Chapter 381 — America’s No. 1 I

Chapter 381: Chapter 381 — America’s No. 1 I

Fifty-two days into the break, James was coming up from the lower hall with a towel round his neck when every phone on the operations floor went off at once.

He knew that sound by now. It was not a clear alert from the tracker app, which buzzed once. This was the System, and it came up in front of his eyes at the same moment as everybody else’s.

`[GLOBAL TOWER ANNOUNCEMENT]`

`[FLOOR 38 CLEARED]`

`[REGION: UNITED STATES]`

Somebody at a desk said "There it is," quietly, like they had been holding a bet in their head for a week.

One of the operations staff was already up at the frontier board with a tablet. James watched her move the American flag up the screen until it sat on the line under Ireland’s, and then she changed the line itself, so that the two flags shared it. Floor 38, both of them. Korea sat one line down, close enough that nobody was relaxed about it.

The recruits had come out of the second hall in their kit and were crowding the screen by the stairs. On the corner of it, the foreign clear notifications were stacking faster than anybody was reading them, China and Japan and somebody in the middle of the board, one under another.

"Korea’s next," said the woman with the green trainers. "Then it’s three of them sitting on Thirty-Eight."

"Nobody’s sitting," said Team One’s caller. "The Americans’ll go up tomorrow."

"Who, though? They’re not sending twelve into Thirty-Nine."

"They don’t need twelve."

Nobody needed to ask who he meant.

——

The American party had been five for the clear, but every broadcast had already stopped talking about four of them.

The fifth man was the United States’ No. 1-ranked Challenger. He had been in the clearing party, so Floor 39 was open to him now, and since the update he had become the most watched person in the Tower.

The big screen in the operations room had gone to an American sports network. They had a highlight package ready, which meant they had been waiting to use it.

James sat on the edge of a desk and watched with his towel still round his neck.

The first clip was from a floor in the twenties. A pack of something heavy and armoured came at the American across open ground. He lifted one hand, and the whole pack went down flat into the dirt as if somebody had dropped a building on them. The ground cracked in a circle round them, and they could not get up.

In the next clip he did not push down. A charging beast the size of a van went sideways in the middle of its stride, as though the floor had tipped under it, and carried on falling sideways for forty metres until it hit a wall.

In the third, an archer line opened up on him, and the arrows slowed in front of him, bent, and went back the way they had come.

In the last one he went up a broken cliff without climbing it. Slabs of rock lifted off the ground underneath him one after another, and he stepped from one to the next like they were stairs, and let each one fall behind him.

It was all one thing. James could see that inside the first ten seconds. Gravity, pointed wherever he wanted it.

"Look how fast he changes," said Finn. He was leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. "He’s not just hitting harder. He goes down, sideways, push, up, and he picks one before the thing’s finished moving. He never sits on one."

"How do you get near that?" said Ronan. He had his arms folded. "Seriously. I walk up to him with the shield, and he points the floor at me, and I’m on the ceiling."

"You don’t," said Cillian. "You stay home and you send him a card." He watched the beast hit the wall again on the replay. "Okay. Fair enough. That’s very good."

Maeve was watching something else.

"He’s built all of it around himself," she said. "Everything he does assumes nobody else is there. If he had four people with him, half of that would hit his own team. On his own, he doesn’t have to hold anything back."

James watched the slabs lift on the cliff one more time.

He did not feel anything about it except interest. The man was very good, and James wanted to see what he did next.

---

That evening the American network cut into its own programming.

The No. 1 had made an announcement. He would attempt Floor 39 the following night, alone, and it would stream on the Tower’s feed like every other attempt.

It was the first solo attempt at the current frontier of the Tower. By ten o’clock it was the lead on RTÉ.

The Team Zero chat filled up quickly.

**Finn:** he’s actually doing it

**Cillian:** fair play to him. i wouldn’t go into a toilet on my own on a new floor

**Maeve:** Before anyone asks, the break ends on the date it ends.

James read it on the sofa at home, with Nyra beside him explaining the gravity clips to their mother, wrongly.

**James:** Not ending the break.

**James:** But we’re watching it. Ops room, tomorrow, eight.

**Ronan:** Good. He’s scouting it for the whole planet.

That was exactly how James saw it.

---

The next night the operations room was full and quiet.

The founders had the chairs at the front. Alice stood behind them, her wings folded against her back so tightly that the staff could see past her. Staff and a handful of the recruits had stayed late and stood further back against the desks, and nobody had told them to go home.

The main wall screen was split in two. On the left was the Tower’s feed, with the chat running up its right-hand side. On the right was the American broadcast, with two commentators at a studio desk.

The chat was a wall of red, white and blue.

