Seeing disgruntled kids in the middle of a bright, snowy day wasn't anyone's ideal pastime, and Thirteen understood that. He stood in front of a polished marble countertop, having a staring competition with the aproned girl behind it. Colorful screens bearing gibberish words gleamed overhead. Fancy pictures of food and drinks joined them. The numbers were universal, though, sitting next to the pictures and the words. Must be what people here call "prices".

He sighed and dug a few coins from the pocket of his torn jacket. They clattered on the countertop. "Can I get the one with the lowest price?" he said. His voice sounded deeper and more foreign in his ears. "Something edible, perhaps."

The girl blinked at him, a confused look plastered on her face. She whirled towards the flashing screens and spoke gibberish back. Thirteen smiled and nodded. Whatever that meant, he assumed it would be something to extend their stay in this place while being inconspicuous. The tourist thing wouldn't work—they looked like they spent the night in a trainwreck—so the other option would be pretending they had been here long enough to understand conversation held in public spaces.

"Wie heißen Sie?" the girl asked. When Thirteen blinked a little too openly at her, she scrambled and retrieved a pen and a cup. She began pantomiming writing on it, pointing to a metal slab glinting on her apron then to him.

Oh. She asked for his name. To put on a cup. How...quaint. He held up a hand, flashing a finger, then three. "Thirteen," he said aloud.

Her face changed from surprise to confusion, before settling to disbelief. Still, she scribbled the number onto the cup's side and uttered more gibberish. Her hand pointed to the side, all fingers out. Oh, she wanted him to get lost. He stalked to the exact spot she pointed to and crossed his arms. Waiting had never been his strong suit, and it showed now. After just a mere two minutes, without his food, he tramped back to their table.

Eight whistled, finishing running her hair down the tangles of her silky, dark hair. "You were amazing back there," she said through a smirk. "You could be the next president with that smile."

He rolled his eyes. "What's the progress with the others?"

The girl turned her eyes to the ceiling in thought. "Five and Two are almost back, per the last check-in. Slate and Seven are almost through getting us more of those." She jerked her chin towards the crumpled wad of bills peeking through the open zipper of their stolen bag. "I hear they're important."

If Thirteen had the nerve to roll his eyes again, he would. Wasn't he the one who figured that out? Well, more like Two, but if he didn't direct the boy what to do, they'd still be sitting on the curb, freezing their asses out.

How many days had it been since they got out of the grounds? Where did the bunker drop them after that seemingly endless tunnel from the Game's headquarters? He had little memory of what happened after he read the last file in the elaborate screens. Five later told him he planted face-first onto the glass panel and bled all over it. She and the others recounted with great detail how they ran around, trying to patch him up.

Thirteen made it through, but not without paying the hefty price for it. Now, he owed his life to other people and didn't know what to do with that information. Then again, Five had saved him countless times in the Game, but he had always attributed that to their alliance. She needed him as much as he needed her. Of course, she would save him when she could.

But this wasn't the Game anymore. It stopped being so as soon as Eighteen died and left the headquarters to those who made it to the end. They were free to go on a journey and leave him to rot in the bunkers, yet they didn't. It messed with Thirteen's head. Shouldn't they want nothing to do with him? He fulfilled his promise; he got them out of the game. So, what stopped them from going off on their own?

That was all that went on in his head as they traversed the dark tunnel Seven discovered. The boy had a knack of uncovering things that could either lead to doom or surprises. Which one did Thirteen like? Tough choice.

After several arguments about his capacity to walk on his own, the others relented and tramped into the darkness deeper into the tunnel. He remembered the rough walls and the conclusion he reached all those days ago. Those tunnels were old to the point of being musty. Like the house sitting on top of the digitized bunker, dust was a permanent resident. The pipes creeping along with them were close to crumbling, rust having eaten most of them.

Through the darkness, Thirteen spied bulbs hanging from cables nailed to the uneven ceiling. Their filaments stuck out of crowns of shards caused by time or unfortunate power surges. He doubted those would light up even if they tried, so he had everyone feel around until they came upon something that would lead them out of the tunnel.

A metallic clang resounded after about an hour of walking through the inky haze. A yelp and a hearty thud followed it. Slate grunted and cursed, her voice ringing through the scuffle of clothes and scratches of boots. Thirteen guessed she hit a lowered ladder and fell to her rear. It would have been a hilarious tale if, one—Thirteen saw it, and two—he was in the mood for bullcrap.

The ladder led to a metal hatch. With a few expert pushes and punches from Five, they popped it out. Wooden floorboards greeted them, along with a homely ambience of a house. It was nowhere near the abandoned residences in the grounds. That house looked as if it was tended with care. Not a speck of dust lay on the surfaces. The curtains were pulled apart, showing him a good view of what went on beyond the glass windows. Then, the cold hit.

Any form of heating was gone, even as Thirteen and the others scrambled around the house in search of any mechanism they could rig to avoid freezing their toes off. It was like Four's ability got loose even though it sat in comfort inside his jacket. When no form of heating showed itself, they raided the cabinets and anything else that could look as though they contained clothes. They scored when Slate found a bundle of coats and scarves in one of the rooms.

After bundling up, Thirteen resolved to keep moving. He doubted The Corrector was unaware of their escape from the Game, or that they didn't know of the death of their Overseer. Primeva sent their people every once in a while, and it would become apparent Thirteen and the others escaped. He wasn't going to sit back on his haunches and wait for them to find him. The others could come with him if they wished. He didn't really care.

Or so he thought.

The moment they stepped out of the old brick house in the middle of nowhere, a vehicle zoomed past Thirteen and almost took his nose with it. If not for Five yanking him back by the arm, he would have lost a lot more.

