Sweat dripped down Thirteen's face as he ran across the blazing heat. The counter's blare ripped through his senses. It was always louder outside than in the command center. That was part of the reason he opted to stay indoors and watch everything from behind the screens. It preserved his sanity better. How did everyone live through this torture?

Nine and Eighteen's traces were somewhere closer to the highway. Of course, with Nine's ability allowing her to control temperatures, even her body's, she could move that fast. Thirteen had nothing against that. He wasn't a runner. Or a mover, in general.

He hadn't even made it past the first chunk of forests from the central region, and his side already attacked him with punches of dull aches. Was he supposed to run all the way to the northern quadrant?

His comms crackled. Twelve's frantic voice bled through. Two hostiles in their location. They were ambushed. Who could it be? He powered his portable screen up, squinting at the barrage of bright blue light assaulting his eyes. Pressing two fingers on the flat, glassy surface, he moved south. The images of the grounds' map moved with them. Okay. Find Twelve and Four's tracker. There. By the forest to the highway's left.

What were they doing there? They were aiming to cross and help Five and the others deal with the overloaded melee by Section H's headquarters. He studied the two hostiles his comrades talked about. Karrel and Caden. A deadly pair. He ran a calculation in his head and arrived at an answer. If that was the case...

He pursed his lips and continued running. The grass scratched underneath his soles. His body overheated from wearing his jacket all day and engaging in a strenuous activity. Could he remove it? What would protect him from dust and the sun's rays though?

Tough choices.

The forest took shape. From the rim, crashes and defiant shrieks flew out from the spaces between the trunks. Somewhere there, Karrel was having the time of her life. She thought it would hurt Section M. His calculations yielded a decrease in their performance, but it wouldn't be a deep plunge. Numbers never lied, but he could be wrong this time. There might be factors and aspects he missed.

He wanted to believe, to give them the trust they craved from him. Hence, he dove into the undergrowth and used the messiest trail to stay hidden from Caden, or worse, Karrel. He weaved across the jagged maze of nature, tracking the evidence of chaos with his periphery. When the line of trees thinned to a fault, a blur of silver and blue rippled in the corner of his vision. His soles scratched to a halt. He threw himself behind the trunk nearest to the unfolding chaos.

Ice crunched and cracked as Four danced around Karrel's blade. Caden was beyond the wall of glaciers, craning his neck up to calculate the height. With the sun in his eyes, it was next to impossible. Four might have done an accidental good job, since the metal dart boy relied heavily on visual accuracy like Fourteen's did.

Perhaps, Thirteen could deal with him from here. His fingers crept at the band of his trousers. Damn it. He forgot the gun. The knife sat neglected on his desk too. Forget it. More chances would come. He would make sure of that.

Four's shriek tore through the clearing, stealing Thirteen's attention. Caden could go muck himself. Right now, Thirteen had to see how Four would hold against Karrel. As one of the strongest melee fighters, he had to adjust his calculations according to what he would see here.

Both women twirled and clashed. They were lost in their own world. Thirteen slid partly from the trunk, watching Four's graceful moves. Despite the rage contorting her face, her shards never missed their marks. Slumped by their feet and resting on a puddle of blood, Twelve lay motionless. Huh. That was one.

Thirteen tapped a few spots on his screen, bringing up the file the drive had about Karrel. It was still vague, but watching her corner Four with nothing but a flimsy sword, he started to understand bits. Pieces. Four's face contorted, confusion evident on her features. Her shards went erratic, going as far as missing their marks entirely. She encased her arm in tapered ice, but it melted just as Karrel's sword slashed up.

It was as if her ability worked against her.

The polished blade cut through Four's exposed torso in one clean arc. It tore through the garbled cries in the comms—ones Thirteen wouldn't answer. Karrel stepped back, head following the trajectory of Four's fall. Thirteen saw it then—a hint of recognition in Four's eyes on her way down. She didn't break eye contact with him. You did this, she seemed to say. You got me killed.

Damned right, he did. They knew he was gambling with their lives. To win this war, no matter how pointless it was, he had to understand the most formidable enemy. Karrel would kill to get her hands on Thirteen's weakness. He shouldn't give her one. And he should use every card he has to play before she steals it from his hand.

Yes. He would let his comrades be killed. Because if he wanted the most to survive, he would have to choose. Should he lose more of his best fighters to save two people who couldn't pull their weight? Four was strong, but if he were to risk, say, Five's life for her, would the returns be more favorable? Five was needed on the northern front. She would curb through the ranks so long as Eight and One were with her. Without Karrel there, they would have an insurmountable chance.

Was he supposed to let go of that variable to save Four? The answer was clear.

He watched Four's wrist light up blue.

Karrel sheathed her sword and stalked off, no doubt to join the northern melee. Thirteen had to move fast. Caden's shadow zipped away from the ice wall, jumping over the top which began melting inward. He waited until they were mere dots among the million leaves in the forest before he stepped from his hiding place. He stalked towards Twelve's body and checked her wrist. No light there. The time has come and gone. Four, however...

He looked around and spotted one of Caden's fallen darts. That'd do. Fingers clasped around the cold metal, he grasped Four's wrist and made a jagged incision. For the second time today, he reached in and drew a chip. He wouldn't let it go to waste.

The counter's alarm shut off. He glanced at his screen. Bloodstained and running low on charge, but it'd live. The counter's timer still counted towards zero. Almost five minutes earlier? That was new. These past few counters, he had been accurate. What happened?

He craned his neck towards the sky. The afternoon sun was still up, painting the sky bright blue. Karrel's words went back to him. There were people up there, or somewhere. They watched this city, its occupants, and everything that happened inside. Why? What was the purpose of this game? Of having people kill each other?

