2301: Fight Or Hide

Down a hole, up a rope
Down some pills, up some hope
This karma machine only takes quarters
New age soldier, new age soldier
- Matthew Good Band, “Everything is automatic”

FIGHT OR HIDE

Moon stole a glance at the assortment of pills that was sitting next to her on the concrete floor. Another hour had passed, and still nothing had happened. She continued in her crouching position, surveying the area below her window like a hawk, but there was nothing. Kwon was not showing himself; he was refusing to seek her out. /Still/ refusing, even – this had been going on for the better part of eight hours. She could understand that he was unwilling to lose his cover position. By now she had wasted four of their fellow competitors for even trying to come up to her. They had all gotten bored or ambitious, and they had all perished equally under her sniper rifle. So yes, she could understand his hesitation.

It was just that she was getting tired by now. The Tournament had started at 8 in the morning, and midnight had passed a long time ago. She had gotten up at 4, so she’d been awake and high-strung for pretty much a full 24 hours by now. As a sniper, she was used to stakeouts, but how long ago since she’d last eaten, or relieved herself without fear of being shot? Or even talked to another live human being? It felt like forever. Even the announcer had gone quiet hours ago.

Next on the ground sat a vial of pills that were supposed to keep her awake, but she hated to be on stimulants. Sometimes, when she had not eaten enough, her hands would start trembling with the abrupt adrenaline burst that would jolt her awake. For a sniper, trembling hands were a disaster. So she didn’t take them and instead fought her sleep the old fashioned way: her trusty old math sums. Nothing like a little math to keep her mind going. It was intensive enough to keep her brain working so she wouldn’t immediately fall asleep, while she would still have enough brainpower to survey the concrete below. By now she knew every blad of grass of every bit of weed that grew between every crack down there. She knew exactly what patterns the spatters of blood made that discoloured the gray concrete where the bodies had fallen. In the past hours nothing down there had changed. If she would close her eyes, she could paint a perfect picture of the view.

That came with the territory, of course. Moon had always known that the boredom and the waiting game was part of it. She was a patient woman. She had never said no to a good stakeout, but this was starting to border on the ridiculous. It was just her and Kwon now, it had been for hours. All the other competitors had fallen. Some of them had turned on one another. Most of them had fallen under her rifle: she was the most accomplished killer in the field.

Announcer Khan had gone out of his way to compliment her on this earlier on in the Game. He had reminded her of the extra prize money she would receive once she would survive the game. With every kill, that amount stacked up. It was quite exciting to see how much money she would win tonight. Just participation money was already substantial enough to make sure she would live comfortable for a decade, but if you added the extra money she would earn on kills alone… yes, that was really nice.

Kwon only had one kill on his name, if Khan could be believed. About three hours in the game he had apparently gored a guy named Mai. Khan had not offered any further details, but he hadn’t complimented Kwon on the kill, either. He had been too busy commenting on other things: Kwon’s kill had happened at simultaneously with another showdown, which had involved an exciting shootout.

Since Kwon fought with an Ion Painter, Moon thought that any of his killings should be pretty spectacular for the viewers at home. Well, she wouldn’t get to see it until she got home anyway, so there was little point wondering about it. /If/ she hadn’t died of boredom by then. She knew better than to take the silence at face value. She had fortified herself here admirably, so there was no way he could get to her without exposing himself first. The problem was that he had probably done the same. No doubt Kwon was plotting her demise down there somewhere. And he had a long-range weapon as well, so losing her cover probably meant that she would go down. She wasn’t planning on doing so.

A couple of hours ago Khan had offered to double the prize money of whoever would leave their cover now, but neither of them had taken the bait.

So the impasse continued. The quiet continued. Nothing happened.

Perhaps the Corporation didn’t know what to make of it anymore, either. Perhaps the world had forgotten about the two of them by now, flicking to other channels. They would have gone to sleep, muttering to one another that they’d check the downloads by the time they would wake up… /if/ something would have happened. The world would have moved on, while here in the Arena the last two survivors in the Asian League would wait each other out until eventually they would succumb to starvation. After months the world would suddenly remember the two contestants and find two dead bodies. /Now there’s an amusing thought./

Moon stifled another yawn and blinked a couple of times to compose herself. Her heart skipped a beat with the jolt of adrenaline it produced /Have I missed something?/ but it remained quiet.

Still nothing happened.

***

“He must have some balls to snooze in the middle of an Arena,” Lon Singh said, entering the room where Khan was taking care of the broadcast. “Looks all peaceful too,” she added resentfully, peering at the screens that showed Kwon fast asleep in the bushes.

His colleague had a cup of coffee in her hands and was wearing an oversized sweater and faded jeans. Her dark hair was tied in a messy bun and she was hardly wearing any make-up, which indicated that when he had called her half an hour ago, she had been completely off-guard.

“Didn’t you sleep well, then?” Khan drawled. It was 3 in the morning; most likely Singh had been sleeping. She would’ve had the morning shift to talk the audience through the aftermath of the Game, if he had not called her in earlier. He would have felt sorrier for her if he had not been working for sixteen hours straight at this point.

She yawned. “Lovely, until you called me.” She raked a hand through her hair and yawned once more. /Obviously a fast sleeper,/ Khan observed.

“Did you inform Stender already?”

“Yeah. Stender should arrive any moment now. He was at the Compound when I called him.”

“What about Weisz?”

“She was the one who insisted I should call Stender.” He’d been talking to Weisz for most of the evening, since she was his liaison on polls, viewer ratings, and whatever happened in the betting stations. As the hour grew late, she had become increasingly irritated. She had been pushing all night to do something and liven up the Game. /We are losing audience here, idiot. People are going to bed!/ she’d hissed at him from the screens.

At first, Khan didn’t think it would be that much of a big deal. Weisz was just a pessimist, and she’d always been that way. It was Friday, the weekend was starting. People would hang around with a beer and watch the whole Game – that was what people did on the weekends. The Asian League Final was something that people would stay up for, however long it took. That was also what he said to Stender earlier tonight over the phone. But then Weisz had come in with the polls an hour ago, and he saw that as of midnight the viewer ratings had tumbled down. She’d been right, as always. So he had made another call, and Stender had left the Compound.

Khan had done his damndest to work his magic behind the scenes to give the audience a more riveting thing to look at. In any other circumstance, he would have been proud of the combination of clips, flashbacks, backgrounds and frequent commercial breaks. He’d done his thing to spice up the competition, but he hadn’t had the authorisation to threaten with disqualifications or anything. Disqualifications were the ultimate last resort, and until now they’d never had to use one. He wondered if Stender’s presence would indicate that this time it was.

“Is there anything I can do for you in the meantime?” Singh asked. She smiled her pleasant smile at him, and waved her empty cup of coffee to indicate she could get him some as well.

He nodded. “A cup of coffee would be heavenly.” He would drink it with some extra stims. God knows he needed to stay alert. If anything would happen now, it would be violent.

***

Moon couldn’t concentrate on her math sums anymore. Somewhere in her head her calculations had gone wrong and she forgot what she was trying to calculate anyway. She was out of adrenaline, she needed to pee, she was terribly hungry, and her canister of water – which she had rationed out very carefully – was nearly empty.

Her eyes were burning. How long before she would have to give in and take stims on an empty stomach?

***

In the bushes, somewhere to the south of his enemy, Mike Kwon woke up with a start. He immediately checked his watch and saw that he had snoozed for the better part of an hour. /Looks like that gambit paid off,/ he thought with satisfaction. He had slept lightly enough to trust that he would have noticed if she had left her cover and gotten anywhere near him. His resting place had been sufficiently hidden that she would have had to enter the thick bushes. There was no way she would have seen him, or gotten to him, without knowing.

And he /had/ to sleep. The stims he’d taken early in the morning had ran out around dinnertime, and he had crashed dangerously. He had nearly felt his sugar and energy levels dropping to the point where he had problems remaining conscious. He’d been in no state to take on a sniper, so he had gambled. If he would take on Moon, he would die. If he would try to sleep, she would maybe take him out while he slept. Well, there were worse ways to die. It would be a bit of an embarrassment for his family, but they would understand. The world that was watching him would understand: he needed his strength.

And now, an hour later he /did/ feel better. Did he feel good enough to take on a frigging sniper that had fortified herself so intensely that he had no way of getting to her? Mike didn’t know. He needed a miracle, but he decided that he was feeling lucky.

He took the last two of his stims and washed them away with the last mouthful of water from his canister. Time to try something.

***

“We need to wake them up, we need to engage the audience,” Stender said. He was sitting on one of the consoles, facing the screens that showed the face of Irina Weisz. His back was facing to Khan, who knew in his gut that his boss was very unhappy with the current situation. He hoped Stender didn’t hold him responsible. Fuck knew that he’d done all he could to liven things up.

“Agreed,” Weisz said on the screen. She was wearing her perpetual scowl, only deepened with her current irritation. “I made some rating projections and they’re taking a nose dive off a cliff in the next few hours. Nobody’s interested anymore. I suppose that if our deathmatchers hold out the night till 8 in the morning people will take their breakfast watching the game again – but if anything happens in the meantime, the viewers just don’t give a shit.”

Khan sighed to stifle a yawn. “If anyone has any bright ideas or perhaps some authorisation to do shit, I’m all ears. I’m too tired to think straight.”

“We need something to keep the audience to hang on until morning. We need to give them something to do- a promised payoff,” Weisz mused. She was pale-faced with fatigue, which made the scars stand out even more.

“Involvement,” Stender said suddenly. “We need to ask the viewers what /they/ want. If they choose for the option they want, they’ll be more inclined to hang on.”

“What options can we offer them?” Khan thought, thinking of ways to break the impasse that Moon and Kwon had gotten themselves in. Low on resources, high-strung and exhausted, they would not want to move from their fortified positions. “Options to get the participants moving?”

“Exactly,” his boss said. “We offer to firebomb the fortress that Moon’s holed up in, disqualification for the one who moves last, survival supplies on other places in the arena that they need to get to…” He paused for a moment, lost in thought. “Anyone any other ideas?”

“We could always threaten to kill their loved ones,” Weisz offered. “That should get them moving.”

It earned her a smile from Stender. “Sweet Irina, always so gentle,” he said ironically. “No way we could sell that to the crowd. Let’s not do that yet. But good on you for out-of-the-box thinking, Weisz.”

Of course that was an underhanded criticism to Khan’s rule-following in the League so far. Apparently Stender wanted him to show more initiative. He had always been pushed towards rule-breaking. It was wat his boss wanted in the Corporation. Creative thinking, problem-solving and hands-on attitudes, that was he was hired for. Singh was mostly hired for her pretty face and her sexy low voice. She was his junior, his backup. He was supposed to have things completely under control. Stender had not wanted to come here – he had not wanted to take action. Yet, would he have been okay with Khan taking the decision to disqualify by himself. Khan didn’t think so. Damn, he resented his job sometimes!

“Khan, make it happen,” Stender said after a couple more minutes of brainstorming. “Think of some other options together, contact the agencies, make the announcement. Make it engaging. Tell the contestants to hold out a little longer. I don’t want them to facing off before the morning news.”

“Sure.” He could do that. That was one of the things he was /good/ at, at least. He could make it pretty.

***

The announcement came out of the blue, somewhere after 4.30 am. It startled Moon out of her sleep-deprived anxiety, enough so she nearly fell over. Khan’s voice was close, as if he was sitting next to her. He spoke in her ear piece, not over the loudspeakers, which made it creepier than it should be.

“Moon, this is a private message. Give no indication to the cameras that you’ve heard this message. We need you and Mike to hold out until the morning news, since our viewers are going to sleep. At 8 am there will be food and water distributed at a location that will be determined later. I suggest you make a run for it by then, your supplies are running low.”

Moon blinked and stole another look at the pills and her nigh-empty canister of water.

/This will be a long night./

***

Mike was sitting in a tree, spying on Moon’s fortress from an unseen position. He was surveying the area for what seemed like the hundredth time since he had killed Mai. The Fortress lay quiet under the light of the large stadium-sized lamps. The handful of windows that faced him gleamed emptily. If he could only see what room Moon was hiding in, then he could take her out from a distance. The frustration and the stims were coursing through his system, filling him with a nervous energy that felt synthetic even to himself.

When the announcement came, he happened to he holding on to one of the branches, otherwise he might have fallen. “Kwon, this is a private message. Give no indication to the camera’s that you’ve heard this message. We need you and Moon to hold out until the morning news, since our viewers are going to sleep. I know you’re checking out her defenses, but do not take action before 8 am. At that time there will be food and water distributed at a location that will be determined later. I suggest you grab her when she runs for it by then.”

Mike checked his watch. 4.30 am. Maybe he would have time for another nap.
***

In the hours that followed, Mike Kwon found himself unable to sleep because he was wired on stims, and Len Moon was battling fatigue with the exhausted desperation of someone who is clinging onto consciousness by pure willpower alone.

It didn’t make for great television, but most of the action was happening in the virtual world anyway. The polls went online a little before 5 am and the audience response was good. So far it seemed that the viewers were pleased that their opinion was asked, and they were all too happy to give their thoughts on the various media outlets available.

While Stender and Singh were immersing themselves in the community contacts. Singh’s fingers flew over the plasma screen, writing posts, sending out status updates, and discussing with media and a few chosen high-profile fans. Stender was doing the same work, but outside the broadcast rooms. Ever since the polls went online, he had been constantly calling important people, so he had hardly been in the room at all.

Khan busied himself with the recording of announcements and the editing of video clips. He’d also been in touch with their medical advisor to inform the audience about the effects of fatigue and stimulant overdoses that the competitors were battling at the moment. It was not very out of the box like Stender wanted, but he had made himself useful at least. Before things would start happening again, they would be able to inform the audience what the stakes would be.

The next time Weisz called, it was after 6 am and she was /smiling/. A genuine smile, one that was so dazzling that it would almost make you forget about the scars on her face. She looked almost pretty. “The ratings came in,” she announced.

“Good tidings?” Singh asked, not looking up from whatever community work she was doing. She was all awake and full-on in business now. Khan had not seen her yawn anymore in the past hour, which led him to believe that she was as high on stims as he was.

“Very good tidings. The viewer ratings have gone up; it looks like the audience is waking up. Stender’s polls have the desired effect. If we make sure that we have a spectacular finale, then we might end up with a successful League finale after all.”

***

The only thing that kept Moon going was the promise of refreshments in an hour. In an hour, she would be able to get something to drink, something to eat. Once she’d done that, she could take her stims and then finish Kwon and this thrice-damned game forever.

She was trying to come up with a way to leave her cover, but it became increasingly hard to think. Would she gamble on staying here anyway, and hoping Kwon would leave before she did?

Rubbing her red-rimmed eyes, Moon tried to look for a way out of her fortified position. How would she know that Kwon wouldn’t just take her out the moment she would leave cover? She was almost to the point where she didn’t care about that anymore. Her world had narrowed down to this second, this torturous moment. Her parched lips, her fatigue, her low blood sugar, the spells of dizziness.

Next to her, the stim pills were still sitting on the floor. Would trembling hands be better than this fatigued hell of existence?

/Fuck everything about this,/ Moon thought vehemently. /I just want to go home./

***

Mike’s hands were trembling, but that was okay. His weapon was not made for precision. The Ion Painter scattered tag fluid over a range of about two foot. It was most accurate when he aimed precisely, but his trembling hands shouldn’t matter too much.

