Wildcard (Warcross)

by Marie Lu

  I break open the cube to stare at the code, letting the glowing blue rows of text fill the interior of the car, and then close it back up again. I have to believe that he’ll do what he knows is right. End it.

  But if he doesn’t, I’ll be ready for him.

  I take a deep breath. Then I reach out to Hideo, asking him to Link with me. For a while, I stare at the glowing green halo around his profile, suddenly wondering if he’s changed his mind.

  Then, a pleasant ding sounds. I feel the familiar trickle of his emotions into my mind. He’s tense and uneasy. But most of all, he feels ready, surrounded in a dark, sure aura. Neither of us says a word.

  I close my eyes at his presence, letting myself stay immersed a while longer in nothing but this glimmer of his feelings and thoughts. Then we reach the grounds of the Tokyo Dome, and I open my eyes to the roar of crowds gathered outside the stadium.

  Thirty minutes until the beta lenses patch.

  Giant projections of today’s players broadcast against building walls and holograms of our championship highlights looming along the stadium’s perimeters. As the sight of my own footage comes into view, I hear the broadcast paired with it.

  “—in the move to allow controversial wild card Emika Chen, originally of the Phoenix Riders, to play in the closing ceremony following her dismissal from the team. Chen, this year’s number one draft pick, had so many write-in votes that—”

  For a brief moment, I feel that thrill again of being escorted to the dome for another game of Warcross, of standing with teammates and fidgeting, eager to be the ones to win.

  Now I’m heading back into the arena for a different reason altogether.

  Soon, I join other black cars carrying official players until there is a caravan of us heading in the same direction. I find myself clenching and unclenching my fists in rapid succession. Stripes of all the teams’ colors adorn the sides of the dome today, and suspended overhead is an enormous Warcross logo in silver chrome, rotating slowly.

  I step out of the car in a daze and follow the bodyguards that are already waiting for me on the red carpet leading into the stadium. People crowd along either side, dressed up like their favorite players and waving their banners and posters. They let out a deafening cheer when they catch sight of me. All I can do is look back at them and smile desperately, unable to tell them any of what’s really happening. Behind and ahead of me, I recognize a few of my fellow top-ten players who will play today. They’re all here. More cheers shake the ground as each of them make their way past the throngs.

  Then we’re inside the dome, and I’m shrouded in the arena’s darkness, illuminated only by a path of colored light leading out into the center of the stadium. The booming voices of analysts along the top floors echoes around the space.

  “And here come another wave of players, folks! We’ve spotted Team Andromeda—Captain Shahira Boulous leading her players in, Ivo Erikkson, Penn Wachowski—”

  “—followed by the Demon Brigade’s Jena MacNeil and her crew—”

  Their words are nearly drowned out by the audience. As I reach the edge of the arena, the Phoenix Riders come into view. Hammie and Roshan are already here, waiting with the other players of today’s match. Asher’s out in the audience with the players who weren’t chosen or who’d already been chosen last year.

  Out of all the players, my teammates look the most tense. They know what’s going to happen. The sight of them tugs at my heart, and I find myself unconsciously turning toward them.

  Roshan sees me first, nudges Hammie, and waves to me. Overhead, the analysts say my name, while images play around the arena of footage from when I was still an official player.

  Even in a stadium full of people, I feel vulnerable. The last time I was exposed in public like this, I’d almost died. My gaze sweeps the audience, searching in vain for Taylor and expecting to glimpse Zero in the shadows of the arena’s halls. The back of my neck prickles as it once did on the rain-swept streets of Shinjuku. He could be anywhere. Everywhere. And even though I can’t see him, I know he’s watching me.

  Still, I keep my smile plastered on, knowing that I’m currently being projected for everyone to see. Jax. If Zero is here, then that means she probably is too, looking out for me. The thought of her gives me some small comfort, and for a second, my smile is genuine.

  Fifteen minutes until the beta lenses patch.

