Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Aloy doesn’t cry. Not for the mother she never had, glimpsed only in aged pictures. Not for the man in the open casket today, her father in everything but name. Not even for herself, for all the bridges she’ll burn, when she disappears tomorrow. Because if Aloy started to cry, she wouldn’t stop.

She wipes a dampness off her cheeks: salty mist clinging. Around her, a gull cries, a breeze whistles, and a wave rocks the dock. Its boards creak beneath her in subtle whines.

She slips her shoes off—her tight, clunky dress shoes—and sits on the edge. The water’s teeth are cold as it nips her ankles. She flinches, but scoots forward. Her fingers graze the rough wood. Something pulls her in. Something about certainty. She will never like dressing up, and the water will never forgive her.

No job. No money. Seattle isn’t cheap. Could they afford to move? No living family except a little sister, who’d refuse to leave. Who’d rather face the city alone.

She’s been running enough as it is. In more ways than one. She made a beeline from the church to the water. Her sister yelled at her. Her neighbor probably thought she was baptizing someone. Herself? Would that drown out the smoke billowing off past mistakes, now piled in ash? She swears she can smell incense, lingering in her nostrils.

This probably-dead woman was once the most certain thing in her life. Certainly never coming back. Until the local news referenced her conservation work, and a montage of her played at Rost’s service. He didn’t know her. Never met her. It wasn’t a mistake. A trick, maybe. Proof she never died at all.

She’s here to turn a fisherman into a magician, if that counts. Less spirits. More salt. She’s going to perform the best act of her career: to get on a boat, skip a few towns, and carry on the Sobeck tradition. With barely a handful of clues, she’s going to chase a ghost. She’s going to become one.

Her life has never been more uncertain.

She lifts her wrist. This watch was his, running ten minutes fast. How is she always early to things she doesn’t want to do? It’s too big for her, heavy on her skin. It’s the only warmth left of him, yet it’s colder than the water. It presses against her quickening pulse.

She has no choice.

If she follows this lead and actually finds someone? Beta will be safe. Cared for. If not? Beta will be left with nothing and no one. An empty house. A graveyard, if she’s lucky.

A motorboat coughs, puffing smog, clearing her thoughts. Water churns through its propellers. Its paint is chipped; if she blinked, she might have missed the trademarked logo on the gunwale. ALPHA PRIME. The same logo from the newspapers.

The captain’s head peaks out, above the steering wheel. His hair is a curly, frizzy mop. His skin is cracked. Just beneath his nose is a dried dribble of blood. He catches her staring, and she finds her reflection in his glazed-over pupils.

“You’re early?” He shouts.

“I wouldn’t be late.”

He bites his bottom lip until it folds back into his mouth.

The boat’s engine dies, then revs back to life. Its rhythm is as awkward, as uneven, as its angle to the dock. The ocean crashes around it in protest. And how persuasive it is. It sways the ship fiercely enough to roll the steering wheel.

Shaken by the low sound–hollow, a knock of some kind–Aloy plants her feet and reaches for the bow. Her open palm slides down the side when it see-saws, and she pushes back, smoothing it out.

“No! Don’t touch it!”

She flinches.

“I’ll dock my own boat.”

She retracts her hands and takes a good few steps back. His loss.

Closer now, she can see a distinct green line where the waves lap at the hull. They’re persistent enough to nurture the algae, but not to wash away the various streaks of dirt, oil, and pollution.

Rost wouldn’t like this. Aloy used to argue with him, endlessly, over attending public school. And then, taking the school bus. Boating off with some stranger who doesn’t have the decency to hose off moss? Who hasn’t noticed the blood on his face? Rost would kill her before anyone else could.

If he were still alive.

She’d prefer a stranger. Someone she hasn’t cursed.

A rope clunks onto the dock, followed by the fisherman in his worn boots. The line thuds along every minute hole in the dock. He chases after it. Aloy’s hands are stuffed under her legs, because otherwise, she’d already be holding it.

“Have I seen you before?”

He throws the rope around a pole, trusting it’ll wrap back around.

She blinks through the wind whipping her hair. “No. I’m not a sailor.”

“Let me tell you. I don’t forget.”

“A good face?”

“Anything.”

Is he talking about her sister? They aren’t twins, but Beta is identical at a glance. What would Beta be doing down here?

“What’s your name?” Aloy asks.

His head snaps. His working hands fall still. Aloy takes a whole breath in the silence he lets span.

“No.” The next tie of the rope wheezes sharply. “I don’t give my name. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever.”

“Um.” She rubs her arm. “Well, I’m–”

“Don’t burden me with yours.”

Burden. Right. Even though she’s paying him. With straight lips, she nods along, pretending he’s right as rain.

She’s been looking for weeks, since before Rost died, for that logo. The same one stamped on every conservation report her mother ever signed. The boat wasn’t a recent buy. It’s the first real proof her mother’s work, maybe her mother herself, still exists. This fisherman is the only one who could’ve known her. The only one that can find her. Probably the only one Aloy can bribe. She’ll nod alright. She’ll do a whole dance, if she has to.

He waves at her.

“Sorry?”

“There is something else I could take off your hands.”

What she came to do in the first place.

She pats her pockets, pulling out a fistful of cash. He counts it under his breath.

“You’re right. You’re not a sailor.” He stuffs it back in her hand. “You’re a thief.”

“What?”

“Ten.”

Her fingers fly through the stack.

He’s right. She’s ten short. She sighs, but it does nothing to lift the weight off her shoulders. The air is thick. Heavy. Hard to breathe in. Is it judging her? He definitely is.

“Fifteen tomorrow?”

“Twenty before the sun rises, or I tell the entire fishery you’re a bilger.”

Her brow furrows. “A bilger?”

“Slippery,” he shrugs. “A bilge rat.”

She holds it back out. “Deal.”

For her mother, she tells herself. For Beta. Though Beta would never agree to this. Aloy can picture her scowl–if she lets herself.

He takes it, then shakes her hand before she can pull away. “Don’t be early,” he murmurs. “Don’t be late, but don’t be early.”

She nods again. Whatever he says.

And saying something, he is; he’s still mumbling as she starts to walk away, barely audible over her the tread of footsteps and water. It sprays her ankles.

Maybe all sailors are this crazy. Maybe her gut is wrong. But the last thing she wants is to be screwed over by someone untraceable. You can’t leave footprints in the sea.

“How will you know it’s me?” She calls over her shoulder.

“I told you. I don’t forget.”

“If you’re wrong?”

“Only so many with red hair.”

She looks him up and down.

Good enough. Not for Rost—never for Rost—but maybe for her.

The knife wedges deep in the watch’s back. It’s no hunting blade—too light, too uneven—but she makes it work. Once she finds an angle, the blade bends, but the metal panel doesn’t break. It pierces Aloy’s ears in a whine.

She grunts as she pulls the knife free. She cups the watch in her hands, then shakes it up like a die. A small component—a nut, a bolt, maybe a hand of the clock—rattles around inside.

Once upon a time, Rost taught her how to fix that. This watch has a tendency to come loose. Sometimes it’s the strap, which he let her poke holes in. Other times, sparing ones, it was a cog in the machine. Less hands-on. He insisted she pay attention, scolded her when she bounced her foot or braided her hair.

She never listened. When the forest called, Aloy answered. He taught her how to track, how to hunt, and soon came to regret it. Paw prints in mud, a rabbit’s bolt through bramble, the clean snap of weapon fire. She preferred the trees and the sky to grease and gears.

Now, there’s no one left to remind her.

She lifts the watch, squinting at her reflection in its face.

Some part of her looks like him. Not literally. He had a strong face, black hair lightened into grey, and the biggest, bluest eyes. He couldn’t be further from her. But while she sits in the garage, at his workbench—telling not just the time of his watch, but his life—she has the same furrow in her brow, the same crook in her frown. The shell that only cracks open alongside the problem. Patience was always his answer. That, she doesn’t know if she agrees on.

“Aloy?”

The watch clunks onto the bench’s leather wrap.

Her sister looks like him, too. In the way she holds herself. Beta could’ve been hovering this entire time, without Aloy knowing. She’s quiet as a mouse; her call of Aloy’s name, merely a squeak.

“Hey, Beta.” She sighs.

“What are you working on?”

She gestures unceremoniously to the little limp watch. Beta pokes it.

“You broke it already?”

Aloy scoffs. “No. It’s just, running a little fast.”

Beta flips the watch over. Her finger traces the back panel Aloy’s crammed a pocket knife into one too many times; the metallic shine glints on every failed attempt.

She points to the bottom left corner. There’s a small, notched hole, obviously meant for a wrench. The light doesn’t catch it.

“You were going to break it.”

Aloy reaches for it. “Sure.”

Beta takes a big step back, out of her reach. “I can do it right.”

“Or I can do it my way,” Aloy’s hands grab at the air, “way faster, without another tool.”

“Just watch.”

Beta’s already fishing around in the nearest toolbox. She doesn’t walk, but skips back, with a hum in her throat. Aloy doesn’t recognize the tune; merely bones of a melody that make the room less empty.

Her tongue sticks out ever-so slightly as she works. She’s more precise with a wrench than Aloy was with a real blade. She spins it at a snail’s pace.

“You’re not defusing a bomb.”

“If it was a bomb, you would have killed me.”

“What?” Aloy crosses her arms. “No.”

“You’re proving my point.”

When the back opens for her, she catches it in her palm and slides it onto the table. Each scratch shines brilliantly in the light.

“Wow. I can count how many times we exploded.”

“I didn’t make all of those!”

Beta nods exactly once.

“It’s an old watch!”

The clock literally ticks as Beta adjusts the hands; she’s still deciding whether or not to believe Aloy. Finally, she breathes, “It’s Rost’s watch.”

Forget resemblance—Beta sounds just like him.

But Rost is a “was” now, Aloy nearly corrects. She chokes on her own spit instead.

“Are you okay?”

Aloy nods, but a hoarse cough betrays her. She pinches the skin between her fingers, hard enough for it to swell.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

“No. Really. You’re fine.”

Beta squints back at her. “ …Are you sure?”

“Ye-up.”

She does a double-take, but says nothing. The hands tick-tock a few times more as she winds them backwards.

“Wait—“

She peeks up at Aloy.

“Put it back.”

“You said it was—“

“I know,” Aloy stammers. “It was.”

Beta doesn’t look away as she winds it, forward this time. “It was here?”

Aloy nods.

Those are—were—Rost’s ten minutes.

When Beta closes the watch and slides it across the table, her fingers linger on the leather strap. Her eyes wander to it not once, but twice, each time falling back to the bench. She sinks into the dim light like a shadow, but she’s too bright to hide.

Aloy’s older. She had more time with him. Ten minutes is nothing, until you’re buried six feet under. Then it’s everything. And Beta deserves everything.

“Do you want it?”

Beta’s nose wrinkles. “I don’t need a watch.”

“Hold out your wrist.”

So she does.

Aloy collects the watch with both hands and wraps it around Beta’s fair skin. She slides the metal through the first hole, pulling it tight–but it’s not tight enough. It slides down Beta’s arm.

She wonders if Rost felt like this about her. Small in almost every way, save for an overactive mind. With the edge of her knife, she twists a hole inches away from the others. She watches Beta smile wide when the watch sits snug on the cuff.

“And you already know how to fix it.”

“Better than you.”

Aloy snickers. “Sure.”

Beta’s not good at thank-yous. It runs in the family. She stares at the face, or maybe at her reflection in the spotty glass. Aloy can’t tell. Her smile slips, leaving the watch to frown for her.

“What’s wrong?” Aloy asks.

She reaches for her neck. Her hands disappear in her hair. “Can you fix this?”

A necklace dangles from her fingertips. It’s a clunky, bejewelled piece that glitters in the light. A hard line of gold encases a miniature globe. The chain is full and long, with no clasp. The base of the necklace is bent like a paperclip. Beneath it, empty sockets gape where gems once sat.

“Let me see.”

“Please don’t use a knife.”

“I won’t! I won’t.”

It’s lighter than it looks. Not too beat up, either. Nothing a new chain and a fresh coat of paint won’t fix.

“Where’d you get it?”

She looks to some far-off corner of the garage. Her shoulders shrug inward. “I don’t remember.”

“I’ve never seen you wear it.”

Aloy swears that the pink on Beta’s cheeks wasn’t there a second ago. What kind of sister would Aloy be, to not take advantage?

“Beta. Did someone give this to you?”

“No!” Beta waves her hands through the air. “It came in the mail.”

“And you just… Took it?”

Beta’s voice quiets. “It was addressed to Elisabet.”

Aloy almost drops it.

“It showed up right before the funeral, and, you were already at the dock–”

“You followed me to the dock?”

“Not today.”

Without meeting Beta’s gaze, she holds the necklace back out. Beta’s hands weakly press into hers.

“That’s where you’re going, right?”

Her lips part, but no words come. Beta’s always been smarter than her. In hindsight, fixing Rost’s watch next to a pack-full of rations and hunting gear? Not very subtle.

