There he is, standing just a few feet away from me. Over his head is a light green number of notes: 100. I raise an eyebrow. Not a very high bidder, either. That’s strange. Usually, when I track someone down under, the gambler tends to blow eye-popping numbers of notes.

But Ren is risking his reputation as a professional player just to gamble a handful of notes here in an illegal game. Doesn’t add up. He’s not here for the game. He’s dallying around, probably just keeping a low profile while he waits. I’m willing to bet he’s here to make contact with someone.

The announcer comes on, introduces the ten players, and then starts the match. Unlike regular games, this game has two numbers displayed at the bottom of my view. Each number is the total notes bet on each team. I can hear the roar of the audience as the players dart into motion. Two opposing players reach each other and both swing their arms back to attack. As they do, one of them suddenly glitches out of sight. He glitches back in behind the other player, and before the second player can react, the first one kicks him off the building’s roof. The crowd cheers. I just stay quiet, watching. In a real game, a move like that would have been banned immediately. But here, with no official Henka Games employees overseeing it, anything goes.

As the game continues, the notes bet on each team changes in my view in a live display. Obsidian Kings, who started out with more bets than the White Sharks, are now falling behind. As their Architect is taken down by an Icicle power-up (temporary paralysis), the Sharks go up even higher.

I sigh. Nothing unusual has happened, other than Ren’s unusually low bet. What if I’m just wasting my time in here, and Ren is a giant red herring?

That’s when I notice a new gambler enter the Pirate’s Den.

I would have missed him, were it not for my hack. Most people around me don’t seem to notice his presence—except for a few. Like Ren, who turns to stare at him, too.

In the midst of all these hulking avatars, the newcomer is inconspicuous, a lean shadow. His face is hidden completely behind a dark, opaque helmet, and he wears a fitted suit of black body armor. Lean muscles ripple as he moves, outlined by the Den’s neon lights. And even though I have no info on him at all, nothing to tell me who this person might be, a chill runs through me from head to toe, some sixth sense of certainty. This is who Ren has been waiting to see. This is who Ren is meeting.

It’s Zero.

16

You don’t know that for sure, I remind myself. It could be anyone. But everything about him—his sense of command, a confidence that betrays how often he comes here, the fact that there is nothing, nothing I can read about him—makes my heartbeat quicken.

I shouldn’t feel this surprised to see him here. But still—bumping into Zero face-to-face makes me forget myself for a moment. I barely react quickly enough to move out of his way as he cuts through the crowd.

Abruptly, Zero pauses. His head turns in my direction—but more specifically, he sees me.

I’m not supposed to be able to see him, I realize. That’s why no one else in the crowd seems to notice. In fact, he is probably supposed to be invisible to everyone except the people who already knew he was coming, those who he knows are his supporters. Zero had noticed me trying to get out of his way. He knows I can see him.

Can he tell who I am? What if he’s staring at me through his own hack, downloading all of my info? Questions fly through my mind. If I exit now, it’ll be obvious that I saw him.

Ignore him. Just stand still and look at the game. He isn’t here.

Zero stares quietly at me, then steps closer. His black helmet is completely opaque, so that all I see in it is the reflection of my generic avatar. Even though everyone in here is encrypted, Zero has absolutely no info at all. Not a fake identity, not a randomized username, nothing. He is a black hole. He paces around me in a slow, deliberate circle, studying me, silent as a predator, his steps echoing in the den. I stand as still as I can, holding my breath, careful to stay calm. In real life, I am typing furiously, pulling back what I’m doing and guarding myself. No doubt that his real-life person is doing the same thing right now. Even though I should be encrypted and off the grid, I feel like his stare is stripping me bare. My heart beats steadily in my chest. I’d dealt with gangsters before. If I could keep my cool around them, I remind myself, then this should be nothing.

A girl standing very close beside him jots something down on a clipboard. She has a short blue bob haircut and wears a black blazer with jeans, but her eyes are what startle me. They are completely white. At first I think she’s one of the other gamblers. But when she and Zero both turn their heads simultaneously, I realize that she is a proxy, a security shield behind which Zero can completely hide his identity. If someone does manage to record this session in the Pirate’s Den, and they somehow notice Zero, the only info they’ll get is this girl’s, whose data will lead to nothing.

