“Do yourselves a favour,” grunts Graaf, “don’t lie to the O’see. She can smell it a mile away.”
“Where’s Mr. Thorpe-Campbell?” I ask. “I need to see him.”
“Not here, young ’un.”
“No shit,” Rachel cuts in. “It’s Lord of the Flies down there.”
That comment seems to amuse him as he accesses the next door with his wrist ink. “I like a bit of spit from a buggo, but watch your mouth, young lady. You can say whatever you like in the Hex, but it’d better stay in there, or else.”
“Show them in, Mister Graaf. But one at a time. There’s been enough gang warfare for one day.” The O’see’s voice is surprisingly high-pitched, exotic—I can’t place its origin—and dripping with disdain.
“You first, Trillion.” As Graaf politely guides me in, I offer Rachel a reassuring wink.
She winks right back. The door slides shut between us.
“James Trillion. I’m Brigadier Hendron, O’see for the Hex. We didn’t meet during the induction, did we?”
“No.”
Seated on the other side of a busy digitab, she looks up at me with big, beautiful purple eyes impeccably decorated with eyeliner. “No what?”
“No, we haven’t met.”
“In future you’ll refer to me as Ma’am or O’see. Okay?”
“O’see, yeah—Oh, I see—I mean, yes, O’see.” I untie my tongue and give a kill-me-now sigh. “Yes, ma’am.”
Glancing back down to her digitab, she slips a lopsided smile through her icy expression. “Scoring below middle of the pack so far, pretty good in a few areas, struggling a bit in the classroom. Surprisingly varied formal education, mostly in Juve-Ed. Impressive reading list. Test scores indicate a potentially very high IQ. All over the map, though, academically and geographically. You got around a lot, didn’t you, under the radar? Criminal tendencies?”
“No, O’see. Mr. Thorpe-Campbell—”
“It’s okay, I have his testimony here. I won’t read it back to you, but I can tell you he’s singled you out as a potential frontrunner, and I don’t mean on the track.”
“How? I’m not even middle of the pack.”
She looks up again. Her slow, deliberate blinks leave me horribly self-conscious, as though her eyelashes are catching my thoughts somehow. The purple pigment of her irises does not look natural. It’s dazzling, almost metallic, made up of tiny incandescent spokes that fan out from the pupil. What is she?
“Multi-spectral ocular implants,” she says, as if I asked the question out loud. “Useful for reading brain activity, among other things. Standard-issue for Phi-level counter-intelligence operatives. But don’t worry, I never use them on buggos. At least not yet.”
I don’t know whether to like her or not. She doesn’t seem old enough to be a brigadier, which I’ve always assumed is a rank reserved for those with ear-hair and white moustaches (men and women). No, O’see Hendron is more like one of the pool moms Sergei and I used to see all the time around the oases hotels. She has short black hair, a very pale, elfin face with high cheekbones, and a not-too-bad figure. Even her cargo pants and blouse with extra pockets in the sleeves is pretty casual for someone of such high rank.
“And to address your previous concern,” she says, “the scoreboard will take care of itself.” Whatever that’s supposed to mean. “Try to focus on why you think Mr. Thorpe-Campbell chose you, and how that might be useful.”
“Yes, O’see. Can I ask a question?”
“Go on.”
“Is riddle-speak also standard issue for Phi-level counter-intelligence operatives, ma’am?”
She double-blinks at me very slowly. “I can’t decide if that was just cheeky or insubordinate, Trillion. Given your criminal background and the informal way you were recruited, I don’t think you quite realise how a hierarchy works. You will. I’ll let it slide this time. But Mr. Thorpe-Campbell isn’t here to mentor you, and I won’t tolerate cheeky or subordinate. Understood?”
“Yes, O’see.”
“The answer to your question is yes. Riddle-speak, as you put it, is pretty much how we extract information from a subject without giving up any of our own. In the military, you say what needs to be said and no more. But unfortunately for you, buggos need to come clean about everything.” She plonks her elbows on the table top and rests her chin on clasped hands. “So, in your own words, tell me what happened just now in the Hex.”
