Assault or Attrition

by Blake Northcott

  At least while I was in The City I knew exactly why people hated me. It was the same reason why they hated every peasant from The Fringe or The Dark Zone. Here, I wasn’t sure if Cameron Frost’s existing staff despised me because I was now their boss (which was reason enough, I suppose) or if it was because the last time they’d seen their previous employer, it was during Arena Mode...right before I’d blown a sizable hole in his throat with a modified handgun. From their perspective, I’d gunned down their former boss in cold blood, and had looted his bank vault in the wake of his death. This was of course the entire point of Arena Mode, making it a pretty valid perspective to have.

  I decided then and there that I’d give each of them a raise whether they deserved it or not; I could afford it. And then, hopefully, I wouldn’t have to deal with the discomfort of living with two dozen people who glared at me like I was the antichrist.

  The seven sub-levels of the fortress were reserved for research, development and storage. On sub-level five (labelled ‘SL5’ above the elevator lift) we continued around the perimeter of the massive circular structure and passed the power core – a thorium reactor that acts as a generator for the entire fortress. “The reactor,” London explained, “is powered by liquid salt – far more efficient than uranium reactors of the past. In a stroke of genius, Mister Frost also began developing a new form of solar power for the dome, which, in less than eighteen months, will make Fortress 23 completely self-sustaining.”

  After more than an hour navigating through the lower levels of the fortress, it hadn’t occurred to anyone that the enormous dome that topped the structure would be part of the tour. We’d spotted it on the flight in, but through the powerful snow squalls we couldn’t see inside.

  “What’s in the dome?” Brynja asked.

  “I was going to save it for last,” Chandler replied sheepishly. “It was going to be the finale. The big...you know, exit. No, that sounded stupid – finale was better.”

  “Can we check it out now?” I asked. “We can circle back around so you can finish your tour afterwards, I promise.”

  Our guide reluctantly agreed, even though it was going against the pre-determined fortress tour schedule. We motored down the long white hallway and through a set of sliding metal doors onto a steel platform; it was an oversized elevator reserved for vehicles and large cargo shipments. The doors slid shut behind us and we sailed to the rooftop level, opening into bright daylight. The dome that capped the top floor was completely transparent. The only way we could detect it’s presence from the inside were the flakes of snow landing on its surface, melting away once they made contact.

  While the enormity of the dome above was utterly mind-boggling, what surrounded us was even more incredible. It was a tropical paradise. Like stepping out of an elevator into a Hawaiian postcard, we were overwhelmed by the sights and smells of lush palm trees, pastel-colored flowers and natural rock formations, some with waterfalls cascading down their sides into shallow inlets. Tropical birds flew overhead and lizards scattered underfoot. London was chiming in with facts about terraforming and climate engineering experiments, but none of us paid any attention – we were mesmerized.

  I smiled, shaking my head in disbelief. For someone who avoided the outdoors at all costs, I could definitely get used to this. “This is incredible,” I whispered, not realizing I was saying the words aloud.

  “Yeah, it’s nice.” Chandler grumbled, shuffling his feet.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “After seeing this,” he said, kicking at a small rock, “you guys aren’t gonna want to check out the desalinization laboratory on sub-level six, will you? I mean it’s exciting, but, you know...in a different way.”

  After a few more hours of exploration everyone settled into their rooms on level two. I made a quick trip to the infirmary to have my wound tended to, and was greeted by the resident nurse – a tiny, middle-aged woman with deep creases in her angular face, and a bob of sandy-brown hair. She was polite (or at least was professional enough to feign politeness), offering me a firm handshake and a tight-lipped smile. She quickly instructed me to hop up onto a gurney where she could inspect the incision below my ribcage, which was thankfully free from infection and healing nicely.

  As she ran some additional tests I asked her name, and the nurse, oddly, introduced herself as a number: ‘Twenty-seven’.

  “So did your parents just hate you?” I replied with a grin.

