“The surveillance team have flagged some suspicious payments coming in for the bounties. I suggest we start a bridge call straight away.” Arty looked at her for long while. Had her hair always been this grey? Had she always looked this tired?
“What do you mean … suspicious?”
“One player has been repeatedly targeted every time their number is available for bounty.”
“There’s nothing against that in the rules, is there?”
“You’re right. Except the number being targeted is 515,740.”
Arty’s eyes narrowed. “Why do I know that number?”
“It’s Nova Negrahnu, the Gogmagog girl. And the bounties being placed on her are huge — £121,212 every time, to be precise. They’re being sent anonymously via cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.”
Arty lurched forward in his seat. “Ask Carl to investigate the payments. Get as much information as possible. And get our friends at Legoland on the phone as soon as you can.”
Chapter Forty-Two
The common room was silent as the Tweel spun round its axis. It had been set in motion by Kiki La Roux from aboard the Disco Stick. He held his hands to his heart and begged for forgiveness from any loyal viewers the Tweel would inevitably select. His nails featured video clips of the players who had been killed only minutes before when thousands of ‘Multiples of Three’ had been selected for bounty and sent to their likely deaths.
Once the Tweel had slowed to a halt, the tentacle closest to Kiki became animated. The face peering out chanted the word ‘Evens’, breaking the silence in the common room with a chorus of groans. Everyone looked to Nova for her reaction. She cussed the number gods under her breath and tried to remain cool, calm and collected.
Cams in the room were broadcasting the event around the globe, so that people could experience the drama with her. That meant that whoever was placing these ridiculous bounties on her head was likely to be watching her every move. And there was no way she was going to give them the satisfaction of watching her squirm.
A minute later, when the same bounty of £121,212 flashed above her head, the crowd booed their disgust louder than ever. She heard Burner swear like a trooper, and Charlie appeal for calm. The bounty was huge. Ten times larger than the bounties on the heads of unpopular celebrities, the kind who were as vacuous as they were untalented.
The bounty’s consistent size and numerical structure — the number twelve, repeated thrice — suggested only one plausible explanation: she was being attacked by the Holy Order. What niggled her most was that the first three digits of the bounty, ‘121’, had been her lowest unique number in Grandmaster Brontanja’s Puzzle, which she’d been inspired to choose when thinking about Sushi. First they kill her. Then they dance on her grave. It only made Nova more determined to survive the round.
As the seconds ticked down to the next phase of the round the room quietened again. She waited for her inevitable inclusion in the group of players who would be teleported to the Southdome. At least the unpopular celebrities with large bounties on their heads could afford double the amounts and cancel them out.
Nova might have had the support of hundreds of people, but the vast majority were students, eking out their meagre allowances on pot noodles and cheap lager. There was no way Team Nova could raise close to quarter of a million pounds between them; no way she would even ask such a thing of them, not after everything they had done for her.
More frustratingly, she knew that a rich daddy’s girl like Holly would be able to cancel the bounties being placed on her head. According to Charlie, Holly’s dad was so rich he’d forked out several grand for her player number — 24,442 — because she thought it ‘had a nice ring to it’. She was down at Rutland Hall right now, playing the round from there, although Nova had purposely turned off notifications so as to not be distracted by her.
When the ‘Double or Quits’ phase ended without her having raised the funds required to cancel the bounty, nobody was surprised. She consoled herself with the knowledge that the charity Charlie had suggested she nominate — one that helped install solar arrays in developing nations — would soon receive another six-figure windfall.
She had ten seconds until her visit to the Southdome, and she used them to cycle through her inventory. Her health stood at a paltry thirty-one points. She had lost a huge number on her first visit to the animals when an Obarian had caught her off guard. As for items, she had seventy-nine left in her inventory, including a solitary Force Field, previous visits to the southern hemisphere having depleted her supply. She cracked her knuckles one last time and switched on the noise cancellation mode in her Booners. Solarversia was now more than just a game.