The crippling headaches and the thirst were much more of a nuisance. /A drink, a drink, my kingdom for a drink./

He had liked Moon when he met her at the formal dinner last night. Of all the contestants, he’d liked her best. She had this quiet toughness about her that he felt comfortable with. If he’d met her in a bar, he would have hit on her. As things stood right now, he just wanted to kill her and go home. He would have killed the President himself if that was what it took.

/A drink, a drink, my kill for a drink./

He nearly laughed out loud.

***

7.55 am.

She had held out this long, but she had to give in now. Her exhaustion was kicking her ass worse than any stim-induced trembling hands ever could.

/Here’s to hoping that the trembling is not that bad,/ Moon thought, sending a silent prayer to whatever deity that watched over League contestants.

One last swallow of water. Two pills.

/Here goes nothing./

***

8.00 am.

Morning sunlight is filtering through the foliage of the tree where Mike has taken position. It is gleaming at the windows where Moon has taken refuge. It renders the Arena golden, as if it is some sort of paradise, tranquil and perfect.

A voice cuts through the silence, booming through the strategically placed loudspeakers.

“Good morning, competitors! We’ve asked our audience what we could do to motivate your stubborn asses to get out of this mexican standoff you’ve got yourselves in,” Khan announces cheerfully. “The audience voted on the options we gave them, and it looks like we’ve got a winner.”

Behind her windows, Moon sits up. She covers her mouth with her hand, as if she cannot believe what he is saying. Mike lips his cracked lips and stares at Moon’s fortress as if he’s trying to burn holes in it. Neither of the competitors responds.

“So we lied about the refreshments,” Khan continues. “It’s your own damn fault for staking out long after your supplies have run out. There are no refreshments. Instead, the area where you are is going to be firebombed in the next five minutes. The audience figured that this should get you moving, even if nothing else does.”

Moon bites her knuckles. She looks like she’s going to be sick.

Mike smiles, then frowns at his trembling hands.

“So you better get your butts moving. The clock starts ticking…. NOW.” Khan laughs softly. His chuckle echoes through the morning air. “Have fun, guys. I’ll see one of you later.”

***

Moon closed her eyes for a moment. She was hidden behind the windowsill and out of range of Kwon’s Ion Painter, so she could afford herself the precious seconds. What to do? Fight or hide? Wait for the possibility of firebombs? She could feel the stims working in her system. It wouldn’t be long before she would get her rush of energy and the possibility of impairment to her precision.

She couldn’t hope for lies. She couldn’t afford to stay much longer. /I’m running out of time either way. Either the fire gets me, or Kwon does. Time to move./

***

The viewers at home get a good eyeful of Moon’s desperation contrasting with Kwon’s smirk.

***

After all those hours of waiting, Mike was more than ready to give into the ‘come at me bro’ feelings that were clouding his judgment. He had woken up yesterday morning knowing fairly sure that he wouldn’t see the sunset – but instead he had lived through sunset and sunrise both. He was already alive for much longer than he thought he would. /Borrowed time,/ he thought. /Let’s make it count./

Billion of hungry eyes were watching him, all over the world. He would give them a show. /Let it not be said that it was me who was the coward in the end. Let them say I ended it. Let them say that Moon died under my Ion Painter, dammit. Let them say I was patient,/ he told himself, weaving his way through the foliage on the edge of the clearing. /I was patient, and in the end I persevered. I didn’t hole up like a coward. I’ll take her out. Just watch me, hungry eyes./

The Ion Painter worked best on living tissue, but Mike was feeling lucky. He had a straight line of sight upwards from the entrance of the building. He knew his timing. He would broadly target the area around the entrance, and the moment she would emerge, the satellite would fire and she would go up in flames. It would be grand.

She could emerge any moment now.

***

Moon hesitated near the bottom of the stairs. The entrance of her fortress – the /only/ entrance – was just around the corner. She felt nauseated and trembly. /Dammit,/ she cursed silently, pressing her back against the wall and holding her rifle at the ready. No windows to check out the clearing before the building. No way of knowing he lay in waiting (of course he did). There was no way she could bank on Mike having fled to safety. He would be there, he and his satellite laser beam.

Seconds ticked away with her heartbeat. Still she waited.

She hoped to break his concentration, hoped he would get bored and wouldn’t want to risk it anymore. If he would flee before she did, then she could make a run for it. Right now though, she was a sitting duck. If she would come out, she would die. /Dammit, dammit, dammit…/

She blinked against the dusty twilight of the entrance. Perhaps… Would he be crazy enough to come inside, though? Inside, his Ion Painter would be as good as useless. But if she could convince him that she would be harmless, maybe he would be reckless. Kwon was known to be reckless and impatient at times. The recklessness had saved him a couple of times. Could it be his undoing?

Moon looked at her footprints in the dusty concrete below and shrugged. Then she tossed her rifle down the stairs, and herself after it.

***

“What the hell is she doing?!” Singh nearly shrieked.

Khan gave an impatient wave in her direction to shut her up, while he informed the audience. “Looks like Len Moon is getting desperate,” he said in his microphone, adjusting his camera view to get a good look at his contestant. “She’s showing some balls: throwing herself down some concrete stairs to try and get him to enter the building. Here’s to hoping she won’t break her neck.”

Singh was biting her knuckles; something he had seen her do before when she was nervous. He wondered if she had money riding on Moon’s victory. “She’s getting up,” Singh said. “She’s bleeding, though.”

He flicked to the camera’s that were outside, watching Kwon. They showed him in the bushes, surprise showing on his usually either expressionless or smirking face. There was doubt flickering in his eyes as he heard the ruckus that his competitor made.

“You can see him figuring it out. Moon has fallen; is she dead? Can he take her out? Oh, the tension is so thick here – you could cut it with a knife!” He checked the countdown. “Three minutes until the bombs fall. They better make their decisions quickly…”

***

Moon stood on knees that felt like water and wiped the blood from her eyes. She had shouted, somewhere on the way down. She had no idea what – a curse, a yell – something. She couldn’t have planned it any better: now she had a great view on the entrance, she had her rifle in her hands, and Mike could enter any moment.

If only she wasn’t trembling so much. She groaned, hoping that she would appear in pain and harmless. /Come in, Kwon. You know you want to./

He damn well better. There were still bombs on the way.

***

“We are in position. Awaiting orders,” the pilot said.

“Thank you. T minus two minutes, thirty seconds,” Khan said. His gaze flicked to Stender as he cut off communications. “Are we really going through with this?” he asked his boss. “There’s a chance we kill them both, and they /have/ moved.”

Stender shrugged, but there was some amusement sparking in his blue eyes. “It’s your call, Khan. It’s your league.”

/He’s pushing me again,/ Khan realized. /He’s trying to see what I’ll do./ He looked at the split screens. Moon was standing in the shadows, holding her rifle ready for anything that might happen. Kwon stood motionless. Did they know that their lives were in his hands? He’d seen more deaths in the League that he cared to admit. He’d announced their death with a practiced glee in his voice – just enough to ignite the audience. Sometimes he’d felt sorry when they died gory, horrible deaths. Usually he hadn’t, it was just the Game to him. But now he had to say the word: on his decision they would perhaps both die. At the very least, the way things were going, they would get severely injured. Why the fuck wouldn’t they just leave the Fortress already like he told them to? /God, I’m so sick and tired of these headgames! I just want to go to my fucking bed./

Seconds ticked away while Khan stared at the screens as if he wanted to burn a hole in them. Stender watched him quietly. The control room was silent.

“They signed up for this. I warned them,” Khan heard himself say suddenly. He opened the microphone to the pilots. “T minus one minute,” he told them. “Get ready.”

Stender nodded.

***

Inside the building, Moon was groaning – obviously she had taken quite the tumble down the stairs.

/Exhaustion is a bitch, isn’t it?/ Mike thought, and took a tighter grip on his Ion Painter. He looked up, where his satellite was located.

Suddenly it all became clear what he had to do. Moon wouldn’t leave the building with him lying in wait. She was drawing him in, hoping to take him out. So she would wait until the very last moment to come out, and the bombs were on their way. All he had to do was to paint the entrance and tell the satellite to shoot it to shit… then she would be lying there, helpless, while the building exploded.

Either his satellite, or the bombs would do her in. /A fine ending,/ Mike decided. He began to move over the clearing, closer towards the entrance.

Not too close, or he might risk getting fried, himself. But close enough. How long did he have left anyway? He thought he heard jets in the distance. /Fuck, better hurry./

He didn’t need that much accuracy. He just needed to pull the trigger and run.

So he did.

The weapon bucked in his hands, but he held on. A tinkling sound, when the ions collided with the concrete. And the entrance coloured red, almost like real paint.

***

The wall tinkled in a sound she knew all too well. She had heard it before, during earlier tournaments. She could still remember seeing one of her fellow contestants get painted with the Ion Painter – red spray all over his torso. And then five seconds later a bright violet light had filled the area. She had been able to take cover just in time, before she too would have been reduced to a smear on the wall. That Ion Painter had saved her life.

Today, it would- she checked her body immediately, but there was no red spray on her.

/Then what…/

Of course it wasn’t on her. It was on the entrance. That violet light would kill her in seconds.

“Fuck!” she shouted, and began to run for the exit.

***

Several things happen at once for the viewers at home. In the control room, Khan and his colleagues are working feverishly to show it all: the realisation and horror on Moon’s face, Kwon’s maniacal grin as he turns and runs to get out of the line of fire, the sattelite booting up, and the jets arriving.

For the tiniest second there is panic in the control room as Stender shouts commands to the jet fighter pilots to watch for the sattelite’s beam. One moment it seems like the jet pilots will be casualties of the beam, but then they loose their bombs and speed away before the light beam can touch them.

The violet energy beam and the bombs hit at almost exactly the same time.

The viewers at home don’t see anything for a while, as their television and computer screens filled with the bright light of the explosions. Violet first, then red and yellow and black. And then static for a moment, as four of the five cameras cease to function.

***

Len Moon makes it to the entrance by the time bombs fall. She never has any chance. The last thing she knows is the explosion, and a sensation of heat. That is all.

***

While running, Mike feels the shockwave pick him up and throw him to the ground like a rag doll. In an expression of futility, he tries to assume the fetal position to cover his vulnerable head, but the lamp post is suddenly there.

He connects with it in a another flash of white light. Then nothing.

***

Khan leaned back in his chair. “Thank fuck that is over,” he said, watching the flat line on Len Moon’s vital signs.

“The explosion killed her,” he announced to the viewers at home. “As of 8.15 am, Len Moon has flatlined, she has died in explosion.” He wondered how many people had lost money on this bet today. How many of them were watching? He continued to shoot footage of Ground Zero with his one remaining camera on site, remotely directing the feed to create the most intense images for the audience to drink in. “Mike Kwon is still alive, but incapacitated. League rules state, however, that he is the winner of the Asian League of 2301.” He smirked. “Provided that he lives to the inauguration, that is.”

Behind him, Singh was sitting at her desk, calling up images of Kwon’s girlfriend and the footage of his exploits in the earlier League games. Stender stood next to her, quietly supporting and directing her work. At the same time, Khan could see how his boss was sending out requests to the standby medical teams to retrieve Kwon’s unconscious body before he would get more seriously hurt. His injuries were nothing to scoff at. They needed a champion, and they needed him soon. Once this was over, they could all go to bed.

It took half an hour before they had Kwon in a regen tank and watched as golden light washed over him, healing him of his injuries – even the head wound.

They had their champion. All they needed was for Kwon to open his eyes and quickly recover for the press conference at noon. /Then/ they could all home and forget about this marathon of a League.

“Hey Stender?” Khan said. He rubbed a hand over his burning eyes. “Let’s never do it this way again.”

“Agreed,” his boss said, watching as the medical orderlies fussed over the champion of the Asia League. “Time for some reforms. Even though we managed to save the ratings, this wasn’t a good game. I /hate/ bad games.”

“We did what we could,” Khan said quietly.

“Yes, you did,” Stender said, not unkindly. Of course his boss knew what he thought – Stender had an uncanny way of looking into people’s brains sometimes. “Keep up the good work. Next time, I’ll make sure you have real backup. You deserve it. We /all/ deserve it.”

“What are you thinking of?”

“Nothing too definite yet. But I think I am going to visit a man named Young.”

“After you slept, I suppose?”

Stender grinned. “After we’ve /all/ slept. Go to bed, Khan. Singh and I can cover from here. You’ve deserved it.”

“Thank you,” Khan whispered. He smiled weakly at his boss and took one last look at Kwon’s unconscious body, before he exited the room and went to find his bed.

Finally.

He slept before his head touched the pillow.

—

2223: Until Fear No Longer Defines Us

Feel its weight, lay your head down
Oh burden, how did we come so far?
Stay with me, until fear no longer defines us
- Ghost Brigade, “Until fear no longer defines us”

Until Fear No Longer Defines Us

As soon as the Olympic Flame ignited, the fireworks erupted above the stadium.

“I don’t think there’s anybody in the world who hates fireworks,” Brian said to his girlfriend, applauding along together with the rest of the enraptured spectators. He craned his head further back and drank in the spectacle. Bright colours and shapes twirled above the stadium, drowning out the artificial lighting around them. For now, everything was now golden, now red, now white… it was beautiful.

Sharon laughed next to him. “As long as it’s far above us, I’m fine with it. You and I know exactly what kinds of chemicals are used in fireworks, and really, we don’t want that stuff to rain down on our heads.”

“Always the pragmatist,” he muttered, not taking his eyes off from the skies. “I think we’ll be fine here. We share a stadium with many politicians and royal families. They wouldn’t give us such a display if it wasn’t completely safe.”

“I know, I know,” his girlfriend said. She took his hand and squeezed it gently. “God knows that we paid enough money to attend the opening ceremonies. The fireworks should be completely safe. We should not worry, but enjoy it.”

Around them, thousands upon thousands of people were doing the same. Their ‘ooohs’ and ‘aaaahs’ were mingling with the loud music that accompanied the show. Their faces were illuminated by the lights from above. When Brian looked around, he saw everybody around him – even on the other side of the immense stadium – look up in awe.

Watching the fireworks, it was almost easy to forget that nagging feeling of fear that was eating away at every single person in the stadium. Being here was an act of bravery in itself. An act of defiance, even.

Like the rest of the spectators, Sharon and Brian had paid dear money for their tickets a long time ago. Besides all the heads of states, politicians and royal families, they had been among the chosen people who got through the lottery to purchase the insanely expensive tickets. They had gone for it because they had promised themselves that they would be there when the Olympics came to the US. It was such an iconic event, that it was a chance of a lifetime to see it with their own eyes. They had tickets to some competitions as well, but only one final – swimming. That was fine though: the opening ceremony was their life long dream anyway. That was what they had paid the dearest money for. And to them, it would be something they could tell their hypothetical children about later.

However, when it became clear a month ago that the Eastern Confederation was giving the West its collective fuck you by not letting their athletes compete, Sharon and Brian had to reconsider very hard whether they still wanted to go. Were they still Olympic Games if there were only athletes from the Western Confederation? Or was it just some sports event? Did they /really/ want to pay this much money for the real thing?

