By the end of the day, we had won six matches and were on the verge of making level five, which was when our abilities would really start to come online. We were gelling as a team. I was excited about our synergies once I could access two patrons' boons at once. We hadn’t yet managed to pull off any wall-hacks, but I had some ideas.

We wrapped up for the night. I popped the lid on my coffin and groaned as the uselessness of my lower body flooded back. Two aides assisted me into the wheelchair, and I rode back to the casino in silence, studying my phone.

Our team standing was ok, not great, at the bottom of the top third. The bottom quarter had been cut at the end of today. Tomorrow, the bottom half would go.

I checked my timer: I had a little over 26 hours to make up my mind about Patriona's offer. Right now, I still could earn my way there honestly. On the other hand, she had made some pretty persuasive arguments. There was no reply from Captain Williams about the Galactics. I hadn't really expected to hear from him. He was a busy man, and I probably hadn't crossed his mind since he'd sent me the invite.

I ate something called a barbecue platter for dinner. It was a bizarrely delicious combination of meats and sides. They’d done things with a baked bean I never knew was possible. I went to sleep and woke up excited for the morning matches.

The morning matches were a fiasco. Game after game, we got stomped hard. In our first match, Rose got separated from the rest of the team, unable to help as the opposing team surrounded Sam, taking him down. With our big damage out of the way, they focused on Alpha and me. Alpha went berserker, but it backfired. They lost focus on what was going on, and we were out.

The next match, I messed up my boon timing, invoking a patron I'd invoked too recently. As soon as I did, I knew I'd fucked up. The system slammed us with a smite, a 50% stat debuff for the next hour. That was the end for that match, and unfortunately, the debuff had not worn off yet when our next match started. Worse, our opponents were level 5, and thanks to our humiliating loss, we weren't. They rolled over us like tanks over protesters in Tiananmen Square.

By the next match, we had our stats back, but our morale was shot. Pete summoned us to a grim huddle.

"We'll be fighting down a couple levels," he said. "But we can manage. Let's focus."

"Yeah," Rose snapped, "like on keeping me alive. What was that last game, Colin?"

"Sorry," I said. "I got distracted. I was trying to keep them from killing Sam."

"And Sam, we need lockdown, not damage,” Rose said. "You need to switch to ice. Maybe we can slow them."

"That's not a bad idea," Pete said.

Alpha was shaking their head. "When fighting down a level, the best strategy is to take out the opponents. We're fighting down a man, as well as level 4 to probably level 6. We have to get some of them down hard and fast, or we're dead."

"The next arena is Cauldron of Fire," Pete said. "Do we want to go for the wall hacks?"

"I think so," I said. "Sam and I did some strategizing last night, and I think we can pull it off."

"Just stop with the cheese and fight properly," Rose said.

Pete overruled her. "I'll call targets as soon as we have eyes. Let's get in there and take them down."

At first, it looked like it might work. Cauldron of Fire was the volcano level. Sam and I had found a place where, working together, we could clip through a spur of rock, then get him up elevated over the floor. That ought to give us an advantage. Sam had swapped not to ice, but to wind, with a plan of knocking one or more of the opponents into the lava as quickly as possible.

As they rushed along the spiraling paths toward Rose and Alpha, I invoked Boon of the Coyote Trickster, and we gained a 50% buff to our dodging ability. Sam gusted wind at the enemy team. He knocked one of them backward. She stumbled, screaming, but her teammates caught her. Alpha and Pete tried to take advantage. Pete lobbed an underhanded fast pitch into two of the enemies. It exploded in their faces.

Alpha shadow-stepped behind and garrotted one, but the second pulled a warhammer from nowhere and slammed it into Alpha's chest, knocking them off the platform and into the lava.

I groaned. We were still down a man, and now the three of them focused on Pete. I tossed out the heals I could, but it wasn't enough against the concerted damage.

We lasted a little longer this time and earned a small tidbit of XP, just enough to knock us over into level 5, which would help, but the writing had been on the wall when we lost Alpha.

Pete pulled us all into the same simulated coffee shop where we'd first met. "Look, mates, I know we're distracted and not coordinating well. We've got to pull it together. We've got two hours until our next fight. I thought about running some training, but I think we all need to clear our heads. Everybody, take some time. Get out of your coffin. Get something to eat."

