Meritropolis

by Joel Ohman

Charley rounded on the four remaining guards, each hurriedly unsheathing their vicious bats. They stepped back slightly as they did so, eying Charley the way one might after jerking a hand back from a puppy suddenly turned rabid.

  The older sister seized the opportunity caused by the distraction. She snatched up the little girl and melted into the now roiling crowd.

  The crowd tightened into a circle around Charley and the four remaining guards, forming a boxing ring of bodies. Closing in tighter and tighter, the guards drew nearer the crazed bear who had dared to buck off his restraints and face down his handlers.

  The smartest way to corner a dangerous animal, when you have them outnumbered and outgunned, is of course to split up and attack from multiple directions at once. But guards on gate duty would have had their middling high Scores because of their size and strength alone, and not for their intelligence. They didn’t proceed with that smartest next step.

  The pure rage and adrenaline rush of Charley’s initial emotional high was already beginning to subside now that the girl was safe, for the time being, and in its place was a cold hard cunning.

  Noticing the change in Charley’s eyes, the guards advanced with more confidence, bats extended.

  The largest of the four stepped forward and leered at Charley. “Let’s see how you handle the feel of my bat against your skull, boy. Bet you wish you had one of these, don’t you?”

  But the guard hadn’t realized Charley’s proximity to the two downed guards. Charley bent down on one knee and, in one fluid motion, jerked both bats from the fallen guards’ belts. Rising, he twirled a bat in each hand and moved cat-like toward the big guard.

  Charley smiled wickedly. “I bet you wish you had two, huh?” The crowd, who had been so restrained when the little girl was being led to the gates, now began to titter, mocking and taunting the guard.

  The big guard’s face flushed. His teeth gritted in anger, but beneath that Charley detected uncertainty. And fear. A curse of going through life as one of the biggest and strongest is that you rarely have that physical superiority challenged. While Charley himself would never be mistaken for the biggest or the strongest in a crowd, he had become an experienced fighter from a very young age. His combination of time-bomb temper and highest Score among the Meritropolis below-grounders had seen to good practice at fighting—and winning—since his youth.

  Circling each other in weaving clockwise loops, Charley sensed the guard’s building frustration. He knew it was only a matter of time before the large guard dropped any semblance of a strategy and charged him. There wasn’t much time. Soon the other three guards would wise up and coordinate their efforts rather than simply letting the biggest guard take the lead.

  Charley decided to speed the process along.

  “Scared of my high Score, chubby?” Charley yelled. The guard was anything but, yet it was often the most muscular guys who took the greatest offense at someone calling them fat.

  The guard’s mouth twisted with rage. Charley winked and said, “Need to catch your breath first?”

  The guard lowered his head and tensed his enormous bulk to charge, but before he could take his first great plodding step, Charley darted in and struck like a snake, jabbing both bats tip-first into the guard’s massive chest. Charley let the bats drift down and then thunder-clapped them on each side of the guard’s head. Stepping back, Charley let the guard sink to his knees and then fall face-first at his feet with a thud, a plume of dust puffing up neatly and then dissipating.

  Charley kept his eyes fixed on the remaining three guards, who had begun looking a bit less confident, and opened his mouth to issue a taunt.

  Suddenly he felt the tip of a very sharp weapon pressed into the base of his skull.

  “Bravo. That was quite a performance. And all for a little girl with a Score of 33, too. Pity it will all be a waste.” The blade point pressed harder, drawing blood.

  “Toss the bats and turn to face me. Slowly.”

  Charley threw the bats in the direction of the three remaining guards and cautiously turned around.

  Commander Orson stood in front of him, his deadly blade outstretched and centered on Charley’s throat.

  “Kneel.”

  Charley’s left eyelid twitched. Now was probably the only chance he had to make a run for it.