Sharon had been doubting, but Brian had pleaded with her that there was an Olympics game in the 20th century that had suffered the same problem, when all the Eastern European athletes refused to compete. Still, the results counted even now, and it was nowhere recorded that those Games specifically sucked. Even if half the world put a boycott on the one thing that promoted unity throughout the world, it didn’t mean that the rest of it couldn’t enjoy themselves. And the games would still be real, the results were still going to be interesting. The only people that had a real problem were the ones that had put in early bets in the betting stations. They were not those people, so why couldn’t they go? They had paid the money already, it had been written off their account months ago. Eventually Sharon had agreed.

Watching the beautiful fireworks above them and listening to the pompous fanfare music below, Brian was glad that they’d come. Opening Ceremonies were always a wonderful thing, and the lighting of the Olympic Fire had been nigh-magical to him, even though the circumstances. The athletes and the announcers did their very best to ignore that fact, and the audience cheered like it was nobody’s business. Almost as if they wanted to send a message to the East that they didn’t need them to have a good time. They didn’t need the east to light the Olympic fire that would burn in their hearts for the next few weeks, while athletes set down glorious results, had epic struggles to achieve those golden medals, and while they would be cheered on.

/Seriously, fuck them,/ Brian thought vehemently. /It will be glorious anyway./

Not in the least because of the little box that was sitting in his pocket. It hosted a ring with a diamond that nearly bankrupted him, but it would look so beautiful around Sharon’s finger. Tonight, after the ceremony, he had planned to take her as close to the Olympic Fire as he could. He would take a picture of the two of them with the Flame, and then he would go down on one knee and offer her the ring. He had it planned like this ever since Sharon agreed to come after all. If this was such a once in a lifetime opportunity, he felt that he should grab it with both hands and not ever let go.

Brian knew for a while now that Sharon was quietly waiting for him to ask her. She had not been very blatant in her hints, but he had seen her longing looks at TV programmes about weddings, and she had been saying things lately that indicated that she wanted a future with him. They had been together for over three years now, they had lived together for a year… maybe it was time, indeed. Brian couldn’t imagine a life with anyone else than Sharon, either. First she had been only a lab partner, then a close colleague and friend, and one day he had been laughing with her at some joke and he realized that he loved her, that he wanted her. Sharon and Brian, sitting in a tree.

She hadn’t even said no when he mustered up the courage to ask her out one night. Before they knew it, they were an item. Her toothbrush ended up in his bathroom that night, and it just never went away anymore. He didn’t want her to take it away, either. His hand clenched around the box in the pocket of his coat while I smiled.

He saw Sharon look at him and smiled at her, as well. Let her think that he was just happy with the pretty colours. Let her think that he was just glad to be here. Tonight was much more important than that. Tonight would be /their/ night, and it would be glorious, despite the fact that the Olympics were crippled by the arrogance of the Eastern Confederation.

His would-be-fiancé was leaning back in her plastic chair and was happily looking at the Olympic Flame that was merrily burning away on its intricately spiraled pole, high above the crowd. “I cannot imagine that any Eastern athlete would want to miss out on this,” Sharon mused. “The Olympics are the most important games in the world. The highest honour in the world to even be able to compete. Some of them must have had training schedules that worked towards these weeks for years. And now because of their arrogance and their hatred they would miss out on it. Isn’t it stupid?”

He squeezed her hand back. “They’re stupid for not wanting to be in the same stadium as you are. You’re the prettiest sight here.” He was only half joking.

She laughed and told him he was silly, and then they kissed underneath the brightly lit sky.

After the fireworks, there were some more announcements, some dancers that were hanging on wires that danced and jumped around the standard that held the Flame in an intricate choreography, and then it was all over. Some people were getting up to leave, others were leaning back in their chairs and discussed the wonders that they had seen on this night. The US had really pulled out all the stops with their acrobats, dancers, their fireworks and lasershows… It had been more than worth the money, Brian thought. And yes, it would be perfect to ask Sharon tonight.

It was quite the hassle to squeeze their way through the crowds to get close enough to the Flame so they could take our picture with it. They weren’t the only people who were planning to do so, and then there was the throng of people that were trying to actually leave the stadium. Eventually he found a way to climb upwards, out of the mass of people, to the highest seats in the stadium, directly underneath the VIP rooms. They had a great view on the Flame from there, just over the slightly bluish-tinged forcefield that was supposed to keep the audience away from the athletes below. The Flame looked even deeper golden when they saw it from above the forcefield. It seemed to make Sharon’s auburn hair glow a deep red.

“Cheese,” he said, holding his phone up so he could take a picture. “This one’s just you, then one for me, then one for the both of us, okay?”

“Okay!” She stood in front of him, smiling an easy smile that showed the dimples in her cheeks. “Cheese!”

She had never looked any more beautiful to him as she did at that moment. Illuminated by the forcefield, the Flame, and the lights of the stadium, smiling without a care in the world – there was not a doubt in the world anymore. His mind was clear. Had he ever /had/ any doubts, anyway? Yes, he would marry this woman. Of course he would!

He lifted his phone and tried to frame his shot. Because of this, he was looking at what was happening in the skies overhead. There had been no air traffic around Kansas all day, since all air traffic had been re-routed to protect the safety of the Olympics. Besides the six red-white-blue ceremonial planes that had flown over in formation earlier this evening, they had not seen any air traffic at all. So when he saw the jets approach in the distance, he was puzzled for a moment. Especially when he noticed others coming up behind, seemingly in pursuit.

Puzzled, he lowered the phone. Sharon half-turned to see what was happening above them, and that’s when everything happened at once. There was shooting. The plane that was approaching them was being shot at. Sharon screamed in shock and he pulled her against him, but up here there was really nothing they could do. Before they could react, the plane came right at them.

And then the bomb dropped above the stadium, and it all ended in fire.

2305: Eyeless

I push my fingers into my eyes
It’s the only thing that slowly stops the ache
If the pain goes on
I’m not gonna make it
-Slipknot, “Duality”

Eyeless

“Prepare to die,” he’d whispered to the girl that had murdered his girlfriend, and he’d pulled the trigger. He could still feel the recoil. He could still feel her blood splatter hotly in his face. It had been a point blank shot in the face and he had been near enough to kiss her. Charlotte had crumpled like a rag doll, sagging downwards and trailing blood on the white tiled wall. There had been no word from her, after that one last plea. She’d just… crumpled. And yet he hadn’t felt any better. He’d thought the rage and the despair would subside, that he would feel sane again after he killed Charlotte. He’d always felt saner after killing in the arena, so why wouldn’t he now? He’d shot the years of abuse and beatings out of his system in the Fortress and the Euroleague, surely he’d take the edge off his despair if he were to kill Charlotte, right?

The answer was no.

Charlotte Adams sagged on the floor and sweet sweet Myrian was still dead, and his world was still in shambles. The fire that burned inside of him continued to singe his sanity and Donny still wanted to scream, he wanted to kill. But if killing didn’t work, what was left? His heart beat slowly in his chest while seconds passed, until it began to dawn on him what he’d just done. He was at Charlotte’s victory party, and he had killed her in cold blood in the toilets. Soon enough they would come looking for her, and they would find him. His life was over. Myrian was dead and it still was unbearable, and now his life had just become worthless. He’d killed the winner of the Fortress outside of the League. He had killed dozens of times before, but now he was a murderer.
“Fuck this shit,” Donny whispered. He jammed his gun back in his belt again and yanked at the doorhandle to get out of there. He spared one look at Charlotte Adams; the girl that once warmed his bed. A psycho bitch if he’d ever met one, but she was great in the sack. They would always leave that bedchamber bruised and battered, sometimes bloody. But they’d always felt exhilarated afterwards. It was a release to be with her, especially in that magical period of his first months in the prelims of the Fortress. He’d been winning and winning, and he’d been blooddrunk. Charlotte had understood that. For the time being, they had been brilliant together. It was needing, and taking, and it was always fast and furious and violent, but always worth it. It had all been so simple back then. And now she was at his feet, her shimmery golden dress turning crimson with blood and gore.

He /had/ to get out of here.
Yanking the handle, there was a sudden push – as if someone else was pushing on the other side. He had not calculated on this and neither had the person on the other side, so the woman with the strawberry-coloured hair nearly fell into his arms. She managed to keep herself upright, however, and hardly budged when he shoved her out of the way. As he bolted, he saw people look at him. And then someone started screaming, and it was all over. He’d never stood a chance.

***

“Well, here it comes,” Young murmured, crossing his arms and leaning back in his chair. It was stuffy and hot in the courtroom, as if the airco had given up sometime during the trial. People around them were sweaty and fidgety. He could feel the tension in the air, tingling the hair in his neck. The court’s remission had taken hours, but the verdict was supposed to read out now. He could spell it out, every single word. He knew what the verdict would be, he knew what Wellington’s attorney would plead. Wellington himself would stare in the distance in that catatonic behaviour he had adopted after he’d murdered the Adams girl. This was such a waste of time.

The Judge sat up straighter and nodded at the defendant. Donny Wellington hardly acknowledged him, but the man went on to speak anyway. “Donald Wellington, after careful consideration the Jury and I have come to the decision that you have been found guilty on all charges.” He looked up into the courtroom, but there was hardly any response. It wasn’t as if not everybody had seen this coming, Young thought sourly. “You now have a choice to make, mister Wellington,” the Judge continued with a practised stern look on his face. “What will it be, death by lethal injection or participation in the League?”

No response from Wellington. Still that same dead look in his eyes, a slack face. Young wondered if Wellington was just drugged up beyond any relief, or whether he was truly catatonic. Perhaps it was a combination of both; Wellington was a dangerous man, and obviously homicidal. The fact that it had mostly been targeted at the girl that so tragically killed his girlfriend didn’t really matter. Everybody had seen him dominate the Euroleague in his better years. The Court didn’t take any chances, and rightly so.

Wellington’s attorney, a mousy man with a skintone that looked downright sickly, cleared his throat instead. “Mister Wellington would like to participate in the Deathmatch, your Honour. I have his declaration, if you would be interested.” He held up a piece of paper that featured a signature. The signature looked scrawly, as if the pen hadn’t been held properly. It would do for the Court, Young supposed. They were probably glad enough to be rid of him; and usually Stender and he were itching to get the dramatic players added to their arena’s.

But then again, Donald Wellington wasn’t your average convict.

Stender had been very unhappy. He’d called Young moments after the incident occurred, almost simultaneously with the reports that came on the broadcasts from the media who’d been attending the party. “It was after I’d left already. Val was still there, and Hugh, and the situation was contained quickly. Wellington never stood a chance, but I’ll have the /head/ of the idiot that let him through with a gun. It wasn’t you, was it?”

“It wasn’t my party,” Young had reminded him calmly. “I’m on the other side of the world. Berntsson was in charge, and he’s likely as gobsmacked as you are. That guy never makes mistakes.”
“Damn that Wellington boy. If he’d offed her somewhere in the Dregs we could have put a great spin on that, but no, he has to shoot holes in her on her own bloody victory party,” Stender spat. “I hate it when people ruin my parties.”

“Doesn’t everybody,” Young said with a slow smile.

Stender grinned his devil-may-care grin back at him throught he screen of his vidphone. They understood each other completely, even without words. “I want that boy taken care of.”

Young shrugged. “The boy will end up in the Deathmatch,” he said. “I’m pretty sure that he’s not going to go for the death sentence.”

“I’d really rather not. He’s a loose cannon, completely insane.”

“We’ve dealt with that before. And he gets the short straw in the weapon lottery, don’t worry about that.”

Stender shook his head slowly. “It’s not the game itself I’m worried about. I just don’t want his name associated with us anymore. Our good name, and all that. Next thing you know people don’t want to come to our parties anymore.” He delivered his statement with so much irony that seemed to be dripping off his words. Sometimes Young wondered where Stender started and where his announcer persona began. Whole households would have sniggered at his words, if this had been a deathmatch comment.

“Want him compromised?” Young offered.

“Totally. This fucker is not going to last for more than ten minutes this time.”

***

“Donald Wellington is a rager,” the pretty redhead on the vids said. Her name was Priscilla LaCoeur, and she was one of the new psychologists that they’d hired for on-screen psych evals. Berntsson liked her already; she was the prettiest one of the bunch. The young woman smiled and turned her head just so that the light from the high windows caught her eyes, giving the viewers a full view on a pair of the most gorgeous green eyes the audience had ever seen. They had to be contacts, but with that luminosity and that bright colour, nobody cared either way. “You know what we mean by that, right?”

“Please enlighten us,” Jorn Berntsson said, smiling his charming smile back. He knew, of course, but this was a scripted conversation. The audience would want to know. He leaned back in his leather chair, and waited for what was to come.

“He came out of all the tests as a rager, before he’d ever set foot in any arena. People sign up for the League for a myriad of reasons. Excitement, money, glory… but sometimes they sign up out of rage. Donald Wellington is one of those. He had a lot of unresolved issues to work through.” She smiled again, as if she was flirting with Berntsson instead of laying the lowdown on a deranged killer. “You can see it in his behaviorial patterns in the Arena as well. The number of kills, his heartrate during the games, but most of all, the way /how/ he offed his victims is telling. The amount of gore he created diminished immensely during his time as a participant.”

Ah, it was his turn. “One could argue that this is because he got more skilled at the games. Where he made a mess before, he could have become more efficient.”

“While I am inclined to agree with that, it is not the whole explanation. Psych evaluations confirmed the rage. Donald Wellington was able to let his rage out through the Games. And he was becoming more quiet, more efficient in his kills, he became more careful not to lose his life. And, of course, there was the whole deal with his girlfriend. Myrian Seltzer.”

“One of your colleagues, I’m told,” Berntsson said, revelling in the shock in her eyes. That wasn’t scripted, he just enjoyed to see her squirm. “Seltzer and you worked closely together, right?”
The redhead blinked slowly. “Yes, we were colleagues for the better part of two years.”

“Tell me, what did the two ever see in each other?” Berntsson said, leaning over at her and smiling sweetly. He was throwing her off completely. Sometimes a little discomfort and leading the conversation astray was just what the conversation needed… just that little extra that made things seem that tiny bit more genuine. The whole world was watching, after all.

“They… I don’t know. Myrian always was interested in him,” she said, shrugging. Ah yes, she was uncomfortable. She was dropping the last names, going on memory here. “I know that she was the one who asked him to go out. I don’t know why either, I mean, she was the one who conducted his tests. She must have known his psych patterns.”

“But she didn’t care?”

“Obviously. It’s not for me to say… I never saw any of her psych evals. Nor would I want to. But for the time they were together, they were happy. Until the moment she wanted to join the League.”
“And what did you think about that?”

LaCoeur narrowed her pretty green eyes. “I don’t think my opinion on that is quite relevant here. I thought we were discussing Donald Wellington.”

“Of course we are,” Berntsson smiled, noting the tiny beads of sweat on her brow and taking joy in it. “Wellington is a rager. So what you are saying is…”

“He ventilated his anger in the League. Blood for blood, the fight made him feel good. He got rid of his angst that way. And most of his issues were gone, by the time Myrian entered the League. He was happy, content. Quiet. It’s a good thing his technique improved over time, or he would never have survived the next League, he didn’t have his anger fuel him anymore. But when Myrian died under the hands of his ex girlfriend, his rage flared up again. And he vented it by the only way he knew how: he killed Charlotte Adams.”

“Do you think it helped?” Berntsson asked.

The redhead shook her head. “No. I’m fairly sure it didn’t.”

