The HUD produced an altimeter which ticked down into impossible ranges. We had descended miles below the surface of the basin, a dramatic shift from the smashing earthquakes into black silence. The chains lowering us groaned and rattled, echoing through the infinite shaft as the pressure changes continually pushed and pulled on my eardrums. The only light source was the blue halo pulsing from Fantus’ gravipods.

  We suddenly dropped—fast enough that my stomach hit my ribs just before my head slammed into the cage’s ceiling. The chains caught traction again, shaking the elevator like it had taken a punch, Slop and I landing in a heap. I groaned as I stood back up, Slop pressing against my legs for stability. Next to us, Fantus clung to the railing with all four claws, wings tucked tight. His tail snapped left, then right, finally curling around the support pole as he whimpered.

  Coach murmured, “This can’t be right. Something feels off.”

  He was right. It wasn’t just deep. It felt wrong. The space was stretched in ways my mind wasn’t tracking, a VR roller coaster where I could feel the momentum jerking me about.

  The elevator tilted. I grabbed the side rail, attempting to pinch Slop between my legs. Still, he slid, all claws and panic. Fantus was knocked by Slop’s tail, losing his grip and hitting the ceiling with a hollow clink. The gravity here was wrong, distorted. He was stuck there for a second before his gravipods figured out which way to pulse him.

  “Master Ainsley,” Fantus huffed, offended at the sudden relocation. “We are not traveling by normal means, are we? This is… improper.”

  “Hang on!” I said.

  The floor pitched again. My boot lost traction for a heartbeat. The walls stretched, then bowed, then snapped back like rubber. It was the kind of distortion you might see in a hidden loading screen, where the character slides between a tight gap and the camera closely follows.

  Heat started rolling in from below, slow at first, then steady. We were being lowered into an oven. The darkness broke. A glowing pit opened beneath us. Orange haze. Ribbons of red light. Rolling banks of heat shimmered like floating puddles. For a moment, the whole world looked like the inside of a furnace. System began logging out warnings: dehydration imminent, rapid temperature rise, and as always, panic suppression. I felt like I was running on injected chemicals.

  Looking through the cage walls of the mining elevator, I was glad to have my emotions dampered. We weren’t just above a volcano. We were in the heart of a titanic mega-mountain ready to explode. The bowl was the size of a major city, easily able to dump the entirety of Dallas right in without a thought. It seemed impossible.

  It was impossible.

  The elevator slid into a cradle carved into the stone, metal bracings on all sides. Ten platforms ringed the upper rim of the vaselike cavern, the other teams dropping into place in evenly spaced pockets built into the superstructure. Each platform had a single cart on rails.

  Ours sat in front of us: a metal box on wheels, open top, tall, vertical sides, a bike handle haphazardly bolted across the front. A lever, brake clamps. Lugs the size of my thumb. No sensors, no guidance. Just heavy alien steel that promised doom.

  Coach whistled in my head, “The DK Death Race. They brought out the classics! Haven’t seen one of these in years.”

  “You’ve never seen any of this, Coach. Weren’t you born when they stuck you in my head?”

  “You know what I mean,” he snapped back. “Its in my library—lucky for you.”

  I peered over the edge. The lake of lava glowed through thick layers of smoke, radiating heat in all directions. Tracks descended in wide curves, diving toward the black clouds, then splitting into hundreds of tunnel mouths. Some tunnels leaked steam, some dripped out massive gulps of lava. A few pulsed with red and orange colored lights like they led to the bowels of hell.

  There were clearly “easy” tracks, broad turns and slower gradients. More support beams. There were also tracks designed to maim and mangle the rider. Sharp angles, hard drops, and sections missing or repaired with plate patches instead of rail. It was impossible to tell which track would lead to where, and I expected there would be ways to accidentally end up on a previous track.

  “Two minutes,” Coach said.

  Slop whined at my knees, looking unsure, knocking my hand up with his snout to get my attention.

  I looked at him, “Sorry, buddy. I don’t know how either of us ended up here.” I picked him up like a sheep, cupping his hind legs and chest to toss him in the cart. He landed with an echoing thump, paws quickly scrambling for purchase. He looked up at me, ears flat, the most betrayed creature in the galaxy.

  “He’ll be fine,” Coach said. “Dog’s love carts.”

  “Do they?” I asked, annoyed.

  Fantus drifted backwards away from the cart, shaking his head with a tsk. “Master Ainsley, I can scarcely believe in the success of our venture with such scant-”

  Coach interrupted, “That’s our whip. Let’s go!”

  “Inadvisable!” Fantus fluttered, “Master Ainsley, please reconsider. We could just bow out now, of course. Spend our time on more… scholarly activities.”

  “Shut it, nerd,” Coach said.

  “Both of you…” I growled.

  “But I do not have the appropriate saddle for safe travels.”

  “Yeah, me either.” I said, looking at the seatless box.

  “Fantus,” Coach said, “you get in your booster seat or you can fly next to the cart until somethin’ hot melts you to slag. Your call.”