The roof of the Northdome sparked and buzzed as it warmed up. Dozens of arkwinis used cattle prods to herd the unlucky even-numbered players — all 800 of them — into the centre of the room. The ground they walked on was the reverse side of the northern wall — the one that accommodated the Player’s Grid. Viewed from the side, it looked like players were defying gravity, sticking to and walking upon a vertical face.
When the round started, the Northdome had been a semi-phased zone. The floor space — a hundred metres squared — hadn’t been large enough to accommodate all hundred thousand players who had started the round. It meant that avatars had appeared in a semi-transparent state, able to walk through one another, if not the walls themselves. Experience of what awaited them in the Southdome meant the novelty had soon worn off.
Toward the edges of room stood the odd-numbered players and those even-numbered players rich enough to cancel any bounty that may have been placed on them. She knew what they were thinking: rather her than me. It was a predictable and therefore forgivable reaction. For survival of the fittest to work, you couldn’t spend too long mourning the dead. It was just that in her case, it felt like she was a victim of unnatural selection, the evil twin of the natural kind.
As the electric crackle of the teleport generator hummed into life, she peered up at the domed ceiling and wondered which direction the lightning bolt would arrive from this time. It landed with an almighty crack, like the lash of a giant electric whip.
She arrived in the centre of the Southdome directly opposite where she had just been standing, as if reflected in a mirror. Teleportees ended up within a circular area at the centre of the square floor, which was bound at its edge by a violet-coloured Force Field, holding back the animals, who stood hugely, menacingly behind it, awaiting the moment the field would dissolve.
This would be the eighteenth session of the round, and the fifth one Nova had participated in. The short reprieve provided by the Force Field was the same each time: a mad scramble to surround yourself with as many other players as possible, putting them in the way of you and the beasts. After a lot of pushing and shoving — and Nova wishing that it was possible to fight other players — they settled in a series of concentric circles facing the animals.
She found herself next to a muscular American guy wielding a gruesome-looking double-headed Battle Axe, stained red from previous use. His fight stats looked impressive. Being next to him was a minor consolation for ending up in the outermost ring, closest to the animals. Her weapon of choice was a Marsden Flamethrower, a contraption first used in the Second World War. Strapped to her back was a tank that contained 18 litres of fuel, pressurised by nitrogen gas. In her hands she gripped a gun-shaped tube. The Marsden drank like a fish — eighteen litres sounded like plenty of fuel, but it was only enough for three individual spurts of flame.
The Force Field cycled through its colours and then disappeared entirely. The minute of hell had begun. At the left of her peripheral vision Nova saw a Huntropellimous clatter towards the circle of players. Behind her somewhere she heard the strangled cry of an Obarian. But charging straight at her was a mighty Petrifier, a bipedal bullock whose enormous twisting horns were tinted with a poison powerful enough to kill her in seconds. When it got ten metres from her, she fell forward into a kneeling positio
n and clamped her trigger finger down hard on the fuel throttle.
The Marsden took half a second to unleash its horizontal inferno, which slammed straight into the Petrifier’s torso, engulfing it in a sea of flames. When it got near enough she heard the American say, “I’ve got it from here,” before he executed a spinning combo with his Battle Axe, landing a fatal blow to the beast’s head. She checked her display. Two goes left on the Marsden. Forty-seven seconds to go.
“Hey, you wanna go back-to-back with me?” Nova asked the American guy. Players had used the stance in earlier rounds with great success.
“Thought you’d never ask. I’ve got a couple of Force Fields left, what about you?”
“Just the one. And only two goes left on this thing. Let’s back away from the Huntropellimous. Its armour plating is flame resistant.”
“Roger that. Quick — to your left!”
Nova spun left and saw nothing. Before she could ask what he was talking about, an Obarian tore past and took a chunk out of her right shoulder.
“Sorry. I meant the other left …”
She was about to give him a load of grief when he erected a Force Field over the two of them.
