When Yeung-Sung first heard mention of the Champions, he expected them to be an elite group. Consistently the top performing faction in the colony, they were impossible to infiltrate. Exclusive and elusive.

And yet, here they were; a motorcycle gang, dressed in black and gold, loitering on the fringes of this miniature society.

“You’ve gotten your own gang quickly. You’re quite powerful. But are you a leader?” asked Carmen, keeping a brisk pace. “What makes you so opposed to Jordan? Don’t believe in people?

“He’s too powerful,” said Yeung-Sung.

“He is. But did you ever think about how GLI got this way? How they can do… anything?”

The Champ’s leader waved Yeung-Sung’s phone like a pack of gum.

When did she-

“Here’s a simple question; When did you last charge your phone?”

Yeung-Sung backed his hand down.

“I -I haven’t.”

But that’s impossible; it must be an incredibly efficient battery.

The Champ nodded slowly and beckoned for Yeung-Sung to walk with him.

“They’ve uncovered a new energy source is our thinking,” he explained. “Something completely revolutionary.”

Carmen winced, looking towards the bright spot in the clouds.

“Yeung-Sung?” she asked, “Do you remember what happened when you first entered the colony? Do you ever wonder why we are isolated, kept secret from the world?”

Frowning, Yeung-Sung stopped following the Champion.

“What are you saying? There’s more to this experiment than Airgead?”

Stumbling forward and unbuckling their arms, Carmen took a few steps to the side. The Champ paused beside a white line sprayed in the ground.

“This is what happens when you leave the perimeter of the colony,” she said and threw his phone on the other side. “Watch.”

There was no flashy gimmick. No shorts of electricity or explosions, but as the Champ put a finger to her lips and picked it up, Yeung-Sung reacted as if he was in a new world.

“It’s dead!”

“Uh-uh.” The Champ pulled her arm in across the line and, like magic, it winked into life.

Yeung-Sung stuttered, raking a hand through his hair. “How is that possible?”

The Champ inhaled through her nose, her breath rising her up to one leg, one foot then one toe.

“It’s in the air we breathe; Power,” Carmen told him.

“That’s what really inspired him. That’s why he has to hide it. This is it, Yeung-Sung! All the world’s problems are solved, potentially, but imagine if other nations found out about it?”

It was a momentous revelation. But Yeung-Sung did not even smile. Sighing, he looked down at his trousers, where his phone lay and whispered, “For the greater good, eh?”

Carmen swiped a box near at his shoulder, faking a headbutt. She did not find this a humorous situation.

“With that kind of power, he can’t be trusted to handle it alone. When this gets out…”

What if it doesn’t?

But Yeung-Sung understood, even though their ideals weren’t exactly aligned. He nodded and said, “You’re saying we need to beat the Gauntlet, escape and tell the public.”

Carmen’s smirk came back. For her small frame, she had a smile that cut wide, deep and intimidating like a serrated melon-slice.

“We’ll take care of that, don’t worry.”

There is more to this than just my revenge. More than just the colony’s lives at stake here. I should have realised this sooner.

“Why are you so secretive, though?”

This time Yeung-Sung moved, prowling around Carmen with a question as thick as moisture in the air.

“Who are you guys really?”

Carmen scooted her glasses up, blinked, and formed that same smirk again. This time Yeung-Sung knew what it meant before she said it.

“Who,” she retorted back to him, “do you think we are? Use your brain.”

What does she mean by that, if not the Champions?

Let’s see; A selective group of elites hidden in between a colony fighting amongst a bunch of politicians, reactionaries, shopkeepers and just -normal people?

Who would think themselves so far above us? Elites? Better than the people in here? From outside…Agents? People stuck to the governments even now.

“You’re spies,” he whispered.

Carmen cocked her head and pouted.

“In a sense, yes,” she replied. “Why, did you think world powers would not protect themselves against a corporation with as much influence as GLI?”

“Of course not.” He bit away, swaying on his knees in defeat. While Camren couldn’t see his face, he bit down his lip to stop himself from saying anything rash.