  Fantus folded instantly, “Cart, then.” He slunk into the rear docking socket in defeat.

  “Wizened Wizard, Zach? Really?” Coach grumbled. “I’m second guessing that Mascot personality.”

  Once Fantus was properly seated, I stepped in after, one leg stretched over Slop, both heels planted wide into the corners to brace. The metal was already warm to the touch, and I worried about Slop’s paws.

  “I got ‘em,” Coach said as I quickly pulled up the market menu. We grabbed some heat resistant canine booties. Fifty thousand florins later, and they phased in cleanly around his feet. Slop jumped, surprised at first, but quickly gained his bearing as he tested his new gear. A few awkward steps-in-place, and he seemed adjusted.

  “Gotta love the Market mod,” Coach said. “Just watch those ‘Logistics Repo’ fees.”

  As if on cue, Bark Killsbark’s voice blew through the arena like a fighter jet. Distant, quiet at first, then thunderously loud. Crowd noise rolled in.

  “W-W-W-W-WELCOME TO BIOME TWO: THE CAULDARAN MINES!”

  He screamed and slobbered into the mic, echoing through the chamber like an earthquake. Music followed, a synthetic heavy metal straight out of Doom. Fast tempo, three-round bursts of machine gun double-kick and guitars made of grinding steel. It was horrible and amazing at the same time.

  A thought of Derrick in his Cannibal Corpse shirt reacting to orc metal briefly crossed my mind before System chirped off a “refocusing” log. I missed a lot of what Bark was saying, the noise was overwhelming.

  “Ahead of our contestants," Bark continued to shout, “they’ll face magma vents, shred wire, line hazards, collapsing rails, pressure jets, thermal pockets, phase-faults… OH! And the SURPRISE! You just can’t forget about the SURPRISE!

  “Now, as with the last round, it's a race to the finish. As our little bloodsplats take a relaxing tour around the Cauldaran Mines, they’ll need to think fast, slow their opponents, and remember to keep their hands, feet, tentacles, claws, gastric balloons—whatever you got, you’re gonna want to keep it in the cart.

  “Again. Xiamiti has graciously sponsored this event. Respawns are half off and the MediDrone swarms are out looking for something to do. So, let’s not keep them waiting!”

  The crowd went wild.

  A countdown appeared above the bowl.

  10

  9

  8

  The rails shuddered under us.

  7

  6

  Fantus covered his face with his wings.

  5

  Slop attempted to escape. I pushed him back down.

  4

  The cart clicked into a locking position, the sound of steam compressions releasing around us.

  3

  “Bend your knees, kid,” Coach said.

  2

  Hot wind rolled across my face.

  1

  The cart detonated off the platform. Suspense was replaced by violence.

  No acceleration. No transition. One moment, I was standing, holding onto the handlebars, bending my knees. The next, I was pinned against the back of the cart as it shot down the track. Air left my lungs as a golden-retriever-turned-sandbag crushed into me. Fantus screamed out in a pitch that clipped his voice and crackled his speaker.

  Ten carts blasted out down their tracks, raining crumbling rock from the inwardly pitched walls.

  “MINOR BIOLOGICAL DISASSEMBLY :: Subluxation across multiple joints”

  I felt like I was being rattled apart. My vision faded to smeared shadows and black dots as red icons flashed across my HUD. The hand of a god was crushing me. I was buried in an avalanche. An avalanche of fur.

  “Slop. Buddy. I can’t. Breathe,” I wheezed out.

  I attempted to roll the kicking mass off my belly, but his boots gripped my coat and twisted us up. With a final shove, I cried, “You big-ass beast!” and heaved him off to the side. I finally regained my footing on the first straightaway, gripping the handlebars for dear—expensive—life as I prepared for the upcoming drop.

  Ahead, miles of tracks spiraled around, up and down, before it would puke us through a chute diving straight down the crater wall.

  Bark roared, “Here. We. GO!”

  We hit the drop. I was basically doing a handstand, feet pinned to the back wall, upside down, Slop hemmed up in there somewhere.

  Wind screamed across my ears. The metal under us wailed. The cart rattled like it was trying to tear itself apart, the strutless wheels holding on through what must have been magnets, shaking me to my core.

  Coach shouted, “STAY LOW, BOY!”

  In my Superman pose, there was nothing to do but try to maintain.

  The next curve came up too fast to react. We were about to level out and snap right. The cart smashed into the turn, sparks raining against the rock wall as we tore a line through it. I belly flopped into the cart, hands still glued to the bar. The wheels shuddered in agony, about to leap from the track. My knees screamed as I pinned myself in, one foot against the left wall. Slop rolled into my other leg, knocking me back to my ass as we tangled.

  Fantus wailed, an unintelligible cry that only made things worse.

  “This is fucking ridiculous. Coach, what do I do here?!”

  “We’re about to find out,” he replied.