Aloy nods. “I won’t be gone long. And if I can find her, or, what happened to her, then–”

Then they’ll finally have a net to fall back on. Then all Beta’s questions will find answers. Then Beta won’t be alone, won’t have to rely on the runaway sister, won’t have to test the luck nobody in the family has passed along.

“Take it with you.”

“What?”

“Somebody might recognize it.”

Beta’s always been smarter.

Aloy pulls her into a hug so tight she can count the wrinkles on Beta’s shirt, the beats of her heart, the tremors in her breaths. She rubs Beta’s back until her arms weaken and her chin plops on Aloy’s shoulder.

If she had more time, she’d watch one of those insufferable television shows Beta likes, or braid twists and beads into Beta’s hair.

“I’m going to suffocate,” Beta wheezes.

“Okay, okay.”

But it’s not about time at all. Aloy’s deadline is self-imposed. If she gets any closer to it, it’ll die, too. The watch proved that. Even something built to last will come apart in her hands.

Beta lifts the necklace over her head. They’re the same height, but she bends down anyway.

And now, the necklace proves it. Who would give her something brand new, when she’s just going to ruin it? To take a knife to it? It’s better she has bent things. Things already about to break.

Her hands trace the worn base of the chain. She’ll try her best to keep it together, but her best has never been good enough.

“Wait. Does this make my curfew ten minutes earlier?”

She rolls her eyes.

Sure enough, the fisherman remembered Aloy. Whether it was her face or her hair didn’t matter. He snatched the money—more than he deserved; he ushered her onboard, now short a life jacket; he complained about the dark sky and the rocky sea, then set them off anyway.

Indeed, they couldn’t see anything for the first hour. Then the sun rose over the horizon and light bloomed down onto the waves. And the fisherman still found something to complain about.

His mutters blurred into the slaps of water against the hull and sails against the wind.

Grief doesn’t have a sound, but if it did, she thinks it’d be this. An ebb and flow. A swelling of something larger than life. It doesn’t have a look, either, but what else could it be if not this? The deep blue reflecting fickle light? Not a stormy day, no—a clear one. How else would you see what you’re missing?

A drop lands in her eye. The salt stings.

“This is as close as I can take you.”

She blinks hard. “What?”

“The current is too strong in the strait.”

The island.

Like most of the islands off Seattle, it towers over the boat and drops into cliff-faces. It’s lush, forested, dotted with the telltale reds of fall. They’re in the open ocean, past the famous San Juan tourist spots. She didn’t expect something so big to be so far out.

The strait is exceptionally narrow. It’s bordered by sharp outcroppings that she can’t imagine any boat passing by, let alone theirs.

“This is the right one?” He asks.

It’s completely devoid of civilization–as it should be. Elisabet’s work was highly privatized. The more public you are, the more rules and regulations you put in place. Elisabet did what Elisabet wanted.

“I think so.”

Built into the nearest cliff is a long, rectangular window. It’s heavily tinted, darker than the surrounding rock. An office? A lab? Did her mom stand right there, watching boats like this one motor on by?

No. Her mom would be on the water. In it.

Aloy’s hands grip the bottom of her hoodie. “How far out are we?”

“A few hundred meters, or so—”

She abandons it on the deck. She’ll find it later, when it’s dripping with saltwater and reeks of fish.

“What are you doing?”

“Swimming.”

He gapes at her. “Have you lost your mind?”

Takes one to know one, she almost says. “Yes,” she says instead.

She eyes the stretch between the boat and the island. About a quarter mile of water separates them. It can’t be that far.

“I told you, the current around this island—“

She kicks her boots off and climbs onto the starboard side. The world rocks under her feet. She holds her arms out to keep steady.

“You’ll get dragged away! And if you somehow make it—“

She brings her hands together, takes a big, deep breath, and dives into the sea.

The cold floods into her chest. Her eyes shut, her ears fill, and her body buzzes with a painful numbness. Each swirl of her legs washes it over her again, colder than before.

The current tugs her sideways. Slams her flat, heavy as a stone. She breaks the surface and braces against the hull.

She expects to hear the fisher. Grumbling about kids these days, or shouting after her. Instead, she hears the rumble of a motor, the whir of a blade.

Is he leaving her?

No—she’d feel the engine roar under her palm, feel the metal slip out of her fingers.

She blinks her eyes open. Salt sears her eyes raw. She squints at the strait from the waterline.

A skiff.

Smaller than their motorboat, and faster. It has no trouble skirting through the strait. Its bow is angled high to take advantage of the current, and its crew hidden in the shadow.

It’s turning right for them.

“Borrowed time, girl,” the fisherman mutters.

The skiff cuts close, spray blurring her vision, waves slapping her cheeks. She spits out a mouthful of saltwater.

She can’t see them clearly, but two colorful figures flash along the gunwale. Bright pink. For safety? Are they islanders? Divers? Whoever they are, they’re efficient, professional. They’ll have intel.

A wooden plank slaps down above her head, bridging the boats. The fisherman waves them onboard.

“She jumped off herself.” His words shake under their rhythmic footsteps. “She’s still alive, she’s–”

The voice that follows is a woman’s, sharp and direct, like wind howling through a mast. “You brought someone here?”

“Yes! Upon request of the Front Man–”

Something heavy clanks against him. He stumbles backward. The boat rocks to the side, and for a glimpsed second, the guard is holding a gun.

“We’re here on his orders.”

Professional, not friendly. Safety vests, she tells herself. Rescuers. But the gun glints so bright…

Her heart stutters in her chest. She takes a big breath, and accidentally gargles saltwater.

Why would Elisabet’s company need arms? What are they hiding on that island?

“But—I did what he asked!”

Aloy’s teeth are chattering together. Her arms and legs are giving way to the current; her head bumps into the skiff, filling her mind with a hazy, aching pain.

She doesn’t have time to find out. She needs to do something. Now. Otherwise she’ll feel a different kind of pain, a permanent kind of cold.

The fisher is pleading with a barrel pressed to his chest. The guard is having none of it. They’re both distracted.

Aloy grips the edge of the skiff and, with strain tensing her shoulders, clambers onboard. She flops on the deck like a half-dead fish. She feels like one.

She squints at the plank, at the guard and the fisherman now across from her.

There was a second guard. Where’s the second guard?

Something scratchy and weighted slips over her head. Her vision darkens. She squints through thin strands of fabric, seeing nothing but pink.

Hands grasp at her sides. Firm, calloused, with a death-grip. This one doesn’t have a gun. Instinctively, Aloy grabs at their wrists, twisting to either side.

Their heel comes down on Aloy’s stomach. So Aloy kicks, with both legs, vaguely where she thinks their abdomen is.

The weight vanishes, and Aloy reaches for her neck. There’s a knot securing the sack. She tugs at it, to no avail.

If she falls overboard? She’s done for.

The guard knows that too. They grab at Aloy’s calves, trying to hoist her up.

Aloy thrashes. She throws herself forward, then slams her back against the ground. The skiff lurches along with her.

Water skirts about the deck. It pools around Aloy’s head, damping the cloth over her mouth. She rolls onto her stomach.

The guard slides.

At first, it’s a shuffle, boots squeaking against the slick floor. Then the skiff lists again, tilting under Aloy’s spine. Cold water rushes across the planks. The current takes hold.

Aloy claws at the deck, bracing herself.

The guard snags at her ankle, desperate, before skidding down in a blur of pink and black. A slam into the railing, and they vanish into the sea. A blink, and they’re gone. Sucked into the waves. Swallowed by the strait.

A gunshot splits the air. The metal of the motorboat clangs, with the weight of something falling.

Aloy listens for a shout, a scream, that never comes. Footsteps too light to be the fisherman’s hammer in Aloy’s ears.

The sack is yanked tight. When she breathes in, the cloth is sucked into her mouth. It clings, wet, against her lips. Each gasp pulls it tighter until she’s breathing in more fabric than air.

She thinks of the window in the cliff, dark and watchful. And she goes under.

Chapter Text

To her surprise, Aloy wakes up.

The sack is still tied around her head, but the bind on her neck is loose. Enough to breathe. Air blasts through a vent, on the warmer side. Or maybe that’s her quickening breath, hotter with each exhale. Something reeks of mold. She can’t help but gag.

Steady, muted light permeates the threads covering her eyes. She’s inside. Is she on the island? The faint hum of machinery blends with the oppressive air conditioning.

She reaches to untie herself, but finds rope wound around her wrists. She pulls against it, again and again, wincing with each tug—to no avail.

Her ankles, too. More fisher’s knots. Why would fishermen carry around guns? Her bribe didn’t. Was he even a fisherman?

Her fingers graze her tank top. She’s been here long enough to dry. Even the mush in her socks has seeped out.

Why did they kill him, and why didn’t they kill her? Is she going to die?

She’s not sticking around to find out. Beta is waiting back home.

Pulse hammering in her ears, she lurches forward. The chair scoots an inch, if that. Guess that only works in movies. No wonder Beta doesn’t like them.

If she could see where she was going, maybe she could snag it on something. Tear it all off at once.

Her fingers interlock. She twists them as far out as she can. The rope is deceptively quiet; it pulls her back in like a tide, ripping her away from freedom, dragging her back under.

“Stop that.”

A woman’s voice. It seizes her lungs awake, not all unlike the cold shock of the ocean. Aloy recognizes it: the armed guard. She must’ve knocked Aloy out.

She passes by in a pink blur, cropped just above Aloy’s nose. Nobody’s that short. She must have her hood off.

“Untie me,” Aloy spits, without thinking.

“So you can kill me?”

She wrinkls her nose. “What–”

“Don’t play dumb. You didn’t call in.” Her silhouette stills a few paces away. Her arms cross. “Did you threaten him? How much did he tell you?”

“The guy you killed?”

Per usual, Aloy’s mouth works faster than her mind. She nearly forgot about the other guard and the gunshot. She needs to get out of here. But there’s no room for error—or witty comebacks.

“He didn’t even say his name.”

“Right. He let a stranger on his boat.”

“I bought him out. He wasn’t cheap.”

“You paid to play?”

Her thumb catches on a wiggly strand of the knot. “Play what?”

“Are you working for someone?” The silhouette nears, leaning forward. “Who do you answer to?”

She presses her elbows together. “Myself.”

“Have anything on you? A camera?”

The guard pokes at her ear through the sack. If she didn’t have the stupid thing on, she’d bite the guard’s finger. “Take this off. See for yourself.”

In her struggle, the chain of Beta’s necklace rides up her neck. It gleams in the artificial light. It gives the guard something to tease; nails ghost Aloy’s skin as the guard runs the globe along her palm.

“You’re an awful liar.”

All at once, she straightens her arms out and wiggles a hand free. “I’m not lying.”

“People don’t end up here by accident.”

She pries at the bows on her neck. “You’re right.”

“So why are you here?”

She tugs.

The sack slips free and falls into her lap. Fluorescent light stabs her eyes until they water. She blinks fast, her vision adjusting. The room is too bright, too big. She’s too exposed.

The guard has golden-brown skin and long, black hair, pulled into a ponytail. Her stare is doe-eyed, even with her brows furrowed. A small, curved scar knocks her nose bridge. Not the kind of person Aloy expected. Not the kind of person that would kill.

“To find my mom,” she admits, voice flat. No point in hiding now.

The guard’s eyes dart around her face. Fishing for interrogation material? Committing her to memory, to tattle to someone later? Either way, she lingers too long. Her frown doesn’t quite hide the curious glint in her eyes.

“She ran some conservation—“

“What’s your name?”

Aloy sits back in the chair. “What?”

The guard’s hand clamps around her wrist, firm, unyielding.

“Your name.”

She yanks against the grip. “Yours first.”

“It won’t help you.” The lightbulbs flicker briefly. “We don’t use our names here.”

Aloy thinks back to her first conversation with the fisherman. To his death. He died with nothing to his name, because he didn’t have one.

How could she be so gullible?

“You’re gonna be like that, huh?”

Aloy can’t decide if the guard deserves silent treatment. “I answered all your questions.”

The guard rummages through the little room, shelves and sacks turned over without care.

She pulls out her gun.

“Seyka.”

Seyka lets it slide down Aloy’s arm, until their fingers brush.

“Your turn.”

Aloy’s grips the muzzle, trying to point it aside. “Aloy,” she stammers.

Seyka doesn’t stop Aloy. “Your last name?”

“Why is that—“

The muzzle nudges her ribs.

If Seyka pulled the trigger now, Beta would be alone. Aloy would be another bloodstain under the carpet. The necklace dangling on her chest would sell for a pretty penny.

Her hands lift on instinct, halfway to surrender, before she forces them still. Her throat tightens, strangling her words out.

“Sobeck.”

The name hangs in the air. Neither of them breathe. Seyka’s grip on the gun loosens, but it doesn’t fall from Aloy’s chest. Aloy’s hands scrape the nothingness above her.

A vent whirs to life. Water drips from it.

She watches Seyka blink once, twice. Her eyes take Aloy in again, in quick, swept glances. The scar across her nose creases with the weight of her frown.

She recognizes it. The name. It’s no wonder these guards wear masks—Aloy can read Seyka like an open book.

When she finally pulls away, she’s slow, fluid like a falling tide under a new moon. She takes the gun with her, her hands faster, like the metal is hot to the touch.