  She didn’t return the smile. ‘Twenty-seven’ explained that her name was actually Judy, and she’d been an ER nurse in Phoenix for over two decades. She was laid off due to budget cutbacks, and accepted a position here in Fortress 23 after being recruited by The Frost Corporation. The number was how Frost referred to his ‘sub-level’ employees, meaning the staff who worked in the subterranean levels of the Fortress – the ones he didn’t have to interact with directly. Frost always liked to associate numbers to faces, which he felt make them easier to keep track of. It was demeaning, but by Judy’s rationale, for a six-figure salary with full benefits in this economy, he could call her whatever the hell he wanted.

  Judy ran one additional scan on my abdomen to monitor the internal damage. Like the external scar, it was healing nicely, although I needed to avoid strenuous activity for the next several weeks. Popping a stitch on the incision was one thing – internal bleeding as a result of pushing myself too hard would require another surgical procedure. I thanked the nurse, and assured her that if anyone specialized in taking it easy, it was me.

  When my exam was complete I retired to Cameron Frost’s private quarters, which were the largest in the fortress. I pulled open the double doors to reveal my new bedroom: stark-white, ultra-modern, and easily ten times the size of my former apartment back in The Fringe. Everything from the carpeting to the linens were pristine, as if they’d never been touched – it looked more like a high-resolution photo from a furniture catalog than a room that had actually been lived in. For all I know Frost had never even slept there. The floor-to-ceiling windows offered a panoramic view of the mountain range to the south, where the dim moonlight bathed the snowy peaks in a pale blue glow.

  “Tinting,” I said through a drawn-out yawn, and the AI responded by darkening the windows to an inky black. I fell onto the mattress, too exhausted to bother pulling back the covers, and stared up at the ceiling.

  My mind raced. Even after Chandler’s tour and London’s detailed explanations, I had barely scratched the surface of this massive structure. I’m sure it would be weeks before I had the chance to inspect every room. I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of toys I had at my disposal, and couldn’t wait to continue exploring – it had barely sunk in that all of this was mine. And I was still trying to process the information about the Kashstarter campaign to finance my destruction...not to mention the naked dead girl who appeared in a swirl of blue mist. Even by my standards it had been a pretty strange day.

  But despite the distractions and shiny objects, I couldn’t get Peyton out of my mind. I wondered where she was, and what she was thinking. Staring into the darkness, trying to will myself to sleep, I couldn’t force her out of my head – and the parting words that spilled from her lips burned in my mind: ‘I don’t trust you.’ I wasn’t sure if she planned that particular part of her speech in advance, or if she knew how painful it would be for me to hear, slicing my insides like a freshly sharpened scalpel. I was a lot of things (many of them I wasn’t proud of) but untrustworthy was not one of them. I’d always been there for Gavin and Peyton – at least I felt like I always had been – and they never failed to reciprocate.

  When I broke the news that a tumor was eating away at my brain they never gave up on me, even after I’d pretty much given up on myself. They pushed and pushed until I had no choice but to feel like there was some sense of hope, and some reason to keep on fighting. If Gavin and Peyton wanted me to live that badly, they must have seen something in me; something that I couldn’t see myself, no matter how h
ard I tried. Their faith was what fueled me during the final stages of The Arena. And it was the thought of losing them had given me the drive to defeat Cameron Frost.

  An agonizing hour stretched into two. I eventually stopped checking the time, but at some point before dawn my heavy lids fluttered shut, and I drifted off thinking that now, I had everything in the world that I’d ever wanted – except for the only two people I wanted to share it with.

  Chapter Seven

  After a few hours of dreamless sleep I awoke feeling more exhausted than when I’d gone to bed. I sat up and winced, gently rubbing my aching stomach. Advanced stem cell therapy had greatly accelerated my healing process, but modern medicine could only do so much.

  It was sunrise, and I thought I’d take the opportunity to explore some of the fortress in silence before my staff and guests awoke. The nurse had recommended a little light exercise if I was feeling up for it, and this was as good a time as any.