I don’t hesitate, and I don’t withhold anything. It’s as clear and concise an account as any I’ve ever given. My limbs shake toward the end—must be the adrenaline working overtime—but I don’t falter. In fact, I’m starting to fume like I did in the arena.
“So Rachel Foggerty didn't start it?” she asks out of the blue.
“No. Why would—”
“She didn't get involved at all with the fighting?”
“Huh?” I can't see what that has to do with anything. “How am I supposed to know? I was too busy getting the crap kicked out of me by a pack of—”
“Okay, Trillion. That's all I wanted to know.”
“What? Why didn’t anyone stop it? We were outnumbered. It wasn’t a fair fight.”
“Barring an extremely serious infraction, we don’t interfere with what goes on in the Hex. That should have been explained to you during acclimation, but you weren’t there. I apologize for that.”
“So what is the point of the Hex? O’see.”
“It’s your opportunity to become the best you can be.”
“But ma’am—”
“That’s all, Trillion. You’re dismissed. Go back to join your first period class. And send Foggerty in on your way out.”
“Yes, O’see.”
The urge to pack my things and heels-up on this crap job is so strong I can taste it, but unfortunately I have no things, I can’t get out, and this isn’t technically a job. So I’ll just have to swallow it. For now.
The idea that nothing will have changed when we next enter the Hex is a nightmare I can’t hope to shake. Are we supposed to fight off Sarazzin and his bullies every time? Four of us against...however many pack hunters he’s collected by then? If we give up Rachel, maybe it will stop. But if we do that, we might as well disband the team altogether, because when someone comes to poach Lyssa, or Lohengrin, they’ll do it knowing we’re not strong enough to refuse forever. What sort of team is that?
Rachel’s damp gaze as I leave her behind stings me deep inside. She knows, just as I do, that it’s all over for us. Out of Sergei’s shadow, I’m thirteen, alone, and puny compared to my enemies. I can’t protect her in the Hex. I can’t protect Lyssa either, or Lohengrin. But worst of all, I can’t protect myself.
They say hell exists underground.
They can say that again.
CHAPTER 8
Altering the Experiment
“From now on you four split up, and stay split up, when you’re in here. I don’t ever wanna see you on the same gig at the same time again.” Sarazzin has started calling the apparatuses ‘gigs’, so naturally everyone else is doing the same. He tosses a handful of sand in the air, showering Lyssa, Lohengrin and me. Kind of like an evil wizard casting a curse. Behind him, Rachel sits cross-legged on the sand, looking anywhere but at us, flanked by the two harpies who took turns slapping Lyssa about earlier.
We all understand why Rachel has defected, and none of us blames her for it. If she’d stayed, we’d all have paid. There’s a simple law of the Hex, one that we’ve just learned the hard way: if you make friends, you’ve already made enemies. It’s a tribal thing. Because scoring points is the driving force here, the better you do as a team, the more others will want to bring you down. And to do that, they’ll have to become a team, a stronger team, if not through talent then through bullying, until you’re left with multiple factions of equal strength, or one team strangling all competition.
Right now, Sarazzin is the emperor of the Hex. He has his royal guard, Orkney and Ramirez, whom no on
e wants to tangle with. He has half a dozen of the top scorers—athletes, mathematicians, scientists, or all-rounders—right where he wants them, to help him be the best he can be (to quote O’see Hendron). And from their point of view, it’s better to be behind the hurricane than in its path. They can still shine. Rachel can still shine. As long as they don’t outshine the emperor.
So this is it. The end of our beginning. The O’see and Thorpe-Campbell have made it clear we’re on our own down here. Therefore, this is all a part of the experiment. They’re watching to see how we evolve as a group and as individuals. No doubt how each of us reacts to Emperor Sarazzin is as important as how we perform on the gigs. On his gigs.
