The first thing Mason sees is the clock on his rig.

  7:18 a.m.

  He lies there a second, arm draped over his eyes, brain thick with leftover argument. Semis or better. The phrase sits in his chest like an extra weight on his ribs.

  7:19.

  He swings his feet off the bed and stands. The room smells faintly of old socks and card ink. Jeans, tournament tee, denim jacket—he pulls them on by muscle memory. The jacket pockets jingle: a few coins, a bent sleeve, a folded receipt.

  The rig waits on his desk where he left it, matte black with his inked sigils curling up the casing. He straps it on, the band tightening around his forearm with familiar pressure. The interface wakes, offering PRACTICE in bright, eager text.

  “Later,” he mutters.

  He slings his bag over his shoulder, checks twice that his deck box is inside, then eases his door nearly shut. The house beyond is gray and quiet. His mom’s already gone. His dad’s room glows faintly through the cracked door.

  He pauses. A dozen half-formed sentences flicker through his head—thanks for not freaking out more, I’ll make semis, I’m trying—but none of them sound right in his own ears.

  He lets the moment pass, moves down the hall, and slips out.

  Outside, the air is cool enough to sting his nose, with a wet edge that hints it rained sometime before dawn. Harper Core’s sign down the block throws shifting purple and blue over the sidewalk, the letters still a little weak, like the hardware’s waking up too.

  By the time he pushes through the arcade door, noise has already built to a low, electric roar.

  Harper Core on tournament morning is half church, half riot. Rigs glow at every station. Kids in hoodies and lanyards crowd the aisles. The Core Field hum sits under it all, that faint vibration in his teeth he’s learned to love.

  Over the counter, the main display hangs high, currently showing an AstraForge logo and a countdown:

  PAIRINGS IN 02:31.

  A knot of players clusters beneath it. Blitz Fang Hoodie bounces near the edge, her namesake hoodie back up, cheeks flushed. Union Cap leans on the change machine, arms folded, trying to look calm. His eyes keep flicking up to the timer.

  Behind the counter, Denise juggles a tablet and a diagnostic screen. Station three’s Field is active with no players on it, barrier shimmering around an empty platform. A tech in an AstraForge polo crouches by the panel, cable looped into the wall.

  “Again,” Denise tells him.

  The tech barely glances up. “It passed auto-diagnostics.”

  “Again,” she repeats. “Station three spiked on Drive activation last night. I want clean numbers before anybody straps in.”

  The tech exhales through his nose, taps a new sequence. Lines of green and yellow crawl across her screen.

  Mason sidles closer to the main display. Blitz Fang Hoodie spots him and plants her fists on her hips.

  “There he is,” she announces. “Man of the hour. You sleep, or did you stare at your deck until your brain melted?”

  “Option D,” Mason says. “Argued semis with my dad in my dreams.”

  Union Cap’s mouth quirks. “Parental performance clauses. Rough patch.”

  “Semis,” Mason says. “Apparently that’s the magic line between ‘respectable hobby’ and ‘I failed as a parent.’”

  Blitz Fang Hoodie winces. “Mine just threatens to cut the Wi?Fi if I don’t keep my grades up,” she says. “I’ll trade you.”

  “Don’t,” Union Cap puts in. “You’ve never seen Harper on inspection day. That woman can bench?press a freshman with guilt alone.”

  The timer ticks down: 00:10.

  Mason flexes his fingers against his rig band. His deck box digs into his side through the canvas of his bag. Thirty cards. Ten creatures. Twenty Tactics. One shot at keeping multiple parts of his life from collapsing into each other.

  3…2…1.

  The AstraForge logo blinks out. The Round of 16 bracket spills down the screen, lines of names and station numbers.

  HARPER CORE QUALIFIER – ROUND OF 16.

  VALDEZ, S. vs. TRAN, D. – STATION 1

  COLE, R. vs. JONES, M. – STATION 4

  ROYCE, K. vs. NGUYEN, L. – STATION 3

  His gaze slides down, heartbeat tripping.