“It’s empty,” she says, tone casual. Almost careless. But she’s avoiding Aloy’s gaze,

Aloy nods, jaw setting. “The gun, or the threat?”

She didn’t mean to say that.

But Seyka laughs at her. Short, sharp, and strained.

“I won’t kill you—“ She tosses the gun on the table. “—but I can’t let you go.”

Skilled hands undo the ties on Aloy’s ankles. “Do I ‘know too much’ now, or something?”

“You’ll get shot on sight.”

Aloy nods again, slower this time. “O-kay.”

What has she gotten herself into? Why is everything surrounding her family so grim? The curse must be genetic. Thanks, mom.

Seyka kicks a crate open with her boot. Inside are stacks of folded cloth, the color of evergreen trees or silver springs. She tosses one into Aloy’s lap. Aloy almost misses the way her hands shake.

It’s a tracksuit. Soft between her fingers, but a little hefty. Folded, pressed, like it just came out of a plastic wrap. It reminds her of the camouflage Rost made her wear in the forests back home. It’s anything but. Stitched, but closer to branded, on the chest is a number. 045.

There are at least a hundred people here. Unless there are exactly 44, making this one a spare—but her gut begs to differ.

Seyka said it herself: they don’t use names here. That’s not a strange guard rule, which makes this suit a headcount. Aloy’s not a person anymore. Aloy’s a number. 045.

What are the guards guarding, exactly? Is she the 45th scientist? Or the 45th lab rat?

Seyka was asking about a game. About playing. If Aloy had to guess, she’d bet the latter.

“Don’t just stare at it. Put it on.”

“And if I don’t?”

“You’ll stand out.” Seyka slips her mask over her head. “More than you already do.”

Aloy shrugs it on. It drags her shoulders like a shroud.

She tucks Beta’s necklace beneath it.

“Don’t show that to anyone.”

She flinches. She looks back to find Seyka dressed, and thus, unrecognizable. A mask with a painted triangle.

“I won’t.”

And for Beta’s sake, she means it.

Seyka guides her through the shelving, to a door embedded in concrete. A bleary window sits above a lever handle.

“What’s your number?” She asks.

Seyka brushes her collar aside.

203.

A simple, structured melody chimes through unseen speakers. It’s high-pitched, bright and cheery.

A door groans open. A hand presses against her back. No time to linger.

“You can look now.”

She’s standing in an elevator, dimly-lit, clinically white-patterned on all sides. The floor shudders beneath her feet. Her stomach sinks into her gut like an anchor in the sea.

Seyka made Aloy close her eyes on the way here: to the first “game”, Seyka called it. Aloy covered her face like a child. Questions teased her lips, but she didn’t want answers from the stranger that kidnapped her. So she kept her eyes shut.

There were so many footsteps. All were in-time. The echo of the march roared at her from all sides, ached in the burrow of her ears. Too perfect to be regular people—which Seyka called “players”—but how could there be that many guards? She chooses not to imagine.

The elevator’s ceiling rattles in sharp, metallic clangs. Aloy’s vision spots at the edges. She presses her back to the nearest wall, and the machinery rumbles up her spine. If Beta were here, she’d be sketching schematics of the pulleys and gears. Aloy’s too busy trying not to throw up.

Seyka stands straight as a statue, the gun across her chest an afterthought. “It does that all the time.”

Her head pounds alongside her heart. She’s no stranger to weaponry, or death. Far from it. She’s a hunter. Rost taught her how to string a bow, to notch an arrow, to count her breaths and her lucky stars. But that doesn’t make the memory of the gunshot somehow pleasant.

It was deafening. It rings in her ears even still, blending with the hum of the walls. She didn’t need to see to know that the crash was him falling to the ground, limp, already gone. She didn’t need to know him to care. The silence that followed stabbed her heart. It puckered the soles of her shoes. It made her want to run, as far from home, from Beta, as possible.

Aloy’s stomach lurches as the elevator climbs and slows all at once. Seyka’s must not. Her bottoms are cuffed. Her sneakers are double-knotted.

She’s practiced, too. But not in hunting. Not in bows or arrows, not in foggy dawns and hoof tracks. In killing people. What kind of place is this? Where people die in Elisabet’s name? And what kind of person is Seyka, for not caring? For not letting Aloy go?

Her eyes drift to Seyka’s collar again, but when Seyka’s hood is up, her number is concealed. Are the players not supposed to know?

Aloy’s hand drifts to her chest. Somewhere beneath her suit, she’s concealing herself, too. Seyka has a gun and is used to shooting it, but didn’t shoot her. Seyka saw her necklace, saw her cradle it like a lifeline, and didn’t take it away. Why?

The elevator stills against Aloy’s arms. Seyka clears her throat.

“You don’t know me.”

Aloy barks a laugh. “I don’t.”

“No—” Seyka shakes her head. “You’ve never met me. You got lost, so you looked for a guard and asked for help.”

“Really elaborate for a game.”

“You have no idea.”

The elevator dings, which is the only normal thing it’s done. The side opposite from the one they entered slides open.

The room is massive. Narrow but wide, extending far out of Aloy’s view. The walls are high, and the ceiling, higher. It’s all painted grey.

She’s never seen so many people.

Directly across from the elevator is a notch in the wall. She squints through the sea of green, but it’s no use. There are hundreds of people. Shoals of fish in too small a tank, swimming in desperate circles, sharing bubbles of air. Still, they talk, they laugh. Their conversations blend together. Aloy has as good a chance of picking one out as she does seeing that shift in the concrete.

Shivers sprawl down Aloy’s back as the butt of Seyka’s gun nips her. Aloy’s a minnow now, and Seyka’s probably a shark.

Guards stand on either side of the elevator. They look identical to Seyka. Pink hoods, triangle masks, nylon utility belts. One lifts a walkie talkie to their face. It crunches to life.

There are only two. Neither are armed. She glimpses the elevator at the last second before its doors close.

The tune from earlier plays again. Three descending notes, repeated three times. The noise of the crowd dies more with each resound.

A woman’s voice bounces off each indiscernible wall. Robotic, as all good announcements are. They say sound travels faster over water.

“Attention, Players. Please line up in numbered order.”

Aloy glances down.

045.

She’s a player. She has a number.

She’s supposed to be finding her mom, not playing stupid games for stupider prizes.

“Follow the dotted line left to right.”

She watches as the entire crowd looks down or shuffles backward. Sure enough, there are white circles drawn on the floor, and connective arrows between.

People obey at once. Bowed heads and shuffling feet engulf Aloy, and something similar engulfs her gut. A swell of people and equal unnerve. They must have something else to do, too. All of them. Living, breathing people, schooling themselves for the whales—there has to be a reason.

Her shoulders are bumped a handful of times before she concedes, but she holds her head high. She takes slow, full strides toward the front.

The notch in the wall. She can see it clearly now, and it’s much more than that. A massive gate patterned like a hatch stretches the entirety of the wall, its frame grazing the ceiling. It’s a slightly darker shade of grey than the rest of the box. It must open outward. Otherwise, her and all these people are going to get concussed.

Her eyes linger on the gate’s nearest edge. She has half a mind to break formation, to run her fingers along it—but the other half reminds her that Seyka had a gun and wasn’t afraid of using it.

Absent-mindedly, she’s on her tippy toes. She peers at the floor. The guiding dots have begun to fade into individual scribbles, the kind a toddler draws on the wall in permanent sharpie. The grey walls, the high ceilings, even the shelves in the cargo hold… This place is orderly. Uniform. Chalk doesn’t fit the mold.

Someone collides with her. Her heels slide on the concrete.

“Watch it!” She snaps over her shoulder, just in time to see them turn. They’re big, bulky, and a little awkward.

“Aloy?”

The sound of her name spins her back around.

The player’s eyes are sunken in, the bridge of his nose is bruised, and his cheeks are flushed the telltale shade of alcoholism. The only thing she recognizes is that awful haircut. It’s grown out at the ends, but not enough to make a difference.

She steps back. “Erend?”

He looks older than she remembers.

Something close to relief—familiar, nostalgic, but not enough for her to name—jolts her awake. She didn’t expect to find someone she knows, let alone someone she cares about.

He barks a laugh. One of his teeth is chipped. “The hell are you doin’ here?”

But misery loves company, and it pulls at her as fast as it pushes the relief away. Her reality doesn’t change because she recognizes a face.

How much should she tell him? That she left Beta alone and set sail with a stranger? That she heard a man die? That she got kidnapped?

“It’s a long story.”

But her and Erend are a longer story. They practically grew up together. When Aloy finally convinced Rost to let her attend public high school, Erend was the first person she ran into. He just… Stuck.

And apparently, he stayed stuck. She should really ask what he’s doing here. Does he know any more than she does?

She’s about to ask when he points to her suit. “We’ve got the same number!”

Her breath catches in her throat.

She can’t bear to look, but she can’t tear her eyes away. Sure enough, the number on his chest is 045.

Shit.

Did Seyka set her up?

She forces half a smile until her lips twitch crooked and her teeth pull together in a grimace. “Is that lucky?”

“No kidding. I think we’re the only double!”

Shit.

If Rost can see her from the afterlife, he’s not proud of her.

Erend could be wrong. There’s no way he’s met every person here. But if Aloy had to bet, he’s at least met half, and that’s half too many for this tight a ship.

What happens if someone finds out? Try as she might, Aloy can’t think of a way to navigate this place. So many people. Even more guards. They won’t all be like Seyka. Aloy doesn’t know if that’s a good or bad thing.

And what about Erend? He’s just another player. More a stranger now than he’s ever been. She wants to reach out, to shake him by the shoulders, to tell him to run from whatever awfulness this place is. But he won’t run. He’s not that kind of person.

The announcer quiets her thoughts. “Please stay on the dotted line.”

“Yea, yea…” Erend grumbles. “That voice creeps me out.”

Aloy frowns. “Just stand next to me. We’ll figure it out after.”

The gate’s hinges are overdue for an oiling. Maybe that’s on purpose? The speakers crackle to a close, and an ear-piercing whine replaces them. The wider the gate opens, the lower the sound becomes. It evens into a resonant groan.

Just beyond it is a beachy expanse. Caged in by four grey walls, of course. There is no floor, but instead, a healthy layer of sand. The edges of the room jut out in wooden platforms. Nestled in the back is a strange playground. The sole climbing gym is a big, plastic sandcastle. It’s a literal sandbox.

That’s what she came all this way for? To play children’s games?

“Please stay in line as you proceed to the play area.”

Every announcement starts with please, in the kind of motherly tone that scolds with a thank-you.

A guard waves the first line forward.

The sand shifts under her soles. She leaves clear footprints. There’s no cover.

A mechanical whine echoes from the ceiling. It slides apart. Rays of unfiltered sunlight flood the “play area”—the glorified box—and dapple the hills of sand.

It kisses her skin. It’s warm. Inviting. But soon, the sand will warm, too. It’ll feel like hell if she falls.

“I can practically see the gears turning.”

Aloy spins on her heel. “What?”

“You’re looking around, acting all weird,” Erend says. “It’s just a game.”

Fresh pangs of dread unravel from her chest outward, slipping down her limbs, into her bloodstream.

If she had to, she’d bet none of these people found their own way in. There’s too many. They were rounded up and ferried. At best, these are the remnants of Elisabet’s environmental research, and none of them know they’re test subjects. At worst… None of them have their belongings. None of them know the guards have guns.

Erend is clueless.

But some of them have to feel this, right? This fear paralyzing her? This twist nauseating her gut?

“No.” She shakes her head. “Something’s off.”

“Here we go.”

“I mean it, Erend.”

He rolls his eyes, but shuts up. She’ll count that as listening.

“We will now begin the first game.”

She had instinctively tuned out the crowd’s murmurs. Now, everyone is silent.

“The game you will be playing is Simon Says.”

A string of guards marches on the wooden edges of the sandbox. Four guards punctuate every row of players. They shouldn’t need guards to play Simon Says.

“You may move when Simon says. If you obey anyone other than Simon, you will be eliminated.”

Because Aloy totally needed Simon Says explained to her.

Erend bumps her with his arm. “See? It’s fine.”

“The game will now begin.” The announcer decrees.

A blaringly loud stock sound of children clapping and laughing plays. In quick succession, an unseen timer begins to tick, as rhythmic as the grandfather clock Rost made for the cabin.

In her peripheral, Aloy glances at Erend, who is grimacing through his teeth.

The announcer’s voice changes from a woman’s to a man’s. Or rather, Simon’s. “Simon Says, wave to Simon.”

Aloy lifts her hand and waves at nothing. Beside her, Erend waves at the guards on each end of the line. She mimics him. None of them wave back.

The stock sounds plays again. “Simon Says, wave to your friends.”

Erend spins to wave at her. Oh, goody. Aloy smiles the straightest of lines.

The stock sounds plays again. It precursors every command. Aloy is hyper-aware of how her muscles tense when she hears it, how her hands tremble, how her arms flinch down.

“Simon Says, jump.”

Hundreds of feet slam in-sync. If they were on concrete, if they could get their footing, they’d be deafening.

“Simon says, jump again.”

