The Three Body Problem

Chapter 7

The victory was short-lived. Only one day after the infiltration, Team STAR sent Grian a message: [We need to talk.]

With anxiety clenching his chest, Grian met up with Doc in the middle of the battlefield.

Doc didn't beat around the bush. "We know, Grian."

"Know what?"

Mumbo, the Watcher realised. Grian, they know Mumbo's a mole, it's a tra-

Doc pressed a button laying inconspicuously on the ground, and Grian plummeted into a hole. But it wasn't a hole: it was an infinity room.

" Bananas ? You didn't think we'd realise?" Ren was also in the infinity room. His legs and torso were hidden behind the item frame maps, with only his head and shoulders peeking into the room.

"I -"

Ren yanked a dishevelled Mumbo into the infinity room while Doc swung down from the ceiling.

"Needless to say, we've got a member on our team that we don't really want," said Doc. "You can have him back, of course. For a price."

"Whoa, hey, I'm not an animal. You can't sell me," protested Mumbo.

"What's the price?" asked Grian.

"If you want to get him back... he has to lose his moustache."

Mumbo giggled a little. "You can't be serious."

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"I can't believe they were serious," griped Mumbo. "I look ridiculous."

"You'll look even more ridiculous when it starts growing out again," Grian remarked. "Little peach fuzz."

"Yikes."

"If it's any condolence, Team STAR's base looks equally ridiculous now."

"Why? What happened to it?"

Grian grinned. "Your moustache got relocated to the front of the turtle bit."

Mumbo laughed. "No way."

"Way."

"Oh, wow, that's perfect. I'm going to go check it out."

As soon as Mumbo flew out of the window, the Watcher said, We need to end this war.

"What do you think we've been trying to do?"

No, I mean we need to end it as soon as possible. What if they'd decided not to be merciful to Mumbo? What if they'd kept him trapped? We can't risk anyone else getting hurt.

"It's just a game, Watcher."

Still.

"I guess we could make it into an actual game," Grian mused. "Like King of the Hill, or something. Winner takes all."

Would we win King of the Hill?

"I dunno. I've never actually played."

Not King of the Hill, then.

"Capture the flag?"

Would we win?

"Maybe. Probably."

Let's do it.

So Grian called a meeting between both teams at the peace flag and proposed the idea of turning the war into a game of capture the flag.

At first, Doc was more willing to just launch his trident at Grian's head, but everyone warmed up to the idea pretty quickly. Each team had three flags - green and yellow for Team STAR, blue for G-Team. Each team also had fifteen lives, represented by turtle heads on gaurdian heads on a wall near the peace flag. If someone died while trying to steal the other team's flag, they had to remove a head from their side of the wall. There were two ways to win: through action, by stealing all three of the other team's flags, or by default, if the other team lost all fifteen lives.