Rogue (Rogue #1)

26

The morning after the ULTRA victory was a tough one to bear. The ride home last night was in stark silence in the autocar. At that same time, their game tattoos had faded into grey. No one had wanted to address what happened that night. Now in the morning, they all slumped onto the couch simultaneously, wading in awkward silence. The Top 3 comprised The Black Infinity, ULTRA, and Inferno. Rogue was going home. At least last year they had Keone leaving as an excuse. But here, they just lost.

Eniola wanted to scream out all the emotion bottled up inside of her. She was so close. So close to winning and finally proving to her parents that she could play SCOPE and be successful! The emotions tormented her.

"I'm sorry!" Eniola was the first one to yell, and she buried her face in her hands.

"It wasn't your fault, Eni," Lucia came over and reassured her.

"Yes, it was!" Eniola insisted, then she explained what happened.

"I remember before I fell, Kinesis touched me on my head and then I felt so much pain," Eniola explained. "It was like the world glitched or something."

"They trapped you under the water," Iris told her. "They hacked you."

She looked up to face her teammates. "They trapped me in a dark room with Keone. If I had somehow resisted it, I would—"

"No!" Lucia shouted. "I will not listen to you blame yourself for something that wasn't your fault."

"I think that game twist was totally unnecessary," Jay brought up. "What's the point of swapping teammates?"

"I think it was supposed to observe enemy weakness and instead of playing to win, make you play to lose," Theo brought up. "It doesn't matter at this point. We lost the game."

Eniola was going to go home a loser. Her SCOPE career was over before it could even begin. Because after seeing she'd lost, her parents would force her to become a doctor. She was so close to following her dreams. Now they had been crushed.

"What do we do now?" Jay asked.

"They're kicking us out tomorrow," Theo told them. "We have a day to pack," he continued but didn't seem to finish. "Don't worry guys, fifth place is still a huge accomplishment."

"We were here last year," Iris mourned. "Then lost." The room went silent again.

"I think we should tell," Lucia said.

"Rogue is at risk," Jay reminded her. "If they go down, then we go too."

"What's worse?" Lucia said. "Losing our team for a while, or watch while Keone unleashes a device that could be possibly lethal to the game and the world?" The room went silent after that.

"This is an issue beyond SCOPE," Eniola broke the silence. "It's not like we were the ones meant to stop it. We just knew about it. Anyways, I'm just going to pack and get some rest if I can." Then their poppy anime doorbell rang.

"Who's here?" Jay asked.

"Probably the androids here to boot us out," Lucia said, while Theo came for the door.

"I thought we had till tomorrow?" Jay recalled as Theo opened the doors on the button. Eniola expected a couple of androids together to get their stuff, but instead, Howie had appeared at their door.

"Rogue!" Howie exclaimed. "Can I come in?" She looked at them confusedly, who all said nothing out of shock. "I'm going to enter anyway because I have news for you." She stepped inside, before she plopped down into the bean bag, making herself at home.

Howie was here. This is close to them. In their dorm. Eniola began reaching out to touch her before Lucia moved her hand back. Eniola felt her cheeks swell with heat. Why did she do that?