in a straight line long enough for us to end up on the same straightaway. I chase him through cubicles and stairwells until it’s too late. Ten seconds have passed. He’ll be regenning any life we’ve chipped off him. Can’t afford to risk a fight on even footing. I ping the last place I got visual for Barley and Sonnet’s benefit, then run back toward the cashout station. That’s when I hear the hawk’s call of my turret alarm, followed by a steady stream of light ammo thumping opponents and walls like idle knuckles on a desk. No way he could have circled back that fast. Maybe his teammates finally tokened in. I round the last corner, my ears full of tin gunfire and chatter between Barley and Sonnet. We’re all looking for the same answers. I find those answers first. Two enemy contestants who have just dispatched my turret and mines. They wait around another corner by the elevators for the gas to disperse. If they’ve marked my presence, they don’t show it. A wall largely obscures my view. Seems like it’s blocking theirs too. I relay this information to Sonnet and Barley.

“On the straggler now,” Sonnet says, “be there soon.”

“Going down.” Barley marks the elevator. Risky move. They’ll see her coming. But what can they do? If they move away from the elevators, I’ll get a clear line of fire. We’ll pinch them. Two on two, plus Sonnet soon. I like our odds.

Barley’s two floors from ground level when I realize my mistake. The contestants in the corner move closer to the cashout station, and I see that one is smaller than the other. A zephyr. These aren’t the Boundless. My error is confirmed as Sonnet finishes the fleeing maven and we deposit a five-hundred MultiBuck team wipe bonus. They never did token.

“I fucked up,” I talk as fast as my tongue allows, “Different team, looks like Thrill Seekers.” They must have given up on the other cashout after getting wiped in their first fight. Should have known better. Should always keep an eye on the spawnlog. Killfeed, cashboard and spawnlog: the three keys to good gamesense. The maven starts to steal, setting off the cashbox’s rhythmic whine, and I sit helpless to stop it for fear of delivering a free kill in a three-vee-one.

Barley is not angry. “I know,” she says, and the elevator door opens. The two Thrill Seekers on the cashout are too focused to notice. She manages to land a grenade before they can react. The maven continues the steal, desperate to lock it in, while the zephyr lunges at Barley. I align my iron sights with the zephyr, trusting Barley to deal with the maven. A second grenade doesn’t finish the thief, but it does knock the cashout station on one side. The steal attempt is cut seven-tenths of a second short, by my count. I finish the zephyr, but not before they run their sword through Barley. Their coins intermingle on the floor. I pivot to the maven and find my magazine dry after four shots. Two hits. They’re low. Frantic, soft footsteps like the scuffle of a rabbit at the bank’s entrance to my rear pull me out of tunnel vision.

I pivot, which means I get to see my death coming head-on. Mid-reload, I’m helpless to stop a zephyr barreling toward me with a sawed-off shotgun. She gets close enough for me to make out the floral pattern of her overlarge shirt, to see the way it droops over denim shorts. No mandated uniform when you’re self-funded, I guess. The first blast takes my health down to a narrow bar at the bottom of my HUD, the second turns me to gold litter. Across the map, in the legislature district, the Chaff finish their cashout uncontested.

I join Barley in the back seat. Through Sonnet, I see the bank lobby from a different perspective. He is near the ceiling, peering down from one of the boomerang petals flaring out from the bank’s marble pillars. I’m reminded of surveillance footage.

Sonnet does not move quickly. He surveys the room. No sign of the zephyr in shorts. The maven starts stealing again. Sonnet waits a full three seconds until tossing his first pair of silver knives. When the first blades land, the second pair is already on its way. The weakened contestant at the box falls. Sonnet’s wait was expertly timed. Though Shorts remains, we have won in the way that matters most. No time for another steal attempt. That being said, none of us want to lose a third of our winnings with a team wipe penalty. Sympathetic sweat slicks my palms.

“Move slow,” Barley commands, “don’t rush it. You have visual on both totems.”

Sonnet curses, but he stays. I wait for a shotgun blast to sever our presence on the map. It doesn’t come. Perhaps the last Thrill Seeker couldn’t figure an origin point for the knives. A benefit of more subtle weaponry. Barley’s order pays off. Shorts goes for the other zephyr’s totem. Sonnet tracks her. He’s poised for the finish. She’s smart, though. She doesn’t start the rezz here. No, she moves into the elevator.

Sonnet cannot reach her before the doors close, but his flashbang grenade can, and does. His eyes do not follow its arc or the elevator doors. He is looking at the sky, visible through the hole in the ceiling where Barley had dropped the Boundless straggler earlier. Sonnet grapples through the opening. His momentum carries him into a slide. He ends up directly above the elevator. A breach charge leaves the shaft exposed. He does not hesitate, dropping directly into the shaft. He makes himself transparent with his last remaining gadget. Then he’s crashing feet first through the elevator’s ceiling panels.

