“Hey!” Kira made her voice firm and loud, but not a scream. She held her gun in a two-handed grip, legs apart, slightly bent. Too far away to be rushed, too close to miss. Chloe on the floor and out of the line of fire. The hallway beyond Niles: empty. She could shoot him without endangering anyone else.
Kira kept her sights on the center of his chest. Niles held his right arm tense and ready, but he didn’t move. He wasn’t that reckless.
He looked Kira up and down, and then produced a derisive snort. “Don’t act like you’ve got the balls to use that thing. Everybody knows you don’t.”
Kira shifted to a low, flat, cold tone. Almost as cold as the space inside her chest. “Niles, you’re armed, you’ve assaulted my roommate, and you’ve broken into my apartment. I find you threatening.” Kira brought her finger inside the guard and let the pad rest on the trigger. The hallway behind Niles remained clear, and Chloe made no move to get off the floor.
For a split second, something flashed across Niles’s face. Anger? Contempt? Maybe the realization of how bad his situation was. “OK. Misunderstanding.” Very slowly, and with exaggerated caution, Niles raised his hands. “That’s all this is. Just a big misunderstanding.”
Kira said nothing, and her gun remained steady.
Slowly and carefully, Niles backed out the door, his eyes fixed on Kira. When he was halfway down the hall, he turned and ran.
Chloe pushed herself upright and rubbed her jaw. “Jesus, Kira. You could have killed him.”
Kira lowered her weapon, reset the safety, and holstered it. She wasn’t even breathing hard. “Yeah, I could have.” She stared down the hallway. “He knew it, too.”
Chapter 9
Tension pinches at the back of Kira’s neck. What the hell is taking Niles so long? Has he taken the door? Or is he just delaying to ensure he makes the final entrance? Kira relieves the stiffness by rolling her head.
On the ceiling and walls, cameras scuttle like bugs. Their motion is a dance negotiated between the AI seeking information to assist the judge and a human producer trying to wring as much drama from the proceedings as possible. To the producer, that little moment between her and Diana must have been a godsend, an emotional oasis in the desert of prematch proceedings. The commentator’s booth and match’s media feed are probably abuzz with speculation on the hand signal’s meaning and Kira’s emotional state.
The door to the opposite-side changing room bursts open, and Niles bounds onto the field wearing the royal blue and silver of United Reinsurance. He jogs to his place beside Kira like a star basketball player trotting onto the court for introductions, his second trailing behind like a towel carrier. After giving the judge a cursory nod, Niles puts on his what-a-good-boy-am-I smile and tilts his head to face the cameras.
Jackass. If the rules allowed his ridiculous porkpie hat on the dueling field, he’d probably be waving it.
He turns to Kira and flashes a hand sign. I’m OK.
Kira’s breath catches. The bastard broke Diana’s code, and now he’s sticking his vulgar, leering, bro-douche self into the space between her and her second. Niles sees the look on her face, and he smirks.
The judge sounds a chime and recites the rules of engagement. Niles resumes his preening for the cameras.
Kira reviews her plan to kill him.
Chapter 10
Chloe exited Simulator Thirty-Seven, her face stoic. For the hundredth and final match of her qualification series, her mech managed a 62-point shot to her lower chest, while she’d administered only a 27-point shoulder graze in return. The loss hurt in the battle for class rank, but Chloe’s sixtieth Qualification Week victory on Thursday had already ensured her future as a TKC gunfighter.
Kira greeted her at the edge of the simulator field. “Hey, you’re done!”
Chloe rubbed a spot on her lower ribcage. For the qualification, the shock suits administered little more than a hard tickle, but the irritation could persist. “I thought I had it until it turned.” She looked back to the field, where the mech had already assumed the start position, and the next trainee verified his holster settings with an instructor. “Damn, those things are fast. The turn block is loose, though. It overshot when it brought the gun around and couldn’t zero in fast enough. That’s what saved my butt.”
“Thanks, that’s good to know.”