They walked the dusty tarmac. Supposedly, towards Wil. Yeung-Sung felt his feet throb, imagining the distance between him and his friend closing in per step. The throbbing continued higher, in through the muscle of his calves, settling in that knee-jerk anticipation of needing to break free and run with Wil if that’s what it took.

But where would we go?

Yeung-Sung cowered a step behind Carmen, who marched on without hesitating, without a need to look back and check on him. An attitude that was fit with her reputation as a Champion.

I have my phone. I anything happens to me, GLI would know. Jordan would know, and he’d hate to be blamed for it.

Carmen paused and stuck out her forearm. Taking the hint, Yeung-Sung wrapped his arm into the hold, gently.

Resuming the pace, Carmen said, “’The Crash’ has hurt us, but I hope you haven’t sided with Jordan, have you? After the way he treated you?”

She tilted her chin into her neck and raised her eyebrows at the Yeung-Sung’s lack of reaction. Honestly, he was a bit surprised himself. Carmen brought him in tighter, a gesture definitely meant to be a supportive. Yet her face was still a wireframe of tension, her nose a sandstone sculpture.

“It’s strange,” Yeung-Sung said, “Jordan himself is psychotic, but the more I learn about his ideas, the more people I meet in the colony who have had their will to live revived by the benefits, the more I’m beginning to believe that, on a certain level he’s right?”

He swayed his neck nervously, in a way that avoided feeling the full impact of the pain that never fully went away while still bringing attention to it; like a skipping rope.

“Maybe the world needs a fundamental change?”

Carmen sniffed, her nostril recoiling in a bellowing bend like the slow-motion expulsion of a gun, and untangled herself from Yeung-Sung.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

“Look,” she began, her steps suddenly thumping heavier, “See the landscape? The fields and humps of the road as it marks a line through the hills? See the sky separated by the horizon, the trees separated from the earth below?”

She hovered to make sure Yeung-Sung was watching.

“All have their place, working together in a single earth. Yes?”

Taking off her glasses, she stuck them on Yeung-Sung.

“This,” she told him, “this is how the ‘Crash’ affects us. Or…the first Depression, even the 2008 one.”

Yeung-Sung kept the frame steady with two fingers balancing the hooks at his ears. He watched. Colours bloomed out of the non-descript grey, greens and browns that instantly had their outlines taken. The blurry lining of nature below and sky above framed an oppressive unending grey of the empty, lonely road that stretched beyond what he could see.

“I…don’t understand?” he said. He waited for an explanation, but he should have realized by now that Carmen was not at all that helpful of a coloner. “It makes it harder to clearly see what’s in front of you?”

Carmen groaned. “It blurs the lines, Yeung-Sung,” she said sharply, “If you can’t figure out what is coming, you panic and do extreme things, thinking the whole world is broken!”

She lifted the glasses off him and poked his shoulder with the long gold-painted nail of her index finger.

“But that’s just a sense of perspective isn’t it? A lack of focus. In reality the world is fundamentally the same as it ever was. And any radical action would have been severely misplaced. Having the faith of global currencies sabotaged caused us this exact reaction. Caused us to break down like we did when we should be focused; Seeing what is really there and rebuilt society form the basics. Not this -shit!”

Satisfied that her glasses were adjusted perfectly, she took Yeung-Sung’s hand again and skipped with it, scraping Yeung-Sung along for the romantic rollercoaster.

He fell over his feet in between trying to comprehend her worldview and keeping up with her newly bolstered, optimistic pace. Adding to that the sudden shift in his vision, his head span and swam and he looked down at the tarmac and tried not to throw up.

The tarmac, he noticed, was not as single paved slab of grey. Or at least, not anymore:

The cement was assaulted by cracks of grass. Soft, fatigued yellow strands that were keeling over in the evening breeze. But even so, they themselves forged a path through the compressed material, making little pockets for themselves and their wiry families.

Seeing this, Yeung-Sung convinced himself that Carmen was wrong.

Change is inevitable.

He kneeled down and dove his fingers through a crack and gripped. He pushed if into a burst of speed, intent on keeping up to the Champion with both body and mind.

“Changing perspective on a system that fails to provide basic human rights for the majority doesn’t change the fact that there is something inherently wrong with the system. We’ve tried different leaders, different policies but… a true change must be something radical, something unexpected that steals the roots of evils from underneath.

