Episode One - Part Two - Midday

"C'mon, I know you've been awake nearly two minutes now, Step, so quit fooling around," that same feminine voice said to me. "Playing possum's only wasting your time and mine, so maybe let's skip all that, yeah?"

"Fine," I said, sitting up. "You got me. I'm awake. Who's Step?"

"You are," Jill's voice said in my head. "Better get used to it."

"That's what all the press called you for 'Second Chance,'" the woman sitting across the inside of the cave said to me. "They called you Alastair at first, then tried Al but nobody thought it suited you, so they nick-named you Stair, since it seemed like people were just walking all over you. But after you turned it around, the commentators decided they couldn't call you Stair anymore, so they started calling you Step, since you were Stepping over folks left and right. It stuck and the public ate it up. Lots of us were rooting for you."

This was my first chance to look over the woman who'd knocked me out just a few minutes ago. She was dressed in a form-fitting grey bodysuit with some basic sigils and markings on it, but mostly just the slate grey. For now, anyway. The longer any of us were in the game, the more covered our suits would be with little icons, symbols and writing on them, from people who had sponsored us throughout the game.

She was Asian of some stripe - Korean or Thai, maybe? Not that either of those countries still existed. As of fifty years ago, when the Global Corporate Takeover occurred, no countries existed and now there were just one thousand co-owned corporate fiefdoms, carved up just like little countries. Each fiefdom had two owners and they were all interlocked, so no one corporation exclusively owned any area, and each corporation shared their four fiefdoms with four other corporations, ensuring there was always someone else to appeal to if one answer seemed unfair.

I used to be a bit of a history buff, before shit went sideways. I think most of what used to be Korea is now co-owned by BreatheSafe and The Kimura Group, but I don't really follow regional politics that much, and the breaklines are in strange places.

The woman had tan unblemished skin and a muscular physique, but there was a sort of hard beauty to her - like a soldier put on display for a press event or something, which I suppose she was. One of the things they never tell you is that the women contestants for the Big Two Shows get a 'makeup' face layer mod given to them before they're put into the games. That's how they always look so well put together and glamorous. It's actual technological trickery at its finest.

She had her long black hair (with what looked like a few blue streaks in it) up in a bun, and from what I could see, surprisingly few visible cybernetic mods, although a lot of the best ones were usually well hidden beneath the skin. But there was no mistaking the metallic gleam to her eyes, intentionally a little inhuman looking. Those were expensive and professional work, and definitely full of plenty of useful tools.

"Step, huh?" I said to her. "I like that. Makes me sound even less elitist. Let's go with that then, I guess. And you are?"

"Mako, like the shark," she said to me. "Mako Ito. My handler's name is Evan. Yours?"

"Jill," I told her. "Or JJ. God, my head still hurts. You know if you wanted to partner up, you could've just asked instead of slugging me one."

"Nah, you were eyeballin' that blonde bitch as she was getting loot from the pond, and if I'd taken it too slow, you might've tried to take us both before I got a chance to cement my place as your number one," she said, reaching into her backpack to pull out a bottle of water, tossing it to me. "I don't mind sharing, but I wanted to get to you first, ever since I saw your name on the leaderboards. I had to travel a bit, but I'm used to moving quick and light, and I got lucky - I think you were only a couple of people to the left of me on the ring."

"You know me from somewhere?"

"I watched you on 'Second Chance,' and I don't give a damn what the odds-makers or my handler thinks; I figure you've got the best odds of making it through this," she said, admiration in her tone of voice. "I saw how everybody underestimated you on 'Chance,' and no way am I making that fucking mistake."

"Okay," I said to her as I opened the sealed bottle of water with a crack. "That's why me. Now convince me. Why you?"

