Play or Die

by Jen Cole

  “Miss Warrington, I understand you wish to make a cash withdrawal of 20,000 dollars.”

  “Yes… did the teller explain my situation?”

  “She did, and please accept my condolences on the passing of your father. But I wonder if you fully understand the risk you take in carrying such a large amount of cash?”

  His forehead was wrinkled and Jo noticed several prematurely grey threads running through his hair.

  “I do, but I have a number of cash payments to make this morning, so I won’t be carrying the money for long.”

  “I see. Unfortunately, we require some notice for a withdrawal of that amount or we wouldn’t have sufficient notes to provide for our other customers over the day.”

  “Oh. How much can you give me?”

  “We could give you 10,000 dollars now and the other 10,000 tomorrow.”

  “I won’t be here tomorrow!” Jo caught herself as panic bubbled up. She breathed deeply and reached for the idea forming in her mind.

  “I’ll be at Chadstone later today. Is there a branch in that area I could get the remainder from?”

  “We have a branch around the corner from Murrumbeena station, which is near Chadstone,” replied the manager, scribbling down the address for her. “Let me give them a call.”

  Jo returned her identity cards to her wallet and slipped the card with the bank’s address into her pocket while the manager spoke on the phone. His desk clock showed 10.42. Her fingers and toes clenched in agony.

  Finally he hung up and pressed an intercom button. “Mrs. Norris, could you please join us.” Then turning to Jo, “You’re in luck Miss Warrington. The Murrumbeena branch can supply you with the other 10,000 dollars. I’ve told them to expect you.”

  Jo stood and extended her hand. “Thank you Mr. Singh. I really appreciate it.”

  “I’m glad we could help,” the bank manager said as he stood to shake her hand. “I hope things go well with your father’s affairs.”

  Though desperate to get going, Jo forced herself to nod and smile. “Thank you.”

  The teller put her head through the doorway. “Yes Mr. Singh?”

  “Please give Miss Warrington 10,000 dollars in cash and transfer the balance to her cheque account. And Miss Warrington… do take care.”

  “I will,” she said, before following Mrs. Norris back to the transaction window.

  As the teller counted and bundled the money, Jo became aware of a disturbance about halfway down the waiting queue. A man and woman were arguing, and she could hear a rising note of hysteria in the woman’s voice. The two were facing each other so Jo could only see the back of the man’s grey coat, but she observed that his sparring partner was a neat blonde in a short black skirt and crimson top. As Jo watched, the man took hold of her arm and she gave a scream. The queuing customers were turning to observe the drama, and another man entered the argument, loudly telling the grey coat to calm down and let the woman go.

  Jo’s teller coughed discretely, and turning, she saw the counted money waiting for her. With a quick ‘thank you’, she thrust the bundles to the bottom of her bag, noticing peripherally that the drama in the queue was escalating. Others had joined in the shouting and she heard the words, ‘Citizen’s arrest,’ and saw a grey-sleeved arm waving an open leather wallet. A police car was pulling up as she left the bank, and she moved on quickly, not wanting to be caught up in whatever was happening.

  With less than ten minutes to get back to the department store, Jo adopted the half skipping weaving run of a city woman late for an appointment, or so she hoped it looked, and reached the store panting, but with two minutes to spare. I’ve got to get right into the middle. It must look like I’m engrossed in shopping, not just about to leave. As she plunged through the milling shoppers, Jo wondered if a sauna could be any hotter, and was glad she only had to endure the department store for a few minutes.

  At eleven by her watch, she reached an area displaying sunglasses alongside racks of cheap magnifying eyewear for the ageing population. She decided to stay two minutes longer to allow for any time discrepancy and eyed the sunglasses. They were tempting, but no. Sunglasses with a coat, scarf and hat in the middle of winter just screamed I’m trying to hide. Better to buy something completely unlikely for someone in her situation. Across the aisle was the answer – artificial flowers.

