PEZO GAMES
The Strong Will Be the Only Ones Standing
PROLOGUE — THE CALM BEFORE THE CROW
Copper 9. Year 3071.
Copper 9 had been dead for a long time.
Not metaphorically.
Not in the ugh, this place is sooo dead way Lizzy used whenever a room contained fewer than three people willing to compliment her.
Actually dead.
The planet's core collapse had murdered the surface decades ago, leaving behind a frozen graveyard beneath a sky permanently stained black with dust. Snow buried highways. Ice swallowed cities. Human facilities rusted beneath drifts deep enough to hide entire buildings.
What remained of civilization survived underground.
Which raised an obvious question.
Why, exactly, was a school bus driving across the surface?
The answer was education.
Unfortunately.
The armored transport groaned over a ridge, treads chewing through snow while its ancient suspension made noises normally associated with dying animals.
Inside sat twenty-three Worker Drone students.
None of them wanted to be there.
"How much farther?!"
Rebecca's voice somehow managed to overpower the engine.
She threw her head against the seat.
"We've been driving for, like, FIVE HOURS."
Emily slowly lowered her book.
"...It's been fifty-eight minutes."
Rebecca stared at her.
Emily stared back.
"Shut up, nerd."
At the front of the transport, their teacher marked something on his clipboard.
"Rebecca."
"What?"
"No bullying."
"You didn't even look up."
"I've taught this class for three years. I don't need eyes anymore."
He checked another box.
Nobody knew what the box meant.
Nobody cared.
Near the back window, Uzi Doorman had successfully avoided speaking to another person for almost the entire trip.
A personal victory.
Her forehead rested against reinforced glass while endless snow crawled past outside.
Her railgun sat inside her backpack.
Railguns were forbidden on school trips.
This was an excellent rule.
Uzi had ignored it.
Also an excellent rule.
She noticed Lizzy glance backward.
Then whisper something to Doll.
Then glance backward again.
Uzi narrowed her purple visor.
"Bite me."
Lizzy blinked.
"I didn't say anything."
"You were about to."
"I was actually telling Doll your bag looks suspiciously weapon-shaped."
Uzi pulled it closer.
"It's an emotional-support rectangle."
Thad snorted from across the aisle.
Uzi glared at him.
He raised both hands.
"Didn't say anything."
"You were about to."
A few rows farther back sat the reason nobody had tried anything genuinely stupid during the trip.
Serial Designation N and Serial Designation V.
Two Disassembly Drones.
Former killing machines.
Current chaperones.
Because apparently Copper 9 had reached the stage of civilization where somebody at a school board meeting had said, You know who'd be great around teenagers? The murder robots.
And everyone else had gone,
Sure.
N was having the best day of his life.
He had a clipboard.
He had been given responsibility.
He had also somehow acquired a bright orange supervisor sash that nobody remembered issuing him.
"This is gonna be awesome, V."
V stared ahead.
"N."
"We get to supervise!"
"N."
"We can organize activities!"
"N."
"Maybe team-building!"
V finally turned toward him.
"I am going to build a team consisting of my fist and your face."
N brightened.
"Oh! Physical activity!"
V slowly faced forward again.
Her claws pressed against her temples.
There were battles she could win.
This was not one of them.
The transport descended the ridge.
Something appeared through the blowing snow ahead.
Buildings.
The abandoned outpost consisted of several prefabricated structures surrounded by chain-link fencing. A half-frozen communications tower leaned above them, crooked enough that gravity seemed personally offended.
A weather station stood at the center.
Or what had once been one.
Decades of snow had buried its lower level, and rust crawled across the exposed walls beneath the remains of an enormous JC Jenson logo.
Beyond the compound was a forest.
Dead pines.
Black trunks.
Bare branches.
And beyond those—
a lake.
One kilometer of perfectly black ice.
The transport slowed.
V stopped listening to N.
Her visor sharpened.
Something was standing between the trees.
She saw it for less than half a second.
Tall.
Humanoid.
Motionless.
Watching the transport.
V's targeting system reacted automatically.
LOCKING—
Nothing.
The figure disappeared.
V straightened.
Not moved.
Disappeared.
Her optics shifted frequencies.
Thermal.