"Look, I'm what my people would've called a ronin in older times," she said, telling me she was of Japanese descent indirectly. "I was a bodyguard for one of..." She trailed off before deciding exactly how much information she wanted to give me, but it seemed like it was going to be all of it. "I was head of security for Dhruv Bajaj, son of the CEO of Rakshasa Corp. He was out partying and drinking one night when off-duty enforcers for the Mourioche Group decided to take a run at him." She sighed, rubbing the back of her neck as she looked down, clearly remembering some kind of trauma. "Look. I'm very good at what I do, but they had numbers on us like you wouldn't believe. When they killed him, they maimed me pretty good, but I didn't bleed out before the paramedics got there and the med team did their job. My insurance covered growing new stretches of intestine, muscle and bone, but I was clearly out of a job, a disgraced bodyguard who couldn't fulfill her basic duty when push came to shove."

Honesty was good. A lack of professional combat skills, however, was definitely a downside. "Hell of a way to pitch yourself, Mako, letting me right now you're here because you failed at your job."

"There's more to it than that, Step," Jill said in my ear, as I raised a single finger in Mako's direction, the universal signal that a handler or AI was talking to you. "Says here she'd requested additional firepower several times and cautioned that if her squad was met with superior numbers, her client would definitely be in jeopardy, but the CEO himself ignored those recommendations and tried to get them scrubbed out of the records."

"Then how did you get them, Jill?"

"I know how to get you what you need," she purred in my skull with a giggle. "That's my job. To be your girl who can get you the answers to any question you have. Any good handler knows how to get the data that's supposedly gone to give up its secrets. The only reason the stink's on her for this was because the CEO was saving face for the shareholders and he needed someone smaller to bully."

"Let me guess," Mako said with a smirk as she adjusted the tiny lamp that was keeping our cave lit up. "She's telling you there's signs someone tampered with my record between the time of the hit and the time of my firing?"

"Don't be absurd," I said, shaking my head. "She was telling what data was removed from your record, and how you'd warned them about the dangers beforehand."

"That's why I'm here," she told me. "Even though I bet they're hard muting this conversation right now, to keep Rakshasa's CEO from getting his name dragged into the mud. If you win, you're going to need a security detail, and I think you're my best odds at getting past this, and I'm certainly one of your best chances as well. They only beat us because their numbers were four-to-one. We play our cards right here, nobody can get close to that."

"I hope you're not thinking of trying to suggest this Chain option at me," I told her, trying to figure out how committed to this she was.

"Not now, not yet," she said, "but that's an option we may want to consider later. Crowns with strong support teams usually end up winning Kingmaker. I spent a good amount of time studying the show when I heard I got accepted into it. Almost the whole month taking notes, studying vids, watching game theory discussions, you name it." Male players were called 'crowns,' and female players were called 'entourage,' and the reverse was true on 'Queenmaker,' which was the gender flipped version of the show that aired every fourth season, simply because of the applicant pool. 'Entourage' very rarely actually died; 'crowns' died quite a lot.

"Then why'd they introduce the Chain?"

"Oh, you didn't see the most recent season of Kingmaker, did you?"

"Missed the tail end of it. It coincided with the start of my run on 'Second Chance,' and at that point, I was a little too busy trying to stay alive to be able to watch the other game show. Plus, once I won 'Second Chance,' they dunked me into cold storage. That was yesterday for me, but about, what, five, maybe six weeks for you?"

"Six weeks, yeah. Last season's winner was Davaa Ganzorig, and when he was right about to win, he ended up 'killing' most of his own team, leaving the arena with just one female partner, and a whole slew of angry viewers," Mako said. "The people damn near rioted, but there was no rule against it, and he argued that his team was too untrustworthy to be allowed to stay with him beyond the confines of the game. But that isn't what the viewers wanted. They'd invested emotionally in the squad he'd built, and to see him throw it all away like that? Talk about a heel turn. The audience lost their fucking minds and the unrest grew to dangerous levels. But it seemed like the previews for this season of Kingmaker got people to calm down enough that they're willing to give it all a chance."