The shotgun player is ready. If she had started the revive process, she must have canceled it the moment Sonnet’s breach charge went off. His invisibility grenade has given him an edge, though not one as significant as I’d like. He’ll still be detectable in the glitchy haze around his mostly-clear silhouette. I can’t manage a breath until the first shotgun blast goes off. It misses Sonnet by nearly a meter. His knives hit her square in the chest. Desperate, Shorts swings the butt of her shotgun to bludgeon. The impact shaves a little off Sonnet’s health, but it was over the moment she resorted to melee. In sporting fashion, he coins her the same way. The next pair of knives don’t leave his hands. He plunges them beneath her ribs, pressing in until she is coin and air.

“That bombastic enough for you, Edmondo?” Sonnet laughs between ragged pants. He returns to our totems and rezzes us by hand. Five seconds each. Me first, in case I need to defib Barley quick. No such need arises.

“Good kills,” I say. I acknowledge Sonnet’s gloat because Barley will not. She will congratulate us only after the game. Immersed in the match, her brain runs like a machine. I imagine she is mapping out our next moves now. She has a God-given gift for strategy, my Mama would say. She can see patterns where the rest of us accept chaos.

When a cashout completes, a fresh vault spawns elsewhere. The vault spawned after the Chaff’s deposit is already being claimed. Looks like the Boundless are on it. Probably they’ll clash with the Chaff, either at the vault or somewhere closer to the cashout station. The Thrill Seekers are still out, which leaves the second vault free of competition. Barley pings it.

“Don’t wanna third-party?” Sonnet takes the lead on the second vault, targeting the cornice of a nearby building with his grappling hook. “Your call,” he says. His body traces the thin line attached to the hook. He cuts the air. Barley and I move at our top speed behind him. Though I’m faster than her, I don’t let myself get too far ahead. We’re safer together. I use the extra moments afforded by my speed to check corners and alleys for opponents. Sonnet’s already grabbed the box by the time we show up. Then we’re turning around and heading for a cashout station in the basilica’s central sanctuary. Sonnet deposits the box without a single shot fired. Across the map, the Chaff and the Boundless have whittled each other down to a single contestant. The Thrill Seekers enter the scene and finish both teams. Sonnet idly rotates his wrists while we watch the cashout from the gallery seating above the sanctuary’s ground floor.

Barley’s playing it safe; I understand that much. While Sonnet and I watch the killfeed, her eyes are on the cashboard. In the end, that’s what matters. With the Chaff losing a chunk of earnings in their wipe, we’re winning simply by virtue of having a single clean cashout in the bag. We don’t need any big, flashy gambits to qualify. Knowing this doesn’t keep my skin from itching. I resist digging my nails into my arms for fear of how it might look in Naturata. Defying the urge only makes it worse. I want to move. I want to do violence against someone or something. In preparation for this game, my body has pumped itself full of adrenaline with nowhere to go. Starting a fight while we’re comfortably in first might be fatal. But letting myself relax, even a little, well, that might be fatal too.

We finish the second cashout, putting our balance up to $29,500. Real money, this time. Split evenly and deposited directly into our credit accounts at the end of the game, courtesy of MultiCo. Even if we get bumped, we’re not crawling back into meatspace totally empty-handed. In the academy lecture halls to our south, the Thrill Seekers seem to be doing a decent job holding their cashout station. Their zephyrs fill the killfeed with opponents.

Unfortunately for them, their opponents are durable. In the chaos of a three-way firefight, the Chaff lock in a steal ten seconds before the buzzer. Everyone’s playing smarter now. Not a single team wipe. When the cashout station blinks into nothing, they lick their wounds and retreat in search of safe places to revive fallen teammates.

With one set of vaults remaining and plenty of time on the clock, we’re not going to be able to get a win through attrition. We’ll need a cashout. Barley tells us to be wary of the two teams currently in the danger zone. I don’t need the warning. The first two rounds of cashouts have split the match into distinct factions. The Chaff and us Tough Shells sit comfortably at the top. We have left the Boundless and the Thrill Seekers with few remaining paths to victory. A single vault isn’t enough for either to qualify, which puts them in a tense sort of alliance for the time being. They’ll both want to double-stack a cashout station. Getting the cash from both vaults in a single station would make it anyone’s game.

The other strategy left to them is hunting. They’re likely to throw themselves at us. Wipes deduct twenty-five percent of earnings, which is a whole lot worse for a team with two deposits under their belt than a team holding loose change. If all else fails, they will turn rabid and try to drag us down with them. This is why Barley says to avoid firefights in this closing act. Maybe Edmondo will be disappointed in her steady, cautious hand. He’d probably be more upset at a knockout this early in the season, though.

