“Anything yet?” came the hushed voice of Ellie.
“Nothing yet!” Yves screamed. “Only glass falling upon us like sunshine.”
Dominique Noel chimed in after a short chirrup. “You see what we do for you?” He aimed low and high, waiting for people to run before peppering a series of parked cars.
“We saw them send out Gold ten minutes ago. They walked right out of the front doors. They should be there any minute,” Ellie said.
With a whipping motion of his gun, Yves signaled his brothers down a side street. They turned one after the other, Tristan last, his gun inches from a stranger’s face, another man who looked to interfere. He held it there until the man broke and ran, aimed after him, then deliberately missed the shot.
“And wait, there’s another team leaving. It’s... it’s Red.”
There was a raucous cheering at Ellie’s end of the com line that built to white static in Yves’s ears. He winced.
“The park is going nuts for them,” Ellie said, disappointed.
“The crowd will go nuts for anything, bella,” Yves said.
“They’re going north. White, do you copy?”
“Si senorita,” Ortiz replied, coming online after another beep. “We are ready. They love Diego. And you?”
“We’re in position. Ian? Pyper?”
The com beeped again. “Yes, I’m ready,” said Pyper.
Another beep. “Almost,” said Ian.
Yves chimed in again: “You say you saw them leave when? Ten minu—”
“—Do you hear that?” chirped Tristan.
Yves stood and listened as best he could. He partitioned the mayhem he and his brothers had caused to his back and focused forward. He held up his hand and his brothers paused. There, on the horizon, another wave of sound, like a train bellowing on the breeze. He signaled them down a thin, brick-walled tributary and they ran at an angle forward until they hit another, wider street. The sound was growing. He heard the stomping of feet, like a marching battalion.
“They’re here,” Yves said.
“Give ‘em hell boys,” said Ellie. “And get your man to the house.”
“I’ll get all three of us to that house, and give you one destroyed city block, too. No extra charge.” Yves checked his gun and flicked the safety on and off one last time. Dominique kicked an empty clip and reloaded. Tristan counted his shots backwards and nodded. Yves looked back at Dominique and motioned him across the street to where the brick walkway began again—they’d have a presence on either side of whatever was coming down the main street. Dominique nodded and sprinted across and held his position. Yves pushed his hand to his earpiece again and switched entirely to French.
“No hesitation, you hear me? Start with your matchups, always keep moving.”
The horde was close. They saw the first of them spill around the soft bend on the horizon. Some of the crowd that had followed them from the Meteorolog caught up and yelled, trying to give their positions away, but it was like spitting into the wind. Everyone was screaming, from all sides. Everyone signaled everywhere.
“Wait for my lead.”
Yves watched the pool of humanity wash upon their tributary, and waited until the first of them noticed him: a fat man in a leather trench coat who pointed wildly at Yves and screamed himself hoarse. Yves allowed it for a moment, and then he remembered how far prudence had gotten his team during the last cycle when they were gunned down at Frieze nightclub. They had spared civilians then because they were French civilians and because they were innocent men and women who wanted only to go out for a night on the town. This crowd wanted to run with the bulls. It helped, telling himself that.
He stepped out from the alley, sighted the center of the crowd through the trench coat, and began to fire in sequence. At first there was little reaction, aside from the fat man and two to his immediate rear who flopped like ragdolls to the ground. Yves aimed at their cores, not their heads, and it was as if the Gamers—and the morbidly curious who came along with them—didn’t understand what was happening. Why the sharks were biting all of the sudden... why the bulls were goring. When several in the outer circle dropped, those nearest stood puzzled, looking around frantically for the source of the popping. A section near the back even raised their fists in the air and cheered and Yves was confronted with three men sporting camera rigging that actually ran towards him, screaming for his attention and lighting up the brick walls with flashbulbs. Yves didn’t even think, gunning all three of them down. He dimly registered at least one camera lens pop like a wet light bulb. The men fell awkwardly, sideways, tipsy from the weight of their equipment, and those who could scream in pain did so. Yves kept firing, clearing the crowd, searching for the team he knew was at the center. When his gun clicked empty he pulled back against the alleyway and Dominique stepped out from the opposite end to continue cleaving.
