Simon's words echo through the silence of our room long after he stops speaking.
I need you to love me back enough to want to survive.
The accusation—the plea—burrows into my chest and makes a home there. He thinks I've given up. Thinks the sabotage is surrender, some kind of slow suicide by combat.
He has no idea that every pulled punch, every delayed call, every mistake that extended our matches was born from the opposite of despair.
I was trying to keep him. And in doing so, I almost got us both killed.
I can't explain that. Can't tell him that my love has become a poison, that I've been sabotaging our escape because winning means losing him. So I do the only thing I can.
I overcorrect.
The final match loads around us—a brutal elimination arena, four teams fighting in a space that shrinks every five minutes. Walls of fire close in from all directions. The rules are simple: last team standing wins. Everyone else dies.
I play like I've never played before.
Every tactical instinct I've been suppressing roars to life. I see patterns in the chaos, predict enemy movements before they happen, call out positions with razor precision.
Simon responds to each command without hesitation, trusting me completely, and together we become something terrifying.
The first team falls within ten minutes. I spot their healer exposed, guide Simon into flanking position, and we tear them apart in thirty seconds of coordinated violence. Their avatars shatter into pixels, screams cutting off mid-breath.
"Good call." Simon's voice is tight with adrenaline. "Two teams left. Where next?"
"East quadrant." I'm already moving, pulling him through a gap in the closing fire walls. "I heard combat—the other two teams are engaging. We hit the winner while they're weakened."
We find them locked in brutal close-quarters, both pairs bleeding and desperate. I wait for the perfect moment, the half-second when the stronger team overextends, and then we strike.
Simon goes high. I go low. The combination is flawless, lethal, everything our synchronization was always capable of when I wasn't pulling punches.
The second team collapses. Then the third, caught off-guard, too damaged from their own fight to mount a real defense.
But they don't go down easy. The final opponent lunges for Simon with a desperation born of knowing they're about to die.
I throw myself between them without thinking—take the blade meant for him, feel it tear through Kira's shoulder, white-hot agony screaming through my neural feedback.
"KIRA!"
Simon's roar is barely audible over the pain. I watch him destroy our last opponent with a fury that should terrify me, watch the avatar shatter, watch victory notifications bloom across my vision while blood drips down my arm.
Then his hands are on me, pressing against the wound, his face a mask of barely contained terror.
"You're okay." He's saying it like a prayer, like he can make it true through repetition. "You're okay, you're okay, we won, we're going to the championship, you're okay."
"I'm okay." I grip his wrist with my good hand. "It's just a shoulder. The game will heal it."
"You jumped in front of a blade for me. Again." His voice cracks. "You keep doing that. You keep almost dying to save me."
"That's the job." I manage something like a smile. "Partners, remember? We protect each other."
The arena shimmers around us. A system announcement echoes through the space: Semifinal complete. Two teams remain. Championship round begins in twelve hours. Rest period initiated.
The battlefield dissolves, replaced by the familiar walls of our recovery room. Simon gathers me against his chest, careful of my injured shoulder, holding me like I might dissolve if he loosens his grip.
"Twelve hours." His breath is warm against my hair. "Twelve hours until we fight for real. Until we either get out of here or…"
"We'll get out." I press closer, let myself sink into his warmth. "We're going to win this thing, and then we're going to wake up in the real world, and everything will be..."
Different. Destroyed. Over. I don't finish the sentence.
The game heals my shoulder over the next few hours—slowly, painfully, the tissue knitting itself back together while Simon holds me through each wave of discomfort. When the wound finally closes, he traces the new skin with reverent fingers.
"I've been thinking." His voice is soft, hesitant in a way I've never heard from him. "About what happens after. When we get out."
My chest tightens. "Yeah?"
"I want to meet you. Really meet you, I mean. In person. I want to see your face, learn your actual name, take you on a real date where neither of us has to worry about being murdered by the environment."
He laughs, nervous and vulnerable.
"God, that sounds insane when I say it out loud. We've been through all this together, and I don't even know what you look like."
"Simon…"
"I want to introduce you to my friends, my family. I want everyone to know about the woman who saved my life a hundred times over. I've actually already told people about you. My best friend Gordon—I mentioned him before, right?"
His arms tighten around me.
"I've been telling him about you since before we got trapped. He's going to love you, Kira. The two of you have a lot in common, actually. He's quiet like you, notices things other people miss, has this dry sense of humor that sneaks up on you."
The irony is a knife sliding between my ribs.
Gordon will love her. He's describing me to myself, comparing Kira to Gordon, not knowing they're the same person. Not knowing his best friend has been here the whole time, wearing a mask, loving him in the only way Simon would allow.
"I can't wait for you two to meet." Simon presses a kiss to my temple. "He's been my person for years, you know? Through everything. And now you're my person too, in a different way. Having both of you in my life—it feels like everything is finally clicking into place."
The words climb my throat, push against my teeth, demand to be spoken.
Simon, I'm Gordon. I've been Gordon this whole time. Every conversation, every match, every night in this room—that was me. Your best friend. The person who's loved you for three years from across an uncrossable distance.
I open my mouth, close it, open it again.
"Simon, there's something I need to tell you. About who I am. About—"
"Hey." He cups my face, forces me to meet his eyes. "Whatever it is, it can wait until after we win. Right now, I need you focused. We're about to fight for our lives, and I need your head in the game, not worried about whatever's been eating at you."
"But…"
"After." His thumb strokes my cheekbone. "Whatever you need to say, whatever secret you've been carrying—tell me after we survive this. Okay? Promise me."
The confession dies in my throat. Because he's right.
If I tell him now—if he enters the championship knowing his partner is his best friend, knowing every intimate moment has been with a man, knowing the woman he loves is a fiction—it could shatter him. Break his focus. Get us both killed in the final round.
I can't risk that, not when we're this close.
"Okay." The word tastes like betrayal. "After the match. I'll tell you everything."
"That's my girl." He kisses me—soft, tender, full of a future he doesn't know is impossible. "Now get some rest. We've got a championship to win."
I lie in his arms through the remaining hours, counting each minute like a death sentence. The truth sits heavy in my chest, a bomb waiting to detonate.
After the match. If we win, if we survive, I'll tell him everything.
The promise feels like a lie even as I make it. Because winning means waking up. Waking up means facing a world where Simon discovers the deception.
And I'm not sure which outcome terrifies me more—dying in the game, or living long enough to watch his love transform into horror.
The system announcement cuts through the silence: Championship round initiating. Please proceed to the arena.
Simon rises, pulls me to my feet, and squeezes my hands.
"Together?"
"Together." I squeeze back. "Always."
The arena shifts around us. Walls dissolve and reform, reality restructuring itself into something new, something final.
The championship round begins.
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