Daily Log—3:32 AM, 03/09/2094
Location: Krylarian Walled City, New Angeles, California
User ID: S3aDrake
I still dream about him sometimes.
They say time heals all wounds, but no matter how many days pass me by, the memory of him refuses to dim. After three years, I can picture him as clearly as if I saw him yesterday. Sometimes, I’m desperate to remember. Sometimes, all I want is to forget.
It’s never quiet in my dreams. I can hear laughter from the next room. Addie and Grant are pushing and shoving, shrieking at the top of their lungs, and Law is speaking to me, his voice pitched low as he leans in close to my ear. I can’t tell what he’s saying, but I don’t really care—his voice is soft and low and deep, and I’m pretty sure I’d give anything to hear him speak to me like that again.
It’s quiet now. So quiet that at night, I can hear the moans of the old metal shifting. When I can’t sleep, I don’t bother to get out of bed before I light up—there’s no one here who’s bothered, no one here who can’t stand the smell. The busted old fire alarm in the corner hasn’t worked in years, anyway. Now I just lie here and smoke in nothing but my boxer briefs, my comforter pushed off to the side, and I listen to the buzz of cicadas outside my boarded-up window.
Sometimes, on nights like these, I sit in my bed with my gun in my lap. I take it apart, piece by piece. Clean it. Put it back together. Then again. Again and again, just like they taught us to do when I was still with the Sparrows. Old habits die hard, and all that. When I’m done, I stare and try to imagine what it would feel like to put the barrel in my mouth.
I wonder what will give out first—my lungs or my liver or my will to keep on kicking. I run my finger over the trigger and I think about Law, who couldn’t stand the smell of smoke. I pick up my burner phone, then put it down again. I stare at it, hoping it will ring, but it stays still and dark and quiet.
I lie back and stare at the ceiling, tracing the water stains with my eyes and trying to find shapes in the splotches. My cigarette is close to burning out—I know there’ll be no more sleep for me tonight. I swing my legs over the edge of the bed.
On nights like this, I feel years—decades, eons—older than my thirty-four years. My joints ache when I move, and my knees are locked up. Pandora X is high-risk and high-contact—the game might be augmented reality, but the effects on the body are very real, and audiences like seeing their champions batted around. Over my time in the game, I broke more bones and tore more ligaments than most street fighters I know, and even three years on the outside haven’t been enough to heal the damage.
I stand with a groan, joints popping as I stretch my arms over my head. My brain is buzzing in my skull—that dumb kid put thoughts in my head, memories that I’ve spent years running from. She was a wisp of a thing, tiny and underfed, with a shock of white hair and round, dark eyes too big for her face. There’s no way a kid like that is gonna last long running with the Eight, especially if she’s set her sights on Pandora X. It won’t be long before she gets herself hurt, maybe killed—it’s happened before.
And yet. I can’t help seeing a bit of myself in her—a bit of Law, too. She’s just another kid who got herself in too deep, too fast.
Before I even know what I’m doing, I find myself sitting at my old monitor in the corner and typing in a familiar URL. It’s been a long, long time since I’ve viewed the Pandora X archives—I try to stay as far away from the game as possible, these days—but I think I’ll remember that string of letters until the day I die. I used to visit the site every day, looking over my old matches, searching desperately for ways to improve.
I don’t have to scroll far through the archive before I find what I’m looking for—a practice match between the Blue Bandits, sponsored by the Daylights, and the Green Ghouls, backed by the Jackals. I can’t help being curious about the kid. Fourteen years old, barely more than a child, and yet she somehow managed to make it onto the Daylights’ official Squadron. That’s no easy feat. Without letting myself think too hard about what I’m doing, I pull up the video and hit play.
The arena looks the same as it always has—a large, empty space with white walls and a white floor, kept as blank as possible so as not to interfere with the augmented reality. Two raised platforms stand on either side of the arena, separated by a dropped floor almost a hundred yards across.
I still remember what it felt like to stand in that arena. Cameras in the corners of the room, recording my every move. The buzz of adrenaline itching in my veins. The hot, heavy press of the mechanized bodysuit against my skin.
The Green Ghouls enter the arena first. Their Kingpin looks vaguely familiar—he must’ve been rising through the ranks when I was still playing—but I don’t recognize any of the other players. As for their Tank, he’s a big motherfucker, probably even taller than me. But size doesn’t mean much in Pandora X, not if you don’t have the skills to back it up.
It’s easy to differentiate who’s playing what role based on their mechanized, skin-tight bodysuits, padded with lightweight plate armor. The Tank’s outfit is most heavy-duty, allowing for solid defense and punishing offense in exchange for limited nobility. The Rogue’s getup is on the other end of the spectrum—lighter and quicker, but with more limited defensive capabilities. One strong hit can take a Rogue out of the game.
The Sniper’s armor prioritizes offense—high mobility and plenty of weapons slots. They’ll have to collect guns and ammo over the course of the game, but their versatile combat outfit gives them an edge when it comes to acquiring weapons.
The Guardian has the highest defense out of anybody on the Squadron. He’s specialized to keep the Kingpin out of danger however possible. His role isn’t about dealing damage or disqualifying opponents—it’s about doing whatever he can to ensure that the Kingpin is safe enough to run the game.
And then there’s the Kingpin. His suit is the highest-tech—it needs to be. His job is to literally code the game as it’s being played—building portals and platforms, coordinating weapons drops, and providing Buffs to his teammates. A bad Kingpin will sink a Squadron.
