Warcross

  I try to shrug off the familiar note of guilt I always feel when combing through others’ private data. It’s your job, I remind myself. No room for feeling bad. Still, I delete the Memories of both Hammie and Asher from my records so that I can’t watch them again.

  A few of Roshan’s messages are to his parents, one is to his sister, and one is a delivery receipt for some sort of gift. There are no recorded Memories, but to my surprise, the gift receipt tells me that it was sent from Tremaine, with a single line written on the card. Did you get my letter? T. I search the rest of his data, but there’s no indication of the letter in question, or that Roshan has responded to Tremaine’s gift yet. Nothing terribly suspicious, but I flag the data anyway for future reference.

  Finally, I arrive at what little I have of Ren’s information. Most of it is of no consequence—plans for setting up equipment for the opening-night party; mail from fans. There’s one Memory of him, recorded at a party from last year, where he’s kissing a girl backstage as someone onstage is announcing his name. I clear my throat and turn my eyes away. Thankfully, the Memory shifts to Ren heading to his instruments in the center of the stage.

  Everything else in Ren’s files is encrypted, including a few emails I’d managed to retrieve from his trash. I swipe through each one. No matter what I run on them, each one looks like a cube of gibberish floating in my view, locked tight behind a shield.

  That’s when I finally run across something that makes me pause.

  It’s a deleted email hidden behind his menagerie of shields, hovering in my view as a locked cube. I turn it in midair. When I do, I notice a tiny, recurring marker at the edge of each side of the cube.

  “Well, well,” I whisper, sitting up taller. Any feelings of guilt I’d had now fly right out of my head. “What’s this?”

  The marker is a red dot, barely noticeable, part of the message’s encryption. And right beside it, in the tiniest letters, is the inscription WC0.

  So Ren was the silhouette in the Wardraft. Based on the red dot, this message was sent to him from inside the Dark World.

  I sit back on my bed and furrow my brow. This means that not only was Ren the one I’d been tracking at the Wardraft, not only was he inside the Dark World recently, but he is talking to others there.

  And no one goes into the Dark World unless they’re doing something illegal.

  14

  The first time I’d set foot in the Dark World was during my first bounty hunt.

  I was sixteen, and on my own. The boss of a local New York street gang had put out a $2,500 bounty on one of his members, and I’d seen it as a brief mention in some online forum.

  I’d read about other young people like me trying their luck in the competitive bounty hunter world. They seemed to have no special skill that I didn’t have, and it looked like a way—if you were good—to make a comfortable income. The best bounty hunters could rake in six figures a year.

  I had another reason to go after this bounty. My father owed $2,000 in gambling debt. After he died, I’d made a promise to myself to not fall into working for anyone in the criminal world—but in order to do that, I had to free myself from this debt. Otherwise, the people Dad owed the money to would come looking for me the instant I turned eighteen.

  So I did as much research as I could about how to get into the Dark World. I honestly thought that by following a few online guides, I would somehow be able to waltz into this den of crime unscathed.

  The Dark World operates by no rule except one: Stay anonymous. Your safety is only as good as your disguise. I learned this the hard way after I made my way into the world, found my target, and tracked him down in real life. Only then did I realize that I’d accidentally exposed a part of my identity while in the Dark World. In no time, my personal information—age, history, location—was broadcast to the entire Dark World, and my equipment was compromised.

  I got the money, paid off my father’s gambling debt. But over the next few months, I completely gutted my laptop and phone, stayed off-line and out of sight, kept the lowest profile I could. Even then, I’d get weird phone calls in the middle of the night, strange letters delivered in the mail. The occasional threat left on my physical doorstep. Eventually, I had to move.

  I never worked for a gang again. It would be months more before I gathered the courage to return online.

  That’s the thing about the Dark World: You can prepare for it all you want, but the only way to truly understand it is to head in.

  • • • • •

  “MISS CHEN,” HIDEO says as our call connects. “Good to hear from you.”