  Ahead, the rail forked into three paths, rushing at me with blinding speed. Too fast to think. Across my HUD, yellow lines scrambled to attach to the track, too much data to take in.

  “I’m thinking left, Zach,” Coach said.

  “Fantus?” I asked.

  System attempted to display the routes with probability lines, this time through the Fant-o-vision stream in my bottom right. They overlaid each other rapidly until they all washed out into a useless yellow haze.

  Fantus, trying to stay calm, said, “C-C-Center track has an unguttered gap. Left, perhaps… No. NO—RIGHT, TAKE RIGHT!”

  I pulled myself up with the handlebars and leaned in, trusting Fantus over Coach. I threw us to the right at the very last second. The cart slammed into the diverging rail with a crack that shook my teeth as my shoulder slammed into the side panel. Pain radiated down my arm. Slop hit the wall and bounced back with a grunt.

  “We’re gonna regret that,” Coach mumbled.

  The right path carried us into a tunnel mouth glowing orange. The heat surged. Sweat rolled down my sides instantly. Stone walls leaned inward, sparks scraping off as the cart gouged them at insane speeds.

  A white-hot vent burst from the wall and blew steam across the tunnel. I ducked down over Slop a second before it scorched past.

  Fantus wailed. I turned to find the left side of his face melted, the eye socket flickering on and off. My screen overlay of his vision blurred on the left, the peripheral completely faded out to black.

  “MY EYE! Master Ainsley, I’ve been mortally wounded!” His wings flapped wildly.

  Coach shouted over the roar with a snort, “Close one! Leave the tactics to the tactician.”

  Ahead, the tunnel ended abruptly. Then the track. Just air and a rail on the far side tilted up at a stupid angle.

  Fantus sobbed, “We cannot survive this!”

  Coach replied, “We can if he commits!”

  And damn it, I committed.

  The cart bucked off the lip. Weight vanished. Wind roared. My stomach went cold. I leaned back, trying to rock the forward wheels upward. Slop slid under me and bark-screamed in one long note. Fantus curled into a ball. The entire cart listed to the right by a few degrees, just enough to make the landing angle fucked.

  Bark announced, “...and we’ve got Team Ainsley coming up to their first gap. Ha, yeah right, they’ll make that when pigs fly. And I ain’t got no wings!”

  We hit the far rail hard, back right wheel first, metal shrieking. My ribs slammed the side, accompanied by a now familiar crunch that I was strangely getting used to. The metal wheels skidded, found grip, then pulled us forward again in one violent lurch.

  My HUD blinked rapidly.

  “MAJOR BIOLOGICAL DEGRADATION :: Multiple rib fractures resulting in reduced structural integrity”

  “Shit, that’s fun, huh?!” Coach shouted.

  “No,” I gasped in pain as I wriggled a MediBall out from under my jacket, dropping it into the cart and preparing to be violated. The shaking of the cart was making tears well and knees weak as fragments of bone pricked me from the inside. I hadn’t seen a MediDrone swarm anywhere—the bastards must be cheaping out.

  The track curved around the inner wall. I would have screamed, but I couldn’t suck in air. The caldera opened wide again. My eyes were streaming as the little drones stuffed themselves into my nose and down my throat, working their way to fix my smashed ribs. The wind-streaked tears immediately evaporated as we came fully into the radiance of the magma, clearing my vision enough to see the other teams before thoroughly drying out from the wave of heat.

  I was heading straight for the mosh pit.

  Through squinted eyes, I tried to see what I was in for. The slimes barreled through a turn on two wheels, bodies flowing to counterweight the centrifugal forces. Running alongside them, the Liizalith duo rode stiff, pinning themselves in the cart with their tails. They were shooting at one another with little effect as the tracks bucked both teams back and forth.

  Not too far off, the Mantid woman was executing a perfect lean through the corners, half crawling out and over the side of her cart, more akin to a spider than a mantis. The flying robojelly asshole she kept as a companion was mounted to the Macker socket. Her actual M.A.C.K., a softball sized spherical droid, hovered above the lava lake, scanning the tracks she was blazing toward.

  “Fantus,” I shouted, “How you doing back there?”

  He took a deep breath.

  And screamed at the top of his lungs, “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaa!”

  “Draa-matic,” Coach said.

  Overhead, the Aureli cart passed on a higher rail as we whipped into several tight curves. One of them pointed at us and laughed, mouth tentacles trumpeting with each mocking huff. I had a growing hatred of them. I didn’t know why, but they were purposefully targeting me—singling me out. Hell, for all I knew, they just hated dogs.

  Coach muttered, “We’ll deal with them later. Eyes on the track. Tracks”

  Fantus was still wailing. I finally turned around and put my hands over his mouth, clamping it shut. His face was a mess. Burned scales and skin exposed charred metal. The eye socket was a dark, shattered screen.

  “Fantus, does it hurt?”

  “Relentlessly,” the little dragon whimpered.

  Coach butted in, “Does it?”

  “Not in body,” Fantus said dramatically, “but in soul.”

