Endgame (Voluntary Eradicators)

by Campbell, Nenia

  That's enough money to buy several days' worth of food. She wonders who she reminds him of — a girlfriend? An ex-girlfriend? An ex-wife? — and why he's willing to pay her so much. He's certainly good-looking enough to hold his own. The scruff on his chin and cheeks suggests he's old enough to be married, maybe even several times over.

  He probably has been, if he talks to all women like that. Though, looking at his hand now, she doesn't see a wedding ring. Maybe he's between wives at the moment.

  She would be lying to herself if she said the offer wasn't at all tempting — that's what disgusts her the most about this situation. She has always thought of herself as a reasonably moral person and he has just made her feel like a cockroach scrounging around in a back alley. “My answer is no.”

  He looks amused now, but that desire — that need to acquire — still hasn't left his eyes. With a sigh, he says, “Oh, very well. I suppose I could spare ten. But you'll have to work for them.”

  When it comes down to it, Vol would do anything to keep from starving. Anything to survive.

  Even that.

  But she isn't starving, so she slaps him instead. The sound rings out like a gunshot in the otherwise silent elevator. She can't believe what she has just done — only her stinging hand convinces her of the outcome. “Get away from me.”

  The imprint of her palm is etched in red on his swarthy skin. He retreats a step back. She stares at him with blatant dislike. At his expensive suit and his proprietary stare. She can't imagine what it must be like to just walk up to someone and assume you can buy them, like so much else. But she knows how it makes her feel: it makes her feel cheap, and she knows that she will never be able to wear this dress again without remembering this encounter and that look, and those mocking eyes.

  At her side, her hand forms a fist. I liked this dress.

  He raises his own hand and she tenses with wary readiness, but it is only to rub the cheek she hit. She hopes it hurts — and that the mark lasts long enough to serve as a badge proclaiming what an utter prick he is. But no, it is already fading. His kind doesn't scar.

  The elevator reaches the first floor. The doors slide open, but neither of them moves. “I never want to see you in here again.” He smiles lazily in response, prompting her to add, “Consider yourself blacklisted.”

  He sidesteps her to get to the doors. “That may be difficult, especially since I happen to be interviewing for a position here at this moment. You might be seeing me on a regular basis. And unless your name is Jillain, I doubt you have the authority required to do anything about that.”

  She stares at him, her jaw dropping slightly at hearing her boss's name dropped so casually from that devil's lips. Her mouth works, but no sounds come out. His lips curve.

  “I doubt your name is Kira, either — unless there are two of you. I was already assailed by one upstairs. She appeared to be going from door to door. As, I imagine, she came to yours.” His golden eyes lock with hers and she fancies that she can see the sparks lighting up between them from the friction of it. “I bet if I described you to her she would be able to tell me your name — unless you'd care to save me the trouble.”

  Vol said nothing. She couldn't.

  “No? Then I suppose I'll be seeing you.”

  She grabs his sleeve. It's made from a material that manages to be both coarse and soft, just like him. She yanks hard, almost cruelly. He freezes but makes no move to turn around and without becoming the slightest bit less afraid or confused she begins to feel something akin to rage. “Look — ”

  “Changed your mind, have you?”

  The words, and the lazy dispassionate tone they are spoken in, send an unexpected frisson through her. That makes her even angrier, and her anger makes her bold. She gives him a shake. “Why do you want to know my name? Who are you — and why do you think you can own me?”

  At that, he turns. His expression is unreadable. “First impressions are everything, darling.” With a firm step he crosses the threshold of the elevator doors, freeing himself from her grasp.

  Darling? She puts her hand, now empty, on the wall. The other tightens around the neck of the bottle of caffeine concentrate which, until now, she has forgotten. It announces itself with a crumpled protest that makes her jump. “That doesn't answer my que — ”

  The doors slam shut.

  “Stion,” she finishes, and stares in disbelief at the rising numbers on the panel as the elevator climbs upwards again. Like the street children who sometimes come to the Tower to wreck mischief and havoc both, he has pressed the buttons for all six floors. The elevator will go to every single floor before stopping at the first again — the floor she actually needs.

