"I am Unnamed. My title is dead."
In the World, the Planet, and the Base, it's either be number one or die.
The alternative to dying, however, is to become an Unnamed. Turning eighteen means that you will compete for your name. Come out on top, you...
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The Elite Solver stops his sentence short, seeing the anger and confusion in the Runner's eyes. His own go wide and he looks around, his Servants busy with their work.
"Come with me, Runner."
"Where are we going?" the Runner asks, trying to hide his emotions from the man who practically raised him.
Mortimer doesn't answer as he walks briskly down the stairs across the entryway. They lead to his basement.
He waits for the Runner to step through the doorway and into the darkness to close the hatch. Blackness swallows the two of them whole.
The Runner feels blind. He doesn't move, afraid something bad might happen. Is this his punishment for disobeying an Elite? But the Elite Leader never said he had to do anything. He never ordered the Runner to go and be a spy.
A single light bulb flashes on and the room fills with light. There are papers strewn everywhere on the long desk curling around each of the walls. There is a single chair in the center of the room with wheels on it and a stool by the stairs. Every five feet, there's a single lamp to add more light to the papers on the desk. The walls and floor are made of cement and unpainted.
Mortimer the Elite Solver moves around the room, shuffling through papers and moving them from one side of the surface to the other, looking for something.
"Sit on the stool, Runner."
The Runner obeys immediately, afraid he really is in trouble.
The Elite Solver stops searching through the papers suddenly, and turns around quicker than his body looks like it can.
"You're wondering why we're down here," he says matter-of-factly. "And I am going to tell you."
The Runner nods, not taking his eyes off of the Elite Solver. The Elites have the power to make you Unnamed.
The Runner just hopes that today isn't his day to become one.
"How much do you know?" Mortimer asks quietly. "How much did the Elite Leader tell you? He's always favored you... we were afraid he'd say something."
"There's a resistance. That's the reason why Rachel the Runner died last year..."
Mortimer the Elite Solver nods and looks at a paper behind him. He picks it up and turns back to the Runner, taking a few steps from the table.
"I was going to tell you closer to the Competitions, but now that you know..." Mortimer the Solver pauses and looks the Runner in the eye. "There's only a month left. I'm sure I know what the Elite Leader asked you. He asked you to go undercover, am I right?"
The Runner nods, and Mortimer the Elite Solver stands up straight, glancing back down at the paper.
"The Elites have decided to pass my solution through. That solution is to send one person in each category into the Unnamed territory."