  As the last of the players file into the arena’s center, the sweeping lights dim and the overheads brighten. Everyone in the stadium disappears behind the glow that surrounds us. I stare out into the darkness as a voice starts to introduce each of us.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve finally arrived at the end of this year’s unexpected and truly epic Warcross championships!” The audience bursts into an excited roar that drowns out the announcer. She pauses, then lists each of us, followed by what position we play in our teams and what we’ll be playing tonight. As she finishes, a 3-D view of today’s environment hovers over our heads, rotating slowly for the benefit of the audience. The other players and I see a smaller version of it in front of us. It’s a setting in outer space, with a planet’s enormous rings slanted behind a series of small fighter pods.

  “And, of course,” the announcer continues, “behind the game itself is the one responsible for this entire revolution—Hideo Tanaka!”

  As the stadium explodes into wild cheers and spotlights blaze on a passageway, I see him: Hideo, his head held high and hands in his pockets, walking toward us with his mob of bodyguards on either side. Audience members sitting in the seats near his path crane their necks and bodies forward in an unconscious attempt to be closer to him.

  In spite of everything, Hideo seems as poised as ever, his trained, polite smile on. As he raises a hand to wave once at the crowds, they scream their approval back at him. He appears to have his attention fixated on the audience, but through the emotions coming from him in the Link, I can sense his focus on me, searing me even as he pretends not to notice. I stand still, careful to copy the other players, and keep my gaze turned up at the dome. I can hear the rhythmic roar of my heartbeat in my ears.

  I find myself marveling for the hundredth time that he’s able to control his emotions even after everything I’ve told him. Maybe it means he’ll be the same way when he’s forced to confront Taylor, or even when he sees Zero for himself—reacting with stone-cold calm.

  Hideo greets each of the players in turn, giving his customary thanks to us for the championship season. The stadium has reached a fever pitch now, and all eyes are on him, drinking in his every move. He edges closer to me. My palms are sweating, and I wipe them against my thighs repeatedly.

  Ten minutes until the beta lenses patch.

  Hideo greets my other teammates. He shakes Roshan’s hand, congratulates Hammie.

  And then he’s here in front of me, gives me a tense smile, and holds his hand out to me. The audience is losing their minds. I reach out my hand to shake his—and as I do, I grip it hard for a moment longer than I should.

  His eyes hold mine. Through his Link comes his voice, deep and strong.

  We’re still on the same page, he says. It’s a question.

  I don’t blink or look away. I am if you are.

  Our hands stay joined for a beat more, until we know that any longer will stir murmurs. Finally, he pulls away, and so do I. My breath rushes out of me.

  He walks to the center of our ring of players, then turns his face up to address the audience. The lights start to sweep again across the rows of seats. As he starts to thank the crowd for their enthusiasm, I turn my attention to the rest of the stadium. High up, near the dome’s ceiling, the countdown clock for the beginning of the game ticks.

  Five minutes until the beta lenses patch.

  Everything around me feels surreal. Maybe nothing will happen. The closing ceremony seems to be progressing like it no
rmally would—Hideo greeting the players, him addressing the audience, the people cheering for the game to start. In some alternate universe, they’ll watch the match without incident, they’ll file out of the arena and head back home, hop into their flights or their trains or their cars. And everything will be fine.

  “—to let the match begin!”

  Hideo’s final words jolt me back into the present. The game world loads all around us then, and we are enveloped in the sweeping blackness of space, the infinite sky dotted with stars. Giant planetary rings arc across my view in a gradient of silver.

  For this one moment, I dare to think that we might actually start playing this final match. Maybe none of the events of the past few weeks have ever happened.

  But as I finish this thought, the game world flickers. It goes out, returning us to the dome—just in time for me to see Zero step onto the floor of the arena. And he’s not alone.

  25

  He and Jax are flanking Taylor. They take a few steps to the middle of the arena, then stop right in front of where Hideo stands near me.

