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Copyright © 2013 by Gard Skinner

All rights reserved. For information about permission to

reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions,
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215
Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003

Harcourt Children’s Books is an imprint of Houghton

Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

CIP data TK
ISBN: 978-0-547-97259-6

Manufactured in the United States of America

TK  10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1
45xxxxxxxx
TAG: DAKOTA
LEVEL: 60+
CONFIRMED KILLS: 2635445
ACCURACY: 63%
HEADSHOTS: 28%
PREFERRED LOAD: SNIPER,
COMBAT RIFLE
UNIT AGE: UNKNOWN

TAG: PHOENIX
LEVEL: 60+
CONFIRMED KILLS: 96598322
ACCURACY: 67%
HEADSHOTS: 22%
PREFERRED LOAD: SHOTGUN,
MACHINE PISTOL
UNIT AGE: CLASSIFIED

TAG: RENO
LEVEL: 60+
CONFIRMED KILLS: 89996899
ACCURACY: 68%
HEADSHOTS: 37%
PREFERRED LOAD: LASER MA-
CHETE, SNIPER CANNON
UNIT AGE: CLASSIFIED
TAG: YORK
LEVEL: 60+
CONFIRMED KILLS: 92135698
ACCURACY: 59%
HEADSHOTS: 21%
PREFERRED LOAD: ROCKET
LAUNCHER, KNIVES
UNIT AGE: CLASSIFIED

TAG: MI [“ME”]
LEVEL: 60+
CONFIRMED KILLS: 86002354
ACCURACY: 74%
HEADSHOTS: 39%
PREFERRED LOAD: RANGED
WEAPONS, EXPLOSIVE ORD-
NANCE
UNIT AGE: CLASSIFIED

TAG: JEVO
LEVEL: 60+
CONFIRMED KILLS: 56021888
ACCURACY: 48%
HEADSHOTS: 44%
PREFERRED LOAD: MELEE,
FISTS, TEETH
UNIT AGE: CLASSIFIED
 Level 1

Our first war with Dakota she was wetting her pants, pinned down
by laser-machine-gun fire, explosions everywhere, missiles scream-
ing, star fighters diving, cannons thumping . . . The girl was terri-
fied, spouting gibberish, but, OK, not really condition yellow.
Sure, she was redlining. We all were. It was an inferno out there.
But to be fair, her army-issue trousers were not pee-stained. Or two-
stained.
Was she brave that day? Not a bit. All huddled in a ball, a teddy-
bear clutch on her weapon, cringing at every blast as Planet LB-427
was reduced to ash.
A seven-hour battle. She didn’t fire a single shot at the enemy.
But at least she could still move and speak, which counts for some-
thing when you’re dropped dead center in the most intense firefight
ever spawned by bloodsucking alien invaders.
In the distance a chrome skyscraper erupted in flames and top-
pled over, crushing half our regiment. Two orbiting star destroyers
collided and rained razor-sharp chunks into our foxhole. Smoke bil-
lowed from a crashed troop crawler while a monstrous spider-bot
lost three legs and rolled on its back, squirming, helpless, just a
countdown away from its atomic core going auto-destruct.
 It wasn’t a totally unusual situation ​— ​another day on the front
lines, another hopeless battle. Our side was defending the last bridge
to the Lair of Ultimate Doom as the enemy advanced on our posi-
tion and tried to wipe us out. Before night fell, they hoped to storm
the fortress gates and have it out with our boss, King Necramoid.
Typical intergalactic war. The noise. The smoke. The burn. The
death.
Pure slaughter. Blood frosted the ruins. Severed body parts en-
tangled our feet as we struggled to move. There were just a few
dozen of us left, all wearing the slime-green Nec uniform, armed
with single-burst blasters, and while we had the numbers, the gamer
out there was mowing us down like he was cutting grass. This one
was a good shot. Quick with his weapon switches. Flawless ammo
management. Relentless power-ups.
Over to my right, by the concrete barriers, Third Platoon caught
a full wave of Dicer fire. They were sliced neatly in two, all right at
the waist. A med-bot tried to revive the top halves but lost both
arms to a frag grenade for the effort. All the dying bodies squirmed,
bled, and finally went still.
But that day, Dakota ​— ​man, she was not with the program.
“I don’t wanna die!” she screamed, cradling her cold rifle, all
curled up in a spot where the gamer had no angle to snipe her in the
helmet or toss a betty in her lap.
“It’s your job to die!” I argued. “Now get out there, expose your-
self, fire off a few random shots, and let the enemy rip you to pieces!
At least we can use you as a distraction for the rest of us take him
out!”
“Why can’t we reason with him? I’m sure he’s just a normal per-
son like the rest of us! Let’s wave a white flag and sit down to discuss
a peace treaty!”