  That son of a bitch.

  2.

  By the time Vol makes it back to the first floor of the tower, she is five minutes behind schedule. Bastard. If she sees him again, she isn't sure what she might do. Only that it will include grievous bodily harm and possible grounds for her own firing.

  Suryan Lafever, the presiding Master of Games for this shift, smiles pleasantly as Vol walks through the automatic doors. Her smile slips, though, as she catches a glimpse of the expression on the blonde-haired girl's face. MoGs are moderators; it is their job to see that the safety precautions are adhered to, and that the game rules are properly followed. Their omnipotence and omnipresence within the games gradually earned them the nickname of “God Mods.”

  Half-Bastani, half-Meridian, Suryan's flaming red hair and amiable demeanor make her far more recognizable and popular than any of the other MoGs. When people call Suryan a God Mod, especially to her face, it lacks the usual aftertaste of bitter condescension and is more like a pet name than anything else.

  She blinks her large eyes. “Um…good morning, Volera.”

  “It's a bit too early to be good, isn't it?” She tries to joke but it sounds resentful.

  Suryan smiles a polite, bland smile. “I have you registered for Bounty Strike today. Is that right?”

  “If that's Kira's game, then yes.”

  Stupid Kira.

  “It is. This way,” Suryan sings out.

  How can she be so chipper this early in the morning? Vol sinks into the chair Suryan leads her to. The upholstered surface isn't that comfortable. In fact, the leather is lumpy and hard, but the padded surface is schematically similar enough to a bed that her body is starting to grow tired by simple association. She fights a yawn. The yawn wins.

  Caffeine concentrate, my ass.

  This is the last time she is going to waste her hard-earned money on that stupid beverage.

  “Tired?” Suryan inquires as she affixes the electrodes to Vol's temples, neatly avoiding Vol's arm as she lowers her hand from her mouth.

  “Let's not go there.” Vol grits her teeth to hold back another yawn and feels her cheeks flare slightly as her throat contracts anyway. “Better hurry,” she warns. “I'm fading fast.”

  “I'm almost done.”

  Suryan finishes the electrodes on Vol's limbs and body with her usual noninvasive precision. Her green eyes flick to the tube lights above their heads, currently glowing with a bright, unwavering yellow. “There are still several minutes before the game sequence activates. Would you like me to bring you a caffeinated beverage from the cafe? It might wake you up.”

  In spite of her misgivings, Vol nearly takes her up on it. Pride makes her turn the offer down. She can't afford it, and she doesn't want Suryan to buy it for her out of pocket, though she probably would anyway. Suryan is one of those nice girls who, inexplicably, people never seem to take advantage of. Probably because she's just so…so damned nice.

  Suryan is staring at her.

  Vol realizes, with a flush of embarrassment, that the girl has been waiting for an answer during the entirety of this inner-monologue. “No, thank you,” she says, in a tone that is strikingly polite — for her. And feeling this isn't enough, she adds, apologetically, “I already had one.”

  An instrument on Suryan's be
lt bleeps. The yellow lights begin to pulse. “The sixty-second countdown has been implemented,” Vol says, unnecessarily.

  Vol tries to bring up her hand in a wave but the wires weigh her down. “See ya.”

  “Best of luck.”

  Vol feels encouraged, as if Suryan's kindness is the antidote to Kira's venomous ill-will.

  The equipment comes to life with a hum. Then the electrical pulses wrest control of her visual cortex and the cubicle vanishes as her field of vision contracts to a single point, leaving her eyes awash in darkness. Her frontal cortex, the logic center of her brain, falters as it struggles to keep up with the rapidly changing sensory input being relayed en route from her thalamus.

  The most terrifying part of this immersion is a part that Vol can never remember. For several literally heart-stopping seconds, her brain switches to a low-power mode, forcing her body into a comatose unconsciousness as her various neural forces rally the troops and plan a course of action. This is the part where, if things go wrong, people die.

  Mercifully, nothing goes wrong.

