by J B Cantwell
Orders. It all came down to orders. There was no retreat allowed. Not here. Not anywhere. Death could have a gun pointed right at your forehead and you still had to move, still had to keep trying to win. There was strategy, but only sometimes. We were used like simple battering rams to win the ground farther into the enemy’s territory. In the real world, tanks and copters would eventually move in to do the heavy lifting. But human lives were much less expensive to lose than war vehicles. The drive we had to win each game, each battle, had to be strong enough to save our lives. Every time.
Blake had been named our team leader, but not because of any particular talent on his part. I knew Blake just well enough to know that he didn’t have the patience to guide our team. But there was no going back now. There was no tolerance for disrespecting the chain of command, even if those in command were in the process of leading you into an ambush.
He wasn’t thinking. I could see in his eyes the glory he expected by being the first one to the flag.
Surely the other team must have our own flag in their sights. Why hadn’t they claimed it?
With one wave of his hand we were on the move, running full-tilt toward the stronghold, shooting blindly in every direction to try to provide cover. Just as he reached the edge of the wall of the enclosure, two sirens sounded at once. The vibrations in the suits of the hit recruits indicated they must fall to the ground. Blake swore under his breath as he obediently fell to the damp earth. He had lost his ability to command the rest of us on the squad the moment he had been hit.
Now, with no leader, none of us were in command. Tim, the small kid who had joined the Service from the Chicago recruitment center, stared ahead blankly. Five feet behind me, Andy from Colorado was coming up on me fast, passing me on the way to the flag. Structure had broken down, and it was anybody’s game now. I froze, wanting to speak, to warn them of a trap I had no proof of.
Soon Tim was on his feet, too, following the only one of us who seemed to have any ideas.
Tim went down first, the flash that came from the enclosure took his suit down, shuddering from its vibration. He rested his head on the ground, and I couldn’t tell if he felt relieved or disappointed. Probably both.
I rolled to one side, flinging my body toward the outer wall of the building. From inside, the sound of Andy’s execution sounded, ringing through the afternoon.
Just me now. Against seven of them. And then the fire came.
Pop, pop, pop. A volley of shots blasted through the trees. I could see the laser sights on the wall just in front of my face. I stared around for my attackers.
Where were they?
Fear took over, even though I knew I wouldn’t die in the end, not for real. This was a war game, not a war. My hands shook against my rifle as I raced around to the other side of the building. The popping noise stopped. I took a few deep breaths, trying to calm down enough to think.
There was no escape from my position. If I had had a plan, somewhere to go and hide maybe, it would have calmed my nerves. I’d be happy with just one more soldier on my team, someone to discuss what we should do next with. But here, alone, I had no choice. I decided I would go in guns blazing.
Automatically I began firing even before I took the first steps toward the doorway.
Pop, pop, pop, came the sound again. The blanks were tied to software that turned the hits red against the stone. Several times I was missed by just inches. I moved quickly from one side of the entrance than the other.
There it was. The yellow strip of fabric draped around a stake driven into the wall. And the room was empty. How could that be? Had Tim managed to take the soldier down before he, himself, had been shot? There was no way for me to ask. Tim had no choice but to lie silently in the mud.
My skin crawled as I looked around the room, waiting for the enemy to come forward and attack. When I saw no one else in the space, I moved forward, reaching out for the fabric.
I felt a strange sensation, cold as ice, as it met the back of my head.
“Boom,” a voice whispered.
And Lydia laughed as my vibration suit shook me to the ground.
Chapter Twelve
“You’re an idiot,” she said casually. “I knew I’d be better off without you on my team.”
She removed the yellow fabric from the wall and stuffed it into her pocket.
Somewhere in the distance, a ringing call of victory echoed through the forest. Whoever had been waiting to take our blue flag had finally done so. My suit immediately stopped shaking, and I got to my feet.
“How did you do it?” I asked.
I couldn’t comprehend how the blue team had suffered so few casualties compared to ours.
“Bigger brains,” she said, tapping the tip of her gun forehead.
I huffed, picked my gun up off the floor, and left the building. Blake and Tim were stirring on the ground now that the vibrations had stopped, and I moved to give them a hand up out of the dirt. But then something distracted me, a movement in my peripheral vision. I stood up straight and saw three recruits shimmying down the thick trunks of the trees surrounding the stronghold.
So that’s how they had done it.
We had spent all our time looking at eye level for our attackers, but none of us had considered their method of attack.
Their faces were painted a combination of tan and brown, the camouflage effect only disturbed by their beaming smiles as their feet hit the ground. Overhead, we heard the sound of the pick-up helicopter. We all turned and made our way to the clearing it had been directed to land in.
Blake seemed to not be able to tell which emotion to pick, anger, frustration, dejected disappointment.
“If you guys had just listened,” he complained as we walked.
