Something shifted behind him. He turned to see Five and the others coming to and stumbling on their way up. Earlier, he woke up sprawled on his side, soaked in blood. His memories were jumbled at best, and nonexistent at worst. The first thing he noticed when he opened his eyes was Eighteen's mangled body, a knife sticking up her neck. Blood had seeped out of multiple gashes all over. Did...he do that?

He tuned out the ringing remaining in his ears, crawling towards the table and gripping the rim. Everything ached, but he hefted his elbows onto the surface and pulled the rest of him up. He slumped all over the smooth surface only to realize the entire spread was another screen. Different blocks bearing strange symbols littered the table-screen in various regions. It took him a bit longer to learn how to navigate, and once he did, he set out to solve the most immediate problem at hand.

When the familiar landscape of codes and syntax flashed into the middle screen, it took him a few seconds to disable the jammer. A simple code, but one leeching in the Founding Chip's mainframe. If he could access it through the code, build off what Eighteen started...

A stool's leg grated against the floor, and a shadow fell over him. He looked up to see Five glaring down. "Sit down," she instructed. "You look like shit."

Thirteen would have rolled his eyes if his head wasn't already spinning. The headache plaguing him since forever never relented either. His vision blurred and sharpened at odd intervals. And yes, he still kneeled on the floor as if praying to the digital gods. He would have refused Five's help and the seat, but hands gripped his arms and hauled him backwards. Wh—

"Sit still while we check your injuries," Seven said, even though he wasn't too happy about it. "You could still die, you know. That concussion isn't going to solve itself."

He coughed, wiping the corner of his lips with his hand before anyone could make a big deal out of it. "And we're not getting out of here if you keep holding me back," he said. "I'm close to the mainframe. A few more seconds."

"Have you checked the database yet?" Eight dropped next to the stool and propped herself on the spot where the touch-panel ended. "Normally, that's what you're gearing for. I repeat, normally."

Thirteen also normally thought he couldn't function without slotting a chip in the reader, and that the time-manipulating trick he had been doing wasn't an ability. His Founding Chip never touched his flesh since he removed it, yet he still developed a unique system in his body. Was it possible for an ability to manifest naturally, even without the Founding Chip? If The Corrector was aware of Thirteen's chip being faulty, were they aware of the possibility an ability could form without it?

He shrugged, wincing when a wave of pain washed over him. Did he break something in that area? When? "I'm fine," he said. His head thought otherwise, dropping forward. He almost hit the glass and cracked it, but Five's hand zipped in his periphery and caught him by the forehead.

"I'm fine," he mumbled, waving Five off him. "Let me just get the..."

His hands slipped across the panel. It must have spelled the right combination because the screens lit up, startling everyone. A voice boomed from the speakers hidden in the walls, and his gaze landed on a moving figure in all three divisions of the wide screen.

Greetings, winner of the Game! We at Primeva Labs congratulate you for showing your valor, wits, and strength throughout the entire process. From the section counters to the elimination of your previous comrades, you have done an exemplary task in all of them.

Thirteen pushed off Five and gripped the table's edge, staring up at a moving image of a middle-aged man in an intelligent, gray suit. His hair sat combed and gelled away from his face. Even digitization couldn't erase the three wrinkles on his forehead and several freckles on his wrinkled cheeks. A graying mustache settled on his upper lip, melting into a goatee and bushy sideburns. Behind him glowed the familiar logo of Primeva Laboraties—a hexagon with intricate geometric lines likening it into a blooming flower.

We have been closely observing your progress, and we will not reward you with your most awaited promise. You will see a red button appear in the corner of the screen. Press that, and you will gain access to the exit. We will be waiting, and we look forward to fruitful collaborations with you. I am The Corrector, and Primeva Labs awaits your willful cooperation.

