I ALMOST MISSED SEEING Duane Chapman die.

I didn't know it at the time. All I knew was that I was running late for the "special exhibition game experience" that I was supposed to be having along with my mother and father. The North American Hilketa League really really really wanted my dad to be a minority investor in the league's upcoming Washington, D.C., franchise, and thought wooing him in a luxury skybox would do the trick.

I was doubtful about this — Dad knew his way around skyboxes, as both a former NBA player and current real estate billionaire, and didn't see them as anything particularly special — but I did know that my flatmates, Hilketa fans all, were glowing green with envy that I was attending the game. This had been literally the case with the twins, Justin and Justine, who for the last three days had set the LED piping of their threep to pulse green at me anytime I walked past them. I thought that was overdoing it, personally.

I had left the house in time to make it to the start of the game, but public transportation had other plans for me. I spent the first half of the game in a tube, surrounded by increasingly agitated passengers.

Where are you, my mother had texted me, once the game had started.

Stuck on the Metro, I sent back. The train stopped fifteen minutes ago. We're all looking at each other deciding who to eat first.

I think you're safe, she replied.

Don't be too sure, I sent. I can see some of them sizing up my threep to part it out for battery power.

Well, if you survive, try to hurry up, Mom texted. Your father is being swarmed by German businessmen and I'm being condescended to by PR flacks. I know you won't want to miss any of that.

I hear there's a game going on too, I sent back.

A what now? she replied.

Eventually the train decided to move again, and ten minutes after that I was heading into the stadium, threading my way through other Metro stoppage victims, rushing to see the second half of the game. Some of them were in Boston Bays white and blue, others were wearing the Toronto Snowbirds purple and gray. The rest were wearing Washington Redhawks burgundy and gold, because this is Washington, D.C., and why wouldn't they.

"I can help you," a gate attendant said to me, waving me over. She had very little traffic because most of the attendees were already in the stadium. I flashed my ticket code onto my chest monitor and she scanned it.

"Skybox, very nice," she said. "You know where you're going?"

I nodded. "I've been here before."

The attendant was about to respond when there was a commotion behind us. I looked over and saw a small clot of protesters chanting and waving signs. HILKETA DISCRIMINATES, read one of the signs. LET US PLAY TOO, read another one. EVEN THE BASQUE DON'T LIKE HILKETA, read a third. The protesters were being shuffled off by stadium security, and they weren't happy about it.

"I don't even get that sign," she said to me, as they were being hustled away.

"Which one?"

"The Basque one." She pronounced the word "baskee." "The other ones I get. All the Hilketa players are Hadens and these guys" — she waved at the protesters, none of whom were Hadens — "don't like that. But what does that other sign even mean?"

"The word 'Hilketa' comes from the Basque language," I said. "It means 'murder.' Some Basque people don't like that it's used. They think it makes them look bad."

"Why?"

"I don't know. I'm not Basque."

"Everyone's got a word for murder," the attendant said.

I nodded at that and looked back at the retreating protesters. Some of them saw me and started chanting more forcefully. Apparently they were under the impression that because I was a Haden, their grievances were my fault. A couple of them had glasses on and were looking at me in the fixed sort of way that indicated they were either storing an image of me or trying to call up my public information.

Well, this was a new threep and I didn't keep my information public when I wasn't working, so good luck, there, guys. I thanked the gate attendant and headed in.

The particular skybox I was going to was a large one, designed to fit a few dozen people, a buffet, and a full-service bar. It was basically a hotel conference room with a view of a sporting field.

I glanced around, looking for my parents. I found Dad first, and this was not entirely surprising. As a former NBA player, he towered above most other people in most rooms. And as Marcus Shane, one of the most famous humans in the world, he was generally thronged.

As he was here — two concentric rings of admirers arrayed themselves around him, holding drinks and looking up at him raptly as he related some story or another. Dad's natural habitat, in other words.

He waved when he saw me but didn't wave for me to come over. I knew what that meant. He was working. A few of the people who were thronging him glanced over to see who he had waved at, but seeing only an anonymous threep, they turned their attention back to Dad. That was fine by me.

"Oh, good. Here, take this," someone said, and shoved a glass at me.

I looked up and saw a middle-aged suit. "Pardon me?" I said.

"I'm done with this," he said, waggling the glass.

"Okay. Congratulations."

The man peered at my threep. "You're catering, yes?" "Not really." I considered flashing my FBI identity information at the suit and then enjoying the fumbling that would follow. Before I could, someone in a white blouse and an apron appeared. "Let me take that," he said, taking the suit's glass.

The suit grunted. "And bring me another. Jack and Coke." He walked off in the direction of Dad.

"Sorry about that," the catering staffer said.

"Not your fault." I looked around the room. "Interesting, though."

"What is?"

"A skybox full of non-Hadens, here for a game played by Hadens, and the first thing that dude does when he sees a threep is hand over his drink glass." I nodded to the glass the caterer had in his hand.

"I better go get him another one," the caterer said.

"Do. Try not to spit in it." The caterer grinned and walked off.

I walked over to the glass wall partitioning the inside of the skybox from its balcony and went through the door there, going to the balcony railing and taking in the roar of the spectators. If the size of the crowd was any indication, the league wasn't wrong to want to expand into Washington. The stadium was jammed to the upper decks.

"I still don't know what's going on," a man said, next to me, to another man standing next to him.

"It's not complicated," the second man said, and pointed at the field, to a threep whose head was ringed with flashing, blinking red lights. "That threep's the goat. That's the player the other team wants to rip the head off of. They try to take his head, while his team tries to keep him from having his head ripped off."

"And when the head is taken, they try to punt it through the goalposts."

"Punt it, toss it, or carry it through, yes."

"And everyone has swords and hammers and bats —"

"They have those because that shit's just fun."

The first man stopped to consider this. "Why 'goat'?" The second man began to expound on this, but I went back inside to find Mom.

Who I found in the seats facing toward the field, drink in hand, smiling tightly while some...