All Against All

by Nathan Allen

  Everyone has their price.

  Something told her this contest would be different from the last one, held a few years ago. A lot of that had to do with the staggering value of the final prize pool – one hundred million dollars.

  Even the most morally upstanding person might contemplate taking a life or two when that amount of cash was dangled in front of them. Even the most fatalistic person might start to get a bit nervous when the people around them were being bumped off in rapid succession.

  The last tontine was rumored to have had sixteen participants and a twenty million dollar prize pool. In that instance, the bodies started mounting within the first two weeks. The whole thing concluded eleven months later.

  Detective Olszewski raised the bottle to her lips and took another generous sip. She savored the warm feeling of calm that trickled down her throat, then spread to the rest of her body. This was smooth, high-quality stuff. Expensive, but one of the small indulgences she treated herself to ever since she graduated to a detective’s salary.

  She screwed the lid back on and stashed the bottle in its usual hiding spot, then reached for her APhID and called home. Her husband answered. She told him not to bother waiting up for her tonight.

  She also told him not to book that holiday they had been planning just yet.

  Chapter 19

  TERRORISTS RELEASE KIDNAP VICTIM

  The Daily Ink

  21 February, 2067

  Emilia Ulbricht, the daughter of AFX Entertainment CEO Ethan Ulbricht, was released from her six-month kidnapping ordeal yesterday.

  Ms. Ulbricht was taken hostage by terrorist organization Discordia last July in retaliation to the arrest of the group’s leader Lukas Ormsby.

  “The only thing that matters now is that our loving daughter has been returned to us, safe and well,” Mr. Ulbricht said via his press officer. “She has suffered a great deal at the hands of these criminals, and we ask that our privacy be respected while Emilia takes the necessary time to recover.”

  Ms. Ulbricht was admitted to the St. John Of God hospital following her release, where she was being treated for the psychological trauma endured during her ordeal. She is not believed to have suffered any physical harm.

  Police are yet to make any arrests over the kidnapping, and have appealed to the public for information regarding the whereabouts of the Discordia members.

  It was recently revealed that Lukas Ormsby had been released without charge shortly after Ms. Ulbricht’s disappearance.

  Police maintain that the kidnapping of Ms. Ulbricht played no part in their decision to release Ormsby.

  [Subscribe now to view the full story]

  Emilia Ulbricht Press Release

  I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for their support and wellwishes over the past few days.

  However, there have been many false stories and misconceptions circulating regarding to my “ordeal”, and I feel I have a responsibility to clear these up.

  First of all, Discordia is not a terrorist organization. Far from it. No matter what way you spin it, the definition does not apply to them. They do not use fear or violence to illustrate their point or achieve their means. They use their brains to devise more provocative and cerebral ways of holding a mirror to society. Highlighting our hypocrisies and double-standards may be uncomfortable, and the natural response is to attack those doing the highlighting, but the truth often is uncomfortable.

  With regards to my kidnapping, the members of Discordia publicly stated from the beginning that I would be afforded the same rights as Lukas Ormsby, who by that stage had been deprived of his liberty for over five months. This is not entirely accurate. Unlike Lukas, I was never held in solitary confinement for weeks on end. My parents’ house was not raided by the police. My friends were not dragged in off the street and roughed up by police officers at the behest of their corporate benefactors. I was not subjected to beatings, threats, sleep deprivation, or other illegal interrogation techniques.

  In fact, when Lukas was finally released, my “captors” informed me that I was free to leave whenever I wanted. I insisted on serving my full 196 day sentence, to match the time that Lukas was held in custody, as a matter of principle. I may come from a much wealthier family, but that doesn’t make my false imprisonment any more unjust.

  Finally, despite what my father and his PR flunkies may want the public to believe, I have not been brainwashed, nor am I suffering from Stockholm syndrome or post-traumatic stress disorder. I have simply had my eyes opened to the ways of the world, and shown how the rich and powerful abuse their authority on a daily basis, all because they can get away with it.

  Emilia Ulbricht – 24 Feb, 2067

  Chapter 20

  There were multiple ways one could ingest Xylox.

  Swallowing was the safest and most common method. Those who took Xylox primarily for medical reasons generally consumed it this way. The effects took twenty to thirty minutes to kick in.

  Snorting was common among those who took Xylox for recreational purposes. Approximately half the snorted chemicals in a crushed pill entered the user’s bloodstream via the nose’s mucus membrane. The remainder was swallowed and traveled down to the stomach, where it then entered the bloodstream. The full high was experienced within fifteen minutes of snorting. Generally, only irregular users of Xylox favored this method, due to the damage that prolonged insufflation could wreak on the nose’s cartilage and septum.

  Injecting was an option for some hardcore users, but this practice was not widespread. The time and preparation required for shooting up – crushing a pill, cooking it up, sucking the mixture into a syringe, tapping a vein, then plunging the needle in – was often more trouble than it was worth.

  Instead, most of the truly committed Xylox connoisseurs (aka xombies) preferred to smoke their drug of choice. This involved breaking a pill into smaller pieces, placing it on a square of tinfoil, holding it over a flame, then inhaling the intoxicating fumes through a straw or a bic pen.

