Warcross (Warcross #1)(41)
Were you responsible for my number one draft pick status? I want to ask, but instead I smile at him and shake his hand politely. “Believe me, I was as shocked as anyone else,” I reply. Behind him, Tremaine and Max stare at us. If Tremaine could stab me with his eyes, he would be doing it right now.
“Every draft has at least one surprise,” Hideo replies.
“Are you saying you didn’t expect me to be drafted so quickly?”
A ghost of a smile appears on Hideo’s lips. “Were you? I hadn’t noticed.” He leans closer to me. “You look lovely tonight,” he continues in a low voice, so that no one else hears. Then he’s already nodding farewell, passing us by with his entourage, bodyguards, and a trailing, screaming mass of fans.
“Damn,” Hammie says in my ear, her eyes still fixed on Hideo. “He looks even better in person than he does in the news.”
Roshan is looking straight at me. “Did he just tease you for being first pick?”
“I don’t think he likes me very much.”
“It’s enough to put you in the tabloids,” Hammie says. “You know that, right? Hideo doesn’t talk like that to his players. It’s all business.” She elbows me hard enough to make me grunt.
“It’s not a big deal.”
Hammie laughs once, sending her curls bouncing. “I don’t even care. The way Tremaine was seething in the background will fuel me for the rest of the championships.”
As several fans line up for autographs from her and Roshan, I glance to where Hideo had disappeared into the crowd. He’d been watching me carefully during the Wardraft. I think back to him standing in his private box as the announcement of my number one draft pick status rang out. He doesn’t talk like that to his players. How does he talk, then? Hadn’t he exchanged words with everyone he met tonight? In the crowd, I catch one final glimpse of his figure as his bodyguards usher him down a hallway.
A name appears in my vision, and I look up instinctively. I’d made my way close enough to where DJ Ren is still standing up behind his mountain of instruments, spinning a fast-tempo beat, the gold wings of his headphones reflecting the neon strobe lights. I’d almost forgotten that he’s also an official player in the game—but now I’m close enough to him to pull his data.
I reach out discreetly and bring up DJ Ren’s info. Immediately, I halt.
His private information is walled behind a mass of shields—not just one, but dozens. Anything I’ve managed to download from him is encrypted. Whatever the reason, Ren is no amateur at dealing with his security, and he knows how to protect himself in ways far beyond the average player. In too many ways. I stare up at him, thinking. The figure I’d seen in the Tokyo Dome is one of the official wild cards.
And there’s only one wild card who was absent from his seat during the Wardraft.
12
The next morning, I hear Asher’s voice driftng up from the atrium as I step out of my room, yawning, my hair tangled in a messy bun. As I go, I run right into Hammie. She grunts in a half-asleep voice.
“Downstairs,” she mutters.
“What’s going on?”
“Matchups are in,” she replies, then stumbles off in the general direction of her bathroom.
Matchups. Today we find out which teams are playing each other. The thought quickly wakes me up. I brush my teeth, splash some water on my face, and put in a new pair of my Warcross contacts. Then I head down to the atrium. Asher’s already there, talking in a low voice to Roshan on the couches. Dark circles ring our captain’s eyes this morning, but otherwise he looks alert and ready. I glance down at the coffee table. The magazine on the top of the stack features a photo of Hideo at a banquet, seated beside a completely smitten blond woman who is whispering something intimately into his ear. HAS PRINCESS ADELE FOUND HER PRINCE? screams the caption.
Hammie files in moments later, followed shortly by DJ Ren. Ren looks the most frazzled out of us all, with his short brown hair sticking out in every direction and his eyes hidden behind a pair of white sunglasses. His winged gold headphones are still on his head, one side in place and the other shifted slightly off his ear, so that he can hear what’s going on. He sits down on the farthest couch from me, leans back, and waves a lazy greeting to everyone. The only one who wasn’t in his place during the Wardraft. Maybe because he was hiding somewhere, perched virtually in the rafters to spy on everything.
Maybe he’s actually Zero.
No. Zero should be better at hiding himself than this. And surely Zero isn’t tacky enough to wear sunglasses indoors.
Hammie reaches an arm out in front of Ren’s face and snaps her fingers twice. “Hey,” she says. “Rock star. You’re not at the club anymore.”
Ren just bats her away. “I’m sensitive to light in the morning,” he says in French, while I read his translation.
Roshan raises one brow at that, while Hammie rolls her eyes. “Yeah, I’m allergic to mornings, too, wild card,” she replies.
As Hammie talks, I quietly begin to sort through my teammates’ data. It looks like Roshan sent a bunch of emails last night, while Hammie’s amount of notes has gone down by a significant amount since the night before, indicating she had made some huge purchase. I turn to Ren. Just like yesterday, he has a wall of shields on over his data, set up so that anyone trying to break in would automatically be redirected to a shield instead of to his data. I start to run a program to bypass them.