Sabersong would be fighting KOL eight days before the Rain Festival. Legionnaire would go two duels later in the same Sector 8 arena.
Since they were near the end of the batch, Marvin holed up in the mech storage below the arena while Caroline, Renee, and Ben wandered through the stands. They followed Ainsel's holo-banner till they found Saeyung and Sunwoo in a box at the top. The siblings were standing at the doorway, talking in low voices. They turned to greet Caroline and her teammates.
"Congrats on breaking the top ten," Caroline said to Sunwoo.
"It's thanks to her," Sunwoo said, pointing to his sister.
Saeyung shook her head and nudged her brother. "All I did was write some code. His improvement this past year has been like no other."
Sunwoo rolled his eyes.
"No, seriously," Saeyung said.
"Now you decide to be humble?"
"Don't get used to it."
Caroline couldn't help smiling. They were still siblings despite all their coldness, it seemed.
"How have you been?" Saeyung asked Caroline.
"Much better," Caroline said. "I haven't triggered any memories."
Saeyung nodded. "You've been helping Amir?"
"We didn't find anything."
"Sorry to hear. But at least the murders have stopped."
I wouldn't be too sure. Caroline used the opportunity to transition into one of her rehearsed lines.
"Can I ask—what do you make of the girl's suicide at the psych ward?"
Saeyung tapped her finger against her elbow. "They told me she tried to kill her parents. I don't mean to be dismissive, but it shouldn't have been unexpected."
Caroline pursed her lips. "Do we know that she tried to kill her parents?"
"No," Saeyung said. "We don't have jurisdiction over our Sector's hospitals."
"Contrary to popular belief," Sunwoo said, which got a strained laugh out of everyone.
Hospitals are owned by Hosaka, Caroline remembered.
The five of them talked for a bit longer, then parted ways. Caroline was hesitant to interact with Legionnaire for too long; Saeyung already disliked Amir, and Caroline didn't want her to target Team Sabersong as well.
Caroline, Ben, and Renee decided to split up. Renee would keep an eye on Saeyung and Sunwoo, Ben would talk to the oddsmakers and try to get them to raise their bets on Sabersong, and Caroline would find out what she could about Kol. Defeating them would get Sabersong into the top hundred in the megacity, maybe even top fifty, and Caroline would use any methods necessary to achieve that. Her main objective was still to win Mecha Realm. She could not lose sight of that.
-----
Renee spent a good while sitting near Ainsel's box, keeping the CEO and her brother in the corner of her eye. She didn't mind being left alone, but now she couldn't stop herself from thinking of the past. Was this what her life would amount to—sitting beside people and simply watching them? What about all the missions Centium sent her on? What happened to making a difference?
You are making a difference, she reminded herself. You're helping Marvin become human again. You're helping Caroline win Mecha Realm. You're helping Ben get away from Centium for good.
The first few duels went by. Mechs Renee wasn't very familiar with. After a bit, Saeyung and Sunwoo left the box and exited the stands through a back door. Renee plugged in her earbuds, muted her voice box, and silently informed Caroline that she was going to follow them.
The back door wasn't private. She stepped into a narrow hallway that encircled the stadium, pretending to search for the bathroom. Saeyung and Sunwoo were farther down the hall, talking quietly.
There would be no cover, so Renee only started following once they were out of sight, relying only on their footsteps. All the while, she swiveled her head left and right, looking for the bathroom. She kind of actually had to go.
After a bit, Saeyung and Sunwoo appeared at the end of the hall again. They were standing next to an elevator, whose screen signified it was currently going down. It would be a bit before it opened, and conveniently, right beside Renee was the restroom. She ducked in, pissed, washed her hands, then climbed onto the stall and crawled into a vent near the ceiling. Classic stuff. She felt a sense of comfort as she scooted through the vent, knowing she would never get trapped, never be in danger while she was in here.
She crawled in the direction of the elevator till she reached the shaft. She dropped onto the box right as Sunwoo and Saeyung entered, and then the three of them began to descend. Through the thin holes in the box's roof, Renee eavesdropped on their conversation.