For the final two days of the seven-day event, operators jacked the mechs’ parameters, enhancing speed and accuracy to such an extent that when the trainees fought their last five matches, they faced the equivalent of another professional gunfighter.
Kira’s early victories had earned her a late slot in the final round, giving her a chance to see the mech settings in action before she faced them herself. To ensure fairness, the Guild required all mechs used in the evaluation to be the same model and software version, as well as being brought to the same physical specifications. Though a mech’s response contained a unique element in every run, the rule gave competitors who studied other matches an advantage.
Kira had watched other trainees compete until the events blurred together in her memory.
She returned the gear bag she’d been holding for Chloe. “Check your handset and see where you’re at.”
Chloe frowned. “I’m not sure I want to know.” But she fished the device out of the bag.
The Guild site displayed her personal results. It showed the 35-point deduction for her last match, then displayed her standing in the Regional Cup competition: currently twenty-seventh overall, with the possibility of going as high as twenty-second or as low as thirty-fourth, depending on how other trainees performed. Kira clapped her on the shoulder. “Hey, that’s top fifty for sure, maybe top twenty-five. You’re getting a bonus!”
Chloe brightened a little. “That’ll be nice.” The bump in starting pay wasn’t much, but it would let her put a little more toward either her duplex or her brothers’ education fund, and Chloe treated every uni as if she were still working uncertain hours for even more uncertain tips.
The screen updated with the results from other matches around the region. Chloe’s position changed to twenty-sixth, with a max of twenty-third and a minimum of twenty-eighth. Chloe clicked the device off and put it back in her gear bag. “I can’t watch. I’ll go nuts.” She pointed to the snack kiosk backed up against a simulator wall. “Let’s get something to eat.”
To lend a festive air to the event, TKC not only provided free food, but splurged by populating the broad walkways between simulator clusters with kiosks whose staff made sandwiches fresh, rather than vending machines that dispensed pre-wrapped food of uncertain age and provenance. Kira drank in the luxury of watching the attendant spread mustard by hand and apply the turkey slices to the roll with a small flourish.
In the walkway, trainees stood in little groups of three to five, juggling snacks, drinks, and handsets. The vendors hadn’t brought quite enough small, stand-up tables for everyone.
A giant banner declaring TKC Insurance’s “Guiding Principles” hung from the ceiling. Probably because of its height and size, this one had escaped being defaced by the marker-wielding artist who had routinely adorned “Customer Focus” with a stick figure viewed through gunsights and “Passion for Performance” with a graveyard. The doodle rumored to provoke the most ire from company management was a bouquet of flowers with a tag reading “TKC” propped against a tombstone. That one went next to the words “Respect for People.” The vandal had been so successful that for the last three months, building maintenance had almost given up displaying “Guiding Principles” posters in the gunfighter training areas.
At the kiosk, Chloe ordered a pastrami and Muenster on rye, with a side of spice chips and a bottle of milk. Kira ordered a protein shake.
Chloe cocked her head toward Kira and provided an explanation the attendant hadn’t asked for. “She’s still in the running.”
The attendant broke into a wide grin. “Well, congratulations, Ms.”—there was the briefest pause as
he checked the name on Kira’s uniform—“Clark.” He studied Kira with a bit more than casual interest, as if he were trying to place her. His face brightened. “Good luck!” He handed her the protein shake and moved on to the next customer.
Kira glared at Chloe.
Chloe grinned back. “I couldn’t figure out how to tell him about you being one of the Cup contenders, but he probably knew already.”
An instructor finished his meal and left one of the standing tables open. Chloe gathered her food and moved toward it.
Kira trailed along. “How could he possibly know? He probably doesn’t even understand how it all works.”
Chloe snorted. “He probably knows the standings better than you do. When I worked for General Catering, the gunfighter fanboys would give you just about anything to swap places if you got a Qualification Week shift.”
“Really?”
“Oh yeah. When you win, tomorrow he’ll be on some fan site, and be all, ‘Yes, I served Kira Clark before the match. She had a Nature’s Rage Extra Mocha Double-Protein shake, and she shook it three times before she opened it.’ It’ll be his biggest thing all year.”
