That night his sleep was troubled. He tossed and turned until the early hours and when he finally fell asleep, he dreamed. It was raining. Sometimes they simulated rain in the matches, this time it was heavy and beat down on his team, stopping them from seeing very far. He took stock of the situation. Six men left where originally there had been fifteen, it had been a bloody match with heavy casulties on both sides. They had stopped in an easily defensible valley, only one enterance at either end, the hills to the sides lost in the rain. He had a sudden urge to slink off into that rain, to conceal himself in the darkness it created until the enemy came. He shook his head to clear it, he had to stay visable to his men, they needed to see him and respect his courage. They wouldn't if he went off to hide.

"Hey boss," said Lett, "how do you reckon the viewers see through all this rain? Can't make very good watching."

"Shut up Lett and form up on me, Jon you too. Gannen, Sammy you two take point, Tomett cover our rear, they may try to slip behind our possition. There should only be three of them left now, you all did your work well earlier. Lets finish this without loosing any more of our own."

"Copy that boss, lets flush the fuckers out," replied Gannen. They stalked forward, the team moving as one, a well oiled machine. He was proud of them, what was left of his team, he'd recruited every one of them himself and trained them to be the best they could be. His Plasma-rifle felt uneasy in his hands, why did he wish that it was a knife? Suddenly he heard a blast of energy behind him as Tomett let rip with his own weapon.

"Got one," he said with a satisfied smile "I guess that leaves tw-" his sentence was curt short by a gurgle as a shock beam took him through the throat.

"Evade," bellowed the leader, there were beams all over, appearing from everywhere it seemed, how are there so many? We killed thirteen of them already. Sammy was already dead, blood pooling at her feet and Gannen was on his knees, one arm missing but still firing into the rain. "Lett, Jon we need to break through their line or we're dead."

"Lett's gone sir," said Jon calmly, the leader was constantly amazed at the unflapability of his second in command.

"You and me then, give us some flak cover." Jon laid down wave after wave of flak and the two of them ran as fast as they could through where they guessed their enemy to be. They passed bodies studded with Jon's ammo and some with burn holes from the leader's plasma. They don't have team insignia or colours, what the fuck is going on? He felt himself falling before he felt the pain in his legs, his left one felt as if it was on fire. It was, the padded underlining of his greaves was burning fiercely and a chunk of his leg was gone. "Jon get out of here, reach safe ground and then surrender." But Jon ignored him, spun round and killed the man who had crippled his leader. He got off several more rounds before a hole appeared in his chest. He looked very surprised. But that was solid plate armour, how could one blast breach it? Then realisation came, they must be using boosted rifles, like in the one hit matches. But the rules! How did they get those weapons and so many more men? He felt a shadow fall across him.

"Ah, there you are."

Adama opened his eyes. Damn, I never get to see his face, he thought. He was sweating heavily and his body ached as it always did after the dreams. He knew he would never get back to sleep tonight so he swung out of bed and got dressed, running through his mind excercise whilst he changed. That was wierd, I could feel Assassin that time, the urge to cling to the shadows and surprise the enemy, but that was Leader's dream. He left his room behind and headed towards the training rooms, determined to put the extra time to good use and hopefully tire himself out so that he slept well later. He passed through the player's hall and off into one of the passageways beyond, even at this early time the hall was busy, full mostly of players too drunk to go back to their rooms after a heavy night. As he walked he thought, They've always kept to themselves before, none of them ever even acknowledging the presence of the others. Why are they appearing in each other's memories? It seemed like a sudden jump, from complete self-absorbtion to being in memories that were not their own. They try to help each other, Adama realised suddenly, Assassin was urging Leader to hide from the attack, just like Tactician tried to stop Rage running out to his death. He was comforted by the thought that the other presences in his mind were friendly toward one another. "If you're gonna share the space you might as well be friends," he said out loud with a grin.

He turned his line of thought to the time before he encountered his cerebral co-habitors. He had been found in the training rooms, the very place he was headed now, all bunched up in a corner. He had been unconcious and it had taken a great effort to rouse him. When he was finally awake people had a lot of questions for him, it seems that he had been missing for a month. Stranger still was the fact that he had no memory of that missing time. He had been examined by the Tournament doctors who said there was nothing wrong with his short term memory and that he was fit as ever, apparently no worse for his experience. No matter what Adama did he could not make himself remember, he had spent the next month trying. Eventually he had given up, his career was suffering and he needed to start training again. It was after that first month of trying to remember that the memories had become apparent. Since then he had hardly been able to concentrate on his fighting, he stopped winning matches and considiered himself lucky if he made the top five at the end of a fight. What a sorry state of affairs, I really need to kick some arse in these sim matches. If i get a good ranking in the deathmatch i'll be able to use the prize money to sponsor myself for a while. Show that fool Kendell what he let slip away. The prizes for the tournament were simple enough: in deathmatches the top five ranked players recieved prizes, a lot more than they paid to enter so that was the best way to get rich. In team battles, such as capture the flag, the player with the most kills on each team got a prize and so did the entire winning team, smaller but still worthwhile. In all battles there was also the crowd pleaser award, it went to the player who had been the most showy and extravagant. There were a couple of other prizes reserved for Cups, mainly awarded for completing certain objectives in battle, such as being in the top three after only using an Enforcer for the entire fight. Basically objectives that made the fights even more watchable.

Adama reached the training rooms, they were a large set of single story rooms, all connected to the Tournament's training system. The training system did not generate arenas that were used in the actual Tournament, instead it had several training-only landscapes, you could program virtual opponents to fight against or battle with other training players. He wandered into a room at random, expecting most of them to be empty at this early time but found it occupied by a lone player. She shut off the program as he entered, took the visor off and smiled up at him. She had brown hair kept cut just above her shoulders and beautiful hazel eyes. Her face was heart shaped and her smile fitted it perfectly, looking as through it permenantly resided there. She had tanned skin but was not dark and, Adama could not tell exactly because she was reclining in one of the sim chairs, was around 5'6 in height. All in all she was very pretty to look at and Adama found himself staring.

"Oh good," she said, "I'm tired of fighting these simulations, no imagination any of them."

"Err.. Hi, i'm Adama Cyrell. Nice to meet you..."

"Leinne, Leinne Starfall."

"Nice to meet you Leinne, so you fancy a match hunh?

"Definately, I couldn't sleep and figured the practice would be good, what with the Garaxis two days from now."

"Great minds think alike, and have trouble sleeping at the same times it seems," Adama was trying his best to be charming, "deathmatch?"

"Definately, get set up so I can kick your arse." She had an impish grin on her face as she lowered her visor and entered the virtual world. Adama smiled to himself, what the hell, this should be fun. He lay back on the chair next to Leinne and put his ID token into the console slot. Here it had duel purpose, to identify a player and then to charge them for using the training facility. Nothing was free in the world of the Tournament. He used the console to patch into her battlefield, then he slipped the visor helmet down over his head and relaxed.