“His name is Wikki,” Asher says. “Our team drone. Go ahead, take a soda.”
I don’t know what to say to that, really, so I pick a can. “He’s still staring at me,” I murmur to Asher.
“He wants to see if you like the drink.”
I take a sip of the soda. It’s delicious, a fizzy strawberry flavor that tickles my insides. I make an exaggerated sound of joy. Wikki seems to take note of this, and over his head, a virtual set of info pops up:
Emika Chen | Strawberry Soda | +1
“He’ll record your food and drink preferences throughout your stay,” Asher adds.
A robot that tracks everyone’s info. I smile at Asher, but not for the reason he thinks. This is my ticket in. I make a mental note to figure out how to break into Wikki’s system later.
Wikki offers a soda to Asher, too, then pops its belly shut and rolls off to where a boy is sitting on the couches. As I look on, the boy moves his hands in midair as if turning a steering wheel, and every now and then he makes a flinging motion. On the wall is a track winding through candy-colored hills, populated by giant mushrooms. He whips down the path, outpacing other players easily.
“Mario Kart: Link Edition, as you can see,” Asher says. “It’s a tradition around here.”
“A tradition?”
“We play for an hour every night during training to improve our speed reflexes. It gets pretty competitive.” Then he claps his hands together loudly and raises his voice so that it fills the dorm. “Riders! Who’s here?”
The boy hears Asher first, pauses the game, pops his earphones off, and turns around on the couch to look at his captain. I recognize him right away: the world-famous Roshan Ahmadi, with his brown skin and head of thick, dark curls, representing Great Britain.
“Guess who I’ve got with me?” Asher says, pointing to my hair.
“You’re so subtle, Ash,” Roshan replies in a dry British accent that sounds more casual than Hideo’s. He nods once at me. “Hello, Emika. I’m Roshan.”
“He’s returning as our Shield this year,” Asher adds. “And he’s also the world’s top-ranked Mario Kart player, in case you’re curious.”
“Hey.” I take one hand out of my pocket and give him a single wave. “An honor to meet you in person.”
Roshan seems pleased by that. He offers me a brief smile. “Likewise, love.”
“We’ve all claimed our rooms already,” Asher says, nodding toward the hall that branches away from the main atrium. “Roshan wanted the one with the largest windows. I got the far end, which has some custom upgrades detailed specifically for me. Captain’s privileges. Ren’s back at the end of the hall. And as for you—”
“Hey!”
A voice calls down at us from one of the floors overhead. I look up to see a girl leaning her elbows over the balcony, loudly chewing gum. Her hair is a jumble of beautiful black curls that frames her round face, and she’s dressed in an oversize, white sports jersey that contrasts with her brown skin. On second look, her shirt isn’t a sports jersey at all—it’s a T-shirt that says QUIDDITCH TRYOUTS in giant sports lettering.
I like her immediately.
“That’s Hamilton Jiménez,” Asher tells me, loudly enough so that she can hear him. “Or just Hammie. She’s our Thief.” He winks at her. “And my right-hand girl.”
She grins back at him. “Feeling sentimental today, Captain?”
He looks at me. “Fair warning: don’t let her talk you into playing chess.”
“Don’t hate just because you can’t win.” She blows an enormous bubble and then sucks it back in. Her gaze jumps to me. “Your room’s up here. Second floor. I took the larger bedroom, since you’re a wild card and I’m not. Hope you don’t mind.”
I wait to see a fourth player show his face, but the house falls into a moment of silence. “Where’s DJ Ren?” I ask.
“Won’t see him until later,” Asher replies. “Ren’s prepping for the party tonight. It’s the only free pass he’ll get from me, especially since I’m counting on him to be our new Fighter. And let that be a lesson for you, too, Emi. We’re here to win.”
“Of course,” I say.
“Good.” He nods, considering me. “Hope you’re as good an Architect as I think you are.”
