by Jacob Gowans
“Har har har.” She closed the door behind him and sat on the floor. “I don’t want anyone to get the wrong idea about us meeting here. That’s all.”
“What would the wrong idea be?”
Jeffie shrugged without looking at Sammy. “I could tell the computer to give us some gel-chairs. Want me to do that?”
“Nah, I’m fine.” He sat on the floor facing her and remembered the time he’d sat in a sim room waiting for her to come talk to him. That time, however, it had been Kobe tricking him into watching a film of Jeffie and Kobe making out. In some backwards way, it was like nothing had changed since that day. Sammy still wanted to be with Jeffie, and Jeffie was still with Kobe.
“So I’ve been hearing stuff that I wanted to talk to you about,” Jeffie said, raising an eyebrow, but staring at the floor.
“You’ve been hearing stuff,” Sammy repeated. “That’s cool.”
“You might leave early. Like pretty soon. What’s the deal?”
“How are things going with Kobe?” Sammy asked.
“Do you realize you ask me that almost every other day?”
“Do I?” The floor was beginning to get uncomfortable, so Sammy got up and told the computer to give them two gel-chairs. When they appeared, Jeffie took the one closest to the door. “I guess that’s because we don’t get to talk very much. I’ll try not to ask anymore.”
“No—I—it’s not that. . . . ” Jeffie huffed and ran her fingers through her hair. “I don’t care—I don’t mind you asking me stuff. I don’t know what I’m trying to say! Gosh, Sammy, I was asking about you leaving early!”
Sammy looked at Jeffie until she looked back at him. Her green eyes reflected the bright lights of the room. As he watched them, he thought they looked a shade paler than normal. “I’m trying to decide if I should leave early. I—I keep going back and forth depending on the day or sometimes the hour.” He forced a laugh, and so did Jeffie, which he appreciated.
“If you think it’s the right thing, you know, you should—you should definitely do it.”
“You think so?”
“Yeah, it’d be a great opportunity. I’d be really happy for you.”
Sammy wanted to believe her—it would make things much easier—but he couldn’t help noticing how her nostrils had flared a little when she’d said those last words. And he’d never forgotten what that meant. “Thanks. I’ll take that into consideration.”
Jeffie opened her mouth to say something and stopped, then started again. “When do you have to decide by?”
For whatever reason, Sammy didn’t want to tell Jeffie about Tawhiri’s proposal of winning or losing the Game as honcho, or that he had only one week left of the six Tawhiri had given him, so he simply shrugged. “I’ve got lots of time.”
“Oh. That’s good. Definitely be sure you’re making the right decision. You know, once you do it, it’d be hard to undo.”
“Yeah, I’ll be sure.” Silence fell between them again, and it seemed heavier this time. Sammy grasped for something to say until his thoughts settled on a topic. “Hey, I heard the Hurricanes are doing really well this year! Champions or something?”
Jeffie rolled her eyes. “Al’s a Hurricanes fan, Sammy. Not me. They’re in Helsinki. I’m an Oslo Otters fan. I have been all my life. But . . . I also cheer for the Beirut Bengals. Sometimes, when the Otters are having a bad year, I cheer for both of them. I’m one of those people who think it’s okay to cheer for two teams at once.”
Sammy noted a strange tone in Jeffie’s voice, but didn’t understand its meaning. “Yeah, the Otters are cool. Are they good this year?”
Jeffie pursed her lips and shook her head. “Not at the moment. I think I’m leaning Bengals right now, but—you know—I’ll always like the Otters. I figure they’ll be good again someday. Right?”
“Uh . . . yeah. I guess.”
“Listen, Sammy, I have—” Right then an alarm sounded in the walls of the room, startling both of them.
“What time is it?” Sammy asked.
Jeffie checked her com. “It’s midnight. I hate this!”
“Already?”
“That stupid sword game took forever!”
“No, it’s okay. My team won the Game this weekend: I can stay up until 0100.”
“Sammy, I wasn’t on your team last Saturday.”
“Oh, yeah.”