  She grabbed a bunch of long-stemmed lilies and took them to the counter. As the sales clerk rolled them into a paper cone, Jo pulled the last fifty-dollar bill from her wallet. There’d be little change, but she waited for it, re-buttoning the coat over her bag. She didn’t want the woman calling out to her from across the store. As soon as the notes were proffered, Jo thrust them into her pocket and lifted the flowers so they partially hid her face. Then with a thumping heart, she headed for the exit. The doorway loomed… she was through.

  Now she faced several blocks’ walk down the very street pursuers could be travelling up, on their way to the department store. Jo didn’t want to risk that close an encounter. She paused indecisively before spotting a solution. A city tram was approaching. A quick sprint got her to the island stop in the middle of the road just as it pulled up. She boarded and took a seat near the door.

  The tram sailed on and Jo laid the flowers across her knees and undid some coat buttons. She felt around inside her bag and her fingers brushed one of the reassuring bundles of money, but she was looking for the transport card she’d purchased that morning to travel from her hotel to the city. Ah, there it was, next to her phone.

  She slipped the card into her pocket, and suddenly felt sick. Her phone – it had been on in her bag the whole time. Couldn’t its GPS chip give away her location? Would the Hunter’s hired help have access to tracking equipment?

  With horror she remembered the woman in the bank queue. A bit shorter than me, she thought, and older, and her crimson top wasn’t quite the same shade as my jacket, but her hair was the same color and length. She certainly looked a lot more like me than anyone else in the bank, and if I’d been out of sight with the manager when the operative came in, he could well have assumed that woman was me. She yanked out her phone and started to turn it off, then paused.

  The tram squealed to a stop opposite the station and Jo left with a group of passengers. Her phone lay on the tram seat. With luck it would be a red herring. She hoped whoever took it wouldn’t manage to crack her auto-lock. Bad enough to lose an expensive phone without having to pay for someone’s long distance calls. Still, it was worth it to steer the Hunter in the wrong direction.

  At the station’s entrance, Jo pulled the transport card from her pocket and held it against the sensor. The barrier opened and she stepped through. Smooth as a regular, she hoped. Thanks to the bank manager she had a station name, but the myriad of platforms and signs inside set her heart fluttering.

  Calm down, she told herself. Murrumbeena Station has to be listed somewhere. And there it was – on the Pakenham line, platform six. A train would be leaving in three minutes. Keeping the flowers up, she made her way to the platform, found a bench and collapsed onto it beside a scruffy student reading a textbook.

