Chapter 186 - 187: The Sky Dome — Part 3

Chapter 186: Chapter 187: The Sky Dome — Part 3

One of the clones was yawning. One was eating a dumpling that did not exist. One was blowing kisses to the third row. One had put on a pair of invisible glasses and was reading an invisible newspaper, and one, standing at the very back, had lain down on the ground and gone to sleep.

"Hi," said three hundred voices, in a slightly uneven chorus.

Yun Xi stared.

"That," she said slowly, "is a lot of you."

"I have a lot to give."

The arena erupted.

The first twenty clones rushed her in a wave. She stepped forward, ahead of them, ahead of the wave, and touched one on the chest, and it dissolved into smoke. She stepped again, and another vanished. She was a drifting grey blur in a sea of Daniels, and the shadows fell away around her like wheat.

But there were so many.

She did what she always did. She looked for the real one, and stepped into the second before he arrived. And every single time, she arrived where he would have been, and he was not there.

"Heads," said a Daniel on her left, flipping a coin.

The coin spun. It landed on his palm.

"Tails. Swap."

Daniel vanished from the left and a clone appeared in his place. The real one reappeared forty meters away, standing behind her with a pistol pointed at her back.

Yun Xi turned. Her eyes were wide.

"You are not deciding," she said.

"The coin is."

"I cannot see a coin."

"Neither can the future." Daniel shrugged. "That’s the funny thing about luck."

A long, strange silence stretched across the ring. Then Yun Xi began to laugh, a real laugh, bright and astonished and helpless, her whole body shaking with it. The shadow clones all paused and watched her, three hundred faces tilted in the same warm curiosity.

"You are impossible," she gasped.

"So I’ve been told."

"Do you yield?"

"I was going to ask you that."

Daniel cocked the pistol.

Yun Xi wiped her eyes with the back of her wrist. The laughter faded into a small, bright, breathless smile. She raised both hands.

"I yield," she said.

The Sky Dome went off like a firework.

---

"WINNER," called Elder Jian, "DANIEL BLACK."

The commentator drones were screaming incoherently. A holographic banner reading SHADOW LEGION flashed across the clouds. The viewer counter rolled past one hundred million and kept climbing. In a glass box high above the arena, a man in a white coat was staring at the sand with a face like wet cement.

Daniel walked across the ring. The clones dissolved behind him one by one, each sketching a tiny wave before it vanished, and the last one, the sleeping one, snored softly into the sand as it melted away.

He stopped in front of Yun Xi.

"You owe me an answer," he said.

"I answered the first."

"I saved the second."

Her ears went slowly pink. "That is a terrible question."

"I’m cashing it in. Are you single?"

The silence this time was absolute.

Every drone in the arena had turned toward them. A hundred and twelve million people were watching. Examiner Qin had stopped breathing, the dumpling bag clutched to his chest.

Yun Xi looked at Daniel for a very long time.

"...Yes," she said, in a small, strangled voice. "I am unattached."

The Sky Dome detonated.

"SHE SAID UNATTACHED!" screamed the first commentator.

"WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?" screamed the second.

"I DON’T KNOW BUT IT’S A SCANDAL!"

Lyra had both hands over her mouth. Fluffy was running along the railing with her hoverboard held over her head like a trophy. Paul was telling a stranger, with great pride, that he had seen it coming.

Yun Xi put both hands on her burning face.

"I am going to kill you," she whispered.

"Join my team first."

She peeked out between her fingers.

"I’m putting together a group," Daniel said, more quietly, so that only she could hear. "Ten people, including me. There’s a game coming, a very bad one, and I need people I trust. I have seven." He hesitated. "I’d like you to be eight."

Yun Xi lowered her hands.

For a moment, the teasing went out of her eyes, and what was left was calm and direct and a little shy.

"My sister cannot walk," she said. "She cannot speak. She has not woken in eleven years. I carry her everywhere. I do not know what the game is, or what it costs." She took a breath. "But I would like to find out where I am going."

"Is that a yes?"

"It is a yes."

[Zariod’s Roster: 8/10 (including Daniel)]

[Yun Xi has joined your party.]

Daniel let out a long, slow breath. Eight. He looked around at the arena, at the cheering crowd, at Lyra’s bright eyes and Fluffy’s wide grin and Cheeky’s quiet pride, and for the first time in a long while, the number ten felt less like a threat and more like a map.

"Daniel," said Yun Xi, softly.

"Yeah?"

"When your shadows rose." Her voice dropped even lower. "My sister turned her head."

Daniel went very still.

"She turned," said Yun Xi. "Toward you. Toward the shadows. I felt it." Her eyes were bright and wet and fierce. "She has not turned toward anything in eleven years."

He did not trust himself to speak. He just stood there, in the middle of the roaring arena, with the sun on his face and a hundred and twelve million strangers screaming his name, and looked at the girl in grey.

"Dumplings," said Yun Xi, wiping her cheek on her sleeve. "Forever."

"I’m working on it."

"Work faster."

And behind her, in the third row of the stands, so quietly that nobody noticed, a small, pale hand moved on a white blanket.

============

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