by Jim Heskett
And, one name appeared at the bottom of the Reds’ list. The last place competitor for the losing team that day. Leandro.
Leandro, a sixteen-year-old who’d only been a guerrero for three or four months, yelped. He fell out of line and took a step toward the podium. The guards scooted closer to Wybert and lowered the noses of their rifles. They clustered around Wybert like a shield.
Leandro sank to his knees, sobbing. “No,” he said through a sheen of tears and snot, “there must be a mistake. I got two of them, for sure. There was something wrong with their suits. The lights didn’t go off.”
Wybert cleared his throat and made a quick flicking motion with his hand. A guard emerged from the side of the podium, helped Leandro to his feet, and then escorted him toward the mansion.
The young Red, as he was being carted away, pleaded with his teammates, and they all looked the other way. Literally. They would not meet his gaze, with their eyes cast toward the ground or the sky. It didn’t matter. Nothing could be done for Leandro now, and they would never see him again. Soon, someone from the kitchen staff, or one of the young ones straight from the training classes would elevate directly to guerrero and join their team. Chosen from a crew of standbys ready to join as soon as any team member ended up last. Probably tomorrow, or maybe even later today.
“Blue team,” Wybert said, leaning into the mic to speak over Leandro’s fading pleas. ”You’ll find extra meat and fruit in your meals at dinner tonight. You’ve earned it.”
With that, the lord of the plantación stepped back from the microphone, and the guerreros all clapped. He raised a hand in acknowledgment as he strolled away from the podium and ambled toward the mansion. The grin on his face said he was pleased.
“Chips, now!” bellowed the Quartermaster, sitting at the rear of the platform. The man responsible for the battle equipment was at a desk, with boxes and clipboards in front of him. Guards on either side.
Yorick and his companions reached around to the backs of their suits and unplugged the chips from the nodules above their tailbones. The blue suits blinked off as the little hunks of plastic and metal came unplugged. Yorick always stared at it, the little chip. The thing was like magic to him, how it could enable and disable the rifles as well as record their movements and tally up their scores. About half the size of his thumb, with a rectangular recess at one end for the plug.
They formed two rows, one for Reds and one for Blues, and approached the desk. The chip would go in the box, then initials next to each name on the clipboard. Yorick dropped his chip into the box and grinned at the Quartermaster as he signed his name. The Quartermaster did not smile back.
Once that was done, Yorick and Rosia hopped off the platform, to head toward the dorms for a rest before lunch. The thought of extra meat tonight was already making Yorick’s mouth water, and he wished he could fast-forward to the dinner meal now. Even though the Blues won more days than they didn’t, they often weren’t rewarded with extra food. Some rounds, not being the last on the scoreboard was reward enough.
“Nap?” Yorick said, and Rosia nodded. He laced his fingers inside hers and they set off to the northeast where the dorm building housed their small room on one of the upper floors. Their room was high up enough they could see over the tall walls of the plantación.
But someone jumped off the raised platform ahead of them, blocking their path.
Diego.
He swished his hair and crossed his arms, but said nothing. The scar on his cheek flexed as he pulled his face into a frown.
“What is it?” Rosia said, barely able to contain her disdain for the leader of the Reds.
“You cheated.”
Yorick laughed. “You’re ridiculous. If anyone out there was cheating, it’s someone from your side.”
“Blues don’t cheat,” Rosia said.
“The ambush at the cave was cheating,” Diego said, leaning forward. “I can’t prove it, but you have some way of knowing our movements. You’ve figured out a way to tap into the chips. I know it.”
Yorick didn’t even know what to say. You can’t reason with logic like that. Tap into the chips? Impossible. It assumed so many things that weren’t conceivable. Not the least of which was the technical know-how to understand how the damn things worked.
“Okay, fine, Diego,” Yorick said, drawing out their adversary’s name. “You find a way to prove it, and we’ll admit to the whole conspiracy.”
“Good luck with that,” Rosia said.
