I leaned back and rubbed my tired eyes. I put my tablet on the side table beside my recliner before steepling my fingers.

  A soft chime announced someone at the back door. I glanced at the standing monitor to my right and mentally flicked to the surveillance feed. Mirox winked up at the camera before letting himself in.

  I flicked back to the challenger stats, but my eyes lost their focus as I read. I let my gaze roam around the room for a moment before tracking back to the wall-screen. It was divided into four sections but only three were populated, two with challengers that could potentially be my picks for this season, and…mindless entertainment.

  “If you show me yours, I’ll show you mine.” Mirox sauntered into the room with a grin and a computer bag slung over his shoulder.

  I glanced at his empty hands. “I would’ve hoped you’d bring me a refreshment.”

  “Don’t you have people for that?”

  “For a being always accusing me of arrogance and posh pompousness, you certainly sound like a rich douche right now.”

  Mirox laughed and set his computer bag next to the spare recliner I’d had brought in. “Know your audience.” He glanced at the wall-screen as he sat down, tilting his head quizzically. “Since when do you entertain stragglers?”

  I didn’t have to follow his gaze to know whom he was talking about. I sent an order down to the kitchen staff for appetizers and a very strong cup of coffee. Maybe a pot of it, actually. Hell, how about a six-pack of energy drinks?

  “I don’t. She’s more…a pleasant distraction when I take a mental break.”

  Mirox lifted his eyebrows as he pulled out a specialty fitted laptop humans wouldn’t understand but would pay an absolute fortune to have. “Despite the last ten Earth years of human females worshipping you like some sort of deity, since when do you take reciprocal interest?”

  “This isn’t reciprocal, and sometimes it is a pleasurable distraction, which this is. She’s funny. And…incredibly odd. I’m riveted. It’s like the real time vid-screen everyone is so taken with.”

  “Reality TV, I think you mean.” He leaned back, placing his laptop on his lap, looking at the screen.

  “Choosing between my two hopefuls is doing me in. They each have incredible advantages and devastating pitfalls. It’s the pitfalls I’m the most worried about.” I shrugged, rubbing my eyes again. “For a break, I watch the female’s antics.”

  A staff member walked in with a silver tray. He deposited a sorely needed cup of coffee on my table, a plate of cheese, and an apple. He asked Mirox if he wanted anything.

  “No, thanks.” Mirox waved the staff being away. He glanced at me. “Clear me a space.” He gestured at the wall-screen.

  I divided it in half as I picked up my mug, my possibles on one side, leaving Mirox the other.

  Two more challengers populated the screen, plus one duplicate.

  “Well, one in three ain’t bad,” Mirox said with a smirk. “You have some taste, at least.”

  “The only one with taste. Those other two are too volatile. They pretend they are invincible, do something stupid, and pay the price. You haven’t been watching closely enough. They will undermine you trying to guard them and probably kill you once they know you put them into an even more dangerous situation than the Core has.”

  Mirox studied his laptop. “They can be cowed. Once someone shows as more dominant, they’ll follow the lead of that individual.”

  “You hope they will, at any rate.”

  “They respond to a hierarchy, both of them. And they’ve been in human combat. They won’t bat an eye at what the Core throws them.”

  “Are you sure?” I quirked an eyebrow. “We aren’t going into a war zone, Mirox. We’re going into the equivalent of a murderous fun house. The Core was programmed with a sense of humor, and the species inside it are the punch line. You need someone flexible. Those two don’t seem flexible.”

  “They don’t need to be flexible. They need to do as I say and kill everything in their way. Punch line or not, they won’t hesitate to take out anything the Core throws at them, the stranger, the better. Nor will they hesitate to take out anyone trying to kill them. Unlike your choices, these two have killed humans. When threatened, they won’t hesitate to do it again.”

  I set down my mug and then steepled my fingers, bumping them against my lips in thought. “Good points.”

  “Yeah. It’s almost like this isn’t my first time, hmm?”

  “Until they kill you.”

  “They won’t kill a team member.”

  “Then you’d have to refrain from mentioning that you aren’t really on their team. That you are, in fact, the bad guy.”

  “But I’m not the bad guy.” Mirox poked at his computer screen. “I didn’t put them into the system.”

  “You put them into something worse than the system, and you are not human. Humans mostly didn’t believe in other life forms and then suddenly an alien is telling them, ‘Sorry about your way of life almost certainly ending, but don’t worry, I’m not like those other aliens, I promise.’”

  “You’re too keyed up.”

