Battle Royale (Remastered)

by Koushun Takami, Nathan Collins

  Shuya rubbed his hands on his thighs. This was what he'd been waiting for—for Kawada to echo his thoughts, that this is his country, so he wanted to do what he could. Hadn't Bob Marley sung about this?

  "Why not?" Shuya asked.

  But Kawada's answer came from a somewhat different place.

  "I want satisfaction. I want revenge. Even if the only result is getting to feel self-satisfied, I want to strike a blow against this country. That's all. As for whether that'll bring about any reform, well, I have major doubts."

  Shuya took in a little breath, then said, "The way you talk, it sounds hopeless."

  "It is hopeless," Kawada said.

  25 STUDENTS REMAIN.

  When he heard the two distant gunshots, Yutaka cowered. Shinji interrupted his keystrokes.

  "That's—" Yutaka said.

  Shinji nodded. "More gunfire."

  Then Shinji quickly resumed his work. He might have been a little brusque, but he couldn't afford to be concerned with others.

  Yutaka looked down at Shinji's fingers, while his own towel bandaged hands held the Beretta his friend gave to him to look after.

  "Hey, Shinji," Yutaka said impatiently, "what are you doing with that computer, anyway? Can't you tell me yet?"

  After rebooting the communications software and dialing up through his cell phone, Shinji had started banging away at the keyboard, occasionally exclaiming, "Yes! Yes! Yes!" or "Oh, shit, oh, right," or "Okay!" But he hadn't given Yutaka any explanation at all.

  "Hold on. Almost. . . done."

  Shinji was typing again. Inside a window near the center of the monochrome display, English words streamed by, interspersed with special characters like "%" and "#" and so on. Shinji typed in response.

  "All right," Shinji said.

  Having initiated the download, Shinji's hands rested. He had performed the basic operations in Unix (natch), but since this was a Mac after all, he'd set up a graphical download progress meter that popped up in a separate window. Shinji stretched his arms over his head. All that remained was to wait for the download to finish—though once it did, he still had to overwrite the log entry to erase his tracks. Then he'd use the data to come up with a plan. He could simply overwrite the data, or possibly put together his own program to outwit his opponents. The latter would take some doing, but he figured half a day would suffice.

  Yutaka repeated, "Shinji, tell me what's going on."

  With a grin, Shinji backed away from the laptop and leaned against his old tree. He still felt a little keyed up, so he took a deep breath to calm himself. His excitement was only natural; after all, when he'd revealed the PowerBook 150 to Yutaka, he hadn't yet known for sure, but now he did. Victory was as good as his.

  Slowly, he opened his mouth to speak. "The thing is, I've been thinking about how to escape from here."

  Yutaka nodded.

  "But this, you see," Shinji said, pointing to his neck. He couldn't see the collar there, but it was probably identical to the silver band around Yutaka's neck. "I wanted to get these off, no matter what. Thanks to them, that bastard, Sakamochi, knows where we are. Right now, he knows we're here together. And if we try to escape, these will make it easy for them to capture us—or, they could send a signal to the explosives inside and kill us in an instant. I wanted to get them off."

  He opened his hands, then shrugged. "But I gave up. As long as I don't know how they're built on the inside, I can't mess with them. Sakamochi said they would explode if we took them apart, and I doubt he was bluffing. The detonating cord is probably lining the inside of the outer casing. If the wire gets cut, the explosives will go off. Why cross a collapsing bridge? I thought about sliding a metal plate between the collar and the neck, but to fit, the metal would probably be too thin to stop the explosion."

  Yutaka nodded again.

  "So then I had an idea. What about getting that computer inside the school, the one that supervises our capture and operates the detonation signal, to work for us? Do you get what I'm saying?"