The alarm grew louder until they opened the door and the sim room alarm turned off. Immediately, alarms in the hallway began clamoring just as loudly. They ran through the halls and down the stairs until they reached Jeffie’s dorm floor. Only then did the sounds finally stop.
“I’ll talk to you some more another time, okay?”
Sammy told her goodnight and went to bed frustrated and disappointed. He fell asleep thinking about all the other nights during his time at headquarters when he’d gone to bed with similar feelings, always because of Jeffie.
The Betas spent most of Saturday afternoon playing Tawhiri’s latest Game. Ultimately, the team Sammy was playing on won, as it had every week since he’d returned. He wanted to finish his conversation with Jeffie, but with Kobe hovering around her, and Strawberry’s Sammy-radar being on overdrive, it was impossible. Sunday was no better.
During the next week, between busy schedules, early bedtimes, and other people demanding their attention, Jeffie and Sammy didn’t get a chance to say more than a passing greeting. Starting Monday, all Sammy could think about was the Game and what kind of set up the major would throw at him as honcho. He often caught himself imagining different tricks or tactics he might see in the Arena. Nowadays, he relied not on his intellect or problem solving to win, but on his superior combat abilities. He still didn’t see the way he used to, but he fought as well as ever. He spent hour after hour in the sims re-teaching himself tactical strategies, mission planning, and advanced combat. His left leg continued to hurt as much as ever whenever he fought a multiple-Thirteen fighting sim. While his brain wasn’t the sponge it used to be, he moved through the lessons quickly because he’d been through the sim units once already.
Saturday was the big day: the day of Sammy’s decision. From the moment he woke, he couldn’t relax. It was as though someone had put a million tiny needles into his skin. Sitting still made him want to go crazy, but he was too distracted to do anything meaningful. Morning went by with no Game. After lunch, when he could stand being around other Betas no longer, he went down to his dormitory to read War of the Worlds while he waited for the call. By the time 2100 rolled around, everyone thought Major Tawhiri had forgotten about this week’s Game—everyone, that is, except Sammy. The only questions in his mind were when and how. He got his answers at 2115.
Team 1: 1st floor
Berhane, Samuel(*)
Plack, Strawberry
Team 2: 3rd floor
Alanazi, Cala
Covas, Miguel
Enova, Levu
Ivanovich, Natalia
Petrov, Ludwig
Plack, Brickert
Reynolds, Kaden(*)
Yoshiharu, Asaki
Team 3: 5th floor
Covas, Rosa
Morel, Brillianté
Ndumi, Hefani
Nujola, Kawai
Otravelli, Antonio
von Pratt, Parley
Reynolds, Kobe
Tvedt, Gefjon(*)
Zheng, Li Cheng
Victory: 1 win
Maximum Game Length: No Limit
Start time: 2130
*See Special Rules*
Strawberry couldn’t have been more excited if she’d downed a liter of caffeine and snorted pure sugar. She glued herself to Sammy and talked and talked, stopping only when someone came by and asked what Sammy thought of the teams. He tried to tune everyone out, including Strawberry, but he may as well have tried to stop time itself. He wanted to think about what he was going to do. It seemed illogical that Major Tawhiri would set him with an impossible task, but it certainly appeared that way.
Do I win this or not? Can I even win with just me and Strawberry?
He tried to focus back to the task at hand. He heard Byron’s words urging him to rein in his emotions. He closed his eyes and put a hand over his face, noticing for the first time that he was shaking ever so slightly. Only then did it dawn on him how badly he wanted to win this Game.
I want to graduate. That’s my answer.
The announcement came to go to their places. Kawai touched Sammy tenderly on the arm and winked at him. “Good luck.”
Jeffie joined him in line to leave the cafeteria. “Sammy,” she said, “I heard something strange. Is it true that Tawhiri told you if you win—?”
“Let’s move in front!” Parley called out, drowning the rest of Jeffie’s question.
“Mush! Mush!” someone else said. Probably Antonio.
“Uh . . . ” Sammy replied. “Who told you that? Brickert?”
“Does it matter?”
Fortunately, he didn’t have to answer. Jeffie had to head for her team’s entrance while he and Strawberry went to the stairs.