  “I wouldn’t if I were you.” Orson spoke in a voice as soft as silk, seeming to read his opponent’s mind. His eyes remained on Charley, almost hypnotic. Using his left hand, he kept the sword point a razor’s edge from Charley’s throat. With his right, he brandished the Score on his own forearm.

  Charley took a quick glance. A Score of 146. Charley’s own Score of 118 drew whispers and respect from complete strangers, but 146 was almost unimaginable. It was over twice the average.

  Charley’s teachers underground said someone like him with a Score of 118 was predicted to only come around once in a generation. If that was true, then what about someone like Commander Orson, with a Score of 146? Once every 100 years? The Event was only 12 years ago, so Charley wondered if perhaps Orson was the first to ever have such a high Score. Considering that, it made sense that Orson was in charge. Charley knew that intelligence was a large factor in the System’s Score assessment, and he also knew that physical abilities accounted for a high Score. Charley trembled inwardly at the thought that such an off-the-charts Score must mean that Orson possessed both.

  “Out of respect for your Score, I will give you one final opportunity. Kneel.” Not once did Orson’s arm waver, the tip of the blade controlled with deadly precision.

  Charley began to obey, dropping down to one knee slowly, reluctant to drop down to both, still looking for an opportunity to escape.

  “Get down on both knees—now!”

  Orson turned his focus to the crowd pushing in. His voice boomed out across the courtyard. “This man kneeling before me has assaulted three guards and defied the System. The very same System that ensures the best of us have food on the table, protection from what lays beyond the gates, and …”

  Charley watched as Commander Orson paused for dramatic impact.

  “The very same System that awarded this man a Score of 118.”

  Sounds of surprise and even a little awe rose up in a crescendo from the mass of people. Charley could feel the eyes of the crowd even more acutely. For the first time he noticed Sven, fighting his way through the densely packed bodies to get closer. Charley looked up and met his gaze, trying to warn him away.

  Commander Orson continued. “This man possesses a Score of 118, given to him by the System, and yet, he has clearly defied the System by interfering with today’s gate ceremony. Should he die for his defiance?” Orson challenged.

  The crowd was silent.

  Charley closed his eyes. He’d failed. Even if the little girl and her sister had got away, the System would find many more like her. Many more like Alec.

  “Maybe he will die. But not today,” Orson said. “Today he will learn to love the System. I decree that he will become a Hunter; one of the select few chosen to battle the dangers that lay outside of the gates for the good of us all. We will see if his fighting talents are as successful outside of the gates as they are within.”

  The crowd murmured, unsure what to make of this pronouncement.

  “To ensure his cooperation, the girl will live.” Commander Orson motioned dismissively toward the guards who had already captured the little girl and her older sister in their failed attempt to escape.

  He paused and then looked directly at Charley.

  “For now.”

  Charley contested Orson with his eyes, willing himself not to blink. Orson paused, as if considering something, before barking an order. “Guards, at attention!”

  The three remaining guards, now joined by a cadre of a dozen or so more, hastily stood ramrod-straight, eyes ahead. Orson directed the full force of his gaze back to Charley. “You must learn that I am a slave to the System just as you are. We all live and die by the Sys
tem. Higher Scores may enjoy certain privileges, but if the girl is to live, then I must have you understand that I will not—I cannot—shirk my responsibility to the System.”

  A shadow flitted across Orson’s face and was gone. “And you must also learn that I do not make idle threats. Your actions will have consequences that affect those you care about. You must learn this. Let’s begin now.”

  “Guards, secure this man!”

  The guards circled Charley, weapons drawn.

  Charley watched as Orson turned toward the crowd, his eyes searching. They came to rest on a small figure not ten feet away.

  Sven.

  Commander Orson closed the distance between him and Sven with three large strides. Without a word, he grabbed Sven’s collar and, exerting no effort, pivoted and threw Sven toward the center of the courtyard, like a little rock skittering across the pond. Charley struggled to rise but immediately received a guard’s boot in the back of the head, accompanied by a gruff curse and a tightening of the guards’ circle.