Nothing.
Ultraviolet.
Nothing.
Electromagnetic.
Nothing.
Motion history.
Nothing.
She replayed the previous five seconds.
Snow.
Trees.
Static interference.
No figure.
V's claws extended with a soft metallic click.
"...Huh."
N leaned toward her.
"What?"
V continued staring through the rear window.
"Nothing."
"Okay!"
A pause.
N leaned closer.
"Was it a murder-nothing or a regular nothing?"
V looked at him.
"Keep talking and we'll find out."
"Regular nothing. Gotcha."
The transport stopped.
Their teacher was already standing.
"Okay."
He checked his clipboard.
"Abandoned surface weather station. Educational value. Historic infrastructure. Atmospheric sensors. Three-day study period."
He opened the airlock.
Cold air punched into the cabin.
Several students immediately groaned.
The teacher continued.
"Things you should not do: leave the compound, lick frozen metal, damage expensive equipment, fall through the lake, annoy the Disassembly Drones, attempt to repair anything, or make me responsible for explaining your death to your parents."
Darren raised his hand.
"What if our parents don't care?"
The teacher considered this.
"...Then don't make me fill out the form."
Fair enough.
Everyone began unloading.
N hopped into the snow with enough enthusiasm to qualify as a weather event.
He threw both arms outward.
"WELCOME TO THE GREAT OUTDOORS!"
Uzi stepped down behind him.
There were no birds.
No animals.
No plants.
No sunlight.
Only nuclear winter.
She stared at N.
"You know we're robots, right?"
"Yeah!"
"And this planet is dead."
"Yep!"
"And everything out here is frozen."
"Uh-huh!"
"And something about that says vacation to you?"
N looked around happily.
"There's a lake!"
V landed beside them.
"The lake can kill you."
N pointed at it.
"Adventure lake."
V sighed.
Then her gaze shifted.
The forest.
Nothing.
But she could feel herself searching.
That bothered her.
V trusted instincts that had been sharpened across massacres, hunts, ambushes, and things she preferred not remembering.
Her instincts did not scream often.
Right now, they were whispering.
And somehow that was worse.
By nightfall, nothing had killed anyone.
This was considered an unexpectedly successful school trip.
The students gathered around a portable heater rigged beneath the shelter of the courtyard. Someone had found marshmallows in a sealed storage unit.
They couldn't eat marshmallows.
This prevented nobody from burning them.
N stood dramatically before the heater.
"...and then the helpless Worker Drone looked beneath the bed."
Lizzy groaned.
"Oh my God."
N lowered his voice.
"And there it was."
Thad leaned back.
"If you say Solver—"
"The Absolute Solver!"
Everyone groaned.
N continued anyway.
"It whispered..."
He leaned toward them.
Everyone waited.
N spread his claws.
"'We have been trying to reach you about your vehicle's extended warranty.'"
Silence.
Thad stared at him.
Then laughed.
Uzi covered her face.
"I hate that that almost worked."
N pumped his fist.
"Yes!"
V wasn't listening.
Again.
She stood near the outer edge of the courtyard.
Watching the trees.
The cold wind hissed against the fence.
Branches moved.
Snow crossed the ground.
Normal.
Normal.
Normal.
Then—
CRACK.
V turned.
Every conversation stopped.
That hadn't been a branch.
A tree had broken.
Far away.
Her audio system calculated distance automatically.
1.28 kilometers.
East-northeast.
Thad looked toward the forest.
"That sounded... big."
"Maybe the wind?" Emily suggested.
There was almost no wind.
Nobody mentioned that.
V's optics zoomed.
One layer of trees.
Two.
Three.
Darkness swallowed everything farther out.
Nothing moved.
Then something rose behind the forest.
V froze.
For one impossible second, her processor attempted to understand what she was seeing.
A silhouette.
Humanoid.
But enormous.
Its shoulders cleared the tallest trees.
Its head continued upward.
And upward.
And—
Her targeting display flashed.
ERROR
DIMENSIONAL ESTIMATE UNSTABLE
The shape stopped.
It was looking at her.
V knew that.
She couldn't explain how.
No visible eyes.
No face.
Barely even an outline.
Yet every combat routine in her system arrived at the exact same conclusion.
