Endgame (Voluntary Eradicators) (14 page)

His smile, when it comes, is dark. “We see if your heart can stand to be broken a little more.”

Nanobot handcuffs are locked around her wrists. They make her feel vulgar, like the prostitutes she has seen prowling the streets after dark. Except theirs are wrought from gold and other precious metals. Gifts from lovers. This lightweight metal with artificial intelligence is somehow worse.

The guard's hand on her shoulder is no less formidable than her restraints. His grip is so tight that it hurts. She squirms, her eyes never leaving the glass panel where the creatures in white sit, watching her.

She does not speak.

“
Outside these walls, people are less understanding of your kind. You might be killed.”

“
Or worse,” one of the other creatures interjects. “A quick death is the best-case scenario.”

“
And the least likely,” another says, just as fluidly. “You do horrible things — ”

“ —
abominable things — ”

“ —
monstrous
things — ”

“
And people will wish to do horrible things to you.”

“
I'd rather take my chances out there,” she hisses. “I'd rather die.”

“
We are very sorry to hear that,” the creatures say, all as one. “We are sorry to hear that you put such a low value on life.”

The door opens. A child is brought in. Grubby. Tow-headed. She recognizes him from the compound. Erran, she thinks his name is. He is the son of one of the cooks.

“
We understand that you have a softness for children.”

Coldness fills her gut as she meet's the child's wide, fearful eyes.

“
What are you going to do?” she says, her voice high and thin. “What are you going to do?” The child begins to cry and her heart aches. She can see his fear, buzzing around his head like a swarm of angry wasps.

“
Sometimes it is necessary to be cruel to be kind,” one of the creatures says, “to teach a lesson.”

“
Leave him alone,” she whispers. At their silence, her voice grows louder. “Leave him alone! Do what you want with me, just leave him alone!”

“
We will not harm the child.”

But she knows better than to feel relief. They have brought this child here and show no signs of wanting to let him go. She knows secrets about the Regency that can never afford to get out. And now, whether he understands them or not, so does the boy.

Her handcuffs are deactivated. She feels the creatures' intent a heartbeat before she catches the silver gleam of a needle, feels the sting of it in her throat. She hits the guard, knocking him to the ground several feet away, but it is already too late. She can feel the drug filling her body, consuming everything that is
her
in a violent fire.

“
We will not harm the child,” the voices say, distantly.

“
You will.”

From a cavern deep inside her head, a woman screams.

She has sunken into a deep depression. The creatures have been injecting her on a daily basis, and she is theirs for as long as the monster plays in her veins. But when it is gone, she hides, locking herself up deep inside, in a shadowed place where they cannot steal the precious little that remains of herself.

Two creatures watch her: one in white, and one is purple.

She has not washed in days. She has not eaten. She is a collection of bones and rancid flesh and greasy hair held together by a blanket. They are letting her sulk as if doing her a favor. She hates them. She hates them all.

“
A team of biologists are evaluating her, to see if her brain can be rewired without incurring death. One suggested the possibility of a frontal lobotomy. A touch invasive, but not fatal.”

She does not completely understand the words, but she understands the intent behind them. They want to cut into her. Carve pieces out of her body as if she were nothing more than a hollow gourd. Her eyes stare into the ceiling impassively, but inside, she is seething. As if she weren't human.

“
Medication does not work?” the white-coated man asks. “Surgery is irreversible.”

“
She does not swallow the pills and medicine of this kind cannot be injected.”

“
What about hormonal therapy?”

“
And risk another outburst like the previous one?” The creatures in purple shakes his head. “No. She's just in a mood. Like a bitch in heat. It should pass.”

They stare at her, not seeing the woman she is or the girl she was none too long ago, but a mere puzzle. An intractable puzzle — bemusing and a little frustrating, but capable of being solved nonetheless.

“
If you did manage to remedy this, the price for that solution would be extraordinarily high.”

The creature in white nods. His qualms, if he had any, have vanished at the mention of money.

The one in purple smiles at her, not knowing that she can both hear and comprehend his every word, his every thought, and that she is imagining knocking out every single one of those pearly white teeth and ripping out those dirt-colored eyes by the stalks like weeds.

“
I'm so glad we understand each other.”

They are both breathing hard.

For a long time, he says nothing and she senses that he is angry, though whether this is aimed at himself or at her, she cannot tell. Then he says, “Fuck.” She blinks, as much at the harshness of the word as at the emotions fueling it. He turns to look at her with an expression she can't read.

“
Why didn't you say something?”

“
About what?” she says, honestly puzzled.

“
That I was your first,” he says.

“
Oh.”

“
I don't want your father coming after me with a gun.”

“
I don't have a father,” she says, hugging the sheet to her chest.

“
That makes me feel so much better,” he says.

“
I can take care of myself,” she says.

“
Yes, I can see that. You're doing a phenomenal job so far.”

“
You're a jerk.”

He grins. “You've only realized that just know? You won't last long out there, then.”

He leans over. His lips brush over her pulse and she squirms. “You'd be surprised at what you can live through.”

“
Actually, no.” He pushes her back against the bed and rolls on top of her. “I wouldn't.”

She loses four hours after that.