  CARVER, M. vs. PARK, N. – STATION 2

  (MACE13) vs. (NPTHEORY)

  For an instant the letters blur. Then they snap into meaning, and something in his stomach does a slow, unpleasant roll.

  Beside him, Blitz Fang Hoodie lets out a low whistle. “Oh,” she breathes. “Oh, the drama. Bracket gods shipping you two already.”

  Union Cap barks a quiet laugh. “Your tutor, huh,” he says. “Thought you had a few weeks before that particular boss fight.”

  Mason huffs. “Great. Either I knock my own guide offline or get dismantled in 4K by the person who wrote half my playbook.”

  “Look at it this way,” Blitz Fang Hoodie says. “At least one of you’s definitely making quarters.”

  “Truly comforting.”

  He drags his focus off the board, scans the room.

  Naomi stands near station five, tablet cradled in one hand, stylus moving. Her rig hangs at her hip from a slim strap. Hair pulled back, posture straight, expression in that resting state of focused neutrality. Of course she’s already working.

  Her gaze lifts. For one heartbeat, their eyes lock.

  She glances up at the display above him, the line with their names, then back. The tiniest tension touches the corner of her mouth; if he didn’t already know how closely she watches everything, he might miss it.

  Then she lowers her eyes to her tablet and keeps writing.

  He tells himself that’s good. That’s how she gets this good. Anyone else and she’d treat them exactly the same.

  “Yo,” a voice calls from the entrance. “Check it out—Park finally has to play instead of lurk in the back taking notes.”

  Kellen Royce cuts through the noise like he’s got his own sound channel. Today’s jacket is white with gold piping, jacket open over an AstraForge performance tee. His rig catches the arcade light, this season’s flagship model with rounded edges and faint blue glow. A camera guy with a DSLR and a girl with a gimbal drift in his wake.

  Kellen saunters to the display. The cameraman angles up for a shot of him reading the bracket. The gimbal girl tilts so she can catch both his profile and the names over his head.

  He laughs when his line appears.

  “Nguyen,” he says. “Solid. Should make for a nice highlight reel.”

  His gaze skims down, lands on Mason’s line.

  CARVER, M. vs. PARK, N.

  His eyebrows go up, slow and delighted.

  “Oh, this is good,” he says. “NP in the ring. Data queen’s finally stepping out from behind the spreadsheet. Fans are gonna eat this.”

  His voice carries. Heads swivel toward Naomi, then toward Mason.

  Mason feels his jaw tighten. Before his brain can vote, his mouth’s already in motion.

  “She’s been in the ring,” he calls back. “She just doesn’t bring a camera crew.”

  Kellen turns, surprise flickering over his face. Then the grin sharpens.

  “There he is,” Kellen says. “Reversal boy. You recover from watching King’s Gambit up close? Arm still buzzing?”

  Mason lifts his rig. “Still here.”

  The cameraman shifts to frame both of them with the bracket overhead. The gimbal inches closer.

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  Kellen’s gaze flicks over Mason’s scuffed jacket, battered bag, older rig. “You know she wrote half the guide that probably got you this far,” he goes on. “Taking her out is kind of biting the hand that feeds you.”

  “I’ll try not to slobber on it,” Mason answers.

  Blitz Fang Hoodie’s shoulders shake with stifled laughter. Union Cap’s mouth twitches.

  Kellen gives a little appreciative hum. “Cute,” he says. “Just remember, man—inside the Field, it’s not about who read more patch notes. It’s who keeps their head when the Drive hits.”

  He jerks his chin toward Naomi. “Would be a shame if the local genius gets bounced before she logs your ‘epic run’ tomorrow.”

  “She’s logging my mistakes,” Mason replies. “Epic ones included.”

  Kellen’s grin widens. “Guess we’ll see whose file ends up thicker.”

  The gimbal girl taps her screen. “We’re good here,” she tells him. “Let’s grab you checking your station.”

  They peel away, bubble of attention floating with them.