Yves pressed the back of his head against the cold brick as he reloaded and tried to ignore the groans of pain that began to displace the cheers like a cutting undercurrent. He told himself that sometimes things had to get worse before they got better. That people couldn’t be told how far gone they were, they could only be shown. Tristan was at the far end of Yves’s side of the alley up on the first rung of a staircase there, sneaking peeks around the back corner at the swelling crowd. He shook his head at Yves and pressed his com.
“Wait. I don’t see them,” Tristan said.
“What?”
“Maybe they’re closer to the front than we think—”
Before he could finish, Ignazio Andizzi sprang from a crouch in the crowd like a greyhound out of the chute, bowling people over as he ran forward with both guns blazing. He spread his arms wide as he came upon the alleyway, looking to hit both Yves and Dominique, and he might have if they hadn’t started running at Tristan’s warning. They knew his questioning tone all too well. He was the sweeper. He saw everything. And if he didn’t, there was trouble. His warning gave Dominique time to throw himself over and into a dumpster, and then because he didn’t want to be caught in a dumpster, to throw himself over the far side of it before Andizzi could draw a good bead on him. Yves was caught reloading and so he ran down the alley towards where Tristan stood on the stairwell, all the while trying to jam a clip into his gun, but neither the clip nor the gun was cooperating.
Andizzi looked to his right and saw a dumpster, he looked to his left and saw Yves running. He took off after Yves. He was counting his diodes carefully and knew that he had to separate Yves from his brothers to get a good shot so he laid down a spatter of gunfire ahead of him to head Yves off. Yves covered his head and ducked down into an egressed doorway. Without a moment’s hesitation he elbowed through the glass window inset and reached in to flick open the lock, then threw himself inside. There, on the dirty concrete ground of an apartment complex, he slid his clip in and chambered a diode and aimed back through the door. For ten seconds he stayed like this, his mind racing, the noise of the crowd outside coming through the shattered window pane. It sounded like people were flooding the streets. His com beeped.
“Yves! He ran after you!” Dominique said. “He’s turning into some sort of basement doorway.”
Yves jumped up. He was at a low vantage with no cover. Behind him was a thin wooden stairway leading up. He dashed up it, taking the stairs two at a time as he pressed his com.
“Well run after him for Christ’s sake! I’m climbing up some stairs. We can pin him between us.”
Dominique took off after his brother, pushing people aside with his free hand and gun hand alike, kicking cameras into other cameras and slashing his way across the street and down the alley. He strained his neck and caught a flash of gold and silver as Andizzi ducked down after Yves. He swore and redoubled his efforts, bending the crowd before him like field grass. He wrenched himself to the door and saw that it swung open and that glass glittered just inside. He swept his immediate view and found nobody, and then he saw the stairs. He began to climb, as quietly a
s he could, his gun up and at an angle.
“Dominique!” chimed Tristan, still outside. “You’ve got a tail of your own!”
“Are you kidding me?” Dominique whispered, his breathing labored. He looked down the flight he’d already climbed. Nothing. He heard thumping from higher up and the staircase shook with movement. He blinked dust out of his eye, glanced down again, then continued up, faster now.
“Someone just dipped in after you. I think it may have been Aldobrandi.”
“Well you tail that bastard then! Pin him in, too!” This from Yves near the top of the staircase, sucking wind. Dominique heard him as a distant muffled noise perhaps four stories up. He shot his head out into the stairwell and then back under. It was a long way up.
Tristan spoke again: “What if Tessa Crocifissa comes in after me and then we’re all stacked up like a nice fat sandwich?”
“Yes!” urged Yves. “A nice fat sandwich I can shoot from above.”
Outside Tristan shook his head, checked his clip and counted four spares in his jacket. He scanned the crowd one more time for Tessa and came up empty. He jammed his gun down the back of his pants, grabbed the iron siding of the stairwell and slid under and out, landing lightly on the ground five feet below. He snatched his gun back and fast-panned the crowd as he ran to the basement door after Aldobrandi. The people were acting chaotically, but they were predictable in their chaos. They had a form, and Tristan had a trained eye. If she was there, Tessa would stand out like a rock in the river. He reached the doorway and ducked in and saw no sign of her. At the stairs he paused and looked back out. Once he ran up he would be fully committed. They would lose their outside man. He felt the stairway tremble and knew that he had to protect Dominique’s back, but something was wrong. He’d gotten in too easy.
