EARTH ONLINE

Chapter 18 — What Makes a Reserve

Dawn came pale through the gym's far window, and the nerves that had held everyone taut all night finally began to ease.

Cole walked the corridor where the six bodies lay, looking at each in turn, his face blank, his pace slow.

"How did you become a Registered Player?"

He looked up. Cassie had come out of the gym and stood against the wall, watching him.

He was quiet a moment. "On the third day after Earth went online, I played a game of the Spire's and won. It was a one-on-one. The other player was your father."

Her body went tight, then loosened. "You don't have to feel guilty."

"I don't."

She looked at him.

"Your father pulled me into that game," Cole said. "Without it I'd likely have been erased already. I've finished what he asked — I've seen that you're safe. The game was him or me. I felt guilty, for a while. But you're alive, so I won't anymore. And I don't think your father would blame me."

She studied him a long moment, and then she smiled. "You're a strange person."

A girl a full head shorter than he was, talking like someone three times her age.

"You're clever," Cole said. He did not hand out praise often.

"Top ten in my year, every year. First place at the math olympiad, first at the national coding competition. I go to all of them for the school." She paused. "But since Earth went online, even a Reserve's body sharpens. I think I've gotten a little smarter, too. For instance — do you know how a Reserve is actually made?"

Cole's eyes narrowed. "No."

A Registered Player won a Spire game in the three days. A Stowaway killed someone in the three days. But a Reserve —

"When the game began, the school had eighteen people," Cassie said. "Only Toby and Joy were Registered. The other sixteen were all Reserves. I asked every one of them, in detail, about those three days, and I found what they had in common."

She had no way of knowing how rare it was that anyone would. Cole had never met enough people to study the question. Cassie had — and more than that, she'd thought to ask, and found an answer.

"All sixteen of us played a game in those three days and won. Not a Spire game — an ordinary one. Video games, phone games, games in real life. Mr. Reyes is the odd one: he never played a game, but he won a bet with another teacher. He survived too."

"It can't be that simple," Cole said, frowning. "If merely winning a game counted, far more than four hundred million people played something in those three days."

"Right. Not that simple." She leaned on the wall. "Take me. In those three days I won games and I lost games — I lived, and the classmate who beat me did not. So I asked more carefully. Every survivor had heard their opponent say it, out loud — I'm out. You got me. I'm eliminated."

Cole went still. "Said it aloud."

"The Spire's first message, on the fifteenth, told the whole world to eliminate a Player. Nobody knew how. But it planted the word. Normally, losing a game, you'd say I lost — you don't usually say I'm eliminated. Because the Spire said it first, the word was in people's heads. Sometimes as a joke, sometimes just an offhand thing — they said it. And the one who beat them lived." She lowered her eyes. "It may only be one path to becoming a Reserve. Two of our sixteen were never told eliminated by anyone, and they're Reserves too. The sample's too small. That's as far as I can take it."

It was further than anyone had taken it. Cole, who never praised, said, "You're very good."

A librarian had won his first game by reading a sentence right. The girl in front of him had cracked a law of the new world by listening to one.

---

By daylight the talk turned to weapons, and to abilities.

Cole already knew, from taking Ben's curse, that collecting a power did something else: it made him stronger. Sharper eyes, faster reflexes, more strength. He'd half-doubted he could have dodged Toby's first nail before he'd taken Ben's ability. He wanted to test whether taking a power raised his whole game.

So he went to Joy first — a slight ninth-grader, a Registered Player stronger than Mr. Reyes despite her size, carrying a cleaver from the cafeteria and a long staff strapped to her back. "Lose the staff," he told her. "You're not tall enough to swing it at full force, and strapped on it's just dead weight. Give it here." She thought about it and handed it over.

Cole felt the faint strange current the moment he took it. In the corner, he drew out his book.

> 【 Ability: I Spy 】

> 【 Owner: Joy (Registered Player) 】

> 【 Type: Special 】

> 【 Function: read a player's identity 】

> 【 Level: 1 】

> 【 Restriction: five players a day; cannot read a target whose ability far outclasses the user's 】

> 【 Note: So trash I can't even be bothered to write a note. 】

So that was why Joy couldn't read him at the gate — his ability so outclassed hers that she'd needed to touch him. He read on.

> 【 Cole's User Manual: read one player's identity per day. Garbage ability, Cole didn't pay, nothing more to say. 】

He pressed his five fingers into the staff. Five shallow prints sank into the solid wood.

Taking a power raised his strength. Which meant —

He drifted over to Toby, who was eating to load up before the fight. "I'm a little hungry. Can I have that roll?"

"There's a whole pile over there, grab your own," the plump boy mumbled.