  It’s the next morning, before training begins again in earnest, and Hideo’s virtual image is in my room, leaning forward in his office chair and resting his elbows on his desk. The single streak of silver in his hair catches some of the light filtering in from his windows. Beside him, Kenn is standing close to the desk with his hands in his pockets in a way that tells me I’d interrupted a conversation they were having. He glances at me over his shoulder. Two bodyguards stand at attention behind them.

  “Calling so soon with an update?” Kenn remarks. He glances back at Hideo. “Maybe you really did find your perfect bounty hunter.”

  I try to feel professional in my bare feet and shredded black jeans. “You must’ve been busy since the opening ceremony party,” I say to Hideo. My eyes dart briefly to Kenn. “Am I interrupting some business?”

  “You are the business,” Kenn replies. “We were just talking about you.”

  “Oh.” I clear my throat. “Good things, I hope.”

  Kenn grins. “I’d say so.” He pushes away from Hideo’s desk without explaining his words further. “I’ll leave you both to it, then. Have fun.”

  Hideo exchanges a glance with Kenn. “We’ll pick up again in a bit.”

  Kenn steps out of sight. Hideo watches him go, then gestures briefly at the door with one hand. Without a word, his two bodyguards bow their heads and head out of the room, leaving Hideo alone.

  When they’re gone, he turns back to me. “I hope life has been pleasant since you took all the attention at the Wardraft.”

  “I just figured that you’d instructed the Phoenix Riders to draft me first.”

  “I didn’t tell anyone to make you the number one pick. Asher Wing did that on his own. You’re quite the commodity.”

  So, Hideo hadn’t been involved in that, after all. “Well,” I say, “the Wardraft was interesting in more ways than one. Look what I found.” I bring up my screenshot from the Wardraft and hover it between us. It rotates slowly, giving us a full view of the dome. The unmistakable shadow of the figure’s silhouette is perched prominently in the dome’s tangle of metal. Over his head is the word [null]. “On the day of the Wardraft, I saw someone watching from the Tokyo Dome’s rafters.”

  This catches Hideo’s interest. He studies the screenshot, his eyes narrowing on the dark silhouette perched in the dome’s maze of beams. “How do you know it’s a he?”

  “Oh, I know better than that. It’s Ren.”

  Hideo’s stare darts from the screenshot over to me. “Renoir Thomas?”

  I nod. “DJ Ren. A marker in the screenshot’s code pointed to him. Since then, I’ve hooked up all of the official players to my Warcross profile.” I pull up everyone’s accounts. “I may need to go through some of their Memories, see who else might be involved.”

  Hideo’s gaze goes to the digital map I’ve created that shows where each of the Warcross players currently are. Most are in their dorms. A group of Andromedans are out in the city, while Asher has left the Riders’ dorm. Ren is still sitting in his room.

  “You’re more dangerous than I thought,” Hideo muses, admiring my handiwork.

  I offer him a smile. “I promise I’ll be nice to you.”

  This time, I manage to coax a laugh from him. “Should I be even more concerned?” he says to me.

  I let his question linger, and bring up Ren’s email. “I’ve been runn
ing a hack on Ren’s info,” I reply, pulling the email forward to hover between us as a dark, encrypted cube of data. “Found this yesterday, although I can’t seem to unlock it.”

  Hideo scans the file once. Like me, his eyes go immediately to the red marker on the edge of the cube. “This was sent from the Dark World,” he says.

  I nod. “And wrapped in a shield I don’t recognize.”

  Hideo brings his hands slightly apart, then rotates the cube once. “I do,” he mutters. He expands his hands again. The cube grows larger, and as it does, he pulls one side of it so that I can see its surface in detail. I narrow my eyes at it. The surface is coated with an elaborate, winding series of endlessly repeating patterns.

  “It’s called a fractal shield,” he explains. “A new variation on onion shields we’ve seen lately, except that the fractal shield’s layers loop endlessly, multiplying each time you burrow through a top layer. The more you try to break it open, the more secure it becomes. Your hacks will run in place forever without getting anywhere.”