She didn’t hear the stock sound. The echo of their sneakers was louder than the laughter. Their confidence is palpable. She doesn’t share the sentiment.

“Simon Says, cover your eyes.”

Light peeks through her fingers in the form of dull, colored warmth.

“Hands down.”

Not the announcer’s voice. Not Simon’s. Low and echoed and human. A guard, maybe. A fake-out. Unfairly quick after the real instruction.

The sack looked a little like this. Through her nose, she takes a clear, unbothered breath. The sandbox smells like the sea, but there’s an artificial hint, something metallic and—

A boom blunt-forces through the silence. Not a pop. Not a crack. A blown-out, trigger-pulled blast.

Her ears ring in a high squeal.

The silence is louder than the body falling.

Chapter Text

There’s a quiet pass of hitched breaths and stuttered heartbeats. Silence is no mistake in a room full of hundreds. The only thing hammering in her ears is her pulse, quick and hard, but not hard enough to drown out the gasp of someone down the line.

The body falls with a thud. Dust billows and hisses. Someone wheezes it out–wet, bubbling–before the rattle dies with them.

She’s reminded of the fisherman. Of the skiff. Of hanging off the gunwale as she fought for her life, and hearing him crash into the ocean as his life ended. The shock of the cold and the tug of the current—

The player next to her is running.

She hears it clearly this time, the methodical click of someone reloading. Another blast. Just as blunt, just as felt in her chest. The runner jerks mid-strike. Their knees fold. It sounds less like a person hitting the ground and more like a sandbag tossed on shiny wood. That’s all they are anyway. Toys to toss in a hole.

Gunpowder itches her nose.

Aloy whispers Erend’s name through clamped teeth.

“Don’t.” She breathes. “Move.”

She expects more sand to shift, or someone’s vocal chords to tear. Four hundred people with their hands over their eyes—not all four hundred can be blissfully unaware. That was unmistakable. That was a gun.

She bites her tongue until blood bubbles around her teeth. It doesn’t hurt as much as a gunshot would, though. It doesn’t hurt as much as death. The two players behind her know that now.

The stock audio plays again. Are the children clapping for the living, or the dead? “Simon Says, take three steps forward.”

Easier said than done. Sweat sheens her skin. Fear locks her feet. She can’t get a full breath.

She shuffles one step forward before she realizes Erend isn’t moving; the sand doesn’t pile around her shoes, nor does she hear it huff. He’s frozen.

With her second step, she sways to the side. Her arm grazes his.

He follows.

After her third, she digs her heels deep into the sand.

“Simon Says, raise your right hand.”

She raises her right hand but shuts her eyes tight, enough for her brow to wrinkle and her eyelids to hurt.

There’s a scream. Somewhere to her left, in the line behind her. They must’ve walked into it. Into the corpse. They must be staring at it. Is it staring back?

If that were her, she can’t say she’d keep it together. She can’t say she wouldn’t run.

She bends her body ever-so slightly to the side, but she can’t make out Erend. He did walk. He didn’t get shot. But she wants to see him, to make sure, because her eyes can’t deceive her. He’s angled too far to make out.

“Simon Says, spin in a circle.”

Her left hand still covering her eyes, Aloy spreads her fingers, blocking out as much light as she can. She doesn’t want to get dizzy.

She doesn’t want to see.

“Stop,” a guard shouts. Not Simon.

The tick of the timer presses her spine. Each beat is a shove forward. She’d cover her ears if she knew she’d stay alive.

One person screams, and suddenly the whole room is. Blood-curtling shrieks are bouncing off each wall. Encasing them, more than the island itself. The voices meld together. They aren’t even individuals in their fear.

And when one person runs, everyone runs with them. Dozens take off. Sneakers skid through the blood as they trip over the fallen. One girl goes down shrieking, her jaw bent wrong. She only quiets after she’s trampled.

Aloy’s feet remain buried in sand. She spins in a tight circle. Those people have no destination; they already know where they’re going. She’s not going with.

The filtered edge to the guard’s voices is absent from the fray. They don’t ask questions. They don’t have time for answers.

Gunfire doesn’t mix with shouting. Each shell clacks, heaving her chest. Each shot shatters her lungs.

She doesn’t know when the nightmare ends, or if it does at all. She still hears death after the bodies have crumpled.

How many were shot? How many mothers won’t hear from their daughters? How many had daughters?

The three-note melody plays. The announcer is a robot again. “I will now repeat the rules,” she scolds.

“You may move when Simon says.”

That’s code for “you can’t run.”

“If you obey anyone other than Simon, you will be eliminated.”

Also code. For “you’re all going to die.”

Acid sears her throat and the foul taste of bile coats her tongue as she throws up. She swallows it down.

“Simon says—“

Bitterness clings anyway.

“—say your player number.”

She coughs through the stabbing dryness.

Mumbles are the most the collective can muster—except for Erend, who shouts his number loud enough for every guard in the facility to hear. Is he just staying alive, or testing her? She hasn’t said anything.

If there were other doubles before, they aren’t now. By saying something, she’s painting a target on her back, bright as the blood on the sand.

She doesn’t need to look to know the person pinching her is Erend.

By saying nothing, that target is way bigger.

“Oh—45,” she gasps out. “045.”

There’s no time to recover. She can’t hear her own thoughts.“Simon Says, pat the player next to you.”

Erend pats her back. She spits out some amalgamation of blood and vomit. As he pulls away, her hand finds his forearm.

“Simon says, pat harder.”

Her eyes blink open. How much harder? Enough to hurt, or enough to kill? She stares, empty, at where their hands join.

“Slap my wrist,” Erend whispers.

“I’m not doing that.”

He slaps her shoulder. The stunned silence only comes after she slaps him back, right across the face.

The timer ticks.

“Simon Says, knock the player down.”

They do. They want her to hurt him.

That’s why they said their player numbers. So there’s someone to blame.

Her mouth parts in protest, but Erend is submerging himself to the ankle in sand, his posture and arms held straight. It’s his face that betrays him. His forehead is covered in sweat. His brow is wrinkled.

He doesn’t say anything, but when he waves her over, his hands tremble.

Aloy’s not a murderer, but she got in a few fights after class. And with her tracking experience? She knows how to throw her weight. If only this wasn’t Erend. His life is on the line. And, like her, he’s not the best liar.

A running start doesn’t stop her from floundering. Just seconds before ramming into Erend’s side, her sneakers skid. She crashes into him. He topples over.

Hands on her knees, she’s still standing. Just not all that tall.

“Are you—“

The heap on the floor nods pitifully.

“Get up.” A guard shouts.

But the game’s almost done. It has to be. The timer’s ticking is loud now. Everyone that’s still here hasn’t been tricked, and hasn’t tried to run.

Aloy knows she’s wrong when someone starts to cry. Panicked sniffles trap their breath in purgatory.

A guard reloads a gun.

They start to sob, but it’s wordless. They don’t beg for their life. Their last words are hiccups, sounding young enough to be a child’s. To be Beta’s. Maybe they shut their eyes. Maybe they kneel. Aloy doesn’t look, but the second before the gunshot is too quiet. Something that shouldn’t be splatters across the sand.

On the floor, Erend looks too much like a body.

He still doesn’t know about Rost. For as much as the two hated each other, they weren’t that different. Erend pushes her in the same way Rost did. She couldn’t bear to look at the open casket.

“Simon Says, kick them while they’re down.”

She taps his back with her foot, like she’s checking if he’s dead with a stick.

His voice muffled, he yells, “bullshit.”

“Erend—“

“Kick my bad side.”

They aren’t that different.

She has to find out about her mom. She has to go home to Beta.

Her heel slams into his chest. Something cracks, and Erend gasps like he’s drowning. He rolls onto his side. His arms cross over his ribs, hands pawing at his sides.

She shares the ache in his chest. He doesn’t deserve that.

The timer buzzes.

These aren’t the hallways Seyka led her down, but Aloy finds no relief. Only insult to injury. The walkways cascade in spirals too steep for any injured player. They’re not wide enough for players to walk side-by-side, so no helping each other, either. There are no elevators.

Players sway with each step. A few of the footprints she steps in are bloody. She watched someone further up the line puke over the side.

Yes, the side. The railings are just blocks of concrete—that she could climb, if she had a death wish. Beyond them is a pit. A deep, dark pit. Other passageways snake and tangle within it.

Her hands graze each divot in the paint. Her fingers are sore. Actually, her everything is sore.

There is so much color. Enough to fill the whole of Seattle with playgrounds, and beyond. The foundations are pink. The walls are decorated with shapes. The paths themselves are pale yellow and sickly green. A child might like it.

There, on a lower path. A flash of movement. A brighter pink.

Both Aloy’s hands cling to the concrete slab. She shuffles to the side, like a crab.

Beneath the single-file line of lambs to slaughter, a wolf—a guard—stands at a door. Their hood is half-off. Their hands are working at their mask strap, tugging it tighter.

In front of them, a door Aloy thought was the wall slides apart. Beyond it, she swears she catches a glimpse of light. Natural light. Is it a reflection? Did she imagine it?

Erend nudges her side. She stumbles backward, beyond herself.

“Don’t even think about it,” he mumbles. It takes a second for her to realize what he means.

The players don’t have rooms. Why would they? A privilege—just like living. And a liability. Someone could get out. Instead, the single file line pools into the biggest, greyest room Aloy’s ever seen, challenged only by the Simon Says waiting room. Plain mattress on metal frames are stacked to the ceiling.

Erend leans on the metal as if testing its hold. He tips backward until it groans under his weight. For a heartbeat, she thinks he’ll topple. He catches himself at the last second. He mutters something about "shitty construction" and how he could make it better. She sighs through her nose, but the image lingers.

When Beta was little, she was obsessed with nature. Rost taught Aloy to hunt because Beta couldn’t bear to kill an animal. If the players are fish, this is a dead coral reef.

It occurs to her that fake players don’t have real beds. Erend leads her to a bunk on the outside of the stack, second row. She dangles her feet off the side when nobody claims the one below. Maybe they’re in the bathroom. Maybe they’re dead.

Erend rubs off the remnants of a nosebleed. One Aloy gave him. He’d never hurt her. That’s what makes it hurt.

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?” He sniffles. “Not killing me?”

“For kicking the shit out of you.”

“Someone would’ve died.”

She pinches the skin between her fingers.

They were inseparable growing up. Rost didn’t want her hanging out with a boy—which she found hilarious—but Erend would show up at the door with his sister, and outnumbering beady eyes. They walked to parks and malls, and once, a concert. They were out until the street lamps turned on.

Then Erend left for college. She couldn’t afford a college, let alone the nicest one downtown. They promised to stay in touch. He never reached out. He came back a different person, with flushed skin, baggy eyes, and a bad attitude. There was always a bottle sweating in his fist. Aloy couldn’t stomach alcohol or him.

So the way he’s staring at her now… He’s insistent. Stubborn, in a way she’s only seen on Rost. He doesn’t look away until she meets his gaze.

There’s a sliver of him in there. Of Erend from before. If he died today, that would’ve died with him.

She pinches herself harder, to keep from crying.

The front of the room is punctuated by a raised platform. Behind it sits the elevator; it slides open, and the rumble of its walls echoes through the player dorm. A disposed group of guards marches out.

“What now?” She thinks aloud. What could they possibly want? More death?

The guards aren’t guarding anything at all. They’re just damage control. Just murderers. One tightens his utility belt, deliberately fast enough for the zip to echo. If this place is tied to her mother, it’s not through them.

Erend sits upright. His hand reaches for the metal frame. “They like to talk.”

Sure enough, none of them have guns. All of them have circle masks, except for the one in the center. He’s wearing a square.

Two of the circle guards’ heads spin. Aloy looks over her shoulder, but there’s nobody behind her; those guards are staring dead at her. One leans over to the other and points, like little girls gossiping at lunchtime.

The taller of the two approaches the square. The square immediately waves her off. It would be funny, if the two guards didn’t then march in the direction of the bunks.

Curiosity killed the cat. Aloy's lived through worse, but that doesn't mean she'll live through this.

The shorter guard takes the lead now, just as scared of authority as they are of insignificance. The taller guard looms behind them in wordless threat. The square guard has started talking, but she can’t hear them over the footsteps of the reapers.

They slow in front of Erend, chins up, backs straight. Erend slouches on the bed. He doesn’t give them the pleasure of moving.

The smaller guard’s voice crackles under their voice filter. “We only took one photo of 045.”

Aloy side-eyes Erend. He took a photo?

“Which of you was recorded?”

“Oh, I definitely took a picture.” Erend meets Aloy’s gaze with a snicker.

“045-2–“ The guard probably rehearsed that. “—Why were you late to the first game?”

Not how she got here. Not if she stole the suit. The actual number doesn’t matter to them, not if they can make up another—or worse, re-use one of the dead’s. All that matters is the game. All that matters is playing.

Erend visibly shudders. Using his hands, face-down on the mattress, he shifts his weight back and forth.

“I got lost.”

The guards are silent. Aloy must sound rehearsed too. They must be waiting for the rest.

“On the way to the game, I asked a guard for help.”