"Getting hooked back up is a pain in the ass," Rose complained.

"That's an order."

"And who put you in charge?" she asked.

Pete went red. I think I had kind of forgotten he wasn't officially our leader, too. "Fine," he snapped. "Then don’t.”

“I’m sick and tired of gamer guys thinking they can tell me what to do," Rose continued.

Alpha loomed at her. "Don't."

"What?"

"Don't take out your insecurities on them."

"That's rich coming from someone who won't even show his face," Rose snapped.

Alpha sighed. There was a shimmer, and then they reached up and pulled off their hood. I stared, along with the rest of the team, at the face under the mask.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

Alpha was female and probably in her early thirties, but it was hard to tell because one whole side of her face was nothing but burn scars. She had long, pale, blonde hair on the other side, framing her in. One of her eyes was permanently closed, a mass of burn and scar tissue.

Rose stared. "What the hell?"

"This is my real face," Alpha said. "Feel free to ask the system to verify I'm not pulling bullshit on you. My name is Meg Hunt, and I've been doing competitive gaming since burn rehab.” She gestured at her face. "This is a long story, and it doesn't matter. Suffice it to say, I started hiding my face about fifteen years ago, and then it turned out to be not a bad plan for a woman gamer anyway. But I'm done with that." She looked at each of us intently. "I am getting up there to Ganymede. And if that means I have to drag the rest of your sorry asses along with me, so be it," she turned to Rose. "So stow it with your put-upon-gamer-girl act. I was getting catcalls in vent back when you were still playing Minecraft."

Rose looked furious. Then she stopped whatever it was she was going to say. After a moment, she nodded. "I'll be back in an hour," she said, and disappeared.

Alpha followed suit, followed by Sam and Pete, leaving me alone.

I thought about just staying here. There was nothing for me out there.

I got a message popup. [Candidate Trevelyan, you have a visitor here.]

“Huh?” Who wanted to see me? I activated the release latch on my coffin and sat up.

A couple of aides were already waiting for me. They helped me into my chair, and I wheeled out of the hangar and onto the airstrip. It was still bustling, even though most of the gamers were inside their huts. I looked around but didn't see my teammates. This airstrip was pretty big, and they could be at the far end of it.

A man in a dress uniform was coming toward me. As he got closer, I recognized him. It was Colonel Twofeather. He approached me, stopping right in front of my wheelchair. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to salute or not, so I kept my hands in my lap.

"You're Colin Trev, aren't you?" he said. "I wanted to speak with you. The system notified me you were out of your coffin.”

I was utterly shocked. Not just that he knew my name, but that he wanted to talk to me. "Uh, yes, Colonel. What can I do for you?"

"Might be what I can do for you," he said. "Got a note from my grandson asking me to make time to talk to you today. He said you've got questions about the Galactics. He thought it'd be better to answer them in person. Shall we go for a walk? How long you got?"

"Uh, 45 minutes or so until my next match."

"All right, then. Come along." The colonel set off. I followed him, my chair easily keeping up with his strides. I couldn't help being jealous. He had been regenerated by the system, just as I wanted to be. "What kind of answers can I give you?"

"I just..." I struggled to find the words. I was a little in awe of the colonel, actually. He was one of the human heroes who had been taken from Earth with no warning and then fought to win the contest for our reality engine. "I, um, well... Is there..." I paused, backtracked, and said, "Are they really all assholes, sir?"

The colonel laughed. "Well, I haven't met every alien out there in the galaxy, and there have been some decent sorts, but on the whole, yes, they are assholes. They have spent thousands of years putting together a system built on exploiting more primitive races, stealing their inheritance from them, and saddling them with a load of debt slavery. Their contracts are written in the sort of sideways lawyer-ese that would make a snake slither away in horror, and the big galactic conglomerates will sell their mother into slavery if it makes them a couple extra soul coin. Now I admit I'm biased, but that's the way I see it."

"Even though they saved your life?"

Colonel Twofeather shrugged. "That was incidental to their plans, not an intended consequence. They also kidnapped my 11-year-old granddaughter and tried to force her into a life of debt slavery. I'm not too fond about that, even if it is working out all right at the moment."

