Chapter 189 - 190: The Grand Bracket — Part 3

Chapter 189: Chapter 190: The Grand Bracket — Part 3

The rest of the day went quickly.

Lyra’s match took forty seconds. Gorran "Brickback" Tull, a gigantic man in a three-meter walking mech, charged her across the sand like a runaway wagon. She put six bullets into the knee actuators with Sure Shot, one after another, and the mech tipped over like a felled tree. Lyra stepped onto its chest, pointed a pistol at the cockpit window, and said, "Yield."

"I yield, I yield," said a small voice from inside.

"Good boy." She turned to the crowd and bowed. "Where’s my dinner?"

The Sky Dome shook with laughter.

Su Wan’s match took nine seconds.

Long Feng, the Golden Dragon Clan’s second cousin, was a tall, languid young man with a topknot of glossy black hair held in place by a golden pin. He had been telling anyone who would listen that Su Wan Lin was a traitor, a stray, a dog that bit the hand that fed it.

"You were raised on our rice," he said, with a sneer, as the horn sounded. "You owe us your life."

Su Wan did not answer.

She drew her sword.

It did not make a sound. One moment she was standing still, the next she was on the other side of Long Feng, sword already sheathed, a single drifting arc of silver light fading behind her. The golden pin fell, tinkling, onto the sand.

A glossy black topknot lay beside it.

Long Feng put a hand to his bare head. He looked at the hair. He looked at Su Wan.

She walked over, picked up the topknot, and presented it to him on her open palm with a small, perfect bow.

"Your hair, young master," said Su Wan.

The crowd lost its mind.

Long Feng did not yield. He fainted.

High in the stands, in a quiet corner of the Golden Dragon section, Long Tian Zhao sat with his arms folded and his face in shadow. When Su Wan glanced up, he did not look away. He gave her one small, stiff nod.

She nodded back.

It was not forgiveness. It was not friendship. It was something older and quieter, the courtesy of two people who had grown up in the same house and had at last been allowed to stop pretending.

---

It was late when Daniel found himself alone on the skydock.

Night had come. The Sky Dome hung in the dark like a lantern, and below it the guild glittered with a thousand tiny lights, plasma-lamps and torches and distant neon, the strange bright patchwork of the Seam. Somewhere down in the lower tiers, someone was playing a violin, and someone else was playing a synthesizer, and the two were politely ignoring each other.

"You embarrassed me," said a voice behind him.

Daniel did not turn around.

Kaelen Vance leaned on the rail a few meters away, his white coat pale in the dark. The drones were gone. The bodyguards were gone. He looked, for the first time, like a tired young man with something very heavy on his shoulders.

"You embarrassed yourself," Daniel said. "I just held the camera."

"The board has frozen my accounts."

"That’s not my fault."

"My father has stopped taking my calls."

"That’s also not my fault."

"You do not understand." Vance’s voice was low. "I was not born to be loved. I was born to win. If I lose this bracket..." He stopped. He pressed his lips together and shook his head. "It does not matter."

Daniel studied him in the dark.

"Why are you here, Kaelen?"

"A courtesy." Vance straightened and looked out over the guild. "I am telling you a thing you ought to know before you meet me in the semifinal. The Orbital Houses did not sponsor this exam out of boredom."

"No?"

"We registered with the Game last year."

Daniel went very still.

"The Mortal to God Game." Vance said it quietly, the way a man says the name of a disease. "Every year, the scouts come to the Seam to recruit teams of ten. Every year, the Houses send a team. Every year, the team does not come back." He turned. His eyes were flat. "I have spent my whole life training to lead mine. The Apex Ten. Ten champions, engineered, sponsored, trained since birth. I will not lose to a napper in a coat."

"Funny," said Daniel. "The last person who said that to me was a demon."

"I am not joking."

"Neither was he."

A translucent panel winked into being in the air between them. Daniel read it twice.

[Competing Roster Detected]

[THE APEX TEN: 10/10]

[Your Roster: 8/10]

"You are two short," said Vance, softly. "And two is a very large number."

"Then I’d better hurry."

"I would not bother." Vance pushed himself off the rail and began to walk away, white coat flaring in the wind. "But do come to the semifinal. I will be gentle."

"You will not."

"No," Vance agreed, without looking back. "I will not."

His footsteps faded down the skybridge.

Daniel stood alone at the rail for a long moment, looking out at the dark sprawl of the Seam, the lights of six worlds glittering at the edge of the clouds. He thought about a roster, a countdown, a demon who had once smiled at him through a screen.

Eight.

Two short.

He cracked his knuckles.

"Okay," he said, to nobody. "Let’s see how this goes."

=========

["I’ve read the next Chapter 47 times trying to decide if it’s good. My eyes are bleeding, and my coffee has turned into a solid. I need a distraction. A Golden Ticket would make me feel seen. A Review would make me feel loved. A Gift would make me feel rich. Choose your fighter. ????"

Am not greedy but I want them all...give it to me, give them all to me hahahaha.... just give me,I really want them...alright how about I dance for it....I was just dancing,so a deal is a deal]