  “We’ll get you fixed up as soon as we can,” I said, as I grabbed him around the body like a fat little football. I pushed the “Release” tab under his socket, and tossed him straight out over the fiery abyss.

  “BEARER!?” Fantus screamed.

  “As if you aren't equipped with a set of gravipods,” Coach said.

  He caught traction like a cat skidding across the kitchen floor, zipping off at a fourty-five degree angle before regaining control.

  Bark boomed through the arena, “R-R-R-Ripcord!” and began to laugh, deep booming barks with a brief pause between. “HA-HA-HA-HAAAaaaa!”

  A saw arm swung out from the volcano’s interior wall, a thick blue blade of glowing liquid plasma wheeling horizontally at the end. It dripped and splashed as the cord of lavalamp deformed at the tightest edge of the chainsaw.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  It was too low. Even if we jumped over it, it would rip right through the lower half of the cart.

  “Coach! Fantus! What’s the play?!”

  Coach yelled, “Abandon ship!”

  There was only hell below.

  “Fantus?!”

  His screen faded in, still blurred. Weakly, he said, “Tracking two empty carts, Master Ainsley. Best option is on your right.”

  It was too far.

  I looked at the saw. Time seemed to slow down. In my periphery, the other cart was swinging across a large arcing turn.

  Slop locked eyes with me. My mouth was hanging open in disbelief.

  System dumped my adrenaline reserves.

  “Time’s up,” Coach said. “Do it now!”

  I scooped up Slop and rolled back into the cart, back against the wall facing the other track. Time seemed to explode in fast-forward.

  “RETREAT!”

  Hollow metal rang out an instant later.

  Slop was successfully phase-dunked into the other cart as the first was ripped in half.

  “Holy-fucking-SHIT!” Bark screamed. “The dumb bastard cut himself in half and doesn’t even know it yet!”

  I was laying flat. Everything was going black. Bark’s voice was fading. My back was wet. And warm. There was pain, but there was also peace. In that brief moment, I felt calm.

  Then the black void.

  I respawned.

  Slop screamed. I screamed. Fantus hyperventilated into our comms. My HUD jittered trying to track out the path, but the cart was zipping past options, lagging it out. I was standing on my head. Literally.

  Below, my left foot sloshed in my own… my previous blood. My right foot was mounted on my face, Captain Morgan style. I had spawned in holding the handle bars. Slop was covered in blood. My blood. I had phased half in the cart, half out, my legs flying off through the black clouds and into the lava lake. The rest of me… myself… was leaking out in burping gulps.

  I wretched on myself. My previous self. Coach was telling me to get back in the game. A red ‘-4,000,000f’ flashed across my HUD. I threw up again.

  Fantus cried out, reminding me of Rizzo the rat, “Phase fault! This track is on a phase fault! DISTORTED REALITY INCOMING!”

  Cortisol flooded my veins. System. Then more adrenaline.

  When did Fantus re-dock? How long was I gone?

  We accelerated out of the caldera in a whipping motion, cart screaming down a straight tunnel moving away at a slight angle.

  The cart began to flicker.

  It was there.

  Then gone.

  An invisible box of gore.

  My gore.

  Back again.

  Repeatedly.

  Gravity finally gave out as the cart disappeared one last time, phase-shifted into a different Frame Rate. We flew above the tracks, a zero-gravity shotgun blast of Fantus, Slop, me, and my corpse. The world flickered around us, the walls changing scenes like a roulette before settling into a tunnel of black glass swords. We sped through the tube, slowly rolling end-over-end, jagged obsidian and lava rock reaching out to snag flesh, fur, and scale.

  SNAP!

  I screamed.

  “Oh, shit!” Coach yelled.

  I had clipped the glass teeth, shredding my pant leg and boot laces as I ricocheted in a new direction.

  My ankle was snapped, maybe even my shin. Pain was radiating through me in hot waves. The spinning forces had my limbs splayed out in all directions, blood rushing to my head as my boot flung off. I tried to reach my hand into my jacket to grab a MediBall from the bandolier, but I slammed into the opposite wall, daggers piercing through my shoulder as it jerked me in a different rotation.

  All at once, we were sent rewinding in reverse, ten times faster than how we had arrived. We floated, I rotated back, crashing into the walls. My boot smacked back onto my foot and my pants were mended. Then my feet slammed into the cart, hands gripping the handlebars, Fantus locked into his carseat. We had been turned around on the track and were now facing the bowl again.

  Bark was calling out play-by-plays, “Team Human is back from their vacation. OH! YEAH! The Kaarbians just flubbed the gap, two fresh respawns from the steam pot. Ha, ha, ha!”

  We didn’t get a second to recalibrate.

  The phase-faulted tunnel immediately spat us out into empty air again. We landed left-heavy on the next track, skidding before the magnets snapped back and stabilized us. Another cart shot across a perpendicular gap twenty feet ahead—Stoneskin and Old Lizard—flying through the air between tunnels, unfazed.

