Light poked his eyes even through his lids slammed shut. He squirmed, determined to shield himself from its merciless pierces. His arms stayed at his sides. He tried opening his eyes, but they stayed closed, as if they were stitched to his cheeks. Panic settled on his veins. Then, the smell hit. Antiseptic.

The beeps were more frantic, pounding not just in his ears. They seemed to be everywhere, including his mind. He moved his lips, forcing his tongue to work, to call out for anyone who could help. Help do what, exactly? He didn't know either. Perhaps to remove the weight pressing on his chest, squeezing the air and the life out of him?

No words flitted out. Instead, a weak groan laced around the beeping, producing a discordant song. With great effort, he wrenched his eyes open. It was like lifting a train car off the rails. He succeeded halfway, giving him the view of the room through blurry slits. White. Everything was. He glanced to his left, the gaps in his memory converging to an image of a bland bedside table next to a three-legged stool. It wasn't empty.

A woman sat on it, hair scattered all over her face as she hunkered into herself. The beeps ebbed out enough for him to hear sniffles. Soft patterns of shaky breath intakes and exhales matched every rise and fall of his chest. It tempted him to start counting. Up to what number would he get to before life ran out?

WIth the last of his strength, he pulled his eyelids farther apart, widening the bright slits into a full fledged scope. The incandescent light stung his incapable vision, threatening to plunge it back to darkness. His fingers twitched, ruffling the sheets they rested on. The woman noticed the smallest of movements, raising her head. Her hair, those luscious dark brown strands, fell away from her face as she rushed towards the bed's edge.

Her face was empty. Just a blob of golden bronze inviting him to attribute whatever features he wanted to it. He let it remain blank, even as her shadow fell over him when she gripped his shoulders and caressed his cheek as if he was all there was to her.

Don't go, the voice, all breathy and desperate, whispered to the wind. Those two words clawed at the recesses of his brain and never let go. They stayed there. All things go, he wanted to reply, but before he could, a strong wave of pain washed over him. Every shred of energy seeped out of his skin as he sank into the depths. Darkness replaced the white. The weight smothered him, shoving him farther from the light.

He didn't fight. He couldn't, anyway. But a nagging voice in his mind told him he should have. It was the same voice telling him to stay. Don't go.

Don't go.

His eyes opened with ease this time. Pins and needles pricked his cheek, and a stabbing pain gripped his neck. He raised his head, the weight shedding off his muscles. He could move again, mostly because he was back in the real world, or at least the other reality with a more lasting permanence. His hood slipped off his hair, flopping without life against his back. Who put that there? Why was he sleeping in the first place?

He turned to the bright screen propped on a metal stand. Oh, right. The chip. He was supposed to decrypt it to the last layer. Where...

Recent memories replayed in his head. After Five and Eight agreed to work with them, they trudged out of the railway and took refuge in the nearest buildings before nightfall. Everyone flitted to their own pace as he told them to search for things that seemed off since the Game started. He was left in the building as the night progressed, but it appeared he didn't make good on his promise and fell asleep.

And promptly dreamed. It was the same dream as Two witnessed. More details were added, though. The crying woman was there, and if Thirteen cross-referenced it to the first time he woke up inside the Game, she could have been the same person. Same dark brown hair, albeit a little longer in the dream, same blank face, even the same swirl of pure white skirt. What was that about?

A flashing message from the screen caught his attention. Access Cleared, it read. His eyes widened. Was he inside the deepest data bank of the chip? Did his algorithm pull it off? He tapped and scrolled, eyes scanning the new files that the recent brute force did. All of them were older files, probably the oldest yet. Certain details were purposefully corrupted as expected, and Thirteen couldn't do anything to recover them. If he traced the path of which device did the redaction, perhaps he'd have more luck in discovering something. It would take him a year or two with the resources he now had access to. The Corrector didn't look like a patient person though.

Whatever. He had yet to unlock something that wasn't just files, something that would lead him directly into the ability mechanism of the chip. He wanted to believe the chip wasn't merely a storage disk. Or maybe it was, and the watchers were having the time of their lives, observing him place all hope in something that wasn't worth anything in the first place.

Faith was the last thing Thirteen wanted to have, but inside a world where everything was backwards and he was at the bottom of the pecking order, it was the only thing he could cling to in his aim to survive. It wouldn't save him, but without it, he'd never take another step forward.

"Had a good one?" A voice speared behind him. He whirled to find Five staring down at him. Her hair hung to her waist, proving she hasn't used her ability lately. "We didn't want to wake you."

Thirteen turned back to the scrappy table they scavenged from the remnants of life on this building. The white paint was peeling, with some brittle clumps peppering his sleeves. He dusted them off. "Are the others back yet?" he asked. "I've got something to consult with everyone."

