Game Slaves (22 page)

“Run a bio-scan on the empty one.”

“Affirmative,” came a reply over the speaker.

A glowing red nozzle then poked up from the top of the middle van. You could hear the thing powering up, and we watched all the troopers take a couple steps back. Many shielded their eyes, even though they all wore those smoked-glass helmets.

“No one in there will ever grow hair again,” one man cracked.

“Not the only thing the men will never do again,” another chortled, grabbing his crotch.

A beam lashed out from the scanner. Up, down, left, right, x-rays or gamma rays or whatever it was using, it pierced wall and ceiling and floor. Cooking, baking, irradiating, basically microwaving everything inside.

“Is it clear?” the captain asked.

“No one inside. Well, not anymore,” the radio reported. “We had a squatter on the third floor. From the readout he was almost fifty years old.”

“Didn't make it?”

“Still breathing. Pretty baked, though. Should we send in a cleaner?”

The captain paused. “No, let the roaches have him. But turn down the power on that thing. Boss will have our heads if we fry the quarry.”

And that was that. But I knew we'd better think hard before we chose a place to hide again. The citizens would turn us in if we tried to pay rent for a flat. And the empty buildings were definitely out of the question.

“Where can we
go?
” York asked, realizing the same things.

“I'm taking water to the old man up there after the troops leave,” Dakota said firmly.

“Of course you are,” I replied. “Then we need a new hideout.”

“We're really between hard places,” York said to me. Reno nodded to that. “Every step we take, they flush us a little farther out.”

They were dead right. Cannibal-infested desert to the south. Frozen mountains to the north. Walls everywhere.

And ruthless bounty hunters on our tail.
Right
on our tail.

I'd left a few things hidden in the building, and even if they were radioactive now, I needed them back. Dakota did what she could to make the cooked man comfortable, but soon enough we were outside again.

“Where can we go?” Mi asked. “Should we break back into the Kode estate? I'm a little mad at Jimmy and Charlotte for booting us out like this.”

“They're just kids,” I reminded her. “And Dakota pushed them hard to do it.”

“I think she wants us to take a chance on the open gap through the unfinished wall to the north. Over those frozen peaks. She's a good climber.”

“Not
that
good.”

“Rabbit must be a delicacy here.” Reno had been eavesdropping. “Although if there's small game, maybe there's some big stuff up there too? Elk, moose, maybe bear? And stuff grows up there. Five of us. A few guns if we can get them. We go over the top and start a new life away from flesh-eating humanoids . . .”

Now York and Dakota had edged up. We were just wandering, homeless, with no destination. Not yet.

Reno was still thinking it through. He said, “. . . but there's got to be a reason more citizens aren't making a break for those mountains.”

York continued for him. “. . . besides the avalanches and frostbite and all the water is frozen and the climb is impossible and we have no ropes or gear or thermal clothing . . .”

“That is not why I showed Phoenix that gap,” Dakota sneered, like some of us just didn't understand. I kind of did. Dakota didn't want to run. Not really. She still held to some hope that there was a better life for her right here.

Yeah, maybe, sure. If she had money. Or top programming or design skills. Right now, her only training would be as a trooper, but she was way too small. Also, as soon as she signed up and they handed her a helmet, there'd be a serious question asked about where she'd gotten that funny-looking cable port in the side of her face.

“I'm
sick
of playing defense,” York muttered. “I need to pull a trigger.”

No one spoke after that for a long time. A couple hours later, with the security sweep gone, I found a strip mall that basically had nothing left but adobe walls and torn-up flooring. It'd been a big one, with interior halls and support rooms, but most of it had been scavenged long before any of us were born. The roof was gone. Maybe it had been made of tin or aluminum.

We did our due diligence, making sure we knew the access points and secondary escape routes. Those habits, they never left us.

Night fell. It got a lot colder, but the stars were stunning. We huddled together, taking turns sleeping, eating what we'd bought from XMart. It was horrible. The chocolate feed tasted like manure. And it was the best flavor.

It amazed me, to be honest, that I could make that distinction out here. Inside the games, when I chose chocolate anything, it was always the best. Maybe it was just my cable telling my submerged taste buds how sweet and dark the candy was, but that memory was overwhelming now.

Out here, everything was different from everything else. I picked up a handful of old pencils from a desk drawer, and every one was unique. Varying erasers, tips, lengths. Even the bite marks on a couple were as distinctive as fingerprints. Inside, every one of these pencils would be exactly identical—pure copies, to save the designer time. In there, a hollow-point .46-caliber gunshot
always
rang the same. Airplanes flying as a fleet behaved identically. Backgrounds repeated. Snowflakes were not individual. Days were the same length no matter what the season.

But out here, variety was the only consistency. It made me wonder how the search teams had found our neighborhood so easily.

Was I too much a product of games? Had I become predictable? How could they have tracked us so quickly? Perhaps I needed to change things up. Perhaps it was me, my simplicity, that was the biggest danger to my team.

And right then, that's when I heard the sound.

I knew this sound. When a small pebble gets stuck in a combat boot tread and the boot comes down on a hard surface, the rock hits first. It doesn't sound like a rock has
dropped;
no, it's been pushed down, slowly, because the foot is moving so slowly.

The boot was creeping. Then the other foot stepped silently. That boot had no pebble wedged in the rubber lug.

And the wearer, whoever was out there, down the hall, he
knew
the mistake. I could almost see what he did next. He'd heard the rock hit too, so now he was balancing on one foot, taking a hand off his weapon, lifting a boot, and prying the stone away.

Then he could creep in silence again.

We weren't alone.

At least one hunter was out there.

And that sneaky mother knew what he was doing.