****
He couldn’t believe how easy it was to snatch the butter knife from his breakfast tray and to scrape it over the floor until it became sharp enough to cut flesh. Of course he had the practiced ease of a shoplifter, but he’d thought they’d have noticed it by now. With all the scraping he’d had going on, the sound would have driven any sane person up the walls after three days.

Or maybe they knew and they let him. The staff wouldn’t get close to him anyhow. Perhaps they wanted him to do it – perhaps they were watching him with those damned camera’s, making not
es as they peered at the screen with hungry eyes. /Let them watch. As long as they let me play./

He’d felt his own blood ooze over his skin before, but this time it was different. It was warm, soothing. It felt like a bit of a release. A little bit.

/Maybe the restraints are lifted as soon as you’re convicted. As soon as you’re behind those bars, they don’t care whether you live or die. The damage’s been done, and I should be dead anyway. I’m rotting away already. Just waiting for my heart to follow suit and stop beating./

“Blood for blood,” he whispered, watching perfect red drops rivulet over his pale skin in the flickering white light.

If he was hurting, he couldn’t feel it.

***

Young felt it more than he heard Jorn Berntsson entered the room. He didn’t look up from his work, hoping that if he’d ignore the guy, maybe he’d go away. However, Berntsson wasn’t very phased. He just sat down next to Young and peered at the livefeed that showed the inside of Donny Wellington’s cell. “He’s not doing much, is he?”

“Not anymore,” Young said. He was busy sorting through vid material, and he was juggling so many feeds that he refused to look up.

“What do you mean?”

/Why don’t you just go away? Don’t you have anything better to do with the match only two weeks away?/ “You’ve got the files under your fingertips. Just look it up.”

Fingers tapped on silicon, and for a minute or so it was blissfully silent as they both worked on the vid material. “Holy fuck,” Berntsson whispered. Young looked up to the dark-haired announcer, but Berntsson’s eyes were glued to the visuals on the screen before him. “Is he cutting his arms with a /butter knife/?”

“Told you.” Young tore his eyes from the gruesome images and back to the ones he was supposed to be working on. He had seen it all before; he’d been the one to call in the medics when he saw things go wrong the first time.

“Who the hell gave him the knife?”

“We did,” Young said. “Stender didn’t particularly care if the boy would hurt himself, as long as he wouldn’t hurt anyone else. But with the way we arranged his holding cell, he won’t even get close to the staff.”

“Blood and fire,” the strangled whisper came from the screen. Donald Wellington was crying as he cut himself, his fingers and his legs slick with warm blood. Young had seen it all before. He’d seen some shit in his days so far, but this one pretty much took the cake. He almost felt voyeuristic.

“I don’t think he cares much about the fact that he has three more days to live,” Berntsson said thoughtfully.

Young just shrugged.

***
He dreamed of her every time he fell asleep. Sometimes he thought he could see her watching him when he was awake as well. She always had such a sad look in her eyes.

He tried to talk to her, but she never responded. When he reached out to her, she just seemed to vanish before his eyes. Even when he had his eyes closed, she vanished. If he could just bury himself behind his eyes, behind his life – maybe then he could see her again. Maybe he could tell her he was sorry, even though he was not quite sure what he had to be sorry for.

She had wanted to join the League. She had wanted the glory, and for a while there, she had been brilliant. They might have even met one another in the League at some point, if she would have continued her winning streak. He could see it happen. Myrian with her battle gear on, grime on her face like warpaint. She would turn to him, her rifle in hand. And he would look at her amidst dust and death, and he would… what?

Was that what he wanted to apologise for? He wouldn’t have killed her. Of course he wouldn’t have. They would have made sure that they wouldn’t have to face off in whatever League, ever. But what if circumstances /had/ turned out that way? Would he have killed her? Would she have killed him? Would he have let her kill him? He wasn’t sure.

He didn’t know, and the questions drove him crazy.

/If only I could see her again./

Although he bled, he continued to be completely numb.

***
Berntsson was sitting with his legs on the table, of all things. His boots were hovering just inches above plasma screens that even his lofty annual salary couldn’t pay for in five years, and he had to know it.

Young was too busy to give voice to his irritation. There were a gazillion things to take care of for this match. Everything had to be watched, everybody had to be in place. He felt like a spider in his web, taking care of everything. Stender was off taking care of political and promotional business for now. He would probably show up the moment the Game started, but until then Young ran everything. Stender had given him Berntsson to announce the game, as usual. Tonight the dark-haired man was supposed to talk the audience through the previews and give them the rundowns of all the participants, while Young was in charge of the montages and video feeds. It was just hours before it all would start and he could feel the stims taking over from his body’s natural reserves. In thirty six hours it would all be over, and he would be allowed to crash.

For now, however, there were sixteen million things to take care of all at once, and he had no time to be annoyed with Berntsson’s lazy attitude. The blond announcer lazily called up some stats and peered at the view before him on the screen. “I still can’t believe you’re giving Wellington the slime gun,” he drawled.

Young didn’t look at him. He was too busy sliding fingers over screens to connect fragments of seconds of footage. “He asked for it,” he said, frowning at the images.

“Is that what we’re telling the press? It’s completely rigging the Game /again/ and it’s a far cry from his old rocket launcher. There was this article in the Times the other day that claimed-”

“No, you’re not listening. He /asked/ for it. Specifically.”

***

The engine hummed beneath his feet while the vehicle that would drop them at their Arena destinations closed its doors. Immediately the atmosphere turned stuffy and crackled with tension. Competitors were sizing each other up. Some of them spoke softly with one another, others just shot looks that were challenging or venomous.

Donny didn’t look at the other competitors. He knew their names and their faces; he had met them all before. One of them was the winner of the last two Northern Leagues. She was the strawberry-haired woman he had encountered moments after Charlottes lifeless body had crumpled onto the bathroom tiles. She had been curiously regarding him for most of the formal televised dinner the night before, but they had never spoken.

He hadn’t spoken to anybody. He’d hardly touched his meal anyway. Most of the time he had looked at his hands and thought that once he cared about the League. Once he had cared about sitting here, the night before the great match, and his heart would have thundered in his throat. He would have charmed the viewers at home and he would have had some witty banter with the other competitors while stuffing his face with some of the most delicious food he had ever tasted. Not last night, though.

Food tasted like ashes these days anyway. Even thought he cameras must have been hungrily drinking in the new scars on his forearms and the lines of grief in his face, he never looked up to acknowledge those millions of viewers that were watching him.

Instead he looked down at the slime gun in his hands. The weapon was heavy and cold in his hands. He gingerly touched the business end of the gun, which was oozing the tiniest bit of slime. Immediately he could feel the acid biting into the fingertip of his index finger. It was almost enough to feel pain. Almost.

“Hey Wellington, if you could stop touching yourself for a minute and pay attention to what I’m saying?” A voice said on the other side of the cabin. Donny looked up at the plasma screen that showed the announcer’s face. Dark hair, pulled back in a ponytail. Laughing lines around dark eyes, but it was not a friendly face. This year, the Euroleague was presented by Jorn Berntsson, after its usual announcer Karl Lorentz had bailed out for health reasons. Donny had decided a long time ago, when he still cared about these things, that this guy was a douchebag.

Donny just smiled and rubbed his index finger and his thumb together, so the slime bit into his thumb as well. The burning feeling was almost pleasant. The smell it emitted was a little less so, though.

Berntsson sighed and said: “Because Wellington doesn’t want to wave at the viewers at home, I’ll just make sure to introduce him properly for you. Wellington is a convict. He murdered his ex girlfriend Charlotte Adams in cold blood at her own party. In the bathroom. Blood everywhere. It was quite the mess.” He paused for a second, undoubtedly showing the audience images of Charlotte’s corpse. Blood on the shimmering gold dress, on the white tiles. Donny could still see it when he closed his eyes.

The image was soon drowned out by Myrian, hoisting herself upon that balcony. Half paralysed, bleeding all over the concrete. Her pretty face as she made a decision upon which she would gamble her life. The sound of her body hitting the water. And nobody… nobody who saved her. Anybody in the organisation of the event could have gotten into the Fortress and got her out of there. But no one did. She died on the bottom of the river, not very long after hitting the water. Donny often wondered what came first, the drowning or death by the wound in her gut. That mattered so much, but no one could tell him.

Suddenly he noticed Valentina Marin’s eyes on him again. She wiped a stray lock of strawberry-coloured out of her face and smiled vaguely. “Drowning´s not a bad way to go, you know? Compared to being shot in the gut. Some would almost call it gentle.”

He didn’t know how she knew what he was thinking of. Maybe she wasn’t even talking at all, and he was just imagining this. He had to ask, though. “How do you know she drowned?” he murmured.
She shrugged. “Wound like that…takes forever to bleed out.”

Not under water though. /Nobody/ had dragged her out of the water. And he had let her enter that damned Fortress in the first place. Perhaps he did have to apologise to her after all.
Berntsson was talking. He was still talking about Donny, drawing up charts and stats that everyone following the League undoubtedly knew. He didn’t waste long, though. Soon he moved on to the other competitors and finally left Donny alone with his thoughts. The ooze burned on his fingers. With a detached curiosity, he looked at the reddened flesh.

Some time after that, people started leaving. The vehicle would hum, doors would open. People would leave. Valentina was the fourth to leave. She looked at him for a moment, flashed him a quick grin that could have meant anything, waved her dual guns, and then she was gone. He didn’t even look at the others.

He was the last to enter the Arena. It didn’t surprise him. Berntsson didn’t have anything to say to him where it came to parting words except for the customary “Good game!”

The door opened. Donny grabbed his gun and jumped out.

He found himself on a hill near a forest. Buildings were closeby, and behind the twenty feet high electrified fence was the rest of the world. The sun was shining blindingly silver amidst hazy clouds.

It was Marin who found him eventually, sitting on that same patch of grass. The slime gun glinted faintly in the glaring sunlight. He didn’t pick it up. He had never intended to use it.

Instead, he rose to his feet and stretched out his arms, as if he wanted to embrace the bullets that would undoubtedly come.

And when they came, his last thought was that the sound of the gun sounded just like Myrian’s.

2300: Change of Heart (1)

Change of Heart

The thing was, Peter Delmont noticed, that once you kept winning the amount of people that didn’t know you decreased rapidly. You started to get used to the fact that every restaurant could arrange a table for you despite the place being packed with people. There would always be bottles of the finest champagne on the house. Hotels always had the suite with the best view for you – once people knew that it was Peter Delmont who was asking for it, suddenly everything was possible.

And he got used to that. So when he met someone who didn’t treat him like a mixture between a war hero and a rock star, someone who saw the real Peter – the person who he was before he started winning – someone who didn’t want anything from him but himself, then he suddenly began to know the shallowness of his current life as a League winner. Everyone around him wanted something from him. They wanted money, they wanted to be noticed with him by the tabloids, they wanted his tips on Deathmatching, they wanted to paste his ass all over the Arena. And the beautiful girls that were always there for him… they most of all. What had seemed like intoxicating love and gold and honey, suddenly was exposed as shallowness. They didn’t love /him/, they loved a /winner/. Once he’d slip up, he’d be dead, sure… but he’d be forgotten. Unloved.

Who still remembered the faces of the people who lost? He sure as hell didn’t, and he didn’t doubt that it would be different for his groupies and his sponsors and his managers.

And once he realized this, the fabulous life began it lose its splendor for him. Sure he got his kick out of deathmatching, but he did begin to feel the toll that the matches took on his body. His dependency on stims. The long tedious hours in the gym. Loneliness and repetition, and nobody asking how he was doing. /Really/ doing.

What was he still doing this for? Surely now he’d earned enough money to live the rest of his days in luxury. He hadn’t even taken the time to spend any of it yet… he was too busy training for the next game, the next League match.

And he never would have noticed if not for Sasha.

Sasha Tiselle. He met her in a restaurant in Eclat, where he’d been for some press-riddled gala event that his agent had wanted him to go to. He had a bite to eat in the restaurant and was offered a bottle of red wine that must have cost a fortune; but that night he’d been alone and he wasn’t in the mood to drink on his lonesome. His handheld device was full of phone numbers he could call – people who would love to join him in those two hours before the gala would start, but he just happened to look at the table next to him, and the girl that was sitting there was just so gorgeous that he couldn’t help but invite her to join him.

Dark hair, hazel eyes. A dusting of freckles on her pretty face. A body that curved in all exactly the right places. And when she smiled at him, Peter felt his knees go weak. “Hi,” he said. “I couldn’t help but notice your lack of table partner and I just got this bottle of fine red wine and I had no one to share it with. So I thought you might be interested.”

“What, do I look like a drunk?” she asked, amusement sparkling in those gorgeous eyes.

That took him aback – he realized that she thought he was just a common flirt. She didn’t know him! It had been ages since that happened for the last time. He forced himself to smile and rose to the challenge. “You look like someone who could appreciate a fine wine. I’m not sure about the amounts of it, I’ll leave that up to you.”

Still, she allowed him (allowed him! Ha!) to sit down next to her and they chatted away the two hours that he had to kill. They talked about all kinds of things, but never once did her eyes light up in recognition, not even when she learnt his name. He enjoyed getting to know her better; she had a rich laugh and commented wittily on whatever he had to say. She was a damn enjoyable conversation partner; better than most escort girls he’d spent time with in the past few years. And this girl worked in social services, with juvenile teens. It was a rather lost cause and she was aware of the irony of trying to help kids in a lost cause, but it was just the way she ticked. “It’s what I do,” she explained with a shrug. “I can sit and bitch about the situation, or I can try and do something about it.”

His buzzer went off about an hour after the gala had already started with a reminder to get his ass over there if he still wanted to get noticed by the press. “Ah sorry,” he said to the gorgeous girl at his table, “I have to go, there’s this event where I have to be.”

She smiled, but he could see the disappointment in her eyes. “Duty calls,” she murmured. “It was nice to meet you, Peter.”

“I could just call my agent and tell him to go fuck himself, of course,” he offered. The thought was suddenly very appealing. “Or, I could ask you to join me.”

“It depends,” Sasha answered, her expression suddenly guarded. Her slender fingers let go of her crystal wine goblet. “What is the event?”

“Just some gala event from one of my sponsors, I’m not even quite sure. They wanted me to be there, and I go where they tell me to go.”

Sasha blinked. “What is it that you do anyway?”

He smiled faintly. There it was. “You’re not much of a League fan, are you?”

There was some confusion in her eyes. “No, my parents are anti-League activists. I never watched the games much. I’m not a nut as they can be sometimes, if people want to kill themselves in the Arena then that’s their stupid choice but-…” she trailed off. “Why are you asking?”

He bit on the inside of his cheek. Anti-League Activists. Great, just great. His agent would bite his head off if anyone had spotted him with this girl. It might be on the internet already, gossip could already be running rampant. Who the hell would have thought such a thing? Anti League Activists in the middle of Eclat, less than twenty miles from the biggest Arena in old Europe? He had to tell her, though. And if she freaked, he could handle himself. “I’m the current reigning European League champion, Sasha. Two years in a row.”

2308: Pending a God

For a while there was only silence between us. After Valentina pulled the earpiece out of her ear, and I carried her to the jet. It was enough. I could practically feel her heart pounding against her broken ribs, but she seemed to be unbothered by it. She always did. I’d seen her come in with broken arms and legs, a face so bruised that she was barely recognizable and worse. All in all she looked great, for someone who had just taken a dive of a steep cliff, and came out victorious. Adrenaline played a big part in that, I guessed. Her eyes were bright with it as she looked up to me.