But can this really be what they want? A herd of buggos, following one guy just because he’s big and bad? Sure, that’s the military way. But we’re supposed to be special cases, hand-picked for this top secret training program. They have to want more from us than this. If they’re studying our every move, as Lyssa reckons, what are we telling them about ourselves by folding under pressure from an ape like Sarazzin? I don’t know much about this facility, but I do know one thing: Thorpe-Campbell didn’t tear me away from Sergei for this.
“The rest of you can...ah, what do I care? I don’t wanna get greedy.” The emperor yawns. “You can’t touch us anyway. This team’s unbeatable now that we’ve got rid of Duck-Boy and his ringers.”
“What if Duck-Boy gets in with another team? He could still be dangerous,” someone warns Sarazzin.
“Then we’ll just have to de-throne him again,” replies Orkney, playfully punching his own palm.
The emperor snickers.
“Well, what are you waiting for?” Ramirez stomps toward us, cocks his fist, then halts a powerful punch millimetres from Lohengrin’s stitched and bandaged nose. My tall friend doesn’t even flinch. “Shoo!” the big meathead yells at him instead.
“Yeah, get out of my sight, all three of you,” adds Sarazzin. “Remember, I don’t wanna see you together again on the same gig. Ever. You know what’ll happen if I do.”
None of us argues, or makes a reply, or even looks at each other. We just walk away. A team no more.
But that’s not all I’m walking away from. No. If this is how the game’s set up, and there are no rules down here, then I don’t have to play. Simple as. If they won’t intervene to stop a blood-fight, or to stop this bullying, then they sure as hell can’t object to my doing nothing.
So from this moment on, I, Jim Trillion, am going to alter the experiment.
They wanted a skimmer? They got one.
All it takes is a little larceny and a lot of patience. In Craft, Design and Tech class, second period, Tuesdays and Fridays, we make things from scratch. Everything from a solar still to a sub-space transmitter and receiver. Throughout the month following my team’s breakup in the Hex I make basic climbing equipment: rope, rigs and harnesses.
Rope-making is a lost art because hardly anybody does it by hand nowadays. They don’t have to. Machines have been doing it faster and more efficiently for centuries. But what if you were out in the field, in the mountains, say, and the only way you could descend a deep ravine—to save your life—was to lower yourself down? You can’t do it without rope, and if you don’t have rope, you have to make it yourself using the materials available.
There are lots of ways to do it, depending on what you have to work with. Tying twisted pieces of clothing together is one way, but you’re generally not wearing enough to make much of it. Mostly it’s vines, creepers, parachute cords, and strips of tree bark. It can be laborious and time-consuming, especially if you rig up a rope-walk and do it the really old-fashioned way.
At the end of each session, when no one’s watching, I stuff several feet of the tightly coiled Manila hemp rope I’ve made into a disused utility pipe in the tool room.
When the month of rope-making is up, I wait for my turn to stay behind and clean up. While our instructor, Mrs Lamphey, is busy maintaining the skivvies, I volunteer to take a damaged one across to the Pit-Stop, the facility’s repair shop across the walkway. She likes to encourage any practical aptitude she sees in a student, and she knows I’ve had experience with skivvies. So, Teacher’s Pet with no shame, I smuggle the rope out by hiding it inside the robot’s empty garbage compartment and taking it straight to my quarters.
It’s a close call when Graaf and the Head of Hex Security, Gladys, walk right by me as I pass the Pit-Stop. But they’re too busy griping to one another to pay any attention to one lowly buggo.
All it takes is a little larceny and a lot of patience. No one else appears to suspect anything, so now all I have to do is knot my lengths of rope together and use it to climb onto the Hex’s balcony. Preferably when Sarazzin and his posse are at the opposite end of the arena. And after that? Well, nobody knows what’s up there. Maybe nothing. In that case I’ll just put my feet up and watch the insanity unfold below.
I want nothing more to do with the gigs. And I want nothing more to do with this game.
Of course, the four of us friends don’t stay complete strangers, not even in the Hex. We share a few words whenever we pass each other, joke around a bit; but we always have to keep an eye out for the emperor’s posse, which loves nothing more than to report Lohengrin’s every little triumph, slip-up, or transgression to Sarazzin.
