All around them survivors were already opening boxes with trembling hands. Some cried when they saw healing items.
Some got strange pieces of gear they did not understand. A few people in the distance started fighting over boxes that were clearly not theirs and one of them was instantly blasted apart by blue light.
The message was clear. Take your own reward and know your place.
Blake tore the stamina patch open and pressed it on the side of his neck like the screen instructed.
A cold shock spread through his body almost immediately and the shaking in his legs eased just enough to make him stand straighter.
Michael smeared the recovery gel over his forearms and shoulders and let out a hiss before rolling them.
"Better?" Blake asked.
"A little."
Before either of them could say more, the ground trembled.
This time it was not a horn or a screen first. It was the plain itself. The endless blue-white floor started vibrating under their shoes and many survivors panicked again, some clutching their rewards and some trying to run even before anything had happened.
Huge lines of light began to crack open far away, then farther, then everywhere.
Blake looked up just as towers started rising from the plain in the distance, hundreds of them, then thousands, each one made of dark metal with a burning blue ring at the top.
The announcer sounded delighted.
[Congratulations to those who survived the warm up! Your species has not completely embarrassed itself yet!]
[Mission #2 will now begin.]
Screens appeared before every survivor at once.
--
[Mission #2: Sprint to a Beacon Tower and enter the light ring before the timer goes off.
Safe spaces are limited.
Reward: Move to the next mission, survival, 1 random gear box
Failure: Death]
--
Michael stared at the nearest tower in the distance and then slowly turned to Blake.
"Tell me," he said with a dead voice, "that those don't look far as hell to you too."
Blake looked at the field of bodies, at the survivors clutching their fresh rewards, at the blue rings burning in the distance and at the comments already beginning to appear again near the edge of his sight.
--
[Priest-Observer Thaariq: Ah. Now the herd runs.]
[Lord Kharuul of Nine Maws: This mission should be louder.]
[House Uul'meret: Wagers open.]
--
Blake swallowed, tightened his jaw and looked at Michael.
"Run first," he said. "Panic later."
Michael did not waste another breath after that. He grabbed his box rewards, shoved the grip wrap into one of the slots on his orange suit and took off at once, forcing Blake to move with him before the crowd around them turned into a wall of bodies.
The moment the first few survivors started running, the rest followed like a dam had burst. What had been a field of exhausted people and corpses became a stampede in a blink. Some ran while clutching their sides, some limped, some screamed as they pushed forward, and some were already trying to shove others out of their way before they had even picked a tower.
Blake ran.
His legs still hurt, but the stamina patch had done enough to keep them from folding. The nearest tower burned with a blue ring that looked much smaller now that they were actually moving toward it, and what had seemed merely far from a distance now looked absurdly far. Hundreds, no, thousands of people from his sector alone had started aiming for the same few towers they could see best.
"Not the closest one!" Blake shouted over the noise.
Michael shot him a glare while running. "Then which one, genius?"
Blake looked ahead and felt his breath hitch. The nearest tower already had a thick stream of people pouring toward it from three directions. Another one farther right had even more. But to the left, farther than both of them, there was one with less traffic because a ridge of cracked floor and fallen bodies had made the approach ugly.
"Left! The farther one!" Blake barked and jerked his chin that way.
Michael looked once and understood immediately. "Fine. If we die, I am blaming you."
"Get in line."
They cut left together.
That single choice probably saved them from being crushed in the first minute. Behind them, the nearest stream of contestants turned into chaos almost at once. A woman tripped, someone went down over her, and then the whole line buckled like a body with broken knees. The screams that followed made Blake's stomach knot, but he did not look back again.
All around the plain, comments burst through the corners of his vision like gnats made of light.
--
[Cartographer-Queen Zephri of the Burnished Veil: Acceptable choice. The nearer beacons will choke first.]
[Sable Bishop Orruun: The quiet human shows route sense. Preserve him a little longer.]
[Velqir of the Black Lattice: The loud male runs like he intends to punch the horizon.]
[Lord Kharuul of Nine Maws: Good. Break their legs now.]
--
Blake kept his eyes ahead and breathed through his nose once, then through his mouth. The plain that had once looked smooth from where he stood now felt like a lie.
Small breaks kept opening in the floor, some no wider than a foot, some large enough to swallow a leg if someone stepped in badly.
Dead bodies from Mission 1 also lay in ugly clusters everywhere and survivors had to leap, swerve or just run over them.
Michael hurdled one corpse and landed hard, then swore. "This place is trying too hard."
"Move," Blake said.
He heard a horn sound again and for a second his whole back tightened, but instead of the announcer, a new line flashed near his eyes.
[Beacon occupancy will be updated every 3 minutes.]
[Contestants denied entry to a full Beacon Tower will not receive mercy.]
Michael saw it too and his face changed. "Occupancy?"
There was no rest.