She returned the gesture. “Thank you. Don’t forget you guys took on the other team all on your own. Oh, look—they’re getting close.”
The Twins had made a plan that was as sneaky as it was quick. They had circled in a particular way and very obviously chose to approach behind another team. Now, they attacked with absolute ruthlessness. Dexi circled again while Callie fired her bow to drive the other two toward him. His strikes were brutally quick. He struck one contestant across the face with such force that the magical barrier came up at once.
The second panicked and fell prey to another arrow.
Dexi and Callie immediately pushed into motion. What they hadn’t seen, however, was that the third team had found and looted two Grade A caches by this point.
“Ohhh, I wanna see them lose,” Tina said.
“Hell yeah,” Justin agreed.
They were on the edge of their seat and mutual anticipation hung in the air between them.
Unfortunately, they were disappointed. Callie and Dexi separated quickly and she circled left while he moved right. They advanced in a pincer movement and began to close. When she first sighted the other team, she gave a piercing whistle like a hawk’s call and began to fire.
Cannily, she altered her positions slightly between each arrow to make it look like both of the Twins were behind the dune.
The other team pushed in too deep and hadn’t realized what was happening. Their strategy—a modified leapfrog—used the rush technique to push closer and closer to her. They thought that if they only got into range, the Twins would be powerless against them.
Two of the three were felled by Dexi before they even saw him. The third must have caught something out of the corner of his eye because he turned with a gasp and a snarl. Armed with a sword, he charged his attacker but fell to an arrow.
Half the stadium sank into sulky silence while the other half erupted into cheers.
“Damn.” Tina shook her head and gave a golf clap. “I don’t want to admit it, but they outplayed them.” She raised an eyebrow at her teammate. “And yet…”
“They make snap decisions and commit entirely,” Justin said and immediately caught her train of thought. “They miss caches and are aggressive. A team that lays traps for them might make them sign their own death warrants—figuratively, of course.”
“That’s unfortunate,” she said. “They’re such jerks.” She saw his look and waved her hands dismissively. “Don’t you look at me like that. They aren’t real. It’s okay to wish they would go away.”
“I suppose there’s that.” He grinned. “Hey, should we get a meal? I, for one, don’t still want to be here when the Twins come for their refreshments.”
“Good call.” She stood and stretched. “Let’s find Lyle and see what he thinks. Okay, I know what he thinks—he’ll simply charge straight in. But we might as well talk about doing something different.”
He laughed and followed her. In all honesty, he hadn’t expected his two friends to get along so well but he was glad they did. He still missed Zaara, though. Sometimes, he thought of the jokes she would make or the disgusted way she would have looked at the Twins.
It was different to have Tina there but in a way he couldn’t describe. He shook his head and followed as he darted a glance to where the woman who had watched them had been seated. She was gone now.
Justin frowned and followed Tina into the darkness of the stadium tunnels.
The pod cover was removed and Anna Price opened her eyes as Jacob and Dr. DuBois removed her sensor pads. They helped her sit and the young engineer waited, clearly nervous about her assessment.
“It was surprisingly immersive,” she told him. “I have to say, I enjoyed myself immensely. It was rather like I imagine the colosseum of Rome—well, in some ways.”
“It still annoys me that we couldn’t sell them,” he told her. “As a game, I mean, because it is fun, isn’t it? It’s super fun. And there’s so much more to the world.”
“Now, tell me how the procedural generation works,” Price told him. She stood and slipped her shoes on. “Wherever players are present, the game prioritizes procedural generation and banks some of it for recall and so on, yes?”
“Yes.” To her surprise, he now looked nervous. “There have to be priorities, you see. Otherwise, it would be too much processing power.”
This was an incredibly mundane point and one he should