The intercom crackled once, causing students walking to stop and look up to the nearest device.

"Attention students participating in the preliminary events. You are required to vacate academy premises at this time. A sponsored transit is waiting at the main south entrance to take you to the next event."

Ash, Alexis and Alina all looked at each other.

"What madness possesseth the Academy, that it would send us away?" Alexis began.

"If the next event requires transit," Alina said. "It only means it will happen off-campus."

"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?" Ash asked.

"I know not," Alexis chirped.

"Lets go into this positively then." Alina said, as they walked through the campus doors.

Waiting for them at the south entrance wasn’t just one bus, but several, each parked in a line against the curb. Ash tried to look inside before boarding one, but the windows were blacked out. The three entered the nearest bus to them. As they walked to the end of the bus, Ash looked to the window to find it also blacked out.

Alexis found a row unoccupied, taking the window seat, while Alina took the exit. Which left Ash to force himself in the middle between them.

"Why would they need to black out the inside too?" Ash finally said.

"Maybe so students wouldn’t begin to form plans based on where they knew they were going," Alina said.

"Maybe?"

Alina raised a thumb to her mouth while humming inaudible words under her breath.

The bus finally began to move. Without any visual reference, the transit was just time, the sound of the engine, and students whispering underneath it so other people couldn’t hear them. Ash was finally able to pick up Swetta’s team, who seemed to be on the last bus in the group.

Meanwhile, he had the discomfort of seeing Davos sit in the front of his bus with his full coalition of teams just before the bus had began to move. Ash tried to pay them no attention, and for once, his voice barely carried over the conversation he was having.

The bus made an abrupt stop at wherever it was meant to, the doors opened up for students to leave. A strong smell of salt and lichen began to flood the bus.

Ash’s team stepped out to daylight to find they were on an island.

Alina and Alexis faces shifted, then their bodies almost turned to want to get back onto the buses that were already departed. Ash took in the scenery, the narrow dock, a tree line, and a slight hill barely visible past the trees.

"Not this place," Alina said.

"What purpose hath the Academy in sending us to this forsaken isle?"

"You two know this place?" Ash asked.

"Thou dost not?"

"Everyone knows this place," Alina said, "Classmates will bring you here and you have to find your way back.

"Tis a time-honored tradition," Alexis said.

"It’s hazing."

"A time-honored tradition of hazing."

Ash looked dumbfounded at their statements. "I’ve never been here."

Alina looked at him. "No one ever brought you?"

"No."

She looked back at the island. "That’s either a good thing or a very bad thing."

"I’ll think of it as a good thing," Ash said.

Students began flocking to a bazaar which was set up just past where they landed. Grids of stalls with displays were mounted above each one. On it were simple menus detailing what they were selling, and for how much.

Stalls were separated into three categories, divided by color. Blue was for shelter and equipment, orange for consumables and food, and red for intelligence packages.

As they entered a phase officer stopped them.

"Here’s your team’s token, you have fifteen minutes in there. Items have a point value associated with them. Whatever you buy gets added onto your token’s point value, so keep good care of it."

"What if we lose it?" Ash asked

The officer laughed. "Kid, for your sake, I hope you don’t."

They walked forward enough to get a feel of what each team was planning, the blue and red stalls were more busy than the orange ones.

"What should we get?" Ash asked.

"This maiden desireth shelter and food."

Alina pulled them away from the main flow of students passing through. "We know each purchase adds to the token value, right?"

She waited until Alexis and Ash bobbed their heads back and forth.

"What we don’t know is what’s the competition, how long they plan to leave us here, and if its an advantage or disadvantage to have a high token count."

"We should only get the essentials then," Ash said "Enough to last a conservative week if we manage to keep what we get to ourselves.

The two girls nodded. Meanwhile Ash’s attention shifted to a familiar voice mid negotiation.

Swetta was already at the consumables stalls.

He already had four ration packs, a water filtration kit, and a thermal blanket.

"I would like to have one thermal blanket," Swetta said to the person attending the stall. He held out his token, the number updated, and received a blanket. Afterwards, he handed off what he had just bought to his teammates, who were already carrying several times their weight.

When Swetta’s hands were cleaned, he purchased the same exact items again.

"I would like to have one thermal blanket," Swetta said, already carrying another wave of supplies. Like before, he handed the clerk his token, points got added onto it, and he received the blanket he requested.

"What’s his deal?" Alina asked.

"I’m still trying to figure it out myself," Ash admitted. "Anyways, we don’t have much longer, lets go get what we said we needed."

They made their way to a blue stall, getting a tarp just wide enough for the three of them, and the thinnest blanket possible. Afterwards they bought four ration packs and a water filtration kit.

"Alright," Ash said returning with the items. "If the three of us share one ration pack every other day, we should last a whole week."

Alina gave a nod in agreement, Alexis looked slightly mortified.

"Spit it out," Alina said.

"This one doth request a tinth more food," Alexis responded softly

Alina sighed. "Alright get two more ration packs, that’s it."

She waited until Alexis nodded in understanding.

"Okay, our token value is at fourteen points." Ash said returning.

They walked through the main foot traffic. Davos had parked himself in front of a red stall since he arrived.

"I want the full team profile on the repeating-purchase team," he said to the intelligence seller. "And the full profile on the team that came through my corridor at the exit of last round. I want to know what they bought today too."

"He’s buying the profile while we’re standing here," Alina said.

"That’s the point," Ash said. "He wants us to hear it."

"Doth that alter what we should do?"

Ash thought about their small point value. "No. I don’t think so."

In the far corner of the bazaar, past the shelter stalls and the water supply vendors, Ash caught a Shade signature he hadn’t read before.

The signature sat at the very edge of his perception, not quite there, but it wasn’t fully absent either. His nervous system was screaming at him to get out, before anything happened to him.

His hunger began to stir, already clearing out space for the next Shade it demanded.

After fifteen minutes, a loud air horn filled the bazaar. Immediately, the vendors closed their stalls entirely, even if someone was mid-purchase.

"To the teams that made it this far, first I want to offer my congratulations," the phase officer began. "For the past fifteen minutes, many, if not all of you have purchased items from the bazaar. I’m sure you all want to know how this phase of the preliminaries will go." He stopped and turned the page he was reading from over.

"The value displayed on the token is your current score. The higher your score is, the greater likelihood there is of your team advancing to the third phase."

Swetta’s teammates were the happiest.

"I told you he knew what he was doing," one of them said.

"Dude. You wanted to drown him if he bought another blanket," The other teammate responded.

The phase officer began to smile. "Of course, just because you’re worth the most doesn’t make you invincible. Teams are free to do whatever it is they need to, in order to secure the highest score."

A silence filled the bazaar.

"That means stealing, fighting, trading. At the end of the event, your team will turn in every token you’ve collected at the end, and the total decides your score. This bazaar will act as the medical emergency meetup point. If you cannot continue, return to this location at once. Participants that are found to attack students in distress will be punished as deemed fit by the attending observing judges. For the next thirty-six hours you are to survive and get the highest score you can. When the next air horn goes off, that means the round will have officially started. Are there any questions?"

Teams began to whisper if they understood the event fully.

One student was about to raise their hand, when—

BWAAAAAAAAMP

The air horn blared at full volume.