At the World Championship Cup, the marksman I had personally trained reported me for match-fixing. I was banned for life, condemned across the internet, and my team deleted every record of me overnight.
When we meet again, I’m the new coach of a women’s team, and he’s a star player.
The girls on my team use the heroes he once excelled at to pull off a flawless quadra kill right in front of him.
In the post-match interview, the camera turns to me. “Coach, is there anything you’d like to say to your former teammate?”
I smile and put an arm around the girls’ shoulders. “Correction: he’s my ex-teammate.” The air is thick with a cloying, sickly sweetness, like cheap syrup spilled over rust. The stadium’s floodlights are blindingly white, pouring down from the ceiling and making every speck of dust onstage crystal clear. They also cast the losers’ faces a ghastly green.