  No wonder I couldn’t break my way through it. “I’ve never seen this before.”

  “I wouldn’t expect you to. This is mutated from security we developed inside Henka Games.”

  I lean forward, my gaze running over the surface of the cube. “Can you break it?”

  Hideo puts his hands against two surfaces of the cube. When he removes his hands, a copy of the top of the fractal shield floats above the cube. “An infinite shield requires an infinite key,” he says. “Something that multiplies at the same rate and type as the shield itself.”

  “Every locked door has a key,” I murmur.

  At my words, Hideo meets my gaze. He smiles.

  He types several commands that are invisible to me, then runs it through a Henka Games program. A key forms in his hands, blacked out and ever-shifting, its own surface coated with the same endless patterns. I look on as he takes the key and presses it back against the cube.

  The surface of the cube suddenly stills. The infinitely repeating fractals that cover it vanish. Then, in a flash, the cube disappears—replaced by a message.

  It only says one thing.

  1300PD

  My gaze hitches on it at the same time Hideo’s does.

  “Pirate’s Den,” we say in unison.

  To a normal person, 1300PD would be meaningless. But to me, it’s a scheduled event. The 1300 is 1:00 p.m., written according to a twenty-four-hour clock—and PD stands for “Pirate’s Den,” an abbreviation I know well. It’s a notorious gathering place in the Dark World.

  The event is tagged for March twentieth.

  “Well,” I say. “Guess I know where I’m going this week.”

  Hideo considers the message for a moment longer before giving me a questioning look. “You’re headed in alone?”

  “You crack the fractal shields.” I lean back on my bed and cross my arms. “It’s my job to walk with the criminals, Mr. Tanaka.”

  At that, he smiles a little. “Hideo, please.”

  I tilt my head at him. “You insist on calling me Miss Chen in public. It’s only fair.”

  He lifts an eyebrow. “I try not to give the tabloids more gossip than they can handle. They’re particularly aggressive at this time of year.”

  “Oh? And what gossip is that? That we’re on a first-name basis? Scandalous. It seems like the tabloids are already making up their own gossip about me, anyway.”

  “Would you prefer I call you Emika?”

  “I would,” I reply.

  “Well.” He nods. “Emika, then.”

  Emika. Hearing him say my first name sends a pleasant shiver down my spine. “I’ll keep you updated,” I decide to say, shifting to signal an end to our call. “Should be enlightening.”

  “Wait. Before you go.”

  I pause. “Yes?”

  “Tell me about your arrest from a couple of years ago.”

  He’s been doing research on my record. I clear my throat, suddenly angry that he’s brought it up. I haven’t talked about my arrest in years. “It’s old news,” I mutter as I begin to launch into a summary of what had happened to Annie, how I’d hacked into the school’s directory.

  Hideo shakes his head, stopping me. “I already know what you did. Tell me about how the police knew it was you.”

  I hesitate.

  “You’re far too skilled for them,” Hideo continues. He studies me intently, his expression the same as it had been when he’d tested me during our first meeting. “They didn’t actually catch you, did they?”

  I meet his gaze. “I confessed.”

  Hideo stays silent.

  “They thought Annie did it,” I go on. The memory of sirens, of me walking into the principal’s office where the cops were gathered, of Annie’s cuffed wrists, her tear-streaked face looking up at me in shock, comes back to me now. “They were going to arrest her. So I turned myself in.”

  “You turned yourself in.” There is a note of fascination in his voice. “And did you know what you would be sacrificing in doing that?”

  I shrug. “Didn’t have time to dwell on it. Just seemed like the right thing to do.”

  Hideo is quiet. His attention is now completely locked on me.

  “I suppose chivalry isn’t dead,” he finally says.

  I don’t quite know how to respond. All I can do is return his look, feel another wall around him fall away, see the glint in his eyes change. Whatever he thought of what I said, it’s made him let down his guard.