"And the trials?" Sunwoo was asking.
"They're pretty much done," Saeyung said in an almost sentimental tone. "Give it a week, and Legionnaire will be perfected."
"Perfected?" Sunwoo repeated. Renee figured that was a word outside of Saeyung's vocabulary.
"For what our resources will allow, we can't do any better," Saeyung said. "I'm thinking of a final test on Thursday, if that works."
"Yeah. A sync?"
Saeyung nodded.
Sunwoo was silent for a moment. Then he sighed. "I'm sorry. You've done so much for me."
Saeyung looked at him inquisitively through those tinted glasses. "What are you talking about?"
Her brother chuckled. "I'm trying to thank you, Saeyung. I know I've been distant."
A half surprised, half pained expression flashed across Saeyung's face. She looked down and took off her glasses. Renee leaned towards the grate to try to glimpse the woman's eyes, but they were out of view.
"I've been the distant one," Saeyung said. "I should be apologizing."
"Well. What is it that you said? You don't feel the full spectrum of emotions?"
"That's not an excuse. And you can call it what it is."
Sunwoo took his sister by the shoulders. "You're not a psychopath."
Saeyung looked up. Her brother blocked Renee's view of her face. "Whatever the case, I should've tried harder. As your sister."
"Eh, we're grownups now," Sunwoo said. "And we're doing alright, I'd argue. We've got a good thing going with Legionnaire."
"That we do," Saeyung agreed.
The elevator stopped, the doors slid open, and the siblings exited the box. Renee found herself smiling. Even those two ice cubes were capable of sharing a heartfelt moment.
She prepared to drop through the grate into the elevator when another person walked in. Great. Grate. Ha. The elevator began going up again and Renee pressed herself flat to the roof. She'd memorized the floor the Parks had gotten off on; she would go back once the elevator was clear.
-----
Caroline headed into the pilot's room with a headache. She had asked the same question to so many people, and they'd all given the same reply: "I don't know." No one knew anything about Kol, not even if they were a rookie pilot. Apparently, they wore all black and covered their face with a mask, not unlike an Inspector, and spoke through a voice-changer.
Had it been earlier in the season, she would've dismissed KOL as a lucky opportunist, but to reach the top ten after three months was no easy feat.
The pilot's room had only three objects: a Bessmer chair, a piloting helmet, and a holoplayer. A referee stood in the dark corner, his golden stripes reflecting the holoplayer's dim blue light. He greeted Caroline and asked a series of security questions she'd heard many times before. She settled into the Bessmer chair and weighed the piloting helmet in her hands.
At that moment, Renee's voice came through her earbud. "I've lost Saeyung!" she said.
That wasn't ideal, but why did she sound so worried? "Are you okay?" Caroline asked.
"She and Sunwoo went into their mech storage but only Sunwoo left," Renee said. "I've been waiting out here for fifteen minutes and Saeyung still hasn't come out."
Caroline frowned. Sunwoo and Saeyung didn't appear to have the best relationship, but Sunwoo surely wouldn't have killed her, right? She was probably just tinkering with Legionnaire.
"Don't wait for too long," Caroline said.
"Uh huh," Renee said. "But what if something happened to her?"
"That's not our problem," Caroline replied. " Make sure you're safe, okay?"
"Okay."
Caroline winced. Those were the same words she'd said to Renee when they'd rescued Ben and Marvin from the Manhunters. The order that had almost gotten Ben killed because Renee had left him.
Saeyung is one of the most powerful people in the megacity, Caroline thought. She'll be fine.
The referee tapped Caroline's shoulder and motioned for her to remove her earpiece. It was almost time for the duel to start. Caroline gave her earbud to the ref and put on her piloting helmet, activating its built-in comms to talk to Ben in the team room. They'd removed the illegal channel connecting her to Marvin, as it was too risky.