As if on cue, chairs grated across the loose tiles. A horde of bodies crowded around him. Eyes stared at him with eager glints in them. Thirteen blew a breath and massaged his temples. "I need your chips," he said. "I'm going to decrypt them and gather what I can."

Everyone leaned back. He scowled. "I'm not going to take them for me," he said. "I've had enough of switching abilities."

A collective sigh could have been heard if not for Slate pushing past the small crowd and chucking her chip into Thirteen's table. "You can start by telling us what those were," she said. "I told you of their existence which I found out because of observation. I still don't know what it is, or why it's inside our bodies."

A wave of nods rippled across his audience. He snatched the screen from the stand Five twisted for him and switched chips. Four's went back inside his pocket. As Slate's chip loaded and he picked up from where he left off from his interrupted stint in the command center, he disclosed everything he found out from all the files he mined from mainly Four's chip. He ran the same algorithm on Slate's chip, and without the hours of meandering and fumbling, he reached the same level of clearance. Or maybe his computing machine just learned how to do it faster and more efficiently.

Next, he moved through the rest of his comrades, unlocking their chips and making copies of everything he could in the screen's storage component. They took turns using Five's dagger in slitting their wrists and taking their chips out. Seven looked close to passing out at the sight of his own blood and at the notion of poking around his flesh. If Thirteen's screen had a camera, he'd have snapped a photo or two. Eventually, Seven made it without fainting, and the process picked up again.

By the time it was Five's turn, the sun had brightened into the afternoon haze, plunging the entire building into a humid craze. The floor-to-ceiling glass panes didn't help either. It was either too bright or too hot. This was the worst hideout ever. He popped Five's chip, ran the codes, got what he needed, and yanked the chip out. Five fumbled for it as he shoved it into her hands. Now, all of them glanced at their bloody devices, uncertain whether to put it back in or leave it lying around.

"It won't affect your abilities if it has already merged with your biological functions," Thirteen said. Rather, snapped. He hated explaining things that should have been obvious to him from the get-go. "Eighteen, you're up next."

A chip pressed on his palm without the ick of fresh blood. He cocked an eyebrow but said nothing. Maybe it was because she had observed it from all the others who went first? Was anyone that conscientious?

After a few minutes, he was inside Eighteen's database. A frown crumpled his features. "Why don't you have any battle logs?" he asked, scrolling through the files. Apart from the oldest files, a huge chunk in the middle that should have been there was gone. Or it was never there in the first place.

Eighteen shrugged. "My ability isn't combative, and I haven't used it since the initial counters," she said. "Must be why."

Made sense. "Must be," Thirteen answered after duplicating everything in Eighteen's chip. Then, he beckoned everyone to draw closer as he turned and propped the screen back on the stand. "I'll flip through the reports, and tell me the things they have in common."

The entire afternoon wore off like that. Thirteen tapped and swiped across the screen, his audience skimmed the files about them. When he finished, he shut the screen off and faced them. "Now, do you believe what I'm saying?" he said. "We only have to turn our attention towards one thing."

"The Corrector." Five tapped her chin. "Whoever they are, they should be powerful enough to contain all of us in this place."

"Or they don't really exist," Thirteen said. "In other reports about the Founding Chip, there were mentions of a laboratory owning some kind of license over it. If The Corrector is affiliated with the lab, what's to stop them from saying they are one and the same?"

"Why didn't you check your chip?" Seven jerked his chin at Thirteen. "Isn't it about time you stopped hiding your ability from us?"

Five and Slate exchanged knowing glances. So, Seven couldn't keep it to himself either. What was the deal about abilities anyway?

He'd rather not have another mad dash across the city just because people were angry they couldn't trust him, so he sighed and drew out the one thing he hadn't thought of in a long time. His chip glinted against the setting sun on its way to the screen's side. As his chip loaded, he worked on regulating his heartbeat and his expectations.

As soon as the algorithm unlocked all access, he tapped to the most recent and only file inside it. Huge, block letters greeted everyone. No Ability Detected. Silence.

Thirteen didn't need to throw another quip. The evidence spoke for itself. The chip had been away from his system for a long time. It was natural for it to never be updated. It never explained how he developed an ability in the middle of the game or if what he made Seven experience was an ability at all, so he was in the dark as much as everyone.

"I suppose we're clear on quite a few things today," Thirteen said, fishing his chip from the screen and returning it to where it belonged—close to his heart. "Any more questions?"

No one spoke, stilled by the weight of the revelation. Thirteen understood what that felt like, because it was also his only question at this point. What was the purpose of shoving a powerless individual inside a world of people with unnatural abilities? Moreover, what did it mean for someone without an ability to have made it this far?

The pieces making up the mystery now presented themselves. Was this connected to the dreams he had been having lately? If so, how? Something happened to him before the Game. He had a life outside this place. The more uncomfortable question now formed at the back of his head, one that gnawed at the edge of his brain.

Without the Game, who was a boy who called himself Thirteen?