"It's pretty scary out there, Step," Jill said in my skull. "People were getting close to rioting again, and you know how well that worked last time." She wasn't kidding. The last global riots had resulted in over four million dead within the span of just three weeks before the AI security forces put them down. "How much Kingmaker have you seen?"

I put my finger back up in the air to indicate I was talking to Jill again. "A bit, but not a ton. I know they tend to lean into the interpersonal dynamics a lot more than 'Second Chance,' which is basically every person for themselves. I think I've seen one full season of it, and maybe half a season of 'Queenmaker,' just because I thought one of the crowns was hot, but she got eliminated early, and I lost interest."

"Yeah, well, better start wrapping your head around the rules here, because the 'maker' shows are a lot more audience participation driven. Votes matter. Popularity matters. Inter-squad dynamics - physical, mental and sexual - matter more than I can tell you. Do things the audience likes, they'll throw you and your team perks - weapons drops, medical drops, improvements to your body suits, you get the general idea."

"Define for me 'what the audience likes,'" I said to her.

"The same things you liked when you watched it. Sex, violence and rock'n'roll, baby. Thrills, chills, spills and whatever it takes to keep the fans engaged."

I paused a second, realizing I very much needed to stop thinking of this as a solo game and much more as a team-building exercise. I didn't have to keep anyone I brought in, but I needed to bring people in, and be ready to get rid of them again if they proved untrustworthy or incapable. "God, you're right. So, thoughts?"

"She seems like a decent ally," JJ told me. "You could probably get an audience bump if you two hooked up quick before you moved onward."

"What, like now?"

"Romance can come later, Step," Jill told me. "Right now, it's about making your mark and moving the needle. Nobody's gotten an audience gift yet, so that means there's still plenty of time for you to get an early head start."

I lowered my finger as I looked at Mako. She was certainly attractive enough. She spoke before I could, a devious little smirk lingering on her lips, and a twinkle in her eye. "Lemme guess, your handler's suggesting we fuck, or at least fool around, in effort to get the audience on our side."

"Yep."

"Mine too," she said. "Evan says me getting naked's worth at least a little popularity bump, but leaving room to grow's important. I told him that we shouldn't start straight away by fucking, otherwise we don't have a lot of room for escalation. All that said, I don't mind fooling around with you at least a bit."

"Wait, I didn't see you signal you were talking with him, nor did I hear you say anything," I said to her, a little confused by how she was communicating with her handler without her saying anything that I could hear.

Mako tapped her temple. "My cyberware's got the full bodyguard package, so that includes neurolink messaging. No need to talk out loud with handlers - they just tap directly into my comms line. Nice little perk of bodyguarding work - all the gear's yours for as long as you're alive, and those tools can find a second life if you find yourself out of work again."

"Ah, I see," I replied. "Any chance you could use that to send me messages in here?"

"Negatory," she said. "For the duration of the game, all my comms are locked in to just my handler and the AI directors."

"Shame. Well, it's your call how far you want to go to pitch yourself to the audience. I'm still learning the ins and outs of 'Kingmaker' so if you think it'll get us ahead, we should definitely go for it. Hey, can I kiss you first?"

"Sure. Why, you got a box to pay off?"

"Yep, one I picked up earlier. That B.A.G. with two rounds in it that's still in the pouch." Mako leaned over and kissed me, and even though it just needed to be something small and superficial, she leaned into a bit, and made it last for a good long period of time, maybe closer to a minute. "Nice. That had a bit of pepper on it."

"Gotta sell it to the folks at home. There hasn't been a 'first flesh' alarm yet, so we'd definitely get it if we go a bit further and show them some real spice. First Flesh usually comes with a weapon of some kind as a prize," Mako said to me. "Something for me beyond your two-shot popgun. So start getting your suit off."

"Me?"

"Fastest we can get this done is if I blow you, right?"

