by Simon Archer
“Well the pizza’s going to get cold, so why don’t you come over and tell us what you’ve learned so far, then get back to your research,” Kira suggested. He looked over at the pizza with a hopeful but conflicted look on his face.
“Fine,” he relented. “But there’s a lot going on here. Even if I didn’t take a break all day or night, I wouldn’t learn everything I want to learn from it.”
“Well, hopefully, we’ll have access to this… internet, I think they called it… wherever we go here,” I said reassuringly.
“Yeah, hopefully,” Malthe said, walking over to the table and grabbing several pieces of pizza. “This looks different. Not like normal pizza.” But he stuffed several squares of it in his mouth nonetheless with a satisfied gulping noise, and we all laughed again.
“So, what d'you find out?” I asked when he finished with his first helping of food, leaning forward on my knees eagerly.
“Oh yeah,” he said, remembering his research and forgetting the pizza entirely. “So basically, the Great Binder War was this huge decades-long conflict between different factions of binders. Kind of like what we had in Termina a few weeks ago, but bigger and longer, and everyone in the whole world got involved.”
“Weird,” I said, shaking my head as I grabbed yet another slice of the pizza. “I’ve never heard of anything like that before.”
“Yeah, me neither,” Malthe said quickly. “But it was this huge thing, and tons of people died. Like, ninety percent of the world’s population or something.”
“Ninety percent?” I repeated, my eyes bugging out a bit at the size of this number. “How many people were there before?”
“Billions,” Malthe said, his eyes wide.
“Billions?” Cindra asked, gawking at him. “No fucking way.”
“Way,” Malthe confirmed. “There were like ten billion of us, but then there were only a few hundred million like there are now.”
“There are hundreds of millions of people in the world right now?” Clem said, forgetting his food for the first time since it had arrived, his mouth hanging open and pizza sauce dripping down his chin.
“Yep,” Malthe said, clearly pleased with himself that he had all this intel to share. “But then people were super freaked out because so many people died in the war and… well, that’s how Termina got started.”
“Come again?” I asked, not quite following this line of reasoning.
“That’s why there are no binders here, you see?” Malthe asked. “Because people were so afraid of you guys after the war that they didn’t want you in normal society anymore. Same with the foxgirls, since so many people wanted bindings with them just like in Termina.”
“Oh god,” I said, realizing what he meant. “So they created Termina as some kind of… colony for binders and foxgirls to live on, isolated from the rest of the world?”
“Yep,” Malthe said, grabbing another serving of the pizza. “They actually considered killing all of the binders and foxgirls that survived the war but decided that was inhumane.”
“You think?” Kinley said, shaking her head in disbelief.
“Yep,” Malthe said again, without missing a beat. “So that’s how Termina got started. But then, after a while, the generations passed, and people stopped being quite so afraid of binders and foxgirls anymore. At least not to the extent that they didn’t want anything to do with you all. But they still were interested in you guys, since you were considered weird and different by then. So that’s how the whole Termina industry got started.”
“Termina industry?” Clem repeated. “Is that like the reality show and stuff?”
“Yeah, and all the merchandise the shippers sent out like the cargo Iggy delivered this morning,” Malthe explained. “Or what he was supposed to deliver, anyway. Man, I hope he’s okay.”
“Yeah, me too,” Kira said, her face all scrunched up with worry. “Though I imagine if they had found him, that would’ve been on the radio news program we heard in that ground air car thing.”
“I think they’re just called cars, actually,” Malthe said.
“Right, but they didn’t say anything about us leaving Termina on the radio, either,” I said. “So maybe they haven’t broadcast that part to the whole world quite yet. It would make sense if they didn’t, considering how freaked out that driver was that we had driven Achilles and his people out of the city. They, whoever they are, wouldn’t want to stir up more panic than they already have.”
“I guess that makes sense,” Clem said slowly. “But why are they so afraid of us? I still don’t get it. What was this war about, anyway?”
“That’s… a complicated question,” Malthe said. “It was so long that it seems kind of like the whole original conflict was lost by the end. But in the beginning, it was all about the foxgirls, and binding the foxgirls, and how that was supposed to go. Kind of like the fight between Elias Berg and your dad.”
“That’s… ugh, I don’t even know,” Cindra said, setting down what was left of her pizza and looking like she wanted to vomit. “Why is it always us?”
“And why, if that was the heart of everything, did they stick all the binders on an island with the foxgirls?” Lin asked with a shrug. “Wouldn’t it make more sense to split them up?”
“Like I said, it seems like the whole original conflict was kind of lost by the end,” Malthe repeated. “It was a decades-long war, after all. I think by the end, everyone just saw the binders and foxgirls as being related to the problem, so they just needed to get the problem away from them in the first place.”
“But what I still don’t understand,” I said, leaning forward on the coffee table, “is what Achilles and his people were doing there in the first place. Just to keep the peace? To monitor us?”