He’d take Tessa raining down gunfire and screaming herself hoarse any day. Tessa completely silent, not a gunshot or even a flash of her hair since this started? It didn’t sit well with him.
————
Ortiz was on his fifth circle of the Solkolniki Park fountain, threading his way through the drink carts on the west side and graciously ignoring a long train of followers when he stopped in his tracks. There was a dark mass on the horizon and ahead of it three small points of red. He placed his hand to his ear.
“They’re here, Diego,” he said, his Spanish calm and clear.
Diego and Lilia stood and looked his way over the crowd and over the cameras and saw where Ortiz pointed in the distance. When they turned, the faction around them also turned, and everyone saw the approaching storm of people. But it was a strange storm, and it took Diego a moment to realize why: It was quiet. The slow, nearly silent walk of the distant crowd brought back an old memory. Back before Santa Maria was developed, he could look out from his porch and see for miles to the east. Far out on the distant plain he remembered watching a blinking red light atop a communications tower as it stood out against a black thundercloud. The sensation of peaceful alarm stuck with him. It was pleasant, actually, to sit in his chair as the storm rolled in. This was years ago, back when the Tournament lifted him, when it offered freedom and possibility as wide as the plains of Mexico. Before it became a tool of fear and blunt power.
“They’re just... walking,” said Lilia.
As Diego followed them with his eyes, he gently shooed the crowd that had gathered around him away. “Esconderse,” he said. Go hide. They moved away from him, but nobody left the carnival grounds. Everyone simply formed a wider circle just offset from the central fountain, and by the time Ortiz had reached Diego and Lilia they had an oval buffer of perhaps two hundred feet around them, no more.
As Red came closer they could make out details of the men. They all wore jackets of the same blood red color that tapered at the waist and ended below the hip and had lines of silver buttons that glittered in the sun. Amon Jimbo’s big, square glasses reflected brightly. Tenri Fuse walked with both hands clasped behind him, like a monk in contemplation.
“Wait,” Diego said. “They carry no weapons.”
Lilia saw Obata’s arms swinging loosely at his sides. Jinbo was biting his nails, and Fuse gestured in conversation before clasping his hands behind him once more.
“They have weapons, Diego. They just aren’t in their hands yet,” said Ortiz. Lilia nodded and reached for her gun in her pocket.
“Wait,” Diego said again.
“We won’t get another chance at this,” said Lilia, but she stayed her hand.
Diego remembered the quiet storm on the plains, the lightning flashing in complete silence. The way it used to be.
“I think they are more like us than we think,” Diego said, stepping forward.
The crowd shifted as Diego walked and then Lilia and Ortiz followed, forming a long rectangle that opened for the three Japanese and then closed behind them and redoubled in size as all those following Red filled it out further. The smoke from burning food, neglected, wafted thick and white over the open space, and the fountain at the far end steamed in the spring chill. When Diego was fifty feet away, the Japanese stopped and the crowd fell silent.
“You did not shoot,” Obata said, in English. Lilia, closest to Diego, translated into his ear, one eye upon them, one hand on her gun in her pocket. Diego responded, his lips barely moving, and Lilia spoke for him.
“We do not shoot those who are unarmed,” Lilia said.
Obata nodded. “I thought so. You have...” he seemed to fight for the correct word, and settled upon “honor.”
They stood across from each other on the winter-browned grass for several silent seconds. Ortiz was about to speak, but Diego held him off with a small gesture of his hand. More seconds passed. Then Obata spoke again.
“I was sorry to hear about your family,” Obata said, voice even. Jinbo and Fuse didn’t blink. Lilia translated and Diego let out a sharp breath through his nose before responding.
“You side with him,” Lilia repeated.
“I wanted the old ways,” Obata said. “Immunity. Freedom. I thought the Black House stood for that.” Obata paused but didn’t look away. “Now I am not sure. Now I think Mazaryk has his own path.”
“Come with us,” said Diego, his English halting, but Obata shook his head.
