The industrial zone smelled like coolant and hot metal even from the jungle, which was sixty meters away and separated by a chain-link boundary that had stopped functioning as a barrier sometime in the previous decade, when the links began to rust through at the bottom.

Proxy stood at the jungle and watched the zone’s eastern section through the network and through his eyes simultaneously. The network version was more informative.

What he had found when he pushed his cyberware outward from the jungle was the densest living signal architecture he had accessed since the resort. Nodes stacked on nodes, live systems running on residual power, channels competing for bandwidth.

What his eyes showed was two contestants who had decided that the best way to resolve their dispute was to do so loudly and with violence.

The fight showed as periodic brightness against the zone’s darker sections. Gunfire, impact, something burning near the eastern cooling towers. Sound came in waves, each burst followed by a pause while both parties reassessed their positions.

"The network is active," he confirmed. "More than the resort was."

"Those two are having a time."

Nyx said, watching the eastern section with the detached interest of someone reviewing footage. Her two fingers were on his sleeve.

"They are not our problem right now."

"They could be," she said agreeably.

"The window they’re creating is."

He retorted. "Everyone’s attention should either be on them, or away from them. Either way, we have time to cross the open area and reach the interior before anyone spot us."

"That’s boring though?"

He snorted. "Boring keeps us alive."

She looked at him. He looked at the perimeter fence. They moved.

The zone was a different kind of space from the resort or the jungle or the ridge. Those were places that had existed for human purposes or were taken by nature. This had been built for industrial purposes and was still slaving out parts of itself for no reason except that no one had told it to stop.

Overhead lighting functioned in patches, bright enough to see by and dark enough between patches to disappear into. The structures were large and close together. Processing units, fuel cylinders on raised platforms, walkways at height connecting things that no longer needed connecting.

The fight’s sound was louder from inside, clearly northeastern.

They crossed lit sections when the fight created noise. They stopped in dark sections when it paused. Proxy was navigating by the network, mapping the zone in real time, looking for the density concentration he had identified in his previous scan and found now as a strong pull to the northeast.

He noted the signal from the central hub section pulling ahead like a current. He also noted, while noting the hub, a third signal somewhere between them and it. Quiet, low, moving in a direction that was not toward the fight.

"There’s a third person in here," he said.

Nyx’s fingers tightened on his sleeve by a fraction. "Where."

"Ahead. Same direction we’re on."

"Problem?"

"I don’t know yet."

"I could butch-"

"Wait," he said.

They came around a large processing unit and found her pressed against the next unit side, facing away, apparently watching the same northeast section Proxy had been watching through the network.

She noticed them before he could announce their presence. Some kind of detection implant, probably, because she turned without sound and had both hands visible before the turn was complete.

She was young in the way that was clearly young even under the grime of several days on a battle royale island. Short, quick-looking, with the build of someone whose cyberware was distributed for speed rather than combat.

Her eyes were the reflective silver of performance-grade optical implants that caught the overhead strip lighting and sent it back differently. A pair of compact pistols were holstered at her hips. Neither of them drawn.

She looked at Proxy. She looked at Nyx. Her emotional response to this discovery was immediate and not subtle.

Her shoulders went up, her jaw dropped slightly, and she made a sound that was approximately sixty percent surprise and forty percent the particular despair of someone who has just found exactly the people they were hoping not to find.

"Oh fuck," she said.

Proxy did not move.

"Mm," he said.

"Okay, okay, that’s bad."

She said, to herself more than to them. "That’s genuinely bad. Of all the places I pick tonight. Okay." She took one breath. Two. "Okay. I’m Jinx. Please don’t kill me."

"Oh?" Proxy realized her panic and played into it.

Jinx shifted her feet once, clearly in distress.

"Please, pleaseee."

She started to ramble. "I’m not looking for a fight or anything, I just want some supplies and a place to sleep, yes? Somewhere that isn’t a dirty cave filled with insects. Really! I promise, pinky promise. Or maybe you want a written promise? A blood oath? I can do it!

"I don’t like her," Nyx snapped.

Jinx’s eyes moved to Nyx.

"Right."

