11

  LEVEL ONE: THE DRAGON STONES

  REMAINING CONTESTANTS: 9,551,999

  TIME UNTIL CULLING: 57 days

  NAME: JACK REN

  CURRENT RANK: 717,578

  Elizabeth and I are made to stand up against the wall of the cave, arms by our sides. Our bindings are removed, which is something, but not much, because they were hardly necessary; our weapons have been confiscated and we’re vastly outnumbered by armed and watchful men and women. If they want us dead, we’re dead; a little rope around our wrists will hardly make a difference.

  The leader of the group introduces himself to us. He’s around the same height as me, a little broader, with the physique of a powerlifter. His head is shaved; dark stubble clings to his jawline. His arms, decorated in green and blue tattoos, are as wide as my thighs.

  “My name is Cole,” he says pleasantly, standing before us with his arms crossed. “Cole Adams. Used to be a cop. Favorite color is red. My star sign is Virgo…I think. Don’t quote me on that. So, now you’ve gotten to know me, why don’t the two of you have a turn?”

  Elizabeth goes first, and she blatantly lies to their faces. The only thing she keeps true is her name—other than that, she tells them some bullshit story about how she used to be a teacher. Although, I suppose, for all I know, she had been a teacher at some point.

  Then it’s my turn.

  And pretty much as soon as I say my name, Cole recognizes me.

  “Oh! God damn.” He grins. “I thought you looked familiar. Now I know for sure. That’s fucking crazy. The Jack Ren, huh? Guess it makes sense that you ended up here. Pound-for-pound number one, right?”

  “That’s right,” I say, plastering on a false smile. Better to go along with it. To be as charismatic as possible. Not that I’m very good at that sort of thing. Sarah always said I’m personable once you get to know me, but when it comes to strangers, I’m distant at best, abrasive at worst.

  I’m not surprised Cole knows me. A man who looks like he does has a pretty high chance of being an MMA fan. Men like him are the bane of my existence. The tough guys. Big, strong men who are drawn to the sport because it’s masculine and because, deep down, they harbor fantasies of themselves being fighters. They would, they tell themselves, step into the octagon—except it doesn’t pay enough, or they’re worried about brain damage, and so on and so forth, an endless array of excuses that, really, amount to one, simple truth: they’re not actually fighters.

  Either that, or they simply don’t have the balls.

  Not that I’d ever say any of that to these people. I prefer to act blandly nice, all smiles and waves, because it’s simply the easier option.

  “So, here’s the thing,” says Cole. “I want you two to join us. Of course I do. The more of us, the better—at least for now. I mean, five million of us can make it to the next level. That’s plenty. The problem, friends, is that it’s a little difficult to trust people under the current circumstances.” He sucks at his teeth. “For example, just last night, we had some real prick take a bunch of our supplies and just…run.” He shakes his head. “We chased him down, got the stuff back…but the point is, we have to be careful. Because what if we let someone in and then, while we’re sleeping, they slit our throats just so that they can level up?”

  “We’re not like that,” I say, and as far as I’m concerned, that’s true, but I realize I’m not quite sure about Elizabeth. I don’t know what she’s like. Right now, she’s staring at Cole with pure ice in her gaze. A killer’s stare. I want to tell her to quit it, it’s not helping us, but maybe some people can’t be helped.

  “May I ask what level you are?”

  “Four,” I say immediately. I see no point in lying.

  Elizabeth answers too, and then, not breaking eye contact, asks, “And what about you?”

  Cole smiles at us. “Six, I don’t mind saying. But, full disclosure, it’s not all about the levels.” He raises his left hand. On his index finger is a golden ring inscribed with tiny, complex symbols. The moment I see the ring, I can feel that it’s special; it radiates power.

  “What does it do?” I ask, in a friendly, casual tone.

  “Secret,” Cole says with a grin. “But it’s good. And it’s why I’m the leader of this little group. I got lucky, honestly. Woke up in a tower when this whole thing began. Me and one other dude in the same room. And there was a chest between us. We both knew there was something good in there. Something we needed. So, we talked about it for a while, tried to hash the situation out in the most peaceful and fair way possible, but when it came down to it…” he grimaces. “We both knew that the matter could be settled only one way.” He looks down at his fists. “So, yeah, I was lucky. But also unlucky. Because I didn’t relish bashing his brains out against the floor. In fact, it’s been three days, and it’s all I can bloody well think about.”

  I say nothing, struggling to get a proper read on the man. I both want to like him and hate him all at once. He’s either a decent man who’s been forced to be a savage just like the rest of it, or he’s actually a savage, a person like Earl, or Elizabeth, with the instincts of a killer.

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  “Okay,” he says. “A few more questions. Why don’t you tell me all about what the two of you have been through. Start at the beginning of this nightmare and continue until we reach this present moment.” He glances over his shoulder, at the rest of his group. They’ll all watching, listening without saying a word. “We’re all very curious about your story thus far.”

  And so, we tell them everything. I do most of the talking, although I imagine that, if Earl had still been with us, he would’ve happily recounted the whole thing. Sadly, Earl’s gone, and it feels increasingly unlikely that we’re going to see him again.

  By the time I’m done, Cole looks much more relaxed, like I’ve said all the right things. He scratches his jaw, shifts his weight from one foot to the other, and says, “Alright. And that man you saw—the man in the black armor, during the battle—did he do anything else? Say anything?”

  I frown. “No. I don’t believe so. Why?”