The image flickered off, the red button nowhere to be found. Thirteen momentarily forgot the sticky blood plastering his clothes to his back or the steady trail dripping down his back. It was never about getting out. Winning wasn't going to get them their freedom. The Corrector would retrieve them and force them to be part of something else. Willful cooperation? Thirteen would bet his limbs they would have their memory erased the moment Primeva got their hands on the survivors. Then, Thirteen's life would start anew. If The Corrector wasn't satisfied, he could end up in yet another Game. In fact, was this his first and only Game, or had this been his fiftieth? He would never know. Unless...

Ignoring Five's stern tongue-clicking, he swept his hands across the table to bring back the keys. His eyes moved across the screens as he purged the video and its contents down the void, but keeping the path in mind. How he wished he still had his portable screen. The algorithm he built there could have cracked this thing within minutes.

But as he moved through the interface, it appeared he didn't need to hack anything. This was the overseer's command center. No wonder Eighteen found this with ease. She was given the clearance Thirteen and his hunk of scraps weren't. He went through the surface level files first, scanning the blocks of text for as long as his fading vision allowed. The others drew closer, similarly intrigued.

As they read in silence, everything slowly became clear. Primeva Labs had been the leading institution after the second World War—whatever that was. The lab was founded under the guidance of someone who was known as The Corrector in the early 1950s, in the outskirts of Austria...wherever that was. Under The Corrector's guidance, the institution flourished in the fields of bioengineering and mechanical innovation, leading in several countries as a manufacturer and the patent holder for various technological advancements related to the health, agriculture, environment, security, research, and government sectors.

Going in deeper, Thirteen pulled out various files showing diagrams of gadgets and inventions, a big, red Classified printed all over them. Some resembled the final make of the Founding Chip, with the first models dating as far back as the 1940s, ten years before Primeva's supposed founding.

Thirteen swiped to the next bunch, this time, witnessing how the War shaped Primeva to what it was now. Faded, black-and-white images of rows upon rows of beds and creepy, frowning nurses populated the archive, each one more depressive than the last. The images started with small children and grown adults populating the beds, until the latter ones finished with all beds vacated.

The scanned, handwritten reports revealed that human experimentation had always been prevalent in the recesses of society. One just had to look over the right corners and have the tenacity to survive even under fire. What would the rest of the world do to Primeva if this information got out? Then again, if The Corrector wanted to hide it that much, why bother uploading it into a shared network available for its smallest worker? The years made them cocky, and Thirteen ought to make use of that eventually.

The next files revealed the ultimate purpose of the endless trials to get the Founding Chip operational. War would always be around. Humans were quarrelsome creatures, and it wouldn't be too long before another large-scale conflict broke out. Thus, countries scrambled to perfect their military and armament industries.

That was the niche Primeva aimed to dominate. With successful bioengineering of the Founding Chip, they could mass-produce soldiers. If their vision held, soon, even some kids in the slums could get their hands on a chip and gain abilities. Then, there was no need to use big guns, explosive missiles, and endless hunk of metal that polluted the environment. They would have solved overpopulation too.

It was such a novel idea that the next images showed The Corrector standing beside stiff, uniformed men and women, shaking hands, bearing bouquets of flowers, and smiling at them with the promise of a safer and brighter future.

The Game, then, was The Corrector's ploy to get the world governments to believe in what he was trying to do. In gathering all of the winners of the previous trials, he could form his own trained platoon of the most perfect soldiers. The plan was to "loan" these soldiers across the globe.

Thirteen tapped a few more keys, skipping through the rest of the details. If he could make a copy of these elsewhere...

He bit the inside of his cheek and pushed forward. What else could he find? He switched interfaces and came upon a series of files named TRIAL - 01923XXXXX. He accessed it, and out came more interfaces, each one labeled a different letter. One specific file caught his eyes, and he opened the one labeled M. More numbers appeared. They increased starting from the hundreds. He clicked the first one he found, and Five's face appeared on the screen.

Five yelped, shocked to see herself there. "What the hell is that?"