  Then the moment’s over. He straightens in his chair and breaks his eye contact with me. “Until next time, Emika,” he says.

  I murmur my own farewell and end the call. His virtual self disappears from my room, leaving me alone again. Slowly, I exhale and let my shoulders sag. Hideo hadn’t mentioned anything about the other bounty hunters, which means I’m probably ahead of them on this job. So far, so good.

  It takes me a moment to realize that I’d forgotten to turn off my hack when I was having my conversation with Hideo. That meant that I was crawling his profile for data, too. Hideo has his own protective shields up on his info, but even so, I’d managed to grab one unencrypted file from his account, one newly created earlier today. Now sitting in my downloads, blinking at me. I peer at it long enough that it opens, thinking that I want to look inside.

  My room fades away. I find myself standing in some sort of gym, equipped with large punching bags, racks of weights, mats, and long mirrors. This is one of Hideo’s Memory files. I shouldn’t be poking around in his data. Right away, I start exiting, but the Memory plays before I can.

  Hideo is punching a bag in a furious rhythm, each impact shuddering in my view. Kickboxing? I pan around the Memory’s world—then stop when I see the reflection in the mirrors.

  He’s shirtless, and his chest and back are slick with sweat, his muscles wound tight. His damp hair shudders with each hit he makes. His hands are wrapped in white bandages, and as he continues his ferocious assault on the punching bag, I can see glimpses of blood staining the bandages over his knuckles. The scars I always see. How hard has he been hitting that bag? But what shocks me is his expression. His eyes are black and fierce, a look so full of focused anger that I physically pull away.

  I think back to the intensity I’d seen on his face during our first meeting, when he was talking about his newest creation, about his passions. I can see a similar light in his eyes here in the way he throws his punches—but this is a darker intensity. One of deep fury.

  Hideo’s bodyguards wait patiently at the edges of the room, and standing right next to him is someone who must be his trainer, decked out head to toe in padded gear. “Enough,” he says now, and in response, Hideo pauses to turn on him. If I didn’t know better, I’d say that the look the trainer gives me—to Hideo—is wary, even a little afraid.

  The trainer starts to circle, and Hideo does the same. His movements are fluid and precise, deadly. His hair falls across his face, obscuring his eyes momentar
ily from view. The trainer twirls a long wooden stick in one hand, drags it along the ground, and then hoists it. He comes at Hideo, swinging the stick at him with blinding speed. My view blurs. Hideo dodges the blow easily. He sidesteps again, then a third time—on the fourth strike, Hideo lunges. He brings one arm up, fist clenched, as the stick comes down on it. The stick snaps with a loud crack against his forearm. Hideo darts forward. His fist strikes the trainer’s arm pads so powerfully that the trainer winces at the impact. Hideo doesn’t let up. He rains blows on the man’s arm pads in a blur of motion—the final punch lands so hard that the trainer stumbles backward and falls.

  Hideo stands there for a moment, breathing heavily, his expression hard. As if he were seeing someone else lying there. Then, the fury in his eyes fades, and for a moment, he looks like himself again. He offers the trainer his hand and pulls him back up to his feet. The session ends.

  I watch in stunned silence as Hideo bids farewell to his trainer, then heads out of the room’s double doors with his bodyguards flanking him, his hands still wrapped in bloodied bandages. Then the Memory ends, and I find myself in my own room again, jolted back into a peaceful scene. I finally exhale, realizing I’d been holding my breath.

  So that’s how Hideo gets his bruised knuckles. Why does he train like a demon possessed? Why does he strike as if he wants to kill? I shiver at the memory of his expression, of those vicious, dark eyes, absent of any hint of the playful, polite, charismatic version of himself that I thought I knew. I shake my head. Best if I didn’t mention watching this Memory to anyone. Aside from his own bodyguards, Hideo probably didn’t intend for anyone to see that.