He caught up to Carmen easily after that.

Gasping, Carmen tugged back a flank of her hair.

“You sound like a damn Marketer!”

Two gritty footsteps and she was at the other end of the road, looking out in the direction of the colony. Meanwhile Yeung-Sung wondered why he didn’t just shut up and let her finish leading him to Wil - and if he kept running, where it would take him. To his home country, or away into the mountains?

Carmen spread her stance, letting the arm of her jacket slip down below her shoulders.

“Yeung-Sung, think clearly,” she said, “What, would happen if Jordan implemented his sweeping socialist structures too fast into countries, with both his energy system and the artificial intelligence as the manpower to back him?”

She seemed to think it was a question that would stump him, but in fact, this was a common topic among the Wick regulars. If done properly, which was the key point, the structures would ensure basic resources spread fairly; ending homelessness, world hunger and freeing up millions of menial labour jobs with mechanised alternatives. But Yeung-Sung knew that Wil was out here in the dark somewhere, probably in an imprisoned, distressed state in the cold and dark, and judging by the darkening in the clouds above, about to experience a downpour. So, Yeung-Sung clenched his fists and didn’t argue.

“What would happen?” he replied.

“-And don’t tell me to think about it.”

But I have a feeling that this time you won’t.

She laughed. “In exchange for these benefits, we’d lose our freedom.”

She gritted her teeth.

“Did you know he’s against owning Private property? We can’t have our own houses! Could you imagine?”

She flung her hair around, her black springs bouncing angrily around her.

“We lose our identity; The fucking games that we play determining where we live, where we come from -We won’t have a nationality!” Carmen shouted. “We’d be slaves to the system -and with this airborne power source, what’s to stop Jordan enforcing it with whatever dystopian bullshit he can come up with?

“It’ll be an endless cycle of repeats,” she moaned, “Stupid distractions that make us fight each other over meaningless reward of -of -of numbers going up. That’s what would define us? How is that a proper human life?”

So that’s what it comes down to. Freedom. Identity. A lack of trust.

Yeung-Sung crossed the dotted line to Carmen’s side of the road.

“What is freedom to you?” he asked her, “Is it obeying your higher ups?”

Carmen swirled, the first drops of rain splashing down the shiny black leather of her outfit. It squeaked as she tightened her muscles.

Yeung-Sung continued,

“Is freedom having to fight for survival while others watch, and begging for the chance to be so sadistic as to watch without consequence. Is freedom letting the blowing winds of chance land some seeds in soil and others inside still-drying cement? Is that identity?

“Or are we connected, a single race that doesn’t need deep familial roots to give another a helping hand?”

Yeung-Sung knew he didn’t have much time.

“You’re Mexican, aren’t you?”

“And?” she snapped back.

He broached the next sentences with care, easing softly off the trigger words and quickly past the rest, acutely aware of the motor in his mouth and the flicking of his tongue, like a woodpecker warning him of the imminent danger.

“I read about your situation; In college one of my modules was geopolitics -I was in my second year when the ‘Crash’ came,” he admitted. He reached out to Carmen with his upturned hand.

“…What they do to -women- and the drugs, the corruption of such a -such a lovely place. And people.”

Carmen raised her head like fanning her anger away inflated it. “Things not so easily changed by a new economic policy,” she said.

Yeung-Sung curled his fingers back. “No?” he asked, “Why do people participate in gang violence and crime if not because it’s the easier choice. If not because the government is too corrupt and too sycophantly impotent to protect them?”

He thrust himself out wide in an appropriation of the stances Carmen had used.

“Tell me I’m wrong!” he shouted.

The bridge of Yeung-Snug’s nose flew so far inside that he could feel it in his throat.

She punched me!

Shaking off her bloodied fist Carmen said, “And Jordan would have to destroy the lives of millions of stubborn people who never knew any better because that was all they ever experienced. Mexicans that can’t comprehend this level of change so fast. How can we afford that risk?”

Free-flowing down Yeung-Sung’s face was his sticky blood.