...2...
 KABOOOOOOM! The gamer blew up our force field genera-
tor with a Quasi-Burst Rocket Launcher. Those babies are lethal.
Downside: they take forever to reload.
Dakota jumped to her feet. Out there in the clearing, the gamer
was reaching for another shell for his QBRL. She had a moment to
do something. Anything. She might have even taken him out with
her weapon, but instead, she waved and screamed, “Hey! You!”
The gamer looked up. Wow, they never look up. Not even when
one of us emits a truly beautiful death howl or dying scream or some
kind of agonized shriek. Gamers refuse to pay attention to the NPC
hordes. They just kill us over and over and over again.
But this one did pause. He stopped loading. He looked right at
Dakota as she hopped over the low wall, tossing her weapon aside.
“I’m not going to hurt you!” she promised, removing her battle
helmet, blond locks tumbling out. “Really! Trust me! I just want to
talk. You look like a reasonable person . . .”
The gamer shrugged.
She rambled on. “So have you ever stopped to ask yourself why
we have to fight and why we have to die and what’s the point of —”
The gamer holstered the rocket launcher and quickly drew a
pair of hand cannons. KERPOWWWWW! They looked to be the
.46-caliber upgrades. Both glowed gold and packed armor-piercing
ammo. Bad spot for Dakota to be in, but she dove quickly into a
bomb crater, her hands still stretched up in surrender.
“You don’t have to kill me!” she yelled. “And we don’t have to
kill you either! There can be peace between our species!”
Strange moment. The gamer paused. Why would he pause? He
had a lot of work to do before finally reaching Necramoid’s war
chamber. These guys don’t stop for anything when a boss battle is so
close they can smell it on their progress bar.

...3...
 But Dakota was having an effect. There was no doubt. The
gamer lifted his weapons, taking harmless aim at a blank wall in the
distance.
Dakota peeked her head over the edge of the crater. Realizing
the gamer was not going to sizzle it off, she clambered across the
bloodstained dirt.
“Who are you?” she asked him. “What’s your name?”
The gamer pointed to a readout over his head. His tag, God_
of_Destruktion glowed green.
Then she let him have it, like a dozen questions all at once.
“So, how old are you? Where are you from? How did you get here?
And who am I? How did I get here? What time is it? What day is it?
What year is it? What is this place? Why all the anger and hostility?
What did I ever do to you?”
God_of_Destruktiontilted his head. He looked confused.
Heavy metal armor shrugged again, the dents and scars moving like
skin over a massive frame. His facemask, dark as a sith helmet, be-
gan to pan around.
He sensed something. It made him nervous. But he wasn’t sure
what it was.
Dakota pressed, moving forward a bit, “Really, tell me, who am
I?” she pleaded. “Why am I here? Part of this madness? Help me,
G-O-D, please . . .”
But something set God_of_Destruktion off. He jumped back a
step, boot rockets popping on, catapulting him a dozen yards away
from the approaching girl. A trap! That must be it! He seemed to
puzzle it out very quickly . . . Had the NPCs in this level sent a
pretty girl as a . . .
“Suicide bomber,” I heard him mutter over the radio. “Nice
work. Clever game.”