The taller guard speaks now. “Do you know their identification number?”

Aloy shakes her head. She doesn’t know Seyka. She’s never met Seyka.

The chances that they already know the truth are high. But how could they penalize her for playing dumb? With death? It’s not her fault. She got kidnapped.

“You will be assigned a new number before the next game.”

A weight she’d gotten used to holding lifts off her chest. She sighs.

“Now please listen to the rest of the instruction,” the smaller guard adds. Then, in perfect synchronization, they turn on their heels and march back.

Erend scoots to her side. “You asked for help?”

“Yes,” she snaps back.

“You never ask for help.”

Her arms cross. “Doesn’t mean I can’t.”

The square guard is talking to a graveyard. Some half the players died. The other half talks amongst themselves, sound rippling through the crowd like the surface of a puddle.

“The guards hide their numbers,” she explains. “In their hoods. So we don’t see.”

It’s not the full story—far from it—but she thinks it’ll do the trick.

Erend rubs the wrinkles in his forehead. “Jesus, Aloy.”

“What?”

“All’a those people just got shot, and you’re telling me—fun facts.”

Her brow furrows. “I’m trying to help.”

“So you snuck around, and, pretended to be lost?”

“That’s not—“

“Sure, yea. And on the way back, you weren’t gonna run for it.” He runs the back of his neck, half a scoff, half a plea. “I know you, Aloy, and you—like to run.”

“Better than drinking myself to death.”

His eyes snap to her from under his hand.

“Ersa’s dead.”

The words don’t land all at once. They hang in the air, trapped, like the souls of the dead in these walls. When they finally land, they feel like another gunshot.

His sister. His only living family. She was a good person. No, a great one. Older and wiser than both of them, always getting them out of trouble; her and Aloy weren’t close, but if Aloy called, Ersa would answer.

So he turned to alcohol when his sister died. Takes one to know one. But how does that put him here? Away from home, from college, from all he’s ever known? Fighting for his life?

“She was out with some guy.” Erend waves a hand. “Got in a crash. I never saw her again.”

She’s doing it again. Erend is paler than the walls, and she’s a sitting duck. But how else can she fix this? She can’t reverse death. All she can do is face it.

Her lips part, but no words come out. The silence stretches, ugly. She hates herself for not knowing what to say. She hates him more, though, for making her say anything at all.

“I’m so sorry.”

He rolls his shoulders back under the guise of stretching. His arms hit the top of the bunk. “Eh, don’t be. You’ve got Rost and Beta to worry about.”

She reaches for her knees.

She’s got Rost.

The guard is still monologuing, the people are still talking… She doesn’t have Rost, but the world moves on.

Her eyelashes catch together as she blinks, a dozen times over. Aloy doesn’t cry. The tears are trapped before they can fall.

She does have Beta. Beta’s world is bright and full, and it moves, too. Right now, it moves without Aloy.

If Beta didn’t come home, Aloy would do a lot more than drink. Her answer would be a second body bag. Or some boating trip to a brand new place—a remote island, maybe—where there’s nobody to get close to or curse.

Oh wait.

“Aloy.”

“Hm?”

Above the square guard, embedded in the wall, is a rectangular screen. Green numbers on a black background. It reminds her of Rost’s old watch, and his older alarm clock before that. Neither matter.

It reads 428. Is that the player number? There can’t be that many of them, not after—

The screen ticks. The number falls once. 427. Then again, and again, until it’s dropping by the dozen with each tick. The sound reminds her of the timer in the game. She thinks that’s on purpose.

It ends on 256.

The guard explains that the number of remaining players will always be visible. He asks for the players’ patience before moving on.

Aloy should give it to him. Aloy should listen. He could have information on Elisabet—a name or a brief sign would be enough. He could have a hint about the next game.

She’s too busy glaring at the screen, though, to catch anything. If she stares long enough, maybe it’ll get scared, grow legs, and run away. Like all those poor people did. The number is only proof of what she already knows; the stink of blood still clings to her tracksuit, the sound of bones breaking still crumbles in her ears.

Two hundred people. Just like that.

Did this guard kill anyone? Does he know how it feels? Or is it only the triangles? The pointy ones? The ones that kidnap and torture?

Aloy’s alive to tell the tale, but she’s not happy about it. Seyka’s a part of this. Did she shoot that pretty gun of hers during the game? Or did she sit back, relax, and enjoy the show? Aloy doesn’t actually care.

Still, why give Aloy a cover story? Why not kill her outright?

Her name. Which she didn’t give up willingly—Seyka had a gun pressed to her chest in the only way these stupid guards know. Aloy snagged the sack off, and Seyka remembered something beyond protocol.

She’s zoning out when the lights dim. It’s not pitch black, but something like it. A welcome change on the heels of the fluorescent lights.

Erend’s voice brings her to reality. “Don’t be mad,” he mumbles.

Too late for that.

Whoever’s in charge of this hellhole really likes music. Strange, childlike, half-music that barely manages a melody. The speakers blast a sound louder than the usual three-note announcement. It crescendos. It reminds her of a casino.

From within a vault in the ceiling lowers a suspended piggy bank. Not a vault, nor a chest… Plastic cheeks and painted grin, like in a cartoon. It’s glowing. Stacks of cash fill the bottom half.

Cash.

She reaches for the nearest pillow, so nobody can suffocate her before she does.“You’re doing this for money?”

Alongside the song’s grand finish, fresh stacks held by rubber bands plop on the pile. They’re killing each other for this. For rubber bands and a pig-shaped toy.

This is a gambler’s dream. She can picture it now: a man down on his luck, offered the deal of a lifetime. The only catch? It’s offered to hundreds. That’s why the fisherman wanted double. That’s what Seyka meant by “calling in”. This is a high-stakes scratch-off, and the players are the winning numbers on the card.

Someone laughs, before it curdles into a sob. Her stomach clenches.

Erend rubs his arm, but doesn’t look away. He watches the cash fall like it’s a sunset, maybe his last. “They didn’t tell us we would die.”

Aloy doesn’t doubt that.

She pulls herself from the edge of the mattress and lays, flat. She stares at the metal. She reaches for her necklace.

The guards don’t move, but she feels them watching. The glow of the piggy bank casts a shadow as heavy as their eyes on her. They don’t need the barrel of a rifle to scrape her mind. They could throw it away, just like they do the players; the players are minnows, and they are sharks. They circle.

They say something about voting. About leaving early—and splitting the prize. Aloy doesn’t listen to the rest. She has a feeling nobody does.

She glances at Erend.

He’s still staring at the money, long after it stops falling.

Chapter Text

The necklace is warm in her hands when she wakes up. An imprint of its chain reddens both her palms.

In her dreams, she held her mother. The same red hair and green eyes—but an otherwise blank face. Did she have Aloy’s bumpy nose? Beta’s crooked smile? When Aloy tries to make Elisabet out, she turns away. She hands over the necklace. Aloy wakes up.

Lights shutter on row by row, spots crowding Aloy’s vision. She blinks into the glare.

She took the bunk below Erend, but didn’t sleep a wink. The mattress is rock-solid, the blanket is thin, and the only warmth comes from herself, because she’s alive. She’s not a corpse. Not yet. She thought about sharing with him, but in her experience, he snores.

She’s lying, of course. Even to herself. She was too prideful. Everything she’s done, she’s done it alone. Separate even from him. For the same reason she doesn’t cry. She shouldn’t need him, but she absolutely does.

At some point, soon, she’ll tell him about Rost. She’ll clear her mind by spewing her thoughts. She won’t ever think about him, or the dead woman she’s chasing, or the sister she left alone, again.

Her thumb brushes the necklace’s bent chain.

The rumble of her stomach yanks her back. Nothing’s passed her lips since Seattle. She skipped dinner last night. At first, she didn’t know what was happening. Why would she line up behind a guard? And that skepticism made her stomach turn. She wouldn’t have kept it down.

The others feel differently. Most are already crowding in the center. They’re loud with each other in ways she’s never been, and never will be. All the eyes and the security cameras–and still, they talk. They laugh.

A couple pace the crowd’s edge. Their hands are interlinked as sweetly as their eyes. A trick of the light bounces off the woman’s finger: a ring. They’re their own family. Not even this island or its games could separate them.

Meanwhile, Aloy could vanish right now, swallowed by greed or envy. Whichever is quicker. The world would march on. The couple, Erend, Seyka—the entire line. What a blessing. And what a horrible burden.

The elevator dings. Another chance, if her stomach pities her. It won’t. It doesn’t care about mothers or bodies.

She hoists herself up. The blanket falls, and in its wake, cold air grips her legs. Goosebumps prick her skin. She hopes breakfast is warm but expects it to be cold, like everything else in this place. Her included.

The guards are only unusual in number. Instead of a couple, there are seven, maybe eight…

Encircled in the middle stands someone new. Their mask is pure white, but carved enough to cast shadows. Geometric slants form the suggestion of face: narrow eyes and a strong nose. Their hood folds seamlessly into their mask. Spotless. Unlike the guards’ rumpled uniforms.

Aloy’s not stupid. There’s a reason she hasn’t seen them before. They must think they’re important. They had that outfit tailored, and they hand-picked the guards at their side.

Two of the triangles disperse. They wheel out packs of mystery goodies. Her stomach growls at her again, this time paired with a pang of hunger. It’s threatening her. She’ll listen to it over the guards any day.

She skids off the edge of the bed. Her feet land on something softer than the floor; a tracksuit is neatly folded at the bottom bunk’s side. It’s a glazed shade of green, with white stripes around the cuff. Identical to the others. Its number is 451.

A stray piece of paper falls out of the fold. It’s crisp, clean, and out of place amongst the stench of sweat and dried blood. It doesn’t belong here.

Aloy Sobeck,

 

Welcome. You are now a player of the game. Please carefully review the conditions of the game.

1. Players are not allowed to stop playing.

2. Players who refuse to play will be eliminated.

3. The game may be terminated if the majority agrees.

By signing, you agree with the conditions of the game and that playing is voluntary.

Please return signed to the Front Man.

 

X __________

ALPHA PRIME ™

The contract is straight-to-the-point. Aloy doubts its legality. She’s a player of the game in the first sentence, but playing is voluntary in the next. How is it so easy to sign your life away?

As easy as it is to learn her name. There it is at the top of the page, instead of the number on the suit. She steals a glance at the Front Man’s guards. Seyka had a loud mouth, but didn’t seem like the tattling type. Was Elisabet’s name in an old file? Either way, Aloy needs no confirmation; Seyka recognizing it? The Front Man printing it? Her name means something here.

Rost never remembered Aloy’s last name, and never shared his own. Material, marriage, ownership—he couldn’t have cared less. The only names knew were Aloy, Beta, and Arrowhead: the only road he took into town.

That’s why it looks wrong. As it is on the page, her name should belong to a stranger. To someone that volunteered. Her mother’s research, too. It’s nothing more than ink or punctuation. She traces a finger over the trademark—then winces when it cuts her. Like mother, like daughter. And a little like Rost.

Aloy Sobeck. Now a player.

If it were any day, if she knew any less, she’d be elated to see her mother’s trademark. She’d be a step closer. This actually sends her three steps back.

The signature line is just below. No pen in the pockets. Is this all a trick, and they’re going to shoot her anyway? She eyes the page. After all she’s seen—they’ll escort her out? Put her on the soonest boat?

Of course not.

Blood globs out of her paper cut. She lifts her finger to her face, but the deep gleam of the droplet catches her eye. Against the grey, it’s so bright. Too bright. She doesn’t suck it off.

Instead, she dabs it right on the line. The squiggles of her fingerprint are a crimson some might call beautiful. Let them have a drop. It’s the most they’ll ever get.

There’s no taking this back, since she signed with her blood. She’s not holding the contract. It’s holding her.

She already can’t bear it. But what’s worse? The blood, or the Front Man? When she looks up, he’s already looking back. The eye-holes cut in the abstracts are dark and wrong. Is there really a person underneath?

It’s now or never. Her strides are quick with feigned confidence. In her hand, the paper catches a breeze and flails. The blotch of blood trickles like blown-out ink. He’s about to see her work, in case he didn’t before. She’s about to rub it in.

The players have dispersed, but they can’t help themselves. They whisper. The Front must think it’s awe. Aloy’s here to tell him it’s not. None of them stop her.

It’s a guard that gives her trouble. If not a guard, then who else? The one standing to the left of the Front Man raises their rifle. The one on the right is still, but Aloy pictures them glaring at her under their mask.

The Front Man’s hand wraps atop the gun. His fingers stretch down the scope’s length like they’ve done so before, like they belong there. It points at the ground.

“How inconsiderate.”

The Front Man isn’t a man at all. Her voice is unfiltered. It’s collected, lilted, but still clear enough to scold. She’s older. Just as refined as she is entitled.

Aloy blinks at her.

“May I?”

The Front doesn’t wait for Aloy. With two fingers delicate enough to be gloved, the Front plucks the contract from Aloy’s hands.

Aloy sits like that for a moment—arms still bent, fingers grasping air. Her mind expects instruction. The Front’s presence alone recalibrates her until her heart, always so rebellious, takes over. Her hands find solace shoved into her pockets.