  Orson raised his voice to the crowd. “Today the System requires that someone be put out of the gates.” His voiced increased to an almost fevered pitch. “Our new Hunter must learn that the System is always right. Always.”

  Orson’s eyes focused on Sven, now scrabbling backward away from him, unthinkingly moving himself closer to the gates.

  “Guards, put this one outside of the gates. Now!”

  Charley roared in defiance and looked wildly toward Sven. Orson’s pale shark eyes glittered in return before he strode quickly back toward Charley. The commander deftly flipped his wrist to the side and then slammed the flat of his sword blade against Charley’s head.

  All was silent.

  CHAPTER 4

  Preparation

  George Jonas was not the kind of man to make rash decisions. In fact, George was the kind of man to very rarely even give a flat-out yes or no answer. “It seems to me that …”, “Everything else being equal, I would venture that …”, and other conditionals were SOP—or Standard Operating Procedure, in gate engineer parlance—for George when presented with a question.

  His wife and children usually found his probing analytical mind and unique mannerisms endearing, his fellow gate engineers didn’t notice a thing, since they were just like him, and his mother had always known he would be an engineer, mathematician, or scientist when he grew up. Everyone else, and their opinions of him, well, just didn’t matter because there was one thing that George Jonas knew for certain: he loved his family. He was devoted to his wife, Allison, and their three young kids.

  George had thought long and hard about the System. His Score had always been quite high. Not triple digits, but significantly higher than the average. His wife had also always enjoyed a middling high Score and they were fortunate that each of their kids enjoyed the same high Scores that brought a relatively comfortable and secure childhood. As was the norm, each received their daytime training in the below-ground dormitories and then came above-ground at night to their home, like the other children with parents or caretakers.

  George knew that his wife and children would be safe in the System for many years to come, barring some freak accident or other unforeseen circumstance that would jeopardize their high Scores. But George Jonas was not the kind of man to leave something as important as the safety of his family to chance.

  A crippling fall from a tree, a fluke infectious disease, it wasn’t unheard of for a young child—or really just about anyone in Meritropolis—to experience a life-changing event that could result in a plummeting Score. And with it, the inevitable sentence to the gates.

  Just like that little girl.

  George was shaken by what had happened to her: perfectly healthy not more than a month before developing some sort of chronic and crippling health condition, and then being sentenced to the gates, her Score dropping to a pitiful 33. He had wanted to say something, to do something, at the gate ceremony, but he had a family to take care of.

  He had secretly cheered on that young man who had intervened to save the little girl and demolish three of Commander Orson’s trained guards. However, George wasn’t under any illusions about his own abilities. He knew he wouldn’t be able to beat up one of the commander’s goons even if he himself had the metal bat and they were empty-handed. And even if he could, everyone saw what had happened to the guy with the Score of 118; he’d still got taken down in the end, just like a rabid dog.

  But after seeing what had happened to the little girl, his wife had made him promise that he would never let anything like that happen to Molly, James, or Serena.

  He had promised.

  He had said that he would do anything to protect them. And George Jonas was not the kind of man to say something and not mean it. He would do whatever it took to protect his family.

  But he was also not the kind of man to sit back and leave uncertainties to untangle themselves later. And that is why he found himself in the closet of his workshop at three in the morning, carefully stacking three-pound bricks of homemade C-4 plastic explosive into neat little pyramids behind the vent.

  Whatever the System decided about his family in the future, he would be prepared.

  That was just the kind of man George Jonas was.

  * * *

  Grigoristan Jurgenson was ugly. In fact, if one were to concentrate upon his great round face—if one could force themselves to stare for long enough, that is—then one might just find that he was the ugliest man they had ever seen.