“It seems like that was the original intent of a lot of the non-binder regular humans on Termina,” Malthe explained. “But as the generations passed, they just kind of integrated into the population like everyone else. Achilles and his guys showed up later, just as we’d originally conjectured. That’s when they took over the tunnels and plotted to get rid of your pops, Nic.”
“But why?” I asked, still confused. “If the whole purpose of Termina was to keep the binders and foxgirls away from the outside world, why did anyone care what went on there, as long as we didn’t bother anyone else? Achilles and his guys went to so much effort to control us and make us bind the foxgirls. But why?”
“And if binding us caused so much trouble in the first place, isn’t that the opposite of what they should’ve wanted?” Kinley asked. “I mean, why go to such lengths to get us bound all over again? What’s even the point of that?”
“That’s the question I had, too,” Malthe said. “And like I told you at the beginning, as time went on, people in the outside world started to find us not just frightening but fascinating. So they wanted to watch.”
Realization dawned on me then, and I groaned.
“So, it was all just some ruse for the show?” I asked, shaking my head. “They saw from history, from this Great Binder War, that creating conflict over foxgirl bindings created all kinds of drama, and that drove up their ratings, and merch sales or whatever it is you called it?”
“That’s it exactly,” Malthe said. “Crazy, right?”
“God,” I said, shaking my head. “So they basically created this whole problem for themselves? If they’d just left well enough alone, let my dad live, and your dad become Prime Minister, Lin, everything would’ve gone on as planned, and none of us ever would’ve been the wiser about the outside world.”
“Ironic, isn’t it?” Lin said, a sad expression cast across her face now. Achilles and Elias Berg had assassinated Lin’s father, like mine, for not falling into line with what the other binding corps wanted for their profession in the city.
“It might not all be a bad thing after all that’s happened,” Cindra said with a shrug. When she saw the baffled expressions on all of our faces, she continued. “Well, it’s all
been bad, I’m not going to deny that. But in the long run, isn’t it better to find out the truth and go through some bad times than to live a lie forever?”
“I guess that’s one way of looking at it,” Clem grumbled.
“No, I think she’s right,” I said, meeting Cindra’s eyes and smiling at her warmly. “This will all be good in the long run. After all, I’d rather know all this than not know any of it. And we found each other, after all.” I reached out and squeezed her hand, and she squeezed it back.
“So, what’s the game plan now?” Clem asked. “We know our disguises will work since there’re no binders in the outside world. But where do we go? Where do we even begin to look for this Achilles person, and whoever he’s working with?”
“I don’t know,” Malthe said. “It’s all very mysterious. I haven’t been able to find much about that.”
“Okay, so where are we now?” I asked him. “That’s a good place to start.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” Malthe laughed. “From what I can determine, we’re on the nearest continent to Termina, the Barrens, in a city called Firebend. The other continents are the Blanks, Sanctum Mesa, Malady, and the Nether.”
“The Nether, that’s what the radio show was talking about,” I said quickly. “And there was some city called Direfall, I think?”
“Here, let me check,” Malthe said, walking back over to the desk and pulling up the computer screen again.
He tapped away for several more moments before speaking again.
“Right, so Direfall in on the Nether,” he said. “Sounds like it’s the capital city.”
“That should be as good a place to start as any, right?” I asked, looking around the room for any objections. Seeing none, I continued, “I mean, it was on that radio show where they were talking about Achilles, so it’s safe to assume he’s there or headed there or related to that place in some way. It sounds important, at least.”
“Yeah, it does,” Malthe said, tapping away again on his laptop. “Oh, here. Looks like the Nether’s on the other side of the world from here. But it’s also the most populated continent, so there are a lot of ocean liners headed in that direction.”
“Ocean liners?” Lin repeated, confused.
“Looks like that’s what they call passenger ships,” Malthe said. “So huge ships that are used to travel across the ocean for the sole purpose of transporting people, not cargo.”
“Ah,” I said, nodding. “Do we have enough money for something like that?”
“Probably not,” Malthe said, pursing his lips. “We’re going to have to figure that out tomorrow. It looks like one of the vessels leaves tomorrow night. We can spend tomorrow digging around for more intel and for more currency, and then we’ll plan to leave on that ship. Otherwise, we’ll have to wait far longer.”
“And there’s no quicker way of traveling between continents?” I asked hopefully, but Malthe shook his head.
“Looks like they used to have airplanes and high-speed rails between continents, but all of that infrastructure fell apart during the Great Binder War, and they just never rebuilt it,” he explained. “The ocean liner is our best bet.”
“Okay then,” I said. “Is there any way you could make us look different tomorrow?”
“What do you mean?” Malthe asked. “We already have the bracelets.”
“Right, but we’re going to need money,” I explained, “which means we’re going to need to make money. And that means that we’re going to need new faces again.”
“Okay…” Malthe said, and I could practically see his mind whirring with the different possibilities for addressing this problem. “Okay, I think I can make that work. But it’ll have to be fast.”
“We can rob the hotel,” Lin said. “There’s not a whole lot of security here, and we won’t change our clothes until we get out. That way, they’ll only suspect the shippers with ill-fitting clothes, not the people with completely different faces and boring hotel clothes.”