  This was how Alice got high, alone in a bathroom cubicle, at her place of work.

  The hit was near-instantaneous, and the effects amplified. The chemicals were drawn into her lungs and rapidly absorbed into the bloodstream, then transferred to the bodily receptors within seconds. Her muscles relaxed, and that gnawing pain she felt drilling into the back of her skull for the past three hours vanished.

  She sucked in another hit. This one felt almost as good as the first. Her misery evaporated as the Xylox raced through her body like a euphoric dose of anesthetic.

  It had been so long since Alice had gotten her hands on some genuine pharmaceutical-grade Xylox that she’d forgotten how good it could be. Up until now she’d had to make do with lemon drops, the low-grade knockoffs that she bought from Gidget on the street. But this stuff was the real deal. No unpredictable side-effects. No foul aftertaste.

  Alice had spotted a small blister pack inside a commuter’s purse on the train ride to work that morning, and she didn’t think twice about swiping the lot. It was a completely reckless and brazen act, and she would have been arrested if she was caught. But she got away with it. Alice justified her behavior by telling herself that somebody else would have stolen it if she didn’t get to it first.

  It was common sense not to leave Xylox out in the open like that. The woman was practically begging for someone to come up and steal it.

  She slumped back and rested her head against the cold tiles. Her body, normally a clenched fist, relaxed into an open palm. Moments like this allowed her to forget that her life was falling apart, disintegrating into one endless nightmare.

  Alice used to see swarms of xombies doing exactly what she was doing now; huddled beneath bridges and congregating in the park, smoking the Xylox they’d just bought with the proceeds of a carjacking. She would pass judgment on them, viewing them all as a subhuman form of life.

  Even when she recommenced her dalliance with Xylox, she never imagined that she’d
end up as one of them. But she tried smoking it once, just to see what it was like, and that was all it took. She wanted to stop, but the compulsion was simply too powerful to resist. If there was a line separating Xylox abuser and xombie, she had well and truly crossed it.

  She remained on the bathroom floor for another ten minutes. She knew it was a haven for germs, but she was far beyond caring. She would have stayed like this forever, if only she could.

  But as much as she would love to get high all day, she still had a job to do. It was a job she despised, but it was also a job she needed.

  She climbed to her feet and braced herself for the inevitable self-loathing that would stalk her once the Xylox wore off.

  She washed her hands at the basin and made a half-hearted attempt at pulling herself together. She did her best not to look like a junkie, but had only limited success.

  She scooped up a handful of water from the tap and swallowed. It felt like shards of glass going down her throat.

  A thin layer of sweat stuck to her face like cling wrap. She wiped her face down, and hoped that her appearance wasn’t too ghastly.

  She avoided the mirror. She didn’t need to be reminded of how awful she looked. It was a shock whenever she inadvertently glimpsed her reflection somewhere. She no longer recognized the gaunt creature with limp hair, sallow skin, blackened fingertips and dead eyes looking back at her. Her features had become so distorted that it was like looking into a cracked mirror.

  She still wasn’t entirely sure how she ended up like this. One minute she was fine, having been clean, sober and healthy for years. Then it was as if someone flicked a switch, and she had relapsed.

  As much as she tried shaking it off, her addiction kept coming back to her like undeliverable mail. It consumed her life, and she once again found herself enslaved by the drug.

  A low point came when she realized that she would now be willing to whore herself out to her former doctor in exchange for a Xylox prescription. The sad irony was that in her present condition, even a creep like him wouldn’t be interested in her.

  She took a breath before heading back to her cubicle, still wondering how everything could have possibly gone so wrong. Her previous sensible life was now nothing more than a distant memory.

  All in all, it had been one harrowing year.

  Unless they had the misfortune of being touched by terminal illness, few people in their twenties spent a great deal of time reflecting on their own mortality. But for Alice, thoughts of death consumed nearly every waking moment. Even on rare occasions when she was temporarily able to push them from her mind, it took only a small reminder – such as finding another brown envelope slipped underneath her door – to drag her back to that dark pit of despair.

  She now accepted that death was coming for her. Death came for everybody, of course, even if most people were unwilling to admit it. But Alice knew it could leap out and surprise her at any moment now. In fact, it was more than likely. A statistical probability. She was living on borrowed time.

  The more she came to accept her impending demise, the more she came to see it as no great tragedy. The world would hardly be any worse off with Alice Kato no longer a part of it. She had made no significant contribution to society. With her gone, there would just be one less person taking up space.

  She doubted few would mourn her passing. Lachlan might, but only because he was obliged to.

  Most of her friends had drifted away in recent years. They would probably be sad upon hearing the news, then forget about it soon enough and carry on with their lives.

  Dinah would be upset; mostly due to the fact that she would have the arduous task of hiring and training Alice’s replacement.

  As for her father, she figured he’d care about as much for Alice in death as he did in life.