  Of course, there are many different types of “ugly” and, yes, “ugly” is in the eye of the beholder, but ugliness has a certain power, causing an almost instant and visceral reaction. It may sometimes elicit sympathy, sometimes cause revulsion, and at other times amusement or mocking. But Grigor’s ugliness did none of these things. When people saw him, they immediately ducked their heads out of deference.

  Grigor’s ugliness had a hardness to it, an almost animalistic quality that seemed wild and menacing—inhuman. He was all massive shoulders and neck with a bulging forehead protruding over his recessed eyes, and his face somehow looked both harder than rock and soft with wrinkles all at the same time. In short, Grigor was scary.

  Grigor was ugly and Grigor was scary. But people liked him.

  Grigor’s most amazing quality was his smile—it could melt paint off the walls. It was so pure and bursting with child-like goodwill that the transformation it wrought on his otherwise menacing features was awe-inspiring. Grigor’s smile caused people to feel a special kind of affirmation about themselves: “Grigor’s on our side.” Seeing Grigor smile was very much like suddenly discovering that you had a knack for relating to a large and dangerous wild animal, and that the animal was quite fond of you, even enjoyed being in your company. The whole experience gave one a sense of pride, as if to be worthy of being chosen for protection.

  But as Charley woke up from unconsciousness, Grigor’s non-smiling face towering over him was terrifying to behold.

  “Where am I? What the—?” Charley squeezed his eyelids together quickly, once, twice, and then fought back a spasm of terror at the sight of the enormous creature looming above him. He jerked himself upright and immediately regretted it. His skull felt like it was caught in a vice, the blood in his head whump-whumping in time to some merciless rhythm.

  He eased his head back down onto a cot of some kind. If this great hulking beast of a man was going to torture him, then so be it. Charley didn’t care. Then he thought of his friend backing toward the gates. “Sven! Where is Sven?” Charley flailed unsuccessfully at the straw-like sheet covering his legs, sinking back down onto the cot once more.

  “Relax,” the great brute said simply.

  Charley obeyed.

  Then the huge man cocked his head quizzically to one side like a dog and said, “The boy, Sven. Your friend. You care about him. He was put outside the gates, but he was not truly zeroed.” He paused. “He will be taken care of.”

  “Wha—w
hat? Taken care of? He’s … not dead?” Charley asked.

  “You must be important to the System.”

  Charley’s head was throbbing worse than ever. “But Commander Orson said—”

  “You must be important to Commander Orson as well.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You don’t need to. Commander Orson instructed me to tell you that your friend will be just fine.” He paused, and then looked meaningfully at Charley. “He will be fine if you don’t cause anymore trouble, of course. You don’t need to understand the details, just know that Commander Orson expects your cooperation.” Grigor paused again, his great forehead wrinkling up as he spoke earnestly. “Just believe me.”

  Grigor smiled.

  And Charley found that he believed him. And then, surprising himself, Charley smiled in return.

  “Good! This will make my job easier. I am called Grigor.” He reached out his enormous bear paw of a hand to Charley, still beaming.

  Forcing himself up on one elbow, Charley extended his hand to be swallowed up enthusiastically by Grigor’s.

  “I’m Charley.”

  Grigor gave a deep-throated chuckle. “I know who you are. All of Meritropolis knows who you are now. You are an impressive fighter. For an untrained worm, that is, of course.” He continued to smile broadly. “I was not close by. I don’t like gate ceremonies. Very good for you that I was watching from a great distance. If I were closer, you wouldn’t have been able to put on the exhibition that you did for the crowd.”

  The smile never left Grigor’s face. And Charley still believed him.

  “Now, get some rest. Training begins tomorrow. I am very excited to see what you can do. You might be one of the first up to facing one of them alone—in the daylight, of course.”

  “Training? Who exactly am I facing? Or …” Charley paused, studying Grigor’s face. “What, exactly, am I facing?”

  Grigor’s massive face creased into an even bigger smile. “You are smart. We will talk more tomorrow. Don’t you worry about a thing. You will do well. Now, sleep.”