When the fizzles quiet and darkness swamps the stadium, I carefully step out of the shelter and look both ways. The aisle is empty.

“Callen?” I say into my headset.

He doesn’t answer. He’s out. I need to find more teammates. Green flares pulse on my headset map as my team figures out who’s left. No one’s near me, so I keep an eye out for enemy players hiding in the shadows. The player count drops to 65.

“Glacia Haverns receives third hit Count,” the headset voice says.

Geez. She’s single-handedly knocked out ten players without being hit.

“Arman, you still out there?”

It’s Ellin. I’m surprised she’s managed to last this long.

“Yeah, no clue where I’m at, though.”

“I’m hiding. It’s a massacre over here.”

Her green flare pulses in the opposite corner of the stadium. I look that direction: a glow illuminates the ceiling, and shadows flicker. The faint fizzling sounds drift toward me, along with muffled shouts.

A sphere floats through the intersection I come to, so I grab it and run to the right. I’m almost to the center of the stadium.

Three green players dart around the corner, and a girl throws her sphere at me out of instinct. I stick mine out to knock it back.

“Sorry,” she says, cringing.

I check the number above the shelter: 59. Once the count reaches 50, we’ll have twenty seconds to reach Level 2—or be purged.

The man behind the girl steps into the glow of her sphere. It’s Lucas.

“We have to move soon,” he says. “Things are going to get tight.”

“I’ll try to meet you—no!”

Ellin’s voice cuts off when she gets knocked out of the game. The number on top of the shelter drops to 56.

“What team’s Gort on?” I ask.

“Blue,” Lucas says as we jog to the end of the aisle. “I hit him right before the purge.”

Yellow light floods the corner. The girl and I raise our spheres, prepared to throw. Four people sprint into the aisle. Two of them fling their spheres and duck away. I deflect one, but it ricochets side-to-side, cutting off our advance.

Then we hear a stampede.

A crowd of blue players charges into the aisle behind us. Gort leads the pack. He sees Lucas, and fury explodes in his eyes.

“You double-timing traitor!”

Lucas doesn’t react fast enough. Gort slams his sphere into the wall and it smacks Lucas’s arm: his first lost Count. A volley of spheres follows Gort’s attack. Blue orbs streak toward us. I knock two away, and the girl flattens herself against the wall. I run the opposite intersection, but a yellow player grabs my shoulders and shoves me, slamming me to the ground.

His mistake.

A marble smacks his face. His suit deactivates, and he growls in anger.

The number ticks to 51.

“Arman!”