  The rails ahead dipped one last time toward a cluster of sharp ridges.

  Coach said, voice firm, “Sharp turn on the right. Take it. Stay controlled.”

  Fantus squeaked, “The left ridge is melting. Center is worse. The right ridge is… marginal.”

  I pulled right.

  The cart dove between two jagged rock pillars. Steam and flames blasted from a crack beside us, just out of reach. My coat warmed instantly. Slop’s fur crisped at the edges, the smell left behind in an instant. I could feel embers streaking my cheek.

  Fantus screamed, “Aaarggh- I’m… I’m alright, actually!”

  I glanced back. His right wing was a gnarled nub. He either didn’t know, or was putting on a brave face. I wasn’t going to be the one to tell him.

  The track straightened. The shaking eased for a breath.

  Coach laughed, “Hell of a start. Now it gets real.”

  Fantus groaned, “This was the beginning?!”

  “Just gettin’ started,” Coach finished.

  The rails twisted, a swept-over loop. The cart dropped into darkness.

  The roar of the caldera cut out. For a second, there was only wind and the grind of wheels on metal. The track curved under us in a long, downward arc, banking hard enough that I had to lean back with it to stay in the cart. Slop slid across my shins and into the front wall, boots squeaking.

  Blue guide lights began to flicker along the tunnel ceiling, strobing by in a line, giving me flashes of rock, metal supports, and little else. Faster and faster.

  The loop tightened. G-forces slowly pinned me to the floor. Slop was a warm, panicked weight as he and Previous Me joined the dog pile. My ribs ached where the MediBall had just patched them, my ankle and shoulder giving me a strange feeling that they should be broken but weren't.

  The track flattened out for half a heartbeat, then jerked us to the left.

  The ceiling was soaked in a dim orange glow pulsing from the end of the tunnel. We were headed back toward the open caldera and whatever fresh hell awaited us.

  Fractures along the tunnel wall began to expose parallel tracks—we weren’t the only team racing in through this side of the volcano. I drew my capacity pistol, unsure of who was going to pop out with me into the next floating track mixer.

  Bark’s voice cut through the stone, “H-H-h-here they come!”

  Four carts shot out of the tunnels at nearly the same time, running alongside each other. We were in lane three. Lane one had the Mantid and her Jelly, lane two was the beardless dwarves, and lane four was the damn squid faces.

  Ahead, four other tracks had already converged into a similar pattern as ours. Four teams were battling it out, lasers, rockets, shields, and explosions tearing away at each other as they raced toward us. Their tracks would soon run parallel to ours, interlacing into all-out-war. At the apex of the masher, the remaining two teams would be rolling down hills that would criss-cross over and under us. It was like a damn Hot Wheels playset intended to smash everyone together at the same time. We had about thirty seconds before the full-on clash.

  “Fantus, cover fire on the right!” I prayed he wouldn’t chicken out. I expected a protest, some whining. A dumb quip.

  He nodded, steeling himself. “Dear me, apologies!” The shy little dragon took a deep breath and, through a scream, let out a spray of rounds towards Team Aureli, forcing them to duck into their cart.

  Coach said, “Find a place to stick a tuner, shadows out!”

  I grabbed a tuner from under my coat and looked around. It wasn’t magnetic. I tried sticking it into my coat, but couldn’t get it to pierce. Finally, I turned to Fantus.

  “Sorry, buddy,” I said just before stabbing it into the broken eye socket.

  “Genius,” Coach said as Fantus protested. “Okay! Worst case, Retreat into Blitz and hope for the best.”

  I called for my shadows and sent them out to our left, right, and rear, trying to create a protective wall and reduce visibility.

  “Stay down, Slop.”

  The heat this low into the bowl was unbearable. I was fighting to keep my eyes open, lashes crisping at the ends. The air wasn’t air anymore, just a swirling layer of pain. Every inhale felt like swallowing something too hot to chew, a blowdryer stuffed down my throat.

  “Stay down, Slop!” I had to push his head down as he continued to try to peek over the side.

  My shadows were obscuring as much of our vision as the other teams. From what I could see, the whole world was chaos, hot smoke, and rails. So many rails. Floating, intersecting, stacking into a lattice that couldn’t possibly exist. A volcano turned into a toy box made into a slaughterhouse.

  As we sped toward the death mixer, a sound registered that didn’t belong. A clean, sterile tone. Not Bark’s screaming countdown. Not the crowd’s roar. Not the event’s theatrical sirens or music. This was a hospital beep in a war zone. A pulse of white noise cutting through the metal and heat, as if someone had opened a door into a different world nearby.

  My HUD flickered as it tried to label it, but the letters were sliced and covered in static.

  Bark’s voice punched through the cavern, but it wasn’t his usual hurricane. It wobbled, stuttered.

  “A-a-a—” He coughed into the mic. “Uh… Okay, here we go—!” I could just barely make out someone talking to him, someone in the same room caught by the hot mic. “Time to see some bloo– say what?”