The more “considerate” guard leans into the Front. The Front turns the contract for them to see, like a child passing a note. Aloy’s not a secret. Just a player.

And yet, the Front praises her. “You catch on fast.”

She nods. Because she does. See, Front? She can be full of herself, too. But her head stutters.

“Then you must know, you’re worth more alive than dead.”

The Front’s voice tilts along with her head. Her gaze lingers too long. It’s drawn from Aloy’s eyes to her lips, her throat, her hands… The Front is measuring her. Weighing her.

Her brows furrow. She has half a mind not to pull her necklace. It’s worth a pretty penny. More than that. They’d take it from her and put it in that awful piggy bank. She adjusts her collar instead. They couldn’t know about Beta…

Is someone betting on her? Did they cheer when she bled on the page? She thinks back to the piggy bank. They have to get all that money from somewhere. But she wasn’t a player during Simon Says.

She glimpses the row of guards, eyes lingering on their walkie talkies. The security cameras in the elevator have swiveled upward to catch the dorms. All these eyes, and still, nobody’s watching or betting on her beyond the Front. Beyond the system. That’s all she’s worth.

“Would you mind?” The Front asks, before stuffing the contract into a guard’s hands. They don’t take it fast enough. They’re still holding the rifle. The contract drifts to the floor.

The Front rubs her forehead.

“203. You’re competent.” She sighs. “See to 451 before the next game.”

203.

203 rolls her heels until she’s straightened out, like she’s a robot executing a command.

Seyka’s alive.

A rush wakes Aloy’s limbs. The line between realization and relief is fine, but she toes it still. Did Seyka rat her out? Was it for the better?

Her head is bowed as she takes to Aloy’s side. They brush shoulders.

“This way.”

The first thing Seyka did was feed her. Stale bread and a leaky egg, smushed into a tin. Aloy swears her portion is bigger than the other players’. The metal was so promising, so ordinary, that Aloy almost forgot about the contract.

The bread cut her gums. The egg tasted like sulfur. The shame that came with needing food brought to her kept her head down. That, and the empty pit called her stomach. It grew pointy, shiny teeth. She finished breakfast with her hands.

Seyka stood beside her, but didn’t stare, didn’t judge. Why would she? She doesn’t know Aloy. She’s here on orders.

Aloy still hasn’t seen Erend. If he’s avoiding her, she hopes it’s because of the guard at her side, not last night’s words. She overstepped. She knows that. And her apology—a seldom-given thing—was honest.

So are Erend’s grudges.

According to him, he’s already met all the players. He probably found a new best friend. One that won’t dig his grave.

Next, Seyka gathered her new “uniform” and escorted her to the bathroom. Because players can’t use the bathroom without a guard. Aloy almost asks why, then decides she doesn’t care.

The bathrooms remind her more of the halls than the dorms. Bubblegum pink stalls reflect the buzzing lights. The sky blue tile masks any leaky pipes or puddles. She wiggles her nose to find the faintest hint of antiseptic. An abandoned faucet drips, rhythmically, into a massive sink.

There’s only one crack. A vent in the ceiling circles air through the room. It’s warm. Moldy. She didn’t know humidity had a taste. She squints at it anyway. Screws meant to fasten it whistle with each gale. The first thing in this place that leads somewhere else.

Seyka’s reflection leans against the door. Her gun is propped at her feet.

She pulls one glove off and holds it out.

Aloy side-eyes her. “Why—“

“If you run, I won’t find you.”

Aloy’s staring at herself when she realizes they never took her picture. But where could she go? Seyka’s holding down the only door. This place is almost a prison, but those don’t kill every prisoner.

She steals a glance at the vent. Her heart yearns to, but her brain doesn’t let her imagine the beyond. The outside world. Her knees itch to bend, to climb…

As Seyka nudges the air, her hands shake, like a wave under a wind. The same waver from when they met. Aloy didn’t look much different then, either. Is Seyka nervous? Of her? Or is that restraint, holding back something dangerous? Aloy pities the former, but respects the latter. She’s beckoned over.

Rost told her to guard her heart like her bowstring. Too little, and it’ll snap. Too much, and no arrow will notch. But Seyka carries a gun. Seyka re-strings after every shot.

“Can I keep it?”

Seyka snorts. “Sure.”

“Really?”

“No.”

She swings open a stall—almost knocks her knee into it, neither here nor there—and slips the glove on.

Plain black. A little big, meant for Seyka’s hand. The fabric is itchy against her palm. A ghost haunts it in clinging warmth. Advantageous or not, there’s proof, whispered like a secret: someone else just wore it. There is life here, close enough to touch.

Cold by comparison, her new uniform has her wondering what she can get away with. Will they check for the whole set? She pulls her new shirt over her old one. She could use the extra layer. She’ll fold things neat.

Seyka needs distracting.

“So the one in white is your boss.”

Seyka’s voice echoes, and with it, a wry twinge. “She’s The Front.”

“How long have you been doing this?”

“Can’t tell you that.”

“Does it get easier?” Aloy almost says the quiet part out loud: killing people?

“Can’t tell you that, either.”

“What can you tell me?”

“To shut up.”

Not angry. Just tired.

Aloy snickers. “Wow.”

“I’m not sorry.”

“And I’m not surprised.”

She can hear a rustle of fabric from behind the stall door. “That’s a good thing to not be,” Seyka tells her.

It’s a shame. Seyka’s a person, like all of them. Why throw that away? Why waste it on guns and obedience?

The zipper almost snags on her second shirt. She winces.

For the same reason as the players, she thinks. They’re all human. Maybe for a purpose. Definitely for the money. A giant check could fix her life, but just as easily break it.

When Aloy rounds out of the stall, she finds Seyka sitting on the ground. Her arms dangle off her knees.

“You knew my name.”

“I didn’t. The Front Man did.” Seyka’s head drags against the door. “We’ve never met.”

Aloy’s face falls. Some part of her—the slack in her shoulders, or maybe her full stomach—wants to trust Seyka. If she’s going to play, she needs allies.

Water hisses from the faucet, cleanly cutting through the quiet of the bathroom. Cold nips her fingers as she twists the knob, only for it to get colder. A shiver assaults her arm.

Aloy doesn’t hear Seyka’s footsteps until she’s leaning against the sink.

“That necklace is out.”

Before Aloy can move, a thumb brushes her neck. Her breath hitches before she can steel herself with a hefty huff, as hefty as air can be. The chain clinks against her zipper. Seyka parts her collar and reaches down, tucking “that necklace” away.

The steadiness as Seyka pulls away is a vice. Aloy’s so desperate for it in this awful place, and Seyka knows how to use it. It’s an act, Aloy tells herself. Even the guards are playing the game.

“Was it a gift?” Seyka asks.

“How’d you know?”

“You keep grabbing it. And also it’s ugly.”

Aloy scoffs. Her fingers graze the bump on her chest, where it’s trying to hide. She wishes she could do the same: run as far as she can from Seyka, before she has to pick between this wanting and her resentment.

Seyka reaches back out—but Aloy doesn’t flinch, or pull away. She should. The gun in the room is more predictable than its owner. There’s also her only memory of home in her hands, already tainted by the facility. Oh, her home…

They stare at each other.

“You have any family?” Aloy blurts.

Seyka snatches the glove back like it might betray her. Air whips behind it.

“No.”

Too tight. Too much. Try as she might, Seyka can’t loose an arrow. Her bowstring bounces like a telltale heart.

Aloy’s chest is tight, too. Not with the obvious lie, no, with something close to regret. She shouldn’t have asked. She already knew the answer.

She doesn’t know what to make of Seyka. Just that her necklace is heavier.

Chapter Text

Aloy’s blindfolded again. With an actual blindfold this time. A pitch black darkness stretches on forever. Unsure which way is forward, she takes a step and slips on the rubber tile.

Water slaps her ankles. It’s cold and smooth but, imbalanced by chlorine. Her nose burns. When she swallows the sting down, she tastes it: chemical muddled in chill. Right now, it’s only a puddle—but the arena’s a giant pool. Maybe she’ll breathe enough of it to pass out.

The three notes chime.

“The game you will be playing is Marco, Polo.”

Another children’s game. Usually, the announcer is robotic. Aloy thought it was a program. Today she’s uncannily human and cheery as day. A distraction from the humming filter.

Aloy’s lips shiver. “Marco,” she whispers, a test under her breath.

Beta hated Marco, Polo—always the first tagged in the lake behind the cabin. Or was Aloy just older, stronger, playing against a little sister?

“Blindfolded players must tag a player to pass.”

She’s about to find out. She has to kill someone to win. It must sound harder than it is. Aloy “tags” everyone that gets close. Even her own father. Recess is murderous, and they’ll be buried on a playground.

“They may only tag a player that answers them.”

If she has anything to worry about, it’s Erend. What if he shouts “polo” back at her?

“If no player answers, they have a two-second grace period.”

And what the hell does that mean?

A current rushes in, brushing between her feet. It rises past her calves.

“Please enter the arena. The game will begin shortly.”

Dozens jump forward. The crack of each dive is a low, hollow sound, until they flail. Beta never jumped in. One toe to test the water, then one step at a time. Not this flailing. Not these waves. They’re running from the water more than the other team.

The pool swells up to her waist. The pull of each body rocks the water, and she rocks with it. Stolen warmth courses down her arms; another blindfolded player bumps her side. Mist seeps into her mouth.

“Sorry!” They shout.

Thrashing is all that keeps her above water. The tops of her feet scrape the floor. Pain shoots through her legs, meeting the cold, evening out in a numb tingle. Bleaching her cut.

What did she hit? What do the other players see? It can’t just be a swimming pool.

Air traps itself in her lungs. Nothing yet. Just the churn of the arena, the echo of its players. She’s a player now. She’s on a mission. She’ll start this if she has to.

“Marco!”

She’d know Erend’s voice anywhere. He’s loud, a little hoarse, and a lot bold. Nobody answers him. Relief dares to slow her. He’s on her side, but that doesn’t mean he’s safe. He won’t pass if he doesn’t quiet down.

The next two ticks of the timer are piercingly loud. Sharp like a throwing knife.

Erend flails; the water splashes in quick succession. Did he catch someone? Did he fall?

Aloy spins, too—just the wrong way. Erend gets quieter. She grasps at the empty water. It slips between her fingers.

The grace period. He’s trying to make sense of it.

“Marco!”

His frustration would be funny, if they were anywhere else. If the call didn’t sound like his last word. She can’t imagine writing “marco” on his headstone—which is great, because he won’t get one.

“Polo!”

The voice comes from the right: a man’s, higher-pitched than Erend’s, and far stabler too. The way Rost sounded when teaching her something new.

Whoever that player is, Aloy can’t tag them. She didn’t call for them. But nothing’s stopping her from following. She wades on. Her hands are outstretched, tickling the pool’s surface. She shuffles her feet.

What are the chances all the “polo”s are together? Holding down one corner? If nobody shouts or moves, they’ll never be found.

Maybe if this was the first game. Maybe if they hadn’t nearly killed each other in Simon Says. Aloy decides that the chances are slim.

Something big collides with Aloy’s side. Her heart stops—but nobody else’s has yet. It can’t be a body. Her hand finds a foam pool noodle. Probably themed. Because this is an arena, and she’s a player.

She has to tag someone.

She pushes the noodle away. It would only slow her down.

She can hear several calls now, faintly, as if from another room. Back and forth. An announcement blares over them. “Player 088, pass. Player 061, eliminated.”

Not Erend. Not numbers she recognizes. But a number nonetheless, a winning one, better at this than her. Did she swim too far? Where is there to go?

“Marco,” she tries.

Nothing but the darkness and the cold.

“Marco?”

No voices, no warmth—not even a pull in the water.

The timer pierces her eardrum. She lunges. Forceful waves break at her sides, starting where her driven hands part the waves. Her feet aren’t touching the ground.

But she’s found another anchor. Headfirst, she slams into something firmer than the pool noodle. Her arms flail until they, too, collide, until a fabric runs between her pruning fingers. It’s thin and damp. It reminds her of something she can’t quite place. She fists it in her hands. She clutches on for her literal life.

She tagged someone.

But they didn’t call back to her. It must be the grace period. She can tag anyone.

A tick echoes off the walls—but it’s not the timer.

“That doesn’t apply to guards.”

It’s the reloading of a gun.

She tagged a guard. Their uniform stretches like Seyka’s glove.

Seyka.

Did she just kill Seyka?

Aloy’s grip on the rumpled fabric clenches in-time with her pulse. Frantic. She finds that death has a texture: unkempt. It has a feeling, too, even to the deadly: a heart hammering in a chest, just before it stops.

She lets go. For a moment, she brushes against bumpy skin. Her stomach flips. Will she feel it go limp?

There’s no way the guards are actually participating. And if they were, well, there’s hundreds of them. What are the odds—

The back of her tracksuit is tugged, straight upward. It’s zipped tight—to keep her necklace hidden—enough for it to drag her up. Out of the water. Someone’s hand snags on her collar, then her blindfold, before she’s shoved to the side. Droplets sing a messy song.

“Keep moving,” they whisper.