  “This is true.” I took another sip of my coffee. “I’ve heard rumors that the Core Collective reprogrammed the system for this planet. That’s why it took them so long to set up such a small system.”

  Mirox glanced up slowly, his brow furrowed. “Yeah?”

  “That’s the rumor. No confirmation.”

  “The Learning Phase is as expected. No one has gone through to the main system yet. The designing team is closely watched. In ten years, there were no rumors, but now this rumor comes up right as the betting pools are getting ready to open?”

  “Maybe someone isn’t as concerned with keeping secrets this close to going live.”

  Mirox let go a slow breath, once again looking at his computer. He stared for a moment. “Or maybe a Purse Hunter is intentionally trying to stir up unease, so they get their chosen challenger.”

  “Or maybe that.”

  “Well, we have all the stats. We have a great procedure for categorizing challengers. If something changes, which I highly doubt, we can adapt.”

  “Adapt or sit this one out. We’ve spent almost no galactic coin. If the land we bought turns into real estate gold, we’ll still come out ahead.”

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  “True. Let’s keep grinding and see what turns up.”

  Mirox continued to work, probably rechecking his picks after I’d pointed out some of the flaws. He was a being that needed a sounding board.

  While I waited for him to be ready to go over my choices, I turned up the volume on the human female and settled back with my coffee. I needed a second wind, as humans liked to say.

  “Right then, Martha,” the female murmured to herself. I had no clue who that might be, but the female human did tend to talk to herself a lot. Maybe it was an imaginary friend, like that fake animal not that long ago.

  She leaned, favoring her wound.

  “She took a direct hit with the rusty sword,” I told Mirox. “She saw it coming, couldn’t do anything, and angled to take it in a place that would hinder her the least.”

  Mirox glanced up, taking in the scene. “She’s bearing it well. You can hardly tell.”

  “Yeah. She got pissed, kicked some loot—or tried—and ignored everything else to set about improving her health. She’s smart, this one. She was one of the first to figure out the puzzle in the stone chamber.”

  “I know. I was monitoring her for a time.” He looked back down. “I thought for sure she’d be one of the top contenders. She’s got an impressive array of stats in a lot of areas.”

  “She does. One of the best.”

  “Let’s get cooking, shall we?” she said, peering into the pot. “They didn’t give me an animal sidekick, and now I’m missing a celebrity co-chef. What’s with this place?”

  Mirox glanced up, watching as she bent to examine the fire beneath the pot.

  “I wonder if I can douse the fire and take the logs…” She chewed her lip, staring at it. “Hard without water…”

  Her words trailed away as she leaned lower.

  “What’s she doing?” Mirox asked in confusion.

  The wonders of reality TV.

  “Maybe if I…” She reached out to touch the log, close to the ground. “Sonuva—!”

  She yanked her hand away.

  “There was no flame!” she hollered at nothing. “If it is going to be hot, it should look burned. That’s just physics!”

  I watched her thought processes flash across the screen, currently wondering if physics was the right word.

  It was.

  Then she absently thought of smothering the director of these games in his or her sleep—I wasn’t quite sure what that meant—while she inspected the pot again.

  Mirox huffed out a laugh. “She has a point.”

  “It’s too bad she moves so slow. She’s got everything that would make a good challenger for the Red Ledger except for that.”

  “Including worshipping you. It’s easy to get female humans to do what you want when you look like a god.”

  “Not that you would know.”

  “Of course I know. I’m the god of the sea. You’re the vengeful god. They each have their way of getting things they want.”

  “I think they have myths for that here.”

  “They do. I couldn’t be bothered to learn the names, though. The myths are creationary. Incorrect and boring.”

  “It better magically cook,” the human female said, threatening nobody as she stared at the pot.

  Mirox glanced up again in time for her to call up her inventory. Stats rolled across the monitor.

  I forwarded the stats to the wall-screen so we could both see her thought processes as she learned this new facet of the system.

  What’s this? she thought, tapping a picture. Venison.

  Code flashed, describing an image called up within the human female’s mind. She remembered seeing a haunch of meat roasting over a fire at a previous “obstacle.”

  “Did you know that some humans can’t think in pictures or words?” Mirox asked, watching the screen. “Their mind is blank. And then others, like her, it seems, can think in vivid images. They can hear words in their head. There’s a spectrum. It’s interesting.”

  It’s already roasted, she thought. Surely that means it’s done.

  She pulled it out, remarking that over the fire it had actually looked like meat, but holding it in her hand, it resembled a food pellet.