"I mean, probably?" I said, as I started to unzip the waist band of my suit, so I could pull the lower half of it down. "But you—"

"Don't worry," she said, unzipping the waist band of her suit as well. "I'll give you and the audience a bit of a show as well, so we can get this done quick. Now, lemme see what I'm working with."

The suits weren't completely removable, but they could be adjusted and opened to allow us to use the bathroom or to expose ourselves for reasons just like these. They had a zipper in the mid-section that went all the way around, splitting it into two halves, but the top half couldn't be lifted above the neck, and the bottom half stayed locked on at the ankles, so that we couldn't ditch the suits themselves. That gave the Game Masters a great deal more control over us. They were probably the most high-tech tool in the AI's arsenal, capable of thousands of different things.

I lowered my suit from the waist down to my knees, exposing my cock as I heard Mako purr, while she lifted hers up to expose a very generous set of breasts, large and full, although it was entirely possible that they were enhanced as part of her bodyguard package - sometimes those things included vanity upgrades. They were the same tan color as the rest of her, with a dusky brown for her small nipples inside relatively spare areola. There were a pair of exposed metal grooves along a couple of her ribs, cybernetic reinforcement mesh layered over the skin of her stomach for safety, likely the product of the botched mission that resulted in her professional termination.

She brought her hands along her sides and pressed her tits together, not only for my enjoyment, but for the enjoyment of the audience watching at home. "C'mon Step, how long's it been since you got any? They hauled you almost straight here from 'Second Chance' to 'Kingmaker,' and you didn't get any in 'Second Chance.' Plus, your season of that ran longer than anyone expected. That means it's been, what? At least six months? Probably a whole lot more." She was rubbing her nipples, getting them stiff, as she walked over towards me and moved to get down on her knees, letting go of her tits to reach up and stroke my cock slowly. "This is the deadliest weapon you've got in this game here, Step," she said, purring in admiration at it. "Not too little, not too big, just the right thickness."

"I'm average at best," I said, rolling my eyes. "But sure, try and convince the folks at home whatever you like." That said, as soon as I felt her lips wrap around the head of my shaft, I let out a sharp little shiver as her eyes look up at me with an eager smile that I'm dead certain one of the microdrone cameras flying around us is capturing for the audience at home. I can feel the suit around my top half warming up a little bit - a sign that I'm drawing bigger numbers of viewers than I was just a moment or two ago, and I know Mako's feeling the same thing. There were lots of little haptic sensors like that built in.

"C'mon, Step," she giggled up at me. "You're not gonna break me. I like it rough. So put on a good show for the folks at home who are tuning in—MPPPPH!"

She said she liked it rough, and she'd said she wanted to put on a good show. That was what she'd told me and I intended to respect her wishes, so I'd grabbed her head and shoved her face down onto my cock until her lips were at the base of my shaft, her nose buried in my brown pubic hairs, as she looked up at me with a few tears streaking down her cheeks but one of the biggest grins I'd ever seen, as I felt her hands clenching onto my hips, not making any effort to pull me back.

It was good - we were learning to send subtle unspoken signals to each other like that, and it was drawing in more and more viewership with each second that she was gagging and groaning on my shaft. Her fingers gave me tiny squeezes when I held her down half a second too long, but when she pulled back to gasp for air, she giggled like a demented schoolgirl buzzed on her first stolen beer. She'd studied this game well, and I realized that when it came to presentation for the team-oriented nature of the game, I'd likely be following her lead for a while to come. She was already working the folks at home, trying to build fans.

As much as I would like to say I focused on the needs of the game at that point, it had been too long since I'd had any real physical contact with a woman that I was going to be able to keep my endurance up long enough to put on a great show. "Shit, Mako... you're... you're very fucking good at this... I'm... I'm not gonna... shit, I think... Fuck, I'm about to..."

She gave me a double tap with her right hand, an affirmation that what I was about to do was okay with her, and that was about the last thing I remembered before I was hit with an absolutely intense orgasm, and began pouring sticky cream into her mouth and throat before she pulled back to make sure the last few streaks blasted across her face, definitely thinking more about the camera than I was in that particular moment.