She said, after a moment. "Okay. You don’t like me. That’s fair. Plenty fair. I can just vanish then?"

Nyx’s fingers stayed on Proxy’s sleeve.

"Oh, yes. You can vanish alright. I can especially help with it." Nyx said pleasantly.

Jinx eyes trembled, and she looked back at Proxy with the specific, terrified expression of someone hoping for a better answer from the other party.

"She will really do it," Proxy said. "But you’re still alive, which means you’re still fine."

"I-I... understand. What do you guys want?" Jinx nearly cried out.

Proxy glanced toward the northeast again.

"You have been in this zone for hours, mm," he said. "What have you found."

She looked at Nyx again, as if verifying that she was still "fine" and not simply pending execution. Nyx looked back with warm, eerie patience. Jinx looked at Proxy.

"These two fighting. You seem them, right? Everyone has." she said. 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖

"Naturally," Proxy said.

Jinx nodded once.

"They found something."

She started to explain. "I don’t know what. I went close enough to confirm but I nearly got blastered by some random missile! I only know they are fighting around something and none of them are getting away from it."

Proxy stopped to think over the information. The central hub. The active network. The two contestants who had found something worth fighting to the death for.

Nyx leaned slightly toward his ear.

"I still don’t like her," she said, quietly enough to be a private communication and loudly enough that Jinx could absolutely hear it.

Proxy did not look away from Jinx.

"I know," he said.

"I just want to make it crystal clear," Nyx said.

"You have been," he said.

"Good."

Jinx was looking at a random point on the processing unit and appearing to manage her expression to this exchange with vivid effort.

"She does that," Proxy told her. "What do you want in exchange for the information."

"For you two to not murder me! I-I mean, while we go to the same direction," Jinx said.

Nyx shifted her hand slightly on Proxy’s sleeve.

"Then, can I brutally maul your body when you change directions~?," she said.

"N-No! I mean, please don’t." Jinx said.

"That is a reasonable request," Proxy said.

"Proxy," Nyx said.

"I know," he said.

"I don’t like this," she said.

"I’m aware."

Nyx looked at him for a moment longer.

"I’m saying it clearly."

"You’ve said it clearly several times."

She considered this for a moment. "I’m going to say it one more time."

"I assumed."

She looked at Jinx with the warm, patient expression she used when she was not performing anything. "I will murder you," she said, simply. "I’m not doing it right now because Proxy said wait. But I want you to be very aware every second you spent near Proxy is one more second I’ll torture your body before your inevitable death."

Jinx’s shoulders went up again.

"What in the fuck-" She stopped. "How does she say that so cutely?!"

"Practice," Proxy said.

"It’s sincere," Nyx agreed.

"Holy, I literally have goosebumps" Jinx said.

The zone shuddered. A creak and then an impact that was larger than any of the previous ones. A secondary explosion followed, the pressure of it reaching them as a shockwave in the air, and overhead the lighting strip flickered once.

Through the network Proxy watched the exterior sensor nodes in the zone go dark in sequence, one after another, as the fight’s escalation overwhelmed whatever infrastructure they were attached to.

He made the decision.

"We’re moving," he said. "Interior. Northeast. Both of you."

Nyx said "yes" immediately, already shifting her weight forward.

Jinx looked at the direction he had indicated, then at Nyx, then at Proxy.

"Both of you meaning me too, or both of you meaning you two...?"

"You too. For now, you may consider yourself a hostage." he said.

Jinx blinked, then slowly nodded, with the air of someone who has decided this is the best available option and is not going to pretend it is a good option.

Nyx looked at her.

"You’re walking ahead of us," Nyx said.

"I was going to," Jinx said.

"Good."

Nyx snickered. "Just so you have the complete picture, when this ends, I’m the one ending it."

Jinx absorbed this without responding for a moment.

"Your girlfriend," she finally said to Proxy, "is extremely direct."

"Consistently," he said.

Nyx reclaimed his sleeve. They moved deeper into the zone, the fight’s secondary fires visible as orange glow against the sky above the structures, and Jinx fell into step ahead of them at a distance that suggested she had thought about it carefully.