“I’m sorry about that, I didn’t have much time to think. I only saw it at the last second and ended up batting it away with the edge of my axe. Hope you didn’t take a big hit.”
“Lost six points. Down to twenty-five. How long do we have under here?”
“I used the longer of the two fields — twenty seconds. Was gonna save it to last, but thought I owed you one.”
“I appreciate the gesture. We’ve got fourteen seconds to get our act together. Then we need to survive ten more seconds before we get beamed back to safety.”
Nova scanned the room for ideas. It was total carnage wherever she looked. On the far side of the dome a Huntropellimous dangled its new playthings for a while — two people impaled on its claws — before slamming their heads together until they exploded, showering blood and brain onto the ground.
Only metres away, she watched helpless as a Petrifier charged someone from behind at full speed, her warning shouts drowned out by screams, roars and the metallic clash of weapons at work. The Petrifier’s left horn tore straight through the guy’s back and out of his rib cage, bringing his still-beating heart with it.
Over to her right she spotted an Obarian slam into an old woman at full speed, decapitating her in the process. One of its friends clamped down on her spinal cord and unceremoniously yanked it out of her body while she slumped to the ground.
To her left, a woman was kneeling, clutching her throat with all her might, like she was trying to strangle herself. As her hands loosened and fell away from her neck, Nova saw the cause of her distress. An Acoo-Stickular exited her body through her mouth, quickly retaining its full speed of 75 mph.
“As soon as the field dies, I’m gonna go crazy on the Marsden, spin round and spray flames everywhere. The second it runs out I’ll activate my Shadow Suckers. If I get the angle right, I should be able to shoot at anything that approaches us and make it stick to the ground. My only worry is the Acoo-Stickular; it moves way too fast.”
“I’m holding on to my Battle Axe. I’ve got that spinning combo down. I can even use the blade to deflect the waveform if it comes for us; they bounce off inorganic matter. The Huntropellimi are my only worry. I counted at least eight of them and the axe can’t pierce their armour, even with a perfectly executed combo. Good luck, I hope we both make it.”
As the field disappeared, exposing them to the battlefield once more, Nova entered the zone. She rolled to her right to evade anything that might have been eyeing them up, waiting for their field to dissipate. The second she landed back on her feet, she let rip with the Marsden, spinning around while she skipped from foot to foot. From above she looked like a Catherine Wheel on Fireworks Night. An Obarian was her first victim. It flew into the tail end of the spiralling band of flames, turning into a flaming comet. Its screech went up a couple of octaves before it hit the ground, where it tumbled to a standstill, a smoking tangle of fangs.
Next up was a Petrifier who got it square in the face just as it was about to make a kill of its own. The flames spread quickly, engulfing its entire being within seconds. The man she saved from certain death didn’t stop to thank her. Instead, he drew an arrow from the quiver on his back and aimed at her head. She froze. What kind of payback was this? It wasn’t as if the arrow could do her any harm, but a simple smile would have sufficed.
A second later she found out. The arrow whistled through the air, narrowly missing her face to spear a cave troll through its neck; a troll that had been coming for her. Now they exchanged a nod and a smile: a life for a life.
She activated her Shadow Suckers, ready for whatever the dome could throw at her, but needn’t have bothered. The minute was up. Screams turned to cheers as they were greeted by the players in the northern hemisphere like a group of war heroes returning from battle. Removing her headset, she found that the common room was even louder. She raised her arms, flexed her biceps and let rip with a war cry. If that wasn’t already enough, she kissed each bicep, sending the crowd wild.
The remaining few minutes of The Bounty Hunt flew by. The Tweel of Fate was on her side for the next three rounds, sending a whole bunch of other players to the southern hemisphere and the overall death counter toward 99,990,000. When the final person died, signalling the end of the round, Nova was hoisted onto Charlie’s shoulders and paraded around the room like an Olympic hero. Professor Carmichael handed her what looked like a quadruple measure of Glenfiddich. She necked it in one, then hurled the shot glass at the wall, smashing it to pieces.
