At the very least, the whole stadium wasn't on fire when we got there. It wasn't exactly proof that I had been overreacting and everything was going to be completely fine, but it definitely could have been worse. There was a part of me that had almost expected to see a Collision Point happening as soon as we came into view.

As members of my established team, the other two were allowed to come all the way in with me once I vouched for their identities. After all, without that, it wouldn't have been hard for a stranger to dress up in someone's costume and claim they were there for their teammate. I had to confirm that they were who they claimed to be. After which, we were given directions through the maze of tunnels to reach a special private viewing area right on the field level where they could watch. It was kind of like the VIP box my family was in up at the top of the stands, except much less fancy.

On our way there, we also found out that I still had a bit of extra time before I needed to get back to the ready room anyway. Apparently there had been some sort of accident with one of the exhibition shows. One of the magicians had let about fifty rats, rabbits, and ferrets loose without being able to contain them. Something about a broken latch on the cage. Between that and the two dozen doves that broke free while he was distracted by the other animals, things were pretty chaotic out there. They needed time to collect everything and get it all back under control.

Hey, maybe that would be the extent of the bad things that happened just because we were here together. Sure, it wasn't exactly ideal, but it was a hell of a lot better than some of the thoughts that had been rushing through my admittedly paranoid mind. This was even something that was kind of funny, as long as none of the poor animals ended up getting hurt or anything. I really didn't want that to happen.

I kept telling my brain to shut up about those stupid thoughts while we stood in that private room. From the outside, the large window looking out onto the field would just appear to be an advertisement banner. It was transparent from this side, giving a good view of the arena, where we could see a bunch of staff working to corral and safely contain the animals. The sight of it made me feel bad for the magician. I really hoped this wouldn't hurt his chances of getting some good gigs. From what I understood, for a lot of people like that, these games were their best springboard into really big careers.

Standing by one of the couches in front of that one-way window, near a monitor that would show a better view of the arena for whenever the competitors were up in the air or just too far away to see well the regular way, Sierra looked back and forth between Paige and me. "Damn it, you're both being paranoid about all this, aren't you? Look, just because we're here unexpectedly doesn't suddenly mean the sky is falling. We already had our chaos for the day, remember? This is our break." She looked at Paige and reached out to poke the other girl in the chest. "Or did you already forget about that mercenary army we just took on? This is our downtime after the big problem. And we chose to spend it watching Paintball go out there and win one of those rings. You know, instead of lounging at that beach on the tropical island that we totally could have stayed at."

Paige made a soft noise deep in her throat before waving that off. "I know, I know." She glanced toward me before amending, "I mean, we know. There's no reason to be paranoid, right?"

My head bobbed up and down quickly. "Absolutely. It's all good. You guys had your excitement this morning, and it hasn't even been twenty-four hours since my-- eh, I'll tell you about it later. It's not as exciting as your mercenary story."

Both of them stared at me, their expressions unreadable from behind their masks, but their body language made it clear they were about to demand I get into it. Before either of them could say anything, however, Paige suddenly pivoted and looked at the closed door. She was followed almost immediately by Sierra doing the same thing. Both of them snapped their gazes that way and stared like they were trying to burn it down with their eyes. It was so abrupt that I found myself spinning around as well. Yet there was no one there. Well, the door was shut, anyway. That didn't mean much, but we had been assured that the rooms were very soundproof. Plus there was plenty of security and other staff out there, wandering the corridors. I really doubted this was a case of someone standing with their ear up to the door.

I started to ask what they were doing, but Paige walked past me and opened the door. As expected, there was no one there. She poked her head out into the hall and looked both ways before turning back to look at her sister. "You felt that too, didn't you? Tell me you felt it too."

Sierra gave an audible sigh, tilting her head back to stare at the ceiling as she lamented, "Did you seriously have to prove me wrong that quickly? Couldn't you have just let this be our break? I mean, we really did just go through a whole mercenary thing. Why do you have to throw us into something else already? That's gotta be some other group you can throw this shit at. Find another way to entertain yourself."

Paige started to cut into her complaints, but the other girl gestured vaguely with one hand. "Yeah, yeah, I felt it too. But you know it's not him. It was too different. It didn't feel like him."

"But if it's not him," Paige insisted, "then who is it? There's not a chance in hell that was just a coincidence. It was too similar. Sure, definitely not the same, but it had to come from his stuff."

Sierra started to say something back to that, but I finally managed to interrupt with a quick, "Hey! What the hell are you guys talking about? What felt different but similar than whose what now?" I was starting to get really nervous about whatever was making them so upset, and I really didn't need to be nervous right now. Not when I was about to go back on that field for the last match.

The two of them looked at each other, then seemed to come to some silent decision (probably with a bit of help from their literal silent communication method) before Sierra turned to step over by the open door. She seemed to be on the lookout for something. Or someone. While she did that, Paige came back over to where I was, speaking intently. "We just felt some sort of Biolem coding. Not exactly that, but something like… you know what it's like when you happen to listen to a lot of songs from the same musician so you can start to recognize their work even if you don't know they did it? You hear a new song but you just know they were the ones who made it."