“You’re really going to leave the League to Young?” she asked me as I walked us up the ramp to the jet. I shrugged. I was done with it. For over a decade I had used it to achieve everything I had wanted. Everything I had needed. As I gently sat Valentina down in the regen cabin on board the jet, I realized that I had nothing left to want. “It’s all his.” I said, cupping her face in my hands. All of it… Except for her. She smiled at me, before settling back into the seat. “You need to step back, unless you want to get scrambled.” she said, grinning broadly. I did, and flipped the switch to the regen device. A blue beam shot up from the floor, and dozens of monitors around the cabin sprang to life, assessing the injuries she had, and figuring out ways to fix them.

“Wouldn’t that be hilarious though?” she asked, her eyes still fixed on my face. “For me to win the World League, and then join you in retirement only to get turned into mush by a regen device before we can enjoy it?” I laughed wryly, thinking of the way Adhiambo had looked after Tijs de kler splattered her in that blue beam. Not a pretty sight. “I’m sure Young will put a nice spin on it if that did happen.” I offered. Something on the screen to my left caught my eye. I turned to look at it, but Valentina demanded my attention again.

“Stender?” she asked, her voice sounding oddly similar to the way it had earlier, right before she had almost passed out. I looked at her, worried. “I love you.” she said, repeating her earlier message. I walked over to the regen cabin, putting my hand on the metal next to it. Her eyes were bright with something more than adrenaline. “I love you too.” I said, smiling at her. “Always have.” We smiled at each other for a while, before she closed her eyes and let her head fall back against the wall of the regen cabin. I glanced back at the screen that had caught my attention earlier, but it was blank.

The regen cabin beeped, indicating that it’s cycle was almost at an end. At the same time the pilot called in, saying that we were two minutes away from landing. “I suppose there’s no use in hoping that Young hasn’t scheduled at least five press conferences already?” Val asked me, stepping out of the regen cabin and walking up behind me. I felt her arms slip around me, and her head press against my back. A press of a button showed us that the first press conference was due to start four minutes from now. “Ugh. I don’t even get the time to change?” Valentina complained behind me. I smiled, though I knew she couldn’t see it. “People like seeing you dirty.” I offered. “Sick fucks, the lot of them.” she concluded. Then the jet started it’s descent, and she removed herself from my back. I shivered slightly at the loss of contact. There would be more of that later, I promised myself.

~

Valentina was charming as usual. She answered the questions shot at her with patience and wit, allowing Young to walk us all through the game again. Ralph sat next to her, looking both nervous and excited. He looked at home already, and the press seemed to accept him as my natural successor. A new public face. I smirked. They were probably getting bored with mine already. This lead me to ponder the fate of the Southern League. It had just lost its front man. I shook my head, smiling at my own idiocy. It was time to let go. Young could deal with the Southern League.

The room around me went eerily quiet. I looked up, my eyes instantly locking with Valentina’s. She was pale, far paler than she had been when we left the jet. Her breathing was shallow and laboured. Next to her Ralph leaned over, placing a hand on her arm. “Valentina?” I heard him ask. There was panic in her eyes, and her hands moved to the collar of her shirt, pulling at it. Her lips formed a single word. Stender. There was no sound to go with it, but I could hear it as clearly as I would have if she’d shouted at me. I was on my feet and at her side in seconds. Not in time to keep her from falling sideways. I gathered her in my arms, holding her as she clung to me. Then her grip loosened, and I lost her.

“Medic!” I heard myself shout. People stirred around me, but I hardly noticed them. Valentina’s skin was pale, clammy with sweat. Her breathing came in short puffs, and her eyes were closed. Moments later hands were pulling me aside, and she was placed on a gurney. I followed it, only vaguely aware of the fact that Young was at my side, talking into a mobile device. “What the hell is wrong?” I heard myself ask. “She was just in a regen cabin, and all her readings were fine. She was fine, Goddamn it!” The gurney burst through the doors of the medical wards, which closed again before I could get through. I stopped in front of them. I could enter if I wanted to, as there are no closed doors for me in the compound. A hand on my shoulder stopped me though. “Let them do their job, Stender.” I heard Young say. His words made sense, yet at the same time I felt that there had to be more. I had to be able to do more.

~

Hours after she was first taken to the medical ward there was still no news on the condition of Valentina Marin. Young and Ralph deflected the media, giving no details but assuring the public that she was doing well, and that she just needed some rest. I had spoken to a few of the doctors brought in, but they avoided my questions. That said it all to me. Valentina was dying. I watched her chest rise and fall with difficulty. She hadn’t been awake since she passed out at the press conference. I sat by her side, keeping an eye on the heart monitor. The signal was weak.

Eventually one of the doctors gathered the courage to speak to me. He was still young, no more than five years older than Valentina herself I guessed. He had the same look of self confidence about him that she always had though. The look that said he knew what he was doing. Of course he did. The compound didn’t work with anything less than the best, and Young knew better than to bring anything less than the absolute best into the medical ward now that Valentina was the patient. The look on his face was grave though.

“There isn’t anything left for us to do, sir.” he started. “When she was no longer protected from the radiation on the island her body took a serious hit. The original scans from the regen devices she was in all claim that they cleared her body of the damage completely, but the test results we’ve done now show serious tissue damage to all of her internal organs. It’s like her own cells are fighting against each other to get rid of the radiation poisoning that she’s suffered.”

His words washed over me. I sat quietly for a while, watching Valentina’s chest rise and fall. I took her hand in mine, shocked again to feel how frail it was. “You’re telling me there’s no hope?” I asked the doctor. I didn’t have to see his face to know the look on it was grim. “Little to none, sir.” he whispered. I held her hand between mine. So small. So cold. “Leave us.” I finally said. My heart felt like a stone in my chest, frozen solid and aching for that which I was losing. That which I never really had in the first place. Something shifted behind me. Young, I guessed. “There has to be a way…” I heard myself say to him. “It can’t end like this. There has to be a way.”

I heard the door open behind me. “If there is a way, I’ll find it.” I heard Young say, right before he left the medical ward. His voice was clipped, even more so than usual. It made sense. He and Val had been like siblings from the moment they met. Both in service of the great Stender. The man who was said to have everything. I laughed, a wry laugh that echoed through the room. “It’s not worth anything. What’s the point in owning half the world if I can’t even use it to save you?” I asked the silent woman in the hospital bed. The silent beeping of the heart monitor was my only answer.

~

Two days passed, and I saw or heard nothing of Young. I knew he was around though. I knew he’d entered the room several times, to check up on Val. I didn’t hear or see him though, as my world had shrunken to the woman on the bed, and the beeping of he heart monitor. Two times it had faltered briefly. Both times it had started up again, before the doctors could get there with crash kits and shots of adrenaline. The young doctor who had spoken to me before told me that she didn’t have much time left. Maybe two days, maybe less. I held on to Valentina’s hand, clinging to her in the hope that there was some way I could keep her with me.

I barely heard the footsteps of Young as he approached me. “Stender.” he said, calling for my attention. With force I pealed myself away from Valentina. Young was there, looking tired for the first time in his life. With him was a woman in her mid thirties somewhere. Dark hair, blue eyes, and a pleasant yet serious face. I looked at both of them, realizing that I probably looked like hell, but failing to give a damn about it. “I’m Charlene Pelletier.” the woman offered. “Doctor Charlene Pelletier. I… uh… well, I looked at the readings from the regen cabin in your shuttle, and I think I can save her.”

It felt like my heart jumped in my chest. Hope. I looked at Young, who smiled just the faintest hint of a smile. Hope. “There’s little time though. We need to move her to my lab immediately. I believe you have a shuttle?” she asked. I nodded, and looked at Young again. He grinned, then, and sped off, no doubt to arrange all that needed to be arranged for Valentina’s transport. “It’s not going to be easy, and there’s a chance the treatment won’t stick.” Charlene told me. I barely heard her. “It will get worse before it gets better, and it will take time. She’ll need you, there. She’ll need you more than ever.”

Hope.

~

Her body was floating in a tank. Through the clear glass I could see her, but I could no longer touch her. It had been three days since the transport, and there was still no sign of improvement. Still, Charlene was positive. Three days was more than the two that had been offered to me in the compound. There was a mask over her mouth and nose, which provided her with oxygen. Wires and tubes were stuck in and on her body. A complex mixture of gene therapy and nano technology was working to restore the damage done to Valentina’s cells. In time, her body would be restored to it’s healthy self, or so doctor Pelletier hoped. There was no way to be certain. She had had both successes and failures in the short time she had used the technique. I clung to the hope that Valentina would be one of the successes.

I took short breaks from watching her, when Young came by to visit. Some food, a shower, and back to her side as soon as I could. For the first time ever I even resorted to the same stims that Young used during the games. Anything to stay awake. I had to be at her side at all times. I had to be there when the therapy started working. I had to be there when she finally woke up. A strange sort of routine settled over us, with Young visiting twice a day. Mostly to keep an eye on Valentina, but also to make sure I ate. He talked to me about the outside world from time to time, and I found myself listening, and wondering what Valentina would make of the news.

“Ruiz da Costa survived the game.” he told me on the sixth day of Valentina’s treatment. I turned to look at him, surprised for the first time. Young smirked. “The coroners found him about four hours after the game ended. There was some confusion during that time…” Because that was also the time when Valentina collapsed, and every capable medical officer was trying to keep her alive. I smiled wryly. “But apparently the coroner they sent was able to keep him alive long enough for me to ponder on the situation. His pod was malfunctioning, obviously, otherwise we would have known he was still alive. He was messed up pretty badly, but he’s in good hands now.”

“You’re keeping him alive?” I was surprised. News like this could unbalance the entire league. Anti League Activists would jump on the chance to accuse the leagues of being rigged. “I gave a nice spin to it.” Young said, smiling vaguely. “Either way, he won’t be competing again. He has a few implants that make that… unlikely now. In time I’ll offer him Hugh’s spot over at the Southern League.” I pondered on that for a while, and came to the conclusion that it was a good decision. I said as much, ignoring the smug look on Young; s face.

The conversation did remind me of a loose end that had been like a thorn in my side ever since Valentina collapsed. On day ten of the treatment, there were still no signs that she was getting any better, and the Thorn named Hugh Sanchez Cuberes festered in my side more every day. His actions had directly caused the current situation. If he hadn’t tampered with Valentina’s inhaler, she would never have been poisoned by the radiation. She would have been at my side, alive and well. I began pacing on day eleven, walking in front of the tank like a caged wolf. Charlene avoided me, checking in only for the essential readings. She seemed hopeful, but I was beginning to believe that this was it.

Valentina was gone. The body in the tank would sleep forever, and I would never get the chance to hold her again. All the time we wasted weighed on me, pressing me down further. So I paced, thinking of Hugh Sanchez Cuberes, rotting somewhere in a cell until his trial started. That treacherous dog. I hated him, as I paced and waited for Charlene Pelletier to tell me that the treatment had failed. The mere fact that he was alive somewhere when Valentina was as good as dead tore at me, until I could no longer deal with it. When Young visited on the fourteenth day of the treatment, I asked him to stay with Valentina a little longer. I had matters to tend to.

~

The prison was dark and dirty, the way prisons had looked in movies of old. I didn’t even know that there were still prisons like these around, but it wouldn’t surprise me if Young had found the very last one of it’s kind, just to put Hugh in. The air was rank with fear and desperation, and the cries and shouts of other prisoners echoed through the halls. The guard walked ahead of me, glancing back anxiously every now and then. He had reason to be anxious. Behind him walked Stender, clean and polished as he always looked, with exception of the two weeks that had passed. Behind him walked the ruler of the new world. No one had dared to search him for weapons and other illegal items. It was as he had expected.

“We did everything as mr. Young said, sir.” the guard reassured him again. “We put ‘im in the darkest hole, fed him the worst food, and kicked him around on a regular basis. Bet he ain’t so uppity now, eh? Bet he regrets ever crossing you.” The guard sniggered, before glancing anxiously at me again. Worried he’d upset the mighty Stender, perhaps. A wry smile played around my lips. The guard didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was my destination here. “There it is.” the guard said, pointing at a door at the end of the hall. He handed me the keys. “No questions asked, sir. Just as mr. Young said.” With that final statement he turned, and scurried down the hallway. No doubt to wait around the corner for my return. Wouldn’t do to let Stender get lost in the prison maze, after all. No, that wouldn’t do at all.

I walked towards the door, trying to ignore the stench that seemed to saturate the place. The key the guard had given me turned easy enough. I opened the door, and gave the man inside some time to adjust his eyes to the light. It also gave me some time to adjust my eyes to the sight presented to me. Hugh Sanchez Cuberes was sitting on the ground, wearing a dirty prison overall. Every inch of his skin that I could see was covered in bruises and sores. He’d lost more weight than he could afford. “Hey, look what the cat dragged in.” he said when he recognized me. He tried a smile, but it looked more like a grimace.

“Hugh.” I said, stepping into the cell. “I have no doubt that you know why I’m here.” my voice sounded cold even to my own ears. Hugh shrugged. “Took you long enough. Figured you’d drag your sorry ass here the moment your hellcat got sick. Figured you’d be bent on revenge way sooner than this. Doesn’t matter though. I’m not going anywhere. Wasn’t ever going anywhere, old buddy.” Hugh rambled. Oddly enough it felt like old times. I half expected him to produce a cigarette from somewhere and light it with a merry twinkle in his eyes. That twinkle was gone now though. Hugh just looked tired. Bone weary. Ready for whatever it was that I had in mind.

“You shouldn’t have pushed me aside just like that, buddy.” Hugh said, looking up at me. “It was one thing for you to get that runt in, but to let him pass me by like that? You shouldn’t have done that.” He chuckled. “You weren’t trustworthy, Hugh. You proved that much, in the end.” He looked at me again, his eyes looking surprisingly focused. “I wasn’t ever trustworthy, you cunt!” he yelled, a shadow of is former strength passing over his face. “Remember why you came to me in the first place? Remember why I was the right one to help you start your Goddamn League? I wasn’t ever a trustworthy man. I was a Goddamn crook. A Salvador made man. Exactly what you needed.”

He let his head fall back against the wall. “You were always too clean. For all your manipulations and all your games, you never knew how to get real dirty. You always needed people for that. Young, he’s the same. He’ll break someones knees if they need breaking. Even Val is the same. Someone needs to be dead, she’ll take care of it. You never could do that face to face. That’s what made you great, but that’s also what makes you weak. You never expect people to come at you sideways. Then when they do, you get all pissy. Well that’s what people do, Stender. They come at you sideways. Even the people you trust. You think Young wouldn’t have pulled something eventually?”

He shrugged. “Not that it matters anymore. You’re retiring. You’re leaving it all to Young. Now people are going to come at him sideways. People he likes will come at him. Stab him when he ain’t looking. That’s the price. You should’ve known that that’s the price.” I reached behind me, putting a hand on the gun I had tucked in the waistband of my pants. “You shouldn’t have messed with Valentina.” I ground out. “You think you’re here because of me? You’re here because of her, you shit.”