  During our guided tour we hadn’t reached the lowest sub-level, so I figured it would be the best place to start exploring. I took an elevator down to SL7 and strolled past an endless row of rooms – laboratories, storage areas, the odd bathroom or maintenance closet – until I reached a large circular door that resembled a bank vault. The polished silver door had a touch-screen keypad off to its side, recessed into an alcove, with two words etched into the steel panel above it: South Tunnel.

  Entering my ten-digit access code caused the door to swing open with a gentle hiss, and the long narrow hallway illuminated. It sloped upward, leveling out after a few hundred meters. I must have walked the featureless cylindrical tunnel for a solid half-hour before I reached a second door, which looked identical to the one at the entrance. There was no keypad, and no voice command would open it. If someone had been observing me on a security cam, they must have had a good laugh watching me shout every variation of ‘open up!’ I could think of to an inanimate object for several minutes.

  I turned back, and had reached the main level hallway when my wrist com signaled an incoming message. It was Brynja, screaming frantically. “Mox, you have to come here and see this. It’s amazing!”

  Her level of energy at seven in the morning was baffling. “What, did you find,” I groaned. “The coffee maker?”

  “No, you idiot, this is better than coffee. I’m on the main level in the lounge. Come quick!” The transmission blipped off before I had a chance to respond.

  I was skeptical. It seemed unlikely that Brynja had discovered something more exciting than coffee at this hour. Locating the nearest elevator, I stepped aboard and shot up to the main observation floor, which is where I found her: sitting in an oversized circular room, surrounded by clothing. More coats, sweaters and pants than I could imagine her ever needing in her lifetime. And shoes – my god, the shoes; mountains of boots, high-heels, runners, and original designs that couldn’t possibly have had any practical use. “Where did all of this crap come from?” I asked, scratching my head.

  “This isn’t crap, you dick – it’s my new wardrobe. I printed it!” She motioned to the doorway behind her, which lead to what would become my favorite device in the entire fortress: a next generation 3D printer.

  “You printed all of this...this morning?”

  “No,” she said with a laugh. “I never slept. I discovered this room last night after dinner, and I haven’t stopped printing since.” She paused and looked me up and down, curling her lips into a tiny frown. “You might want to give this thing a go yourself.”

  I’d been wearing the same clothes since I left the hospital, which were incidentally the same clothes I was wearing at the CN Tower during my stabbing. I wore a dark hoodie to conceal my t-shirt, which was torn and blood-stained. I agreed it was probably best to burn what I was wearing and take a cue from Brynja – why spend hours flying to the nearest mall when I could generate any garment I needed right here?

  It was an incredible machine: the next generation model 3D printer could replicate virtually anything, from textiles to machines with moving parts. A few torrent sites had searchable archives, home to literally millions of design files called ‘physibles’. It was simple: download the source file, upload the proper materials and feed it to the printer. A few minutes later your desired item would appear in a large metal chamber like magic.

  The machine had a single design flaw: you had to ensure you had enough of the correct material loaded into it before printing, or it would default to a random compound – usually whatever had been loaded in previously. My short-term memory issues didn’t help with the problem. Forgetting to check the levels of cotton and polyester, one evening I printed everyone a cushy new aluminum pillow for their bedrooms. My running shoes made of chocolate chip cookie dough with licorice shoelaces were another amusing disaster (and provided a surprisingly delicious snack, considering the combination).

  As a child my father had purchased one of the very first commercially available 3D printers, which was a relic by today’s standards. At the time the technology was mind-boggling, and my family was fascinated with the device. Occasionally my sister and I were allowed to model and produce our own toys under my dad’s strict supervision. The first gen 3D printers worked by using hot polycarbonate plastic, which hardened as the design cooled and took shape. Design options were limited, and the printing process seemed to take forever, but one option was all I needed: I wanted to make Lego. Sure, I had toy chests filled with the tiny plastic blocks in my room, but there was something special about inputting a design and printing my own.

