...The virtual gong sounded, echoing over the city, so loud it rattled the cement walls of the small building I crouched inside.

It was time.

Reflexively, my hand tightened around the grip of my pulse bow, so hard that my fingernails bit into my palm. I could already hear shots being fired close by, which made me itch to enter the fray.

I pushed the thought aside. Some of the deadliest killers in the galaxy were competing in this death match. In order to survive, I needed to be smart and that meant hiding until their initial numbers thinned. Once that had happened, then I could stalk the stragglers, taking them out one by one.

A heat grenade—its boxy shape making it unmistakable—sailed through one of the building’s open windows, clinking off the wall and landing beside me. I froze for a split second and then dashed for the door, hearing a roar and feeling the air suddenly boil behind me. The blast pushed me forward out of the building. Somehow, my mesh bodysuit insulated me from the worst of it, and I managed to keep my feet underneath me as sprinted into the open.

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Exposed now, caught in between the crumbling structures that made up the Azar Arena, I ran erratically to avoid the bullets and energy beams that flashed around me, tearing up the ground wherever they hit and making my heart race faster than my feet. I ducked into a nearby highrise that was just a steel frame but at least it provided some protection. Inside, there were a series of crisscrossing metal ramps, and I charged up one as fast as I could. If I got higher in the building, I could pick off some of the people who were firing at me.

The walkway I sprinted along was mottled with rust but still popped pings in answer to my steel-shod heels. For some reason I took heart in the sound, thinking of hail striking the roof of the factory where I had been forced to spend so many years. The taskmasters there hadn’t managed to kill me and neither would this.

I ducked under a low hanging ramp and—

shzzzzzt