Warcross (Warcross #1)(54)

A girl standing very close beside him jots something down on a clipboard. She has a short blue bob haircut and wears a black blazer with jeans, but her eyes are what startle me. They are completely white. At first I think she’s one of the other gamblers. But when she and Zero both turn their heads simultaneously, I realize that she is a proxy, a security shield behind which Zero can completely hide his identity. If someone does manage to record this session in the Pirate’s Den, and they somehow notice Zero, the only info they’ll get is this girl’s, whose data will lead to nothing.

What did she jot down on her clipboard? Info about us?

Zero stares at me for another beat. Then, miraculously, he turns his attention away. His proxy does the same. My hands are clenched so hard that I can feel my nails cutting into my palms.

As I look on, Zero casts a bet of 34.05 notes on the Obsidian Kings. I frown. What a strange number to bet. I wait in silence, until exactly one minute passes. Then, Zero casts another bet, this time in favor of the White Sharks. 118.25 notes.

Now he’s betting on the opposite team? What the hell is he doing?

Another gambler across the den now also casts a bet of 34.05 notes. A minute later, he then casts a bet of 118.25 notes in favor of the White Sharks. The exact same pair of bets that Zero cast. Zero’s proxy jots something down on her clipboard.

He’s not betting at all. He’s communicating with the other gambler.

Of course he is. Record the numbers, I tell myself. I look on as Zero waits another few minutes before casting a new bet. This time, it’s 55.75 notes for the Obsidian Kings, and 37.62 notes for the Sharks.

Sure enough—across the den, a different gambler now casts the same bets in order. Again, the proxy jots this down.

I watch in perplexed silence as this continues, on and on, as everyone around me continues to cheer on the game. No one else seems bothered by these bets—they have no reason to be, really, because only the big bets are bolded and significantly change the tallies on either side. Why would anyone care about these strange, small sums?

Then, Zero casts a pair of bets—and Ren is the responding gambler.

Finally, when the match ends, Zero stands up with his proxy and steps away from the glass cylinder without a word. Beside him, his proxy nods once at the crowd, and the ones who had responded in code now nod back once. Overhead, the electronic track momentarily shifts to a different melody, as if it had hit a glitch. Go out with a bang, the singer on this new track croons. Yeah / let’s go out with a bang. Then the track hops back to its usual beat. The Obsidian Kings end up winning, and the tally over the White Sharks disappears, divided and paid proportionally among the winning gamblers. I look down at my list of recorded numbers that Zero had bet.

Fifty pairs of numbers. All of them are small bets. They range as high as 153, and as low as 0. As I stare at them, a possibility comes to me. It’s such a strange thought that at first I dismiss it. But the more I stare at the numbers, the more they seem to fit.

They’re locations. Longitudes and latitudes.

What if they’re locations of cities? My mind feels feverish with dread, the coming together of something big, of finally stumbling upon significant clues. Why, exactly, is Zero assigning a bunch of locations to others? What is he planning?

In a daze, I initiate a log out to leave the Dark World. Right as I do, I glimpse Zero across the room one last time.

He’s staring straight at me.





17



I don’t know if he recognized me. He might not have been paying attention to me at all, and his glance might have just been coincidental. But the memory of his head turned in my direction sends a shudder through me as I now find myself back in my room, staring out at the balcony again. I let out a slow breath. The serenity of the real world feels jarring after my jaunt in the Dark World.

What if Zero is on to me?

I pull up a map to hover transparently before me, along with the list of coordinates I’d just jotted down in the Pirate’s Den. Then I turn my attention to the longitudes and latitudes on the map’s sides.

“Thirty-one point two,” I mutter out loud, running my finger along the projection. “One hundred twenty-one point five.”

My finger stops right over Shanghai.

I do another set of numbers. “Thirty-four point zero five. One hundred eighteen point twenty-five.”

Los Angeles.

40.71, 74.01. New York City.

55.75, 37.62. Moscow.

And so on. I compare each set of numbers, sometimes adding a negative in front of a number whenever it ends up in the middle of nowhere or in the ocean. Sure enough, every set of coordinates matches up with a major city. In fact, Zero had listed out the top fifty largest cities in the world, each one repeated back to him by someone else in the crowd at the Pirate’s Den.

Whatever Zero’s doing, it is a global operation. And somehow, I have an ominous feeling that his endgame involves much more than just messing up some Warcross tournaments.

What if lives are at stake?

A knock on my door jolts me from my thoughts. “Yes?” I call out.

No answer. I stay where I am for a moment, then get up and walk to my door. I push the button that slides the door open.

It’s Ren, leaning against the side of the entryway, his headphones looped around his neck. A smile appears on his face that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Heard you skipped lunch,” he says. He tilts his head at me. “Headache?”