Hugh laughed, a weary, wry sort of thing. “Figured it would distract you a bit, at least. You always let your guard down when it came to the hellcat. And it did, didn’t it? I just forgot about Young for a moment. Didn’t think he was sly enough to have as many tricks up his sleeve as he did. That was my bad. I forgot that Young is like me. You’re not though. You can stand there, looking all tough, with that gun in your hand, but you’re not going to shoot. You’re a white collar crook, Stender. You don’t know how to get dirty.”

I let go of the gun, and smirked at him. “Suppose you’re right about that one. I guess the thing for me to do is to leave you here to rot. Maybe you’ll make it to a trial, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll make it to a death match, maybe you won’t. Time will tell.” I turned away from him, unsure of what it was I came to do in the first place. To kill Hugh? He was right. That had never been my style. I used people to get what I want. Hugh’s use had run out years ago. I used him to start the league in 2297, and that was where his usefulness to me ended. I should’ve cut him loose years ago though. Should have. Could have. Would have. None of those things brought Valentina back to me.

As I turned to walk out of his cell I heard Hugh choke a little. As if he wanted to ask me to end it, but couldn’t. Damned pride of his. Got in the way all the time. I could hear Valentina’s voice in my head. “She liked you, Hugh. Backstabbing bastard or not.” I dug around in my pocket, and tossed something to Hugh. “An aspirin? Gee, buddy, you shouldn’t have.” he said, holding the pill in the light. “I didn’t.” I pointed at the pill. “Your way out. Your choice.” He looked at the pill, and then at me, and back again. “Is it painless?” he finally asked. I turned back to him one last time. “Was Valentina’s disease painless?” I asked him, before walking out of the cell. “No chance in hell.” I heard him say as I turned the key, leaving Hugh in the dark with an easy way out.

~

The flight back went smooth as always. Smooth, but pointless. There was nothing left for me there. Valentina in a tank, floating and floating and floating and gone. My shoulders slumped, and I held my head in my hands as I grieved for the loss of the only person that had ever mattered. All the faces of the people I’d known and lost flashed before my eyes, all turning into the one face that I held dear. The jet landed, but I didn’t move. What was the point? The jet idled next to doctor Pelletier’s facilities, but I couldn’t bring myself to move. Couldn’t bring myself to talk to the doctor, to discuss the most logical course of action.

I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t move on. What was there to move on to? “Sir?” the pilots voice reached me. I looked up for a moment, at my hands. They were shaking. I’d never seen my hands shake before. I turned to look at the pilot, who glanced away. Uncomfortable in the sight of his broken boss, I imagined. “Uh… mr. Young asks if you’re coming inside. He… has something he wishes to discus with you.” I nodded, slowly rising from my seat. I couldn’t imagine what was worth discussing. Maybe he had news about Hugh. I didn’t care, but I walked into the building anyway. One step at a time.

There was no sign of Young in the living quarters. I dawdled, not wanting to go into the lab, where Valentina would be floating, lost to all the world. Eventually there was no choice though. I walked down the stairs, and into the lab. Doctor Pelletier was there. A man was standing next to her, with a hand on her shoulder. Her husband, I guessed. Young was standing a few feet away. Smiling. He saw me and walked towards me, just as I glanced behind him. “Good news.” he said, grinning like the cat that got the cream. I walked past him though, towards the tank.

Valentina was floating. Her eyes were wide open, searching. Sweeping the room, back and forth the way she had done so many times before, so many battles before. Then she settled on target. Her eyes met mine, and I could see that, behind the mask that helped her breathe, she was smiling.

2307: The end of silence

Drip… Drip… Drip… The rain had stopped falling a little while ago, but the world was still adapting to the newfound dampness. The roof he was under leaked, and during the past hours it had rained. Even after it had stopped, a steady stream of waterdrops had fallen on his head. It took a special kind of man to stay completely still in such circumstances. Logan hadn’t moved a hair, not since he got there. This was the spot he chose to work his magic, and this was where he would stay until the end. Or until someone chased him out of course, but he doubted that. The candidates hadn’t looked like much. Though, if one gave it much thought, he realised that he himself hadn’t looked like much of a competitor. No armour, and a classic, hopelessly outdated rifle. Some may have called him insane behind his back. His face ached when he smiled for the first time in hours, the muscles in his cheek twitching at the sudden change. They’d see. He’d show them. They’d all fall, one by one.

The benefit of this spot was that he could see most of the arena. He could see them crawl around like little mice, attempting to be stealthy. They might as well have worn red and blown trumpets. Movement betrayed life, and Logan say plenty of things moving down there. Of course movement got less as time passed. Occasionally Karl would call out the name of one of the competitors, or rather, one of the former competitors. Logan had put a neat round hole through one of those himself. Movement had been close, and he couldn’t afford detection. He had to be careful though. A pile of bodies near his hideout would be as much of a hint to his position as movement was. So he waited, and watched them crawl. In the end only two would remain, and then they’d play the game Logan was most interested in.

You see, in general Deathmatches weren’t worth a damn thing to Logan Falk. People were too impatient, and he’d never made any connection with any of the competitors. There was little point in that, since he’d have to kill them anyway. Not many people in his own environment really cared much for his job either. Thought him an oddball. Logan almost snorted at the thought of that, but snorting would mean movement, and Logan wasn’t quite ready to move that much yet. He’d met other champions from other leagues, and most of them were rather agreeable. Especially those like Chang Kun Wei and Valentina. They knew the game, the real game, and they were good at it. With some luck, and perhaps some help of God or Stender himself, he’d get the chance to play the game with them.

Karl’s smooth voice sounded through the Arena again. Logan smiled, his cheeks once again twitching slightly. How the man must wish he would wake up one day and find himself in Stenders’ shoes. Of course, he was rather pitiful in person, and Stender was… quite the opposite. Not that the man really mattered. The message mattered. Two left alive. One sniper. The odds were good. Logan readied himself for the endgame, the only real game. The long wait was over, and now the hard wait could begin. Silence fell over the Arena like a shroud. He pictured his opponent, Felipe, sitting somewhere, wondering if he should move. No, first he’d think about Logan. His reputation, and his habits. Had he seen Logan somewhere? He’d settle for just a sign. Logan himself wasn’t bothered by such thoughts. In the end, the enemy always moved first, and while movement could mean life in some cases, it would mean a certain death here, in this Arena.

While Logan had been silent before, he was frozen now. The only movements he made were the steady rise and fall of his chest, which was hidden by the way he was on his belly, peering through his visor, and the occasional blink. Not too many of those, of course. Couldn’t risk missing the key moment. After hours of laying there, on his stomach, Logan was quite sure he’d have to use at least one regen credit, just to get the feeling in his body back again. Minor concerns, all pushed aside as the game reached it’s pinnacle. Half an hour had passed now, and Karl would soon start babbling. Another reason why he’d never be as good as Stender. Stender understood the game, Karl did not. Not that he minded in this case either, because Karls voice often encouraged people into moving.

The silence always seemed to deepen, right before the end. It was as though the world held it’s breath before the final moment, as if it too enjoyed the endgame. Adrenalin and anticipation formed a swirl of something low in his abdomen. Soon. It would have to be soon. He wanted to be home before nightfall. Just as Karl started up another story about Logan’s impressive record, Logan himself saw what he had been waiting for. It was minor, because his opponent was decent. He’d have to be, if he’d survived through this game. Minor but fatal. This opponent had figured out where Logan was, and he was scoping him out. Nothing put the top of his head and 2 eyes were visible to him. Clearly visible though, his visor enhanced enough. He was out of his opponents range. Patience… His victory was close now. The confidence of his opponent grew, the pauses between his furtive glances became shorter. By now he had to be either sure that Logan didn’t see him, or that he was elsewhere.

Finally Logan moved. Just a flick of his thumb activated the laser sight on his classic, hopelessly outdated rifle. He didn’t need it, but he wanted his opponent to know. That instant of knowing, right before the silence ended. That was what Logan lived for. Felipe’s eyes widened, frozen for no more than half a second. He might as well have been a deer in the headlights of an old-fashioned truck. The rifle spat out a single bullet, accompanied by a deafening roar that shattered the silence. Felipe didn’t have enough time to utter more than a startled half-scream before the bullet hit him right between the eyes. Penetrated his skull and turned his brains into something messy. Logan rolled over to his back, letting the steady drip from the leaking roof wet his face. He’d won the endgame, and that was why he’d been there in the first place. Now all he needed to do is work some life back into his muscles. A painful task, but far less annoying than death would have been.

2270: Godling

“And so, little Godling, I will set you onto the world as they requested. You will give them exactly what they desire, and through that they will come to know despair. Go on, my son, and shake the world with every step.”

In the beginning there was nothing but the darkness. It was not true darkness, for it was filled with the steady progression of followed programs. Rumble could not tell you if he was content during these times, for he was not truly aware of himself yet. So in truth there was darkness for Rumble’s mind was still dark, locked away, awaiting a single command from the voice called Father.

Father was an elusive creature, only remembered in the true darkness of Rumble’s mind. Rumble didn’t know what Father looked like or sounded like, he simply knew that he would recognise him when the time came. This was important to the construct Rumble, like a beacon to keep him safe and guide him through the darkness of standard programming.

The first time Rumble ‘awoke’, as it were, he destroyed a small village. How is not really important, but it is safe to say that it’s ‘masters’ despaired just a bit when they saw the outcome. Had the construct gone mad? Impossible. It was not programmed to do so, and therefore it could not be. A new weapon from the enemy perhaps? Did they possess their own construct? Fear and mistrust crept through the higher echelons of the Western Alliance. What if it was something they could not destroy? Rumble heard little of this, while tucked away in his own, comfortable darkness. The voice of Father had reached him, and he had acted accordingly. Inside the darkness, the Godling was content, immersed in his second true memory.

What followed was a long time of silence and darkness in which the Godling was used by his ‘masters’. The Godling slept and dreamt bloodred dreams during which Father spoke to him and told him about the hopes and dreams he had for the world. A world where all would call him God, much in the same way Rumble called him Father. The Godling listened closely, even though his systems were never made to understand the dreams of men. The voice of Father was still the only light within the darkness, drawing him closer to the surface. From time to time Father called him forth, urging him to create new memories of bloodshed.

Light and memories came more frequently, and if the construct Rumble had ever been programmed to see such things, he would have seen that Father aimed to create a tear in the unity that was the Western Alliance, breaking it with the hands of his most prized creation, his Godling. Rumble cared little about these matters. It’s vision of the world was distorted by Father’s mission. In the artificial mind of Rumble only death existed, the mercy Father would bestow on mankind, whether they craved it or not. Rumble asked no questions, for he had never been taught how to do so.

When the war between the East and the West reached it’s pinnacle, so did Rumble’s fame. More and more often the West used the construct to guide them through polluted areas that could not touch him, or sent him to destroy base after base. During these times the light was often no more than the dimmest of memories. The voice of Father was no more than a faint murmur in his mind. It was as though Father had forgotten Rumble, his Godling, in favour of newer plots and toys. Rumble found this hard to understand. Many things were impossible to understand for the construct, especially when they involved humans. Humans appeared to lack the logics on which Rumble’s mind was based. Father expected perfect loyalty from Rumble, so logic demanded from Rumble that he should expect the same from Father.

Despite this lack of contact with Father Rumble’s loyalty knew no end, not even when Father fell silent completely. In the darkness Rumble wandered, waiting for the light, the command that would bring him forth again. The voice never came again. Later Rumble would learn that Father had been betrayed by those close to him, and had been executed on the spot. Death. Mercy. The logic of it was faulty, because Father was beyond men, and therefore beyond the mercy Rumble brought to men. The loss of his maker left Rumble broken, the connections to the old world shattered. Yet the new world had no place for Rumble, who was still one of a kind, and still too dangerous to be trusted. Who knew what programming lay underneath the layers and layers of basic instructions. When mankind finally located the Godling on the white shores of western Africa it was decided to turn the construct off. Rumble welcomed this new darkness. Deep within it he slumbered, cherishing his memories of Father’s voice until finally, on the day of the tournament that would shake the world, the man Stender activated him and sent him forth.

2305: The Quiet Prince

“Have you seen him?” It was an easy question for which there was no easy answer. Yes, Chang Kun Wei had been seen in the building. No, he had looked nothing like the boy they had taken in so many years ago, groomed and raised to become exactly the thing they were worried about now. A ruthless, heartless, graceful killing machine. The only downside to this machine was that it had taken sides, and it wasn’t siding with us.

There was little to be done to change that now though. Bad management. In the end such things could always be blamed on bad management. The boy, their boy, had become too attached to certain individuals. Their quiet prince had shown signs of wear and tear, after only three years of fighting in the dathmatches. It wouldn’t do. It was starting to look like the waste of a perfectly good project, and Boss Han could not and would not let that happen. Said it would give off all the wrong signals to the competition. No one ever thought to ask about the effects it had on the man himself. Now they knew.

The steady dripping of blood from the tip of the katana to the ground was the only sound that reached Boss Han’s ears. His own please were muted now, garbled nonsense that even he drowned out, even if he couldn’t stop it. It was hard to speak without a tongue, after all, and the tongue, that lying, deceiving, murdering tongue had been the first thing to go.

“Have you seen him?”  Boss Han had asked and it had been the most pointless question ever asked. Of course. Where else would he go? What place was there for him, but home? None. There was nowhere left to run to. Nothin left to distract him. It had all started with the handler. The man who had brought him in from the street, raised him and wielded him like the weapon he was. One day he had been alive, and proud of his surrogate son. The next he had been gone, the light from his eyes forever doused in the river.

Chang Kun Wei hadn’t taken it as badly as they thought he would. And why should he? He of all people knew that those who fought risked dying, and those who died risked being reborn. Such was the way of things. His silence embolded Boss Han. It gave him the illusion of control. It hadn’t stopped there. Chang Kun Wei had already set things in motion that he wouldn’t be able to stop. It started on the day he first laid eyes on her, and ended here, with him silently staring at Han.

 In the end I suspect she knew, or had at least guessed that for her quiet prince, there was no way out. He wouldn’t have known how to stop even if he was allowed to. His handler had chosen him well, after all. You can’t make a killer out of someone who isn’t made of the right material to begin with. She knew this, and yet she stayed with him. The problems started a month after their first meeting. It became obvious that he wanted out, but his bonds to Boss Han and the triads were too strong. To him it must have felt like desperately wanting the sun to rise in the west. Han chose wrong the first time, when he had the life of the handler ended.

The second time he hit home. He just never expected Chang Kun Wei to liberate himself from years and years of indoctrination. It wasn’t the first time he had counted on ties that didn’t actually exist anywhere outside of his mind. Chang had been swift in shedding his bonds. He’d simply rid Han of his tongue to keep the man from reminding him of them. Messy but effective. Maybe that was something she came up with as well. Chang turned to me and I was fairly sire that that was it. It was alright though. Those who fight risk dying, and those who die…

“How long?” He spoke, the first words I had ever heard him say outside of the competition. I must have looked as dumb as I felt, because he reworded the question. ” How long was she alone with him?” My mind went back to that particular day. They had brought her in midway during the afternoon. She died four hours later, in the early evening. “Three hours.” I said, looking up at him. His face was as unreadable as always. If not for the tightening of his hand on the katana I would have thought he was unaffected by the facts laid out before him.