Red hair hangs heavy on her shoulders, and all three layers of her tracksuit are soaked through in artificial cold. Water pierces the blindfold. As she blinks it out of her eyes, her lashes hit the cloth.

It’s loose. She can see.

Not everything—but enough. More than she could in the sack. Hints of color and silhouettes of movement. There’s so much green. Fake trees are painted on the wall, too tall and lush for her to make out details, built to remind her how small she is. The pool noodle is a foam log. Loose decorative leaves float on the surface.

“What the hell?”

The guards. Behind her. The pink strains her eyes.

“You didn’t radio in.”

Seyka’s voice. Her whisper was so quiet, Aloy didn’t recognize her.

She almost killed Seyka.

Guilt is a cold rock that slams between her ribs. What kind of ally is she? Erend would’ve laughed it off. Seyka’s more intense than that.

The guard slings his gun back over his shoulder. It clacks back and forth. “New system’s some bullshit.”

Seyka fires something back, but Aloy doesn’t hear it.

There’s no way Seyka didn’t recognize her. They saw each other this morning. And for a second time, Seyka pointed the gun the other way.

Aloy’s eyes narrow. The tightness in her gut has found a new feeling to tangle into. One beyond nervousness.

She dives, and the pool envelopes her. The chill that rushes through her isn’t unwelcome anymore. It laces with the adrenaline until her eyes, stinging from the chlorine, snap open. Her limbs tremble, barely. It wakes her up.

With her head fully submerged, she can hear it: the arena. Down here, its mechanisms work, more diligently than any guard. Gears and pumps…

Slightly above and to her sides, legs stir water, making quick work of it. Her own knees are held to her chest when the current topples her. The guards are wading away in long strides. A restless wake whirls out from their boots. With every stomp of the heel, it ripples, starting all over.

Movement is a different kind of sight. She can’t see the other players, but she can still find them.

She comes up to tighten her blindfold. The tie is riding up the back of her head, into her scalp. Strands of hair catch on her fingers before she second-guesses herself. It looks like she’s taking the blindfold off.

She’ll only play fair if it keeps her alive. Like everyone else.

“Marco!” A player shouts from somewhere far.

“Polo.” She recognizes that voice: the same steadfast player that answered Erend.

Her legs kick furiously. The worst part of the blindfold has nothing to do with the players. She can’t see the timer.

The players go back and forth. She hears all sorts of “marco”s, but only one polo. The room is otherwise silent. The water echoes more than their voices.

Through her nose, she breathes deep. “Marco.”

“Polo.”

The same player again. Why answer from over there? Is he really the closest?

Realization rinses her like a wave.

There’s no pump gargling the water—just a hundred people running circles around her. All the movement melds together. They’re everywhere. And since they won’t group up, this one player is trying to save them. He’s not the closest—but the bravest. He’s putting himself between them and death.

She’s stopped swimming. Some hobble backward, making space; she can feel the water bend after them. Aloy’s the first to figure them out.

She takes a step forward. Only one. “Marco?”

“Polo.”

“Marco!”

Someone behind her splashes, but still doesn’t answer. Only the savior. “Polo.”

Of course it’s him. Whoever he is. He’s vaguely familiar, but her admiration clouds her memory. She doesn’t know what of.

Her feet are planted, firm, on the concrete. She rolls her weight into her heels.

“Marco!”

Nobody calls back.

Who’s he saving now? Her? Not really. Not on purpose.

The timer pierces through her, resounding in her chest.

Whatever he is, he’s just as fed up as her.

Wind and water get trapped in the drums of her ears. Forcefully, she kicks off, and not even the pool can hold her back; her arms part the drag and then outstretch with empty hands, painfully so, grasping at air. She feels like a child. Like she’s just learned to swim, and all she can do is leap.

But she hits something. Someone. Her head butts into their arm. Beta’s necklace comes loose and hits the water with a plop. The chain, the zipper—metal unseen snags and tears at the victim’s cloth.

“Player 451, pass.”

An ill warmth shudders between the two. Hands slap the pool as they both squirm away. They’ve fanned a fire, a wall of metaphorical death that burns more skin off the longer they touch.

She throws herself back—but she won’t get charred. She made it. She’s fireproof.

Over and over, she pats her head, until her palm lands flat on the blindfold’s knot. The tie rips clean apart. Utility lights, gleaming bright overhead, blind her more than the fold ever did.

A bullet blast shreds the air.

She sees red.

“Player 208, eliminated.”

It’s all over her hands. Warm, fresh, in the creases of her fingers. Both her arms quiver as it trickles down her wrist, down her forearm, down, down… It itches. It taunts.

She’s victiorious—but they’re not just defeated. They’re dead.

Muddled swirls fill the world, alongside a smell only open things reek. There’s nowhere for her to go. If she dares swim out of it, it’ll seep its way after her.

Everyone describes death as cold. Maybe it is after a while. But right now, it’s so, so warm.

The chemicals can only do so much. In fact, they’re uncaring. The water turns pink and the filter keeps humming. This is routine.

There’s screaming, but it’s not from her. The room is built for voices to echo. She can’t discern them. All there is, and all there ever will be, is copper clouding her nose, thick blood like a second skin, fear gluing her feet to the floor. Her shoulders take the brunt of her panic. She trembles.

“451?”

A woman’s voice. Not one she knows. It cuts through the chlorine not in an order, but a plea. Almost melodic. Comfort where there shouldn’t be any.

“Is that your number?”

She nods.

The woman rests a hand on Aloy’s shoulder, small but firm. Grounding. Aloy flinches.

“Sh. It’s alright.”

The hand falls to her arm. The light catches on its single adorning ring. Aloy recognizes it from the breakfast line.

“I’m 163.”

163 is taller than her, with dark skin and frizzy hair pulled into a bun. But her clothes are stained. She’s been… Around.

“Did that guard hurt you?”

She’s been watching.

Aloy shakes her head, but can't get rid of any thoughts. It’s just blood. It can’t hurt her. But it sure hurt someone else. Did she know them? It wasn’t Seyka, but—

What if it was Erend?

She still hasn’t heard his number. But he wouldn’t go down that easy. Would he?

A dry sound chuffs as her lips part. She almost asks about Erend, or about the polo that saved her.

She follows 163’s gaze to a cluster of pink instead. The guards bleed the same red as everyone else. They just get to hide it. They wade in groups like schools of fish, with a confidence Aloy knows is fake. They can’t possibly have a route to follow. How could they account for the players?

She expects them to carry the body out. They don’t. They swim past like they’re on a patrol, with better things to do. She hopes dying is on the list.

Erend is behind them. He still has a blindfold on. The crowd has scattered around him and a few other marcos; she watches them bump into each other, flinch, and stumble. Erend’s patience is worn thin.

“Marco.”

163 isn’t watching. Her back to the crowd, she wades to the wall. She must be a polo, the calmest one in the game. If only Aloy had half that patience. That kindness. 163 braved death not just for a stranger, but for an enemy.

Aloy’s reminded of the polo, the one that kept answering. She scans the nearby players. She doesn’t know what he looked like, and the voice that calls back to Erend isn’t his.

“Polo.”

A boy her age, if not younger. Short and thin, his word the same.

Erend lunges for him, but completely misses. The boy scurries backward and into another player. They both fall.

Aloy’s brows furrow. She can’t watch—but she can’t look away.

Erend finds his footing faster. “Marco,” he coughs out.

The player doesn’t pick the boy up. They’re gone in the blink of an eye. He gasps. He calls the player’s name. He must know them, and they’ve left him to die. The water ripples with the shake of his legs. Tears blear in his eyes, glazed over with betrayal, defeat—feelings Aloy doesn’t pretend to know.

Behind her, 163 is frozen. Her hand covers her mouth. Aloy understands that more. She’s thinking, maybe if I stayed a minute longer. Maybe if I hadn’t been there at all.

“Po-lo.” He sobs.

It happens so fast. Erend lunges, and the boy doesn’t. Nobody comes back for him. Only the tide, rolling in around him, claiming his end. Only Erend’s calloused hands.

“Player 045, pass.”

Erend rips his blindfold off. For a second, their eyes meet. He doesn’t look scared. He looks like a child again. The flutter of his eyes, the wrinkle in his forehead, the refusal to give up…

“Player 174, eliminated.”

He might actually win.

Guards cut through the crowd. Their guns gleam with humidity. Aloy wonders if they’ve fired anyone by mistake; one slip of the finger, and they’d squeeze the trigger. Guess she’ll never know. Erend won fair and square.

She can’t see the boy anymore.

The gunshot has her grimacing over her shoulder.

There were only two rules, but when one marco is tracking, the others are quiet; there’s no need to run. So now, 163 leans against the wall. She rests her forehead on the cracked paint. One of her hands clutches her stomach through waves of unseen nausea; still, she stands tall.

A player is at her side. He doesn’t lean—no, he paces slightly ahead, scanning the tops of each wave. Aloy glimpses his number: 162. He must do the same. When she looks up, he’s looking back. He nods to her with a solemn smile.

He’s the polo. He saved her life, and countless others’. Even now, he’s protecting 163. He knows her. He’s her partner from the breakfast line, the one that put the pretty ring on her fingers, the other side of her coin. Both are bold and brave, in their own ways.

She almost hates it.

It’s their strength. Aloy’s weak. They were protecting everyone, meanwhile she was tagging guards. No—it’s their trust. The way 162 bends down to meet 163’s eyes. Aloy hasn’t even talked to Erend today.

No.

It’s Rost. 162 looks so much like Rost.

Aloy takes a step forward, in his direction.

The hatred fizzles into a mean, almost meek pang of envy, that starts in her chest and crawls up her throat. She has no word for it, the way the loneliness of the game, her grief yet to culminate, has turned so vicious.

162 nods again. This time, gesturing. And she’s reminded again. It’s always Rost. But Rost is dead. What the hell is she doing?

“Aloy!”

Erend. She spins on her heel.

“You passed, right? I heard it over the, uh, announcement thing.”

Her mumble is bristly. She can’t tell why. Erend didn’t do anything wrong. She thought she was happy to see him. “You heard it.”

“There’s something you might wanna see. All the way to the left.” He pants. “There’s a valve.”

A valve?

Erend’s right. She heard them loud and clear when she swam, the layers of machinery. What if they can be broken? Slipped through? If there’s a way out, this is it. If she passes it up, Beta never sees her again.

“Do you see them? In the back?” She points to 162 and 163. 162 waves.

“Sure. What about ‘em?”

Erend is comfortable. A reminder of home, of childhood, and of the way things were. But he’s big and hard to miss. The game continues behind them in muffled calls. He’ll only slow her down.

“Stay with them until I find it.”

And she dashes away before he can argue. Leaving is a promise. To get Erend out alive; to carry on her mother’s legacy; to get home to Beta. She can’t break that promise by staying.

But if she lives through this, she owes 162 double.

Chapter Text

The round is over.

Beads of cold sweat roll down Aloy’s skin. Her tracksuit clings, oppressive on her legs in the same way as exhaustion. Every step is heavier than the last. Sleepy pain stings through her every time she finds the tile.

Her plan was to take advantage of the chaos. If she looked like another player scared for their life, nobody would question her. But that meant taking things slow. Dodging the marcos as they reached for freedom, for safety. They wouldn’t find it in her. They couldn’t. Her head was too low, and her ambitions too high.

When she neared the opposing wall, the cracks of a dozen guns deafened her. She was expecting the timer. Instead, every marco still blindfolded was lined up and gunned down. At least they didn’t see the guns. At least their death was swift.

Now, the arena empties, but it still smells like bleach and blood. The water is just below her knees now.

A current pushes around her, is stirred by her. It’s a nudge at first. Not random, but not natural. Something certain beneath the surface. It slips between her legs toward the arena’s end. The furthest corner. She follows, half against her will.

It’s a whirlpool here. Just as quick, as scared, as a player. It’s found an exit: a circle of sunken-in concrete. A drain.

A low, mechanical rumble rises from the surface like bile up a throat.

She does not step, for fear of drowning. She shuffles. A mirage ripples through the waves, impossible to discern even if she squints. The black is bottomless. No matter how close she gets, how far she peers, there’s nothing. When she jumped off the fisherman’s boat, she knew she’d land in the sea. But this? The sea isn’t quiet like this. The drain swallows everything without a sound. Water, air, her name.

In a room full of people, no one else noticed. Does it seal closed? Or is there a pile of bodies under her nose? She doesn’t know what’s worse: not passing the game, or not even finishing it.

Her elbow scrapes the wall. Green paint flakes off. A frog with X’s for eyes. It scatters in the stream, like something to leave behind. Scratched paint on a metal lunchbox, or a toy abandoned on a playground. The kind of small, stupid thing a mother would hand to her daughters. For her daughters to fight over.

She didn’t need all of it. Just one piece.

In a thought unspoken, a glance stolen, she searches for them. 162 and 163. The couple that saved her. They’re ducking under a short archway, into the hall. They wouldn’t agree with her. Even in this place, they love the little, lost things. Each other.

Erend isn’t with them. He’s impossible to miss, but somehow hard to spot. Is he tailing behind them? Somewhere in the crowd? He’s never fit in. Maybe he’d agree with her. In all his pain, his grief—he’d understand.