  Strands of sweaty hair stuck to her face and she pushed them back. The blister on her heel stung and her feet were throbbing, but she’d succeeded, and when three minutes later the train approached, she almost sprang to meet it.

  ~~~~

  CHAPTER 6

  Angela Karpin patrolled the studio Playroom out of habit, but after eight seasons she was able to leave most of the problems to her programmers. The fact that so many kept coming back reinforced the heady feeling of being part of something worthwhile.

  When three years earlier, Fitani had proposed a partnership in a blank Playroom, she’d been simultaneously flattered and suspicious – flattered that he’d thought the programming skills of a nineteen-year-old up to his project, and suspicious that his real interest was in her investment contribution – her highly acclaimed tube games had won her a great many Personal P
oints. There was probably some truth on both counts, but Fitani had ended up surprising her. She’d known he was a showman, but he’d also turned out to be a skilled motivator and organizer. Moreover, he never seemed slowed by doubts and this, she’d come to realize, was because he had something she lacked – faith in The Company and its path for them.

  Their broadcasts from the Fun ’n’ Games Playroom had gained an instant following, but Play or Die was to become their greatest success. It may even have saved her, she admitted. At the time, Ben had just turned two and had gone into the children’s silo, and though she was pregnant with Sandra, compulsory sterilization followed the second child, so after Sandra, she would never again have the comfort of a baby to banish the creeping despair so many were succumbing to.

  Somehow Play or Die had turned things around for everyone. People had become reinvigorated when they’d discovered they could dispense real justice to their hated Ancestors and the rising suicide rates had dropped. Angela was proud to play a part in bringing this healing to the people of the Safe Places all over the Earth.

  As she glanced at the action on screen, her attention was drawn to the Hunter, who was with one of his agents, sorting out the debacle that had resulted from Jo leaving her phone on the tram. This Hunter was like a snake, she decided – both repellent and fascinating. He worked his charm to bring others under his thrall, while never losing sight of his goal. His preparation for the game had been faultless, especially given the mere twenty-four hours he’d had before Jo’s briefing. Since the game had begun however, arrogance had led him to make a mistake, and the Prey had slipped through his fingers in the city.

  No doubt he would catch her, but Angela found herself hoping it wouldn’t be too soon. Something in the Hunter reminded her of Scott Marshall. Their paths had last crossed a month ago, in the Congregation Playroom at the Spring Season Raging Festival, when he’d come up behind her during the effigy burning, and squeezed her breast. She’d struggled from his grasp and called him a filthy Ancestor before giving him a shove. In retaliation he’d pretended to lose balance, stumbling against her, and stomping hard on her instep. For the surrounding crowd, whose heads had turned at her scream, he’d apologized with mock humility, all the while enjoying her pain and anger.

  This Hunter, Angela decided, was a Scott Marshall-type, and she felt an unexpected twinge of sympathy for the Prey. Not, she told herself, that she really cared either way. They were both vile, selfish Ancestors, and one of them would soon be getting their punishment.

  ~~~~

  CHAPTER 7

  Jo boarded, swept a glance around the carriage and took a seat in an empty section. As the train pulled out, she sighed, feeling tension drain away. Her eyelids began to droop until the shock of nearly falling asleep flipped them back open.

  Don’t let your guard down, she told herself and scanned the carriage a second time but the occupants continued to look completely ordinary. It was 11.15. For sanity’s sake she had to assume she’d given the Hunter the slip and would be relatively safe until two o’clock.

  How best to use her time until then? Make a list of the things she needed. Jo pulled a pen and notepad from her bag and wrote, Passport? Never having travelled overseas in her eighteen years, she didn’t own a passport, but guessed the process of acquiring one could take some days.

  She crossed it out. I’m stuck in Australia but that’s not so bad. It’s a big country. As long as I move fast to a different place every three hours, I should be able to avoid the Hunter, shouldn’t I? With a sick feeling, Jo admitted to herself that keeping ahead of the Hunter would become increasingly difficult the more tired she got.

  I can’t afford to sleep through a coordinates posting, but the Hunter can if he has others tracking me down. That means he’ll always be fresher than me. Jo realized she’d been thinking of the Hunter as male for a while now, but it felt right so she didn’t fight it.

  Okay, since I have to be awake at each posting, I’ll need a watch that has an alarm. She wrote it down. And a money belt, oh and a decent pair of walking shoes! Just thinking about them made her feet start throbbing again. Should she get a haircut? Going short would change her appearance and make it easy to use wigs as well. Jo added wigs to the list but put a question mark after it. How much appearance changing would she need to do? Fitani had said they were sending her new coordinates, every three hours, but he hadn’t mentioned, and she hadn’t thought to ask, whether her photo was also being updated.

  The Hunter’s briefing, according to Fitani, had taken place yesterday. How much personal information about her had Fitani given him? How many arrangements had the Hunter been able to put into place in those twenty-four hours before she’d received her briefing?

  For the first time, Jo wished Fitani back so she could ask those questions, and remembered two things – that he would reappear if she gained a thousand points, and that she was now on constant show for the TV viewers of the future.

  Her face grew hot as she realized these strangers had already watched her vomiting into a toilet bowl and she cringed at the thought of the personal, private things they would continue to see over the coming days.