“I guess this will be an easy Game for me!” she chirped at him as he walked away.
Strawberry held Sammy’s upper arm as they walked into the Arena from inside the boys’ dorm on the first floor. It made Sammy feel like he was her escort to a dance or a fancy meal. He noticed his hands were still trembling so he locked his fingers together to make it stop.
If you lose . . . I’ll take that as a sign that you’re not capable of being an Alpha, Tawhiri had said. But I am capable, Sammy told himself. I have to win this game.
As he took his first step into the Arena, his left leg gave one dull throb. He ignored it. They stood at the bottom of a giant maze. From what little Sammy could see at his vantage point, the design was extremely complex, far more byzantine than anything Byron had thrown at them with narrow hallways, lots of dead ends, and a dizzyingly difficult design that no one would be able to master in one Game. No stairs, only holes in the floors to ascend or descend. According to the special rules, each time someone was deactivated, five percent of the walls would come down, making the maze less impossible to navigate and more treacherous for Sammy and Strawberry.
“Stick together,” a voice said.
“Did you hear that?” Sammy asked Strawberry.
She shook her head. “What?”
Sammy looked around them. No one could be near them. The two other teams had started on different levels.
“Stay with me,” a second voice said. This time he recognized it as Jeffie’s. The first voice was Kaden’s. Tawhiri’s letting me hear them. Did that mean the other honchos could hear him?
Sammy whispered orders into Strawberry’s ear, and they started into the maze at a run. Their first priority was to gain the highest ground. Since the Game wouldn’t end until two teams were completely deactivated, Sammy had to put them in the best position to win. They quickly found one of the holes in the ceiling. Sammy had Strawberry go up first.
“Coast is clear!” she hissed at him.
Sammy blast-jumped to the ledge and pulled himself through. In his com, he heard Kaden sending half his team up to the fourth floor while the other half stayed on the third covering the holes. Jeffie ordered her team to stay on the fifth floor and make everyone come to them—both solid strategies. I haven’t lost a Game since coming back. They’re going to be more worried about me than each other.
Before jumping to the third floor, they waited at one of the holes for several minutes, watching for any sign that someone might be guarding that particular portal. He could hear Kaden and Jeffie speaking to their teams, but had no way of knowing the exact positions of Kaden’s players. Finally, an idea came to him.
He lifted Strawberry into his arms and held her as if she were a bazooka. He supported the bulk of her weight with his left hand on her sternum, and used his other hand to grip her by the soles of her shoes. Then, as best as he could, he aimed her head at the hole in the ceiling.
“It’s a good thing you’re the smallest person at headquarters,” he grunted through the pain blooming up and down his thigh. “Remember: don’t stop moving.”
“Three . . . ” Strawberry said, “two . . . one. . . . ”
In unison, Strawberry fired foot blasts and Sammy blasted with his right hand. The result was that Strawberry shot off like a rocket into the next level. Looking on from below, Sammy saw her stop herself with hand blasts before crashing into the ceiling of the upper level. Something near the hole moved.
“Behind you!” Sammy told her.
“They’re on the third floor!” Natalia said. Sammy saw her fire multiple blasts at Strawberry, who whirled around mid-air and counterattacked. Sammy hurried to join the fray. Within seconds, however, Strawberry had deactivated Natalia without Sammy’s help.
“Very impressive, Berry.”
She beamed at him as she gave him a high-five. “Thanks! I learned that move watching you and Brick.”
About five meters, away a wall dissolved into nothing. Sammy assumed the same thing was happening all over the Arena.
Through his com he heard Jeffie give more orders. Apparently, two of Kaden’s team had attacked two of hers. Meanwhile, Kaden was reacting to Natalia’s report that Sammy and Strawberry had made it to the third floor. The reports made Sammy optimistic as he and Strawberry picked their way through the maze using what he guessed was an excessive amount of caution. On the third floor, they encountered one more of Kaden’s team: Asaki. Sammy ordered Strawberry to stay behind while he dealt with her.
