Kai woke up with a kink in his neck.
He hadn't slept on the king-sized mattress. He had slept in the upholstered chair dragged into the corner of the room, facing the door. The blackout curtains were still drawn tight, but the temperature of the glass behind them had shifted. Morning.
He pulled the Signal from his cargo pocket. The screen woke against his thumb.
07:14. PULSE DAYS REMAINING: 2
He went downstairs.
The lobby of the Shinjuku Prince Hotel smelled worse in the daylight. The shivering yellow light of the camping lanterns was gone, replaced by the flat, gray illumination bleeding through the floor-to-ceiling windows. The air was heavy with the sour dampness of unwashed clothes and old sweat.
Kai bypassed the center of the room. Daisuke's calorie faction was already arguing over a crate of bottled water. The shivering lump under the foil blanket near the elevators hadn't moved since yesterday.
Kai found a stool at the edge of the dead lobby bar. The mahogany was sticky. He kept his hands in his pockets and watched the front doors.
The concrete block was still wedged in the track.
At 07:42, a boy walked through the gap.
A bright, blindingly orange track jacket. A target from three blocks away. It belonged on a high school running track, not in a city that erased people from the sky.
He carried no bag. No weapon. His brown hair was a chaotic mess, sticking up at the back like he'd been running his hands through it for hours.
He bypassed the doorway completely, ignoring the thirty people staring at him and the exits behind them.
He walked straight toward the woman pacing near the dead elevators.
Kai watched. The pacing woman was burning energy she couldn't replace. Her footsteps were uneven, dragging slightly on the left side.
The boy in the orange jacket stopped two feet from her. He dropped his shoulders, tilted his head slightly, and said something Kai couldn't hear.
The woman stopped pacing.
She looked at the boy. Her mouth opened. She said a single word, and her shoulders hitched, and she stopped gripping her own elbows. The boy nodded. He offered her a small, lopsided smile.
Empathy required proximity. Proximity introduced variables. Kai kept his jaw tight.
The boy patted the woman's shoulder—a brief, familiar gesture—and turned away. His amber eyes swept the lobby.
They locked onto Kai.
Kai didn't look away. He kept his eyes locked on the space between the boy's collarbones.
The boy walked straight toward the bar. His sneakers squeaked against the marble. It was a ridiculous sound.
He stopped at the empty stool next to Kai and sat down without asking.
"You look like you've been here longer than me," the boy said.
His voice was completely grounded. Present.
"One day," Kai said.
"Ren Ashida." The boy held out his hand.
Kai stared at the hand. He didn't want to touch it.
He looked at Ren's face. The amber eyes were waiting, completely devoid of the usual social pressure that accompanied an offered handshake. Ren wasn't demanding a response; he was just offering one.
Kai gripped the hand for a fraction of a second. Rough skin. Warm.
"Kai Kurosawa."
Ren pulled his hand back and rested his forearms on the sticky mahogany. He didn't complain about the texture. "What've you figured out?"
Kai looked at him.
"Every midnight, the sky drops a silver laser," Kai said. "It erases whoever hits zero on their Signal device. No body. Just clothes."
He watched Ren's face for the break. The flinch. The widening of the eyes.
Nothing. Ren just watched his mouth, listening.
"You start with three days," Kai continued. "You add days by entering the buildings that light up in Kabukicho at night. Arenas. The number on the card is the number of days you win. You lose, you die."
"Card?" Ren asked.
"The games are categorized by suits. Spades is physical. Diamonds is logic. Clubs is teamwork. Hearts is psychological."
Kai finished the summary. He waited for the heart rate spike. The shift in breathing.
Ren tapped his thumb against his jaw. Once. Twice.
"Okay," Ren said.
Kai blinked. "Okay?"
"Yeah. The math is brutal, but it's math." Ren shifted his weight on the stool, turning fully toward Kai. "So we're smart about it, and we go together."
The word together made the muscles in Kai's neck lock.
The image of a rain-slicked windshield flashed behind Kai's eyes. The sound of metal folding inward. The absolute, crushing silence from the passenger seat.
He forced his breathing to remain shallow and even.
"I work alone," Kai said.
"Noted," Ren said. He didn't move. He didn't look offended. He just looked at Kai the way a person looks at a heavy piece of furniture blocking a hallway.
Kai's fingers twitched against his thigh. He waited for the anger, or the begging.
Ren just sat there, tapping his thumb against his jaw, occupying space Kai didn't want to share.
"If you work alone," Ren said casually, looking out at the lobby, "how do you plan to clear a Clubs game? Teamwork implies more than one."
"I avoid Clubs."
"Right. Until you can't."
Kai turned his head slowly. "I don't need—"
Footsteps on the stairs cut him off.
Not the shuffling, exhausted steps of the other Wanderers. These were hard. Deliberate. The heavy, rhythmic thud of combat boots hitting the marble.
She was maybe twenty. Five-foot-six. She marched out of the stairwell.
She wore a dark, scavenged tactical jacket that fit her perfectly, and dark cargo pants tucked into boots.
But it was her hair that caught the eye. Silver-white. Natural, not dyed. Shaved close on the left side, the right side falling in a dramatic, sharp angle past her jaw. She had a small silver ring in her nose.
Her eyes were green. Sharp, cutting green. They swept over the lobby, dismissed Daisuke's water-arguing faction in half a second, bypassed the pacing woman, and locked onto the bar.
She walked straight toward them.
Kai cataloged her instantly. Double-knotted laces. Scavenged tactical jacket. Zero hesitation in her stride.
She stopped three feet from the bar. She crossed her arms.
"Are you two going to talk all morning?" she asked.
Her voice was completely flat.
Ren looked at her. He offered that same lopsided smile. "We were discussing strategy. I'm Ren."
She didn't look at his hand. "Saya Mizuno."
Kai looked at the tight line of her shoulders. "You've been here longer than two days."
Saya finally looked at Kai. The green eyes tracked his scar, his posture, the stillness of his hands.
"Two and a half," she said. She didn't elaborate.
"You were listening from the stairs," Kai said.
"You weren't exactly whispering." Saya dropped her arms. She looked at the floor-to-ceiling windows, out toward the jagged concrete teeth of the Kabukicho district to the south. The daylight was doing nothing to make the dead buildings look any less threatening.
"There's an Arena in sector four," Saya said. "It lit up last night. Nobody from The Shore went in. It's still active."
Ren leaned forward on the bar. "What color?"
Saya turned her head. She looked at Ren, then at Kai. She didn't roll her eyes, but the muscles in her face suggested she was thinking about it.
"Red," she said.
The blood drained out of Kai's face.
He had memorized Obi's speech. He knew the categories. He knew exactly what red meant.
"Hearts," Kai said.
"Yes." Saya adjusted the collar of her tactical jacket. "Psychological. Trust exploitation. Statistically the most lethal."
Ren pushed off the barstool. The orange jacket caught the gray light.
"Great," Ren said. He sounded entirely genuine. "Let's go look at it."
Kai looked at him. Looked at Saya.
Two variables. Standing right in front of him.
His Signal buzzed in his pocket. A phantom vibration against his thigh.
Two days.
Kai stood up. He walked past them, heading for the cracked glass doors.