Through the visor, she saw what Marvin saw: the mellow lights of the arena and KOL standing at the opposite wall. The opponent was painted jet black, with big circular plates on each arm and leg. Shields that could turn into wheels, probably.
"Prime your mechs!" an announcer shouted.
"All systems check," Ben told Caroline.
"Pilots, enter your mechs!"
Good luck, Marvin. Caroline squeezed the neurobrick in her right hand and her vision went dark.
-----
Marvin had heard Renee's update on Saeyung. On any other day he would've been preoccupied with that, worrying what it could entail, but right now, he could not afford to think of anything else but the fight. Ben had raised the price on his victory to nearly twenty-thousand dollars. The oddsmakers, his teammates, and the rest of the crowd were expecting big things.
"On your mark!" the announcer said. "Get set!"
Marvin raised his sabers and burned his thrusters.
"Fight!"
The two mechs charged at each other. Marvin swiped, missed, and ended up behind KOL. He spun his torso and head around on his waist, reversed his knees, and lunged at the opponent's back. KOL's leg-shields rose and shifted rearside, causing Marvin's sword to clang off of them. He dodged a slice of an arm-shield and parried another.
That parry sent KOL back a few steps. Its leg-shields shifted back to the sides, then kept going downwards until KOL's feet were elevated.
Using the wheels already.
Marvin braced as the opponent sped towards him. He caught a shield to the chest, but only to get close to KOL. He stabbed and missed. KOL threw Marvin off, and Marvin skittered a few steps, found his balance, and boosted towards the enemy with sabers outstretched. KOL dodged handily with its wheels, then went after Marvin's trajectory. Marvin led it along for a second before stopping suddenly, ducking, and jamming his saber into KOL's stomach.
A hit already, and a decent hit at that. Sections of the crowd stood up, cheering.
KOL retracted its wheels. Marvin backed up. The initial burst of action was over, and now it was time to truly study the opponent.
They traded sparse blows for the next few minutes. KOL was well-piloted, but it moved more mechanically than Marvin was used to, like it was solely relying on an autonomous program. There was no personality to it.
This means I can find a pattern easily.
Soon, Marvin began to up the pressure. He swung relentlessly at the shields, backing KOL up and pivoting with his waist axis any time it tried to get around him. The opponent's movements were predictable, but it was equally likely that a shield would move to the area Marvin wanted to hit. It was an ingenious design. Instead of countless seams in KOL's armor, the shields seem to move with magnets, snapping in place wherever they were needed.
Soon, Marvin began taking more damage than he was dealing; it was obvious KOL had purposely tanked that first hit. With precisely calculated jabs, KOL crushed bits of Marvin's armor and circuitry. Marvin backed off to reevaluate.
I have to trick the shields somehow. But there were four of them, and he only had two swords which the shields tracked perfectly.
There has to be something that allows them to track me. The cameras wouldn't be on the shields themselves—that was too risky—so it had to either be the mech's eyes themselves or a hidden camera on its body. Probably both.
They began the second round of fighting. Marvin aimed for the head as much as possible, hoping to create enough chaos in the opponent's vision where its tracking program would get disoriented.
Minutes passed. No luck. Marvin landed a few trivial hits and a kick or two, but nothing to cause KOL to falter. On the other hand, he kept losing pieces of himself, and a red warning bar in his HUD slowly got bigger.
This isn't sustainable. He backed off again. Something about KOL confused him. Its shields were groundbreaking tech, but the rest of its body was strangely average. Each component was top notch, from the armor to the finger joints, but the way they were assembled seemed amateurish, like the engineer had never worked with parts of this caliber before.
What does this mean? Can I take advantage of it?
Just then, KOL rushed. Marvin held up his arms in surprise as dual shields collided into them. Then, in a burst of light, KOL suddenly flipped over him and jammed a shield into his back, cutting through his shoulder blades. Marvin reversed his arms and tried to stab KOL, but its other shields blocked every hit. KOL kicked Marvin onto one knee, pulled out its shield, and brought another one down on his head. Marvin blocked it with both arms, but that left his torso open. KOL flared every thruster on its right leg and kicked, carving a deep dent in Marvin's side and sending him flying across the arena.