IT SEES YOU.
V's wings snapped halfway open.
"N."
The silhouette vanished.
Her visor flickered.
Gone.
No movement.
No blur.
Nothing left behind.
"N."
He was already beside her.
"What?"
V pointed.
"There."
N scanned the forest.
His expression changed.
The cheerful look faded.
"I don't see anything."
"I know."
"What did you see?"
V didn't answer immediately.
Because she didn't have an answer she liked.
"Something."
"...Okay."
"Something tall."
"How tall?"
V stared at him.
N's smile disappeared completely.
"Oh."
A second passed.
V opened the internal recording.
Static.
Again.
Static.
The frame where the figure should have been simply wasn't there.
Her voice dropped.
"It erased the recording."
N glanced toward her.
"Erased?"
"I saw it."
She replayed the footage.
Snow.
Forest.
Static.
Snow.
"I saw it."
N didn't tell her she was imagining things this time.
He moved subtly in front of the students.
Not enough for them to notice.
Enough for V to notice.
His claws came out.
"Everybody inside," V said.
Rebecca frowned.
"What? Why?"
"Because I said so."
"But—"
TING.
Something struck metal behind them.
Everyone turned.
The transport glittered.
For one heartbeat, nobody understood what they were seeing.
The armored hull shimmered beneath the courtyard lights.
Light fractured across its surface.
Not reflected.
Fractured.
Uzi stood.
"...N?"
The transformation raced across the vehicle.
Steel became transparent.
Glass crystallized.
Treads hardened into brilliant geometric shapes.
The engine.
Seats.
Axles.
Bolts.
Every piece of the transport changed in silence.
Then gravity took over.
KRRRSHHHH—!
The entire seven-ton vehicle collapsed.
Not exploded.
Not crushed.
Shattered.
Thousands of glittering fragments poured onto the snow with the crystalline roar of a cathedral window hitting concrete.
Everyone screamed.
N launched forward.
V's wings snapped open.
Uzi's railgun was in her hands before her brain had officially admitted she brought it.
Doll's Solver symbol flashed.
Thad stumbled backward.
Lizzy grabbed Doll's arm.
Rebecca dropped her marshmallow.
Darren simply shouted:
"WE'RE GONNA DIE!"
"SHUT UP, DARREN!"
"WHY?!"
"BECAUSE YOU'RE MAKING IT WORSE!"
The last pieces settled.
Silence returned.
Where their transport had been was now a glittering mound.
Thad crouched.
V caught the back of his jacket.
"No."
"I was just gonna—"
"No."
Uzi pointed her railgun toward the pile.
"Is that..."
Emily adjusted her glasses.
"Diamond."
Nobody spoke.
Emily crouched from a safer distance.
"Crystalline carbon structure. Extremely pure."
Lizzy stared.
"Someone turned our bus into diamonds?!"
"It wasn't a bus," Uzi said automatically.
Everyone looked at her.
She shrugged.
"Transport."
"THIS IS NOT THE TIME!"
Doll had not moved.
Her red visor remained locked on the rubble.
Her Solver symbol flickered once.
Then vanished.
She tried again.
Nothing.
That was what frightened her.
Not because the Solver had stopped working.
It hadn't.
It simply had nothing to grab.
No familiar pattern.
No recognizable transformation.
Whatever had happened to the vehicle had left behind no signature she understood.
Lizzy noticed her expression.
"...Doll?"
Doll answered quietly.
"I didn't do that."
Nobody had accused her.
That made the silence afterward much worse.
V spun toward the woods.
"Inside. Now."
This time nobody argued.
The teacher was having a bad evening.
Five minutes ago, his largest concern had been preventing Darren from setting himself on fire for "science."
Now his transport was a mineral deposit.
He slammed the emergency communicator onto the desk.
"Come on."
Static.
"Come on."
He switched channels.
Nothing.
"Emergency surface team, this is Outpost—"
ZZZRAK!
Pain exploded behind his visor.
The teacher collapsed against the desk.
"AAGH—!"
His comm fell from his hand.
Dark.
He blinked.
Checked it.
Battery:
0%.
"...What?"
It had been fully charged.
He grabbed his phone.
0%.
Tablet.