"I like this kind. It's the last one." Cole was shameless.

Toby, generous to a fault, handed it over with a grimace.

"Hey," Wes said. "You stealing food off a kid now?"

Cole didn't answer. His expression had gone slightly sour — because he'd taken the bread off Toby, hadn't paid, and gotten no ability at all.

What was that?

He wasn't ready to quit. Toby's power was the offensive one; collecting it would be a real asset. Cole mooched a couple of crackers, a carton of milk — only ever Toby's, no one else's — until the boy went green and nearly cried. "Why are you only after my stuff?!"

Cole's own face was going green. "…One more cracker."

Two boxes of crackers, a roll, and a milk later, Cole was uncomfortably full and still had nothing. The others, watching the two of them, broke into the first easy laughter the school had managed in days. But Cassie watched him thoughtfully, and when Cole finally gave up and turned away, she picked up a box of crackers and hurried after him.

She wasn't a pretty child, short and thin, but her eyes were iron. "You take things from people. It's tied to your ability, isn't it? If I give you something — does that make you stronger?"

How is she this sharp? Right on the mark, again.

Cassie had no ability worth taking; pocketing her crackers without paying would do Cole nothing. But she held the box out in both hands, jaw set. "I'm giving it to you. So kill them. Whatever it takes — I'll give you anything, just kill them."

Cole had been about to refuse. He shut his mouth and took the box.

And the instant his fingers met the cardboard his eyes widened. He drew out the book — he'd kept it in his pack this time — and opened it.

> 【 Ability: Big Brain 】

> 【 Owner: Cassie Hale (Reserve) 】

> 【 Type: Genetic 】

> 【 Function: extreme development of the brain — superhuman intellect and acuity 】

> 【 Level: 3 】

> 【 Restriction: judgment accuracy caps at 50%; physical enhancement potential is 0 】

> 【 Note: Why am I always right about the truth? Because I'm smarter than you, you fish-lipped mortal. Ahahaha. 】

> 【 Cole's User Manual: judgment accuracy 10%. Christ, the luck on this man — and of course he didn't pay. 】

The mole had said it: Registered Players and Stowaways always woke a power, and a Reserve might. So that was it. No wonder she was like this.

He looked down at her. Two things sat side by side in his mind, and he set both aside for later: that Cassie had a power and Toby's mooched bread had given him nothing — and that the difference, maybe, was that Toby had handed his roll over grudging and wanting it back, while this girl had pressed her crackers on him like a gift.

"I'll kill them," he said.

"Good," said Cassie. "Kill them. And avenge them."

---

By Cassie's account, three Stowaways were left. Two had died the night before — both with feeble powers, which was why the children had managed it. Of the three remaining, one ability was hard to read and two were lethal.

"The unclear one first," she said. "His ability is — growing flowers. Mr. Reyes saw it himself; flowers bloom where he walks. Ordinary roses. We fought him twice and he never showed anything more. But he's fast, and he knows how to fight, and he's vicious. He's the one missing an arm — the Stowaway who tried to take Wade's match in the game."

Cole had seen enough strange powers, his own snide book among them, that a man who grew roses didn't move him to comment. He didn't relax, either.

"The other two are dangerous. One breathes fire."

"Fire?"

"From his mouth. I watched closely — once every three minutes. Hot enough to melt marble but not steel. You couldn't see it in the dark last night, but two of the letters on our gate sign are melted off. Steel melts near fifteen hundred degrees; marble around eight hundred. His fire's under a thousand."

A dangerous power. "And the last?"

Her tone went flat. "The last one has a gun."

Cole's face stilled.

"Toby plays survival games, he knows guns — says it's a police sidearm, looted from a precinct after the game started. But the gun isn't the frightening part. His ability is tied to it." She paused. "He never runs out of bullets. A police pistol holds maybe eight rounds. He fired at least thirty last night. No reload, no swapping mags. We have to assume the worst — that his ammunition is infinite."

Cole's chest tightened. A Registered Player's remade skin turned ordinary blades; it could not yet turn a bullet. Three rounds and even he was finished. A Reserve had no chance at all.

He thought a long time. "Can I use the giant match?"

Toby had it in Cole's hands before he'd finished the sentence. "Been waiting for you to ask. We three Registered Players are the strongest of us, and you're stronger than me — Cassie said it's best in your hands."

Cole pressed the great match to his wrist. It vanished in a flash of red, and a match-tattoo bloomed on his skin.

Toby's eyes went round. "A hidden weapon! Perfect."

The sun crept west. Through the day they ran the campus, and with Toby's power setting traps was easy work — pits, tripwires, a thin filament strung across the iron gate. As the light failed, every nerve drew tight again.

Night was coming, and so were they.