Hearing this from him sends a jolt of excitement and anxiety through me. An Architect’s job is to manipulate the world of the level in favor of her team. If there’s an obstacle, like a bridge, I would collapse it to let us through. If there are floating rocks, I’d push them together to create a bigger platform. An Architect is a designer of the level, dedicated to changing the world on the spot in favor of her team. It’s one of the most important jobs on a team. Last year, the Phoenix Riders lost their Architect because he’d been caught gambling away millions on Warcross games. The entire team was punished heavily, too—knocked down to the bottom of the rankings and stripped of their top two players.
“I’ll do my best,” I say.
“Tomorrow,” Asher continues as I follow him into an elevator leading up to the second floor, “we’ll catch you and Ren up on how things work in the championship games. I’ll walk you both through an official game. Although you”—he pauses to spin around and give me a calculating look—“may already know more than you let on.”
I hold my hands up. “It was an accident,” I say, feeling like I’ve repeated this forever. “I didn’t know what I was doing.”
“You did know,” Asher counters without hesitation. “In fact, you’re a much better Warcross player than your level suggests. Aren’t you?” He nods up at the numbers above my head. “After your name went viral, I looked up your Warcross account. I studied the few games that you did play. Those are not the skills of an Architect who is only on Level 28. Why are you so much better than your level suggests?”
“What makes you say that? I just play against other beginners.”
“You think I can’t see through that?”
He has been paying attention to me. It’s true—I stream my plays live, when I’m actually linked in under my public Warcross account. But my encrypted, anonymous self is the account I use more often. All the hours I rack up under it don’t count into my leveling. Still, I’m not about to tell Asher that.
“I just haven’t had the money or time to play as often as I want,” I say. “But I’m a pretty fast learner.”
Asher doesn’t seem to buy this at all, but he lets it slide. “Every other team is going to underestimate you. They’ll say I’ve lost my touch, that I picked you just for the news coverage it’ll get the Riders. But we know better than that, don’t we? I don’t waste my time on players with no potential. You’re a weapon in disguise—and I intend to keep it that way until our first game.”
It seems I’m becoming the weapon in disguise for more people than I’d like.
We reach the second floor. Asher spins to face me, leans his head against the back of his chair, and exchanges a look with Hammie. She just nods at him, bunches up her curls on her head, and lets them go again. “Hammie will show you the rest,” Asher says. “We’re heading out in a few hours to the opening party.” He starts rolling back toward the elevator. “All the players will be out in force. If you’ve never seen an opening party before, brace yourself. It’s a wild one.”
Hammie looks me over the instant Asher leaves. She’s the same height as me, but somehow, the jut of her chin makes her look taller than she is. She motions me forward and heads to the door closest to us. “This is your room,” she says over her shoulder at me.
I half expect the door to swing open like a regular door, but instead it slides to one side. The room is enormous—even larger than the penthouse hotel suite that I had. One entire glass wall opens up to my own private patio, half of which is taken up by a shimmering blue infinity pool that goes all the way to the edge of the balcony. A waterfall cascades into the pool from somewhere on the roof. The rest of the walls are virtually painted by my lenses with ivory and shimmering gold. When I reach out to touch the colors, they ripple under my fingers, sending waves across my room. At the same time, three small buttons right above my hand hover against the wall. One says Off, another says Switch Scene, while a third says Customize. I decide to turn off the colors for now, then press the first button. The walls are replaced by blank space. I look around. My bed is huge, piled high with furry cushions and blankets, and my rugs match the ones downstairs. A work area dominates the rest of the space—chairs, a clean desk.
Hammie grins at my expression. “And yours is the smallest room,” she says.
I turn back to the space. “This place is ridiculous.”
“Everything in the dorm is gameified,” she explains. “Like the rest of Tokyo. You’ll earn three notes every time you customize your walls, and one note for switching the scenery. The room’s preprogrammed to your Warcross account. If you’re logged in, then the house system knows you’re the one who’s coming inside.”