From beside the crumbled brick wall, Hazel Hops peered past a seemingly nonstop barrage of bullets that pummeled the air above her, forming a ceiling of grey atop her head. The shallow pools that swirled around her boots splashed lightly, but the raindrops gathering on the hollowed-out shells of the Leopard tanks masked the sound, adding a sporadic splattering to the tender pips of light rain falling from the looming clouds. Hazel shivered to dispel the gloom that pressed onto the horizon by the never-ending grey.

A few feet away, a faint blue flame licked along the oil-slicked surface of the water, and she quickly adjusted her course lest the oil saturate her fatigues and send her to the nether before she could get off a shot. She stayed low, knowing better than to move abruptly. So far, she had managed fifteen kills without a single hit against her, but before long, the Alliance would make a move – they wouldn’t let her camp without marking her for elimination.

Though she swore she hadn’t given any indication of her thoughts, a laser burst burned into her left shoulder the second she lurched across the gap from the tank to a kiosk less than a body length away. “They’re on me!” she called to her companion. “You have to make your move now!”

Even with the wound, she had enough power to bear crawl through the rusting remains of the tank cemetery, and as she approached the other side, she caught sight of the primary target. “You’re dead,” Hazel murmured as she raised her weapon and focused the sights on her goal. “Get the healer, WarpLight!” she commanded, tensing her finger to take the shot.

“Ow!” she shrieked, reaching her hand to rub a painful spot on her forehead. Using the distraction, her target executed a perfect three-point leap to the top of the tank that had hidden her, blasting her partner into oblivion before aiming the weapon directly at her skull through the displaced deflector shield that once had covered the tank treads. Before she could react, the target had turned the tables and Hazel was dead.

“What the heck was that, Peter?” Hazel complained, staring down at the headset that rested by her feet.

“It was an accident,” Peter shrugged, kicking hard at the leg of the chair he had vacated. “I just meant to bash it against something – not against you. The gunner shot me right when you started barking orders at me.”

“Well, it was my head you hit. Just before the target hit my head in the game.”

“It’s not like this is your game,” he grumbled. “I don’t know what you’re pissed about. You deal in magic wands and parlor tricks. You called the medic a ‘healer.’ A shot in the head with a bullet doesn’t matter to you.”

Puffing out an irritated breath, Hazel forced herself not to correct Pete about Tripartite, her game of choice. “Maybe not in the game, but a knock to my actual head is pretty important to me, and something I intend to avoid.”

When Pete shrugged, Hazel glared at him and stood to her feet. “Just be glad you didn’t screw me up on Trip. I just reached the top tier for the first time this year, and I will be in elite by next week.” He wasn’t even that serious about his game – just naturally gifted. He couldn’t possibly care too much about losing.

“You just started a week and a half ago,” Peter accused.

“I don’t know why that bothers you. How long have you known me? I reached elite in under a month last year. The only reason it’s taken so long this year was the surgery.” Despite her deep desire not to postpone her season, Hazel had acquiesced to eye surgery which had put her out of commission for weeks. When the choices were surgery now or an implant later, Hazel did not feel torn. No one was wiring circuits to her mind, for a variety of reasons.

“As long as you don’t pass me in my game,” he groused. “You have no idea how annoying it is to have a non-master kick your ass several times a month.”

“Guess that won’t be a problem if you keep bruising me with your equipment,” Hazel mumbled. Aloud she just said, “We’ve run out of food up here, and I have an appointment in twenty minutes anyway.”

Peter stood to his feet and joined her at the door. “Tomorrow?” he queried, his substantial mass leaning casually against the frame.

“I have to work on my game status with Sophie,” Hazel shrugged, squeezing past him. Before she could escape, he moved to block her. He should have lost his muscle once he stopped competing, but apparently, running the world still left time for him to exercise. He stood a good three inches taller than she, and when he wasn’t at work, he let his dark blond fringe of hair fall loose across his eyes. Even having known him for six years – having slept in his apartment on occasion – Peter could still stop her in her tracks with a look. A fact that irritated her immensely and sent her into massive bouts of internal rebellion.

“It sure was nice to have you around more during your recovery.”

“Not nice for me.”

“Yeah, but when you had nothing to distract you, you were pretty much at my beck and call.”

Irritated, Hazel tried to push past him. If he had been joking, she might have laughed, and she knew he would claim it as a joke. In reality? Pete preferred his friends available, and with his money, they usually were whenever he wanted them – day or night.

“I could Jolt you and make you stay,” he teased, moving into her path again. Why had he continued to attract her even after he made money? She had run into a couple of Pete’s wealthy friends early in his ascent in the computer industry, and a couple had even shown interest in her. One thing she knew about herself – she would always run scurrying away from a wealthy man, leery of their tendency to leverage money for personal reasons. And yet, even as Pete climbed up the ranks and started to acquire influence and fancy toys, Hazel stuck with him. Probably because I knew him when he was a pathetic puppy of a human, she sighed.

One corner of Peter’s mouth lifted, as if he could read her thoughts, and Hazel forced a calm breath, refusing to let him see his effect on her.