With gritted teeth, Diego spun and walked away. But as he went, he looked back and threw a wink at Yorick. A wink so devoid of life, Yorick felt a shiver run down his spine.
Chapter Three
The walk from the grounds of the mansion to the dorms in the northeast of the plantación would take about ten minutes. Maybe fifteen, depending on if Yorick and Rosia meandered. Some days, they would wander along the perimeter of the wall, through the fields. Greeting the farm workers who they were acquainted with.
Farm serfs and guerrero serfs weren’t technically allowed to mingle, but that was one of the lord's laws the guards tended not to enforce. Unless, of course, the fraternization led to any trouble, and then you could count on spending a day or two in one of Wybert’s cages near his mansion. Or, if you broke enough of Wybert’s laws in one go, they might stick you up against the wall.
The cages, you would walk away from. The wall, you would not.
Today, though, joined at the hand, tired, Yorick and Rosia opted not to take a stroll. The morning’s heat was already swirling in the valley’s dry air. He wanted to go home, rest his sore knee, and spend the afternoon studying battle strategy.
As they marched along the dirt walkways, Rosia nodded up at the guard tower in the northeast corner. “Sometimes, there’s only one guard at the tower lookout in the mornings. Then, sometimes, when they do shift change, there might not be one there at all for a full minute. Have you noticed that?”
“Stop,” Yorick said. “You shouldn’t even be looking up there. They have sniper scopes, you know. They look out for people watching them. Probably cameras, too.”
“You don’t know that’s true.”
“You don’t know that’s not true,” Yorick said.
Rosia let go of his hand, seizing it back to her body. She halted and crossed her arms in front of her diminutive frame. Yorick stopped in front of her and placed hands on her shoulders. He thought for a moment she might pull away, but she didn’t. He looked down at her, and she craned her neck up to meet his gaze.
“You worry me,” he said.
Rosia shrugged. “It’s just talk. We have to have some way to pass the time.”
He cocked his eyes, staring at her. He knew it wasn’t only talk, and he also knew he didn’t want to get into it right now. The last thing he wanted after a victory on the battlefield was a fight. Especially one he couldn’t win.
“Love me?” he asked.
“Of course I do.”
“Okay, then. I supposed you can keep on being my girlfriend.”
She giggled and took his hand again as they continued along the path. “That’s very magnanimous of you.”
“Mag-what?”
“It means generous and charitable.”
He nodded. “I see. Yes, I am magnificent. I agree completely, and I appreciate how insightful you are.”
She chuckled at the mention of the word insightful. It had been their dictionary word of the day from two weeks ago, and he hadn’t yet had a chance to work it into their conversation. But, he did need to let her know from time to time he paid attention during their reading sessions.
Yorick held up a closed fist and then extended his pinky finger. Rosia did the same, and they touched pinkies together.
“Always,” he said.
“Always,” she said.
A cluster of Red guerreros approached from the other direction. Without the chips inserted into the back ports to make their rubbery suits glow, you might not even know which tea
m some of them had been assigned to.
But this group, Yorick knew their nature. Three of them were among the ones hiding in the cave. The way they’d been taken out, you might expect them to offer a hard shoulder to knock you over as they came close enough.
But, they all passed by with no eye contact. Many of them were like that; they could leave their grievances on the field. Some of them were even decent human beings. Unlike power-hungry idiotas like Diego, who made everything personal.
Once they had passed, Rosia asked, “What do you remember from before?”
“Before what?”
She swept a hand toward the high walls surrounding the plantación, at the guards who patrolled the top of that wall. Every few months, this question came up, and Yorick usually had no answer. He wondered if Rosia’s nostalgia had something to do with the phase of the moon since it was so cyclical.
“Just blips of memory,” he said. “Like flashes. Nothing I can name.”
The dorm building stood close to the front gate. As they approached, a truck rolled up to the interior, with some farmer serfs hanging from the back. Fruit was going out today. This was the purpose of the plantación, as far as Yorick could see.