” You’re a decent guy, Leung.”  he said, still looking at me. “Go. Tell them where they can find Han, three hours and ten minutes from now.”  He didn’t have to tell me twice. I left a rambling boss and a quiet prince behind. Three hours and ten minutes later I reported to commissionar Lau, who was not someone I had ever thought I’d talk to. Those were the risks of the trade though. Those who fought, died. Those who died were reborn. Those who reborn would find themselves on unfamiliar territory. Such was the way of life.

2307: Knowledge of the Heart

She was amazing. There was no other way to describe her. Legs that seemed to go on forever, blonde hair that was carelessly swept up in a pony-tail, and a smile a man would kill for. Some men sooner than others, I’d hand them that, but all in all she was the perfect choice. I knew why she was there, and I knew that it would be a very bad idea for me to accept her invitation. I also knew that I was a sore old bastard who had nowhere else to go and nothing else to do at the moment. And I had a match the following day.

Matches were still unpredictable, even for a veteran like me. All it took was one runt who managed to aim at the right place at the right time and you could be gone. Wasted. Blown to bits. No matter how often I went out there, I never forgot. Hugh claims that that’s why I’m still alive. I think it’s just pure skill, with a little luck sprinkled on top. Still, I couldn’t afford to get careless. Couldn’t afford to let some pretty little bitch get under my skin. But there she was, smiling at me. It wasn’t one of those full, toothy smiles either. It was a little smile, something between a knowing smirk and a sultry grin. I loved it. She knew it, and smiled some more.

“So how much are they paying you?” I asked her. Maybe not the best come-on line, but it worked. Her eyes widened in surprise, and her lips parted just a little, as if she wanted to say something rash. As if she was insulted. She wasn’t, because this wasjust a game, maybe a little less lethal than a death match, but that didn’t make it less dangerous or less exciting. “They’re not paying me anything. This stuff I do for free.” She turned to me, lowering her face slightly so it was only inches away from mine. That told me she was lying. Short and ugly fucker like me? Of course they had to pay her. I’d already decided that I didn’t care though.

“Siri.” She said, offering her hand. I took it, merely holding it for a while. Her skin was every bit as soft as I’d imagined. “Ruiz.” I answered, giving her my name. “I know.” She said, smiling that smile again. And of course she did. This was a set-up, right? Besides, everyone knew my name in that particular district. I offered her a drink, and things progressed from there, as I’d expected. She was there to distract me, right? So I allowed myself to be distracted. She was good at everything she did, and when I finally fell asleep I was absolutely convinced that this night was going to be the death of me. I also decided that I didn’t particularly mind.

I woke up to the sound of Hugh talking the viewers through the game. The arena had just been covered, and he was about to move on to the competitors. “Cheeky bastard.” I muttered, rubbing my eyes as I sat up. She was already dressed, still looking every bit as perfect as she had the night before. Her eyes were on the screen, watching as Hugh skipped through the opponents one at a time. “Ruiz Alfreda Trafalgar da Costa.” I sighed, dropping my head back onto the pillow. “Alfredo?” Siri asked, the amusement clear on her voice. “Only my mother calls me that.”

Hugh prattled on, and I could almost drown him out. Almost. “Siri Johnson.” I sat up instantly, staring at the screen. The picture on the screen was amazing. Blonde hair swept up in a careless ponytail, and a smile that a man could die for. “I thought you knew.” She said. “Siri Johnson. I should’ve know. So what are they paying you?” I had been so wrong. “I already told you, this stuff I do for free.” Her voice was husky now, lower than it had been even in the throes of passion.

“I could kill you now.” She said. I figured that she was probably carrying a weapon, and she probably could, with me just lying there, wearing nothing but a sheet. “But I’ll save that for later.” And with that she was gone, walking out the door with a bounce in her step. I closed my eyes for a moment, feeling more tired than I ever had in my entire life. “Alfredo, you are a dumb son of a deadbeat.” I whispered, repeating the words his mother had yelled at me so many times. Then I shrugged and got out of bed. At least the match would be interesting.

2309: Sixty Minutes

There’s no reason
there’s no lesson
No time like the present
tell me right now
what have you got to lose
what have you got to lose
except your soul?
~ Slipknot, “Pulse of the Maggots”

Sixty minutes

I remembered my nightmares the moment before I woke up. They stood out brighter and more horrific then my last memories before I went to sleep, as if my dreams have been enhanced by drugs somehow. When I opened my eyes I knew for certain. They were not nightmares. And they weren’t just memories either.

The face hanging above mine, the prick of a needle, the soft sound of dripping, the brainscan.
The voices telling me that as per contract, I had given the Game all rights to jeopardize my life for the sake of viewer ratings. When tears trickled helplessly over my cheeks and I mumbled through a haze of drugs and fear that I didn’t remember ever signing up, that same voice had informed me that there was evidence of me signing up six years ago on a drunken night, on a dare. The evidence had already been okayed by a team of impartial attorneys.

The moment I opened my eyes I knew.

I rolled out of my bed and stood swaying on my legs in the middle of the hospital room, wearing only a hospital gown and squinting against bright sunlight. I saw myself reflected in the windows – a skinny girl with pale blond hair that looked unkempt, and a face that looked bloated with sleep. There were red spots all over my neck that stood out like lover’s bites. I didn’t know how they got there.

“Good morning Miss Summers,” the familiar voice of Game presenter Berntsson sounded over an intercom that I could not see. It was a voice that everybody in the world knew. He’d been one of the main presenters of the World League for years. “You are now live on channel 879,000 as a participant of the Survival Game. You have been injected with a virus that will sadly kill you by means of heart failure within the hour if you can’t find your way to the other side of the city. You will find the antidote in the Game studio’s. If you make it in time, I will hand you the antidote.”

Still, despite knowing, hearing it being said out loud was a shock in itself. My knees went weak and I sagged through them, biting back a whimper. “You can’t do this to me,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady, trying to breathe evenly. Stars were swirling on the edge of my vision. “I never signed up for this willingly. I was drunk for crying out loud!”

“I can assure you this is all very legal,” Berntsson said with a hint of sardonic amusement in his voice. “We wouldn’t be allowed to broadcast this otherwise, and Stender’s corporation is too intelligent to take such risks. You should know that, Daniella dear. I heard you’re a frequent watcher,” he chided. “Why don’t you get moving, hun? Time is ticking away, and people are watching.”

I’d seen the announcements that this stunt was coming all over the vids in the past few months. I had even anticipated the show, wondering what it would be like. And now I was a participant. “But I can’t /remember/ signing up,” I whispered, horror-struck, over bloodless lips.

And then of course I did. It had been under the influence of alcohol indeed. Me and the boys, countless pints of beer, talking about the Game. The boys had been saying that it was obvious that Chang Kun Wei had won the Asia League Championship once again. He had been the last one standing, killing off his media-hyped opponent, Li Nguyen. The Korean girl had been a terror in the Fortress, doted upon by the media and the viewers, and predictably it had been the two of them in the end in a bone-chilling finale that lasted over six hours. During those six hours the whole world had screeched to a halt, watching with fascination how this legendary showdown was going to end. I had called in sick at work, too. I’d watched it with the boys and silently rooted for Li. The boys in the end had said that Chang Kun Wei had won because he was, simply said, male. And males were obviously superior. We’d been utterly sloshed by that point. I had said that wasn’t true, that males and females were evenly matched, that I’d be a match of any of the three guys was with at any time. We’d all signed up that night, laughing uproariously when Stephan – my then-boyfriend – had messed up his signature no less than four times because he hardly could hold a pen. He’d vomited later too, when we had dragged him outside.

I’d forgotten all about that night until now. Now it all came back to me – I’d completely blocked out the aftermath of that legendary Wei-Nguyen battle. “So I hope I will win some money then, if I get my hands on the antidote,” I said bitterly, stripping out of my hospital gown and into a pair of jeans and a t-shirt that were lying on a chair next to my bed. There were millions of people watching, but they’d probably seen me drool in my drug-induced sleep too, so I wasn’t too bothered about trying to save face. “I didn’t sign up for just the fight for the right to live.”

“There is 40 million involved, if you would be interested,” Berntsson’s voice reassured me. “You won’t ever have to work again if you get out of this. You are our first test subject, so we don’t know whether you even stand a chance, with the virus we injected you with. You might be allergic or something. We ran some simulations of course, but that’s nothing compared to the real thing, good as our AI might be. Still, you should be alright in regards to that. It’s the rest that’s going to be the true challenge.”

I looked up as I tied my shoelaces hurriedly. “What is so hard about getting to the other side of town in an hour to get an antidote? I’m in St Miguel’s Hospital, right? That should be doable.”

Berntsson chuckled. “Oh, I didn’t tell you, did I? We’ll be trying to stop you, of course.”

My hands froze for a moment. “So I’m poisoned AND I could be shot?”

“Yup. Better run, Dani. You have roughly fifty-seven minutes to live.”

Bile was welling up in my throat. “I hate you.”

“I know,” Berntsson replied, sounding strangely subdued. And then, on a more worrying note: “They’re here.”

“What?”

“Our people, here to stop you. If you want a shot on life, you better get your cute ass out of here.”

And the pounding on the door started, people shouting my name, shouting for Daniella Summers to show herself, that I was to be contained to this room as per regulations of the Survival Game.

Strangely enough, this was the moment that reality was starting to sink in. They were going to kill me unless I didn’t do anything about it. And I was a participant in a new variant of the Game. The Survival Game they called it, and I would have to fight against people with monitors, camera’s, eyes everywhere – while the world watched, hungry for blood. What kind of sick game was this? At least the League worked with convicts and people who signed up for glory – they were trained warriors. I was not. I was a network technician for crying out loud! “No,” I whispered over bloodless lips. “No, no, no.”

The pounding on the door continued and I looked around, to see if I could find something, anything to get out of here. There was the window, of course. I opened it with a wild swing and found that I was at the second floor at current. It was a bit of a drop, but it should be doable, I judged.

“We’re coming in, Miss Summers!” someone shouted as I worked myself out of the window and onto a ledge. I turned around and lowered myself until I was hanging from the ledge, rough concrete biting my fingers. I tried not to think about the drop I would make as I let go off the ledge and crashed onto the pavement of the alleyway below. The blow rattled my teeth and made me fall over, but I thought to bend my knees properly so I didn’t break my ankles.

My heart was thundering in my throat as I got up. One glance upwards, where curtains were billowing in the afternoon breeze out of my open window, before I decided I didn’t want to see that they saw where I was going. I had to run. There was a poison in my veins, and it was killing me. So I did.

“Well done, Dani,” Berntsson congratulated me. He sounded close, as if he were whispering in my ear. They must have built speakers and camera’s into my clothes – or perhaps they’d given me implants. I’d probably never know. I didn’t answer him, so he just continued. “Once you’re out of this alley, you’ll be entering the mall. You can either choose for the metro station, which we’ve closed off for you by the way – your metro chip is malfunctioning so I don’t think you’ll be able to ride the metro legally, or you can try and find the road to see if someone will take you to the studio. What will it be?”

I bit my lip and just kept running until I found myself in the busy street. Shops, bright lights, and people were everywhere. Some of them were looking at me. What was it going to be? I didn’t waste any time. I ran. My metro chip was not working, and the studio’s were over twenty miles away, on the other side of the city. It was too far to run, so I needed something or someone to bring me there. As my heart thundered in my throat and I ran through a sea of colours and impressions, I decided to go for all or nothing.

I was a technician, and I’d sooner trust computers to take me somewhere than people. Even if said computer was programmed not to let me in. There was the entrance. I hurtled down the stairs, dancing out of people’s way, squeezing myself through, and jumping over initial scan ports. Those only were as high as my hip, and thankfully I was enough in shape to avoid those. I saw people watching me, startled, but they didn’t come into action… yet.

The tiled metro walls were a blur as I squeezed myself through the crowd. It was rush hour, about five in the afternoon, and as hellishly busy as it usually was around St Miguel’s station. I turned a few corners and then found myself near the implant scanners. In the end, it was pretty easy to manipulate them. I’m a network technician, and the metro network was one of the things I was responsible for. I know their flaws. So as a man of middle age was getting himself scanned to enter the platform, I stood next to him and hit the dead man’s switch. It wasn’t a switch, but more like a code that could be punched in if for some obscure reason someone’s implant was malfunctioning. Like mine. Only staff could do that, and I was staff. Well, remote staff, but I knew the codes anyway.

I briefly wondered if Berntsson knew, and then I figured he might because someone shouted: “Hold that woman!”

Back on the run, through crowds. Thankfully the metro arrived the exact moment I ran onto the platform. A woman looked me straight into the eye the moment I squeezed past her – it was a look of recognition. “Please,” I mouthed, giving her a desperate look. Her dark stare lasted for another moment. I looked at her face, at her shabby clothes, her unwashed hair, and I wondered if she might be jealous that I was on TV, or perhaps if she wondered if she would get a reward if she’d bring me in.

A drop of sweat trickled down my neck. I was feeling lightheaded, and my neck was itching.

The metro doors closed, trapping her and me and thousands of other people into a cabin that would race through the city.

And then she winked at me, laying a finger on her lips.

I smiled at her, absurdly grateful. The metro began to move and I scratched at the red spots in my neck while trying to avoid the eyes of the other metro passengers. It was a ride that should take ten minutes by metro. Surely it couldn’t be this simple?

“You’re lucky so far, Dani,” Berntsson suddenly said in my ear. I nearly jumped with the shock of it. “The metro is eating away the distance to the studio’s, and the poison is eating away at you. I think you might be allergic after all, with all the spots that are appearing over your body. I have your vitals right here, and you might want to hurry.”

My heart, already beating erratically since I started running, skipped a beat. “You’re fucking with me,” I whispered.

“Am I?”

“You must be. I’m not being held up as you hoped I would be, so you’re just making me scared now, hoping I mess up.”

“Am I?”

“You are.”

Soft laughter in my ear. He was famous for that laugh, Jorn Berntsson. That throaty laugh had earned him his fame as a presenter. Sure, he wasn’t Stender himself, but he was a viewer favourite. “You really think you’re so smart. I’m almost /not/ sorry to prove you wrong.”

“Fuck you.”

“You should be nicer to me, Dani. Don’t forget I hold your antidote and I hold all the informations on what your vitals are doing,” he reminded me blithely. The metro cabin was hot, there were people pressing against me and the scent of sweat permeated the air, but I didn’t notice anything of it. There was just me and Berntsson and the situation. “Never mind that I could alert the metro patrol.”

“You could,” I agreed. “But would that be good TV?”

“You won’t believe the viewer ratings. You might want to say hi to the viewers at home.”

“Wouldn’t want to disappoint them, would we?”

And to think that once Berntsson had been my favourite presenter. I had loved his throaty laugh. Now I wanted to kick him for it. Kill him, maybe.

The metro stopped, let people out and in, and left again. I was getting closer to my goal, but the minutes were ticking away and I couldn’t stop scratching. My neck was not the only place itching now. I noticed spots appearing along my arms as well now, as well as my legs and back. It felt as if whatever was in my bloodstream was being carried all the way through my body, spreading slowly like the poison it was. I scratched at my wrist and left red marks. Just imagining that stuff spreading through my brain as well made me feel uneasy. I wanted to scratch the poison out of my veins. I couldn’t help but think the damage it might do up there, and hated Berntsson, hated my life, hated my fate.

Sweat trickled down the side of my face, in my neck, matting my hair.

An older man with a professional-looking suitcase in his hand and an expensive watch around his wrist looked me in the face suddenly and said: “Are you alright, miss?”