  Shinji had learned the basics of how to use a computer from his uncle. But when his mentor died, leaving him his computer, Shinji worked at mastering it with the same level of passion he applied to the basketball court. From time to time, he infiltrated the restricted international line to access the real Internet (what this country called the "Internet" was in reality nothing more than a closed network—the laughably named "Greater East Asia Net"), where he acquired even more advanced techniques along with the latest news from around the world. This was of course illegal, and though the punishment didn't go as far as execution, a child Shinji's age would get two years in a juvenile detention center for ideological criminals.

  For that reason, Shinji honed his skills at avoiding detection, and he never told anyone what he was doing—though he did show Yutaka some pictures he'd downloaded (dirty pictures, mostly, but what else would you expect?). By any measure, Shinji had acquired considerable hacking skills.

  "So I went looking for a computer," Shinji said. "I already had my cell phone, you know. I guess we were allowed to keep all of our stuff in this stupid game, so it's too bad I didn't bring along my own laptop. Anyway, I found this baby, so it worked out. I still needed power, so I took that battery from a car. I had to mess with the voltage, but that was no big deal."

  As Shinji explained, Yutaka began nodding. He seemed to be finally coming to grasp, if vaguely, what those objects on the ground in front of him were up to. But then, as if a thought suddenly came to him, he interrupted. "But, but. . . didn't Sakamochi say that we couldn't use the phones? So then do cell phones work?"

  Shinji shook his head. "No. That's a no go. I tried a number—the weather information—and Sakamochi picked up. 'Fair weather at the Shiroiwa Junior High Program Headquarters,' he said. I hung up right away, 'cause I was so pissed that I felt sick. Anyway, that means that they're controlling the nearest cell tower. I don't think a phone with any provider would work."

  "So—"

  Shinji held up a finger, cutting him off. "Think about it. They must have some way to reach the outside. And their computers must be connected to other government computers—for their own security, among other reasons. So how do they communicate with the outside world? It's simple. The mobile networks selectively allow only the calls originating from military numbers."

  "So we can't—"

  Shinji cut him off again, then grinned. "But—there's always a 'but.' I thought that even with those measures, wouldn't they have set it up so that someone from the phone company, at the very least, could operate the system in case something went wrong?"

  Shinji reached for the cell phone on the ground and said, "I never told you this, but my phone's a little special. Its ROM has two sets of phone numbers and network IDs. You can't tell by looking at it, but I can switch between them by turning this screw ninety degrees. As for that second number, I programmed it when I was playing around with making phone calls for free." He let go of the phone. "It's the number used by phone company technicians to test phone lines."

  "So . . . that means ..."

  Shinji winked. "Exactly. The rest is simple. Well, connecting the landline modem to the cell phone was a little tricky. I don't exactly have the proper tools out here. But I managed it. And I reached the network. Then I accessed my home computer. Hacking isn't just like regular network access—you need special tools, like password-cracking software, so I needed to download that stuff before I could do anything else. Then my first target was the prefectural government's site. The national systems like Central Processing must be well guarded, but I figured down at the prefectural level security would be softer. I was right. Then I figured that no matter how directly the Program is managed by the central government, they would have to be in some level of contact with the local prefecture. I was right there too. I saw unfamiliar addresses in the communications log files. Reading through the mailbox, I found an e-mail to the superintendent notifying him that the game had begun. So I broke into
the sender's site next—the provisional server in that school. The next part was a bit of a pain in the ass, but I looked around as best I could and found a backup of a work file someone had screwed up and left behind. I nabbed it. I'll spare you the details, but I found a piece of encrypted text that looked like it might be important. The Mac's been working at breaking it for me since before I met up with you. And here's what it found ..."

  Shinji reached for the PowerBook. Leaving the connection status window open, he summoned a text file written in a gigantic 24-point font and showed Yutaka the display. Yutaka leaned in to see.

  KINPATI - SAKAMOCHO

  "Sakamocho . . . ?" Yutaka asked.