A warning blip of the alarm sounded as the gate mechanism whirred and chugged. At the top of the wall on either side, six sharpshooters stood, ready to punch holes in anyone foolish enough to wander close to the gate. Not that anyone would. Yorick had seen that only once, about eight years before. He’d been a child, spending his time in the lecture hall and classrooms above the cafeteria. That day, a farm serf had dropped everything and sprinted toward the gate as it opened to let in the ambassador from the First City. A sniper had exploded that serf’s head at two hundred meters. Like dropping a piece of fruit from a tall building. Bits and pieces settled ten meters away. Yorick had cried himself to sleep that night and had never dreamed of going near the gate again. He was a good little serf from that moment on.
That’s how it had been in the twelve or so years Yorick had lived inside these walls. Aside from the view from their dorm room, when those gates opened to let the trucks in or out was all he saw of the outside world. A strip of dried land, beige soil torn and flat. Ringing the valley were mountain peaks which no one could name. Beyond that, only sky, blue in the day and black at night. Beyond that, there might as well have been nothing.
Chapter Four
Rosia stood at the center of the cafeteria serving line, awaiting her turn. She held up the card, and the young girl on the other side paused, then picked up three small plates and added them to Rosia’s tray. The girl—no more than twelve years old—wore no expression on her face as she did so. Deep brown eyes and caramel skin contrasted with the skin-tight white cap covering her hair and white gloves on her hands.
“Do you need something?” the girl said.
Rosia shook her head, lost in thought. The girl then pointed down the line, at the serfs waiting to pick up their meals. Rosia smiled and slid her tray along.
After selecting a drink, she carried her food from the end of the serving line toward the table. On her tray sat the meager meal: a smattering of blueberries, a pile of beans, and four beef empanadas. When Lord Wybert had promised fruit and extra meat, Rosia had pictured towering piles of roasted chicken on plates crowded by strawberries, grapes, and oranges. She’d never tasted oranges before, but in the pictures, they looked delicious.
But no, she should have known better to get her hopes up for quality extra meat and fruit today.
She escorted the disappointing dinner across the room. The tables filled with guerreros, with farm workers, with janitorial workers, and the other random serfs during this cafeteria shift. The little kids who lived at the training center on the upper floors of this cafeteria building dined separately as did the guards and the mansion staff.
She set the tray down at a table opposite Yorick, next to Hamon, and near a few other Blue guerreros. They didn’t always eat together, but after the victory today, a celebration made sense. To relish this hollow victory until tomorrow when they would do it all over again.
On the nearby wall, a framed poster looked over them. An illustration of Wybert, standing over a group of children sleeping in their beds. A big grin widened the lord's face, and a caption below read Hard Work Makes Sound Sleep.
“You don’t like empanadas?” Hamon said.
Rosia shrugged, then Yorick leaned over to speak for her. “I think she was expecting a little more than an extra helping or two.”
Hamon’s eyes flicked left and right, to make sure no one was directly listening. “Is that true?”
She nodded. “Every time I get my hopes up, this happens. Turkey, chicken, beef. A small pile of meat and smaller piles of fruit and vegetables. If this is supposed to signify winning, I don’t see it.”
“It’s better than losing,” Yorick said. He pointed his fork at a nearby table of glowering Reds. “Look at the frowns on their faces. Our team won’t have to welcome a new recruit this evening.”
She sighed as she thought it over. Yes, it was better than losing, but not by much. The only thing that mattered was not completing a round as the lowest scorer on the losing team. Not having to leave with the guards and disappear inside Wybert’s mansion, and then never be seen again.
“You’re right,” she said, trying to smile. “I have more to be thankful for than I can complain about.”
She could see on Hamon’s face he didn’t believe her, but that was fine. They all knew the state of things. They all knew what to expect. How one day would be the same as the next day, and the same as the day after that.
“Want to play Fours tonight?” Hamon asked.
They all nodded. Their version of the card game kept it simple and ignored the complex official rules. Using the full list of rules sucked all the fun out of the game.