“Mazaryk has a place here. Time will tell us where.” Obata looked down for the first time. “And I gave him my word.” His words hung in the air as if buoyed by the flashbulbs and the reverberations from the thudding helicopters as the air grew thick with them.
“So what now?” Ortiz asked, of his own accord.
Obata looked steadily at Diego and a wordless agreement passed between them. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“You and I are among the very first, Diego. Even before there were eight. You remember the old ways.”
Diego waited for Lilia to translate before saying “Me acuerdo.” I remember.
“You know how we used to settle these,” Obata said. Diego nodded again. “It’s almost noon. Wait for the twelfth bell.”
Diego knew what he meant. Obata straightened himself, looked into Diego’s eyes, and then turned back towards his team. He spoke a few quiet syllables and they walked a short distance away. Diego did the same and when he eyed Lilia and Ortiz each in turn, both knew what was expected. Ortiz unzipped his jacket, following Diego and Lilia as they walked to one end of the manmade arena. At first the crowd was unsure, turning to each other with questions, but the oldest among them held back anyone who sought to cross the green or approach the teams and warned the young and drunk to stay quiet. The people formed two long lines on either side of each team, now a thousand people thick. Diego motioned for them to move farther back, but the crowd had given as much ground as it was going to this day.
On one end of the field White stood in a loose triangle, jackets open, holsters adjusted. Lilia flexed her hands and shook her arms out. Ortiz positioned himself and pushed his jacket out behind his gun on his hip. Diego smoothed out his moustache and
pulled his hat down to cut the glare.
“Clean shots, one clip,” Diego muttered. “Find your matchup. No problem.” He grinned, his golden tooth glinting in the sun, and Ortiz found himself grinning, and then Lilia, because for the first time since Alex Auldborne had smeared his nephew’s blood on the door of his home, Diego Vega was having fun.
The Japanese arrayed themselves in a straight line at the other end of the green and all three unbuttoned their coats. They took a side stance and the sun shot down and they dazzled in the rays. Obata checked his watch... both teams waited.
Not a soul spoke. No one on either team, no one in the crowd of thousands. The sea of cameras could be heard, rolling and clicking like the machinations of a great clock of their own. Not even the thumping helicopters could drown out the chiming of the Cosmonovtiki tower mere blocks away. The bells rang a sad and brief, brassy tune, then began to chime the hour. One, two, three...
All six players breathed deeply and flittered their fingers.
...Seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven...
At twelve all of them fired at once.
Diego dropped low, almost to the ground, and shot at Obata from a crouched position, and not a second too soon. He could hear a series of diodes scream by his head like monstrous bees. A part of him registered that if the diodes missed his team they probably plowed into the human wall around them, but then the thought washed away. Watching this duel was their choice, like shooting in it was his. He saw the field of play in similar hues of black and white; everything presented itself in a near manic clarity. He saw Ortiz stagger backwards out of the corner of his eye, but whether it was because he was hit or because he was dodging diodes, Diego didn’t have time to tell. His own shot went wide, and Obata had him in his sight.
When Amon Jinbo began to shoot it became a battle just to stay standing. He aimed an unwieldy Glock sporting a high capacity clip at all three of the Mexicans and began to fire, but they knew Jinbo: he wanted them to run. He loved runners, and was second to none when it came to leading a moving target. Lilia and Diego stayed perfectly still, but Ortiz dove and Jinbo picked him up on instinct. He hit him clean in the shoulder and Ortiz staggered backward. When Jinbo committed to Ortiz, Lilia took advantage of the opening and shot him directly in the gut. Jinbo stumbled back and lost his glasses but kept firing even as he treaded for balance, doubling his trigger rate and hitting Ortiz again. Ortiz knew he had mere seconds left standing so he threw himself forward and towards the Red line. Tenri Fuse thought he had a clean shot on Lilia but was forced to attend to Ortiz as he staggered forward on a suicide run. Fuse swung his long-barreled pistol to Ortiz and gunned him down for good, seconds before Lilia sunk a diode into his sternum. He let out a great huff of air and collapsed along with Ortiz, the two of them mere feet apart.
The Tournament Trilogy Page 83