  Gross. She shoved it into her mouth and then wondered why the raw eggs hadn’t tasted like nothing. Because if the meat had a flavor, it was beige.

  Mirox snorted.

  She barely had to chew. It essentially disintegrated in her mouth.

  “At least I won’t eat for fun here,” she mumbled, swallowing the rest. “Easy diet plan.”

  Her health increased and the pain from her wound faded. She’d just figured out one facet of collectable items, and in a moment, she’d figure out how to make them.

  “One of my guys ate the venison roasting over the fire simply because it was meat,” Mirox said, his gaze still glued to the screen. “He saw meat, and he put it in his mouth. Wasted it. His health had been full. Zero thought about it.” He adopted a cartoon caveman voice. “Meat, mmm. Good.”

  “There are a lot of primitive elements to this civilization.” I sighed. “I keep trying to think of a reason to ignore this human female’s sluggish nature. She hasn’t died and had to be respawned. Only a few can boast that stat. She didn’t panic in the stone chamber, and she has figured out all the little extras in the Learning Phase so far. Some humans have picked up on how gamelike—to them—this system is. They have a modicum of experience and know-how. She doesn’t have any of those references. She figured everything out on her own. She will be incredible in the main system.”

  “Except she stalls with danger. She lacks the necessary fighting drive.”

  “She has the drive—once she commits, she handles herself beautifully. But yes, she stalls. A great deal.”

  “The best challengers are the ones who get through the challenges quickly,” Mirox said, watching her cooking meals. It wasn’t difficult. The Core wanted challengers to stay in the system for as long as possible. The longer they were in there, the more data they would create. To keep up their health, challengers could collect and cook or loot for potions to replenish their health.

  Crafting would be nearly as easy, and if they didn’t want to, they wouldn’t have to eat or sleep. They wouldn’t have to rest. The idea was to maintain as lengthy and continuous a data feed as possible.

  “She is entertaining, I grant you. She’ll probably get swept up into the Red Ledger purely for comic relief, but you know what happens to stragglers,” Mirox said ominously.

  The Red Ledger had different time constraints.

  The longer the challengers on the Red Ledger stayed in the system, the more opportunity there was for them to be hunted and taken out, and the Purse Hunter with them.

  “Yeah,” I said, back to rubbing my eyes. I didn’t like my options this time around. I had a sinking feeling this whole venture would be a dangerous waste of time.

  “What’s…” Mirox glanced up at the wall-screen with a deep frown. “What’s going on?”

  I followed his gaze and leaned forward in surprise.

  One of Mirox’s possible challengers was no longer alone. Another human male stood off to the side. He was holding a bat and had blood all over his torso.

  “What’s going on?” I repeated, pulling my monitor closer.

  “Jinx.”

  “That’s not how humans use that term,” I replied absently, using a combination of my mind and fingers to look for answers.

  “Another.” Mirox pointed at one of my possible challengers. That male had also encountered another.

  “You one of them?” my possible challenger asked the other male.

  “Does it look like I am? I got the same strange clothes, bro. Use your head.”

  I cut out the sound so I could think.

  Challengers were supposed to be entirely alone until they got through the Learning Phase. The point was to set their baseline—to see their capabilities without outside influence. Then, once they were in the main trials, the Core would monitor the differences between the baseline and the flux due to herd mentality.

  Throwing them together early, especially this early, wiped out a valuable dataset.

  “Have you heard of any structural changes to the system?” I asked.

  “Obviously not. I hadn’t even heard the rumor that you had. That sort of thing would be all over the Shadow Exchange if it were verified.”

  Yes, it would.

  A message came through, and then five more within a blink. Notifications lit up my monitor. Another random human joined the collection of humans on the wall-screen.

  “I’ve got activity,” Mirox said, leaning closer to his laptop.

  So did I.

  I skimmed through the messages, chose one from a name I trusted, and read the contents. A swear rode my release of breath.

  Mirox looked up at me slowly, wariness in his gaze. “This changes things.”

  “It definitely changes things.” My fingers flew across the monitor, in sync with other directives from my mind. “I’m recalibrating our parameters. We’re no longer looking for the same type of challenger. I hope you slept, because we have to start all over again.”

  Mirox shook his head, bending to his laptop. “But Seryn, these changes…” His gaze came back up, imploring. “Is it me, or is the collective trying to create data that’ll justify wiping the humans off their planet?”

  I flicked my gaze Mirox’s way before going back to my monitor. “Looks like it. But hey, humans are resilient. They might come out all right.”

  “Not when their greatest enemy is themselves.”