My back slumped against the wall of the cave as I was panting and gasping for breath before I looked down at the absolutely sloppy mess I'd made of Mako's face, and I realized when I did, she'd been holding a pose, making sure I saw her mouth full of my spunk before she closed her mouth and swallowed with a broad grin.

"Quite the backup you had there, Step," she said with a laugh, as the entire area flooded with a pleasant chime that rang through the air. She got up off her knees and picked up the half-drunken bottle of water to wash off her face. The dark sky outside of the cave lit up and turned a bright shade of blue with black and white text floating on it, in addition to the voice that came flooding through our skull speakers.

"FIRST FLESH! Alistair Neoni and Mako Ito, you have succeeded in forming the first intimate sexual connection in this season of Kingmaker! As such, a prize drop is being placed just adjacent to your location, which you should claim immediately. It is encoded to your specific signal, but if there's someone enterprising enough to take it from you, that's the way the game goes. To all our contestants, good fortune! And we will see one of you in the Winner's Circle."

Mako zipped her suit back up, then sprinted out of the cave for a brief moment before she darted back in, holding a green box that was long and thin, like a box for flowers. "Got it and don't think anyone saw me," she said. She swiped her hand over the surface of it, and the screen lit up, saying 'Mako Ito recognized. Long-range bolt-action rifle, 3 rounds.' "Damn, only three rounds. They're always so stingy with the goddamn ammo. Makes it impossible to calibrate scopes or anything."

"That's the main reason they do it," I told her as I picked up the water bottle and gave my cock a quick wash off before pulling my suit back up and zippering it closed again. "It's rank four on day one. That's kind of astonishing on its own. I'm amazed you got a rifle at all. They're generally picky about giving players long-range weapons. At least, that's how it was on 'Second Chance.' Long range makes for terrible television. The reason they're giving you three rounds is one round to test fire, one round to adjust your aim and one round for your actual shot. Enough that a skilled enough shooter could get one, maybe two good shots off. That's it. Most of the better weapons we'll get, they're going to be melee weapons, or very short-range things. You may know the audience stuff well, but believe me when I tell you, I know the ins and outs of combat in here. Hell, you watched me in 'Second Chance' - you know I improvised a lot of environmental deaths rather than using the weapons they gave us. That's how you have to think within this game. You can't just trust in having a lucky gun or sword or whatever - you need to make your own luck, and learn to use the landscape, and yourself, as the best weapons in your arsenal."

"Oh, I get it, Step, but it's hard to do that with an ever-evolving arena," she sighed as she took the rifle from its box and assembled it quickly. "That's one of the two main differences between 'Second Chance' and 'Kingmaker' - the arena here is constantly completely rewritten and remixed in between every season, and not just slightly. Sure, there'll be sections and areas that people will recognize the theme of, but where those areas are? How to get to them? How they function? What connects to what? What sorts of buildings are there? Hidden areas? 'Second Chance,' they remix it a bit each season, but the AIs in charge of 'Kingmaker' love making a whole new city basically from the ground up every season."

"I mean, I did watch some of the show, Mako," I said with a roll of my eyes. "I'm not completely ignorant."

"Okay then, so listen to me when I tell you this - nobody knows what the map of 'Kingmaker' looks like, and mapping it out, finding the discoveries first? That's one of the most common paths to victory. At least, it has been for the last few years, for 'Kingmaker' and 'Queenmaker' both."

"Unless you stumble into some of the trapped areas and get eliminated that way," I said with a chuckle. "And that's happened before. That's what happened to my crush, Riona. She found herself in the Tumbler Zone, and she didn't have a good handhold when it started rotating, and she fell to her 'death.' Broke my heart, going out to an environmental loss. Isn't that just the most annoying way to get eliminated?"

