by Guy Morpuss
S.
I wasn’t in a bar.
I was sitting in the dark in an abandoned warehouse, my back to a pile of overgrown rubble. Moonlight streamed in through what had once been the roof several storeys above me.
I didn’t need the moon or my enhanced vision to tell that the shape on the floor in front of me had been human. Once. Now it lay like a broken doll, neck at an odd angle that no living person could tolerate, face turned towards me.
Karl’s career as a drug dealer was over. He wasn’t going to be telling anyone anything.
I felt sick, a cold sweat was on my arms. I’d never seen a dead body before. What should I do? Who to tell? Who could I trust?
The warehouse seemed deserted. There was no sign of anyone nearby, so I was safe for the moment. Before doing anything I skimmed the rest of my messages.
There was one from Kate that confirmed parts of what Sierra had said about the andi. A couple from Mike about choosing a new body. A private message from Mike saying he needed my support with buying an EliteCorps athlete, as Ben and Sierra wouldn’t agree. None of that mattered for now.
There was another message from Mike telling me I ought to be more compassionate towards Sierra. Yeah, right.
Then nothing more from Mike.
Lastly one from Ben.
Alex. Strange things are happening, my friend. Kate has told you part of it, but not everything. See her message to me [attached].
I have sent Sierra to try to track down this andi of Kate’s. Hopefully she will do it, and will have some news for you. If not you are going to have to find the andi.
We also need to know who this is [attached]. I found her leaving the arena where Mike did his race, together with the andi, shortly before I woke up at the wrong time.
Hopefully this is all about nothing, and by the time I’m next round Mike will have been in contact. It’s not what we need, though, ten days before a new life.
I don’t like any of this. We need to get things back to normal.
Ben.
As was obvious, things were anything but normal. I could answer some of Ben’s queries, but not all. What to tell him?
First things first. I stood and walked over to the body, kneeling beside it. With difficulty I turned him over, trying not to look at the face as his head flopped to the other side. I swallowed hard to keep down the remains of whatever Sierra had been drinking. My throat tasted like acid. Real death was very different from the games. Even Jessica hadn’t felt as bad as this.
Steeling myself, I rifled quickly through the pockets of his coat. They were stuffed with small packets, each containing a single black pill.
Perfect. I didn’t know exactly what they were, but I had little doubt that they would prove to the others that Sierra was using again. I took one and stuffed it in my pocket.
The discovery of the pills also solved the problem of what to do with the body. I had contemplated calling ParkGov and putting the blame on Sierra. The trouble was that if she was hauled in for questioning we all were. Odds were that we all got locked up. And what would I say? That I was here sitting next to a cooling corpse, that he might have been killed by someone I was sharing a body with, and could they please come and arrest us? Once they had stopped laughing they would be here in a shot to take me away, plans ruined.
Better just to leave Karl where he was. If he was found with his pockets full of recreational drugs, ParkGov would just assume it was a deal gone wrong and leave it there. Case closed. There were enough bodies produced in a death park on a daily basis. No one was going to investigate the death of a drug-dealing hed with days left to live.
No. There was no point in calling the authorities. We needed to deal with this ourselves.
•
I retreated to my high-rise block to work out what to do next. It was quite a climb, but I needed somewhere safe and free from disturbance.
I sat cross-legged on the bed in the dark, staring out of the window at the moonlight on the ruined buildings below.
What to tell the others? What was it safe for me to say? The official line was that all messages were encrypted and confidential. No one believed that. Messages containing words such as ‘murdered’, ‘killed’ or ‘dead’ might well trigger an alert that had ParkGov hauling us in for questioning. I might be right that no one was going to care about a drug dealer who was days away from death. But it still wasn’t worth taking the risk. Murder is murder.
I started with the easiest one.
