The chance.

FLC provided them with a bus because the challenge was supposed to be in the middle of nowhere. Except for two people, Liberty did not know the other contestants. She had probably seen one man in a hospital before, but she was unsure. Everyone looked better than her and dressed better.

There was no obvious reason to get friendly with others, so she sat by the window at the back of the bus and put her backpack on the seat near her. There were twenty contestants while the bus had fifty-six seats; she could take two without troubling anyone.

It was a chance, just like the FLC official said. It was not a guarantee. They were supposed to have some kind of competition, a showoff against professional athletes. Liberty and Lev had discussed this and assumed an obstacle course. Four professional sportsmen and sixteen FLC clients were to compete, with the top three going into the second round, where one of them would be selected as the company’s face. Not the only one, as they had some models, business people, and Fujitora or Lahache families to serve this role already, but still a prestigious role. FLC assumed, judging from this setup, that at least three of them would be able to surpass those without upgrades.

While traveling, Liberty planned to review her gear’s privacy settings. Lev was extremely unsettled by the fact that FLC, apparently, was tracking her location. And he would not stop reminding her to address the issue. Liberty did not see location tracking as a big deal. But, as Lev said, they could keep other information. She needed to look into it sometime soon, but at the moment, she could not focus. It was, probably, for the best. She decided to study her competitors instead.

Two people she knew. The first one was Steven Bos, the progressivist. He had all limbs replaced with prosthetics, even though they were perfectly functional. When he got his first prosthetic arm, one was not allowed to have one if one’s arms were healthy, so he went to the hospital and cut his own arm off, to everyone’s shock. Steven believed in technology more than he did in the human body. He also had some obscure theory on how his body would age slower because it did not need to spend any collagen on arms and legs. Steven might have been an obvious choice for Fujitora-Lahache if it was not for his obsessiveness being creepy. Still, he would not be easy to beat in a race of any kind.

The second person Liberty could recognize was Coral from the CoralSnake channel. Liberty stumbled upon her videos when researching which updates to install and had been watching her channel since. Coral had started her channel with the idea of documenting her road to recovery after an assident. But she discovered a passion for researching and comparing options along the way, and after her recovery, she dedicated her channel to just that. CoralSnake channel was the reason Liberty discovered and eventually installed an advanced processor to support her lens. Liberty double-checked; Coral herself only had a right-hand prosthesis and several minor health-related upgrades. She was likely to lose to professional athletes in any physical challenge.

The athletes were easy to spot. Three of four, two women and a man, occupied two seats in the front row and one in the second row. They were chatting nonstop. The fourth one, a man, was occupying the second row on the other side of the bus, seemingly sleeping. Liberty theorized that the women likely were invited to make FLC clients stand out more.

Out of the remaining thirteen Fujitora-Lahache clients, there were three women. All three wore beautiful makeup, which made Liberty uncomfortable. Before boarding the bus, she did not give it many thoughts, but as she was looking at the women present, she became more and more concerned with her appearance. Even though it took the form of a race, it was a selection process for the one to represent the company. All three women were equipped worse than Liberty in terms of tech, but each was easier to imagine as a company face.

Liberty sighed.

It was stated that the competition would be in physical ability, demonstrating FLC products. So Liberty was preparing for that. But everyone around either put more effort into their looks or was more presentable than her without even trying. Probably, the winners were selected already, and she was invited to serve as another somebody for preselected winners to overcome. She scanned faces for emotions but did not get anything unexpected or telling.Liberty disliked it all. She had never been good at figuring out others’ intentions or plans. Lawrence was better at such things. It would have been so good to have him here with her. However, she would not have to do this in the first place if they were together. She missed Law so much.

To keep herself from slipping into the wrong mood, Liberty attempted to look up tips from the sports where body modifications were allowed. Surprisingly, there were very few such sports. People on the internet speculated that the traditional sports industry was afraid of the competition and was doing everything to keep people with upgrades from entering any meaningful competition. This fact left Liberty wondering if FLC was doing this as a test run before creating Fujitora-Lahache Sports or something similar. It would not be so crazy; Fujitora-Lahache already had several unexpected businesses in their company group. A taxi service, food points, health and fitness business, among others.

Bus windows turned unpenetrable black several minutes before their arrival. As the lights inside the bus went on, a cheerful woman’s voice explained that it was done in order to avoid spoilers.

When the bus opened the doors, Liberty tried to peek outside and accidentally pushed Steven Bos a little. He turned to look at her and, after processing what he was seeing, made an expression that her lens helpfully labeled as disgust.