Worse, she has removed her contacts in the fugue state and comes close to leaving the room without them. Only the mirror by the door stops her. Vol inhales sharply and runs back to the bathroom in a panic, nearly jabbing herself in her haste to put the contacts back in.

Stupid, stupid, stupid
.

She must wear the contacts. Always. She must take the pills. Always. If she does not do these things, something bad will happen.

Maybe it already has
.

Her room is a mess. The sheets are strewn about, half off the bed, clothes everywhere. It looks like a miniature hurricane passed through her room. Vol knows she must have been looking for something but can't imagine what it could be or why it warrants such wanton destruction.

No. On second thought, perhaps she can. Because written on the notepad beside her bed, in a frenzied hand she recognizes as her own, are these words:

“
I killed them all.”

8.

Rather than eat in the cafeteria, Vol stays in her room and boils some water to use for the tea and the instant noodles. She can't quite bring herself to make her usual attempt to be social. Not today.

The noodles taste like cardboard and unidentifiable meat. Vol picks up the cup of tea in both hands and takes a long sip. Mm, grass-clippings. Her favorite. After a while, the hotness of the drink numbs her mouth and she ceases to taste anything at all. It's an improvement.

Her next game starts in two hours.

Vol considers calling in sick. Her supervisors would want to know why, though, and she doubts they will be sympathetic to a case of bad dreams and déjà vu. Besides, being sick would mean staying in bed, sleeping, and this is precisely what she needs to get away from.

She considers her room, her meager belongings. The bed, with its standard-issue gray sheets and blue quilt. The bookshelf she uses as a pantry. A small cluster of books huddle together in the lower right corner like refugees. One is a book on programming she bought on impulse in the bazaar one day. The second is an encyclopedia of Karagh, with notations added in her own hand that she cannot remember writing. The third is a compendium of faerie tales. Not glitzy entertainment centers for her. No holladramas. No music. Just a few books and a couple packs of cheap noodles. She didn't realize how boring and pitiful her existence is.

Party on
, she thinks, raising the tea skywards. No wonder she doesn't have any close friends. Why, they'd all be bored right to dea —

(I killed them all.)

A shattering sound jolts her back into full-on consciousness. She has dropped the teacup on the floor.

Vol goes to the bathroom and grabs a dirty shirt from the floor that she still hasn't gotten around to washing yet. She frowns. She cannot recall putting it on, although it has clearly been worn. The pile of dirty clothes is larger than it was the last time she —

When
was
the last time she did laundry? She can't even remember.

Slashes of memory, as hot and white as supernovae, tear through her mind in a disconnected stream, each as distinct and as separate as the shuttering images of a phantasmagoria, and just as occluded. And they are memories, not nightmares. She is certain.

She has done something horrible. Irrevocable.

Monstrous.

Vol stares down at the shirt. The fabric is stretched taut between her straining hands. She can't help but think that the lukewarm tea stains look awfully similar to dried, spattered blood. She swallows hard, and tosses the ruined shirt aside, no longer willing to even touch it. She needs to find out what she might have done …

Before she does it again.

Today Vol is scheduled to compete in GP1. She rides the elevator down to the first floor. Her breakfast sloshes against her stomach unpleasantly. This is going to be a long day, she can tell. The lobby is packed with Marks. She feels like an island marooned in the center of an oblivious and insensitive ocean.

Seeing Catan in the front room does nothing to allay her misery. He's leaning on the back of Suryan's chair, watching her program the computer. Seeing him draped all over the female God Mod like that instills a sense of disgust so strong that Vol nearly feels drunk in it. Taking supervision as literally as possible. He would, the power-hungry son of a bitch.

His eyes lift. “Good morning, Volera.”

“
Hello, Vol,” Suryan says without looking up. “You can go ahead. We'll just be a moment.”

We?

“
Run along, Vol,” Catan says. “Your friends are waiting.”

Friends?

She pushes open the back door, both curious and wary in equal measure, and is just in time to hear Kira say, “This is absolutely unacceptable.” Since Suryan and Catan are busy setting up the cubicles for the back-to-back shifts, her captive audience is considerably larger than it would be under other circumstances. “Somebody is making pirated games.”

Several Players roll their eyes, used to the temperamental Spinner's outbursts. Some whisper. Most of them, Marks included, simply ignore her.

“
Kira — ” Jade puts a hand on her shoulder. She shrugs him off.

“
This is ridiculous. Good, honest people are suffering while this cheat goes unpunished.”

“
A good, honest person?” someone pipes up. “In Karagh?”

Laughter ripples throughout the room.

Kira's cheeks darken. “I'm being serious.”

“
I think he is, too,” one of the other Marks says. The two of them must be friends because the first boy who spoke nudges the other and the two of them double over from the weight of their ensuing giggles.

Kira eyes the two of them with disgust, though since the two of them are Marks she curbs her tongue. Vol can only imagine how much effort this must cost her. “Why isn't anybody doing anything about it, then? They could be viruses. They could be — ”

“
Competition,” someone whispers.

“
I'm not worried about that,” Kira snaps, suggesting otherwise. “But it isn't fair. What if everyone decided to make a game without training? Do you have any idea how chaotic that would be?”