"Your record, apparently." Thirteen scrolled through the blocks of text, reading through the trivial details about her. He settled on the lowest niche on the first page labeled Family. Words blinked back at them, no doubt names. Nothing else. They existed, at least. None of them came out of nothing. At least, The Corrector wasn't making tiny humans out of jelly or something. And if they have names, they could be found. One particular detail caught his eye. Her place of origin was a place called The United Kingdom. There were still kingdoms? Really?

"Would you want to see yours?" Thirteen turned to the others who stared at Five's face as if it was a saint they didn't recognize. "I can pull up the records."

Soon, they clambered to be beside Thirteen as he unlocked and let them read their own files. When Eight stepped back, knowing she was of Korean descent, she jerked her chin towards Thirteen. "Pull up yours," she said. "No need to have secrets between us."

He obliged, finding it at the very end. A boy with dark curls, honey-colored eyes, and scrawny face stared back at him. He resembled the woman in his dreams, cementing his relationship to her to be biological. Slowly, he scrolled through the pages. He was from a place called Spain, and his family's names were...Jaime Halcon Escriva and Teresa Aragones Vargas.

"What do you think about everything you've read?" Thirteen ventured, glancing at Five. With her being the most altruistic and righteous among them, it would be interesting to hear her side. "What should be our next course of action?"

"We have to find The Corrector and put a stop to this madness." She delivered quite passionately. "None of this sounds right, even if it didn't happen to us."

"But it did," Seven answered. "And to many others all over the world. We can't let them get away with that, can we?"

"Think about how much time of our lives was wasted in this crap?" Thirteen added. "We can just find The Corrector, make him pay for what he did to us, find our families, and start anew. After all, we promised not to get involved with each other after all this."

A wave of uncertainty rippled across the group. Thirteen turned back to the screen, pretending to have not noticed it. Why would they turn back on what they agreed on now? It wasn't as if they became something more than acquaintances with benefits over the course of a few days. Last week alone, the majority of them wanted to saw his head off.

"How are we supposed to find The Corrector?" Sixteen said. "The only lead we have is a face, and I doubt that even if we find the likeness of the symbol they'd let us stroll away from here and inside their lobby."

Thirteen bobbed his head. "And I doubt they want these documents to leave this place either, so either Primeva Labs is a covert company, or the departments handling the trials and the iterations of the Game are not public knowledge," he said. "They won't be easy to find, but...let me try this."

He clacked away at the keys, going back to the Trials. He scrolled to the very bottom of the sections, and a single file was named differently. Trial X. Just that. He accessed it, and the face of a young girl popped up. Blond hair, bright blue eyes, and pale skin flecked with freckles. She could be anyone in the vast world, but a single name was attributed to her.

"Born in Annemasse, France as the only daughter of a business tycoon, Jacques Shaw II. Both vanished from the public eye in the early 1990s," Thirteen read aloud. "The father's affiliations include Shaw Securities, Shaw & Hobbes Accounting Firm, Shaw & Hobbes Law—the list goes on—until..." he paused to grant emphasis and suspense to the next one. "Primeva Laboratories."

"Do you think she is connected to The Corrector?" Slate asked.

"She's probably the first trial," Thirteen answered. "The very first."

Five inclined her head at the screen. "Do you think she's alive?" she said. "If she's the first trial under Primeva, she might be a pile of ashes now."

"Or if she exists, we can find her and force her to lead us straight to the Corrector," Thirteen said. "If she's dead, then we will find another way inside without her."

He rubbed his chin, his fingers coming up with dull red streaks. Blood. "I'm honestly curious about all of this," he said. "There are tons of questions to answer."

Five snorted. "Knowing you, you won't be able to sleep at night without your beloved answers."

"Indeed," Thirteen replied. "What else is new?"

They all chuckled, each one probably lost in the multitude of memories and the irony of it all. Thirteen, however, didn't feel like laughing. He had gained what he and his mother wished for the most, but would it matter if he found her again? Would she recognize him, or was his life before this died off with him the first time?

It didn't matter, though. Now, it was his turn. He had time, and after the years spent in unknown realities and daunting fantasies, he'd use that for himself. He'd use it to go home.