Rich, or Fat Rich, was Walter’s gateway into a whole new world of Linked. In fact, he didn’t realise just how disconnected his team had been from the rest of the training facility. He had just assumed that every group was just as isolated as his own, and it had taken just shy of six weeks for him to figure that out.

Rich was, at the heart of it all, a great man. Kind, hilarious, and a great friend. Attentive to boot. Rich was about as interested in games as Ajax was, and declined to give them a go, but he was into comics almost as much as Walter was.

They spent much of their time talking and training, chatting about the new issues and line-ups of seasons of comic books adaptions. It was a different experience than chatting with Ajax, who was so guarded about himself, and the others in his team were the same. Mirah barely talked at all in general conversation, and Aaliyah was almost hostile when he’d asked her questions.

In fact, Walter found himself drifting from the group entirely. Aside for Tracker’s lessons over the past weeks, they had barely been in direct contact with each other—their only significant interactions being around the cafeteria table, eating lunch.

So it was odd when Willem had ordered them all down to the Underground, like he had on their first few days in the training facility. Now, the walk down there could be done with eyes closed, the muscle memory almost as instinctual as any other basic task.

The team walked alongside each other, silently making their way out of the elevator and towards their designated training area. Walter distinctly noticed that Mirah and Ajax were standing closer together than they had weeks prior. Not romantically, mind you, but with a sense of camaraderie or closeness that Walter wasn’t sure he’d ever managed to form with the Greek giant.

With a small pang of envy in Walter’s chest, they moved quickly into the Gym, the wide-open space filled with people due to the time of day. But immediately, Walter realised something was off. In fact, the entire team were suddenly on edge, a strange dread making its way into their stomachs. They moved through the rows of equipment slowly, eyes scanning the room.

“What’s going on?” Ajax whispered subtly as the team squished together to move past a particularly large apparatus.

“No clue, but people are giving us looks.” Aaliyah said in a normal voice, at just the right volume to almost be lost in the cacophony of sounds that was almost inherent to the Gym’s environment. No-one dared to speak after that, only keeping their eyes searching the surroundings as they passed through.

Aaliyah was right, Walter could see people giving them quick looks and then turning away in short order. Some whispers cropped up when they passed, though that could be a trick of the mind. Walter couldn’t convince himself that it wasn’t however.

It was as they drew close to the door of their private training area that Walter spied Rich out of the corner of his eyes. Their eyes connected for a moment, and Rich moved towards them as casually as he could. The rest of the group, oblivious to his new found friend, were immediately wary of the man before Walter waved at them with his hand.

“Rich, do you know what’s–” Walter started, but was interrupted by a pained expression on Rich’s face.

“Man, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know that they were going to pull this shit on you. Everyone’s only learning about it now, man. You need to stay strong out there, don’t let them break you.” Rich didn’t stick around to be asked questions, passing by without so much as a farewell. For some reason, seeing the normally unflappable man so perturbed was almost harrowing for Walter. It’d be like if he saw Ajax with an expression of malice on his face.

“Uh, so, that’s a really bad sign.” Walter said slowly, turning back to his group. The rest of the group were various shades of shocked, with Ajax clenching his powerful jaw and his eyebrows furrowed, Aaliyah with her eyes shut in consternation, and Mirah looking as she always did, but with more nuance.

“A friend of yours?” Aaliyah said dryly, and Walter simply nodded as they began their walk towards the training area they all spent much of their time in. As soon as they walked through the doors, they were greeted with the sight of a stoic Willem, arms crossed over his chest, next to a taller, smartly dressed man. Off in the corner, you could see Tracker as she was on the phone, facing the wall away from the two men.

“–I simply think this will be an excellent chance for our students to compete against each other in as close to real combat as we can get.” Willem just nodded; his expression almost entirely neutral.

“And you want to move up the real combat training of my own team to match yours, who have been here for almost twice as long?” Willem’s tone wasn’t scathing, but it was cold. Someone unfamiliar with the man might think that this was indifference, but it was actually a cold contempt—something Aaliyah had pieced together from being around the man so often for her meditation training.

“Hello? How can I help you?” Ajax said affably as he walked closer to the unfamiliar man. He was suited in a perfectly tailored, pinstriped suit that starkly contrasted the pale of his skin and matched the raven black, oiled hair on top of his head.

“Ah, welcome Willem’s team. We were just discussing the minutia of our two teams participating in a combat exercise.” The smiling man immediately gave off an aura that meshed terribly with every person in Walter’s team. Mirah almost recoiled from just how predatory the man’s expression was, even if it pretended to be amiable. Aaliyah, in a rare moment of almost-comradery, pulled the other girl behind her own form subtly, hiding Mirah’s tense form behind her own taller one.

Walter, for his part, had a pit form in his stomach and felt as his organs dropped into the sudden fracture in space. He had been wary and suspicious before, but this was downright mortifying. Baxter had come after them. He was forcing Willem’s hand and making them face off in combat.

The man in the pinstripe suit let the personable smile on his face grow a little sharper as he surveyed the reactions of his audience.

“Well, there’s nothing more to it! We’ll be holding the match in the arenas in only a few hours. An exciting time for any new trainee!” Then he left, the smell of his overpowering cologne lingering in the air for just a moment after he waltzed out of the room, almost like a lingering threat against them.