Ben. We have to assume Mike lost his race, and that is why you woke early. If you ever watched anything other than games you would have recognised the woman leaving the arena with Bird as Svetlana Gurushkin, a former elite marathon runner. She hit the headlines a couple of years ago after she signed up to be the face of Siber-X, an energy drink said to be sourced from the spring waters of the Ural Mountains in Siberia. It turned out that the springs were next to an abandoned nuclear power plant, and the secret ingredient of Siber-X was depleted Uranium-235. The last I heard, Gurushkin was bankrupt and in jail. I don’t know how she ended up running a race against Mike. Presumably someone has slipped her a chunk of time. He wouldn’t have stood a chance against her, even in retirement.
But if he died in the game then we all ought to be out of here, waking up after a couple of weeks in stasis and arguing about what body to choose for our next life. And we’d have lost all our time. But we’re still here and Mike has gone missing. I don’t understand how that is possible.
Sierra traced Bird to the bar where you saw her, but then got leaned on by some drug dealer. See her message to me [attached]. I didn’t hear from her after that, so don’t know what Karl told her at the meeting. But he won’t be troubling us again. In my pocket is a pill that he was selling. We really need to know what it is. It seems to me that either Sierra or Mike has been buying stuff they shouldn’t. Sierra may be using again, or Mike may have decided he needed a performance boost. Sierra says she didn’t, but we know how far we can believe what she says. If we knew what was in the pill then we would know which. But I don’t know how we get it analysed without someone asking questions.
I don’t understand where Bird comes into this. Why did she get in touch with Kate instead of Sierra or Mike? Why did Kate give her access? Is there something Kate isn’t telling us?
None of this makes sense for a minor drug deal gone wrong. If Mike or Sierra didn’t pay I could understand if one of us woke up in a back alley with a broken nose, or some ribs kicked in. This seems way too elaborate.
Did Sierra see something she hasn’t told us?
We need to find Bird again. I’m running out of time. Not much more I can do this cycle. Let me know what you can find out.
Alex.
Next a message to Mike, copied to the others.
Mike, we need to hear from you. Get in touch asap. Alex.
Then one to Kate.
Kate. As you’ll have seen, there’s lots of odd things happened since your encounter with Bird. Mike’s gone missing. I’m copying you a message from Sierra where she tracked Bird to a local bar [attached]. It seems as though someone (Sierra?) bought some drugs from this dealer earlier, and Bird was somehow involved.
Or could it be Mike? Or Ben, even? Something weird happened in Mike’s game, and if anyone could manipulate a game it would be Ben.
There’s a pill in my pocket that came from the dealer, Karl, that Sierra mentions meeting. If you can find out what it is that might tell us who was buying from them.
I’ve got to drop out any minute. Let me know what you find.
A.
Finally a private message to Sierra, copied to Kate and Ben.
Sierra. I found Karl but didn’t learn anything useful – as you will have guessed. What were you doing dropping out in a warehouse?
Please be honest for once – are you using again? Is this all down to you? It might not just be Mike. We are all at risk now.
Alex.
I wasn’t going to say anythin
g more to her. Generally the less information you give Sierra, the better. I hadn’t trusted Sierra from the first day I met her.
KATE
DAY THREE
06:00–11:00
Things seemed to have gone to hell since my last cycle. There was a brief moment of first waking when I enjoyed the feeling of another morning, before the memory of the previous day’s events came crashing down on me.
It didn’t get any better as I waded through my messages.
I started with a high priority from CGov, telling me that on this occasion my imminent death excused me from public service, but that they would be in touch again once I was in my new body. Great.
But probably the least of my worries.
There were forty-seven challenges to various forms of death match. The lists would have been updated overnight, and with twenty-four years we were now a juicy target for everyone. There was a message from ParkGov reminding us that we were here to play, and if we didn’t complete at least one challenge per cycle we would forfeit time and be assigned one at random. I didn’t remember that being in the rules. Maybe they only bothered to enforce it once you’d acquired enough time to become an interesting target. We could presumably still leave the park before midnight and avoid competing. Alex was going to have to make that decision.