“Be right back,” Yorick said, then he backed out of his chair and marched off toward the bathrooms. As soon as he’d left, Hamon’s eye wandered over toward a nearby table where a cute farm boy was already staring at him. Hamon blushed and then lowered his head, grinning into his mashed potatoes.
Rosia smirked at the two of them. So adorable, this cat-and-mouse game they’d been playing for weeks now. Also, dangerous. They would never allow farm serfs and guerreros to live together, so there was little point beyond clandestine sex. And even that would be difficult to arrange.
“Idiota,” said a nearby voice. Both Rosia and Hamon looked up to find Diego standing nearby, with a tray in hand, hair hanging down over his shoulders. On either side, flanked by two of his Red lackeys.
“What do you want?” Hamon said.
“You were cheating. Somehow. You’ve done something to the chips. You’ve found a way to isolate certain ones and pinpoint them on the battlefield.”
“That's ridiculous,” Rosia said. “What you’re saying doesn’t make any sense. Even if we could do that, how would we read the info? Have it beamed into our brains by magic?”
Diego stepped closer to the table. “Only the stars know how you did it, but I’m going to figure it out. Maybe you’ve enlisted a guard to feed you the info.”
Hamon took a breath to speak, but before he could, Diego jabbed the edge of his food tray into Hamon’s mouth. Blood gushed from the smack, coating Hamon’s teeth red.
Rosia reacted. She shot to her feet and swiped a hand up as she did. She pushed the tray of food up and back, toward Diego’s chin. A plate full of empanadas smashed into his nose and sent him back a step. The other two plates on the tray slipped and fell to the ground, clattering and then breaking into pieces.
Rosia leaped forward, clenching her fingers into a fist to punch Diego in his stupid face, but a strong hand reached out and grabbed her from behind. From the corner of her eye, Yorick was there, grasping her wrist, keeping her from attacking. His head vibrating back and forth, shaking, warning her to stop. Eyes intense.
A beat later, the alarm overhead blasted a single tone. A brash chirp
to alert the nearby guards. Everyone looked up at the ceiling where the red strobe light flashed, and the alarm chirped a second time. Diego and his two thugs backed away. Hamon spat blood onto his tray but didn’t stand up.
Guards rushed in from two directions at once. Heavy rifles leveled, gruff voices shouting at everyone in the middle. Most of the inhabitants of the cafeteria put their hands on their heads and lowered their faces to the table. The standard procedure in any sort of emergency.
“I leave you alone for sixty seconds,” Yorick said, “and everything turns to mierda.”
Chapter Five
In their dorm room, Yorick lifted the painting from the wall, and then Rosia removed the cinderblock. In the well inside the wall were a dozen books, and she reached in and withdrew three.
Yorick stood and bounced a rubber ball against the wall over her head. He groaned. “Not the dictionary again.”
“You need to learn more words. We haven’t done a daily word since insightful.”
The other two books were Bird Spotting in the Pacific Northwest and the fiction book Don Quixote. Yorick liked the fiction books much better, because the stories excited him, although many parts made no sense at all. So many odd-sounding names of places to remember, like Italy and Spain and England and Canada… too many to keep track of. Plus, the fiction books were so rare, there were only ten or fifteen total floating around the secret book-swapping program. That alone made them of higher value.
A book about the First City of Denver had been a popular one to pass around, detailing the city’s technology and government system. Yorick didn’t know if he believed half of what was written about Denver, though. Seemed like a lot of it was myth.
“Did you see Paulo in the battle this morning?” he said, chuckling.
“At the beginning, for a minute. Why?”
Yorick’s next toss of the ball missed his hand on the rebound and sailed into their tiny shared closet. He scrambled after it. “He had that sheet… like a bedsheet? I don't know where he got it. He must have taken it from one of the apartments in the block. Anyway, a couple of Reds were chasing after me and Hamon, right outside the warehouses. Paulo was on top of the warehouse, and he threw the sheet over the two Reds. Made them trip right there on the concrete.” He smiled, reminiscing.