  The point of light expands. As if the darkness were a transition no more significant than a blink of the eyes — and for Vol, this is the case — she finds herself standing in the middle of a temperate forest. The trees form a dense green dome over and around her, a tapestry of foliage so thick and closely-woven that she can scarcely make out what lies beyond.

  Can't see the forest for the trees, she finds herself thinking. More like, can't see the trees for the forest. Having never been in a real forest before, she admires the scene and wonders, as she always does, whether this is anything like the real thing or just somebody's idealized concept of it.

  Either way, it is very beautiful and infinitely preferable to the backdrop of decrepit urban wasteland she was expecting with a name like “Bounty Strike.”

  With a sense of reluctance, she turns out the forest and accesses the data-link — the database of game data pertinent to the various scenarios — in order to read the archives, replete with character profiles, game back story, game objectives, and miscellaneous information about the setting, including, in this case, information about the various flora and fauna. The Marks find these things inordinately helpful, especially when randomly allotted positions of power, and while most of them would never admit it, so do the vast majority of Players.

  The helpfulness and informativeness varies from designer to designer, though. Knowing that this is Kira's game does not exactly instill Vol with high hopes for a walk-through.

  Program name: Bounty_Strike_3.exe

  Character class: Bandit

  The Empire's high taxes and oppressive regime have forced its inhabitants to take drastic measures for survival. Bandits have taken over the countryside, holding up travelers and obstructing trade relations with neighboring countries. Bounty hunters have been commissioned to detain and capture any highwaymen and -women they find committing these infractions.

  …Alive or dead.

  Typical Kira scenario. A bit of a hunt, a bit of a chase, and just dangerous enough to keep the Marks going. Gold eyes flash in her mind and Vol makes a face. She has never been fond of danger or recklessness, and she isn't about to start singing a different tune now.

  Vol severs the link and hesitates, unsure which direction to take. A breeze lifts her hair, gently nudging her westward. She glances at the waiting trees and shrugs. It's as good a choice as any.

  Beams of sunlight spear through the canopy like arrow shafts. A hawk — she thinks it's a hawk, though it is larger than the ones she sees circling over the desert — flits through them, its wings throwing of dazzling diamonds of sunlight. Vol shields her eyes with one hand and follows the bird's progression, keeping one hand wrapped around the hilt of the dagger at her waist. In the distance she can hear the shrieks and laughter of the other players.

  A grin forms on her lips. She finds herself relaxing a little in spite of the fact that she's being persecuted by a bounty hunter somewhere in that wild green yonder who wants her alive—or dead. This is…surprisingly fun. She can't remember the last time she's been out in the sunshine, let alone on a nature walk. Karagh doesn't have much in the way of vegetation, and if you walk around too aimlessly people are apt to try and sell you something.

  Karagh isn't her native birthplace, though. She is Bastani. Eastern Bastani, though she doesn't tell people this part. Not since it was destroyed, burnt to rubble and black ash for its people's hubris. For attempting to play God, the Regent claims, although the hows and whys of this are unspecific and he has made no attempt to elaborate.

  Bordered by the Crys Sea on one side and the Balustrade Mountains on the other, Vol has heard that Eastern Bastan was a temperate place, kept green from the constant influx of rain that resulted from being so close to the coast. At the southernmost regions, parts were even alleged to be subtropical as a result of the dry heat emanating from the nearby Shifting Sand Lands.

  The content smile slips from Vol's face as the scenery around her takes on a whole new significance. Her place of birth quite possibly looked a lot like this.

  But since she can't remember, she will never be certain. And this is what irks her: this uncertainty. Because in a way, this is the worst kind of loss — the loss of something you never knew, and never will know, but nonetheless makes itself felt like a hole in the heart. And it isn't just her homeland she can't remember. Parents. Friends. Schooling. Childhood. These are missing, too.

  Logic dictates that she has had these things at some point in her life to get to where she is now. She must have because she can write and speak and socialize, and these things are all learned. She has crystallized knowledge, intact and brightly gleaming with sharply honed intelligence, and these things are learned, too. But Vol cannot remember how she obtained any of these skills, nor has she any recollection of the trials and tribulations that were an integral process of their acquisition.