  “Jerk,” Blitz Fang Hoodie mutters once he’s out of range. “Attractive jerk, but still.”

  Union Cap studies the bracket. “He’s not wrong about one thing,” he says. “Naomi usually plays from the back row. There’s a difference between observing tilt and being the one tilting.”

  “That’s data for her too,” Mason says. “Live experiment.”

  “And for you,” Union Cap adds. “If you start playing weird because she’s across from you, that’s information you didn’t have yesterday.”

  Denise’s voice slices through the general murmur. “All right, listen up!”

  The crowd shifts as faces turn her way.

  “Round of sixteen goes live in twenty minutes,” she calls. “Check your station numbers. If you’re not at your Field five minutes before your time, I will personally DQ you and hand you a broom. We clear?”

  A chorus of groans and halfhearted “Yeah”s answers her.

  “Carver!” she adds. “Up front.”

  He threads through bodies until he’s at the counter. Up close, the worry line between her brows looks a little deeper.

  “You look like someone slept on you,” she observes.

  “Negotiated with a parent,” he replies. “Lost some rounds.”

  Her eyes flick to the bracket behind him. “Park, huh,” she murmurs. “Brutal draw.”

  He huffs a breath. “Could be worse,” he says. “At least I know she won’t misplay the rules on purpose.”

  Denise taps her tablet, brings up the individual match list. She swivels it toward him.

  STATION 2 – PARK, N. vs. CARVER, M.

  “You rattled?” she asks.

  He rolls one shoulder, trying to shake the tightness there. “A little,” he admits. “She’s…Naomi. I use her frameworks. We’ve been talking lines. Feels like…cheating on a test with the person who wrote the answer key.”

  Denise leans one elbow on the counter. “Lemme translate,” she says. “You like her brain, you like her game, and you’re worried that trying your hardest against her is rude.”

  “I know that’s dumb,” he mutters.

  “It’s human,” she corrects. “But human doesn’t help you once you’re inside the Field unless you use it right.”

  He watches her, waiting.

  “You treat her like any other opponent,” Denise goes on. “Respect her. Punish openings. Expect her to do the same. That’s how you give each other something to learn from later. Throwing a round because you’re scared of feelings? That’s the actual insult.”

  His throat works around something. “And if it messes up the…whatever this is, between us?”

  “Then you two can talk about it after,” she says. “You don’t play on IOUs. Not here. You hear me?”

  He nods. “Yeah.”

  Her hand drops briefly to his rig bracer. Her thumb traces the edge of an inked sigil. “Also,” she adds more quietly, “whatever deal you made with your dad? Leave it at the door. You start trying to win for him and Naomi and me and the electric bill all at once, you’re going to freeze.”

  He looks away. She’s not wrong.

  “One opponent at a time,” she finishes. “One round at a time. Let the rest wait.”

  “Right.”

  “Go hydrate,” she orders, straightening. “And if you puke on my nice floor because you chugged Liquid Shock instead of water, I will turn you into a cautionary poster.”

  He grabs a flimsy paper cup from the cooler, fills it, downs it in three gulps, and heads for the back.

  The staging area feels like the least glamorous part of the whole operation: gray walls, stackable chairs, a humming vending machine. A whiteboard lists stations and names in squeaky marker.

  A few players sit alone with their rigs, eyes half closed. Others huddle in pairs, whispering card counts. The air tastes like nerves and energy drink.

  Mason drops into an open chair in the corner and pulls his deck box out. He flips the lid and fans the cards quickly, a tactile ritual that settles his hands even as his brain races.

  Striker core: Blitz Prowler, Ghostline Runner, Ember Edge. Controller suite: Anchor Trap, Field Mute, Echo Snare. His single Rank?4, Storm Sabre, waits near the back, art gleaming under the sleeve.

  He runs a mental opener: Blitz Prowler, Anchor Trap, Charge Sink, Ghostline Runner, Echo Snare. Against Naomi’s Controller style, he’ll need to press just hard enough to make her commit, not so hard he sends his creatures into a minefield.