Of course, that was the answer that I would have expected from him and anyone else involved in this operation. I didn't know how to ask what else. Colonel Twofeather's eyes narrowed.

"Come with me, son." He set off down the flight line, and I turned my chair to follow. We passed the rows and rows of Conex trailers, the parked SUVs and buses waiting for their loads of passengers, the soldiers bustling around. We got out past the section where the trailers were, right over to the helicopter that was still spinning its blades. The Colonel stepped up to the door in the front. A minute later, a pair of airmen came out. They lifted me out of my chair and into the big side door of the chopper.

"Where are we going?" I shouted at the Colonel as the airmen strapped me in and gave me a pair of headphones. I slipped them on, blocking out some of the noise. The headphones were an intercom. When the Colonel answered, I could hear him perfectly well.

"Thought I'd give you a little perspective on this, son." He settled back, and a moment later we were airborne. I peered out the window. The airstrip below us shrank quickly. The Conex trailers looked like little Lego bricks left scattered about by some kid who's been sent off to bed.

We flew off north, passing over rolling hills of sage and scrubby trees. Then popped over a small ridge. I gasped. A starport in front of us. Dozens, maybe a hundred, shiny metal cans rose from the desert, each about six stories high and thirty feet across. They were blunt, like soup cans, because they didn't need to be aerodynamic. Not with anti-grav to get them out of the atmosphere.

Each rested on an enormous concrete pad. I could see more pads being constructed a little ways away. Whole crews of workers setting foundations and pouring the concrete. A boat of lorries came crawling toward one of the cans the Colonel pointed.

"That one's going up in tomorrow. I know, because I'll be on it. Most of the rest of these will be waiting until next month for our next scheduled load. By then, Air Marshal Hatfield's group will have reached Ganymede and their cans come back for another load. We're sending hundreds of these up every time. Loaded with people or supplies or gear. This is the single most important endeavor the human race has ever embarked on. This is going to determine our future. I think it's a bright one. You know why?"

He didn't wait for me to answer. "We got the anti-grav off of the aliens. SpaceX had their starships converted to use it in a week. We got a reactionless drive, too. Some of our brainy boys at JPL took a look and said, 'Who designed this?' and started improving on it. You know why the aliens are here on Earth recruiting as heavily as they are?"

"Because we Earthlings get unique classes," I said promptly.

Colonel Twofeather shook his head. "Nope. Wrong answer. Kronos can hand out those classes to anyone he wants, and he's been offering them to the aliens with a few strings attached, of course. Nope. They're here on Earth because we are the first technologically advanced species they've come across in a couple thousand years. The last one, the Grignarians, they nearly wiped out. The tentacle-faces fought back hard and they are still ostracized by the rest of the galaxy. They call them soulless abominations and keep them on the outskirts. We're making inroads with them.”

He scratched his head, his long braids quivering. I found myself studying his intent dark face. “Anyway. All this alien tech that seems like super weapons to you, it comes from the reality engines. The big companies, Proxima and the others, they don't innovate, they don't create. They're leeches upholding a system that's been running for thousands of years, terrified of something coming along to upset the apple cart. Well, here we are. Apple cart upset. And they aren’t going to take that lying down. Colin, when my grandson told me about his plan to recruit gamers like you to help out, I was a little skeptical. I'm career US Army myself, and I thought that’s what we'd need. But I'm coming around to his point of view. So I'm going to tell it to you straight. We need you, but only if you want to be here, and only if you earn it. So you want the easy way out? Take that Proxima contract. I think you'll regret it, but it's your choice."

I felt myself flush. "So you do know about it."

"You think we'd let those recruiters near our people without listening in? Sure we know about it. It's up to you to make the decision, though. I got strong-armed into a contract I didn't like too much myself. It's not going to happen to the rest of us."

"Then why make me go through all this gaming if you want me?"

"Because I've got to know you've got what it takes," he snapped. "If my grandkids' lives are going to be in your hands, I want to be damn sure you're the best of the best. I looked things over. You're not out of this competition yet.”

"I’m pretty sure my team thinks we are."

"Then you'd better get down there and convince them otherwise," Colonel Twofeather said. "Now I've got a meeting to go to and you've got a tournament to win. See you on Ganymede."