The Game of Luck

by Catherine Cerveny

  At some point, my new reality overwhelmed me and I threw up. Funny. I couldn’t control my arms and legs, but had no trouble throwing up. Unfortunately, the angle of my head was wrong and I started to choke on my vomit. Then I couldn’t breathe, which made the choking worse. Coughing followed, because that was involuntary, like breathing. Eventually, I collapsed on my side and lay in my own vomit.

  I remained there a long while. Through the air-hack windows, I saw Pallas and Vesta both at crescent in the sky. The air-hack had been driving for a long time. Unlike flight-limos that used HE-3, the air-hack’s fuel cell would need to be recharged soon. No air-hack could drive forever on a single charge. Moments after I’d had that thought, the air-hack dropped to low-street orbit, then stopped. My body got out and I found another air-hack waiting. The drive resumed. The air-hack exchange was repeated two more times.

  As my racing thoughts kept stumbling over the details of Soyuz Park, I pieced together a hypothesis as to what might have happened. Even still, it was nearly an impossible task; that ball of confusion and disbelief just wouldn’t stop bouncing—I killed Alexei. Alexei was dead. One, I couldn’t control my body other than involuntary functions like blinking or breathing. It had happened after my ping from Rax and the excruciating pain down my spine. Had he somehow caused it? Two, the sliver of CN-net awareness in the back of my head was gone. Three, without my c-tex, I couldn’t be tracked. No one would be coming for me.

  It didn’t make sense, but all my brain could offer was my body had been sniped through my implants. Implants Karol’s assistant had said were working out of sync…Shit. I’d been caught in a trap by a master AI jockey who could snipe rings around Alexei and Brody, knew about the luck gene, and had One Gov connections. My unknown King of Swords.

  Numbness subsided, replaced by the ever-present rage that had been simmering in me for weeks. It built quickly, becoming something so furious and hot, it burned away my confusion and demanded action. It pushed aside fear and despair, replacing it with purpose and resolve. It reshaped lives. Not just lives. Worlds. I was so full of fury—even though I didn’t know my next move—that when I found out who was responsible for this, they were going to wish they’d never heard of Felicia Sevigny.

  The air-hack set down again and I got out. I looked around but had no idea where I was. Given all the driving I’d done today, for all I knew, I was halfway across the planet. In front of me was a lone building—square, windowless, stubby, and lit up with a naked fluorescent above a single door. Inside I found a cement floor and walls, and one dim light overhead. Furniture was sparse: bed, table, a few chairs, cold unit, hot pad for cooking. Off to the side was a grungy bathroom. The whole setup looked like a place where you would stash someone if you wanted to keep them out of sight for weeks.

  I was marched to the bathroom. What followed was one of the most surreal experiences of my life. I caught sight of myself in the full-length mirror bolted to the wall. Scraped and bruised, covered with vomit and blood, hair matted and tangled. My face underneath the gore was unconcerned and unimpressed—resting bitch face. And while I knew I was looking at myself, I also knew someone else was looking at me too. Looking at my reflection through my eyes, studying and appraising my image in a way I never would.

  At the nearby sink, I cupped my hands under the spout, the mule-AI sensing motion beneath it, and water flowed out. I scrubbed at my skin, washing away the blood and vomit until the water ran clean. Then I went back to the mirror to gaze at myself.

  Moments passed—weighted, uncomfortable. My thoughts raced, and dove to a terrible place as an awful idea occurred to me. I didn’t want to let it form. Didn’t even want my mind to go there—oh gods, please no, don’t do this to me—but my pleas went unheeded. My body, helpless to resist, followed as if my hijacker had plucked my idea from my thoughts and couldn’t wait to explore the opportunity.

  I undressed. Then it was back to the mirror, looking at myself again, my eyes roaming over my naked body. My hands went to my breasts, cupping them, lifting and pressing them together, seeming to offer them to my reflection. Or rather, offering them to whoever looked out through my eyes. My mind recoiled, wanting to stop my hands, my body, everything. My hands kept moving, caressing, brushing my nipples, pinching them until they were tight and erect.