Most worrying was the fact that no one had heard from Mike since his race. There was an excited message from him about the twenty years I had won, and potential new bodies. And then nothing.
My heart sank as I read on through the various messages from Ben and Alex. Mike had been suckered into a race that he couldn’t win. But we were still here, and had all our time, which made no sense at all. I could raise a query with ParkGov about Mike’s race, but if he’d lost, that risked alerting them to the fact that something had gone wrong. The likelihood was that they would deem us losers and take away all the time we had won.
Poor Ben. He hated change. This would be killing him.
All of this was somehow connected with Amy Bird. As I’d guessed, she was still alive. I’d been right to be suspicious of her, and should never have taken the challenge. Had I killed Mike by giving her access? What had Mike or Sierra got involved in with the andi? It all seemed too elaborate for a drug deal gone wrong. As Alex suggested, if anyone could manipulate a game it would be Ben. But why? Could he and Mike be up to something?
I felt in my pocket and pulled out a packet containing a small black pill. It could have been anything. I found it hard to believe that this could be causing all our troubles. Had we stumbled across something much bigger? Was Guskov behind all this?
If Bird had been telling me the truth then we would be carrying an extra mind, and I could expect to be contacted by someone this cycle to tell me how to remove it. I hadn’t been entirely honest with the others about what I agreed to with Bird, as they would have been horrified at the idea of me letting in a sixth person, even if only for a day and with no control. Although I doubted now whether any of what Bird had told me was true.
I logged on through my admin codes. There was no record of the sixth space ever having been accessed, let alone recently. So good news and bad news. We weren’t carrying anyone extra, but the andi’s story had been lies from beginning to end.
I couldn’t tell whether Mike was still with us. Although I had access to restricted areas, privacy controls meant that I didn’t know who occupied which space. Each space showed traffic and I couldn’t differentiate between messages going in and out, so it told me nothing. For all I could tell, Mike was in there but keeping quiet, screaming his head off unheard, or gone for good.
This was getting us nowhere. I needed to find another way. Tracking down Amy Bird seemed like a long shot. If Ben couldn’t find her then I wasn’t going to.
The only other lead we had was the pill. I couldn’t go to the authorities with it. Equally, I wasn’t going to find the answer cruising the bars at seven in the morning.
I sat staring at the pill as though it could provide a solution.
Then it struck me who might know the answer.
•
As I’d hoped, halfway to Borth Street the man in the long coat was in the same spot as the day before at the end of the alley. Again, business seemed quiet, and he perked up as I walked over. Up close I saw his face was lined. His long black hair, down to his shoulders, made him look younger than he was.
‘Hey, what can I do for you today?’ he asked. ‘What game are you playing? Give me the name and I’ll tell you what you need.’
‘I’m not playing,’ I said. ‘I’m looking for information.’ I looked down at his suitcase, coloured packets and bottles of pills neatly arrayed. ‘Is this stuff legal?’
‘Hey! What sort of a question is that?’ He kicked the lid of the suitcase shut and I heard the whirring of a locking mechanism. No doubt he could send a signal that would incinerate the contents of the suitcase, destroying any evidence. I’d obviously come to the right man.
‘Relax,’ I said quickly. Making him destroy his drugs by mistake wasn’t going to get us off to a good start. ‘I got passed something last night that I’m pretty sure isn’t legal. I was hoping you could tell me what it is.’
‘And what makes you think I’d know?’
I said nothing, just looked down at his suitcase again.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘I might be able to help you. But not here.’ He glanced left and right. ‘We’re being watched all the time. How much is it worth to you?’
‘It depends on what you can tell me. But it’ll be more than you’re making standing here at seven in the morning with no customers.’
He considered for a moment. ‘All right. Meet me at 8:30, at this address.’ He touched his hand to mine. ‘Tell them you’re there to see Godfried.’ He paused. ‘That’s me.’
‘Fine. See you there.’