He ran at her, knowing she would shield and give up ground. Before he reached her range, he threw himself down and slid at her, using a shield of his own to protect his helmet while his other hand’s blasts propelled him across the floor. As Asaki retreated, she stumbled into a dead end. Sammy shot her in the ankle, causing her to lose her footing. Then he aimed a blast at her knee, forcing it to buckle. His third blast hit her square in the helmet, slamming her head into the wall.
“Very crazy-cool-awesome, Sammy,” Strawberry joked as she mimicked Sammy’s tone from minutes earlier.
They reached the fourth level without incident and spent several minutes hunting for a way to the fifth floor. As they searched, Kaden ordered his team to regroup so they could attack Jeffie on the top floor as a unit. It was twenty minutes after this when Strawberry spotted a way up to the fifth floor. Sammy warned her to be ready for a second attack as he aimed and launched her, but, again, there was no one watching the hole.
“This way.” He led Strawberry back into the heart of the fifth level.
“You’re limping again,” she muttered. “How’d you get hurt?”
“It’s not bad.” In truth, almost every step sent a jolt of fire from his thigh to his toes.
Kaden and Jeffie hadn’t said much in a while. Sammy guessed that Kaden’s team had reverted back to working as a unit while Jeffie’s was probably still spread out around the Arena. She seemed to like splitting her team into small functional groups.
Strawberry kept lookout behind them while Sammy assigned himself the task of peeking around corners and steering them away from danger. He had no strategy other than trying to engage his enemies in small packs. His chances of getting them to fight each other were low. Jeffie was too smart to let her team get whittled down by Kaden.
A short distance away, Sammy heard whispering. He retreated into a narrow cove and pulled Strawberry back with him. They stood there waiting, their faces only centimeters apart. Gripping Strawberry’s arm, he felt her pulse pounding rapidly. He couldn’t see her eyes, but felt her watching him. His own heart beat a little faster as he listened intently for the sounds of enemies, but didn’t know if he could believe what he heard because everything had gone so quiet. Then, without warning, the wall behind them disappeared. Three Betas, Cala, Levu, and Miguel, turned in reaction to the sudden change.
“We found Sammy,” Levu told Kaden through her com.
“Engage him,” Kaden ordered, his voice in Sammy’s ear. “We’ll surprise him from behind.”
“Stay behind me and guard my back,” Sammy hissed at Strawberry. “Don’t fight. Just watch out for anyone being sneaky.”
Levu, Cala, and Miguel spread out and moved in carefully. Sammy eyed them all, trying to decide which was the weakest and how best to engage them without endangering Strawberry. Not Cala, he decided. Eenie meenie miney mo. He ran full sprint at Miguel, using both hands to shield. Miguel shot blasts at Sammy with his right hand and protected himself with his left.
The space containing the five Betas wasn’t much larger than a bedroom, not cramped, but not spacious, either. Sammy launched himself with a blast from his left foot into the wall on his right. A bolt of lightning shot up his leg to his torso as he did so, causing him to grunt in pain. Midair, he shifted his weight to perform a wall blast. Miguel jumped to meet him while the two girls tried to contain Sammy. Once both feet were on the wall, Sammy used a double foot blast to shoot himself away from Miguel and toward Levu.
Levu wasn’t caught completely off-guard, but she didn’t defend herself well, either. She shielded her head from the front, but didn’t react fast enough as Sammy sailed past her and deactivated her helmet from behind. Cala’s blasts knocked Sammy’s legs, disrupting his motion enough that she ruined his landing. All he could do to prevent a total crash was use cushioning blasts to soften the blow against the incoming wall and floor.
Cala and Miguel ran at him, giving him no time to prepare. I can’t lose!
He saw Strawberry watching the action instead of keeping an eye out for Kaden. He yelled at her, “NOW!”
Sammy had no idea what Cala and Miguel would think it meant, but it was enough to make them hesitate. He regained his footing and blasted himself bodily into both of them, shielding as he did so they would have no way to reach his helmet. The drawback to this, however, was that he couldn’t reach theirs, either.
The three Betas collapsed in a heap and scrambled over each other, each concerned about protecting their own helmets so the enemy couldn’t deactivate them.