The majority of buggos are still rubbing sleep out of their peepers when I make a bee-line for the balcony and, after peeling my glowsuit down to the waist, uncoil the full length of rope I’ve wrapped in a spiral around my torso. No one in the elevator seemed to notice the unusual bulges in my suit. Several buggos are fascinated now, though, those that aren’t sleep-walking to their allotted gigs—yesterday’s sessions were some of the toughest yet for these saps, four or five teams trying to outdo each other in a kind of spontaneous mini tournament, and they’re paying the price for that tiring workout now.
But I’m fresh as juice from the squeezer. For the past five or six weeks I’ve hardly touched a gig unless someone’s asked me to, usually when one of the smaller teams have been short-handed on a co-op activity. The rest of the time I’ve spent alone, either jogging laps or browsing the digipedia or sitting in the sand, back against a rock wall, imagining myself out there in the desert on a blissfully aimless journey with a sand bike purring beside me.
This morning is different. I peel the elastic rubber border frame off the nearest digitab. It’s there to prevent injury if a buggo should slip and bang his head—not an uncommon result here, as you can imagine. Next, I fashion this into as tight and round a rubber ball as I possibly can, and then secure that shape by tying it with one end of my rope. I now have my anchor.
Regular gaps between the metal balcony posts, and a flat wall behind, means I can throw my anchor up over the railing and let it bounce off the rear wall. Hopefully it will find its way through the posts and back down to me. I’ll then be able to knot the line into a loop and tighten it around the railing, securing a climbing rope.
During our first few days in the Hex, a student from a senior class sat up there, “supervising” us. He never said anything and we didn’t ask. There hasn’t been a single visitor since.
My first two throws fall short. The next three are too high or too hard. It’s tricky, this—I have to get exactly the right force and trajectory for the rubber anchor-ball to bounce the way I want it to.
“Jim? What in the name of Black Hole Bertha are you doing?” It’s Lyssa, half amused, half terrified—for my sake—as she ties her hair into a bun and watches me commit career suicide.
“Making my own gig,” I reply.
“Don’t you want to pick up some more points first? I mean you’ve been hurting on the scoreboard lately. I don’t wanna see you get cut, Jim.”
“Thanks. But the only thing that hurts around here is that scoreboard. It’s spoiled everything. I don’t want any part of it. Or this whole experiment. Don’t you see how crazy it is? How pointless?”
�
�It’s what we’re here to do. It’s what they—”
“Lyssa, it’s dumb. The only thing we’re learning here is how to crap ourselves at the sight of bullies. Well, guess what—lesson learned. Thanks for that, Hex.”
I try another throw. This one lands where I want it to but doesn’t make it through the posts, so I have to gently reel it back.
“You’ll get your stupid ass thrown out of here, Trillion.” Her face is pink with rage, like she’s about to thump me. But all it does is make me feel sorry for her. If she’s right and I do get thrown out, that will be one of the few things I’ll regret—leaving Lyssa. And Lohengrin. And Rachel, of course.
“Don’t care,” I lie, readying another toss. “Tell you what, though. If I find anything cool up there, next time you can come with me.”
She plonks her fists on her hips. “Oh, you’ll find something cool up there alright—ice cool, numbnuts, when they spit your ass out.”
God, I wish I’d met Lyssa during our skimming days. That mouth of hers would have had me and Sergei in stitches.
I take another step back and let fly with a stronger throw. The rubber anchor reappears immediately after it thuds against the back wall. Lyssa catches it before it hits the sand, then tosses it to me. “See you around, Trillion.”
After watching her rejoin a team I don’t know—and don’t much want to—I secure my rope and make the climb on the first attempt. I’ve had plenty of practice in the oases gyms and funhouses. Once I’m on the balcony, I haul the rope after me. Almost every buggo’s looking up at me now. My heart’s racing so fast it pumps adrenaline in waves that roll and crash and thrill; they fizz up, moistening my eyes with a feeling of excitement and release I haven’t experienced since those two weeks in the desert with Sergei, at the throttle of a sand bike. I can’t make anyone out through the mist.
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