“We did listen,” I argued. “You just got it wrong. I told you we should have waited. I knew there was something fishy about how easily we’d been able to approach, but—“
“Just shut up,” he snarled. “If you three had been fast enough, we would have been in and out of there, four to one, and we could have taken her down.”
I knew he was wrong. Blake had been fooled by the yellow team’s trap too easily, and now he was trying to cover himself of a crime he knew he was guilty of. Over-confidence.
I felt relatively certain that the teams had been evenly matched. The difference came in the leadership. On our team, Blake was taken out during his final approach. But Hannah smiled broadly as though the entire thing had been wildly entertaining.
She fell into step beside me.
“Don’t be sore,” she said as we made our way down the hill to the helicopter.
“The only thing I’m sore about is that idiot Blake,” I said, trying to keep the hurt out of my voice.
We walked for a couple minutes in silence.
“It’ll be different in the field, you know,” I said. “There won’t be a viewscreen telling you who to choose first.”
She smirked.
“You’re right,” she said. “No lens designations. No viewscreens. It’ll be almost like being human.”
She elbowed me in the side, and I pushed her away, but as we got farther down the hill we both smiled.
The sound of the helicopter blades echoed off the valley walls, and all twenty of us broke into a run toward its landing spot. I peered at the sky above, searching for the second helicopter. As we neared the landing spot, my stomach dropped as I realized the truth.
Half of us would be walking back.
The door to the copter opened and Sergeant Holt stuck his head out into the afternoon acid drizzle.
“Yellows only, please!” he shouted over the sound of the blades.
I didn’t bother making my way any closer. I dropped my pack and unsnapped the chin strap to my helmet, yanking it off my head and tossing it to the ground beside me. My shaved hair had grown half an inch in the past few weeks. I scratched at my scalp with dirty fingernails.
Lydia passed on my left, cocking her head as she heade
d toward her ride.
“Looks like a long night for you and your pals,” she snarled. I sneered back up at her and spit in her direction. She stopped abruptly and turned.
She was so easy to bait.
“Oh, is that how this is going to go?” she asked. Beneath her face paint I could see her color rising.
I stood, silent.
I didn’t try to get away as she approached me, the fingers of her right hand curling into a fist made tighter with each step she took.
“Lydia, no!” One of her teammates had seen the exchange and rushed over to stop the beating before it started.
I had been happily surprised by one of the few main rules I had been introduced to in the Service. No fighting. No hazing. Only the sergeants had the pleasure of spilling our blood. And even then there would be repercussions.
It had been different before. Holt had shouted to us on our first day on site that in the past, the fighting and ritualistic games the recruits used against each other had been tolerated, even encouraged. But hazing had since officially been outlawed. To have us fight amongst ourselves when our numbers were so few and our enemies so great was considered a waste of recruit energy and a danger to the force. So I stood tall as Lydia tried to control her rage enough to avoid beating me to the ground.
She was still struggling with the other recruit as he tried to hold her back.
“Get off me, Johnson!” she snarled, squirming in his grip. “Get OFF!” She finally ripped herself free.
“Don’t be an idiot,” he said. “You know she’s just trying to take you down. She’s just a rat. And she’s sore she lost the game.”
I bristled at this, shooting Johnson a grimace.
“Oh, shut up, Pink. You know it’s true.”
Lydia’s fingers released, and I tried desperately to not show fear, to not take a step back and away from her as she approached.
“Johnson,” she snarled. “She’s even worse than a rat.”
My mind went into a scramble. I suddenly felt sure she was going to break the rules and punch me anyway. I fought the urge to take a step backward.
She slowly made her way closer to me, inch by inch until her nose was nearly touching mine. I stared ahead, just as if it was the sergeant in my face now, only barely registering the green flecks in her irises.
And then she did something I did not expect. Slowly, she moved her head around and whispered in my ear.
“We’ve been watching you,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “We know what’s going on here. You saw … with the group that passed us the other day. They’re … doing something to them.”
What?
My heart was beating so fast I could feel it in my chest.
She leaned back and grabbed me by the fabric of my fatigues.
“She’s from the dirtiest, darkest places,” she went on, her voice loud again for the crowd. “I’ll get my chance to show her a lesson. Maybe we’ll just have to wait until the first battle, but her time will come.”
She leaned in again. To an outsider, it must’ve looked like she was saving her best threats for my ears alone. But her words betrayed that assumption.
“We want you in,” she whispered. “We need all the help we can get.”
Then she grabbed onto the fabric of my fatigues and threw me to the ground.
I lay there for a moment, confused. Lydia stared down at me, no longer smirking. Johnson laughed from behind her. In an instant her face changed from seriousness back to her ever-present sneer. It was like watching someone take off one mask and put on another.
The two of them turned. walking together to board the helicopter. I sat up to watch as its rotors spun faster and faster. And as it took off from the ground, I saw Lydia’s eyes staring back at me.
It hadn’t been as I had thought.