Various noises exploded into a damning cloud, flitting in and out of his ear. People dressed in fur-collared coats, gloves, and thick-soled boots trudged across the snow-laden landscape. Engines purred and yowled. Voices jabbered in an unknown language, filling his head with more clutter. He narrowed his eyes and listened in. Nothing. He got nothing.

A lady with bobbed blond hair eyed them from the opposite glass window, seemingly surprised people, or worse, children, emerged from the house. Thirteen remembered whirling back to the house, noting its plain-looking cement fence. Was this one of those properties? Those whom all the locals knew to be empty? What did she think seeing random children burst out of it?

How much longer before The Corrector's people found her and forced her to spit out all she knew about their targets?

Thirteen ended up hobbling down the street, leaving the others to trudge after him. The snow bit against his skin and washed over his boots. After another hour of walking, he was certain his feet were as soggy as a pastry dunked into a cup of coffee. Speaking of coffee...

The smell of the warm drink wafted across his nose, reminding him of his empty stomach and parched throat. He strode inside the building with big, bold letters imprinted on the walls. Tables teeming with warmly-dressed people crowded towards them from the entrance. By sheer observation, Thirteen picked an empty table close to a window and gathered everyone for a little planning.

"Two," he called. The younger boy perked up. "Can you tap into everyone's heads? Just to see what we need to do to get things in this place."

The boy was off to do his thing, closing his eyes with his fingers pressed into his temples. Thirteen leaned back on his hardwood chair and surveyed the horde. He had always done it from Fourteen's conservatory or the fortress' only window, but it became boring after a while. No one liked being watched, so they avoided places where Thirteen could do so. But this place...

It was as if no one cared what Thirteen did. They couldn't even care about those with them, or at least the other people whom they strode inside the shop with. Most of them queued in front of a marble countertop. They craned their necks towards screens behind the attendants of the automated screens. Some didn't need to, spouting gibberish at the attendants in green aprons, and the other half of the conversation confirming it and flitting off into the back. The kitchens, maybe.

While people waited for their request, they stood to the side and tinkered with a hunk of glass. It resembled Thirteen's portable screen, and a twinge spouted in his gut. If he brought the gadget, would he have understood this world faster?

Two's eyes snapped open. "Money," he blurted.

Thirteen frowned. "What about it?" He knew what it entailed. At least, the concept and the word attached to it made sense intrinsically. However, the question stemmed from the confusion on what it has got to do with their current situation.

"These people thought about it when they approached the counter," Two said. "I think we need to pay for what they're selling here."

"Any idea how to get some?" Thirteen asked.

And soon, the plan became clear. Five and Sixteen struck up a conversation with the first man they encountered when they went out. Seven trailed behind, flexing his fingers and disappearing into thin air. Thirteen stood inside a shop for used books, watching the entire exchange happen. Five smiled and nodded, her white hair bouncing against the fur lining of her collar. She and Sixteen gesticulated wildly, just to distract the man from the floating wallet drifting away from his coat pocket.

Thirteen pressed a hand to his ear, activating the new system of comms. "Terminate," he said. "Target secured. Slate?"

The other line crackled. Being on a parallel street, her voice sounded more scratchy and distant. "In position," she confirmed. "Waiting for an optimal contact point."

He ducked out of the shop, giving the old man at the helm a brief nod. His boots crunched against the melting snow. They were lucky this hasn't turned into a blizzard yet. He picked his way towards the rendezvous point, edging close to a sharp corner. A moment of rustling and scraping snow. Then, a thud.

The comms fizzled as Two's voice flooded into Thirteen's ears. "I got what we needed," he said. "Let's get out of here."

That way, Thirteen followed Slate disguised as their unfortunate target and ended up at something called an ATM. Together, they cracked the method to the buttons and the safety code. Then, a wad of bills popped out of the tray. Thirteen had never snatched something so fast his fingers hooked.

They made it back to the cafe—as the locals called it—and, after a quick show of hands, Thirteen was elected to be the one to try out the "purchasing" procedure. Hence, him taking a place in the queue, looking like a fool to the girl behind the counter, and not knowing what kind of food he got.

A bell dinged, and Five strode through the door with Two on her heels. Another ding, and Seven and Slate followed. They dropped into the circular table—a set of disheveled teens who looked more homeless than a homeless person.

Five cocked an eyebrow at Thirteen. "No food yet?"

Thirteen opened his mouth just as a loud voice shouted from the queueing place. "One Three!" The aproned girl waved a cup in the air, a light-brown liquid sloshing inside. "One Three! Dreizhen?"

"Here." He shot up and strode to the girl before she announced to the world he was here. He snatched the cup from her hand. A quick smile plastered across his lips just to placate the appalled expression twisting her features.

He sank back to his seat and met his comrades' eyes. "Alright, we need to change our names," he said. "We have to blend in."

Something heavy clattered on the table. Thirteen stared down at the similar slab of illuminated glass he saw in some people in this cafe alone. "What is this about?" His head snapped back up.

"It's your specialty," Five answered. "We'll be waiting for what you find. Maybe we'd get closer in finding Jacqueline Shaw or Primeva with that thing."

Thirteen tapped twice on the screen, and it lit up just like his portable gadget. He swiped up, and a numbered keypad appeared. "It's a challenge, then," he said. "Give me a few hours."

It was a necessary enigma. Five said so herself. Either they find Jacqueline Shaw or The Corrector finds them first. A race against time and the unknown. But...wasn't that what Thirteen and the others had survived once?

What was new?