0%.
Emergency beacon.
0%.
Backup transmitter.
0%.
He slowly looked at the equipment surrounding him.
One by one, indicator lights died.
Green.
Yellow.
Red.
Black.
The room went silent.
The teacher sat down.
He stared at the dead communicator.
Then at the wall.
Then at absolutely nothing.
"...I should have become an accountant."
Outside, unseen by him, a thin pulse of blue-white electricity crawled across the distant snow.
One kilometer from the outpost.
Then another.
Then another.
The pulses met.
A circle completed.
Nothing visible changed.
But every signal attempting to leave the area died.
Every transmission entering it dissolved into noise.
Every high-energy system preparing to fire suddenly found resistance waiting on the other side.
The trap had closed.
One kilometer away, beneath the trees, a slender figure lowered his hand.
Sparks danced between his fingers.
"Field stable."
Nobody answered him.
There was nobody there.
At least, nobody he could see.
He tilted his head.
"Dimno?"
A voice replied from somewhere to his left.
"Done."
The slender figure looked toward the outpost.
The pile of diamonds glittered through the trees.
"Show-off."
Dimno appeared beside him.
He had not walked there.
One moment there was empty snow.
The next, a tall figure in a white mask stood with both hands folded behind his back.
Crystalline veins glimmered beneath his chassis.
"You say that as though you didn't surround an entire facility with an electromagnetic prison."
Ligho's fingertips sparked.
"Mine is practical."
"You gave the field a thunder sound."
"Atmosphere."
Dimno looked at him.
Ligho looked back.
Neither spoke.
Somewhere behind them—
CRACK.
Another tree fell.
Dimno sighed.
"Motenlar."
A mountain-sized silhouette shifted deeper within the forest.
"I barely touched it."
"You're two hundred meters tall."
"I am being careful."
Another tree cracked.
"...Very careful."
Ligho stared upward.
"He's going to notice."
The enormous silhouette stopped moving.
Several seconds passed.
Then Motenlar whispered:
"...Sorry."
Unfortunately, Motenlar whispering still sounded like distant thunder.
Dimno pinched the bridge of his mask.
"Wonderful."
Ligho looked toward the outpost.
"Do they know?"
"No."
"Suspect?"
"V does."
"Good."
Dimno turned.
"Why is that good?"
Ligho smiled.
"Fear works better when someone knows enough to be afraid."
Then both disappeared into the forest.
The room was too small for everybody.
That didn't stop everybody from getting inside.
Battery lanterns illuminated frightened faces.
Weapons had been collected.
One wrench.
Two axes.
A flare gun that no longer functioned.
Several knives.
A pipe.
Uzi's railgun.
And something Thad insisted was a weapon even though it was clearly a chair leg.
Rebecca was crying.
Darren had progressed from predicting death to writing a will.
Emily continued reading.
Uzi noticed.
"How are you reading right now?"
Emily turned a page.
"Stress."
"That's your stress response?"
"I've reread the same paragraph sixteen times."
"...Okay, fair."
Across the room, N tried the communicator again.
Nothing.
"Still dead."
Uzi checked her railgun.
Its power core flickered.
She frowned.
"Mine's weird too."
V immediately turned.
"Don't fire it."
"What?"
"Don't."
Uzi glared.
"That's my entire combat strategy."
"Find another one."
"I have angst."
"Weaponized?"
"Extremely."
N glanced between them.
"Guys."
V looked back toward the window.
The forest remained black.
"I don't know what's out there."
That quieted the room.
V rarely admitted that.
"I saw something when we arrived."
N looked at her.
She continued.
"Human-sized. Maybe."
Uzi frowned.
"Maybe?"
"It disappeared."
Doll looked up.
V continued.
"Then tonight I saw something else."
Thad tightened his grip on the chair leg.
"The tree thing?"
V nodded.
"Big."
"How big?"
V looked toward the window.
"...Big enough that I don't want to answer that."
Rebecca began crying harder.
"Great job," Uzi muttered.
"She asked."
Another silence.
Doll walked toward the diamond fragment sitting on the table.
She raised one hand.
Her Solver symbol flickered.
The shard trembled.
Barely.
Then stopped.
Doll's expression changed.