  He’s watched her games here, read her online breakdowns, listened to her slicing through hypothetical lines like they’re cake. He knows NP_Theory on paper.

  Knowing Naomi across a barrier is something else entirely.

  “Carver.”

  He looks up.

  Naomi stands just inside the doorway, notebook tucked under one arm, tablet in the other. Her jacket is a clean line of dark fabric over a neutral tee; jeans, sneakers, rig band snug on her forearm. She’s the kind of put?together that makes him acutely aware of the wrinkles in his own shirt.

  Her eyes flick to his deck box, then to his face.

  “Can I check something with you before we start?” she asks.

  He straightens. “Yeah. Sure.”

  She steps closer, within conversational distance. The faintest trace of something floral rides the general smell of vending machine snacks and plastic chairs.

  “In the fifteenth?edition errata,” she begins, “they clarified simultaneous Trap triggers when both players respond to the same Opening. Specifically, if we both have Traps that say ‘refund two Charge if this card is the first Trap to resolve this Beat.’”

  He nods. “Right. Priority goes to whichever Trap was set earlier in real time unless some speed modifier messes with it.”

  “Correct.” She taps her notebook lightly with the back of her pen. “But the refund clause? Does the game check ‘first Trap’ at trigger or on resolution? If it’s at trigger, both Traps might technically satisfy the condition.”

  Mason thinks of the judge email Denise forwarded to a regulars’ group chat last month. “It’s on resolution,” he answers. “That’s how the judges are ruling it. Only the Trap that actually resolves first sees itself as ‘first.’ The second one doesn’t get the refund.”

  Naomi’s shoulders ease a fraction. “That was my interpretation too,” she says. “Thank you for confirming.”

  He squints at her notebook. “You running double refund tech?”

  “That would be greedy,” she replies.

  “Greedy is fun.”

  “Greedy is how people deck themselves out on Beat six.”

  He grins. “Greedy is how you find broken stuff before anyone else.”

  A quick, almost reluctant smile touches her mouth and disappears. “You might be right,” she allows.

  He gestures with his chin toward her rig. “So this is…weird, yeah? For you too?”

  Her fingers tighten minutely on the notebook’s spine. “Define ‘weird.’”

  “‘Playing the person who helped you not scrub out yesterday weird.’” He shrugs. “You didn’t have a section in your guide about this.”

  “That would have been presumptuous,” she answers. “I didn’t know you then.”

  The line lands warmer than it should.

  “Still can write it after,” he says. “Chapter six: ‘When your test subject talks back.’”

  Naomi’s brow arches. “I don’t think of you as a test subject.”

  “No?”

  Her gaze holds his for a beat. “You’re a data set,” she corrects. “With free will.”

  He laughs. “That’s almost flattering.”

  “It’s meant to be.”

  She shifts her tablet to her bag, freeing her right hand. The motion exposes the corner of a different deck box than he saw yesterday—a dark blue case with silver trim.

  “You switched boxes,” he notes. “New build?”

  “Variant,” she says. “I re?weighted some of my Trap ratios yesterday. I wanted to test it against someone with flexible tempo.”

  “Should I be honored or terrified?”

  “Both are reasonable responses.” Her eyes flick to his rig. “You kept your Striker/Controller split?”

  He turns his decklist sheet face?down on his knee before instinct makes him check side counts again. “Guess you’ll see when Blitz Prowler nails your Warden Golem,” he says.

  “Interesting that you assume I’ll bring Warden,” she answers. “Especially after how much trouble you had with Choke Point terrain in round two.”

  Heat crawls up his neck. Of course she saw that set. She probably has bullet points somewhere labeled “Mason: Vulnerable To…”

  “You trying to psych me out?” he asks.

  “No,” she says. “Trying to estimate how much of your own footage you’ve reviewed.”

  “All of it,” he answers.

  “Then you know your tells better than I do.” Her tone is dry, but something like respect glints under it. “I’ve been looking forward to seeing how you play when you’re not just reacting to strangers.”

  Her words land heavier than any compliment from a caster. “And if I play worse because it’s you?” he blurts.

