“Assassination, Arman Lance,” the voice says. “Thirty players remain.”

Cheers erupt outside the stadium where the green supporters are sitting. I walk out of the shelter and meet Lucas and the girl, who are standing in the middle of the aisle, each holding a sphere. Lucas pats my shoulder. He looks around the corner—and springs backward.

Fzzz!

A sphere clips the wall where his face was.

He sucks in a breath. “Three reds, two yellows.”

“Glacia?” I ask.

“No idea.”

We jump out and throw our spheres into the confusion. Mine hits one of the red players and knocks him out of the game. The yellow players dodge Lucas’s sphere and it hits another red player on the shoulder. It was his first Count—until he stumbles and is hit by the sphere the girl on our team threw.

The player count drops to 28.

“Watch it, Starmile,” the Official on the red team shouts at Lucas, almost laughing. “That girl said she’s saving you for last.”

Lucas stretches his arms, welcoming an attack.

“Send her my way, Auburn.”

The man named Auburn retreats, but the two girls on the yellow team don’t move.

“How many you got left?” Lucas asks them.

“Eight,” the girl in front says.

“So that means Green or Red is winning.”

“We think Red’s got six.”

I jerk my thumb backward. “Let’s go see—”

Lucas suddenly shoves me sideways and throws himself against the wall. The second girl was hiding a marble and flung it over her friend’s shoulder. It smacks the girl on our team, who yelps and hangs her head when her suit deactivates.

“Oh, tricky!” Lucas says, applauding them sarcastically. “Now run along.”

He shoos them away, then takes me to search the aisles for fresh spheres. We see green players in two corridors but don’t join them. I find a sphere drifting across an intersection, and Lucas finds another floating next to a shelter.

“Wait,” he says, holding my shoulder. “Let’s draw some out. Stand over there.”

I walk to the barrier he points at and prepare to run as Lucas ticks down on his fingers.

“And…now.”

The barrier flashes red. I twist behind a wall as the marbles fizzle through the air, lighting our position so it becomes a beacon for other players.

“That should get their attention.”

He’s right. It doesn’t take long for three yellow players to carefully step into the corridor—two of them are the same girls who tried to trick us. Lucas and I lift our spheres as a warning.

“Let’s make this simple,” the third yellow player says. “We all throw at the same time.”

“Deal,” Lucas calls back.

He catches my eye to let me know we’re thinking the same thing: don’t throw.

The man makes the count. “One, two, three.”

Nobody throws. It’s a stand-off.