“Jay, go on defence!” Theo yelled as an arrow whizzed past his head.

Jay dodged it and ran back to the disk area, jumping over the small river. He plunged the sword into the humanoid simulation.

Eniola dove past the white simulation before shooting it in the feet. It vanished before respawning back on their base. She ran to the river, then dove in the warm waters, then came back out and onto the simulation team’s territory.

Eniola took an arrow and aligned it on the bow before shooting another simulation avatar in the back. It also respawned back onto the base. Eniola stopped for a quick smile. That felt really nice.

“Superweapon!” she yelled before the bow and arrow morphed so that it was bigger and shining gold. Eniola ran for their disk and shot at the remaining defence before they all vanished again. She ran for the disk, before jumping and grabbing it. The simulation ended.

“Great job, Eniola!” Lucia yelled, attacking her in a side hug.

“Yeah, great job,” Theo said “With plays like this, we’re bound to win. We have a shot, guys. But let’s celebrate in the dorms; the next team should be here soon.”

As everyone was about to leave, someone tapped her shoulder. She jumped before seeing it was just Jay. Who else would it be?

She calmed her breathing. “Hey. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, I just thought you played well today,” Jay said, digging his hands into his pockets and rocking back and forth. “I just wanted to tell you. But I’m sure you hear that all the time.”

“Thanks,” Eniola said. “I thought you did well. You’re improving more and more. You might just become a team player.” Eniola couldn’t help but smile a bit.

He smirked before chuckling. “Maybe. I wanted to talk about last night. We should tell the team what we heard.”

“I agree,” Eniola mumbled and followed him back into the dorm.

Disturbing was an understatement. Someone wanted them out of the game and was using extreme measures to make sure of it.

Eniola went out last night to clear her head but came back overflowing with anxiety. It filled her thoughts as they headed back to the dorms and filled her dreams as she slept.

“Welcome back, Rogue!” Wendy said, rolling into the kitchen with five plates of pancakes all balanced on her arms. “For breakfast, I have vegan and gluten-free banana pancakes!” She handed a stack to each of them. The warm aroma quickly blessed Eniola’s nose.

“Why did they have to be vegan and gluten-free?” Lucia asked.

“You mean flavourless?” Jay joked, prompting laughter through all of them.

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Iris threw a pillow at him. “They’re not flavourless.” She grabbed his fork and placed a chunk of the pancake into his still open mouth. He spluttered, but his eyes widened as the flavours hit.

“You were wrong, huh?” Iris jested.

“I guess,” Jay chuckled. He then looked all serious, “Me and Eniola have something to tell you.”

Eniola almost choked on the vegan pancakes as Jay did.

Lucia’s eyes went wide. “For real? I knew you guys were in—”

“We stumbled upon this conversation last night,” Jay began. “It was a group of people talking about going after teams. They mentioned Rogue. Us.” The room fell into silence.

“That’s impossible,” Iris put forth. “Who would want to target us?”

“I don’t know,” Eniola said. Eniola had the sudden urge to tell them about the weird glitches that invaded her mind. But she closed her mouth.

“What does this mean then?” Lucia asked fearfully.

“I don’t know,” Eniola admitted. “But they mentioned something about the arena and how they’re going to be there tonight. They mentioned a device too. I think we should go, but if we don’t, we should tell Howie.”

“This doesn’t feel like something we should snitch on,” Theo warned. “But it’s also too dangerous just to walk in.”

“But someone might come for us?” Lucia argues. “I’ll go. I’ll take the risk.”

“So it’s like some secret mission?” Iris said all mysteriously.

“It will be,” Jay said with a waver in his voice.

“Do you think it’s a player?” Theo suggested. “Or a team? If you heard them in the dorm, then they might live here.”

“We don’t have time to do a full analysis on fifty teams,” Lucia grumbles. “There has to be some other way.”

“They mentioned something called ALT,” Eniola said. “I don’t know what the hell that means though.”

“Gather round then,” Iris said, before taking out her phone and extending the screen. “ALT. Does it stand for something?”

Eniola and Jay shrugged. “They didn’t go deeper into it. But they mentioned us. Does the word ALT mean anything to you guys?” Everyone exchanged confused glances, but everyone shook their heads.

Eniola suddenly felt a jolt shiver down her spine, like someone was behind her watching her. She looked over her shoulder briefly. Of course, there was no one there.

Iris continued toggling with the screen, doing deep searches all over the internet for the word ‘ALT’.

“This is frustrating,” Iris grumbles, running a frustrated hand through her blue hair.

“What can we do more to access it?” Theo asked.

“I can do some other things,” Iris admitted. “Since I’m a cyborg, I can combine my computer interface with my regular brain, and use it to override anything that we can’t see.”

“Is that allowed?” Jay asked. Iris turned to him.

“I never said it was legal for cyborgs to do that,” Iris mumbled, and Eniola raised an eyebrow. She exchanged a glance with Lucia who simply smiled. Eniola turned back to Iris who now looked to be in some deep meditation or something. Hacking into something with the mere focus of her mind.

“That means you can technically hack into anything with your brain,” Jay said. “That’s so cool yet so… different.”

“I found something,” Iris said, opening her eyes. “It’s just a phrase. There is none,’”

“Huh,” Lucia said. “I thought you said you saw a phrase.”

“I did,” Iris said. “It says ‘there is none.’ I can’t trace the link anywhere relevant. We have to give it more thought.”

And that’s how they ended up searching for the phrase ‘there is none’ before getting stumped yet again. Eniola let a huge sigh escape from her.

“I think we need to go there tonight and find something out ourselves,” Eniola said. “Internet research isn’t just going to cut it.”

“But the arena’s closed,” Iris said.

“It’s not if some sketchy people are meeting there. Someone must've got in,” Lucia mumbled.

“The idea of migrating towards sketchy people gives me feelings,” Jay said. “None of those are good.”

“Well unless we want to continue to be oblivious to attacks against us, we should go to the arena tonight,” Theo spoke up. “Rogue’s first non-SCOPE mission is about to begin.”