“Stop. Laughing.”

V’s laughter stopped, his lips pressing tight as he attempted to hold a straight face. It didn’t work, and a moment later, laughter was erupting out of him once again. “This is… quite the challenge,” he snorted.

Emilia would have glowered at him, but the brief moment of attention she had given him was already causing her problems. “Shut. Up.” she hissed instead, a frown of concentration marring her face as she attempted to beat the stupid machine—the stupid game—before her.

Out of all the skills and talents and interests she had, the one the labyrinth had pulled on to create this challenge was both one of the easiest and the most annoying. No one would be dying in this section of the labyrinth, and if anything, the silly joy of the challenge had lightened nearly all their moods.

Still, this was ridiculous.

Emilia’s hand darted forward to grab a ball as it shot out of the winding graviplex track. She dropped the ball back into the top of the contraption, the heavy ball clunking before it began to roll back down the track. Her hand shot back down to catch the next ball falling out of the machine.

The next fell out of a different hole.

The next another hole.

The next the same as the last, barely a second between the drops.

She missed one, the ball falling out of a hole she hadn’t noticed before and into the second, painfully slow track. Two more places to watch for falling balls now, so she could win.

How was she—or any of the children who were diligently playing alongside her at their own ball tracks—supposed to win? Emilia had no idea. She could only guess that there was a time she had to beat—probably a personal best, or whatever the labyrinth thought was a good minimum time, given her reduced abilities.

Would something happen to indicate someone had passed the challenge? Were the children aiming to beat the same time as her, or some time designed specifically for their little arms and muscles. Their own ball tracks were noticeably simpler than her own disaster of twisting metal and a half dozen holes, so it made sense that their goal would also be easier to achieve.

Did everyone need to complete? Emilia hoped not. Only about half of their group was competing now, a mixture of children too young and children too afraid or downcast sitting it out with V.

“I can’t believe you used to be obsessed with this game,” the other visitor said, his voice too close behind her. His warmth echoed through her, his loose clothing brushing over her own and sending a shiver she didn’t need through her. “I’ve never seen someone actual play graviplex before,” he added, his voice a whisper over her ear.

“V,” she hissed, wishing she could push him away or kick him without making the situation worse. They’d been at this so long already, and while the failures and restarts of the children had confirmed that they could try to beat the challenge at least a few times, Emilia’s arms were already aching. Even the hand tucked diligently behind her back, as per official regulations, was beginning to ache.

Stupid level-300 body. The labyrinth had better have set a more reasonable goal for the challenge, because there was no way she was making it anywhere close to her personal best in this body. Her muscles screamed with strain. Her eyes were watering. She needed to blink. Blinking took concentration, and all of her focus was currently on the balls.

Falling. Catching. Dropping. Falling. Around and around, in a torturous loop that would not end.

The room rumbled, just as sudden and ominous as the first few times it had done so. Nearby, the older children grumbled in complaint while the younger ones bounced excitedly. Emilia, personally, wanted to die. Her machine already had over a dozen potential routes for the balls to take, chance and gravity and the levers each ball bounced against leading the balls from route to route until they fell out fuck knew where.

The arrays beneath each of the machines began to glow, aether so powerful it froze the balls in place shuddering through the room. Whatever the machines were made of began to vibrate, the dark grey material transitioning into a hot red that bent and shifted until a new, more complicated maze came into existence.

“Fuck…” Emilia sighed as the aether let go—settled back into itself—and the balls began to fall again.

Her feet were moving before she gave conscious thought to it, years of training to play in graviplex competitions during compulsory schooling filling her muscles. Around, skid, step step step and grab. Drop. Drop more. Faster. Always faster. You could never be fast enough. Don’t drop the ball too soon. Don’t hold on to it too long. Know your limits, know your body and believe in it.

This wasn’t her body, and yet it was. This was, more or less, the body of her youth. There were slight differences, but those were mostly etched across her face. Younger, cuter, smaller. Her features were pulled different, wider, more delicate than they’d been since she was a child, but this was her body. The height and reach, the size of everything important; this was the her of her teens and 20s.

This was the her who had competed across Baalphoria in this silly game. These were the muscles and proportions she had trained with, and even if she was weaker and slower, at least she wasn’t overreaching. She wasn’t dropping too late or scraping too long fingers over the game. Had she been in her current body, she would have been worse off, her mind unable to reconcile memory with everything being just a touch larger.

Emilia hadn’t even touched a machine since one drunken night at a bar during the war. It was a good memory, if also filled with pain and sadness. Laughter and smiles, her and her ex’s hands, although they hadn’t yet been dating, flying over their respective machines. Hot and angry and happy, Nettie cheering her on from the side while Charles watched her with doe eyes and James watched his twin like he was the stupidest man in existence. Their supports in the corner, awkward and tired and aware that their lives could burn out at any moment. Naomi trying to restore the energy of their youngest member, complaining in broken Baalphorian that they hated the noise of the machines, the smell of booze and sting of drugs drifting through the air.

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Halen had been there, too. Their voluntary ref, a surprise given he had played alongside her in compulsory school as well—had been almost as good as Emilia, no less. He could have competed that night, there were enough machines in that place. Why were there so many? Emilia had no idea. It was such a strange, niche game that nearly three decades on, it still struck her as odd that the bar had had a half dozen of them.