“Though I wouldn’t be surprised if someone saw you buy those,” I pointed out, gesturing to the pile of clothing.
“Right,” she said, pursing her lips. “Well, we’ll just need to make it work until we can find better ones.”
“Looks like these ocean liners sell all kinds of shit,” Malthe said. “We should be okay once we get on board. And until then, we just need to keep as low a profile as possible.”
“Robbing a motel isn’t exactly keeping a low profile,” Kira said, laughing nervously.
“It seems like this is a relatively high crime area, though, from what I’ve found on here,” Malthe said, pointing back at the computer. “Hopefully, the authorities won’t give it much thought, or at least by the time they do, we’ll be long gone with our new faces and versions of ourselves.”
“Okay,” Clem said, shaking his head and taking a sip from a water bottle. “I still say we’re in way over our heads here, friends.”
“We may be,” I admitted. “But what other option do we have?”
“We could find a way back to Termina,” Clem said. “Tell Semra what’s going on and prepare for war.”
“When we know nothing about these people?” I asked, shaking my head. “No way. We have to be prepared. We have the upper hand right now in that they don’t know where we are or what we know. So we need to keep that upper hand. Keep accumulating information, and strike them where it counts. We need to take out Achilles and figure out a way to free Termina.”
“What’s the end game here, though?” Lin asked. “Do we want to keep Termina the way it is, just free from interference? Or do we want to get rid of Termina and just get our citizens to reintegrate into society on the other continents?”
“Why would we want to leave Termina?” Clem asked, aghast. “That doesn’t make any sense. The outside world--”
“Is nothing like what we thought it was,” Lin interjected. “It’s not any more or less desirable than like in Termina as far as I can tell, just different. And free. Do we really want to keep living in a place we were put against our will and used as entertainment for people we didn’t even know existed?”
Clem opened his mouth to argue back, but I stepped in to break up the fight before it got too heated.
“I think the goal should be to let every citizen of Termina determine the answers to these questions for themselves,” I argued. “Some will no doubt choose to stay, and some will leave when they realize what’s been done to us all these years. But that choice should be an individual one. That’s the whole point. No one should get to decide for them. Not us, and definitely not the outside world.”
“I think that’s the right answer,” Lin admitted, nodding to me.
“These are important conversations,” I said. “But right now, I think it’s most important to focus on each step at hand, to make everything more manageable. This way, it’s not as overwhelming. So research and getting on this ocean liner thing. These are the main goals for now. We’ll worry about the rest later.”
“Agreed,” Cindra said, then she warily glanced over at the TV screen. “Dare I ask if we should find out what’s going on in Termina?”
“God, I hate watching our friends when they don’t even know we’re watching them,” Kira said, making a disgusted snort and glowering at the blank screen. “It feels like a violation.”
“Because it is,” I said. “But we might learn something from the commentary, and the way they present everything on the show. I think we should tune in, if just for a little while.”
“Fine,” Kira relented, and Lin got up to turn the thing on. It was already on the Termina livestream, which was now showing Semra talking to the reporters again.
“I assure you that I will let you know as soon as we have news,” she was saying as the reporters sent her an onslaught of questions about my team and me and our whereabouts. “And must I remind you that it’s not a bad thing that we don’t have news. This just means they’re still working and being thorough. There’s a whol
e world we never knew about beneath the city. Exploring it will take time and patience.”
“I guess that’s sort of the truth,” Clem said with a shrug as he stuffed several more squares of pizza into his mouth. “We are exploring a whole new world we never knew about.”
“I’ve found that it is always best to keep lies as close to the truth as possible,” I remarked, thinking back to when I needed to lie to Elias Berg about the foxgirl bindings. “That way, you’re less likely to slip up or contradict yourself, or forget what the lie was in the first place.”
More reporters asked more questions, and Semra began to answer them, but the screen panned back to the host we’d seen earlier.
“I must apologize to our ever loyal viewers once again for the fact that we’ve been unable to get cameras down into these tunnels to show what Nic Joch and his friends are up to this time around,” she gushed into the camera. “I assure you we are working on that tirelessly, as well as getting cameras back into TelCorp. Our producers and sponsors want to thank you all for your patience as we sort through all these unforeseen difficulties, and to reassure you that everything is under control in Termina, despite the exit of Tibor Enterprises from the island.”
“Heh, right,” Clem scoffed.
“No one in Termina has any idea about the outside world,” the host continued. “And that’s what makes them so fun! So we just want you all to know that you have nothing to worry about, and you can continue to enjoy all your favorite Termina related entertainment options that we have made available to you. And there are more than ever!”
I kind of drowned her out as she started to list all the Termina merchandise available for sale. It was a shameless advertising plug. And she was basically just listing all of our exports that we always thought were so vital to the poor people stuck on the continents outside Termina. But it turned out they were just luxury items based on a reality show about us.
“So you were right, Nic,” Cindra said, looking relieved. “They haven’t told anyone that we left the island yet.”