  When I tried to close my eyes so I wouldn’t have to see, they snapped open and stayed that way, not letting me shut out the sight of what I did to myself. I posed in front of the mirror, my body contorting into overtly sexualized positions that weren’t even comfortable. I smiled, seductive and flirtatious. I tossed my hair, running my fingers through it and arching my body as if pressing myself against some invisible lover. I was a performer on a stage, there to entertain while a stranger used my hands to touch me in crass and violating ways. I knew with a sick, plummeting feeling that whoever watched me—maybe several whoevers—were using me to get themselves off. In their minds, I existed for their pleasure, there for them to use and enjoy. I was nothing, the object that indulged their fantasies, with no will of my own.

  I wanted to be sick again, but my stomach was empty. The anger boiled and churned within me, but outwardly, I moved the way I might if I was with Alexei. Hell, from the outside, I even looked like I was enjoying myself—smiling, gaze provocative, skin flushed. Inside, nothing. I felt violated. Worse, as my unknown voyeur watched, I felt myself growing wet. Gods, my brain knew this was all wrong, but my body didn’t care. I continued to smile and pout, caressing, touching, squeezing, and moaning. Until finally, and with so much horror this could even happen, I came.

  Flushed, I looked at the clear, thick moisture on my hand. I raised it to my mouth and lapped at it, all the while watching myself in the mirror, smiling. I sucked my fingers with satisfaction until all the moisture was gone.

  With the show over, I stopped moving. My arms dropped back to my sides and the smile disappeared—a doll, shut off, no longer entertaining. I could only imagine what my body thief was doing now.

  Minutes later I was walked, naked, to the room’s only table. On it lay a pressure syringe. It was a handheld device, the sort used to inject something just below the skin’s surface. A similar device had been used to place trackers in Feodor. It was also popular in the drug fetish culture depending on the drug and what sort of high it provided, or so Mannette said. It was single-use, disposable, easily broken down by any particle scrambler. I picked up the syringe and pressed it to my right hand, at the base of my thumb. Then I hit the trigger, releasing the syringe’s contents. A tiny raised bump appeared just under the skin.

  I’d just been chipped.

  I dropped like a stone, tumbling to the cold cement floor. Like a marionette whose strings had been cut, my body fell in a heap. I groaned at the sharp, jarring impact of my hip hitting the cement. Then I lay there, too stunned to move even as I knew instinctively I could get up. For reasons I could only guess, my hijacker had abandoned control of my body and left me to my own devices.

  I climbed to my feet and tried the door. Locked. My implants, nothing. Still no connectivity to the CN-net. I ran my fingers over the tiny bump on my palm, feeling the chip under my skin. I tried picking at it with my fingernails, as if I could dig it out. Not happening. I looked around for something sharp. Again, nothing. Not even the syringe had a pointy edge to it.

  I spent the next bit of time smashing objects against the door in the hopes of cracking the seals. I prowled every inch of that room, looking for a way out or weak spot I could exploit. A complete waste of time and when I was done, I was so enraged, I couldn’t think. Better that than crying, I decided. Better to be so angry I wanted to tear the building apart than to curl up on the floor, helpless with tears. Fuck. Alexei. No, I couldn’t think about that. Couldn’t focus on him. I had to pretend it hadn’t happened, believe he was still alive, and deal with this—get out of this prison of a room, find out who was responsible, and destroy them. If I thought about Alexei, I would fall apart. I wouldn’t want to do any
thing other than die myself, and that attitude wasn’t going to take care of business. Right now, I had to crack skulls and end these assholes. And I would. Whatever it took, whatever I had to do, I would do it. I was going to win this fucking game, even if it killed me.

