Edmund turned his head instinctively.
Standing at the far end of the long glass hallway was Kaelen Sorel.
Kaelen wasn't alone. Behind him stood two other contestants—a heavy-set Talented wielding a massive kinetic warhammer, and a swift-footed assassin carrying two curved short swords.
Kaelen's face was pale, his eyes wide with a volatile mix of paranoia and aggressive ambition. He held his rapier drawn, its tip pointing straight at the ground.
"Kaelen," Edmund said calmly, stepping away from the archive terminal.
"What are you doing in Sector 7-C? I thought you were hunting Samantha in 7-A."
"Samantha was a trick," Kaelen said, his voice echoing off the high glass walls of the arcade. "She talked her way out of it. She made us think the spear was too obvious."
Edmund tilted his head slightly. "It was too obvious. It was a classic cognitive bias trap. If you had attacked her, you would have lost a hundred points."