Uzi noticed.
"What?"
Doll didn't answer.
"Doll."
"This isn't Solver."
Uzi stiffened.
"You sure?"
"No."
That answer was worse.
Doll looked at the crystal.
"But it doesn't feel like it."
Uzi stared toward the forest.
She knew what Solver-weird felt like.
Wrong angles.
Reality misbehaving.
Objects responding to commands they should never have understood.
The constant feeling that something enormous had hidden a mouth behind physics.
This wasn't that.
This felt...
cleaner.
Deliberate.
Someone had touched their transport.
Changed it.
Then walked away.
No tantrum.
No hunger.
No chaos.
Just a demonstration.
Uzi's grip tightened around her railgun.
"They're showing us they can."
N looked toward her.
"What?"
"The bus."
"Transport."
Uzi slowly turned toward him.
N smiled nervously.
"...Sorry. Continue."
"They could've hit us."
Nobody interrupted now.
"They didn't."
V understood first.
Her claws curled.
"It wasn't an attack."
Uzi nodded.
"It was a message."
Thad swallowed.
"What message?"
Uzi looked through the window.
Snow drifted between the trees.
"We're not leaving."
From somewhere in the forest—
CRACK.
A tree fell.
Then another.
Farther left—
CRACK.
Then behind the outpost.
CRACK.
Everyone slowly looked around.
The sounds were moving.
Not approaching.
Circling.
Something walked around them through the darkness.
Patiently.
Rebecca whispered:
"Why isn't it coming closer?"
Nobody answered.
Because that might have been the worst part.
Whatever was outside didn't seem hungry.
It wasn't struggling to get in.
It wasn't trying to kill them.
It was waiting.
Somewhere that did not appear on any map, there was a room.
Calling it a room was generous.
Rooms had walls.
This place had none.
A polished black floor stretched into darkness, reflecting everything above it so perfectly that standing upon it felt like balancing over another universe.
There was no ceiling.
Only a void.
Cold violet veins moved through that void like lightning trapped beneath skin.
At the center stood a circular table.
Seven figures sat around it.
None spoke.
None moved.
Three others stood closer to the far end of the chamber.
Dimno.
Ligho.
Motenlar.
Motenlar had compressed himself to two meters.
Mostly because furniture had become a recurring problem.
And beyond them—
the throne.
Black feathers drifted around it.
Not falling.
Orbiting.
Slowly.
A figure sat upon the throne wearing a long dark coat.
One red line shone across his visor.
He had been watching the outpost from the beginning.
Pezo leaned forward.
Dimno knelt.
"The transport has been neutralized."
Ligho remained standing.
"The field is complete."
Motenlar lowered his head.
"All candidates accounted for."
Pezo tapped one finger against the throne.
Once.
The sound traveled much farther than it should have.
"Candidates."
His voice was quiet.
Motenlar hesitated.
"Players, my lord."
Pezo stopped tapping.
"Better."
One of the seven figures at the table shifted.
That tiny movement drew everyone's attention.
A distorted voice came from the darkness.
"Do they know the rules?"
Pezo smiled.
"No."
Another voice.
"Do they know there are other worlds?"
"No."
A third.
"Do they know why they were chosen?"
Pezo's smile widened slightly.
"No."
Silence.
Then Pezo rose.
The feathers around his throne scattered.
Dozens.
Hundreds.
Black shapes spiraling through violet darkness.
"Perfect."
Dimno looked up.
"What is the next phase?"
Pezo walked down the steps.
Each footfall rippled across the mirrored floor.
"The mistake lesser games make..."
He stopped beside the table.
"...is explaining themselves."
Nobody moved.
Pezo continued.
"They announce the contestants."
One finger rose.
"They announce the prize."
A second.
"The rules."
A third.
"The enemy."
He lowered his hand.
"And then everyone knows what kind of story they're in."
The red line of his visor brightened.
"I don't want that."
Ligho's sparks stopped.
Even Motenlar went completely still.
Pezo looked at the image floating above the table.
Copper 9.
The outpost.
Uzi.
N.
V.
Doll.
Twenty-three students.
One terrified teacher sitting in a supply closet reconsidering every decision he had ever made.
"The first lesson is simple."
The image changed.