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
In a lot of ways, Pandora X is like fucked-up AR chess. Your Kingpin is your central player—the minute the opposite team strikes him down, you lose. A good Squadron has a split of offense and defense, targeting the other team’s Kingpin with pinpoint precision while protecting their own from danger.
Without too much fanfare, the opposite side doors are opening, and the Blue Bandits are stepping into the arena. My eyes catch on a shock of white, and I lean forward, eyes straining from how close I am to the backlit monitor.
It’s the kid. Apparently, she plays Kingpin—although whoever let a teenager take point for an entire Squadron is begging for an early defeat. She looks so small, standing on that platform, surrounded by players twice her height and age.
There’s no way they’re winning this. I don’t care how spunky she is—a fourteen-year-old can’t play Kingpin and win.
The players start pulling on their AR helmets. At the same time, the audience view changes, reflecting the AR enhancements that the players see through their visors. Suddenly, the all-white arena is awash with neon lights. The Pit doesn't look like just a dropped floor anymore—it’s taken on the appearance of a bottomless, empty void looming between the two starting platforms.
In the center of the arena, looming above the Pit, shimmering neon numbers take shape. The countdown has begun.
Ten.
The players take their starting positions. The Kingpins stand in the center of the starting platform, flanked by their Squadrons. Their Guardians stand to their right, their Tanks to their left. The Snipers and Rogues stand in the front, crouched down low to the ground, ready to leap into action at a moments’ notice.
Nine.
The kid is saying something to her team. I try to read her lips through the clear front pane of her visor, but the cameras are too far away for me to get a good view.
Eight.
The Green Ghouls are doing some sort of handshake. They’ve probably been playing together for a long time—not good for the new-blood Blue Bandits, who are entrusting the fate of their team to a teenager.
Seven.
But the Blue Bandits don’t look nervous, I notice. Their Sniper is smirking, a cocky gleam in her eye like she knows something her opponents don’t.
Six.
The kid adjusts her helmet, her breath fogging up the inside of the visor. Her fingers twitch at her sides.
Five.
At the five-second mark, the rule prohibiting the Kingpin from coding commands is lifted. Both players start waving their hands rapidly through the air, typing and issuing commands on screens that only they can see.
Four.
My hands clench into fists under the table. I want her to win, I realize—no matter how unlikely it is, I want the kid to win.
Three.
The players lean farther forward, readying themselves to leap off the starting platform. The pressure mounts and builds. I can feel my heart beating in my throat.
Two.
The Blue Bandits’ Rogue flickers out of sight. The kid works fast—the buzzer hasn’t even gone off yet, and already she’s managed to code her teammate’s suit to blend into the AR background. I can still see the outline of his body, like a vague shimmer against the starting platform, but unless you’re looking hard, he’d be hard to spot.
One.
The buzzer goes off, and both teams spring into action. The Green Ghouls get off to an earlier start—no doubt their Kingpin was working on summoning a platform while the kid was disguising her Rogue. Without the influence of the AR, you’d see the dropped floor of the Pit opening up, raising the platform into the air. But the augmented reality gives the platform the appearance of free-floating, appearing out of thin air at the Kingpin’s whim.
To her credit, the kid isn’t far behind—she summons a platform only a moment after her opponent. A blinking red light appears over the new platform, indicating an incoming item drop. The Sniper leaps into action, hauling herself onto the platform just in time to grab the single-shot handgun as it drops from the ceiling. It’s a simple weapon: small and short range, with a fifteen second minimum reload time that leaves its wielder defenseless immediately after use. The more complex a weapon is, the longer it takes to summon—early-game weapons tend to be low-grade, buying the players just enough time for the Kingpin to summon something more impressive.
As I watch the teams go head-to-head, one thing quickly becomes apparent: the kid is good. Really good.
She summons quicker than any other Kingpin I’ve ever seen, platforms rising from the Pit and weapons dropping from the ceiling before the rest of her Squadron even thinks to need them. It’s obvious her team trusts her implicitly—her Sniper throws herself off the platforms without a second thought, trusting that another will appear under her before she falls. If she lands in the Pit, she’ll be disqualified. She might even break a limb. But the kid comes through every time.
It’s no wonder the kid was able to track me down. With coding knowledge like that, she probably found me in a day or less.
As I watch her play, I can’t help but wonder. The rest of her Squadron is mediocre at best, but with decent backup, the kid could be a force to be reckoned with. I wonder what would happen if she had Addie as her tank. Grant as her Sniper.
Me as her Rogue.
She’s right, I realize—we really could win. With a cut of the Champion’s pot, I could by my freedom, for real this time. I could buy Law’s freedom.
I jam my finger into the power button, shutting the monitor down just before the Blue Bandits’ Sniper takes out the opposing Kingpin and claims the win. No—I can’t get sucked back into this, not now. Not when I’m finally out. I scrub my hands over my face, trying to erase the neon images still playing behind my eyes.
She’s just another kid, I remind myself. I stand, letting out a long, slow breath through my nose. She’s another kid with a crazy, impossible dream and no way to achieve it, who’s been lured in by the promise of freedom offered by Pandora X. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned by playing the game, it’s that no one ever really wins. There’s no escaping—not unless you know how to disappear.
I light another cigarette with shaking hands. Throw myself back down onto the bare mattress. Stare at the familiar water stains. Try to fall asleep, and pray I don’t dream.
Outside, the cicadas are screaming.