  “Cut the fucking feed, damn it!” A clipped voice snapped in the background. “We’re getting emergency traffic.”

  A third voice could be heard, “Don’t you fucking dare. The shields will hold!”

  The alarm tone pulsed again. Clean. Clinical. Wrong. It wasn’t echoing through the caldera like Bark’s voice did. It wasn’t in the sim. A feeling of dread washed over me.

  “Quit daydreaming, Zach!” Coach yelled. “INCOMING!”

  A burst of light streaked overhead followed by a trailing shockwave that clobbered the cart with a loud THUNK, causing my ears to ring and my vision to suck in momentarily. It came from one of the carts ahead already fighting for their lives—for their wallets.

  The dwarves had erected a reddish-brown barrier that was encircling their whole cart. Bullets, lasers, and micro-missiles were skipping off it, causing it to flicker. But it held.

  The Aureli rose up from their carts just enough to show weapons. Blue tentacles reached from their faces to the side of the rail to stabilize the shot.

  “Here it comes, Zach!” Coach said.

  The muzzle of the forward Aureli flashed.

  My right-side shadow snapped outward from the cart, hungry, catching the plasma beam. More rounds came pouring in from above—one of the other rails crossing perpendicularly. My rear shadow surged up and ate the line of fire. The bullets didn’t ricochet. They didn’t deform. They simply vanished, swallowed by the smoky blur.

  Slop tried to lift his head again, determined to get into the action. I couldn’t hold him back and keep track of everything going on. He put his two front boots on the right side of the cart, and with a heroic leap, cleared the distance between ours and the squid-faces.

  To our left, Team Mantid and Team Dwarf were duking it out, but my shadow was blinding me from the details. Fantus’ feed was getting worse, the whole left side now just scrambled static.

  Over the wind and chaos, I could hear Slop growling as he tore one of the Aureli to pieces. I couldn’t see into the cart due to the high walls, and worried that he might not be okay.

  A shotgun blast sounded out as their cart sped into a swarm of MediDrones. Screams. Blasts. Barks and growls. A flash of Slop covered in silver blood. Tentacles ripped free were tossed out of the cart. More screams. Multiple gunshots.

  One of the Aureli bailed, jumping out of the cart and into the smoky abyss, a blubbering wail descending in volume until silenced by distance. Blue fingers gripped at the side railed, the remaining squid grasping for life. Slop’s growling rips sounded out before the fingers slid free, limp. Then he popped his head up over the side, a cloud of drones leaking out of his smiling face.

  He landed back in my cart with a heavy thump just as we came to the mega-mixer. There were several patches of fur missing from his side and face, gaping holes that must have been being repaired mid-fight.

  Bark’s voice cracked back in, louder, strained, fighting back whoever was pushing him in the background.

  “C-contestants!” he yelled. “We’ve got a—uh—minor…”

  “Bark,” one of the background voices hissed, closer now, clear over the mic. “It’s not minor. Read the damn red script. NOW!”

  “Don’t tell me what color my damned script…” Bark trailed, paper shuffling over the PA as multiple explosions erased two of the teams coming at us. Bullets rained, plinking off carts, tracks, and the far walls.

  “L-L-Ladies and gentlemen. We are experiencing…” Bark swallowed, a gulping sound ringing out with heavy reverb.

  The alarm tone pulsed again. Louder. Closer.

  I heard a chair squeal and the mic dropped, deafeningly loud across the sim. Almost every team ducked down into their carts, covering whatever orifice counted as their ears as the speakers in the arena cried out with feedback. It was hard to tell what was louder, the fight taking place between teams, or the fight in the announcer booth. They both came second to Fantus’ insane screeching.

  The team on the track crossing above had a clear shot at me again. Then I saw one of the lizard men peek over, trying to take aim. From my back, I grabbed the pistol I had dropped into the cart and fired the first round, causing him to duck away. I had two rounds now thanks to the skills upgrade from the start of this whole shit show and was waiting for him to pop out again.

  Everything was moving in slow motion.

  We crossed under their track, but I kept my sights locked. Like every noob in every first-person shooter, he peeked the corner again.

  I fired.

  A clean hole instantly materialized through his head before spraying blood from both sides.

  Bark screamed, “What a shot- Oh. Shit! BRACE FOR IMPACT!”

  The world shook.

  The cart above began to flicker, similar to the phase-fault, but in a different way.

  Glitching.

  Random tracks. Our cart. The other teams. Everything began to flicker at different times, variable intervals. Everything but the weaponry flying through the air.

  The world around me suddenly blinked.

  Pitch black.

  Then, all twenty and more of us—dead or alive—were sent flailing, sailing, and gliding through the air before taking hard, skidding landings on the pristine white hologrid.

  The world shook again. Red lights began flashing, illuminating the white room into hell and back. With each flash, my eyes filled in the empty space with horrors—from the swamps, from the race, from everything. I couldn’t breathe.