A shiver went down her spine, but it had nothing to do with the liquor or the rush of surviving the round. It was the headline news she had read that morning which had filled her with dread and a sick sort of pleasure. Her arch-nemesis finally had a name: Theodore Markowsky. She said it over and over in her head, enunciating every last letter, getting a feel for it, wanting to know the man behind it, and hating him harder, stronger, fiercer than he could ever hate her. As the adrenaline coursed through her body, she felt invincible. She looked up at one of the cameras and narrowed her eyes. Then she raised an arm and pointed a finger. I’m coming for you, Markowsky. And I won’t be taking prisoners.
***
Special Agent Debrieze Kirkland volleyed to cam seventeen. It took him a few seconds to take the scene in and for its magnitude to register. A smile crept across his unshaven face. The cam was planted in the eyes of a robotic sparrow, which was perched on a branch overhanging the embankment a mile downstream, just yards from where Theodore Markowsky was kneeling in front of an altar inside a camouflaged marquee. Suspended from the altar was a tapestry bearing a curly swastika. Through the sparrow’s eyes, Kirkland could make out the same symbol embroidered on the preacher’s black robes — a symbol that had haunted his dreams for more than a year.
He was heading up the two hundred FBI agents aboard several dozen boats taking part in Operation Delta Strike. The call had come in three days before. Someone had taken a photo of some friends posing in front of the fountain at the local shopping mall in Jackson City and then shared it online. The social network she used was trialling Gogmagog, whose algorithms were set to scan the faces of any person detected in a photograph, even, it appeared, those half-hidden behind a water feature.
From a blurry shot of his profile, a wanted member of the Holy Order had been identified. Gogmagog fired off a critical alert to the FBI, and a fleet of drones was mobilised within minutes. Hovering at several thousand feet, they had triangulated the guy’s location and tailed him from on high to the parking lot, on and off the highway, along the banks of the swamp, all the way to the Compound.
Kirkland’s smile gave way to a yawn. He had slept three, maybe four hours since the alert had come in and considered himself lucky at that. Beside him, his men paddled silently: the sparrows had identified a handful of look
out towers spread around the Compound’s perimeter, so they had cut the motors a while back.
“Sir, are you getting this? We have Markowsky in our sights. He’s alone and unarmed.” Kirkland spoke into his headset just loud enough for the men on his boat to hear. The case had consumed all of their lives for far too long now. This day, this Operation, this stealth mission, was their reward.
“I see him. He’s probably praying to that Magus character right now, asking for a goddamn miracle. I’ve got a meeting with the Vice President later today. This’ll give him something to take people’s minds off the unemployment figures.” It was the Deputy Director of the FBI, stationed at a mobile command centre three hundred miles away. “The only worry now is those lookout towers. Proceed with caution.”
“Roger that, sir. I’d say it’ll be twenty minutes before we can move on them.”
Kirkland stuffed his hands behind his flak jacket. He hadn’t anticipated quite how cold it would be, the chill of the late January air five degrees cooler down here than it was up in town. It was hard to believe that they finally had Markowsky surrounded, the most wanted man in the FBI’s recent history, a man who up until a few weeks ago had been nothing but a ghost.
Suddenly, a distant explosion sent the boat lurching dangerously to one side. His men ducked, instinctively shying away from the noise. Around him, what seemed like every last bird in the state took to the skies at once. “At your stations,” he shouted and fumbled to get his dropped headset back in place.
“What the hell happened, Kirkland? I thought I instructed caution. I’ve made it abundantly clear. I want my agents returned in one piece to their families tonight.”
“I just shared my view with you, sir, stand by.”
Kirkland volleyed his view to the sparrow closest to the column of smoke billowing from whatever it was that had exploded. He used its eyes to zoom in and investigate the flaming wreck. More sparrows arrived, each able to view the scene from a different angle. He felt a rush of relief — it was one of the remote-controlled sweeper boats.
Solarversia: The Year Long Game Page 37