The answer wasn't up there. Thirteen had to go back to the fortress. The others should be on their way as well. He glanced at the bodies. No choice, then.

By the time he arrived with two corpses, sweat had drenched his jacket through. He looked as if he had taken a dive in the middle of the arid expanse. Still, he took the hidden way past the trenches and came to the lobby. The way back cost him the remaining sun hours.

He threw the bodies to the floor, showing everyone who waited for him what this counter cost them. "I found them in the forest by the highway," he said, catching his breath. His side flared now, but he disregarded it. His arm hurt too. He was this close to passing out. Damn. He needed sleep. "It seems Karrel found them first and did this."

Frowns pulled everyone's faces down. A sniffle could be heard. It was Seventeen, but the buffoon wouldn't admit it anytime, so Thirteen let him be. He let them all be. On his way past the gathered crowd, he locked eyes with Two. Ah, shit. The mind reader. He knew everything, saw it all play out in Thirteen's memories. Hell, Two knew every one of his secrets.

Thirteen narrowed his eyes at Two, daring him to speak. Let the boy talk. If he did, he also knew what Thirteen would be bound to do. He wouldn't hold it back from the boy, even the goriest of details. It was only right for someone who made a living out of prying into private minds.

There was more than one way to silence a mouth who betrayed the devil.

The command room was silent. Thirteen, with his wrist bandaged and treated, pulled his chip off the reader. After the chaos subsided in the upper floors, Thirteen retreated to this hovel. For the first hour, he tweaked his calculations and some of his tactics. Karrel was beginning to catch on, seeing how she cornered Twelve and Four out of the unit-pairs he sent out.

A rundown of the remaining enemies in the grounds was overdue as well. With the system's latest update, he could track every active chip. In the next hour, the system could reflect the chip's owner. The wonders of technology and having the brain to understand it and bend it to one's will.

Which brought him to the next part. He dislodged his chip from the reader and threw it into the highest drawer to his right. His stash of discarded chips greeted him. He'd get to them later. For now...

He produced Four's chip from his pocket. The following half an hour was spent with him cleaning the dried blood from the grooves and the sides. It was flimsy—that much he was certain. It could snap if a boot caught it wrong. But inside this piece of unseeming junk lay the secrets and the truth to the abilities. He could know who or what kept them inside this game. Stretching the application, he could get his comrades out of this place and avoid the inevitable bloodbath.

When Four's chip was clean, he slotted it into the reader and launched the bypass program. The next hour passed by with him tapping away on his keyboard, eyes flitting across the lowest screen. The dim light stung his eyeballs. He pushed on, coming so close to breaking the first layer of encryption. After a thousand Access Denieds, he created the perfect backdoor to run a decryption algorithm. That way, those from the top wouldn't trace his location and erase the data before he could get to them.

A full minute later, the algorithm hit the first key and broke down the encryption. White squares appeared on his screen, one after the other. Okay. These were the files? He navigated through them, running his fingers across the screen to move some squares out of the way. More and more seemed to appear, each one locked with another layer of encryption. His algorithm might not be able to crack most, but there were always ways to improve. For now, he had to find the square that hadn't locked him out. There has to be a base file accessible after the shallowest layer of security.

After an indefinite amount of sifting, he arrived at a white square with a single tile on it. He accessed it, opening another application. There, plain text in a language he understood blinked back at him. He scanned through it.

Patent No.: FR █████████████
Date of Patent: ████ - ██ - ██

THE FOUNDING CHIP
███████ Laboratories, Inc., ████████████ █████ ████

Applicant:         ████████████ █████ ████ , ███████████ ,
                              FR (EUR) ██████ ████████ , ███████ , VT (US)

Inventor:           ████████████ █████ ████

Assignee:          ███████ Laboratories, Inc., ███████████ , FR (EUR)

(*) Notice:         Subject to any disclaimer, the term of this patent is extended or adjusted under ██████████ (b) by 0 days.

Appl. No.:        ██████████
Filed:                 ████ - ██ - ██

Primary Examiner:                 █████ ████████
Attorney, Agent, or Firm:     ██████████ ███

Thirteen knitted his eyebrows. This was a file for something. A patent? Meaning what? And why would the redacted information need more passkeys? The heading caught his eye, though.

The Founding Chip.

Upon reading towards the end of the first page, it became clear. The Founding Chip was a miracle feat in the biomedical-engineering field. The patent owners developed a cure for most diseases and strengthened the human race just by inserting a bio-altering device in the body, particularly the wrist. This device would read a person's biological systems, do a quick troubleshoot, and introduce an intervention if needed.

Except it wasn't used only for that, right? For some unknown reason, the device was placed into humans for an entirely different reason. If he understood this correctly, the chip not only altered their systems to cure illness, it did it in such a way the body started developing errors. Anomalies. With a device capable of thinking for itself while inside a sentient being, who was to say what was impossible?

Thirteen heaved a sigh, leaning away from the screen. He massaged his eyes and the bridge of his nose. That wasn't an easy pill to swallow. Was Karrel aware about this? Because this just proved her suspicion. Someone watched them, and whoever they were, they were the reason everyone had strange abilities.

But why make them slaughter each other? What was the reason for the Game? Even if this was some sort of twisted experiment, what were they trying to prove?

If Thirteen wanted to dig deeper into this entire issue, he would have to unlock every code, break every layer of encryption. The chips might even contain detailed studies on an individual's manifesting ability. And if he gained access to that...

This would be the next part of the plan. Indeed.