The maintenance corridor on the third tier ran between the eastern and western walkway access points, narrow and metal-walled; the overhead lighting half-failed from a prior wave’s exothermic discharge.

Ash read it from the shaft exit. He could feel three bodies inside. They didn’t feel like they were exhausted, more like organizing themselves before they continued. Two more teams were converging on the corridor from opposite directions, their Shade-pressure moving with the deliberate speed of teams that had seen something worth taking.

"There’s a team inside the maintenance corridor," Ash said. "Two teams are closing on them from both ends."

"Then we should attack them first if they have a coin before those other teams do," Alina said.

The maintenance corridor was narrower than the arena’s walkways: single file in the center, shoulder-width clearance on both sides. The walls had conduit running along the upper edges, the metal warm from the previous waves’ heat. The lighting cut out completely at the corridor’s midpoint and came back at half-strength past it.

The team had positioned themselves in the dark section.

Someone was talking like they were exchanging ghost stories around a campfire at night. Ash heard him before he saw him. A warm, unhurried voice in conversation with someone who, as far as Ash could tell, was not responding. Up close the read was the same as from a distance. It was metronomic and warm, feeling like a lightbulb that had been left on for several hours. The hunger stayed quiet. Patient. There was no urgency here. No door.

The person talking turned when Ash’s team entered the dark section. His face was open and pleasant, genuinely happy to have more bodies to share stories with.

"Hey," he said. "Are you passing through?"

Alina began to approach, but Ash held her back.

"What gives," she demanded, her voice just loud enough to be heard between the two of them.

"We need allies. Davos likely has entire teams under his control," Ash responded.

"Hey," Alina started. "Are you three with Davos?"

"Davos." The person who was talking’s expression remained pleasant. "Yeah, he’s got the upper tier. Which team are you with?"

The three looked at each other.

"We were looking for a team to work with," Ash added. "Davos has the upper tier locked. We need people who know the lower structure."

"Davos," the student talking repeated his name. "Yeah, he’s got the upper tier. Which team are you with?" 𝐟𝕣𝗲𝕖𝕨𝗲𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝗲𝚕.𝗰𝚘𝐦

Alina sighed heavily, pinching her temples in response. Alexis, meanwhile, looked like she found someone to read her lines to from then on.

"We are together," Ash said, gesturing between Alexis, Alina, and himself. "We’re in Wave Three, like yourself."

"You three are a good team. I’m Swetta." He extended a hand. Ash shook it. "Which corridor did you come up from?"

"Northern shaft from the second tier."

"Good route." Swetta nodded with the manner of someone confirming a detail they’d already known. "Are you passing through?"

Ash heard the two teams hit the corridor openings at both ends simultaneously. Flanking from the eastern entrance were three signatures, each spiking with pressure, like they were fully committed to whatever would happen inside. On the west, another three signatures, same pressure, same commitment.

"Get against the wall," Ash said to Swetta.

The two approaching teams didn’t wait.

From the east, two members of the team came sprinting down the corridor. The third stayed at the entrance to provide a wide viewpoint. Alina began running in the other direction before they had covered half the corridor. While running, her hand brushed against the conduit and support beams, reading them for any weak points.

"Don’t move!" She yelled out.

Ash, Alexis, Swetta, and his teammates stayed put.

Alina hit the junction and drove her palm flat against it. The beam groaned. The wall section shifted three inches toward the western team’s advance, the conduit lines creaking with the load.

The western team’s advance stopped.

Alexis moved in-between Ash and the eastern team, both hands raised. In the narrow corridor the field she was raising had nowhere to disperse. It ran wall to wall, blanketing the approach. The two eastern team members’ momentum broke. Their feet wobbled against the metal grating; one of them stumbling into the other, the advance turned into a controlled fall.

The eastern entrance was still open.

Ash followed Alexis’s lead, running his own severed field through the full length of the remaining corridor through the entrance.