  One of Hideo’s bodyguards makes a move toward them, but Hideo shakes his head once. “Stop.”

  His bodyguards freeze where they are, their eyes blinking but blank, as if in a trance. But they’re not the only ones. All around us, everything halts: the analysts hush in mid-sentence; the audience ceases waving their arms, the cheers quiet. Most of the other players—anyone not on the beta lenses—stop moving.

  Only Hammie and Roshan stay unaffected. Still, they gape at Zero, Hammie’s lips slightly parted, Roshan looking like he’s about to lunge forward to protect me.

  Where just moments earlier the noise in here was deafening, the stadium instantly plunges into eerie silence. It’s as if someone had simply pressed a button and paused the world, leaving only a few of us still running.

  That’s exactly what just happened.

  Hideo is using the algorithm to control everyone in here. I start to shake. I haven’t seen the sheer power of his abilities with my own eyes until now.

  Hideo, I say, reaching out through our Link. But he doesn’t respond. His attention is focused on Taylor.

  Taylor stares at Hideo with a soft smile I’ve come to know all too well. When I look at her eyes, though, they are hard as stone. “I’ve been watching your career for a while,” she finally says to him. “You’re very impressive, as is this algorithm you’ve developed.”

  Hideo has gone so still that for an instant I think he’s being controlled, too. He says nothing as he stares at the woman who kidnapped his brother and stole his life.

  But his emotions—the dark, seething hatred churning across our Link—is a flood of barbs and thorns, a force so powerful that I can almost feel the edges of it clawing into my skin.

  “Your creative director agreed to give us the way in,” she says. “Among other details.”

  Kenn.

  I gasp through the overwhelming wave of Hideo’s emotions. My eyes dart up to meet Taylor’s. Kenn had let them into the dome. What else has he given them?

  Hideo’s eyes are hard and glittering. “How long?” he says quietly.

  “Months.” Taylor takes a step forward and folds her arms. “It’s hard to find friends you can trust, isn’t it? I suppose everyone has their price.”

  Everyone has their price. I realize they are the exact words Zero had once said to me, when he’d confronted me during the Warcross championships. Months. So Kenn has been working with her since before the championships began.

  The argument I’d seen between Kenn and Hideo comes back to me in a flash. How eager he’d been to skip Mari’s study on the NeuroLink’s flaws.

  But maybe his frustrations ran deeper than that. Deep enough for him to betray Hideo and let Taylor in.

  And suddenly I understand how Zero always seemed to know so much. Every detail of the closing ceremony. Every piece of Hideo’s plan to patch the beta lenses at the opening of today’s game. The bug that allows a way into Hideo’s mind. The existence of the algorithm in the first place.

  Kenn had been the one feeding them information. Maybe this is why he used to ask me to watch out for Hideo’s safety. It was never actually out of concern. It was to keep tabs on Hideo.

  The truth of it hits me so hard I can barely breathe. My gaze flies from Taylor up to the glass box overlooking the arena, where Kenn now sits. His silhouette is angled down toward us.

  Maybe he had even been the one who’d let Jax slip into Hideo’s secured box in the stadium during the failed assassination attempt.

  My breaths are coming in short gasps now. Had Taylor offered him a stake in this mission in exchange for his help? She must have. And he, frustrated and ambitious, had agreed.

  Fifty-nine seconds until the beta lenses patch.

  Hideo’s attention is no longer on Taylor. He’s staring at Zero, whose eyes—unmistakably that of Hideo’s brother—stay cold and unfeeling.

  Hideo’s studying Zero as if everything I’d told him couldn’t possibly be real.

  “Sasuke,” Hideo says hoarsely. The wave of his anger shifts into grief.

  All semblance of practicality has vanished from him. There’s a note of wild hope in his voice, like Zero might snap out of it if they could just talk to each other. And for a moment, even knowing that it’s impossible, I think it might work.