We grab a box. So do the Boundless. We move for the nearest cashout station, one set in the field of the colosseum at Century Stadium’s heart. The Boundless move the same way. I see the colosseum rise ahead of us, all blue glass and rounded white beams. The round building slopes gradually downward in a wide cone, then curves up again as it nears the perimeter, thorning the rim. At the highest point of the colosseum’s saucer roof, a starburst of neon waves crest the structure like a crown. Chintzy neon signs jutting out at various points along the colosseum’s surface advertise “Rob’s Wrist Wraps” and “Fizzi Tiger.” Farther above, a massive ring holding tens of thousands of virtual spectators orbits the sky. When a cashout completes or someone makes a particularly cinematic play, their collective shriek resonates down to the arena like a thunderclap.

We are nearly indoors when the Boundless deposit.

“Get back,” Barley says, a grimace in her voice, “Sonnet, we’re going for the other station.” Ah, but we were so close.

And Sonnet is closer. He deposits, doubling the potential earnings of the Boundless. The cashout rockets to forty-four thousand bucks. Barley grunts. She trudges forward into the colosseum, soon to be a hive of activity, and I follow close behind.

“No wipes,” she says, and the way her calm voice strains belies her simmering rage. We’re leading the Chaff by more than five thousand MultiBucks. No way they can make that up without the cashout, which means we’re guaranteed to qualify. As long as we don’t take a 30% hit.

Barley and I skirt the colosseum’s concourse. I watch Sonnet’s health melt down to a quarter, then go static until ten seconds pass and it rises again. Must have found a safe crevice somewhere in the stands. Almost certainly biding his time until chaos creates an opening for a steal. By double-stacking, he has made chaos inevitable. I duck into an elevator behind Barley. We take it up to the nosebleeds. When chaos erupts, we’ll benefit from the high ground.

“Next time,” Barley says, and I see she has flipped to a private channel, “Save compliments for after.”

“Didn’t think a little comment would go to his head like that,” I reply.

“Mm.” Barley switches back to team comms.

The Thrill Seekers are the first to arrive. They flank the cashout station and pester the Boundless with hit-and-runs. Those tactics only work twice before the Boundless turn the cashout into a minefield. Smart. It’s what I would do.

It doesn’t matter how well the Thrill Seekers play now. They lost when they went in first. The Chaff approach at their rear, and it’s over. Pinched between the mines and the Chaff’s machine guns, the Thrill Seekers don’t last long. Two go down within seconds. The one who remains is the shotgunner in the floral shirt. She makes it halfway up the stands opposite us and vanishes. They’ve done their part, though. The Boundless, resources expended, have few tools left for defending against another team. Two of their three defibs are on cooldown, by my count.

Still, they fight hard. The three mavens space out to delay a wipe. In doing so, they drift from the point, and Sonnet sees his opening. Barley and I watch, helpless. We can’t risk anything more than cover fire, which won’t do much at this range. My gut says dive the point and shield Sonnet during the steal. Except there’s a loose cloaker running loose in the stands. I’d get coined using myself as cover, Sonnet would obviously get coined for the steal, successful or not, and Barley would get coined simply for being an easy target on her own. All I can do now is hope that Sonnet gets lucky. He’s got a few things going for him: the chaos all around, the compromised state of the defending team, and the fact that the Chaff won’t stop him. Our steal won’t get them any more cash, but it’ll seal their qualification. Right now, the Boundless are poised to push them out.

Sonnet gets further than I expected. He’s four full seconds into the steal when a member of the Boundless manages to peel out of the fight and put two revolver rounds in him. Twenty seconds left. I give Barley a look that shamelessly asks for permission. Her silence is firmer than any words could be. We stay here. We give up forty-four thousand MultiBucks. This is the price of safety.

Ten seconds remain when the Chaff start their steal. Though they’ve cleared the cashout station of mines and other hazards, they’re not in the clear. The cloaker evaded death long enough for her Thrill Seeker teammates to token back in. No sense holding tokens when you’re about to lose it all, I guess. Then there’s the Boundless maven with the marksman rifle, huddled at one edge of the Colosseum turf. He manages to pick off one Chaff stalwart. The other keeps stealing, protected by pop-up barricades and a steady stream of healing from the Chaff maven.

The Thrill Seekers break onto the field in a burst of violence. They kill both remaining Chaff players a moment too late. Four seconds remain, not enough for another steal. The Chaff have it. With their last moments in the spotlight, the Thrill Seekers begin to move. They do not go for the rifle-wielding Boundless contestant to score one final kill. They dance. A sporting gesture, a respectable acceptance of defeat. It’s more than I expected from them. The timer ticks to zero, Century Stadium disintegrates, the uproar of the audience fades, and I cannot help but wonder who they are cheering for.