This and the unmistakable sounds of the crowd from outside the bus made Liberty nervous. She was not nervous anymore as she stepped outside the bus. She was borderline hysterical. The bus, Liberty, and the others were situated on a small scene in the middle of a stadium, filled with lots of random constructions. In addition to other passengers, there was a man with a very expressive face, broadcasting his excited speech. Before she could process everything she saw, the last passenger left the bus, and the man with an extremely expressive face turned to them.

“Welcome, dear participants! It is a pleasure to see you today! Let us start with introductions and then proceed to duels to death!”

What?

Before Liberty could do anything, one man sprinted to the side of the scene. The man with an expressive face laughed.

“Please forgive me for this little joke. My name is Ben, and my work is to keep things fun. Let us start our introductions with our little scaredy-cat!” Ben gestured for a man who attempted to run away to come to him.
Despite the terrible first impression, the scaredy-cat delivered an impressive self-presentation. Then all the professional athletes were introduced. After them, Coral merrily advertised her channel. The faces of presenters were broadcasted on giant screens and on the lens of everyone willing to view the broadcast via the lens.
Liberty was terrified. Probably dueling to death would have been better. She was composing her speech hastily, keeping the text visible right in front of her. And then deleting it. Everyone seemed to have something they wanted to deliver or at least something about themselves worth mentioning. Every part Liberty was trying to include seemed meaningless and boring.
“Now, let us hear the red-tips girl!” Ben turned his attention to her earlier than she wished.

Blushing, she moved closer.

He did not have a visible microphone, but she saw that he moved one of his hands towards whoever was speaking. So, when he extended his palm near her face, she took it as a signal to start speaking.

“My name is Liberty. I work as a waitress, and sometimes a bouncer, and I also help people move and do part times at construction sites,” Liberty saw a mixture of emotions on everyone’s faces, and the mixture did not contain much appreciation for her words, “but, umm, I hope to change this!”

Liberty made a small step from Ben, indicating the end of her introduction.She tried to smile. But she didn’t muster enough courage to look at any of the screens and see how her face looked there.

“Concise and to the point,” Ben moved his hand away from her to his own face as he spoke, “but it will be unfair to leave the audience with so little information!”

Liberty was afraid that she would have to add something. She could not think of any response.But after a momentary pause, Ben continued to speak.

“Oh! I see that you were saved from sure death by FL Medical! Are you grateful to FLC for that? That is why you want to become the company’s face?”

“I am grateful to my family!” Liberty answered before she could think, “And to FLC for making it possible, of course,” she added.

She should have updated this damned privacy policy. She decided to update it first thing after this contest. Not sharing location. Not sharing emotional events from the past.Ben looked over her face and clothing. His expression was not as telling as Steven’s was before, but the lens described it as a combination of irritation, pity, and discontent.

“Family is important,” with a small nod he waved her to go away, “let us proceed to famous Steven Bos!”

She moved away. The introductions continued.

More and more participants were done with theirs; they approached each other, talked, and tried to make sense of the stadium. Nobody tried to talk to Liberty, although from time to time, some groups seemed to glance her way. She tried to make sense of this setup by herself. She didn’t succeed.

First, it didn’t make a lot of sense to go to the middle of nowhere for a lousy marketing event, and indeed the stadium was less than a quarter full. It was also strange to use customers as competitors. Limiting. She signed a no complaints form, but she didn’t expect the event to introduce any real risk. Liberty was not a marketing expert, but harming customers seemed to be a very bad way to advertise. And finally, standing on a scene in the middle of a stadium, she saw an army-style obstacle course. It was boring. Making them play football would have been more entertaining, and Liberty never liked this sport. The level of planning behind the event did not impress, especially in contrast to the possible reward. Again, she thought about Law, who would have ideas about how this works. But, for now, she had to endure for herself. There was a chance she would win this, and then she will use it to find out about him.

The introductions ended, and Ben asked the audience to rate the contestants. The giant screens showed their ratings, adjusted as more people voted. Liberty made herself look at the rating, ready to be the twentieth of twenty. She held the fifteenth place of sixteen. Athletes had their own rating. Coral was second, and Steven was fifth.

“Now, let us finally begin,” Ben sounded enthusiastic as ever, “the first stage will be the obstacle course!”

Liberty had been entertaining the thought that the obstacle course was a distraction or a joke. This was disappointing.

The contestants were led to a starting line.

"Anyone to cross the blue lines is out!”

Ben said that, and the bright lines of blue light appeared, outlining the track course. The vertical light walls were well visible without being blinding. Unlike many things there, whatever produced the walls seemed to be a work of quality.

“The first six people to make a full circle proceed to the second round. And the second round is,” he made a pause, “the duels to death!”

Liberty thought that she might apply for Ben’s position, whatever it was. At the moment, she was not good with public speaking, but at least her sense of humor was not that bad.