  But Zero doesn’t react in any way. Watching him in front of his brother for the first time in years, I can’t tell if he registers any emotion at all. Beside him, Jax’s hand is wrapped tightly around the handle of her gun.

  We are standing in the middle of a powder keg, and the fuse is about to blow.

  Thirty seconds until the beta lenses patch.

  “This is the deal, isn’t it, Hideo?” Zero finally says. His voice sounds like it always does, and there’s not even the slightest hint of recognition in it. “Or has Emika not told you what she should?”

  Hideo looks at me. His eyes are black with anguish, filled with a deep feeling of loss, the realization that everything I told him was true, that Sasuke is looking at him, saying his name but not reacting to what it means. When he speaks again, his voice grates, harsh with desperation. “You’re not a work of code,” he says. “You’re my brother. I know you’re reluctant to hurt us. I can hear in your voice the memory of who you are. You know, don’t you?”

  “Of course I know,” Zero replies, in that eerily calm way of his.

  The words hit Hideo like bullets.

  Taylor just smiles at him in that knowing, manipulative way. “Look at it this way, Hideo. You created your life’s work because of your brother’s disappearance,” she says. “Everything happens for a reason.”

  “That’s the most bullshit saying in the world,” he snaps.

  “Come on. Now your brother is here, when I could have just let him die of his illness. Is this not better?”

  Hideo narrows his eyes at her. The pure hatred in his gaze—the rage that has surfaced at the sight of what Taylor did to his brother, that Taylor is now threatening my life—is boiling over now. The deep, soulless fury I’ve witnessed in him before, the scarred knuckles . . . it’s nothing compared to this.

  Taylor glances at me. She’s expecting me to follow through on my promise now, that I will break into Hideo’s mind.

  Zero seconds.

  An electric current rushes through my head. Nearby, Hammie and Roshan also flinch. The beta lenses start to patch, steadily downloading the algorithm onto them.

  I pull out the cube that Zero had given me. The hack. And in the space of that moment, I hesitate.

  I don’t know what gives me away to Taylor. Something about the light in my eyes, the shift in my stance, the slight hesitation in my actions.

  Does she know I have other plans?

  She suddenly raises a gun and aims it directly at my head. She keeps
her eyes on Hideo as her finger hovers over the trigger. “Open the algorithm, Hideo,” she says calmly.

  Hideo’s lips curl into a snarl at her threat to me. His hatred pours over like oil across the ocean.

  At the same time, Jax—who had been so still—suddenly draws her own gun and points it directly at Taylor. “Shoot her, and I shoot you.” Her hand is clenched tightly enough around her gun’s handle to wash her skin white.

  Taylor looks sharply at her. This time, the woman is surprised. “What’s this?” she murmurs. “You’re in on this, too, Jackson?”

  Jax winces at the use of her full name.

  Taylor tightens her lips. Deep anger flashes across her face. I remember what Jax had said to me about Taylor’s greatest fear. Death. Now her daughter is threatening her with it.

  Panic floods Jax’s eyes, that terror she’d had as a small girl cowering under the influence of someone supposed to be her mother. Her hand trembles. But this time, she doesn’t back down. Everything building up inside her since the death of Sasuke has erupted to the surface, and its strength keeps her arm lifted.

  She tears her eyes away from Taylor long enough to glance at me. “Now,” she hisses.

  Hideo, I gasp through our Link.

  Taylor looks back at him and tightens her finger on her gun’s trigger.

  Hideo moves.

  He snaps his fingers once, pulling up his own small, rotating box to hover between us. Before I even have time to register that this is the key to opening his algorithm, he flicks his wrist and unlocks it.

  A maze of colors bursts from the box, a million bright nodes connected to each other with lines of light, the way a brain’s circuits link to one another. It’s massive and intricate, extending far beyond our space on the floor to fill the entire arena. For one brief instant, I am looking into a web of commands that can control the minds of every single person in the world hooked up to the NeuroLink. If time could have stopped right now, I would stop to marvel at this frightening masterpiece.