**[EagleEyeTX]:** LETS GOOOO

**[GravityGang]:** solo frontier clear incoming. history tonight

**[chi_raid_lead]:** one person = weaker scaling. this is the smartest move anyone’s made since the update

**[NotABot_Honest]:** scaling doesn’t mean weaker it means DIFFERENT. you don’t know that

**[sligo_sean]:** no healer no tank no nothing. big call

**[EagleEyeTX]:** he doesn’t NEED a healer lmao he doesn’t get hit

Somebody posted the cliff clip. Somebody else posted the beast hitting the wall.

The commentators were more careful.

"Nobody’s seen this floor," the older one said. "Nobody. It’s not like Thirty-Eight, where we had Ireland’s footage to look at. He’s going in completely cold."

"But if anybody can walk into an unknown floor alone—"

"If anybody can. Yes."

The American walked into the transport light on the left of the screen, and the feed went white.

---

Floor 39 came up as a court.

It was a huge circle of stone, flat and open, and probably two hundred metres across. Ruined black walls ran all the way round it, broken in places, and some sections had fallen in and lay as slabs on the ground near the edge.

There was no cover, nothing to solve, and no doors.

The American stood near the outer edge with the wall at his back.

Thin red lines ran through the stone under him. They ran in from every part of the perimeter, dozens of them, and they all bent the same way and met in the middle of the court.

`[FLOOR 39]`

`[BOSS FLOOR]`

`[PRIMARY OBJECTIVE: DEFEAT THE ECHO]`

**[GravityGang]:** BOSS FLOOR. open arena. this is HIS map

**[EagleEyeTX]:** no puzzle?? EZ

**[kpop_and_tanks]:** nothing to hide behind tho

**[DubLadDave]:** lads the red lines. look at the floor

**[FloorTheoryIE]:** that’s the red. that’s the same red from the Team Zero floors

**[EagleEyeTX]:** who cares about irish floors

James’s hands had gone still on his knees.

Beside him, Maeve did not say anything.

Nothing attacked. The American turned slowly where he stood, scanning the walls. He lifted a few loose stones off the ground beside him and let them hang at his shoulder.

Then the red moved.

The lines pulled inward across the court all at once, toward the centre, the way water goes down a drain. Where they met, they rose up off the stone and climbed and thickened into the shape of a man.

Black wings opened behind him. The feathers became solid as James watched, one layer after another. Above his head a dark ring came into being, and it was broken, cracked through in two places so the light did not quite close. Under the skin of his arms and neck and down one side of his face, thin crimson threads still showed through, as if the body had been stitched together from the inside and nobody had finished.

James knew the face.

He had looked at it enlarged on a screen in his mother’s front room. It had the hard clean jaw and the straight nose, and the long hair falling loose past the jaw and over the shoulders. The mouth was doing the thing that was not a smile.

Behind him, Alice stood up.

Nobody had asked her anything.

`[ECHO OF WRATH]`

`[RECONSTRUCTED ENTITY]`

`[FURTHER INFORMATION UNAVAILABLE]`

The chat broke.

**[NotABot_Honest]:** WRATH??

**[sligo_sean]:** THATS THE FLOOR 30 NAME. THE DYING GUY SAID WRATH

**[DubLadDave]:** someone pull up team zero floor 30 NOW

**[chi_raid_lead]:** "reconstructed" means rebuilt. its a copy

**[kpop_and_tanks]:** or it means its the real one put back together??

**[EagleEyeTX]:** whats wrath

**[GravityGang]:** is that one of the seven?? is one of the SEVEN in the tower

**[MOD]:** Slow mode enabled.

The commentators had both stopped talking at once. There was a gap of nearly three seconds of dead studio air, which James had never heard on an American broadcast. Then the older one said "Okay, give me— we’re getting— can we get the Ireland footage up," to somebody off camera, and a window opened in the corner of the broadcast with Team Zero’s Floor 30 stream in it, running from the wrong point.

James turned round in his chair.

Alice was looking at the screen.

"Is it him?" said James.

"It’s his face," said Alice.

She did not say anything else, and nobody asked her for more, because they had asked her before.

---

The American did not rush.

James liked him for that. He watched the Echo stand in the middle of the court with its wings half open, and then he raised one hand, slowly, and pressed.

The air above the Echo bent. The Echo’s feet went into the stone, and its wings were dragged down behind it toward the ground as though wet sand had been poured on them.

It worked. The American pressed harder.

The court cracked in a ring round the Echo. Stone split and dropped, and the Echo went down with it into a shallow crater a metre deep, its wings flattened against the edges.

