I shake myself back to reality. The woman is soaked, furious, and so beautiful, I feel the blood rush to the exact wrong place at the exact wrong time. Then she steps closer, her eyes daggers that go straight through me like I’m the dumbest person alive, and my heart drops into my stomach.

Shit. I know her.
Leilani Tanaka-Brooks.

She stares up at the torn flag hanging from Niko’s bruising wrist as Dante works to untangle him. Then her green-blue eyes sweep the team, her mouth turned down, disapprovingly. I feel the athletes shrink under her gaze.

Her attention goes along the line and finally stops on me. Surprise and a fresh surge of outrage flicker, and I know, before she says another word, that we have broken all three rules of initiation night.

And that we are royally fucked.

The trackball is the thing. Roll it soft and the ball floats. Roll it hard and the ball screams — hundred yards of digital air, a trajectory bent by wind and elevation and the particular cruelty of whatever imaginary course the game has chosen for you. The physics have not meaningfully changed since 1989, when the game was first built in an office park outside Chicago. The man who has designed the courses since then — more than 150 of them — still plays every day, still trying to beat his own best score. According to the company, they have produced over 150,000 machines since 1989, placed in every state, and in twelve countries worldwide. And once a year the people who are best in the world at rolling that ball fly to Las Vegas to find out who is better.