What did she jot down on her clipboard? Info about us?

Zero stares at me for another beat. Then, miraculously, he turns his attention away. His proxy does the same. My hands are clenched so hard that I can feel my nails cutting into my palms.

As I look on, Zero casts a bet of 34.05 notes on the Obsidian Kings. I frown. What a strange number to bet. I wait in silence, until exactly one minute passes. Then, Zero casts another bet, this time in favor of the White Sharks. 118.25 notes.

Now he’s betting on the opposite team? What the hell is he doing?

Another gambler across the den now also casts a bet of 34.05 notes. A minute later, he then casts a bet of 118.25 notes in favor of the White Sharks. The exact same pair of bets that Zero cast. Zero’s proxy jots something down on her clipboard.

He’s not betting at all. He’s communicating with the other gambler.

Of course he is. Record the numbers, I tell myself. I look on as Zero waits another few minutes before casting a new bet. This time, it’s 55.75 notes for the Obsidian Kings, and 37.62 notes for the Sharks.

Sure enough—across the den, a different gambler now casts the same bets in order. Again, the proxy jots this down.

I watch in perplexed silence as this continues, on and on, as everyone around me continues to cheer on the game. No one else seems bothered by these bets—they have no reason to be, really, because only the big bets are bolded and significantly change the tallies on either side. Why would anyone care about these strange, small sums?

Then, Zero casts a pair of bets—and Ren is the responding gambler.

Finally, when the match ends, Zero stands up with his proxy and steps away from the glass cylinder without a word. Beside him, his proxy nods once at the crowd, and the ones who had responded in code now nod back once. Overhead, the electronic track momentarily shifts to a different melody, as if it had hit a glitch. Go out with a bang, the singer on this new track croons. Yeah / let’s go out with a bang. Then the track hops back to its usual beat. The Obsidian Kings end up winning, and the tally over the White Sharks disappears, divided and paid proportionally among the winning gamblers. I look down at my list of recorded numbers that Zero had bet.

Fifty pairs of numbers. All of them are small bets. They range as high as 153, and as low as 0. As I stare at them, a possibility comes to me. It’s such a strange thought that at first I dismiss it. But the more I stare at the numbers, the more they seem to fit.

They’re locations. Longitudes and latitudes.

What if they’re locations of cities? My mind feels feverish with dread, the coming together of something big, of finally stumbling upon significant clues. Why, exactly, is Zero assigning a bunch of locations to others? What is he planning?

In a daze, I initiate a log out to leave the Dark World. Right as I do, I glimpse Zero across the room one last time.

He’s staring straight at me.

17

I don’t know if he recognized me. He might not have been paying attention to me at all, and his glance might have just been coincidental. But the memory of his head turned in my direction sends a shudder through me as I now find myself back in my room, staring out at the balcony again. I let out a slow breath. The serenity of the real world feels jarring after my jaunt in the Dark World.

What if Zero is on to me?

I pull up a map to hover transparently before me, along with the list of coordinates I’d just jotted down in the Pirate’s Den. Then I turn my attention to the longitudes and latitudes on the map’s sides.

“Thirty-one point two,” I mutter out loud, running my finger along the projection. “One hundred twenty-one point five.”

My finger stops right over Shanghai.

I do another set of numbers. “Thirty-four point zero five. One hundred eighteen point twenty-five.”

Los Angeles.

40.71, 74.01. New York City.

55.75, 37.62. Moscow.

And so on. I compare each set of numbers, sometimes adding a negative in front of a number whenever it ends up in the middle of nowhere or in the ocean. Sure enough, every set of coordinates matches up with a major city. In fact, Zero had listed out the top fifty largest cities in the world, each one repeated back to him by someone else in the crowd at the Pirate’s Den.

Whatever Zero’s doing, it is a global operation. And somehow, I have an ominous feeling that his endgame involves much more than just messing up some Warcross tournaments.