Kira rolled her eyes, twisted the top off the bottle, and took a deep swig of the contents. Chloe was probably exaggerating, but even if the caterer didn’t know all the details, he might guess she was doing pretty well. If she won the Cup, paid off her signing bonus, and walked away, would that make his story better or worse?
On a nearby video display, a bald-headed guy in a blue blazer talked his way through the current set of matches. With every company trying to push its trainees through limited simulator space as quickly as possible, the results came thick and fast all week, but now, as one trainee after another completed their hundredth match, he had time to do more than rattle off stats. “. . . becoming clearer all the time exactly who those last three will be.”
In deference to fan sensibilities and the Guild’s desire for vid revenue, the final matches for the top three contenders would play out sequentially, rather than simultaneously, with the first starting at 7:00 p.m. to hit prime time in the Midwest.
Kira’s handset warbled with a tone normally reserved for emergency evacuation messages and Amber Alerts. Heads turned in her direction before she could silence the device. The bright red block on the screen announced: “YOU ARE A TOP THREE CONTENDER. REPORT TO YOUR MATCH IN TKC SIMULATOR THREE NO LATER THAN 6:40 P.M.”
Chloe washed down the final bite of her sandwich by gulping the last of her milk. “We gotta get going. That’s clear across campus.”
On the vid screen, a red band announcement came up. The announcer touched his earpiece, said he had important news, and the screen displayed a head shot of a young man with brown hair and a square, muscular face—Fred Grahl from the Minneapolis training center of North Star Mercantile Finance. Ranked third going into the final round with 7,203 points, he would shoot first.
Kira pushed toward the display. This was the most she’d ever know about her competition. The announcer said something about his style or stats, but Kira couldn’t make it out over the bustle of other people trying to position themselves for a good view.
A brown-skinned, black-haired young man with dark, soulful eyes appeared below Fred’s face on the screen. Julian Gomez hailed from Midwest AgriSystems’ Des Moines training center, right next to the TKC campus. His 7,256 points placed him comfortably ahead of Fred, and only two points behind Kira. However, those two points were enough to make him shoot before she did, so she would know exactly what she needed to do when she stepped on the field.
Finally, Kira’s trainee ID photo displayed, and scattered applause and cheers ran through the crowd around the monitor. The group quieted down just in time for the announcer to note that during the ninety-nine qualification matches so far, Kira had killed her first sixty mechs outright, added five non-sequential kills in later matches, won an additional twenty-six with nonfatal hits, and lost just eight times. Along the way, she’d only died twice.
Hands extended in congratulations, and Kira shook them. Kess Johnson, a former college linebacker, squeezed her shoulder with so much good-hearted enthusiasm that Chloe intervened. “We need to go.”
The two friends made their way through the maze of walkways between the simulator clusters, Kira fielding waves and wishes for good luck from trainees and staff as they went.
When they reached a break in traffic, Kira bumped Chloe with her elbow. “Hey, check your standings again. If they’ve got the top three, you’re probably set.”
They stopped and Chloe made a grumpy noise, but she again fished her handset from her bag. The screen flashed “Twenty-Fifth Place” over the word “FINAL.” Chloe stared at the terminal in disbelief.
“Hey!” Kira patted her friend on the shoulder. “You made it!”
They hugged and laughed.
Chloe wiped her eyes. “I really didn’t think I’d get it. I always just miss.” She stared wistfully at the display. “Maybe gunfighting is going to work out for me.” She grabbed Kira’s upper arm. “Now you need to go win this thing.”
Kira laughed again. “But no pressure, right?”
“Right. No pressure at all.”
When Chloe turned to resume their journey, the smile disappeared from Kira’s face. Would Chloe really be OK if Kira won and bought her way out? She’d always told herself her friend would be happy for her. And maybe she would be. But still . . .
“Hey, come on. What are you waiting for?” Chloe stood in the walkway, looking exasperated.
Kira jogged a little to catch up. “Coming.”
