Chapter 73

I paused. I think we all paused. I wanted to pounce on him as he dropped, but I had depleted my own AGILITY dodging his shots. The three of us watched in confusion as he hung from a pipe just below the lip of the cone. Then he let go, dropped another few feet. We were arrayed below him, not that far now. I poised to defend myself, wondering what his game was now. Now that his BEAM was exhausted, did he want to come after me personally? What would Lauren and Katya do? Would they just race up past him on either side and claim the safe zone? Would they ally with me? Would they make the strategic decision to engage him now and try and remove him from later rounds?

As I contemplated the possibility of them just climbing up past him on either side, my eyes flicked to the left and right of Lance. I had to double take. There were no pipes sticking from the walls to either side of him. In fact, there were no pipes to be seen anywhere above the light line, which was rapidly approaching my heels as I crouched on my pipe, sword held in defense, left hand doing what it could to hold onto my poor perch. The only pipes left that would reach to the cone, that would give us a path up, were a narrow, straggling path directly below Lance. My eyes widened with horror, I knew his game now.

I screamed, "NO!" but too late.

Lance employed CUT, his level 3 CUT erasing the pipes between him and us. I leaped to my feet as he propelled himself back up to the cone, using CUT to sever each pipe that remained along the way.

The pipes shattered and fell. They plunged to the earth, disappearing as the shrank out of view. I saw the path disappearing in front of me, the only way to the top being destroyed. The light line was at my feet, and there was no time left.

The three of us were stranded, no way to ascend, and the light line was on us. We had seconds to act. But there was no action to take.

The light line continued to creep up as we looked around, desperate for a route up. It was 15 feet away, more than we could jump, any of us. My AGILITY might have allowed me to get there, but it was exhausted. I couldn't dare try to use it in case of failure; the result would be a long fall to the ground. The crowd noise swelled with anticipation, a cacophony of excitement and dread.

Mario's voice boomed over the amplifiers, "Katya, Lauren, Tiberius, Gideon, ten seconds remain!"

I glanced down at my feet in panic; the light line was touching my heel. The thought of using AGILITY in the final second crossed my mind—risking death or maiming to stay in the Choosing. If I succeeded, it would only be me and Lance in the next round. My odds would never have been better. For now, I searched for an option.

Idiot thoughts flicked through my brain: we could make a human ladder, stand on each other's shoulders... but then only the one on top would have a chance, and all that while Lance waited above us with his CUT ready to knock us from the tower.

Lauren was a statue. I don't know if she had given up, or if she was thinking. Whatever the case, she would not dishonor herself with emotion. She wouldn't give Lance the satisfaction. Gideon slammed an angry fist into the wall of the tower. Katya kept moving, head tilting and bobbing like a birds as she sought any option.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

“Nine seconds!”

I looked around, up, down, everywhere. There had to be something. Anything.

“Eight seconds.”

By the Oracle, the frustration was enough to drown in. To lose, now, to Lance, like this. To lose while he got to sit back and watch the fruits of his plot.

"Seven seconds!"

Movement to the right caught my eye. Gideon was airborne. He was leaping up to something. He's seen something we hadn't. He snatched a pipe, swinging up with a grace that belied his brute strength. He hit the cone, and Lance spun to face him.

"Six seconds!"

We saw it then—a nub of a pipe, barely a handhold. We had missed it in our panic.

"Five seconds!"

Katya, Lauren, and I raced for the pipe, scrambling over the shredded pipes below us. I hated to admit it, but Lance's strategy had been utter genius. All the time we thought he had been missing, he had been plotting our defeat. I had underestimated him, seen him as a dumb athlete, a handsome idiot. How stupid of me.

"Four seconds!"

We were moving as fast as we could, jostling each other in the desperate scramble. There was no allegiance here, only survival.

"Three seconds!"

We weren't close enough. It was too far.

"Two seconds!"

Shit, this was it. We all knew it. I crouched, tensed, daring not to use AGILITY, putting everything I had into firing those suit muscles. Katya and Lauren, either side of me, did the same.

"One second!"

We leapt, all three of us airborne. The pipe was close, but there was only enough room for one hand, one body. As we soared through the air, our fates hung in the balance, a split second from elimination.

In that heart-stopping moment, I reached out, my hand straining for the pipe. Katya and Lauren's hands shot out beside mine, all three of us fighting for that single chance to stay in the Choosing. The world seemed to slow as we flew toward our uncertain future

I mentioned earlier about how there would be a sorry tale attached to my ambition... If you're reading this, whenever you are, you may already know me, know my story. If you do, then what comes next may not surprise you. But if all you know of Tiberius is what you've read so far, you may be disappointed.

I want to tell you what happened next was a reflex. I want to believe that myself, and to be truthful, I don't know that the contrary is definitely true either. But I know what I did later in life...

As we each soared towards the pipe, our forms were converging. A collision was inevitable, a collision that would tangle us all, ruin our momentums, certainly spoil our chance to get to the next round, and very likely send one or more of us spinning to the ground 300 feet below. You need to understand we were about to have a mid-air collision.

I braced for impact. But now my instinct to brace for impact was intimately tied to an instinct to flex my SHIELD. My level 2 SHIELD. As we struck each other, my SHIELD pulsed, driving their bodies away from me.

My hand, and my hand alone, found the nub of pipe jutting from the wall. The recoil from my SHIELD sent them hurtling form me. Katya hit the wall itself, sliding down it, but Lauren... Lauren arced into the air, away from the tower, into open space where only 300 feet of nothing stood between her and the ground.