WILL: Let’s get back to the Big Crunch. You said they send in the army? Is this like a rat army? Or a Trust Foundation army? Because I’m tired of taking things on hearsay.

  TRIX: Well, my, uh–

  WILL: Game guide? The same guy that said to stay off the streets at night to steer clear of the rats? That game guide?

  TRIX: He was erring on the side of caution. Silver lining is, I’m still here.

  I shook my head. This game wasn’t fair. They’d thrown me in this place with less than a week before a scheduled reset and all they’d given me was Weapon’s Lore. But maybe it wouldn’t have mattered when I arrived. We were meat tossed to their TV show’s audience. But we’d been lucky enough to find out about the Quadrant Strongholds. Maybe we could get out before the Big Crunch. We’d have to try, because I was pretty sure that if we were still here to greet the coming paramilitary force, they’d give us the same treatment we gave the rats.

  Ahead, lights flashed from multiple screens behind the glass fa?ade of a storefront. We stopped to watch. All the screens played the same content, a recap of battles from the last 24 hours. We walked up in time to see a guy playing a silver flute and leading a column of rats that were much nastier than the ones we’d encountered. They weren’t quite in the same class as R.O.U.S.es, but they were big enough to demand a double take. The pied piper watched with bemusement as a single young woman — Eleyre – level 10 — stood in his path. She wore a black hoodie, blue jeans, and white sneakers and had a stoic look on her face as she watched him approach. He played a series of notes on his flute and the rats took off for the woman, fangs bared. She clinched her fists and screamed, not a scream of terror but of power and defiance. It was an actual scream attack. Shrill and long, it stunned the big rats and she jumped into action with two katanas, slicing her way to the evil piper, leaving a trail of blood and mangled fur. He started to play another tune but she sliced the instrument through with one sword and ran the player through with the other.

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  The feed cut to a middle-aged man with cropped hair named Javier – Level 9. He wore a New York Knicks hoodie, dad jeans, and a black steel gauntlet on his right hand. A wave of rodents sprinted toward Javier until he said something and pointed at a hooded figure named Rat Czar. Rat Czar looked more or less like Darius, Lord of the Rats, except he had an eye patch and a green hood. When Javier pointed at Rat Czar, all the rats did an about face and swarmed their old comrade. The recap showed a time-lapse of the horde consuming Rat Czar until all that was left were his boots and gnawed bones.

  Next was a team of six level one and two players beating a crocodile with makeshift weapons—a board with a couple of nails protruding at the end, a belt with a thick silver belt buckle, a shovel, a brick, and a manhole cover. The camera zoomed up on the little guy using the belt. One second he was swinging the belt at the croc, and the next, the croc had bitten off the guy’s arm and blood was spraying everywhere. The guy using the manhole cover—Rufus, Level 2—was big. He dealt the killing blow, hefting the heavy disc above his head and slamming it against the croc’s jaw.

  WILL: Maybe we can find these people and work with them.

  TRIX: Yeah, maybe.

  The feed switched over to a montage of character deaths. A croc swallowed someone as they were leaving a tent. Laser arrays cut down a player trying to break into a supertall. A woman with a red mask and a comically massive sword, Cyclone, Level 14, impaled a blonde woman with a samurai sword and then chopped down a haggard-looking man for a double kill. A gang of seven players led by a level 14 named Edge were shown stalking a player and then gunning her down in an alleyway.

  TRIX: Or maybe we should just stay as far away from them as possible.

  I turned away from the screen to see a tear running down Trix’s face.

  TRIX: I hate this place.

  WILL: Yeah.

  TRIX: You see what it does? It turns us into monsters. Will, we’re going to work together, and we’re getting out of this quadrant.

  WILL: How?

  TRIX: I’m open to ideas.

  B I N G E