  "Yeah. I think it's Spanish or something. Just a stupid little vowel change to make it harder to guess. But that's the root password. Now I can do whatever I want. That's what I've been up to now. I've just scraped every bit of data from inside the school computers. After I poke through the files, I'll be able to log back into those computers and disable these collars locked around our necks. They think they're all safe inside the forbidden zone, where we can't come near. We can attack them by surprise. We'll have a chance against them. Then, once we've taken over the school, we should be able to help the others. And if not, we'll fake our deaths, and the two of us can wave this island goodbye."

  Shinji paused to catch his breath, then grinned again. "What do you think?"

  Yutaka wore an expression of astonishment. "Incredible."

  Pleased by his friend's reaction, Shinji smiled. Thanks, Yutaka. Whatever else is happening, it's always nice to have my skills appreciated.

  "Shinji," Yutaka said, still looking astonished.

  Shinji raised his eyebrows. "What's up? Do you have a question?" "No." Yutaka shook his head. "I was just—I was wondering . . ."

  "What?"

  Yutaka dropped his eyes to glance at the Beretta in his hand, then looked back up. "Well. . . why are you friends with a guy like me?"

  Shinji didn't understand what Yutaka was getting at. His mouth hung open, then he said, "What are you talking about?"

  Yutaka looked down again. "It's—it's just. . . you're really incredible. I get how you could be friends with someone like Shuya. He's just about as good at sports as you are, and he's awesome at the guitar. But. . . but I'm nothing. So I was wondering why you'd be friends with someone like me."

  Shinji watched Yutaka's downturned face. Then slowly and softly, he said, "Don't talk nonsense like that, Yutaka."

  Yutaka looked up.

  Shinji continued, "I am who I am, yeah? And you're who you are. Even if I'm pretty good at basketball, or pretty good at computers, or pretty popular with girls, those kinds of things don't determine a person's worth. You have the ability to make people laugh, and you'd never hurt anyone. And when you get serious, you can be far more serious than me—like with girls, for one thing. And I'm not jerking you around with some garbage about how everyone has some good side to offer. I'm telling you there's a lot about you I like."

  Shinji shrugged, then offered a grin. "I like you. We've always been together. You're an important friend. Just so we're clear—my best friend."

  He could see the tears coming back to Yutaka's eyes. Then Yutaka said, "Shit," like he had when he was tearing up just before. "Thanks, Shinji. Thanks."

  The boy wiped his tears and laughed, then said, "But if you stick around a crybaby like me, you'll end up drowning before you can escape."

  Shinji was forming a grin when—

  Beep.

  Shinji frowned with his eyebrows and hurriedly sat up. That was the Macintosh's default alert sound.

  Shinji knelt in front of the PowerBook and peered at the screen.

  His eyes went wide. The message on the screen said that the line had been disconnected, and the download interrupted.

  "Why?" Shinji groaned. Frantically, he typed on the keyboard. But he couldn't repair the connection. He closed the Unix communication software and tried a different program to dial the modem.

  This time, the message read no connection. No matter how many times he tried, the result remained the same. The connection between the modem and the cell phone seemed fine. To test it, he disabled the link and dialed directly with the phone's touch pad. He tried the weather report. He put the phone to his ear.

  The phone was silent. What, so is the phone—no, the battery still has plenty of charge. . .

  Impossible. With the phone still in his hand, he stared blankly at the PowerBook's screen, which was now black on standby. They couldn't have noticed my hack. They can't—that's why it's called hacking. Shinji was more than skilled enough.

  "Shinji, what happened? Shinji?"

  Yutaka's voice came over his shoulder, but Shinji couldn't respond.

  25 STUDENTS REMAIN.

  When Hiroki Sugimura (Boys #11) saw the star-shaped blip appear at the edge of the handheld device's LCD screen, his eyes widened. This mark matched another that had been at the center of the display since he'd first held the gadget.

  He was inside the village on the island's eastern shore. The area would soon become one of the forbidden zones, so he moved quickly, though extremely cautiously, between the houses. Meanwhile, he kept a close eye on the device, which looked like one of those PDAs often used by salarymen. And now, finally, the display had changed. This was the first such response since booting it up sometime past six in the morning, when he'd finished flipping through the instruction manual included with it inside his daypack. He'd prioritized searching the impending forbidden zones, as announced by Sakamochi, but the device had remained silent as he dashed from sector J-2 on the southern shore to sector F-l on the western shore, to here, sector H-8.