The field was stretched thin to its maximum limits. He felt it. A wrongness at the edges of his own spatial read, his body receiving faint false signals as the ability pushed past its comfortable output, and some of the propagation reflected back. The wall to his left was slightly not where his hand reported it. He compensated, held the extended field, and watched the person at the entrance misjudge the corridor’s width.

His foot stomped down at the wrong edge.

They went sideways.

"Thou hast a similar ability to mine own," Alexis said, not looking away from the two on the floor in front of her.

Ash didn’t comment. He dropped the extended field, and the false signals stopped. The eastern entrance was clear.

"Go," he said to Swetta. "Eastern exit, now."

"Wait, the coin," Alina said.

"If they have one, let them keep it," Ash said.

"Thou wouldst leave the wounded their bread," Alexis said, cape settling. "The path of honor is long, and its provisions must be shared."

Ash froze. "Whatever she said."

Swetta moved without hesitation, his two teammates following, as Ash’s team fell in behind.

The western team had pushed through as the corridor’s width had been restored. They hit the two stumbling members of the eastern team head-on.

Ash’s team and Swetta’s team were already at the eastern exit.

They moved into the third tier’s open space, away from the corridor’s noise. Swetta fell into step beside Ash, his expression as open as it had been in the dark section.

"That worked out," Swetta said. "Which team are you with?"

"With those two over there," Ash said.

"Good team." Swetta nodded. "Are you heading for the northern exit?"

"Yes."

"Same." Swetta looked at the walkway ahead. "Which corridor did you come from?"

"Northern shaft, from the second tier."

"Good route," Swetta said.

They crossed the third tier’s lateral walkway toward the northern access. The arena above them was louder in a different way than it had been when they entered the maintenance corridor. Less the continuous combat of sixty teams in motion, and now teams are picking and choosing which teams to engage in combat with. The wave was already thinning. Teams had cleared the exit or been eliminated or were holding positions waiting for others to move first.

At the third tier’s northern edge, the exit shaft was visible: a marked access point, two officials visible at the top, and the coin submission table.

Swetta looked at the exit and smiled. "We made it." He turned to Ash. "Thanks for the help. Really."

"Sure, no problem," Ash said. "Just remember us for future phases if we match up together.

Swetta’s two teammates handed their coin to the official, and the three of them climbed through. Swetta looked back at Ash from the exit.

"Thanks for the help." "Really," he said again. Same warmth. Same tone. Like the previous thanks hadn’t happened or been enough.

Then he was through.

The fourth tier’s eastern section read differently from an hour ago. Davos’s team was no longer holding a position. They were moving, the Shade-pressure of his team and his two remaining allied teams converging toward the northern exit at the fourth tier’s access.

Alina came to stand beside him. "I hope you had a good reason for helping those three escape. We still have two coins, and there is less than ten minutes remaining."

"I’m not sure myself at this point," Ash responded.

Alina turned her gaze to Ash, then pulled it away. "The arena has thinned from the looks of things. Fewer teams out there, which means—"

"The chances of securing a coin are higher," Alexis butted in.

Ash and Alina turned to look at her.

She cleared her throat. "The likelihood of securing the coin doth grow ever greater."

Ash swept the second tier below them. He felt at least five teams’ worth of Shades, their pressure patterns telling him who was on the hunt and who had given up and was waiting their time. One team on the second tier’s southwest corner had been stationary for eleven minutes, long enough that the Shade pressure had settled from active to waiting. Three signatures.

The hungry man read the stationary team’s Shades and moved past them without interest. It was still oriented toward Swetta’s retreating warmth on the other side of the exit, patient and metronomic, noting the direction for later.

"On the southwest corner," Ash said. "Second tier. They’ve been stationary."

Alina looked at the drop to the second tier. "Stationary" means either injured or hiding."

"Either way they’re not moving."

Alexis straightened. "The still quarry," she said, "yields to the patient hunter."

"You said that already," Alina said.

"I find it applicable in recurring situations," Alexis said, and stepped toward the shaft.