Another Copper 9 appeared beside the first.
Almost identical.
Almost.
Different scars.
Different structures.
Different graves.
Different survivors.
Pezo's smile returned.
"Nobody is unique."
A second image appeared.
Then a third.
Then ten.
Some familiar.
Some unrecognizable.
One showed a Copper 9 where the bunker had fallen.
Another showed an Uzi standing alone.
Another showed N wearing a coat none of them recognized.
Another displayed something that made Dimno's crystalline eyes narrow.
Pezo lifted one hand.
Every image vanished except two.
The original.
And one parallel world.
"Not all of them."
Dimno looked toward him.
"Master?"
Pezo turned.
"If I throw infinity at them immediately, they learn nothing."
He looked at the remaining parallel Copper 9.
"They survive one world first."
A pause.
"Then two."
Another.
"Then we see how long they keep calling themselves heroes."
The seven at the table remained silent.
Pezo looked toward Ligho.
"Open the first gate."
Ligho bowed.
"Yes, sir."
"Dimno."
"Master."
"No more demonstrations."
Dimno tilted his masked head.
Pezo glanced at the diamond transport.
"We've introduced ourselves."
A faint crystalline chuckle.
"Understood."
"Motenlar."
The giant bowed.
"Yes, my lord."
Pezo smiled.
"Stop stepping on the trees."
Motenlar froze.
"...Yes, my lord."
One of the seven laughed.
Just once.
Motenlar looked offended.
Pezo returned his attention to the floating image.
At the outpost, Uzi stood beside the window.
N beside her.
V guarding the door.
Doll watching the crystal.
None of them knew Pezo's name.
None knew Dimno.
Ligho.
Motenlar.
The seven.
The arena.
The worlds waiting beyond theirs.
Or what winning would eventually require.
Good.
Pezo reached toward the image.
A crow feather landed against his finger.
"Let them wonder."
Back on Copper 9, Uzi couldn't sleep.
Nobody really could.
N sat beside the wall.
V remained at the window.
Doll hadn't moved for several minutes.
The teacher was still in the supply closet.
Nobody had bothered checking on him.
Uzi stared at the black sky.
Something flickered above the clouds.
Purple.
Very faint.
Gone almost instantly.
She stood.
"N."
He looked up.
"Yeah?"
"Did you see that?"
"See what?"
Uzi hesitated.
Then—
A crow landed on the fence.
Everyone froze.
It was impossible.
There were no living birds on Copper 9.
There hadn't been for decades.
The crow tilted its head.
Black feathers.
Black eyes.
No visible machinery.
No frost damage.
Nothing.
Just a bird.
Watching them.
V raised a weapon.
The crow looked at her.
V stopped.
Not because something controlled her.
Because every instinct she possessed suddenly told her shooting it would be an absolutely terrible idea.
The crow turned toward Uzi.
Something shimmered inside its eye.
Violet.
Uzi stepped backward.
"...Okay."
N rose.
"That's new."
The crow opened its beak.
No sound emerged.
Instead—
the sky split.
A vertical purple line appeared above the frozen lake.
Thin at first.
No wider than a thread.
Then it widened.
The black sky peeled apart.
Light poured through.
Not sunlight.
Something deeper.
Something that made Doll's Solver flare involuntarily.
Something that made N's wings snap open.
Something that made V forget the crow entirely.
The opening widened.
Ten meters.
Twenty.
Fifty.
Beyond it—
another sky.
Another frozen lake.
Another Copper 9.
Uzi stared.
On the other side of the impossible opening, figures stood in the snow.
Watching them.
One stepped forward.
Uzi's visor widened.
Because she recognized the silhouette.
The height.
The jacket.
The glowing purple eyes.
Herself.
The other Uzi stared back.
Neither spoke.
Neither moved.
N slowly looked from one to the other.
"...Oh."
V raised both weapons.
Doll's Solver activated.
Thad whispered:
"What the hell..."
The crow finally took flight.
It passed through the purple opening.
And vanished.
Far beyond either Copper 9, Pezo watched.
His visor glowed red.
"Now..."
The parallel Uzi raised her weapon.
"...we can begin."
END PROLOGUE
PEZO GAMES WILL CONTINUE