  The device couldn't really be called a weapon, as such. But right now, depending on how he used it, it could be far more effective than even a gun—though he wasn't sure if he was currently using it effectively or not.

  Hiroki made sure he had a good grip on the long stick in his other

  hand and stepped away from the clapboard wall at his back. (The weapon was the handle from a broom he'd found in a shack off the north side of the residential area. If he'd wanted some kind of blade, he could have had his pick, but having studied kempo since he was in elementary school, he knew how to wield a staff, so he thought this would be both easier to use and more useful.) He spurred his large, one-hundred-eighty-centimeter-tall body to speed, and soon he had pinned himself against the wall of the house diagonally adjacent. The star icon at the side of the screen moved closer to its pair in the center.

  He thought back to what the manual had said about how the display worked, then he looked over his shoulder. It's inside a house. This house.

  The house had a small yard with a vegetable garden where tomato stalks grew waist high, and vines of sweet potatoes or some such covered the ground alongside onions and the multicolored blooms of pansies and chrysanthemums. A children's tricycle sat in front of the garden, its chrome handlebars gleaming in the near-noon sunlight.

  The storm doors on the veranda were closed. Worried that opening them might make a loud noise, Hiroki went around the right side of the house.

  There was a window—a broken one. No doubt remained. Someone had gone inside. And if the instruction manual was worth the paper it was printed on, that person was still there.

  With the forbidden zone deadline approaching, he could reasonably assume that anyone alive would have left the sector by now. The odds were strong that only a corpse awaited him. But he had to know for sure.

  Hiroki stuck his head through the broken window and looked inside. The room appeared to be a living room with tatami-mat floors.

  He cautiously slid the window open. To his relief, it made no sound. Keeping the stick in one hand, he grabbed the window frame with his other and, in one catlike motion, climbed inside.

  The room had a decorative alcove, and in the center of the room sat a low table. A large-screen TV was situated in the corner next to the window where Hiroki had entere
d. Taking care to silence his footsteps, he slipped out of the room.

  As he entered the hallway, he smelled something mixed in with the air, as if he'd put his nose up to a rusted scrap of iron.

  Hurrying now, he moved down the hall. The smell grew stronger.

  It was coming from the kitchen. Hiroki stood at the side of the doorway and peeked inside.

  On the floor behind the kitchen table, he saw a pair of white sneakers and socks and, above them, legs, nearly up to the calves.

  Hiroki's eyes widened and he ran to the other side of the table.

  A girl in a sailor fuku was lying facedown. Her face was turned away from him. She had a petite body, with shoulder-length hair, and blood had formed a pool across the wooden boards of the floor with her face at its center. It was an incredible amount, and its surface had already started to coagulate and turn black.

  She was dead all right. But. . .

  That petite body. That shoulder-length hair.

  She could have been one of the two girls he was searching for. He couldn't say which of the two was more important to him, but this could have been one of the two. Think. Did she wear sneakers like these?

  Hiroki set aside his stick and daypack and slowly knelt beside the body. He reached a trembling hand for her shoulder. After a moment of hesitation, he clenched his teeth and flipped over the corpse, and revealed fresh, red, and still liquid blood underneath. The smell was intense now.

  The body was gruesome. Above her collar (which was what had led him here), her slender throat had been slit open. The blood had long since drained out, and for a second, the open, hollow gash seemed an infant's toothless mouth. The blood had left a downward trail, staining the collar's silver surface before continuing down toward her chest. Blood stuck to her mouth, and the tip of her nose, and her left cheek, where they had been submerged in the pool of blood after she fell. Around the edges of her gray, vacant eyes, drops of now-hardened blood had formed in the tips of her eyelashes.