Another team of people in the prevention uniform teleported onto ground level in a blast of displaced air. Xiaoshu explained the situation to them, and they calmly began to run their instruments over the wreckage.

The leader of the team spoke with them.

“Just so you know,” he said, “this is noteworthy behavior. A lot of students lose themselves in these games chasing glory. The teachers read our reports on what happens here.”

“We’re supposed to win together,” Xiaoshu said.

“Just for thoroughness, how did you kids know there were people stuck under there?”

There was a pause. Lyssa held her breath. She froze her expression into a blank look.

“To be honest,” Xiaoshu said, “I wasn’t sure. I saw the building collapse and thought I saw figures in the thick of it. Guess it slipped my mind until we got so close.”

“I see.”

Ecto phased out of the rubble pile along with two other prevention team members. They had Amelia and Penny slung over their shoulders. The two students were gently set down.

“That’s all we’re authorized to do,” the prevention team said. “Good luck.” They regrouped and disappeared.

Lyssa rushed over to the foot of the pile.

“Are you alright?” She asked.

“Yes,” Amelia said. “My arms are sore as hell. But we are alive.”

“And ready to rock,” Penny added. She coughed.

They looked ragged. A layer of dust caked their uniforms, mixed with sweat like cement.

“What happened?” Lyssa asked.

“We thought we would get a vantage point,” Amelia said. “The gate needs to open, do you know this?”

“Yes.”

“Well the other students must have gotten bored. Miss ice queen and brainiac naturally gathered their own trail of flies clinging onto them. They met outside of the gate and began to talk. Looks like egos were bruised.”

“Power corrupts, or something,” Penny said. “I dunno.”

“Not always. Victory has never had anything questionable tied to her ledger,” Ecto remarked.

Amelia and Penny both glanced at Lyssa.

“I’m going,” Lyssa said. She marched off towards the direction of the gate. Having rested enough, Amelia helped Penny to her feet to get ready to move.

“What did I say?” Ecto said.

They continued to move. Lyssa occasionally checked up on her friends. They were recovering, but only as far as one could after such an event. They were exhausted. And so was she. Her body was repaired, but her strength had been spent. She no longer hurt but a heavy numbness came with every movement of her muscles. This might be as far as she could make it in the games.

The gate was marked by a large, red barrier. Hundreds of students had gathered nearby, getting ready to fight. Most were still fresh having avoided run-ins with the machines that infested the testing area. Quiet conversation swept throughout the crowded street like a low wind. The exchanges were even friendly. A pretense.

The red number hung at the end of one, long street. It was over a dozen lanes wide past the barrier. It was a funneled filter that would once again purge hundreds of students from the games. A zeppelin listed behind the gate attended by a swarm of camera drones, watching, reacting, commentating.

Amelia tapped Lyssa’s shoulder.

“When they open this gate, I want you to go ahead,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“Do not worry about us.”

“I don’t want to leave you behind,” Lyssa said. This concern for someone else. A novel feeling. She didn’t know if she liked it, but felt compelled to hold onto it.

“Lyssa, this is a competition. Our lives are no longer in danger. You have to try to win.”

Lyssa thought about it for a moment. She thought of why she had entered the games in the first place. At first it was because Carrie had pushed her to. Then it was to discover what she really wanted to do. What was it now? A plea, to herself perhaps, that her existence had meaning that she alone inscribed. That had to be of some significance. She would not throw that away.

“Okay,” she said. She looked out at the hundreds of students ahead of them. The energies of dozens of gifts primed like flexed muscles. There was an itchy feeling on her skin. A mere few hundred footsteps separated them from the finish line. The goal seemed enormous, despite being a small ribbon reduced in the distance. An antsy anticipation built and built until…

All eyes followed the lazy arc of a green flare shot up in the distance. There was no sound, no fanfare, no boisterous indication of what it meant. But as the flare reached the height of its trajectory and began to fall, the red barrier disappeared.

Colossi’s all-too-apparent voice shattered the moment of tranquility.

“What are we waiting for!?”

The horde of students performed a battle cry and charged forward. Footfalls and strides of all sizes thundered down the asphalt road. Lyssa broke into a run as well, but they were all in the back of the horde. The shaking was making it a challenge to maintain a sure footing. She studied the chaos, searching for an opening to gain on her peers. She recognized Ironhog’s imposing form barrel through the students. When they learned to get out of his way he curled into a ball of quills and rolled ahead.

Beside her, a green figure covered in vines sprinted, easily outpacing her. Lyssa only recognized that it was Penny from the thick hair spilling through the incomplete living suit. Even when exhausted the botanical manipulator was able to compete. Ecto had no doubt begun swimming through the ground. And Xiaoshu’s versatile strength easily allowed him to run ahead. Amelia soared above, but she did not yet overtake the wave of students.

The caution was rewarded when a wall of wind lifted a number of students in the air. Vortex briefly glanced back to check on her work before riding her breeze forward.

“Of course she made it,” Lyssa thought.

Lyssa ran around the brief rain of falling students. That put her ahead of a decent number of people. Moments later a great spider web of cracks crawled along the road, and the asphalt split into unsteady chunks as it sank a few storeys into the ground. Lyssa followed the trail of mental energy and saw a student with what looked like a colander on his head. That must be Metalobe, the telekinetic she was hearing so much about.

She called on Mercurial’s shadowy mist and made a single twitchwalk over the gap. Many students simply jumped over the obstruction. Some flew. Few were slowed. Lyssa did not count, but she knew her place among the two hundred was not yet secure.

Her skin began to prickle as the temperature rapidly dropped. Reflexively, she jumped back and enflamed her skin with Sethlana’s fire, right before a wall of ice several meters tall barred the entire road. She caught a glimpse of Selazane, the woman who could make the deepest Arctic feel like summer. Students were already jumping over the wall. Lyssa nearly used another gift to get herself over until she heard Colossi shout.

“Let’s make this more interesting!”

The large man ran straight through the ice. The cold did not seem to bother him, nor slow him down. Lyssa ran through the gap before the other students swarmed it. She could see the finish line clearly now. And a cursory glance around told her there was around a hundred students alongside her. She forgot her fatigue and bit her tongue against the burning in her muscles. Seeing their place secured, the students with the powerhouse gifts did not try to further slow down the competition.

They were all seconds away.

That was the last thought Lyssa had in her mind when she woke up covered in dust. Her ears were ringing. Where was she? The game. They were about to cross the finish line. She looked around her. The road was littered with students like her, just barely beginning to recover. No one had crossed. A grey smog had settled over the last stretch of the road. What was once a clear path, had been replaced by an absence. Lyssa blinked away the tears in her eyes caused by the irritants in the air. She squinted, trying to understand where everything had went. Her mind stalled to grasp what she was seeing, only to conclude it was nothing. It took an additional second for her to realize that the nothing was a crater. It was so wide she had to turn her head to see the entirety of the newly formed geological formation. The finish line? Nowhere in sight. Where it had been was now the center of the blast zone. As the dust settled, a lone individual could be seen in the place of the end goal.

The details came through little by little. Crossed arms like pythons, thighs like the boughs of a great tree. A torso forged like an hourglass fit to tell time for a god. The figure could only be described as Amazonian. Her hair—a golden waterfall—came down to her mid back, pristine despite the recent destruction. Her livery was silver and blue stripes, though gold remained the dominant color. A small patch on her shoulder spelled M.A.G.E, but that symbol was hardly noticeable when across her ample chest, etched in gleaming gold, was the great letter:

V.