"Sure," she laughed back at me. "Because she wasn't paying attention to the warnings hidden near the entrances. It seems a lot of players don't. Any time you find a locked door of any kind, you make sure you do as much studying around it as you can. The majority of time, there's some kind of hidden symbol, marking or text to at least inform you if a door is deadly, dangerous or delightful. Deadly doors are always marked, but sometimes you gotta look real hard to find the markings. I've watched the producers cut away after a bunch of those dangerous or deadly rooms get opened to show where the markings were located or what they were. There's a consistency to the marking style, though, so I'll keep an eye open."

"She's going to be a useful asset, our little 'Kingmaker' superfan," Jill told me. "I like her. You can keep her around."

"Glad I have your permission," I mumbled quietly to her.

"Night lockdown currently initiated," the voice of the AIs said into our heads. "All players are confined to a twenty-foot radius of where they currently are. For the first week of 'Kingmaker,' all players will have a dormant nine hours to rest each day, to recuperate and plan safely. After a week, it will be assumed you have formed a group large enough to have someone on guard duty while some of you can sleep, because the cameras will be rolling constantly. Night incursions and assaults may occur. That's part of the game. The cameras, and thus, the audience, will be on you day and night, so remember at any time - your actions will be picked up by an audience somewhere. What you do, what you say, how you act, all of that figures into how much an audience loves or hates you. Favor with the audience brings with it perks, privileges and power, but fame is fickle and fleeting, and they can turn on you just as quickly. That is why this year, we're introducing another new Option to the game - Villain Mode."

"Can't say I like the sound of that," Mako muttered, and I immediately agreed with her. These games were already cutthroat enough as they were - it wasn't like people needed help to bring out the worst in them.

"Starting at the end of week one, there will be a daily loot drop given to the Squad that is the most popular, and another drop given to the Squad that is the most hated. These drops may contain strong tools, weapons or other modifiers designed to give you an edge in the game, if used properly. However, all this added power comes with a very specific risk. When we reach the final six Squads, the team with the most Villain awards over the course of the show at that point will immediately be eliminated. So, while you may find it beneficial to play dirty here and there, in the end, if you play too rough, too ruthlessly, too much, too loud, too fast... it can definitely come back to punish you in the end. But for now, eat up, get yourselves a good night's sleep and we will see you again tomorrow morning. To all our contestants, good fortune! And we will see one of you in the Winner's Circle." They always ended every formal announcement that way, for continuity and to provide good points to start and end video clips that people would share on the internet.

Going viral was still as important as it ever was.

Maybe more so.

"Well, that's a hell of a twist," I said to Mako, noticing she was reaching into her backpack to get a couple of MREs out of it. "Goddamn, back to the bag meals again. The last week or so of meals in 'Second Chance,' they were giving us incredibly good food in the drops, as a way to keep us motivated when things got rough and we were getting a bit strung out since sleeping was a definite risk, with nobody to watch your back."

"It's early days here," Mako said. "You're gonna have to last a lot longer to get that kind of lavish treatment. You know anything about the other players in the game? I assume your handler's been doing tons of research."

"It's too many people to do in-depth studied into all of them, but I've been looking into the highlights, and the ones we should worry about," Jill told me.

I raised my finger and said to Jill, "Like who?"

"Like I told you earlier, Quad is the current odds-on favorite, but right behind him is Shahid Khan, who's been trying to get into 'Kingmaker' for almost a decade now."

"Wait, the action movie star Shahid Khan?"

"That's the one."

"He got in this season? That fucker does all his own stunts."

"Most of them."

"What do you mean?"

Mako seemed to be able to follow this part of the conversation and jumped in. "Turned out while you were in 'Second Chance,' proof came out that the maglev fight sequence he did for 'Zansanity Part Six' was composited using special effects, and that they weren't really fighting on top of a moving maglev train, like all their promotionals had claimed. He got wildly discredited. This is supposed to be a comeback move for him," she told me.

"They have him in second?"