He still wanted her to go.

A guard is taking deep steps around the players, pushing them together like sardines, keeping them there with pressings of a gun. They’re efficient, as all guards are, except for how they spin in place.

They’re looking for stragglers.

A whistle cuts through the air. Other guards bark orders.

If she’s going, she needs to now.

Aloy won’t miss this arena. The tall walls, the high ceilings, the foam decoration her palms still itch from… The blood in the water. The skin in the filter. No, she won’t miss it at all. At least Simon Says had the sky.

She looms over the drain’s lip. She stares down the unknown in its one big, baffling eye. Quiet below but chaos above. Death everywhere anyway.

She will miss Erend.

She could stay. Wait for capture, wait for dinner, wait for the next game… Wait. Or she could go where the water wants. Either way, she’ll lose something.

For a second she thinks she hears him, asking her to wait. But a current doesn’t do waiting.

This is for the best.

Her palms brace on the rim, but it’s no use. Waves crash on her back, then diverge through her arms like a river to a rock. Her arms strain for purchase. The current has already decided. It pulls, stronger than she ever could.

It bursts over her head in a single, enveloping sheet. She claws at the concrete as it slides past, but this ship has no bearing nor anchor. Sound and smell are vacuumed with her; the rampage collapses into white noise, and the water isn’t so fresh in this cramped must.

Her world is a column. The only direction is down.

Which must mean her mother is below. A part of her, at least. A piece.

She blanks on the way down—not faint, but not awake. Faint light bleeds through her eyelids, spots just as fickle as air.

That’s what wakes her: a parting in the waterfall, and beneath, a pocket of air. Fresh. Almost clean. Her gasps are ragged enough to hurt.

The current canons her under, chews her up and spits her out. She trembles like a readied bow, or the arm threading the arrow.

Her yelp is a blur of bubbles. She paddles and paddles, arms and legs desynched. Is it her strength that lifts her? Or weakness, weightlessness, that has no other option? Hands paw at the surface like they’re shoving a door.

A second chance at breathing. At living.

The room is all-white, but dim. The filter—is this whole thing a filter?—and the platforms beyond are wide. No, massive. She’s noticing a pattern.

There better be something here.

When she swims, she ignores the tinge, the taint, of pink. Is she imagining the metallic hint in the air? Is it the facility’s membrane, or its blood? A droplet splashes on her tongue. She spits it out just as fast.

The closer she gets, the clearer the halls are. The ceilings angle in a steep fashion.

Somewhere behind her, water slaps against tile. Footsteps? No. Not yet.

The lighting shifts from overhead to underfoot, in the form of sparkly strips and glass panes. As pretty as purpose can be. Not even maintenance holes are safe from the Front’s hand.

Aloy’s wet palm slaps the floor. She glances around before planting her arm. A shadow dances in her peripheral, a person—but when she faces them, they’re gone. What is she? A child? She doesn’t need permission.

Somehow, she’s colder out of the water. Her hands run quick down her arms.

There are paintings on the walls. Framed. Aloy’s more inclined to science and math. While she follows them down, her footsteps hollow, she doesn’t recognize any. They’re geometric, but shapeless. Undecided. At least they have purpose; if it wasn’t prettied up, this hall would be a sewer.

Past the slope in the ceiling, the paintings turn to posters. There’s one next to every water tank. Some are instructional, others unashamed propaganda. She almost doesn’t stop.

But there’s this stark, boldened one. A black silhouette in a player’s jacket. Guess the uniforms are always green. The silhouette has no name, no face. At first, it’s any other player. Then the number on their chest catches Aloy’s eye.

451.

Her pruned thumb runs over a footnote.

No winner, no game.

ALPHA PRIME ™ is stamped in the corner.

The blunt shape of the shoulders. The straight and narrow posture. The same number, even though there’s probably a 452, 453, and beyond. Some of the other posters bear her mom’s trademark—but on this one, it’s front and center. A brand.

Too many coincidences.

This is her.

The lights dim in a hum. A downbeat. A physical manifestation of the tightening in her chest. The water towers look so big in the dark.

Why would they have a poster of her? And what kind of message does it send?

They know her full name and that she snuck her way in, so knowing why isn’t the furthest reach. She’s a glitch in the system. A rebel. A threat. They can number her all they want, but they can’t control her.

Or they make a poster like this every year with the most interesting tribute.

Someone whistles past the pool. Someone’s coming.

But she can’t leave this.

It rips off the wall in a clean clip of sound. The crinkling as she folds it is louder. She can’t tell if she’s stolen her mother’s face, or if her mother stole hers.

A flashlight whips past her.

She stuffs it in her suit.

When she steps back, she steps into something. Someone. Shadowed hands grasp at her shoulders, unsure how to steady themselves. Her heart hammers. A guard? Her death? She twists to elbow them but—

“Sh!”

Their heads almost bonk.

“Erend?”

That’s why she couldn’t find him. He wasn’t with 162 or 163 at all. Did he even meet them? No—he was too busy following her.

Now they’re both going to die.

“What the hell are you—“

The flashlight lingers on a nearby pipe. Erend slaps a hand over her mouth. She’s tempted to bite it, to squirm away, to run from him again.

Why? Why can’t she handle this? Erend’s her friend. And he’s confident. His fingers are parted ever-so slightly. He’s pulled them into the wall, behind a concrete jungle of pipes. For the first time ever, he’s better than her at something. She’ll pretend that something isn’t hiding from authority.

Either way, Rost would be proud of him. For pushing her.

She came here to find her mom. Instead, she found ghosts, only one of which fits in her pocket. The other only listens to his gut and sways back and forth on the heels of his shoes. Bad habits. Rost habits.

He didn’t come here to die. Nobody did. Now, he’s risking it all to find her, to save her. When he looks at her, does he see Ersa?

“I found some schematics,” he whispers. Thankfully, he can’t read her mind. “I was about to tap the valve when these–jerks showed up.”

Of course his first thought is to tinker. “Guards?”

“Always.”

“Did they see you?”

Erend’s not exactly easy to miss. But he shakes his head. “Not yet.”

Even if Erend got the valve open, they can’t exactly swim out. The ocean isn’t welcoming. Aloy knows that firsthand.

The two guards come strolling down the hall, directly across from Aloy and Erend. They’re pressed flat against the thickest pipe, knees in puddles, barely enough room for two. Flashlights fly around like rapid eyes. It must be hard to see, doubled-up in masks and darkness. If they stay out of the light, it should be easy to sneak past.

Or to knock them out.

The thought intrudes like a friend and makes itself at home in her mind. This is a single pair of guards. How many more are on patrol? On one hand, it’s just a filtration system. On the other, it leads outside, and not even Erend knows where to go. How far will they get before they’re found?

If they knock both guards out, take their masks and suits…

Erend’s whisper jolts her back. “You’ve got that look on your face.”

“I don’t have a look.”

“The gears, remember?”

He said the same thing before Simon Says. Quickly, she fires back, “And I was right, remember?”

“Yea, yea…”

Aloy pinches between her fingers.

“You take the one on the left.”

Erend pulls back just to gawk at her, his jaw hung. “You wanna kill them?”

And now she feels like an asshole. A jerk, as he puts it. She frowns, hard, thinking of the player she killed in Marco, Polo. Player 208. She didn’t know them, but death has tied them to her and her dirty, mean hands.

“We can just… Take their stuff.”

Or maybe Erend’s the jerk for thinking so little of her. His brow line hardens, anchoring his face in his thoughts. She finally knows what he means. He has a “look”, too. A worrying, untrustworthy, this-is-a-bad-idea look.

He stuffs the schematics in Aloy’s hands.

The details are hard to make out, but this one piece of paper is too small to be the whole facility. Maybe it’s one level? Maintenance doors, pressure valves, and security exits are marked. The walls of this maze are hard, boldened lines.

“Don’t lose ‘em.”

“What are you doing?”

He grunts as he stands. “You didn’t open the drain, yea?” He dusts off his knees like they weren’t just in the water. “You found it open.”

She nods.

“I’m asking for directions.”

And he thought she was crazy.

It’s her turn to gawk. Sneakers squeaking on a puddle, she scrambles after him; her hands find his sleeve, where she pulls, hard.

Are they lost? Yes. Should they admit it? Hell no. Not unless they want bullets through their heads.

“You can’t just–”

“You wanna do it?”

“What?” She scoffs. “No!”

She can’t rely on Seyka to save her, not for a third time. And she can’t rely on Erend having his own secrets. He’s a blockhead, but a loyal one.

Is Aloy disloyal?

“Hey!” Erend shouts. And her train of thought immediately crashes. He jumps up and down, flailing his arms like he’s a flagging hitchhiker.

A flashlight burns her eyes. She shadows her face with her hand.

She didn’t find anything about her mom. And judging by the posters stuffed in her pockets—one of her, and one of what must be her plans—she’s never going to.

Thanks, Erend.

“Hey. Your drain? Up there?” He points to the ceiling. “Storm runoff, not filtration. Half these pipes’ll clog in a week.”

The guards are unmoving. Aloy pictures them blinking at him and snorts.

“No, no—ignore her. This is serious!” He’s still going. “You don’t even have a check valve…”

“He’s saying we fell in,” Aloy deadpans.

A guard’s voice. “The drain?”

“The drain.”

“Yea, it sucked us up. Like the sediment it sure as hell can’t hold! What’s a basin this shallow gonna catch? A cold?”

“Erend—“

“All I’m sayin’ is, you want people to play, you keep ‘em in the game!”

Aloy doesn’t give Erend enough credit. “Thanks, Erend,” she says, but it still comes out sarcastic.

One guard leans into his walkie-talkie. A press of a button, and it’s crackling like a fire, one the filter will drown out.

The other guard clips his flashlight onto his utility belt. “If you weren’t in uniform, I’d tell you to get back to work.”

Erend stiffens. She can’t imagine what’s running through his head, but she looks over anyway. His eyes linger on the water. His fists clench at his sides. He should’ve listened to her. She’s always right, and always full of herself.

“Front. 412 and 413. Filtration Bay. Unauthorized individuals at water tank two. Requesting instruction.”

The Front? She must handle all player interaction. So she’s who Aloy can blame.

“Sobeck Protocol,” the radio responds. “Escort.”

She need not wonder if she heard that right, because 413 incredulously mumbles it under his breath. Has he never heard it before? That would make sense. Does it spell out her death?

412 stuffs a hand in 413’s face. “Protocol, copy. Both of them?”

“Description?”

“045. Tall, round, uh. A mechanic, I—“

“The other one.”

“451. Redhead.”

She feels like all four of them are leaning in, promising to keep a secret, promising friendship for just a night. If only 412 would stand still. He keeps shuffling back, to the side. But it’s not his secret to keep.

“Transfer communications to 451.”

413 scoffs. “First the system update, and now this?”

“Transfer.”

Saved not by Seyka, but by the Front. But they’re not transferring her or Erend. They’re transferring that little walkie talkie.

Then what? Her and the Front will be friends, too?

“Transfering,” 412 sighs. “Copy.”

412 holds the radio to their ear a moment longer. They’re waiting, listening—for instruction or condolence, Aloy doesn’t know. To her, it’s just a radio. To them, it’s probably a ticket out. The last ticket out. Disobeying orders spells death faster than any of the games.

He flicks it forward.

It’s big in her palm. Boxy. She grew up in a cabin in the woods, but she never had a real walkie talkie. Her and Beta used the toy ones you find at the grocery store, that only have one continuous channel. But this is real. This has dials and a patterned speaker.

The guards nudge Erend in front. She’s left to take up the rear, to her own devices. Nobody’s watching her.

She presses the button.

“Hello?”

“451. What’s the difference between intrusion and inheritance?”

Strong words for a weak threat. So weak, it’s a question. Aloy intruded, but it’s her mother’s legacy she’s chasing. She’s not backing down.

“Money?” She snickers.

“Oh, money intrudes. You know that by now.”

She does. But she doesn’t want to play some guessing game for the Front’s entertainment. She’s already playing the deadly one.

“If I answer wrong, will you kill me?”

“Of course not,” the radio buzzes. The Front is laughing. At her? “It’s a trick question. Both lead to absence.”

“What do you know about Elisabet?”

“More than she could leave you.”

She catches Erend peeking back at her. Checking on her. The guards shoulder him on.

“So, let me intrude.”

She shivers.

“What did you find?”

“Nothing.”

“Hm. I almost believe you.”

It clicks off.

What the hell was any of that?

She doesn’t look at the posters. She doesn’t want the guards to take them. It’s not worth it, anyway, not when one is nearly blank and the other is a plumbing system.

What did she inherit? What does The Front know? She’s 451 to most, but still Aloy to some. To the biggest threat in her world. The Front even has a “Sobeck Protocol”. Whatever that means.

She wants to slam the radio down, until it’s shattered between the tiles. Instead she holds it, squeezes it, revels in the way the speaker’s mesh scrapes her palm. Just as painful as it is absent. Like everything else.

As they walk, the walls grow tall and the shadows, taller.

She holds on anyway.