“First of all, that wouldn’t work on me because I don’t have a Wire –”

“It would work because it would knock you out…”

“And secondly…” She wouldn’t acknowledge his veiled threat. “…that might be a figure of speech for everyone else in the world, but you shouldn’t make it because you actually have the ability to do it.”

“Being me has its perks.”

“Having the son of an arms dealer as your best friend has its perks, you mean. The perks of being you is that thousand-credit cloak you bought for Trip – a game you don’t play.”

“Your dad was an arms dealer? I had no idea,” he queried disingenuously.

“Very funny, making a joke about my dead dad.” She wasn’t really bothered – she made jokes about her dead dad with great frequency, since it was the best way to numb the pain. Of course Peter would pick up on her habit. “Say hello to Ziyad for me, or don’t. He’s kind of an ass anyway. And our next game will have to be this weekend. Sorry…”

She shrugged and pressed past him, gliding down the stairway to hop on her bike at the bottom. Though she prayed her rebellion would amuse him, it might as easily have irritated him, so she would find a reason to stay away from him a little longer than usual. It looked like the rain would wait until she made it to her destination.

The sun had sunk most of the way behind the buildings, and the grey-blue sky had faded to a dull aqua green. As always, the neon billboards assailed her eyes, violating her vision and threatening a headache. Who thought making signs that cause physical pain was a good idea? she complained. Once she was able to see again, the news story that scrolled across the sign registered in her mind, and her stomach performed a flip.

Freddy Nako, the 23-year-old son of the ambassador from Greater Lagos, collapsed at his home in New Greenwich yesterday afternoon. No apparent cause for the collapse has been released at this time, but Wire readings indicate no traumatic event. Nako is currently in stable condition under observation, and his father has handed duties to the Executive Secretary of the consulate.

Though the news hit her with a shockwave, it was just a small shockwave. Hazel hadn’t seen Freddy since high school, but Freddy was the reason she played. Her crush on him had sent her to the high school Game Society, where she had realized her real love – Guild, the predecessor to Trip. Within two years, Hazel had moved to Trip and started to earn money. She had spoken maybe twenty words to the guy before he left for college, so they weren’t exactly close, but seeing him blasted on a billboard – knowing he was hurt – Hazel stopped for a second under the portico to say a quick petition for him.

Once she made it out past the overhang and onto the street, the wind ripped past her with a frigid peel of irony. She had worried about precipitation, and mother nature had mocked her with a cold front.

Her team would have ganged up on her and barraged her with their claim that it was yet another reason why she should get the implant. For Hazel, though, unexpected weather was part of the thrill, something none of her teammates could remember feeling. True, she had to work twice as hard as any of her friends to excel at Trip, but even playing without the implant brought exhilaration that her teammates couldn’t grasp.

Besides, Hazel smirked as she pulled her bike to the front of the industrial-style building, it keeps them from knowing what I’m doing right now.

Stepping into the classroom, Hazel switched off her handheld, embarking on one of her daily disconnections, and pulled on her sneakers, waiting for the music to start.

++++++++++++++

“Someone get Aggey online!” shrieked Dr. Steven Frances as he wheeled the crashcart through the hospital room door. He couldn’t understand how Aggey hadn’t already begun offering instructions, lobbing protocols into his path so he would know how to save the young man lying on the hospital table.

Instead, Steven fumbled in the dark, as if his eyes were disconnected from his mind and he had to grope blindly into the deep recesses of his memory to access long forgotten procedures and methods.

“Get Dr. Rojandi in here, stat!” Steven commanded, staring around at the attending nurses. “And somebody give me some direction!” Steven had finally started to calm, centering on the young man in front of him. From what he had figured, the only reason the kid still lived was the implant that kept his vital functions running. Much like the one in Steven’s own brain. The one that was currently failing to access protocols. Only Dr. Pawar Rojandi still practiced wire-free, and so only Dr. Rojandi could manage the save if the system had failed.

Regardless, the young man on the table in front of Dr. Frances would likely not wake anytime soon, if at all. Though Dr. Frances felt a sense of responsibility, the patient had actually arrived much in the state he now lay, and enhanced or unenhanced intervention wouldn’t have made much difference.

+++++++++++++

Staring down at the Blueprint, Peter assessed the filtering Rendering, the apparently random series of glowing dots that correlated with the satellite signals responsible for the architecture of the Bridge. He had a lot of work to do, work he couldn’t ask anyone else to manage. Even if he could have trusted someone, no one else knew how to manage the complexities of everything he had to oversee.

Besides Hazel, he had given up most friendships. Hazel had known Lex, though. Hazel had lost Lex. Honestly, sometimes Hazel felt like the only link Peter still held to his baby brother. The Framework had seen to that. And he couldn’t lose Hazel, not like he had lost Lex.

Hazel wasn’t Wired.

No matter what happened, though she could die from some natural or unrelated cause, the Bridge could not touch Hazel. The Wire could not touch Hazel. A lightning strike could kill her, but a Jolt could not. Before the world erupted into chaos, he needed to make sure she would come to him when hell broke loose.