“You’ve now had the pleasure of meeting Cain.” No-one recognised the name, but it was quickly entered into the mind of everyone present. “We’re trying to get this stopped, but Tracker isn’t having any luck getting through to her superiors and I can’t do shit. This is all AASAU ruling on a technicality that allows them to progress a trainee’s training if they think they’re advanced enough.” Walter could swear that the short and stocky trainer was about to spit in disgust, but he thought better of it and just sighed.

“Wait, so we’re fighting against Baxter’s team now?” Ajax said, blinking quickly as if he were fighting against a bright light.

“Individually, yes.” Willem’s jaw clenched, showing an impressive amount of muscle definition even in such an obscure place, “Usually you start proper combat training a week or two from now, and graduate to the Arena a few weeks of training after that. Now, you’re going in with basically no training against one of the most senior teams.”

“They’re smurfing.” Walter blurted out without thinking, making the rest of the team put away their worry and look at him questioningly. “I–I mean, smurfing just means they’re fighting the weak fighters to make themselves feel good. Like if Michael Tyson went back into amateur boxing at his peak for fun.” Aaliyah snorted out a laugh, though not one filled with derision like usual. It was a genuine laugh.

“In simple terms, yes. In more accurate terms, they’re going to try to fuck you up.” The sudden rapture that Willem caused by simply using a swear word was almost glorious. For some reason, the dissonance that it caused within the team members drove it home for them. Walter gulped, but Mirah managed to speak first.

“How much?” Her voice was consistent and calm, though her hands were clenched within the pockets of her gym sweats—even if no-one noticed the white knuckles.

“As much as they can get through with me as a judge and referee.” Willem said, his tone low and dangerous. “They can’t stop me, it’s in my literal job description and I could make AASAU’s pay heftily for it. So, here’s how it’s going to go.” Willem paused for a moment, leaving only the sound of Tracker talking in hushed tones over her cell phone.

“You have no experience, you all have no idea how to fight. You are going to be fighting against trainees that have had at least a month of intense combat training, probably more. They are going to be better than you at fighting, period. The likelihood that any one of you will win in a fight is infinitesimal.” The small man, despite his stature, was large and imposing in that moment. An authoritative figure that he neglected to be most of the time, content to let the trainees become better in their own ways.

“You need to be careful and self-protective. They will try to get things through me, even if it’ll be almost impossible. They will cheat to hurt you and their own referee will pull every trick in the book to keep the match going. You cannot go for deathblows, there is no win condition for deathblows, and that’s the only way some of you will be able to win, Walter specifically.”

“Your only concern is running out the clock and waiting for the moment that you can call surrender.” Willem’s eyes were like little gems in his head, glimmering with an iron command that they hadn’t truly experienced from the man until now. “Am I understood?”

The team hastily nodded, not willing to tell the man otherwise. In a way, it was comforting to have the man who had been training the team so firmly on their side, though they had no doubt that he’d administer his judgement equally amongst the match’s participants.

Walter’s heart was starting to furiously beat in his chest, his mouth going suddenly dry from the rush of adrenalin as his mind began to scratch the surface of just how serious this was.

“Holy shit, guys.” He said shakily as he turned to his teammates, “What the fuck do we do?” Walter’s eyes met with Ajax’s first, who was surprisingly calm about it all, and then Mirah next, who had nothing if not an excellent poker face. Aaliyah’s face was more telling, filled with a quiet resignation.

“Do we have much of a choice? Willem wasn’t exactly offering us any options, and if Tracker is over there,” Aaliyah pointed towards the suited lady with her thumb, “trying to figure this out and hasn’t already, then there isn’t going to be anything we can do to stop it. We’re sitting duck, Walt.”

Walter gulped again against his dry throat, the pet name that Walter had slowly grown to adopt as a second name didn’t work to ease his anxiety. His rebellious hands began to shake, even as he tried to hide them beneath the sleeves of his jumper. His breathing started to become laboured as the world began to close in around him, an indistinct and fuzzy wall blocking off his vision.

It was when he felt a cool hand on the tips of his fingers that it jolted him enough to push the fuzzy feeling away, revealing Mirah’s classically blank face. He was almost in shock, never having been as close to the woman as right now, giving him an excellent look at the scar running down her cheek and through her lips that he found his eyes always resting on. They locked eyes for a moment, the stark green of Mirah’s and the mundane brown of Walter’s intermingling as their gazes formed a connection and transferred a silent message.

You’re with us. I’m with you.

It was such a simple thing, barely more than a sentiment, but somehow it calmed the shaking to jitters, and the fuzzy feeling to a slight light-headedness. Walter managed to take a deep breath as he nodded thankfully towards the scarred girl, not quite brave enough to speak right now. After a long string of breaths, Walter managed to regain control over his body again, the shakes now an afterthought.

“Okay. Alright,” he said to himself, self soothing the remaining worry before sighing deeply, “Ajax.” He said as strongly as he could, which might not be impressively loud, but it had a conviction that he’d built over years of working with teams. The tall man regarded Walter seriously, their eyes truly meeting for the first time since Ajax had said something stupid and made Walter mad. All of that was thrown away in lieu of the dire situation. Ajax nodded, signifying his attention.

“You’re the only one who had actually fought against their guys. I want you to tell me everything you can about the other team; links, possible weaknesses, personalities, everything, and we’ll talk strategy.” He looked commandingly over his other teammates, searching their faces for their attention, and finding it in droves. “Then we’ll find out how we will make it through this alive.”