  She studies his face. “Then that tells both of us something important about pressure,” she replies. “Which we can address.”

  Of course even that gets framed as something to fix.

  “Carver, Park, station two!” a voice calls from the doorway. One of the volunteer judges leans in, clipboard in hand. “You’re up.”

  Chairs scrape. Rigs rustle. Players stand and file toward the main floor.

  Mason rises. His heartbeat has settled into a high, constant thrum.

  Naomi closes her notebook with a soft snap of elastic. She slides it into her bag, shifts the strap onto her shoulder, and nods toward the door.

  “Let’s go,” she says.

  They move out into the hallway side by side, not speaking now. Fluorescent light washes everything in pale color. The faint vibration under the floor grows with each step, the Core Field arrays under Harper Core’s cheap tile doing their work.

  At station two, the world narrows.

  The platform rises just a few inches above the arcade floor, enough to create a defined boundary. The pad with its card reader waits at his side. Across the gap, Naomi steps up onto her own pad, positioning herself with the same precise stance he’s watched in all her recorded matches.

  The judge from staging walks between them, checks his clipboard.

  “Park, Naomi?”

  She raises her rig arm slightly. “Here.”

  “Carver, Mason?”

  “Here.”

  “Standard best?of?three,” the judge reminds them. “Twelve Beats. One command and one Tactic per Beat. Call for me if you have a dispute; don’t argue across the Field. If we hit Beat twelve with both Cores above zero, we go to decision based on official metrics.”

  They both nod.

  “Scan rigs,” he says.

  Mason slots his rig against the reader. It chirps.

  PLAYER 1: CARVER, M.

  DECK: REGISTERED – HASH 3F99A.

  Across from him, Naomi does the same.

  PLAYER 2: PARK, N.

  DECK: REGISTERED – HASH 1C27B.

  The floor hum deepens. A translucent barrier rises in a smooth curve around them, isolating the two pads from the rest of the arcade. Hexagonal patterns shimmer briefly across its surface before fading, leaving only a faint, glassy sheen.

  The sound from the main floor dampens, like someone turned the world’s volume down one notch. The Core Field’s presence moves in to fill the gap.

  Mason flexes his hand. Tiny motors adjust inside the rig, giving him a low buzz of acknowledgment. Virtual card outlines settle at the edge of his vision, mapped to the real sleeves in his deck box.

  He looks up.

  Naomi stands balanced, weight evenly distributed, rig arm held close but not tight, fingers loose. Her deck box rests within easy reach; the latch is already open. Her eyes meet his through the shimmer.

  His dad’s voice nudges at the edge of his thoughts—semis or better—but Mason shoves it into a mental corner. This isn’t about that. Not for the next few minutes.

  “Good luck,” Naomi says.

  The words hold no extra sugar, but no edge either. Just level courtesy.

  “You too,” he answers.

  She reaches out her right hand across the pad.

  It’s a simple gesture, but it lands with more weight than he expects. No fist?bump, no exaggerated streamer bow, no attempt at show. Just a straight handshake, offered with the exact seriousness she brings to everything else.

  He leans forward to meet it. Her palm is cool, grip firm. No squeeze contest, no flinch.

  Their eyes lock for a breath at close range. The barrier reflects faint light over her lenses before the smart tint compensates, leaving her gaze clear.

  They let go in the same moment, pull back to their marks.

  The overhead display flashes:

  ROUND ONE – READY.

  “Begin on whistle,” the judge calls from just outside the Field.

  Mason draws his starting hand from muscle memory, the cards slotting into his real hand as the virtual HUD syncs: Blitz Prowler, Anchor Trap, Charge Sink, Ghostline Runner, Echo Snare. Solid. Flexible.

  Across from him, Naomi fans her own cards, face unreadable.

  The whistle cuts clean through the Field’s hum.

  The arena floor sharpens, colors a fraction too vivid, edges a touch too crisp. His rig pulses against his skin.

  Beat one.

  The match against Naomi starts.