  You can’t care about that, she told herself. To these people you’re nothing but a circus chimp performing for their entertainment. Never give them the satisfaction of showing embarrassment. Concentrate on what’s important.

  Important – she found herself scribbling down the two names Fitani had given her. Simon Brooks and Morris Blatman. Simon Brooks had hired Morris Blatman to kill her father. These future people thought they were using her, but Jo realized with amazement that she’d already used them to discover the names of her father’s murderers. This using business can be a two-way street, she thought with rising hope.

  The train pulled into Southern Cross station. Jo knew its undulating roof and steep escalators well. This was the terminus for all Victoria’s country lines. She could get off right here if she wanted, and catch a train home to Shepparton. Her resolve of barely a minute ago wavered. The word home felt so sweet and she was so tired. But home would be no haven. The Hunter probably already had people stationed around her house, and if he didn’t, he’d quickly send some when her 2.00 p.m. coordinates put her there.

  Estate agents were also waiting to pounce. One had phoned yesterday as she was leaving for Melbourne. A buyer, he’d said, had approached him about her farm.

  Jo sighed. Only three weeks ago she and her dad had been sitting over mugs of tea at the breakfast table discussing the usual week’s tasks. Then the first change had started. Out of the blue her father had said, “Jo-cat, the university has a mid-year intake. Why don’t you apply for their agricultural degree course?”

  “Huh? Since when do you need me to have a degree?

  “We should keep up with the times.”

  Jo had laughed. “Is this the great skeptic of new-fangled ideas I hear talking?”

  “I’m serious, Jo. Qualifications make you saleable, should we ever have to let the farm go.”

  “What? No Dad,” she’d protested. We grow the best apples in Shep!”

  Her father had held up a hand. “And the supermarket chains, with their three and four hundred percent markups are grinding us into the ground. It’s harder than ever to cover our costs. That new tree shaker alone will take another five years to pay off. The Davies have just sold up,” he added.

  She was scornful. “Their kids are to blame for that. They abandoned the farm to get jobs in Melbourne and Mitch and Fran were too old to keep up the place on their own. The new owner, that city bloke, Jack Murray, seems to be doing alright.”

  “Maybe, if things really are as they seem… and don’t forget, I’m no spring chicken myself.”

  Shocked at hearing him speak this way, Jo had responded vigorously. “Dad, you’re barely middle aged, not old. And as fit as a fiddle. No city farmer could hold a candle to you.”

  That had made him smile. “I hope not. Fiddles are made of wood. In any case, w
hile I’m barely middle-aged and still have the energy to run the orchard on my own, you should take the opportunity to head off to university.”

  He’d had answers for all her objections and gradually the frightening thoughts of losing the farm had given way to a growing excitement over what she could achieve armed with up-to-date techniques and scientific knowledge in agriculture. That same night she’d filled out the university’s online application form and when the invitation to attend an interview had arrived, Jo had been thrilled and optimistic.

  How had things gone so wrong? A man she’d never heard of had ordered her father’s death, and now people from the future were using the opportunity provided by her new orphan status to order hers. Well if they thought she was a goner they had another think coming. She was far from helpless. She’d avoid their damned Hunter and bring her father’s murderers to justice.

  The train moved on and Jo shifted in her seat, catching a waft of her own body odour. The morning’s repeated combinations of terror, exercise and overheated city stores had taken their toll. She thought of her Richmond hotel room. Could she risk going back to have a shower and collect her gear? Better not, she decided grimly, but at some stage she’d have to let them know she wouldn’t be returning. No point in running up unnecessary bills.

  She already missed her phone. How easy it would be to call the hotel right now. And how stupid, she reminded herself. Every time I turned it on, I’d be telling the Hunter where I was. She wondered if Tayla had been texting. Before much longer she’d need to let people know her phone was out of action, or first Tayla and then other friends would start worrying about her lack of communication. What I need is a pre-paid phone that can’t be traced to me. Jo added “phone” to her list.