  At least in accepting her death, Alice was coping better than many of the other contestants in the lottery. Some had gone to great lengths in trying to outrun the inevitable.

  One such contestant was Levi Sassmannshausen. He had changed his name and altered his appearance, before fleeing town and hiding out in a cheap motel. His electrocuted body was discovered submerged in the bathtub a few days later.

  Another contestant, Abigail Tevez, took even more extreme measures. She beat another contestant to death in the street with a claw hammer, then immediately surrendered to police. It appeared her logic was that she would be much safer in prison than out in public. She could serve out her term, and still be in the running to collect the prize money when she was released.

  It sounded good in theory, but six weeks into her thirty-five year prison sentence she was found dead in her cell, hanging by a bed sheet.

  Lianne Levy even made an attempt at faking her own death. Upon hearing of a deadly train crash nearby, she rushed to the scene and managed to sneak past the rescue workers, then tossed her identification and other personal belongings into the wreck. This led police to conclude that she was one of the passengers on the train who had perished in the crash. The contest organizers weren’t so easily fooled, and duly informed the other contestants of her present whereabouts.

  A short time later, Lianne’s family grieved for her a second time.

  Many contestants wished to withdraw from the lottery, but had no idea of how they should go about this. One was Arash Amirpour; he delivered letters to all the remaining contestants informing them that he was voluntarily removing his name from the lottery, thereby forfeiting any chance of ever claiming the money.

  The contestants all received a second letter from the organizers a few days later. It instructed them to disregard Mr. Amirpour’s letter, and reminded the participants that the $100 million would not be paid out until all but one contestant remained.

  Chapter 21

  Alice came to an abrupt stop when she noticed the brand new silver Volkswagen parked directly opposite the entrance to The Daily Ink building. Even from this distance, she could recognize the driver.

  Bourke Nation. He was here, outside her place of work.

  She quickly backtracked around the corner and hoped she hadn’t been spotted.

  Scores of questions flooded her mind. How long had Bourke been sitting there? Was he waiting for her? Was this the first time he had been here?

  It was only due to luck that Alice noticed him tonight. The elevators had broken down earlier in the day and she was forced to exit via the stairwell, which led to a door at the side of the building. Had she left through the front entrance like she usually did, she probably wouldn’t have seen him.

  She was set on edge from the moment she laid eyes on him. What were the chances of Bourke stumbling across her by accident? Unlikely. The old Alice might have brushed this off as a mere coincidence. The new Alice no longer believed in such a phenomenon.

  She stood back and observed him from behind the corner of the building. Bourke’s sudden reappearance in her life had rattled her – this was the first time she had seen the cocky loudmouth since Naomi’s funeral, more than a year ago – even if she didn’t quite know what exactly bothered her so much. It wasn’t as if the streets were deserted; it was daylight, and there were still plenty of people around. She wasn’t in any immediate danger. She doubted Bourke would be foolish enough to try anything with so many witnesses. And there was nothing in his demeanor to suggest that he meant her any harm. For all she knew, he had dropped by just to talk to her.

  Alice had developed a chronic habit of blowing every instance in her life all out of proportion, adding unwarranted significance to the insignificant. Maybe she was doing it again.

  Minutes passed, and neither one moved. Her eyes stayed firmly on Bourke, while Bourke kept his eyes firmly on the building’s entrance.

  Alice wondered how much longer they could keep this up, and which one would crack first.

  She could have left without Bourke seeing her. But she wanted to stay. She wasn’t comfortable with the idea of letting him out of her sight just yet. She much preferred to be the one watch
ing him, knowing something he didn’t, rather than the other way around.

  Another twenty nerve-grinding minutes elapsed before Bourke eventually grew bored with waiting. He pulled out of his parking space and sped off down the road.

  Alice didn’t move until his taillights faded from view.

  Another brown envelope was awaiting Alice upon her return home that night.

  She often wondered about the exact purpose of placing the cards inside these envelopes. The contest organizers could just as easily have slipped the cards under the door as they were. Maybe concealing them was all part of the Consortium’s mind games; keeping the contestants in suspense, letting them know that someone had died but not telling them who it was straight away.

  Discovering another envelope always provoked a queasy feeling of dread. Alice maintained a Schrodinger-like belief that the contestant wasn’t really, officially dead until she opened it up and saw their photograph. Sometimes she delayed doing this for as long as she could bear it. She believed this extended their life – in her mind, at least.

  She didn’t bother with any such superstitions tonight and tore it open straight away.

  This envelope contained two cards instead of the usual one.

  The first showed Tory Weller, a twenty-five year old waitress. The second showed Chadwick Lyons, thirty-three and unemployed. Both contestants had “ELIMINATED” stamped across their smiling faces.

  She closed her eyes and said a silent prayer for the two dead strangers. Two deaths closer to her own.

  She pinned the cards to her wall, next to the other sixteen.

  Her wall of death resembled a macabre bingo card. Twenty-seven spaces, one for each contestant, and eighteen now filled in.

  Only nine remained.

  The lottery had become a modern day bubonic plague, tearing through the population and leaving a trail of death and destruction in its wake.