26

  LEVEL ONE: THE DRAGON STONES

  REMAINING CONTESTANTS: 9,087,403

  TIME UNTIL CULLING: 48 days

  NAME: JACK REN

  CURRENT RANK: 280,117

  I step out into the darkness, muscles tensed, heart beating hard, and can’t help but grin when I see that everyone still has their backs to me. I’m in the clear, at least for this moment. The game continues, and I walk the long path.

  I still have no plan, no thought beyond the notion that I’ll continue as I have been, a murderous ghost roaming from house to house, haunting these people who committed no crime other than to mess with the wrong person.

  The next building isn’t far. I make it to the door, which is already open, glancing over my shoulder at the last moment.

  On the other side of the town, Elizabeth is staring at me.

  I meet her eyes, which are filled, I think, with immense surprise.

  I grin.

  And then I go inside.

  Within, three people are talking in low voices around a table. I touch the Spider Bracelet and then, praying that this will work, I crawl up the side of the wall. It does work—perfectly. I travel vertically with zero effort, completely defying gravity, until I’m crawling upside down along the ceiling.

  Until I’m right above the three individuals.

  I quickly assess them. Two men, one woman. The first man is short, blond, and drinking from an archaic bottle of wine. I absently wonder where they found it and feel a slight pang of jealousy because, although I’m no boozer, a little bit of alcohol in this fucking place would go a long way to dulling the misery of the experience.

  The other man is a titan. Almost seven foot and so muscular that, if I’d seen him in the real world back home, I’d have assumed he was roided out of his mind. Based on what I’ve pieced together about their world, they don’t have modern technology and so probably haven’t synthesized steroids—meaning that this big bastard is simply a genetic freak.

  Then there’s the woman, who has her hair shaved on one side only, a vertical side with short stubble contrasted with long, wild red hair. She’s leaning back in a wooden chair, fiddling with a knife that looks like it’s made entirely out of glass. I have a feeling that it is not, in fact, as fragile as it looks, and I don’t want to find out exactly what it is or what it does.

  “Sooner or later,” the woman says, “we’re going to have to deal with the inevitable problem. Which is that there are twenty-eight of us, and only one person can win this game. Now, I know Maras keeps saying that we don’t even need to think about that until we reach the last level…” the woman sighs, shakes her head. “But Maras is a snake. Let’s just all be honest about that. He doesn’t want us thinking ahead because, right now, he’s the leader. He has it good. Everything is fucking swell for him, in fact. So—”

  “So what are you even suggesting?” The giant rumbles. “I think you talk too much, Cera.”

  “I think you think too little, Andos.”

  Andos grins at her. “One of these days, Cera. One of these days.”

  “One of these days what?” The lady snaps. “What are you gonna do?”

  “Well, I’m going to kill you,” the giant says pleasantly. “But not until I’ve fucked you—”

  The glass knife in the woman’s hand disappears.

  And then it reappears in Andos’s throat, buried to the hilt.

  The giant shoots to his feet, his chair flying backward. He grunts, eyes going wide, and clutches at his neck. Blood gushes out. The other man just sighs and sits quietly, watching his friend die before his eyes with an expression that says they’re not very good friends at all.

  “Did you have to do that, Cera?”

  “You heard the man.”

  “Yes but we all know that Andos doesn’t think about what he’s saying. He didn’t mean it—”

  “He didn’t think about what he said,” says Cera. “It’s important that we now use past tense when we refer to him, on account of the fact that he is, now, fucking dead. As you can quite clearly see. And good riddance.” Cera spits on Andos, who’s now lying on the ground and flopping around like a gutted fish. “Timon, why don’t you go close the door, eh? We wouldn’t want anyone to see this mess before we figure out how we’re going to deal with it.”

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  “You mean how we’re going to explain ourselves to Maras.”

  Cera shakes her head sadly. “I am so sick of hearing about that man.”

  I watch all of this silently, holding my breath and commanding my heart not to beat so loudly. These people, I think, are insane—but I’m not even remotely surprised. Everyone in here is, more or less, a killer—or at least someone well acquainted with violence. Makes sense you’d get people like Cera. And I’m glad about what I just saw for two reasons: firstly, there’s now one less person for me to kill, and the biggest person at that. And secondly, the cold-blooded murder just completely erased any sympathy I might have for these two, meaning that killing them is going to be a whole lot easier.

  Timon closes the door. The two of them stand over the body of the person who might’ve been their friend. Cera sighs.