She had been watching me from the very start.
I got up and brushed myself off as the helicopter moved out of sight, picking up my pack. I adjusted the straps and followed the others down the hillside, no longer knowing what to expect from anyone in this game.
Episode 3
Chapter One
I stared through a thick glass window. My fingers gently grazed the surface, and I peered inside, curious about why I was there.
It was a hospital room I was looking at, I realized. A man lay strapped down to a table, his arms and legs somehow too big, like they were balloons pushed to the limit, ready to pop.
It was Alex.
I searched around me for someone, anyone to help. But the corridor I stood in was empty, and no one was in the room with him, either. As I watched, a small tube of green liquid was automatically pushed into the IV in Alex’s arm. He was growing then. Faster and faster, the weight of his limbs pushing against the ability of his skin to keep intact.
I pounded on the glass.
“Alex!”
His eyes remained glued to the ceiling, wide and clearly in pain, his mouth open in a silent scream.
I searched for something, anything to help me break the glass, but the corridor was abandoned. No chairs. No people. Nothing.
The sound of Alex’s heart monitor suddenly went wild, and he tilted his head backward, his eyes rolling.
“No!” I shouted. “Stop it! Stop it! He’s had enough!”
The heart monitor flickered for a few more moments, and then flatlined.
My hands pounded, smarting now from the effort.
Where were they? Surely there must be people monitoring him. Whoever it was that had calibrated the computer, or maybe the nurse who had fastened the straps. Didn’t they care whether he lived or died?
They did not come.
I pounded more, screamed more.
Then suddenly, the glass that had been dividing us was gone, and I lost my balance. I didn’t question where the glass had gone. I just jumped through the opening and started chest compressions, something I had learned about on my lens long ago. With each push, a feeble beep sounded on the monitor.
“Come on,” I said, breathing hard. “Don’t give up.”
Another push on his chest. How had its muscles become so enormous?
“Help me!” I screamed. “Somebody help us!”
But there were no doors in this room. Now instead pounding on the glass, I pounded on Alex’s chest. I was crying, could feel the tears streaming down my face. Even with the compressions now, the monitor stayed silent. I draped myself over him like an animal protecting its young, and the tears slid down his face as they dropped from mine.
I woke up drenched in sweat, crying just as hard as I had been in the dream.
He was gone. They had taken him somewhere, and I would never see him again. Maybe he was dead. Maybe all the things I had dreamed about were actually true, or close to the truth.
Hannah rolled over, sleepy.
“What’s the problem?” she asked sleepily.
I tried to silence my sobs. I didn’t need anyone in this room with us to see me showing weakness. It was bad enough that I was so far down on the board.
“Just a bad dream,” I squeaked. “Just go back to sleep.”
Hannah didn’t hesitate. Her eyes closed and she was asleep again in an instant.
I wiped my face with the back of my sleeve, looking around. Everyone was still and silent. It seemed that nobody had heard my cries, which was good.
Then she stood up.
Lydia. She didn’t look at me once, but moved toward the bathroom.
I looked around again. Had anyone seen her? Why had she chosen that moment to leave her bed? I realized with horror that she must have witnessed the whole thing.
I slipped my socked feet onto the cold concrete floor and followed. But when I entered the bathroom, it looked like no one was inside. I went to the sink, trying to wash away the blotchy red that had covered my face after the dream. Then, a call. Like a bird singing a two note song.
Or like someone calling a dog.
I looked around and found that one of the stalls
was occupied by another pair of socked feet. I moved toward the stall and chose the one next to it.
She was crazy. They had to be taping us. Maybe we had privacy in the actual bathroom stalls, but definitely nowhere else.
I closed the door behind me and sat on the toilet, clothes on. Her hand appeared beneath the solid partition between us. In it were a folded piece of paper and a pen.
I grabbed for them, and while I was untrusting, for the first time I saw Lydia as just another human being. Just another Green gone Red. Just another kid trying to get out of a trap we all shared.
I opened the note.
“There’s an army of them. Every time at the start they take the biggest of the men and make these super soldiers out of them. But the treatment messes with their heads. They forget who they are, even their own families.”
I stared back and forth between the note and the solid stall wall between us.
Really?
I clicked the pen and wrote her back.
“That doesn’t make sense. You’ve seen the men who come back from their tours, the ones who come back to town to visit.”
I passed the note back to her under the stall.
“Those are regular men, she responded. They’re the ones at the top of the pile in the regular infantry. Not everyone in our group here is weak. There are some really giant Reds milling around. They can pump them with steroids, and us, too, I guess. But they’re not the same. They’re not in the same army as those other guys. And neither are we.”
My breath caught in my chest. I knew they were doing something to him, something that made him different.
“But why do you care?”
I pushed the paper back to her.
She looked at it for some time. Maybe she was deciding whether or not to tell me the reason. Finally, her hand appeared below again, just two words scrawled onto the page.