  But she dreams, and these dreams leave her with the feeling that the memories are perhaps not all lost, but locked away somewhere deep inside. Each morning she wakes feeling as if her life's story is but a word on the tip of the tongue, capable of being recalled at any given moment.

  Each morning, she awakes disappointed.

  Morose now, but not entirely sure why, Vol kicks at a loose stone with the toe of her boot. It skitters some distance away with a soft patter, blending neatly into the stealthy crunch of topsoil that sounds from somewhere close behind. Vol whirls around, drawing her dagger, all thoughts of her homeland forgotten.

  A thwack resounds through the otherwise silent clearing. Inches away from Vol's side, an arrow is embedded in the trunk of the beech tree to her right. Wrapped around the shaft and tied with a bit of string is a scroll. Without relinquishing her hold on the dagger in the slightest, Vol tugs the arrow. She can feel its resistance, buried the way it is within the wood. The shooter's aim was sure and true. Vol moves her legs slightly apart, bracing herself, and gives a fierce tug.

  Pop.

  The metal point thus freed, the arrow yields easily and Vol stumbles backwards, carried by the force of her own momentum. She falls on her ass, clutching arrow and dagger both, and scuttles behind the much broader trunk of what the archives have identified as a towering oak. Even as she crawls, she can hear the hiss of more displaced arrows narrowly missing their mark. She waits, catching her breath, and hears only silence.

  And, if she listens very closely, perhaps the slightest whisper of another's breath?

  Vol pushes off from the tree and runs, unwilling to stick around long enough to find out. She unwinds the scroll as she runs, studying the message her unseen assailant has left her.

  You are being hunted.

  An arrow pierces through the parchment, tearing it from her hands and piercing it to the trunk of a nearby sapling. But not before Vol gets a good, long look at the last word in that sentence, written in a careful and steady hand with fresh ink that drips like even fresher blood.

  Run.


  3.

  Vol runs, slightly bent, as she crashes through the underbrush, pursued by her fleet-footed assailant. A sense of exhilaration fills her as wave after wave of adrenaline courses through her bloodstream, giving her a delicious high. She feels fierce satisfaction at eluding such a talented marksman; it reaffirms why she has kept this job, despite its shortcomings. It is, if nothing else, a rush.

  She crouches beneath a bank of ferns to catch her breath. The sound of a creek burbles nearby, unseen. Vol moves deeper into her hiding space, trying not to rustle the leaves. About a stone's throw away the trees grow farther apart, ferns and juniper yielding to a grove of bluebells caught in an intangible breeze. She waits, silent and watchful.

  A girl crashes into the clearing scattering dirt and rocks beneath her boots, stumbling like a startled foal as she glances around the clearing. Her thick black hair is knotted into a long braid that swings in a lazy arc as she turns her head to study the woods. Her sharp, aquiline features, swarthy skin, and statuesque build denote her as an Arbatian.

  She wears a tawny vest and fatigues of the same hue, both close in shade to the girl's own skin. The fatigues are tucked into soft-soled boots the color of earth. In her gloved hands, she is holding a bow. One arrow is already poised on the taut bowstring.

  She glances around warily, turning back to face the bluebells. Vol watches her kneel, studying the ground. Tracks. She's looking for tracks. She feels a small burst of delight at the prospect. Probably not a Mark, then. Another Player, perhaps? It's a refreshing change from the normal routine. The algorithm that assigns positions within the games is supposed to be random but Players are disproportionately paired off with Marks to ensure that the paying customers get their money's worth, and Vol has only so much patience for m00bs.

  She closes her hand over an egg-shaped stone, bouncing it in her hand lightly to get the weight of it, and lobs the stone into a cluster of juniper brush growing under the shadow of a nearby rowan. The other girl starts, whirling around, but does not fire. Her reflexes must be good. Vol watches her prowl towards the ground-hugging shrubs, already shifting her weight to the balls of her feet. Once the girl's back is turned Vol catapults into a charging assault, grabbing the darker girl around the waist with one arm and holding the dagger to her throat with the other.