  “This,” she says, “is going to be very annoying to clean.”

  And then I drop from the ceiling.

  I drop directly on top of Cera, who I reckon to be the more dangerous of the two, even if only because of that glass knife of hers. I smash into her with the force of a boulder rolling down a mountain. She grunts, cries out; I rise and throw a spinning elbow at Timon’s head. It connects perfectly and smashes his jaw to pieces, dropping him soundlessly.

  I bend and throw a punch at Cera’s head, my fists feeling as though they’re made out of solid steel.

  Cera rolls, impossibly fast, and gets to her feet.

  “What the…?”

  I don’t give her time to process the situation. Panic is about to set in; my goal had been to kill the both of them in the first three seconds so that they couldn’t possibly call for help. Well. It’s already been a lot longer than three seconds and already I can sense Timon getting back up behind me. And that’s the fucking problem with these levels, because I’m not the only one with superhuman durability and healing. That elbow would’ve cracked open an ordinary man’s head like a hammer taken to a watermelon—but this guy, he’s fully conscious, and the creaking of a floorboard tells me I have a mere moment to deal with him.

  I’m caught between two opponents of unknown lethality. It is, suffice it to say, a shitty situation.

  So, I throw myself at Cera, shooting in for a takedown. I see the flash of her glass knife. I pull back at the last moment, and then I jump as high as I can. The Spring Boots do the rest. I hit the ceiling and the Spider Bracelet allows me to cling to it with ease. I push off the ceiling as hard as I can, propel myself at Timon, and I have a brief second to consider how demented I must look to the two below, a shadow detaching himself from the ceiling like some kind of monster from a horror story. I doubt either of them have even had time to mentally reconcile themselves with my surprise appearance.

  I slam into Timon. Red light is dancing around his hands, sparks gathering in his palms. Fucking magic. Or at least I assume it’s magic. I don’t really want to know what the man is capable of, so I punch him in the throat so hard that I feel every internal structure in his neck rupture all at once.

  He may be durable, but he won’t survive that.

  I roll off his flailing body, away from Cera, and get back to my feet.

  We stare at each other for a single moment.

  I know what she’s about to do. I wince, bracing myself.

  “Help!” Cera screams. “Intruder!”

  Ah, fuck.

  “Really wish you hadn’t done that,” I say, going cold. Quite possibly, she’s just made my death official. A whole lot of enemies are about to close on my position.

  “Sorry about that,” Cera says, in a tone that tells me she’s not sorry at all.

  We run at each other.

  Her glass knife vanishes from her hand. I know it’s about to do something nasty to me, so I throw myself forward, right at her, hitting her in the stomach, in the face, in the liver—a three punch combo that comes at her as fast as a spray of bullets. She goes down; at the same time, I feel her knife punch into my thigh. I wince, then finish Cera off with a kick to her downed head. My boot collapses her skull. The sudden softness, the gore, the blood—it’s almost too much. Under different circumstances, I might’ve collapsed vomiting.

  Right now, though, I’m fighting for my life.

  I pull the knife out of my thigh just as golden words form in front of me.

  You have leveled up!

  Name: Jack Ren

  Contestant level: Eight

  Current rank: 220,112

  Reward: New item

  Choose from one of the following:

  Bone Armor

  Thunder Knuckles

  I don’t have time to think. To weigh up the choices. Quickly, I say, “Thunder knuckles.”

  And there they are. A sudden weight upon my hands.

  I glance down at them. They resemble brass knuckles, which I’ve only ever seen before in movies, except the metal is a cool, icy silver, and around it, the air is slightly distorted. There’s a faint tingle in my hands and, I notice, the arm along the back of my arms is standing on end.

  “Cera?” Someone is shouting from somewhere outside. “Cera, what’s going on?”

  “Shit,” I hiss. I spin, looking around. There’s a window on the other side of the building, facing away from the center of the town. I don’t hesitate. I run and dive through it, glass exploding, shards cutting at my face, which is suddenly exposed to the cool, night air. I land in a heap amongst the undergrowth, thigh aching where the dagger had plunged deep into the meat of my leg. It throbs. Healing, yes, but not fast enough to prevent me from having a mean limp.

  A bang as someone kicks down the door. Then more shouts as those who’ve just burst inside discover the bodies.

  I take a deep breath. I could run. The woods stretch out before me, dark and deep.

  But fuck that.

  I’m not going to run.

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