"Let's just say I understand what you mean," I allowed with a shrug. "Are you saying a Biolem just walked past that door and you guys-- um, detected it somehow? But you said it wasn't just like his. Pittman, you meant what you felt wasn't exactly like Pittman's… what, Biolem coding?"

Sierra answered from her place by the door. "Something like that. And whatever it was just tried to connect to our private chat. Not like they were trying to hack in or anything. It's like when one of your devices automatically tries to connect to Wi-Fi as soon as it's available. It came within range, right outside the door, and tried to join in. Didn't make it, obviously, we're not that dumb."

My mind was reeling as I tried to catch up with all this. The entire idea of going back out for the match had completely vanished. I wasn't thinking about that at all. The only thing in my head was, "Wait, does that mean they know what you guys are? Whatever Biolem was out there, I mean. Is this another one of Pittman's fucking backup plans or something? Wasn't all this shit supposed to be over now that he's-- um, now that he's dead? How is that fucker still doing this?"

"I don't think he is," Paige pointed out before reminding me, "the coding was different. Similar enough that it had to be based on his work, but not exactly the same. Not as good in some ways, better in others. It's like someone had some of his code, enough to start from, and then filled in the blanks with their own work. Knockoff Biolems or something. Maybe that's why they were still set to auto-connect to our chat. That gave them away. But no, they don't know what we are. At least, we don't think so. We're pretty sure the Biolem brains weren't advanced enough to notice and pay attention to anything like that. They aren't really sapient, they're more like the mindless drone versions that just do what they're told to do. They only follow basic commands."

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I took in a deep breath before letting it out, trying to stop myself from shaking. "Okay, so what you're saying is that someone took at least one, maybe more 'dumb Biolems,' and did a little extra reprogramming of their own before sending them in here to do… something. We have no idea what that something could be, or who reprogrammed th--oh, Cup. It could be Cup, right? We already know she worked with Pittman's stuff, this could be something she put together."

"Could be," Sierra agreed with a doubtful tone while continuing to watch the corridor, "but I don't think so. This didn't feel like what we've seen of her coding either, and we got a pretty good look at that when we broke into that lab of hers. I mean, sure, it's not a hundred percent or anything. But between that and the amount of eyes she has on her at the moment, seems pretty unlikely."

"Unless it's something she set up ahead of time, and did differently enough than her usual work for you to not recognize it," I pointed out before nodding. "But fine, let's go with the idea that it's someone else, someone we don't know about. What do we do about it right now? I mean, we could just tell the people in charge what we know-- at least a version of what we know, and let them deal with it from there, right? There's gotta be like a hundred Stars here, let alone all the Shields. We could tell them what to look for, give them some… I dunno, just something they can use so we can let them handle it?" Even as I said that, I just knew it wouldn't work out that way.

Sure enough, Paige gave a heavy sigh before carefully replying, "If it's a Biolem, even one of the dumb ones, then we don't know who to talk to. We don't know who might be compromised. Just because what we felt right there was one of the dumb ones doesn't mean there aren't any smart ones. And we don't know who actually brought them in here to begin with. What if the person we go to has something to do with it? Or maybe whoever they go to with it will. This isn't the sort of thing that stays quiet for long. Hell, maybe this is something your parents are doing. The Ministry had access to Cup and Pittman's code too. Maybe they're testing something. Or it could be the Breakwater people. Maybe they had Pittman do something for them while he was there."

"Or it could be someone we've never heard anything about, a completely unrelated group," I agreed with a muttered curse. "So what you're saying is, we can't tell anyone right now. At least not until we find out more about what this actually is. Which means tracking down that Biolem you guys felt, even though we have no idea who they were or what they looked like. Just great."

Sierra gave me what was probably supposed to be an encouraging thumbs up. "On the plus side, all we have to do is get close enough to it for the thing to try to auto-connect to our chat again. And it looks like it's gonna take those guys another few minutes to get those animals put away, so… time to take a little walk? They can't blame you for wanting to stretch your legs a bit."

She had a point, there was no reason we couldn't go for a walk down here. No one would be surprised that I was nervous and had to move around to take my mind off the match, even if the truth was that it was one of the last things I was thinking about right then. Mostly I was thinking just about every curse word I had ever heard about the fact that Pittman had managed to make himself a problem yet again. I didn't even know who had brought one of his Biolems in here, but still. Whatever was going on had originated from him, so this was still that unhinged fuck's fault.

Either way, we had to go out there and walk around. I didn't have any better ideas, and who knew how long we'd have before they got that field cleaned up and I'd have to choose whether to keep going with this and ignore the match, which would probably lead to needing to explain why I wasn't out there, or put this on hold so I could go compete. Sure, it would only be for a few minutes or so, but a lot could happen in that time. I just-- yeah, we really had to find this Biolem.