  “Alert. Alert.” An administrative woman’s voice came on over the PA, replacing Bark’s wild announcements with a strange sounding, upbeat text-to-speech. “Third nuclear impact imminent. ‘Schtots’ orbital pathing disrupted.

  “All hands are to prepare for hibernation. ‘Schtots’ returning to ‘Zjee-a-meetee’ Headquarters, Port ‘Schee-Man-Ooze’. Time remaining before Lower Phase shift: thirty minutes. All biologicals not in hibernation in—thirty minutes—shall perish. ‘Zjee-a-meetee’ thanks you for your cooperation. Please stand by.”

  I laid there stunned, half-listening, my mind still in the cart, the death race, my body now throbbing from the impact on the tile. System attempted to dump my adrenaline reserves—all out. Panic was setting in.

  “You gotta get the fuck up, Zach!” Coach shouted.

  I groaned as I sat up, dizzy and confused. I wasn’t alone.

  Some of my fellow trainees were crumpled on the ground, physically injured from their fall. Broken limbs, destroyed spines. Others were standing up, grudges evident across their faces. Still others were recently deceased, probably popping out of a respawner as the second quake hit, their corpses creating milestones along the arena’s borders.

  “Where… where am I?” Fantus asked in a faint, scratchy voice. Several of his gravipods were blown out, the blue halo missing.

  I scooped up the one-winged dragon and called Slop back to my side as Coach said, “We better get to your quarters. Quick!”

  It was a fifteen minute trip at the best of times, but with all of us trying to get out of the sim arena simultaneously, I knew I needed to get moving. We hurried toward the giant iris door that led to the elevators, beating out the other teams that were still in a skirmish or recovering on the floor. Using Retreat, we cleared the final distance and I frantically slapped my hand on the elevator call pad.

  The double doors slid open and we rushed in, trying to get them closed and the pod across the space station’s donut hole as fast as possible. I didn’t know what the rules were on combat outside of the arena, and I didn’t plan to find out while in a glass tube shooting through space.

  A burning sensation filled my leg as I fell to the ground. The sound took me a second to register. Pain connected the dots. The doors slid shut as the blood began to spurt out of my thigh. Through the glass, one of the Aureli bastards was holding a plasma gun, redhot at the tip.

  “The fucker shot me. Coach, I’m hit.”

  Coach replied, “Fuck ‘em, there’s no time for this. Compress that wound and drop a MediBall.”

  System pinged out some logs and I listened for anything that could send me back to a respawner. I dropped a MediBall on the floor as the doors closed and let the bots patch me up as we moved across the station. I didn’t think an artery was hit, but respawning in the hologrid just to take another death from the phase shift wasn’t on my todo list.

  Halfway across, we saw what was happening. Blue shields surrounding XTOTTS were shimmering as they took the full force of various sized explosions.

  “...the shields will hold…” I said to myself, remembering what the other person in the announcer booth had said. I felt like a skeet disc flung across space, waiting for Earth to shatter us. Hundreds of missiles were coming.

  In awe, I said, “There’s a third wave coming. How long until it hits?”

  “Couple minutes?” Coach guessed. “Wouldn’t be surprised if Xiamiti shifts us out of here prematurely.”

  The doors to the hall of my quarters slid open shortly after the drones finished layering in my outer skin, a job well done as denoted by System. A sick yellow slag had been pushed out of the wound, which Coach explained was the material used to create the plasma, and not my leg fat as I had anxiously assumed. The spent healers had flown out of my body directly into the ventilation, and I wondered if they knew where they were heading.

  In the hall, dozens of people were running in both directions, bumping into each other, yelling.

  “Where did all these people come from?”

  “Don’t know. Don’t matter,” he replied. “We gotta get you into hibernation. Focus.”

  The red lights and alarms were still going off.

  “Remember, once you’re in that room, I’ll be offline. Just lay on the bed and close your eyes. Xiamiti will handle the rest. If you don’t make it, the respawn should hold off until after the phase-shift. Non-harnessed entities need to make it to a HiberPod. Slop should be fine, and Fantus is a robot.”

  I shoved through a group of panicked workers before asking, “What if they move XTOTTS before they get to their pods?”

  “Come on, Zach… You already know.”

  Reaching my door, I somberly said, “Thought so. See you on the other side.”

  Slop immediately hopped up onto the bed as I sat the broken Fantus on the desk. I was quickly stripping off my overcoat, boots, and safety pants when the whole room turned sideways. It was like being inside a boat that had just smacked the side of a rock, tossing everyone and everything to the side. The third wave of impacts were landing.

  “‘SCHTOTS’ Phase-shift in thirty seconds. All hands not in hibernation in thirty seconds should pray to their god or gods, call their loved ones, or prepare for respawn.”

  “Oh, shit, in the bed!” I jumped in next to Slop and closed my eyes. “WAIT! Coach!? What about-”

  “HIBERNATION SEQUENCE INITIATED :: Preparing for Mass Phase Shift”

  I don’t really know what came next. I blinked. A very long blink. It wasn’t sleep, as I could hear, think. It was like closing my eyes and being freed of my body. I couldn’t move, but there was nowhere to go. Nowhere I wanted to go.