...4...
 Yes. That had to be why this enemy soldier had approached
him. Unarmed. So gorgeous. So vulnerable . . .
Dakota froze, and I watched the whole thing unfold. Honestly,
I’d never seen anything like it in all my years in the muck. Nothing
even close. And I’ve sent millions to die. Maybe the gamer was right
to be afraid. What if Dakota was some kind of self-destruct bomb?
I’d only met her that morning while getting suited up. For all I
knew, she might be the next generation of NPC soldier.
God_of_Destruktion wasn’t taking any chances. He wanted to
live just as bad as Dakota.
The guy pulled a fusion grenade and slapped it to a sticky pad ​
— ​another nice move. I could see what was coming. That guy knew
war ​— ​then he threw the thing neatly at Dakota in a long arc. There
was a SPLAT!
She turned to look back at us, the blinking device stuck squarely
to her forehead; one great toss, if you ask me.
The gamer dove behind cover. What could the rest of us do?
We all dove too. Reno, York, Mi, Jevo, all of us.
Dakota erupted in a shower of red mist and electrical backlash.
When the battle resumed, there wasn’t a piece of her left that
was larger than a raindrop.

...5...
 Level 2

“OOOOOOOWWWWWWW!” Dakota moaned. I could tell the

reassimilation was hurting, but that’s usually the way it goes the first
few times. Some soldiers can take it. Others have to let you know
they don’t like pain. That second kind is also prone to all sorts of
other whining. I’ll get back to that later.
She was lying on the operating table, the arms and beams from
the giant machine quickly knitting her back together. A foot here.
A leg there. Two hands. The organs and glands and blood vessels.
Arteries were strung, sealed, and pressure-tested. Veins were filled
with fresh blood. Eyeballs plopped into sockets, a synaptic wand
stabbing in the side and neatly stitching the neurons to her oblon-
gata.
“OH, man, this HURTS!” she cried.
“Of course it does,” I agreed, grabbing her left fingers to see if
the feeling had returned. “You took a fusion grenade to the fore-
head, dummy. It isn’t supposed to feel good.”
“They didn’t tell me about that in training,” she spat, obviously
angry that her drill sergeant had left out a few key facts.
“They assume you understand that getting shot or blown up
or run over or disintegrated all the time isn’t going to be a walk in
the freakin’ park.” The words came out of my mouth a little mean.
Not sure why I lashed out like that; I really didn’t have a reason. I
kinda liked her so far. She must pack a different kind of guts to face
a gamer without a weapon like that.
I noticed I was still holding her wrist. Not sure why about that,
either. It looked different. Strong, tough, but . . . different.
“You’re Phoenix.” She said it flat, like repeating a fact for a test.
At the same time I saw her start massaging the ink around her hand.
“No one told me I was getting another body.”
And what a body too. You can’t imagine. Some artist pulled out
all the stops for this one. Built for war. Just plain built.
She’d taken her paw away, was making a fist. I wanted it back.
Something along the palm . . .
Dakota sneered. “I do not plan to end up on this table. Not ever
again.”
“I like the attitude, Dakota. Staying alive is the game. You sound
like a winner.”
“I just don’t like getting pulverized.”
“None of us do. Hop up, kid, let me show you around.”
The machine finished sewing her back together. She zipped her
jumper but was wobbly as both boots hit the floor. Typical. Some-
thing about the first few times you go double-z. As in 00, when you
die, no hit points or health left. Your equilibrium gets all messed up
for a while. Anyway, she stumbled into me. Man, she was stacked,
for war, for pinup photos, you name it. Head to toe, not a muscle
or bulge out of place.
I could see her weaving as we walked. Didn’t mind when she
leaned against me, not one little bit. Just doing my duty for my
team, right?
The inside of Central Ops was, you guessed it, constructed just

...7...
like you’d want a cost-is-no-object top-secret military installation
to be. Steel grates for walkways. Sliding doors. Cold gray walls and
thick windows. Everything burly and tough and top of the line.
Very little wasted space. Hall after hall with closely spaced cabins.
Deck upon deck of them. You’d get completely lost if the coordi-
nates of your location weren’t painted every few steps on the floor.
At CO, no one gets lost because there’s nowhere to go. You’re
totally enclosed except for the out-portals in mission control. In-
coming mail goes straight to Re-Sim.
The place seems huge your first day, and then you realize how
small it is.
“Where are my quarters?” Dakota asked, and of course this
was my choice. I was team commander, and I’d planned to put her
down below with the other new grunts, but on a whim, I changed
my mind. We were on my deck now, and one of my corporals had
just been promoted to Boss, so what the heck, I gave her his cube.
That put her about five doors down from me, and again, why do
that? She already seemed like a whiner.
Maybe it was that hand. We’ve all got the company tat, you
know. Around the palm. Have it as long as any of us can remember.
But hers . . . now it hit me . . . hers was off somehow.
Dakota was an interesting addition to my squad, no doubt
about it. That blond hair. Around the same age as the rest of us,
which was in the prime of our fighting lives. But she wasn’t built
like a teenage girl. No, she walked like an athlete and moved like a
warrior. You probably know the mold. You know it for all of us.
I was way over six feet, about 250, and all of it ripped muscle. I
made the Hulk look like he should do a sit-up or two.
Wire hair. Block steel for a skull, iron girders for bones. And
here’s the kicker: none of us could legally join any military we’d ever