I killed time by finding somewhere for breakfast, then took a leisurely stroll to the address he’d given me. It was a nondescript brown door in yet another crumbling concrete monolith. There was an old-fashioned intercom next to the door. I pressed the button.
‘Yes?’
‘I’m here to see Godfried.’
‘Come up.’ The door buzzed open.
I stepped into a dimly lit corridor that led to a flight of stairs. At the top a middle-aged woman was sitting behind a desk. She looked up at me, and nodded to her right. ‘Carry on through – God’s in the bar.’
To my surprise the corridor opened out into a large, circular room with high ceilings and elaborate chandeliers. A long curved bar ran along one edge. Along the opposite edge was a row of red-leather booths. Dotted around the rest of the room were low tables and armchairs, separated from one another by small trees in pots. This was by far the nicest place I’d been in the death park.
The bar was dark and deserted at that time of morning. It took me a moment to find Godfried. He was sitting in one of the armchairs, suitcase at his side. He’d discarded his coat.
He rose at my approach and shook my hand.
‘So, Ms Weston,’ he said. ‘What will you have? I can recommend the Admiral Nelson. You’re paying.’
I looked down at his glass. ‘Rum? At 8:30 in the morning? I’m fine, thanks.’
‘Gods, woman,’ he said. ‘If I wanted to be told when I could drink I’d have got married.’
I shrugged and sat down across from him.
He gestured to the room. ‘What do you think?’
‘It’s incredible. What’s somewhere like this doing in the middle of a death park?’
‘It’s a club, of sorts,’ he said. ‘Invitation only. You can do things here that you aren’t allowed to do in the games.’
‘Like what?’
‘Pretty much anything. You want to gamble with your time, see if you can win big? The casino is through there.’ He pointed to an unmarked door next to the bar. ‘That’s tame, though. Suppose you’ve given up on ever leaving the park and want to drift towards death in the most pleasan
t way possible. There’s an opium den. You rapidly get into a death spiral, trading more and more of your time for drugs, until eventually you have nothing left. I’m told it’s a pleasant way to go.
‘There’s a lot here that isn’t nearly as pleasant. There are some for whom killing in the arenas isn’t enough any more. Maybe it never was. For them it’s the act of killing that matters, not winning time. They want to kill without risk to themselves. Let’s say you’ve got a few days left to live and you know the odds of getting any more in the arenas are low. They’ll offer you what’s known as the mini-hed package. You live here for thirty days, all the alcohol, drugs, gambling, whores, whatever you want. But you never leave. At the end of the thirty days you’re stuck in a room with some rich psychopath to die as part of his – or her – twisted fantasies.
‘There’s plenty more like that. There are game booths here where you can play games that are banned in the arenas. Basically, whatever sick desires you have, if you’ve got enough credit you’ll find someone in the park who’s willing to act it out with you. It makes what I do look innocent.’ He paused, and took a drink.
‘So why are you a member if you find it all so distasteful?’ I asked.
‘I’m more on the service side of things. There’s good business to be had here at night. I don’t come here for pleasure. Unlike others.’ He nodded to one of the booths opposite the bar. ‘The good doctor over there, for instance.’
I turned in surprise. I’d thought we were alone. Half hidden in the darkness of the booth was a pale-faced man wearing an old-fashioned three-piece suit. He had a short dark beard, and piercing blue eyes that were staring at me. He smiled slightly as my gaze met his, but made no effort to look away. I shivered and turned back to Godfried. But I could still feel those eyes on me.
‘Ugh,’ I said, beginning to wish I’d taken up the offer of a drink. ‘Who is he?’
‘Doctor Bernard. He practically lives here. He’s been in the park for years. Much longer than I have. Rumour is that he fled here because he’s wanted for horrible crimes. Or he worked for a secret government agency, and left when they wouldn’t let him carry out his more extreme experiments. I don’t know which is true, but from what I’ve seen I can believe either story. He seems to have limitless amounts of time, and he’s sponsored some of the most gruesome acts here.’ Godfried paused, and took another drink.