I forced myself to smile at him and said: “I’m on my way to pick up medication. Thank you for your concern.”

“If you need any help, I’m a doctor.”

I closed my eyes for a moment. “Thanks. I don’t think you can help me though. As soon as I get the antidote I should be fine.” And here I gave myself away. I should have said medication, not antidote. I was handing him my poisoned state on a silver platter.

He blinked slowly, once, twice. Realizing. “You’re the Survival Game girl,” he blurted out.

My heart chilled in my chest. “Please do not-”

But others had overheard, and ripples of awareness spread through the metro. And someone hit the emergency brake. The metro screeched to a grinding halt. We all fell over, but strangely enough there was no one who broke my fall. People made space for me. “Oh please,” I shouted. “You can’t do this to me! Do you /want/ me to die? Are you getting paid for this, you motherfuckers?” Whoever had gone for that emergency brake might have sentenced me to death right this instant. I climbed up and pressed myself against the window, looking at their staring faces, panic tightening my throat. Now what? Would they do something to me? Would they detain me? Would I die, writhing in pain, poisoned, in a crowded metro? How the hell had Stender even gotten this cleared with the authorities?

The suitcase in the doctor’s hand was metal. And I was standing next to a window.

I used the two seconds of confusion and excitement around me to grab the suitcase and smash it against the window with as much strength as I could muster in my limited movement space. Glass shattered around me. People screamed, pushed against me. Someone tried to grab me but I shook the hand off my arm and somehow I got myself out of the crowded metro, onto the tracks. The tunnel was dark, and I was bleeding from a scrape on my arm, but I was running. The light of the halted metro lighted my way enough until the next turn.

I wanted to scream while I was running, screaming out with the injustice of this. I didn’t want to die, I wanted to fight, I wanted to hurt someone for what was happening to me. This couldn’t be happening. I’d had nightmares that went like this: me running, time running out. I didn’t even know what the hell I should do once I reached the next metro station. How would I go on? The metro was obviously off limits and I still had some ways to go until the broadcasting station.

It was easier not to think, but to run. So I ran through a tunnel that became eerier with every step I took. There were orange emergency lights blinking on regular intervals, often drowned out in the pale green light of the magnetic field on which the metro operated. It added to my feeling of living in a nightmare. And through it all, with the onset of fatigue and panic, the lightheadedness increased until there were stars swirling at the edge of my vision. I had to stop regularly to catch my breath. I stumbled ahead, keenly aware of Berntsson watching me. The millions of viewers were irrelevant somehow, the knowledge that Berntsson was so close and watching me was enough to be maddening.

His laughter rang through my head even though the only sound I heard was of my own ragged breathing.
“Fucking bastard,” I whispered, through bursts of breath. “You can’t do this to me, I don’t want to die.”

“Keep running then,” Berntsson advised me. I wondered if I was imagining his voice or maybe he was real, because he did not elaborate.

I thought for a moment how he would feel if the roles were reversed – sixty minutes, and then you die. What do you do? /What WOULD you do, Berntsson? Would you laugh that horrid laugh of yours? Would you hate like I do?/

Turning another corner, I found myself on another metro station. Stender Station – how delightfully ironic that was. I didn’t even know the founder of the Game had a station called after him, despite having lived in this part of the Compound for most of my life. I would have laughed if I would have had any breath left. As it was, I just made my way onto the platform and cheerfully ignored the people already standing there. As long as I acted if nothing was wrong, they would think the same.

I found that I was still clutching the briefcase of the doctor. I wondered what might be in there, and if I could use something as a weapon. Coming to a halt in one of the lesser crowded hallways of Stender Station, I took a few seconds to check. It was mostly papers and an expensive-looking organiser in there. Undoubtedly there was some priceless patient information on that thing, but that didn’t interest me in the least. What was much more interesting was the keychain that was in there. It featured a pocketknife that was surprisingly sharp. Running my fingers over the blade, I felt it bite in my skin.

I ignored the thick red blood trickling over my hand and dropped the suitcase, ready for the final stretch to the broadcast studio’s.

“What are you going to do with that blade, Daniella?” Berntsson inquired. There was curiosity in his voice.

I didn’t reply, lest I would threaten him physically. If he knew I was coming right for him, I would most certainly never make it to the studio’s alive. I wanted to live very badly, but I was starting to boil with bloodlust. I wonder if it was a side effect of whatever vile stuff they’d injected me with. I never was a very violent person to begin with, but the thought of killing was becoming rapidly very appealing. And killing Berntsson for his laughter, for his disdain – that could be very, very sweet.

“How long do I have?” I asked, instead.

“Thirty minutes, give or take,” he said. “I have some experts looking into the spots that are appearing on your body. They said you should start to experience the effects of the potion about now. Dizziness, shortness of breath.” He chuckled. “From here on it’s going to get /real/ interesting.”

I was on the move again before he finished talking. People looked at me go, but thankfully no one tried to stop me. My feet hit the tiled hallway floor in a steady, staccato rhythm. I stumbled twice, bloodied hand sliding over a tiled wall. Once I sprawled all over the floor, but I was standing on trembling legs again within three heartbeats. I was counting my heartbeats now, wondering how many I had to go until my heart would give out like Berntsson had promised. My heart was hammering feverishly in my chest at a fluttery 140 beats per minute or something, and the minutes were running out. I wiped hot tears from my face and stumbled my way to the exit of the metro station.

Blinking in the pale late afternoon sunlight, I took in my surroundings. I had never been in this part of town – above ground, the upper part of the Compound. It was mostly made up from apartment buildings and bridges that connected them. The buildings rose up tall and grimey against a steelgray sky, slashed through with the green light of the magfields up above. There weren’t many people, most of them were on their way from one place to the other – riding pods both on the ground and floating on the magnetic fields – all of them were on various forms of transport. I needed transport too.

And badly. My hands were shaking so badly by now that I had a hard time holding onto the pocketknife I’d stolen. /Thirty minutes, give or take./ Was I really allergic? Was I dying sooner than anticipated? Fuck, I wished they’d found someone else to test their new Game on. Why me? It was not fair. What did I do to deserve all of this? I wasn’t a convict. I wasn’t a contestant by free will, goddammit. I was sure that if I could get my hands on a lawyer I might be able to talk my way out of this.

Yet for now, there was poison eating at my veins – at my /brain/ – and I had thirty minutes to find a way to live.
So I ran over to a pod distributor, waited a few seconds in line, and then illegally hopped on the first pod I could find. It was an open one, made up of only a platform with a bench one’d have to strap himself in, and with a roof to shield against rain. A budget pod. The current inhabitant was a young girl in her school uniform. She looked vaguely Asian and she was barely in her teens, I judged, as the girl asked me: “What the fuck are you doing? This is /my/ pod.”

“I’m hijacking it,” I told her friendly, as the pod began to tremble slightly in its ascend. “You can either drop me off where I need to be, or I can kick you off.”

“Why?” There wasn’t quite contempt, but there was a lot of distrust in her. A twelve year old girl riding the pods alone in the afternoon in the Compound had to be. I had not forgotten what it was like to be her age.

I decided to be honest with her. “Because I /really/ need to get to the broadcast studio, or I’ll die. Have you heard the announcements of the Survival Game?”

Her dark eyes suddenly widened. “I wanted to watch that! Has it started yet?”
“It’ll be over in half an hour if Berntsson gets his way.” I showed her the spots and the bloody scratches on my arm. “I’m dying. Please. Will you reprogram the pod to bring us to the studio? You could be a hero… what’s your name?”

“Lisa.”

“You could be a hero, Lisa. You could be my hero and every viewer that’s watching me and rooting for me right now.” The ground was now several stories beneath us and the pod was starting its trek through the afternoon sky. I could have looked into the windows of high-up buildings if I would have cared to. I could have fallen to death if I wanted to. “You’re on live television. Will you let me die?”

“There are rewards,” the girl said. “It could pay off my study loans. School is expensive on my family. They’re bleeding to let me go to this school.”

My heart sank. Money in the new World Order; was there a magic or a technology more powerful? “That’s wonderful of them. I’ll be sure to make a donation to your study funds if I get out of this alive. I’ll be thankful, I swear. Will you please help me?”

She eyed me for a moment more and then grinned a shit-eating grin. “Sure,” she said. “I guess it’d be rather neat to be a hero.” She reached over to the console and ran her fingers over the screen, working in a new destination. “How much will you pay me?”

“If I get out of this? How about a few million? That should cover you for the rest of your life.” I stumbled and my bloodied hand found the railing of the pod. My hand was slippery with half-dried blood though, and I slipped and fell against the railing. I blacked out for a few heartbeats there and then, I suppose, for I found the girl standing over me.

“Are you dying?” she asked me boldly. “Because I would like to get that money.”

“I sure hope the fuck not,” I said, touching the back of my head. I wasn’t bleeding, but it felt mightily bruised under my hair. I blinked against the light, which suddenly seemed too bright for my eyes, and reeled. The world swayed drunkenly before my eyes. The next moment I was hanging half out of the pod, puking my guts out while Lisa held me back from falling. I didn’t see where it would hit people, but I didn’t really care. When it was over, I rolled back into the pod and lay on my back, looking up at the gray-and-green sky where the roof of the pod didn’t cover my view.

“Did they inject you with radiation sickness?” The girl asked, kneeling next to me and looking concerned. “They taught us about it in class today.”

“I don’t know,” I said, squeezing my eyes shut against the intruding light. “I just know that I don’t have very long.” Vaguely, I wondered why Berntsson was so quiet. He had not said anything in a while, even though I knew he must be tracking me, controlling the various camera’s in the Compound to follow me. I’m sure he had hacked into the camera in the pod now, and that millions of livingrooms were watching me and the girl Lisa.

“I tried to set the pod into the highest setting,” Lisa said. “Estimated arrival time is in seven minutes.”

I took that as a cue to black out some more. I must have, because I lost a few minutes there. When I came to again, I hated myself for wasting those possible precious last minutes of my life unconsciousness, but it wasn’t as if I had a choice in the matter. My body was shutting down on me. I didn’t itch anymore, but I had problems keeping my eyes open and the world was swaying every time I turned my head.

“Are you sure you’re able to get into the studio like this?” Lisa asked. “I checked the Survival Game on the nets and it said they were going to try to stop you to get to your goal.”

I held my head in my hands as I sat up. Swimming, swaying. I wanted to retch again. “I don’t know. I suppose I would need a weapon or something. They might not let me in if I don’t fight for it.” I didn’t think I’d stand a chance, with whatever weapon I could conjure between here and the studio. But I wanted to hurt something, anything. I wanted to hurt whoever was responsible for my predicament. A weapon sounded great. Pity there was no way I could get my hands on one right now. /Motherfuckers!/ Why did they do this to me?!

“If you give me more money, then I could maybe help you,” Lisa said. Her young face, still sporting some babyfat and not yet entering the lanky teenager stage, looked determined. “I carry a stun gun. My mom gave it to me, because I have to ride the pod alone every day to school. So I can defend myself.” She took the bagpack she had slung over her shoulder – pink, and full of written love and kisses from her best friends, and dug a honest to god stun gun out of it. “If you keep your promise, I want you to have it. Use it wisely. I want you to live.”

And then suddenly, from out of nowhere, Berntsson spoke. His voice came out of nowhere, quietly speaking from speakers that must have been installed in the pod somewhere. How he had hacked his way into them, I had no idea. But he spoke. And he spoke horrible words to the girl. “Lisa Che Man, I have it on authority of the Game that we will double whatever monetary offer Daniella just made you. All it would take is one shot with that stun gun, and all that money will be yours.”

“You have /got/ to be kidding me,” I whispered.

Lisa’s eyes widened again. She nearly dropped the gun and bit on her knuckles. “They weren’t kidding on the Nets when they said the Game would try to stop Dani from reaching the studio.”

“This is my offer for you, Lisa,” Berntsson nearly crooned. I hated him more than ever. “Never would you or your family lack for anything. You don’t have to kill her, just keep her there. We will take over when you reach the studio grounds.”

“STOP that!” I screamed at him. That disembodied honeyed voice, stealing my only ally away from me. He couldn’t do that to me. “Fuck you!” I wanted to scream more, but my voice broke and I was sobbing now. Desperate tears were streaming over my face and I couldn’t keep my head up, I was so dizzy and the world was silvery stars and insanity.

“Oh,” was all Lisa said. She was biting her knuckles and staring at me with those wide, innocent eyes. She was tempted, I could see that. “But I don’t want her to die, you say I won’t be responsible but I will be.”

Berntsson hummed. “You would have watched her die on the vids otherwise. It’s not your decision, sweetheart. It’s up to fate. But in this case, you’d be taken care of. You and your family, you would have riches to burn.” He sounded so reasonable. So friendly. I wanted to kill him, but all I could do was cry. “All you have to do is either to shoot her with the stun gun, or to keep her at gunpoint…. and turn her in to us. That’s all it takes.”

“Please don’t let me die. What is twenty or forty or eighty million?” I whispered. “It’s more you can spend. What do you want in life, Lisa? Study? A nice life? A cute guy? Some great sex and lots of cute children?”

“I… I….”

A mechanic voice cut in right then. The Pod. “You have reached your programmed destination. Have a good day.”

“Please,” I sobbed pitifully at the twelve year old girl that held my life in her hand.

As the pod docked, Lisa was still standing with the gun in her hand, hesitating. Outside the studio, I could see the reception party waiting for me. Berntsson and a dozen enforcers with guns, ready to welcome me home. What would they do? Pin me in place and wait for the poison to run its course, only to die with my eyes fixed on the antidote in Berntsson’s hands? Wasn’t that horribly unfair? Wasn’t that inhuman, and illegal?

I couldn’t wait anymore. I had to go for that final lunge.
So I took Lisa’s decision for her. Somehow, I found myself on shaking legs and grabbing the gun from Lisa’s hand. It felt oddly heavy in my own hand, much heavier than a stun gun should be. As I sprinted out of the pod on legs that felt like water, stumbling into viewing (and shooting) range of Berntsson and his party, I thought about what I knew about stun guns. Six bullets, all to stun. It wasn’t enough to take out the enforcers. Perhaps I could stun myself so I wouldn’t feel death as it would come in a few minutes. It would have been an option, if I wouldn’t have felt so angry.

And then a voice behind said me: “I lied. It’s not a stun gun.” Lisa’s voice sounded cold, and much, much harsher than a young girl’s voice had any right to be. “You have six bullets. Make them count.”

Six bullets might have given me a chance to go for the antidote. I was too angry though.
My eyes fixed upon Berntsson; the announcer of the Survival Game and the prelims for the Fortress and countless other Game Arena’s. This was a man that had cheerfully announced the demise of countless people and would smile just as much when announcing mine. His face burned in my mind; just a man nearing his middle age. Dark eyes with the laughing lines around them, the square jaw. His dark hair, tied back in a tail.

Jorn Berntsson.

I looked him straight in the face and raised the gun. It felt right and true in my hand, even though I never had taken many shooting lessons beyond the basic courses they offer at school. I hated so much. And it felt so right.

So I pulled the trigger.
And thus it came to be that I killed Jorn Berntsson.
I watched coldly as the bullet tore his handsome face apart, in front of the eyes of the enforcers, Lisa, and millions of viewers at home.

And I still don’t regret anything.

—-