  Cole winces. “We know him. His name is David. He was with us on day one. We got lucky, you know—within twenty-four hours of these games starting, we had a group of one hundred humans all willing to work together. Soon as I found the ring, I was the leader. But we had David. And David didn’t like that I was the leader. We never learned much about him because he wasn’t exactly an open book, although he mentioned something about working for the British government. Anyway, none of us really liked him. He was…odd. And then, in the middle of the night, he killed a bunch of us. And when I say a bunch…” Cole looks away. His face is distraught. “Thirty-six of us, Jack. He killed thirty-six people on day one while we fucking slept, and after thirty-six, we finally woke up and realized what was happening. We chased him. He got away. And now I know exactly where he is.”

  “Still alive, unfortunately,” a woman behind him throws in.

  “Unfortunately,” Cole agrees.

  I let out a breath. It’s an uncomfortable mental image. What sort of person could even do that? It’s not just the fact that he killed so many people…it’s the fact that he did it on the same day. That, in less than twenty-four hours, he went from our normal, modern world, our rigid society, to this impossible game, and adjusted seemingly instantly.

  “He sounds like a sociopath,” I say. “Like a fucking psycho.”

  “And I wouldn’t disagree with that description. Anyway, the two of you don’t need to stand like that anymore. I’m willing to trust you.” His eyes shift to Elizabeth. It’s clear it’s mostly me he’s talking about, but since she’s with me, she gets to be included. I have a feeling they’re going to keep a close eye on her, and I’m glad for it. There’s no harm in a little caution,

  Cole quickly introduces the two of us to the rest of the group. There are nineteen of them in total, twenty-one including Elizabeth and myself. There’d been more of them, we’re told, even beyond those killed by David, but a bunch of them had decided to split off into their own group. Cole doesn’t tell us why, and for now, I don’t question it, but I make a note to myself to bring it up later.

  “So,” I say, hands on my hips. “What’s the plan?”

  They exchange looks. Eventually, a woman named Mary says, “We have a map.”

  I wait for her to elaborate.

  “A map to a dragonstone,” Cole finally says.

  At that, I come to full attention. “Well, shit. Where’d you find it?”

  “On the other side of the mountains,” Cole says, “there’s a city. The Golden City. It’s fuckin’ massive, man. And empty. Just tons and tons of buildings, houses, towers, palaces. But no one lives there. We think that a whole bunch of us were dropped in around it…the goal, from the perspective of the Game organizers, was to have this city, which could act as a battlefield, right in the middle of all these contestants, and then we’d have to go in and fight over it.” Cole offers us a humorless smile. “We spent a day in there. Let me tell you, we weren’t the only ones. We’re pretty sure thousands of players were in there on the second day. A lot of people, and, shit, monsters, died. We got out before it got too intense, and we brought with us a map, which, when we found it…we had no idea what it was for.”

  Mary steps forward. She isn’t much shorter than Cole. She’s lean, strong, maybe in her early thirties. She has a thick, French accent, a reminder that we’ve been pulled from every corner of the world—and, supposedly, from other timelines and realities.

  “Cole talks a lot,” Mary says. “Let me be more concise. We have the map. And according to the map, there’s a dragonstone around fifty kilometers from here. That’s around thirty miles for you Americans. I probably don’t need to tell you that it’s quite possible to walk thirty miles in a single day.”

  “The problem,” Cole says, “is that it’s thirty miles east.”

  I raise my eyebrows. “And what’s wrong with going east?”

  Mary grimaces. “East is…dangerous.”

  “There’s a group,” Cole says. “We don’t know what they are. They sure as fuck aren’t human. They’re tall, with big, black eyes. And—”

  “And they have wings,” says someone else, a young man surely no older than twenty. “And they have God damned fangs. And they can see just fine in the dark. So what I’m saying is, they’re basically vampires.”

  “That’s what Ben has been calling them,” Cole says, sounding somewhat impatient, as though this is a topic they’ve argued about many times before. “Personally, I don’t really feel like calling them vampires, because A, they don’t even look like vampires, B, we don’t know if they drink blood—”

  Mary sighs. “The point, gentlemen, is that, whatever they are, there are a lot of them. A group of at least one hundred. And from what we’ve seen, they’re sticking together.”

  “Contestants?” I ask.

  “Right,” Cole says. “They’re contestants. I mean, as far as we know, and according to our Whispers, which have promptly fucked off, everything in here is a contestant.”

  “East is rather broad,” Elizabeth drawls. “And you say there are only one hundred of them. Why can’t we simply go around them?”

  “Because there’s a range of impassable mountains cutting us off from the east,” says Mary. “With a single, narrow passage. A funnel. And it’s this funnel that the vampires—or whatever you want to call them—are occupying. I don’t think they know there’s a stone on the other side, otherwise they’d go get it, but they’ve obviously figured it’s a nice spot for them to camp out in.”

  “They’re farming anyone who tries to get through,” says the young man. “You know, like in a game, when you farm NPCs—”

  “Liam?” Cole says.

  “Boss?”

  “Please, stop with the game analogies.”

  Liam frowns. “We’re in a game, man. That’s the truth, like it or not.”

  “This isn’t a game,” Cole snaps. “It’s real fucking life, no matter what you say.” He lets out a breath and meets my eyes. “So, yeah. That’s why we’re here, anyway. We want the stone. But we don’t know how to get through that pass without those things tearing us to pieces.”

  After that, there’s a prolonged period of silence. The mood declines rapidly, and soon enough, people are arguing.

  I sit there, listening quietly.

  Planning.

  Because I’m going to get that fucking stone.

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