This had been early in the war. Before Alliance Ridge was even a thought through their heads. Before more than military brass knew of their unit’s skill. Before Seven had joined, young and nervous. Before Boyd and the drama that all that had been. Before they had become so closely associated with The Black Knot or the de la Rues.

It had just been their small group, stuck together because one person had said it was a good idea—had insisted that their Free Colony would not be sending their strongest support unless this specific group was formed. The core of it, anyways. Most of the supports, Halen and Nettie had been acquired at random—more or less. Then everyone else had come at random as well.

Almost everyone, but that particular person didn’t join until later—until the war had become so terrible that their government could no longer insist that, distant as their home was from Baalphoria and the monsters of war, they had no need to send help.

Emilia’s knee collided with the corner of the machine as she reached low to grab the escaping ball. If it fell out of the machine—rolled into the inaccessible container of lost balls—she had no idea what would happen. In a normal game, you continued on, hoping your opponents would lose all their balls before you, the goal of the game being to last the longest. Lose a ball, lose a life.

Of course, there was strategy in losing a ball—in giving yourself space to breathe and hoping that space was enough to make up for the lost ball. Such things had been seen as weak during her years of competition, although the few times she’d watched more recent, university and professional level games, that stigma didn’t seem to exist.

Whether viewing it as a show of weakness was something that had existed at all levels before the war or just at the compulsory school level, Emilia had no idea. Her Censor had looked it up, but she’d refused to read it—refused to learn if she and the other competitors had just been being ridiculous teens or not. Those memories, happy and free, didn’t deserve to be marred by the strain of reality and age.

She had considered taking the sport back up when she first started at Astrapan. It had felt too hard, too risky to the joy of playing during her youth. It also would have been too obvious. People didn’t pop out of nowhere being a master of this game. Niche and silly, the greatest players had played since childhood, just like she had.

They’d had a machine at her first home, too complicated for any of their little hands. Someone had donated it, probably thinking it would suit the children well. There had been a few of them who had obsessed over mastering it. None of them ever had, and when she’d returned to that place in her 30s, wondering if her skills were now enough, it had been gone.

Given away. Scrapped. None of the adults, with their insincere smiles and dead eyes, had any idea or care. All they had cared about was her money—her and her family’s fame. Once, she might have donated, hoping the money would make that place a little kinder—a little warmer. Olivier, of all people, had talked her out of it.

“There are better ways to make a difference for those children, if you wish to do so,” he had said, after overhearing her talk about it. A stack of information about those better ways had slotted itself into her before he walked away. It had been weird, interacting with the man after her case was over, after they had stopped having sex, after all the regret of those final moments between them.

Well, final moments until she’d shown back up in his life, laughing and high and trying to enjoy her gap decade. It had been in those years when she hadn’t been able to read him. Did he hate her? He had certainly kept his distance, as though even looking at her were unpleasant—as though the sight of her were something to be avoided at all costs.

Then the war had come and she hadn’t known what to think. He had hated her ex and seemed to once again like her. He had joined the war for her. He had almost died keeping her safe.

A ball dropped into the slow track, and Emilia cursed herself for letting her mind be distracted by Olivier. The man was too fucking distracting, popping up in her mind too easily.

“Should have dropped a ball earlier,” she muttered as a new ball slid into the fray of a dozen balls, then another.

Fourteen balls. One was slowly following the bottom track, bumping and stalling on its way to falling. She should have timed how long the track took before more balls dropped into the game, now she was stuck watching it from the corner of her eye. The bottom penalty track was always the worst. Too slow. Emilia had never been good with slow. She had loved this game because it was always fast, shifting, a single moment of distraction a recipe for disaster.

It calmed her brain, the single-minded focus of it. Hands and feet and eyes shifting in perfect unison. Peripheral vision guiding your way because a moment of looking away was the end.

Don’t look away.

Don’t get distracted.

Just grab and drop.

Don’t get too caught up in timing, not until you have the machine mastered. Emilia had seen competitors fall out because they tried to spread the drop of balls, one ball lingering in their hand before they dropped it, only for them to miss another ball as it exited the track.

Or worse, to fuck up and reach with their dead hand. There was nothing holding it behind their backs but force of will. Instincts left behind. Don’t move that hand. Don’t let your instinct to grab the ball, no matter what, cost you the game.

Don’t—

The arrays beneath the machines began to glow again, and Emilia almost screamed. There was no way the labyrinth could expect her to keep going. Her clothes were heavy with sweat, her limbs damp and sticky, armpits chaffing, which, seriously? Who had designed her {Blood Armour} to not protect her from chaffing? Given where the bands fell on the thighs, she was pretty sure she was going to chaff there too, which was objectively terrible.

⸂Hey! Look!⸃ one of the children yelled, their voice scratchy and high in a way that implied they could have been a preteen boy or a young girl.

Even with the balls once again frozen in time and place, Emilia didn’t dare look away from the machine. It wasn’t until V’s hand wrapped around her own, still poised to reach for the next ball, that Emilia realized the game was over.

“Emilia,” he said quietly, head tilted forward to rest against the back of hers, “it’s over. You did it.”

“Oh…” she breathed out, letting her shaky arms fall. Her eyes squeezed closed, and she leaned back into the other visitor. “That’s good. Can I rest now?”

Behind her, V huffed before rearranging them so she was tucked into his chest. “Yeah. You can rest for a bit.”