  This is nice.

  At last, I reopened my eyes.

  “Aaaahhh-” I screamed before clamping my hands down over my mouth. I was hit with a flood of emotions. Fear, anger, anxiety, hatred, panic… all at once. Memories of my journey leading up to this point streamed through my head, an eruption of suppressed feelings all at once.

  I tried to focus on something tangible in my quarters, but I couldn’t believe what my eyes showed me. I was no longer in my room, but some sort of alien jail cell made of jagged flesh, chitin, and sinew. The ‘bars’ in front of me were hard strands of what looked to be stretched bone. The walls thrummed in extreme slow-motion, reacting to my movement with slow rippling waves as I got up off the floor.

  Shivering, I closed my eyes and tried to listen down the curved, organic hall. There was a quiet clicking coming from every direction, like the building or city was shifting and grinding. As I strained, a wet ‘squish-squash’ repeated, growing louder. Something was coming toward my prison.

  From around the corner, a familiar face came into view—the frogman general from the portrait in my room. A Fribbick. Perhaps the Fribbick. His mustache was more amazing than the portrait led on, nearly a full foot wide and sweeping into grand curls on the ends. His uniform had medals down both sides of his chest, his sleeves, and even a few on his collar.

  What the image in my room got wrong: he was wearing an eyepatch over his left eye. A gnarly new scar ran across his face from just above the ‘stache to the peak of his head. I was worried I might be confusing frogs—perhaps they all look the same. Perhaps I was being racist… speciesist. But something told me this was the same guy.

  As if materializing from thin air, an enormous Mantid appeared. Dark green chitinous armor and the same sword-swept forearms as my mantis peer. This was likely an adult male, but I couldn’t be sure. It began speaking with a series of clicks and guttural sounds that slid into English.

  “...are not exactly a prisoner, but you may not leave until certain decisions have been made at the next board meeting within the Xiamiti Corporation. Until then, you are to stay right where you are. Your Client has been disabled, and your rank of Entrant revoked. That is all.”

  Without another word, it turned about on its six hydraulic legs with an eerie silence, disappearing around the corner at a measured pace. The Fribbick remained, patiently staring at me with an expression I couldn’t read, his throat filling and deflating as he breathed.

  “So. Hrmph. Why you?” He said at last in a deep, croaky voice. “Why are you the only human to—hrmph—take the harness and not die?”

  I had no words, so I just stared back, slightly shaking my head in the negative.

  “Your Client’s been turned off, Mister Ainsley.”

  Another long pause. My anger was rising. He produced a pistol, casually pointing it at me.

  “If I killed you here and now, hrmph, you wouldn’t come back. Liberating, isn’t it? To know you wouldn’t have to—hrmph—suffer anymore.”

  Softly, I said, “So, do it. Nothing stoppin’ you.”

  “Bravery in the face of—hrmph—death. I like that. However, as you are a citizen of a civilization who has declared war on Xiamiti, by rights, hrmph, that makes you a prisoner of war, and in some ways, a political prisoner-r-r-ribbit. A ward, even, as you are now also a valued Xiamiti—hrmph—research asset with the potential to unlock human immortality. For all of your kind, Zach.”

  “Are you asking for my allegiance?”

  He replied, “No, I am asking if you can behave, Entrant Ainsley. You were enlisted in your country's—hrmph—navy, were you not? And here you are now, an officer in my navy.”

  “I thought my rank was just revoked.”

  He scoffed, his large tongue adjusting his mustache, still pointing his capacity pistol at me. “Bah, corp-a-ribbit drivel to keep you in line.”

  “I didn’t ask for any of this! You know what? Just fucking put me out of my fucking misery. I have no idea where I am, how I got here, where that fucking dog is… Where’s Slop?”

  “So emotional. Hrmph. So irrational. Humans,” he said with disdain. “I won’t be ending your immortality, Zach. This is just r-r-reassurance.” He nodded toward his gun. “Not today. Not unless the executives decide otherwise. The Mantids may not be known for their kindness—hrmph—but mercy isn’t outside of their wheelhouse.”

  “Where is Slop?” I was losing my cool, losing my mind, losing the path.

  “Being examined, hrmph. There is something not r-r-right with that creature. But not to worry. Once we’ve sliced up his—hrmph—brain, we can see what kind of hardware was installed. You will not be harboring spies, Mister Ainsley.”

  “CLIENT OPERATIONS RESTORED :: User control restricted”

  System began rattling off various procedure logs, process restores, and the like.

  Coach started in, slowly saying, “Oh, shit. How’d you land yourself in the penalty box?”

  The Fribbick said, “From now on, you will refer to me as ‘Sir’. Learn some discipline, Ainsley.”

  A shot rang out. Blackness unfolded.

  “RESPAWN PROTOCOL INITIATED :: Xiamiti Headquarters, Cell Block Alpha-Nine.”