  * * *

  I wasn’t surprised when my body was hijacked again. I’d even expected it, and made myself ready. The room might have been sparsely furnished, but it had basic food items, clothing, and a working bathroom. I’d used my time to eat, clean up, and get dressed in the clothing provided—loose navy pants, shapeless gray top, and a pair of badly fitting running boots. I managed to sleep, but it was restless and came in snatches that lasted only minutes. I considered trying to make a weapon but couldn’t find anything useful. Plus, I doubted I’d be able to carry it once my body was sniped again. Even if I managed to tie a knife to my leg—didn’t have a knife or a tie, but whatever—I’d just remove it once my hijacker took over and felt me up again. Asshole.

  When the snipe came, I was on the bed. The paralyzing crack of pain went down my spine, bowing my body. Then I was on my feet and out the door with no time to spare. I had a feeling that if I’d been peeing with my pants around my ankles, I’d have been marched out all the same, with no time to pull up my shapeless and who-picked-out-these-hideous pants. I’d been right about concealed weapons too as my hijacker used my own hands to pat me down.

  Outside, the light had that golden pink hue of early morning. The air held the dawn winter coolness you could only get at the equator on Mars—fresh, crisp, clean, without a hint of the heat yet to come. Yesterday’s air-hack waited for me. My body got in and I was off.

  I endured the same air-hack-switching routine from last night, which enraged me further. I’d suffered enough cloak-and-dagger bullshit to last several lifetimes. By the time I’d been shuttled into my third air-hack, I suspected my ride around Mars was coming to an end—this air-hack’s windows were tinted, so looking in or out was impossible, and I found a zipped canvas bag on the seat. Inside was a navy blue pantsuit and low black heels. I pulled them out, and then my hijacker began the laborious process of redressing me.

  If I could have cursed the idiot who’d come up with this part of the kidnaping plan, I would have. Getting dressed in the back of an air-hack was hard enough, but having someone else try to do it for you? Im-fucking-possible. As least my body thief hadn’t decided to take time to examine my breasts again.

  Insofar as disguises went, it was pretty basic. I looked like a less flamboyant version of me. Then again, the clothes didn’t matter. Not when the cornerstone of my disguise was my new One Gov citizenship chip. That chip contained whatever identity had been coded into it and would override everything else. As far as the queenmind was concerned, I was who the chip said I was, no questions asked. To me, it reinforced how connected my hijacker was to One Gov—legitimate citizenship chips weren’t easy to come by. It left me wondering what the endgame might be. Get the Consortium out of the way. Control the luck gene. But what else was at stake that I hadn’t figured out yet?

  The air-hack stopped. There wasn’t time to consider my surroundings as I climbed out and charged on ahead. Even still, I knew where I was. My stomach dropped, and panic didn’t just ensue, it threatened to swallow me in one giant gulp. My hijacker was taking me off-world.

  Looming in front of me, up into infinity, was the Mars space elevator.

  I tried fighting my body’s rolling forward gait, but how do you win when so far as your nervous system is concerned, your body doesn’t belong to you? Moving with helpless purpose, I got into line with the other travelers. My head was tucked down and I avoided eye contact. When people made small talk, I grunted and looked away. In some cases, I even turned my back to them. I had no way to signal I needed help, not even with eye twitches. I could only stand in line, shuffling along with everyone else.

  When I reached the front, I ran my palm over the citizenship chip reader. The automated system read my fake chip without issue and let me through the gate. I felt like screaming then. I’d had some ridiculous hope the AI would know my chip was bogus and dozens of alarms would sound. Then One Gov hooahs would swoop in from gods knew where, and everything would be sorted out. I’d be saved. But no. I entered the passenger carrier that would ascend the carbon nanotube cable and took my prearranged seat.

  The seats in the carrier filled rapidly. It was designed to ferry two hundred people between the surface and Space Station Destiny in geosynchronous orbit around Mars. From there, ships left for the asteroid mines and Mars’s four moons. Since Mars didn’t have the same volume of air traffic as Earth, the elevator ran only a few sols a week. Now I knew why I’d been stashed overnight—my hijackers had been waiting for the next space elevator lift. And as for my destination…As I eavesdropped on the conversations around me, my gulping panic returned. We weren’t just heading off-world. We were boarding the Martian Princess. Damn it, I was booked for the month-long trip back to Earth!