**[GravityGang]:** PERFECT MATCHUP. GRAVITY V FLYING BOSS. GG

**[EagleEyeTX]:** USA USA USA

**[mn_tank_main]:** look at the boss hp bar. hasn’t moved

**[GravityGang]:** its a restraint you dont need hp to move yet

**[mn_tank_main]:** thats my point

The bar above the Echo’s head was full, apart from a sliver.

Then the Echo started to stand.

The gravity had not stopped. James could see it was still on it. The wings were still being dragged down behind it, and the edge of the crater was still crumbling under the pressure. The Echo put one hand on the broken rim and pushed itself up against all of that, and kept pushing, until it was standing straight in the hole.

**[EagleEyeTX]:** turn it UP

**[NotABot_Honest]:** HE IS turning it up. look at the floor

**[sligo_sean]:** its just. standing up. through it

**[kpop_and_tanks]:** strength check. it’s winning a strength check vs gravity

**[DubLadDave]:** that’s not normal lads

"It moves while he’s holding it," said Finn. He had not sat back once. "He’s got everything on it, and it moves."

Maeve was not looking at the Echo. "The bar’s barely touched," she said.

James was looking at the wings. They were still pinned down behind the Echo, hanging toward the ground. It had stood up without them.

---

The American changed straight away.

He dropped the downward pressure, and in the same movement he turned it sideways.

The Echo came out of the crater as if the whole court had been tipped on its side. It went across two hundred metres of stone flat and fast and hit the ruined wall on the far side hard enough to bring down a section of it.

A chunk went out of its HP bar. It was the first real damage of the fight.

**[EagleEyeTX]:** THERE IT IS

**[GravityGang]:** CAN BE HURT. CAN BE HURT. LETS GO

Then the red flared.

Crimson lit up under the skin of the Echo where it had hit the wall, all along its side and down the arm, brighter than the threads had been, and then it pulled together into a knot of light at the Echo’s shoulder.

James was halfway out of his chair.

He knew that. He had stood in a courtyard on Floor 30 and watched that red gather round a man after every hit Team Zero landed, and he had watched the man spend it.

The damage stayed off the bar. The red went.

It came out of the Echo as force and crossed the court toward the American in less than a second.

The American turned it round on himself. The air in front of him bent outward and the stone at his feet blew back in a fan, and he met most of it. The rest still hit him. He went backwards ten metres with his boots dragging lines in the stone, and his own HP bar dropped by nearly a fifth.

**[kpop_and_tanks]:** IT REFLECTED IT

**[mn_tank_main]:** that wasn’t a reflect. look at the replay it charged first

**[FloorTheoryIE]:** SAME AS FLOOR 30. the red builds and it throws it back. Team Zero had this

**[EagleEyeTX]:** what just happened

**[chi_raid_lead]:** it reflects the exact attack. don’t hit it hard. simple

**[sligo_sean]:** it’s not the same attack it’s a different direction

Nobody in the operations room said anything. Cillian had stopped making jokes about ten minutes before.

---

The American had learned from it, and he changed the whole fight.

He stopped hitting it hard. From then on he used small bursts of directional pull, a few metres at a time, to knock the Echo’s feet out every time it tried to get going toward him. He lifted slabs of fallen wall off the ground and kept them moving round himself as barriers, putting one into the Echo’s path, pulling it away, and putting another in. Then he went up off the floor, standing on a slab ten metres in the air, stepping to another and another and never staying where he had been.

For a while it worked.

Every time the Echo came for him, something moved it before it got there. A slab slid into its line. Its footing went out sideways. It got halfway across the court and found itself three metres to the left of where it had meant to be.

The American stayed high and hard to get to.

**[GravityGang]:** see this is it. control fight. he’s got it figured

**[NotABot_Honest]:** boss is strong but it’s SOLVABLE

**[EagleEyeTX]:** told you. no healer needed

The commentators had found their rhythm again. The older one was talking about the slabs as "mobile cover", and the younger one was saying, for the third time, that this was why he was No. 1.

James looked at the Echo’s bar.

It had not moved since the wall.

"He’s not killing it," he said.

"No," said Maeve at the same time.

The objective said to defeat it. It did not say survive it. The American could keep that going for an hour and leave the floor exactly where it had been.

On screen, the American came to the same conclusion. James watched him do it. He waited for a gap, and inside his next sideways pull he added a short, hard push, a strike a few metres long instead of a throw across the court.

The bar moved a little. The red gathered at the hit, but less of it this time. When it came back at him it was small enough that he turned most of it on a slab and let the slab take it.

He did it again, and then a third and a fourth time.

**[mn_tank_main]:** chip damage. small hits small return

**[chi_raid_lead]:** that’s the answer. keep the hits under the threshold

**[DubLadDave]:** ok he might actually do this

"He might actually do this," said Cillian, out loud, very quietly, to nobody.