As all contestants stood on a starting line, a rating showing their respective positions on track appeared near the voters’ choice rating. Liberty checked that she could see it through her lens without a need to turn to the big screens.

“You could start at three,” Ben announced, “One! Two! You didn’t really expect it to be just this, did you?”

With surprisingly little noise, robots appeared from underground. There were different types. Most looked like metallic crabs but more symmetrical, with evenly spaced legs.

“There are three...”
Half of the contestants, including Liberty, bolted at “three.” Others took a moment to start.

“…three types of bots,” Bob did not interrupt his explanation to comment on the start, “the tall ones are for crowd control; they zap, deploy tear gas, and use water guns.”

Steven Bos was among those who started a moment later, but he was getting speed fast. As he accelerated, Steven shoved two women ahead of him from the track through the wall of blue light.

“No fighting yet,” Ben commented, “from this point forward, anyone who attacks other contestants in any form will be disqualified. For now, Steven may proceed.”

The women dropped from both ratings and were listed on the bottom part of the screens. Even without comment from Ben, it was clear that they were out of competition.

"The second type is battle bots, but they are locked not to attack contestants with anything deadly. The third type is medical, which can carry injured and shoot tranquilizers. Each member of the audience can assess bots’ controls. You could use them to help your preferred candidate to come first. Naturally, there will be prizes for those who succeed!”

Such a system, Liberty decided, favored contestants that were popular. But she was relieved. This event made at least a little sense now.

The first real obstacle was a 20-meter-high climbing wall. One of the male athletes reached it first and started to climb without taking any kind of break. Steven was second, as he leaped on the wall straight from the track, landing on around two meters high level.

Liberty was ninth to reach the wall. She still had one foot on the ground when she heard a sharp cry of pain from above. Instead of looking up, she had screens from the stadium broadcasted to her lens with half of the maximum opacity. She opened it just in time to see how a bot's water gun attacked the athlete's second hand, and he almost dropped. She didn’t notice it while running, but a sufficient share of bots now encircled the climbing wall.

Liberty did not have any software capable of detecting that she was targeted. She set her lens to highlight movements, especially sudden movements, in her field of view. Liberty did not stop to climb while setting up her lens. She was seventh when she reached the middle of the wall. Bots kept attacking people ahead of her. She knew from somewhere that climbing with one’s feet is advised, as the lower body is a lot stronger than the upper body. Liberty, however, could afford to rely on her prosthetic arm, which could pull all her weight up without getting tired. When she reached the top of the wall, she was sixth.

She just needed to not fall back, and she could go into the next round.There was a sudden movement at the edge of her field of vision, and Liberty crouched and turned to face it, ready to protect her eyes.

But it was not a bot attack. The first rows of the stadium were still several meters above the ground, a typical robolaserclash stadium, and there was a girl who sharply pulled a popcorn basket. He let go, and a popcorn basket and popcorn went in an opposite direction, most popcorn falling out. By the time Liberty turned to look at the potential threat, it was already over, parents and kids all looking at the mostly empty basket. Kids looked angry, and parents looked annoyed.

Liberty should have turned back and proceeded. But even as the lens informed her that she fell back to seventh and then eighth place, she could not take her eyes off the siblings: a sister and her little brother. She was in tenth place when she was ready to let go.

The girl pushed her sibling. She did not look like she expected him to fall over the edge, but he did. Both sister and their mom tried to catch him by his hand or his clothes, but they failed.Liberty was the only one facing them, but she did not know and did not think about that as she jumped to catch the kid. In the biggest leap of her life, she flew through the wall of blue light and caught the boy with her left arm, lending on her feet and right arm. From the feel of it, this was not a healthy thing to do, even with her strengthened knees. Her lens informed Liberty that she was out of both ratings, similarly to the women pushed by Steven Bos.

The boy, though, looked as if he was more or less unharmed. He was red and on the edge of crying but probably, too shocked to start crying.

Liberty tried to smile at the boy. Everything exploded.

It was loud and hot and bright. Liberty hugged the kid, pressing his face against her chest, and closed her eyes, protecting her head with the prosthetic arm.
When the sound became more bearable or her ears adjusted, she turned to look at the source, still hugging the kid. It was easy to see the cause of the destruction: bots of the second type had deployed lasers and bombs, aiming at the stadium and the track. Part of the stadium had collapsed. People were running and shouting. Liberty saw at least one body damaged too much to be alive.

She was just looking at the scene for an unknown time until she got another warning about sudden movement and jumped away to the side just in time to avoid being hit by a part of collapsing stadium.

The climbing wall still was intact, and more than a couple of people tried to hide near its base. Liberty took the kid there.

Now the boy was crying, and Liberty was not surprised.