  With this massive printing monstrosity at my disposal, I became a kid all over again. Over the following month I must have created a thousand things with my new printer: graphene-coated armor suits. Swords. Shields. A customized toaster that looked like the original Nintendo system. Frisbees. A working bicycle. Sniper rifles that could fire marshmallows a thousand feet. And of course, mountains and mountains of Lego. At one point I’d printed so many Lego pieces that a room in the north wing was dedicated solely to my growing collection. The entire compound was littered with pieces until the maintenance staff got tired of stepping on them. Several people threatened to quit if I didn’t start cleaning up after myself. I wasn’t much of a ‘clean up after myself’ type of guy, so I hired some additional cleaning staff dedicated solely to the task.

  When I wasn’t printing Lego or playing video games with Brynja I was reading. After a week of searching I’d located Cameron Frost’s hidden library in one of the deep subterranean levels, accessed by pulling a lever in one of the supply closets. It was epic. A collection of every book and graphic novel I’d ever heard of, leather-bound and carefully organized in a three-story room with a cathedral ceiling. Retrieving a book from the top shelf required a harrowing journey, climbing up while clinging to a series of sliding wooden ladders. It was three days later before I’d realized that London could hover up and retrieve them for me, but there was a strange sense of satisfaction in risking a broken leg to source out the perfect reading material.

  I read one novel after the next, day after day, until I came across a series of hardcover books that were not novels at all: they were Cameron Frost’s personal notebooks; filled from cover-to-cover with handwritten notes and crudely-drawn sketches, detailing Frost’s plans for the next decade. Beyond his desire to produce violent reality television – which had become the linchpin of his entire financial empire – he had aspirations that ranged from grandiose to the brink of insanity.

  His expansion into feature films was the least surprising of his ventures. Frost had worked tirelessly to purchase the film rights to every major movie franchise from the past fifty years; Star Wars, Star Trek, The Lord of the Rings, The Matrix, Indiana Jones, Tron – he had put in bids for every single one of them. Frost was sure that he could reboot these franchises and attract an entirely new generation of fans. And even stranger: he had delusions of writing and directing the movies himself.

  Beyond his desire to become the next James Came
ron, Frost’s passion for robotics was evident. He’d crammed entire volumes with schematics, detailing every moving part of incredibly intricate exoskeletons. A paraplegic as a result of a yachting accident, he’d been obsessed with regaining his ability to walk, and when medical science had failed him, he turned to the next logical option.

  The exoskeleton that Frost had worn into The Arena – a heavily armored, Japanese-inspired mech that he’d dubbed ‘Fudō-Myōō’ – was far too large and impractical for everyday use. It stood nearly seven feet tall and was as bulky as an all-terrain vehicle. It was a juggernaut, but it worked: he could walk, run, swordfight, and even fly for short distances. Frost’s plans, according to his journals, were to create next-generation models of the Fudō armor using his printer, all while making incremental upgrades. First would be waterproofing along with an underwater propulsion system so the units could explore the seas; then advanced flight capabilities, followed by space travel. He’d wanted to be the first person to walk on the surface of Mars, and wanted to arrive there without the aid of NASA or a space shuttle – he was going to do it alone, in his own exoskeleton.

  His plans to privately finance space missions were incredible, but his ambitions went far beyond that. Frost had scientists from around the world working on wild, theoretical projects with budgets that ranged into the billions. Desalinization serums that would convert entire oceans into potable water sources. Terraforming machines that could give an otherwise dead planet a living, breathable atmosphere. And a teleportation device that would allow matter to travel from one place to the next, creating a gateway to the other side of the world. I had no idea how far along any of these projects were, or how many scientists and engineers had been receiving paychecks to make them a reality, but I was curious to find out.

  His political aspirations were as lofty as his scientific ones. He one day aspired to run for President (which was no surprise) but his short-term goal was to declare Fortress 23, and the surrounding area that I now own in Northern Alberta, it’s own country. There were a list of people he’d given ‘donations’ to in order to make this happen, or at least to grease the proverbial wheels; usually untraceable BitGold transfers that were made to offshore accounts in various amounts, never less than seven figures. Some additional digging revealed page upon page of documents and notes from meetings he’d attended, all in pursuit of being the undisputed ruler of his own sovereign nation.