...8...
heard of. Years-wise, we were too young. But it was all about combat
experience, right? My squad was ten times as battle-hardened as any
puss gray-haired general on any planet. We’d seen more, shot more,
and suffered more than entire armies. Some days, we were entire
armies.
Our whole regiment was the same way. You’ve seen us in games,
in comics ​— ​we’re the biggest of the big and the best of the best.
Looking for a steamroller in combat boots? A truck in pants? A
wrecking ball wearing army-green?
You found us. And you found a world of hurt.
But Dakota, the closer I got to her, the more time we spent
together, there was something else. Something extra. A blackened
core in those dark eyes. A gaze that made you shake a bit.
Strong, yes. Confident, absolutely.
But no one would forget her on the battlefield earlier. She sure
hadn’t shown much in the way of common sense when hot metal
began tearing through soft flesh.
So I told her where to find things. The mess, where she could
grab whatever she wanted to eat. The gym, where she could work
out if she felt like it, clear the cobwebs or whatever. We had a library
and a game room and a bunch of other spots to gather during off-
hours, but interest in those really came and went.
Up ahead, my buddies, who’d been here almost as long as I’d
been at CO, were just coming out of the section lounge. Drinks,
games, chatter. It had a monitor for the latest outgoing missions,
something we checked all the time. Like any military, we lived our
lives on call. Long periods of boredom punctuated by intense mo-
ments of sheer terror.
“What’s the drill?” I shouted to Reno. The boy just shook his
big head, neck tendons rippling. He was always first to check for

...9...
action. First to go over a hill or through a door. I trusted him with
my life every single day of my life.
“Nothin’.”
“Nothin’,” York echoed. He was always doing that. Going with
the flow. Never a complaint. Dude was a monster, skin dark as
shadow, the kind of bald beast you don’t want to run into unless
you’ve got a lot of friends around the corner.
Mi ​— ​full name Miami ​— ​was right behind them. Of course it
had occurred to us all long ago that we’d each been named after
some city or state or something in the United Zones of whatever
they were calling it these days. Who really knew what was going
on outside CO? Our information came straight through the pro-
paganda channels. And even the little stuff we could glean from
our enemies, from their chatter, from their habits . . . well, at least
we had a safe place to sleep every night. Didn’t seem like that was a
common luxury these days.
You might have seen Mi around. She was a hottie. But in a com-
plete-opposite-of-a-weak-supermodel kind of way. Body, brains,
and brawn. Not to mention those eyes. If you ran into her on the
front lines, trust me, you didn’t forget. Something about when you
mix radioactive green peering through coal-black locks. Her gaze
was the last thing, the very last thing, a lot of gamers ever saw.
So, more about our names: I was probably from Arizona origi-
nally, Mi from the Orange State . . . New York, Nevada, Sarajevo,
and so on. You’d have to be a complete moron not to have picked
that up right away.
So of course the next question is, why not just go by our real
names?
And that was the thing. The central point. None of us could
remember our real name. None of us had any solid memories at all

. . . 10 . . .
of where we were before we joined up. That part of our lives ​— ​how
we got here, why we were here, where we came from ​— ​it was all
a big blank in our heads. It was as if someone had kidnapped us,
opened our skulls, and melon-balled out all the memory stuff. The
only things they’d left behind were the training and the encrypted
tattoos. We got blank slates, serial codes on our hands, and the abil-
ity to get blown to a million bits in insane battles day in and day
out. Then they gathered up the debris and pieced us together again.
What a life.
Or was it even life?
It might have been death. None of us really had a clue. None of
us really cared, either.
Not until Dakota started asking hard questions.

. . . 11 . . .