Spitting a wad of copper taste out he simply said, “Take me to him”

“You fucking idiot,” Carmen told him, “This is not a rescue mission. You don’t order me around.”

She grabbed the zip of her jacket and from within she pulled out a stubby looking Glock that curled menacingly out from her grip.

“This power that Jordan has needs to given to the public. They can decide what to do with it. If he can make a convincing argument, maybe elements of this experiment will continue.”

Yeung-Sung held his arms up, quivering as she corralled hem down the quickly wetting road. Despite closing his mouth, his bashed-in face still managed to bleed through to the edges of his lips. He fought the urge to wipe it, his arms quivered more. Between mouthfuls of blood, Yeung-Sung squeezed in a calming breath.

Pain he could handle. Pain told him he was on the right trail of decisions. SO, Yeung-Sung smiled, walking ahead of Carmen, so she didn’t see. As he did, more blood leaked in, pooling in around his lower gums, and so he sucked it in to continue his defiant smile, continue interfacing with the righteous pain.

Minutes later, Carmen ordered him to stop. Lowering her gun, she allowed him a rest before they descended the hill at the side of the road to Wil. But only once he handed over his phone. They sat together not on, but against the angled bumper rail. His ass cold and slimy as his face, Yeung-Sung lightly padded around his nose and tried to assess the damage as he waited for Carmen’s instructions.

Why did they kidnap him in the first place -maybe to help them understand Airgead? Was it an act of desperation after Jordan’s threat?

If we lose, and the threat is real, then the secrets of his power would fade with them. And I wonder, would the United Nations treat the Champs as anything more than a necessary casualty?

Suddenly, Carmen’s anger, her lashing out at him and her attempts to convince him over to her side seemed reasonable to him. Yeung-Sung thought that he had seen the truth of her constant flickering with her hair and the changing of her stances; She was nervous, fragile, even with the gun lowered between her legs. This woman wasn’t just afraid of Jordan in an ideological sense, it was a very real and near in the future mortal fear. That is, if the Gauntlet wasn’t defeated. If Yeung-Sung didn’t defeat it.

So, in a sense, she was just like all the other coloners. But as she was a Champion, and a Duner, that made her look even more desperate. And all the more dangerous.

Yeung-Sung scratch-peeled a few red flakes off the corners off his eyes, which drifted down to match the rusted, squealing gutter-metal under his weight. Yeung-Sung still couldn’t smell anything. Well, anything outside of the stench bleeding from his insides, and it smelled to him that the body worked harder to pump it out with the advent of the quickening rain.

“He’s just beyond there” Carmen motioned to a gravel path at the bottom of the grassy hill, fading beyond into a valley. “At the lake.”

Yeung-Sung stood without thinking, and met the press of Carmen’s Glock between his ribs.

“Now, now, wait a minute, I didn’t ay you could go,” said Carmen, “Did you think we arranged for you to brought here just so we could re-unite you two? Sit.”

As Yeung-Sung breathed, he felt the musculature of his rib shake shaft of the gun further in. He could feel a cough coming on, but firmed his abs eye-jerkingly tight and swallowed to avoid setting either of them off; Carmen or the gun.

I know what you want.

“You want me to beat the Gauntlet.”

“First of all, it’s not a want; it’s a need,” Carmen corrected, “Next, it’s Wil that needs to beat it. Nobody would trust you with their resources after your antics with Jordan’s AI. But, your knowledge of the system -and your friendship with Wil -is very useful.”

“I’m here to support him?”

“You’re going to make sure that he wins,” explained Carmen. “You’ll be his confidant and our insurance over him, and vice-versa for you.”

Yeung-Sung took one look at he gravel path and nodded. “Fine,” he said, shoving the ran misted barrel aside and began the descent.

But Carmen pressed it quickly into the back of his head, parting the scared hair around it into a clear shot of his skull. He stopped.

“One more thing. The final Gauntlet needs to occur on the day of the UN visit, not before, though I doubt it’ll be an issue. Jordan needs to be distracted for long enough. Make an event out of it.”

Knowing better than to ask what they are going to do, Yeung-Sung nodded once more and slid his first foot down onto the wet grass.

I’m helping the Champions steal the source of GLI.