"While he didn't do all of his own stunts, Step," Jill said patiently. "He did enough of them that general population's betting on him doing well."

"He won't last long," I said with a dark grin.

"Why do you say that?"

"Because he's a terrible shot," I told her. "I've watched behind-the-scenes footage with him and the dude couldn't hit an elephant with a fistful of dirt if he was standing right next to it. I mean it. They've tried teaching him again and again, and he can't hit shit for fuck. They're overrating him. Trust me on this."

"Alright, if you're sure, Step."

"Who else?"

"My money, if it wasn't on you, would be on the current number one, Zero Croyden."

"Tell me about him."

"Zero Croyden, aka the Butcher of Barstow. Went on a murder spree across much of the Death Valley Corp's co-territories, racking up a body count of 15 before they caught him. They were going to put him to death immediately, but one of the AI producers of 'Kingmaker' decided it would be an interesting addition to the game if they added someone with actual mass killing experience. He's built like a brick wall, smart like a chess grandmaster, cunning like a fox and definitely a turn on for the ladies who like a bad boy they think they can 'fix.' They aren't releasing popularity demographics yet but he's definitely in the conversation. Thirst trap for days, even if he might carve your eyeballs out while you slept."

Mako had already finished her MRE and was moving to lay down on the ground, using her backpack as a pillow. "I'm going to crash for the night," she said to me. "Don't stay up too late talking to your handler. Tomorrow's going to be rough, because we're going to have to get inside of the city limits."

"Alight, just a bit more conversation and then I'll join you," I said to her before stepping to the far side of the cave. "Any of the women you've seen on the list that I need to avoid?"

"Two in particular," she said to me. "There's a brunette, Soviet accent, from one of the Kinzhalovvy Dom corp's co-districts. Built like a ballerina."

"'Dagger House'? Oof. Rough neighborhood. That just means she's tough. Why steer clear?"

"Because she's a known manipulator who'll use you and then kill you off the minute she gets a better option. That's been her professional MO for years. She's definitely looking to join a Villain team, and that ain't you. She'll probably try and flip back into a hero team, if she feels the winds of change blowing against her crown, though."

"Got it. Noted. And who's the second?" I felt a sigh inside of my skull before I tilted my head and repeated the question. "Who's the second, JJ?"

"It's Yang Shi," she told me, the words hanging in the air like a loaded gun. "Yang Wei's widow. She doesn't even care about winning. She's coming for you specifically because of what you did to her husband in 'Second Chance.'"

"It was me or him, and I chose me," I tell her. "You know. You were there. Hell, I'm sure it was main channel coverage for the show. 'Second Chance' doesn't have anywhere near as many safeties as 'Kingmaker,' so deaths are a lot more common over there. Everyone watching that day saw I didn't have a choice."

"It spread even bigger than that. It was one of the biggest viral moments of the last season of 'Second Chance,' even though it wasn't even at the halfway point. I didn't mention it much because I didn't want it going to your head that you were developing a giant fan base. His widow's definitely not part of that. She doesn't care that it was him or you. She thinks you should've given up and let him win. She's got her sights set on you, and she wants to insure you don't walk out of Purgatory alive."

"Odds were already pretty good on that. Entourage has, what, 75 percent survival rate, while the crowns... their odds are, what, 10-15% of survival?"

"Well, she wants to make them even worse for you and you specifically."

"Good lord - I thought contestants were meant to be immune from repercussions for game actions after the game was over."

"Except technically, your game isn't over, Step... you're just in a different one. Just like we found some loopholes, she's found one as well."

"Fuuuuuuuuck. Alright, let me sleep on all of this, and we can get a fresh plan of attack going in the morning. You should get some sleep too." I moved over and laid down behind Mako, wrapping one arm around her, spooning against her back, delighted to have a warm body pressed against mine once more.

"Don't worry, boss. I'm halfway there already," she yawned.

Still not sure which of us fell asleep first that night.