At last, they reached Simulator Three. A trainee from the class right behind them checked Kira in, taking her thumbprint on his data pad.
“You can watch the matches with the others.” He pointed to a mass of trainees and staff standing around video displays hung along the walkway. “Or you can wait here in the ready box.” He indicated a painted rectangle that marked off an area beside the simulator wall. It contained a chair and a small table with two bottles of water. “Either way, be sure you’re right here and set to go ten minutes before start.”
Kira’s handset warbled. Message from Diana. “Congratulations. Coming soon.” Like the other instructors, Diana was working as support staff for the qualification matches.
A slight knot formed below Kira’s sternum as she keyed a response. “At Sim 3.”
If Kira won and left, what would Diana say? Another part of Kira’s mind asked why she should care. She was on her own, pure, plain, and simple. It’s not as if she had anybody to look out for her. Sure, Diana had been helpful, but she had her reasons. Walking away might hurt some feelings, but if she stayed, she’d be killing people. Assuming they didn’t kill her first.
Kira and Chloe watched from the edge of the crowd as Fred marched to the start point with the mech, where they stood back-to-back. On the ward’s signal, Fred traveled almost straight down the strikeline, beating the mech to the kill box. A snappy, precise turn left him facing the gray expanse of the Wall. A cutout screen in the lower left corner showed a close-up of Fred with his gun drawn and his eyes darting back and forth, waiting for the hologram to vanish. On the other side of the Wall, the mech planted its pivot foot on the kill box’s marker line. When its back leg landed inside the kill box, the Wall came down. The mech pulled the toe of its pivot foot inside the line, drew, and fired. The mech’s diode and Fred’s muzzle flashed almost simultaneously, and a new cutout screen on the upper left showed where the hits landed. The mech’s simulated projectile caught Fred’s upper leg, but high and on the outside. The mech wouldn’t get many points for that. The inner thigh was a legitimate target, where shattering the bone or inducing a spasm in the femoral nerve could cause an immediate fall, or severing the femoral artery could cause death from catastrophic blood loss in minutes. A hit in the quadriceps was merely painful, and a gunfighter trained with a shock suit could stand through the resulting bleed-off. Fred’s shot struck the mech’s upper ab
domen. On a human, it would have ripped through the liver but missed the spine. The system computer awarded Fred 82 points and the mech 47. The net gain of 35 held Fred’s position at third, but unless Kira or Julian suffered a serious loss, it wouldn’t be enough to improve his standing.
A strong hand grasped Kira’s shoulder, followed immediately by a warm greeting. “Hey.”
She turned to face Diana. “Ms. Reynolds. Hi.”
“I came to wish you luck.”
“Thanks.” Kira couldn’t look Diana in the eye, but she could at least turn toward her. “Ms. Reynolds, no matter how this turns out, you’ve been good to me, and I won’t forget that.”
Diana’s smile became genuinely warm. “I appreciate that. I really do.” She clapped Kira’s upper arm. “Remember: you deserve to win.”
Despite a small twinge in her chest, Kira responded. “Thanks. I’ll do my best.”
“I know.” One of Diana’s secret smiles followed the affirmation.
Chloe worked her way to them through the growing throng around the vid monitor. “Hey, Kira, don’t you need to go do that thing?”
Kira grinned at her. “Get into character?”
“Yeah, that.”
Diana looked over their heads, sizing up the mob gathered on the open side of Simulator Three and the catwalks above it. “We can’t get close enough to see. Chloe, why don’t you walk Kira to the ready box? I’ll find a spot close to a monitor.”
Diana and Chloe synched the “Mutual Locate” function on their handsets, and Diana set off on her quest for a place to view the match. Though Kira appreciated the support, it would be good to be alone while she prepared.
She and Chloe pushed through the crowd toward the simulator.
Chloe broke the silence. “You know, maybe this is a bad time to say this, but I really don’t like her.”
“My dueling persona?”
“Yeah. She’s so . . .”
Kira adopted her flat, cold, above-it-all tone. “You’re not supposed to like her. You’re supposed to fear her.”
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