So, we went out together, the three of us moving through the hall in costume. The other two were at least fairly confident about which direction the Biolem had been moving in, since they knew exactly where it had been when it first came within range to start trying to connect to their network, and where it was when it stopped. Which meant we just started moving that way, past other doors leading to private rooms. We weren't actually sneaking around or anything. That never would've worked, not in a place as busy as this. Instead, we walked normally, talking back and forth at each other about random nonsense so everyone we passed would just think the others were trying to keep me distracted. It worked well enough that I had other people telling me not to worry and that they thought I had this. So, if nothing else, our ruse was convincing.

The entire time we were searching, I kept an ongoing internal rant with myself about why the hell this would be happening, and how far away we had to go before all of us might finally get a break from dealing with that goddamn bastard and all of his bullshit. Seriously, what were the odds that something like this would happen while we were here? There seemed to be three possible options. Either it was a true coincidence, or it was happening specifically because we were here and someone was deliberately messing with us, or (and this was the most terrifying option) there were actually these Biolems all over the place and we just happened to be here to notice this one. What if whoever was using them had actually just started putting them everywhere?

Obviously, I couldn't raise those concerns out loud with the other two, but I did use my phone to connect to that private chat of theirs so I could bring it up that way. They had both assured me constantly that it was safe and there was no chance anyone could break into it. At least not without them knowing, and the person would need to be both very good and very close to do it. Close enough to be identified and punched in the face a few dozen times if it came down to that.

When I raised my concerns about the odds of this happening while we were here the other two agreed, through text, of course. Out loud, we just kept talking about strategy for the next match. It was kind of difficult to keep multiple conversations going but at least we were moving, so anyone near enough to hear us only caught part of the discussion and hopefully didn't realize how circular and repetitive it was. But in any case, Paige and Sierra agreed that this was weird. Unfortunately, we didn't have any other choice about what to do besides look for the Biolem.

Then, without any warning, Paige abruptly snapped her hand out to grab my arm so I'd stop. Sierra was pivoting toward an unmarked door, both of them looking in opposite directions to make sure we weren't being watched. The hall was empty for the moment, so Sierra forced the door open with a quick shove and all of us moved into what turned out to be some sort of small utility closet with a bunch of shelves full of cleaning supplies and whatnot. Once the door was closed, there was barely enough room for the three of us to stand close together in the middle.

"Um," I started quietly, shifting slightly in those close quarters. Was I claustrophobic? I felt weird.

Before I could say anything else besides that single 'um,' Paige's hand snapped up to cover my mouth. I had taken the helmet off to be more comfortable around here, holding it in one hand while relying on my mask to hide my identity. As her hand silenced me, I felt a deep blush cross my face under that mask. Duh, yeah, that was stupid, obviously they wanted to hide. Why had I started to talk? Stupid, stupid Cassidy. I really needed to get my head in the game.

Once she was sure I understood and wasn't going to start talking again, Paige used two fingers to tap my phone so I would look at that. Then she and Sierra turned their attention to the ceiling. When I looked down I saw a message telling me that they had detected the Biolems. As in multiple, plural Biolems, which was just so much better than only having one around. This day was turning out to be just the absolute best. Seriously, it was fantastic. I couldn't wait to see where this went. Maybe if we were really lucky, we could squeeze in even more trauma before it was done.

While I stayed quiet and just watched, the other two were doing their best to tap into the security feed for their room above us. Which started with Sierra prying the cover for an electrical outlet off the wall so they could both use their finger wire things to plug into something back there. I really wanted to ask them what was going on and what they saw, my anxiety rising with every passing second. But I forced myself to wait. They'd tell me when they had something. For now, I just had to twiddle my thumbs and be patient. Well, sort of patient. Even if what I really wanted to do was melt down into my puddle self and find a way to sneak up through the cracks between the walls so I could see what was going on for myself. I trusted these two, of course, but I really didn't like being out of the loop like this. I wanted to see for myself.

Finally, they both withdrew from the outlet, exchanging what were obviously anxious looks before turning back to me. I saw new text appearing on my phone from both of them.

Paige: No video, only audio. Couldn't see who was there, but we know what they're doing. Big problem.

Sierra: Understatement. Giant problem. Not one Biolem. Not even full Biolem. Not a dumb Biolem, just similar code, programmed into rings.

Paige: The LEAT rings, the ones that read straight from genetics to be worn. Been changed, upgraded, now don't just read genetics, they deposit, insert, take over. Plug dumb Biolem program into person who wears them. Lets them be programmed, taken over, controlled. Like brainwashing but with technology. Overwrites brain with Biolem program.

Just in case that wasn't enough for me to get how bad this actually was, Sierra summed it up.

Sierra: If we don't stop them, every single person who accepts one of these rings and puts it on will be controlled, puppeted, by whoever is behind this.

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