  The next few hours were mental and physical agony as I sat with my hands folded in my lap, unmoving. I was trapped in my body, a prisoner of my own thoughts, unable to make myself comfortable and enduring the g-forces pressing down on me as the space elevator rose.

  After the elevator docked, I made my way through Space Station Destiny and to the berth where the Martian Princess waited. No one boarded yet. It would be hours before passengers could check in, and a few sols before the star cruiser launched. Unfortunately, I seemed to have VIP status. I ducked around those milling at the boarding gate, had my chip scanned, and walked on through. Some people called after me. I ignored them and kept going. No one stopped me, and another spark of hope at being rescued died within me. I entered the Martian Princess with ease.

  I’d been on the Martian Princess a little less than a standard year ago, when Alexei and I had arrived from Earth. I knew the overall layout. But just like in the space station, I strode purposefully through the pristine corridors with their clean white floors, unadorned gray walls, and soft overhead lighting as if I’d been there just yesterday. I kept walking until I found the medical bay. Inside was a series of smaller exam rooms. I entered one that looked like it might have been used for surgical procedures. More white floors, gray walls, soft lighting. Also, a table surrounded by machines and medical instruments I couldn’t name. I thought of the white room where my father had been dissected. This was the same. Not identical, but similar enough I knew what was coming next. My fear didn’t just grow. It morphed into something baser, distilled down to a pure, animal terror—the kind of terror that made our ancestors fear fire and turn thunder into godlike wrath.

  And yet, my body couldn’t react to it. I undressed—which seemed like a shitty, asshole thing for my hijacker to have me do. There I was, prepping myself for my own dissection, carefully folding my clothes and placing them on a nearby table. Naked, I climbed onto the table and pulled a white sheet up to my shoulders.

  Then I waited.

  Time seemed to stop. I hung in a suspended bubble of fear and horror where I could no longer think rationally. And when two figures entered wearing white coveralls and reflective face shields that made it impossible to note a single detail other than my own pale reflection—my reality just vanished altogether.

  I wasn’t drugged. I wasn’t strapped down. I wasn’t given anything for pain. I simply lay there as the two figures in white ran gloved hands over me, injected things, took skin scrapings, blood samples, tissues, and gods knew what else. I was scanned and probed, touched and manipulated. It was done in relative silence, aside from commands to move or shift my body into a particular position so they could better access whatever part of me they needed. I knew my examiners were male, but I was too far gone to note anything else. I couldn’t scream. Couldn’t do anything except feel their hands and their equipment moving over me. Enduring the pain, the discomfort, knowing my eyes watered and tears rolled down into my hair.

  And then, it stopped. Everything went still an
d my examiners took a moment to collect themselves.

  “This is unexpected,” one said. I could see him looking at a monitor, then a second monitor, comparing results. “There was no record of this in the fertility registry. According to the analysis, it’s been seven sols since fertilization. That’s one week of gestation.”

  “What do you recommend? Do we terminate? We need the subject’s uterus and accompanying organs intact. This will cause issues with the transaction legality and the subject’s owner. If we abort now, we eliminate the difficulty later.”

  Silence then, both examiners conferring with someone on the CN-net.

  “Can it be assumed the father is Alexei Petriv? Do we have a DNA sample on file to corroborate?”

  Another pause. “No, none. There’s nothing available we can use to run a cross-comparison against.”

  “Such a pairing would be invaluable. The subject’s owner could be persuaded to wait before he made use of the subject himself.”

  “Do you think he’d wait nine months?”

  “To get his hands on the by-product of post-human altered DNA crossbred with gene sequence 1353-075? Yes, I think he’d wait. If we can secure a Consortium sampling, we can run the necessary tests long before we reach Earth. There’s still time to abort if the results are negative.”

  “And if we can’t secure a DNA sample in the allotted time, we abort and the subject is free to use as the client sees fit.”

  Another pause. “All right. We wait.”

  With that, both examiners left the room, the medical bay doors closing behind them.