He skidded and found himself lying in a field of sparks. Both his swords had snapped. His vision flashed red. Several systems were critical.
He didn't get up. As frustrating as it was to admit, this didn't seem like a winnable fight. KOL was too well built and well programmed. There was a reason it was a top five mech. Marvin wasn't even in the top hundred.
It's fine, you're still the highest-ranked in Sector 58. Learn what you can from this and—
He frowned. What was there to learn? That rich teams with better mechs always won? That was how he'd thought of his Legionnaire duel, and Ella had rightfully criticized him for it. Marvin would never have tech equal to KOL or Legionnaire. He had to make up for it in other ways.
An anger stirred within his Core as he rose to his feet. There was nothing skillful about KOL's piloting. Whoever this fraud of a pilot was, they were letting their programmer do all the work. They had a better mech than Marvin, better resources, better code, but they didn't deserve to win.
Marvin stood up and unsheathed his backup sabers. He'd been going about this all wrong. There was no point in having a plan of attack, no point in analyzing his opponent. He would move faster than KOL. He would think faster. He was an entire human brain inside of a chip; the other robot was just some lines of text.
KOL didn't stand a chance.
-----
Through Sabersong's shoulder camera, Caroline saw Marvin split KOL down the middle, cutting straight through its head. Then the refs pulled Caroline out of her sync, and she heard cheering in her helmet's comms. She smiled and pumped her fist. Sabersong now sat even higher at the top of Sector 58's leaderboard. She'd been doubtful, but the moment Marvin got back up, she had known he was going to win.
Caroline took off her helmet and prepared for the debrief. Time to finally meet the mysterious Kol.
She ran through some notes of the fight. She figured she could ask about KOL's autonomous program, though she didn't want to make it seem backhanded—it was clear how much Kol relied on it. She also wanted to ask about the shield design, as it was something she could incorporate into Sabersong.
But what about the actual pilot?
She supposed she'd try to know as much as Kol was willing to share.
The holoplayer beeped. Blue lines spread out from the center disk and traced the outline of a woman wearing a simple pilot's jacket and glasses. Details began to form, and Caroline blinked. Kol looked a lot like… No, there was no denying it. It was none other than Saeyung Park.
"You're Kol?!" Caroline asked in disbelief.
"As fun as that would be, I am not," Saeyung replied. "The real Kol has been watching out there. I paid them to pilot this duel."
Caroline's mouth fell open. "Why?"
"I wanted to talk to you."
Caroline searched for Saeyung's eyes beneath her glasses but only found more blue lines. Was this something about Amir? Something she couldn't say in public?
"I know your mech's secret."
Caroline's breath caught in her throat. This is something else. She doesn't know. She doesn't—
"He's a consciousness implant, isn't he? Steve." Saeyung tilted her head, trying to gauge a reaction. "You've done an alright job of hiding him—makes sense why Hosaka hasn't found out yet."
There was no use pretending to be innocent. Even if Saeyung couldn't see how pale Caroline had gotten, her silence said enough.
Does she know it's Marvin Yao? She has to, right?
But if she did, she made no mention of it as she continued, "My brother and I won't tell anyone. Under one condition."
Caroline's head was spinning. This was straight out of a nightmare. They were supposed to get to Mecha Realm, or at least get through the rest of the season. Hell, she'd be okay if they even made it through Battlegrounds Month. Never in a million years had she expected it to end like this.
"I want to speak with Steve tomorrow at 9 PM on the roof of the Sector 8 shopping mall," Saeyung said. "He is to come alone and unarmed, and I promise I will do the same."
Caroline clenched her teeth. "What do you want with him?"
What do you think? She'll take him apart and study him. Finish what she started.
The CEO of Ainsel AI ignored the question. "9 PM tomorrow," she repeated. Then the holoplayer beeped and her blue figure disappeared.