Quickly, one of us tapping the next, everyone was awake. But we were inside, in a closed hall. Just two clear exits: up where the intruder was, and to the rear. Were we being flushed that way? We could try to climb up and out, over the walls, but I was pretty sure we'd be cut down as we moved from the shadows into the starlight.

Down here, down low, darkness was our best cover.

If we'd had weapons, we would have pointed them toward the creeper. Without any, we formed into a tight diamond, Dakota in the middle. Five sets of ears and eyes trying to pick up anything through the gloom.

“P?” Mi whispered, waiting for an order. A team again. Just like that.

I listened hard. What was our best move? Rush him? Them?

Attack
first:
that would have been my normal order. I'd given it ten million times out of ten million opportunities.

But not now.

It was still too soon. We had no hints as to troop strength or position. We were small, weak, and unarmed.

“Retreat,” I whispered. “Assemble at location four if we get separated.” Habits die hard. We'd used our map and chosen a few safe areas around the city.

Our feet, all at the same time, began stepping back, back, back, down the long hall. The choreography was perfect. And dead silent.

In thirty steps, I knew, we'd get to a junction where two other corridors came together. At that point, we had multiple exits and could scatter and rendezvous at our meeting place. In any case, when we got to the crossing, we had a way to confuse whoever had made that sound.

TINK!
Clumsy. Now he'd bumped a wall. Or had he just made that sound to give us a false location? This whole thing might just be a diversion. The bulk of the BlackStar troops could be waiting in the direction we'd been pushed into going. That'd be a good move. One of
my
moves.

I wished I could spray that area behind us with a few bullets. But I knew he wouldn't make that mistake again, giving away his position. Nor would he stay in that spot.

I listened. Yes. Whoever it was, he had training. He moved immediately to another angle in the dark. He was stalking. Playing cat. That made us the mice.

 

“There's just one of him,” York whispered low as we retreated. “I'll lie in the dark under some garbage. You lead him in. When he passes, I'll hammer his knees.”

“No,” I said, “we don't need to engage yet. This is a lose-lose, we have no toys or tools. If this were my assault, I'd have sent this guy to flush us into a bigger area with more troopers.”

Mi agreed. “He's pushing us in exactly the direction he wants to push us.”

“Ten yards to the corridor junction,” York announced. There was the four-way there, the way we'd come in.

“We'll split quickly,” I decided. “Make him think.”

Mi was back in her element, offering, “I'll go right, with Reno.”

“Good,” I agreed. “York, take straight.” That'd put me and Dakota going left. “He'll pursue you since you'll be the single quarry, but I'll flank around once you're clear. And we'll play it by ear, try to take him out or trap him. Quietly.”

“
Without
killing him?” York asked. “I mean, right, yes, without killing him.”

I grinned slightly. York caught on. No reason to murder someone when all they'd done was scurry toward us and bang into a chair. Those weren't exactly execution-level offenses.

“Five steps to the junction,” Dakota continued, then, “CRAP!”

She said it loud. Too loud. Our position was given away.

“Cover!” I barked, and we all dove into alcoves and doorways off to the sides. That took only a split second, but at least now we had our backs to something solid.

I listened for a fast approach. Nothing came.

“What, Dakota?” I demanded, angry as I get. She knew better than to cry out like that.

“There's a
gate
now,” she hissed. “We're trapped! The sliding door that covers the hallway! It's
shut!
”

I didn't believe it, so I moved over to where she was. Bad news. She was right.

“That was open a half hour ago!” Mi said. We all knew it had been. Reno had scouted it. And we trusted him not to make mistakes.

I grumbled to the rest, “Someone got in here quiet, behind us, and closed off our—”

Tick tick!
More noise from the hall.

What could it be?

Tick tick!
It was a faint echo, like a rat's nails on linoleum, but not a rat. No, it was the sound a rifle's sighting scope makes when the power source starts to build up a charge.

Two blips, red dots, popped on and glowed toward us through the night. I knew exactly what they were. They were as familiar to me as the green in Mi's eyes.

Because they
were
eyes.

Night vision. Infrared goggles, staring at us from down the hall.

And then we heard more. The unmistakable
CLACK-CLACK
of machine-gun shells being chambered in a military-issue assault rifle.

That beautiful noise. Smooth, oiled, precise. I could probably have told you the weapon's age and weight.

“Don't move,” a man's cold voice rang out. It didn't shake. It didn't waver. Whoever was out there was used to being in situations in which he pointed a loaded weapon at unarmed citizens.

He continued, “I can see you all plain as day. Move to the center of the hall.”

We paused. It's what you do. Push the limits, see if—

POW! POW! POW!

A muzzle flashed as three shells buzzed by my ears, just centimeters away.

My
ears. Not warning shots at any random ears, but
mine
.

“I said move out!” he repeated.

My brain searched. This was not a low-rent wall guard. Or a store guard. No. The equipment was too nice. The guy using it was in command. This guy was a pro.

I motioned to my team. We had a bit of faint light from the commando's goggle beams, but it didn't compare to what that guy could see. I knew his rig—the weapon sights fed the scope reticule into his goggles. He could aim as easily as you do with a cursor when you play a game. We might be able to see shadows, but this guy could look right through our rib cages, put his red dot on any valve in our hearts, and cut away.

“OK, to the center,” I agreed. The five of us reluctantly shuffled into a pack. Mi, cleverly, was in the back, trying to feel for a gap in the outer edge of the wooden barrier, hoping for a way to make a break for it.

The eye beams approached three steps. Then three more. This guy was systematic. Trained. Mistake-free.

He panned around, making sure there were no tripwires or traps.

Man, I wished I'd left York lying in the hall behind him before the guy turned on his night vision.

But I hadn't. So now he had the upper hand. But he hadn't shot us yet, had he?

There must have been a reason.

Of course there was. In a flash, I realized the biggest difference between our old world and this new one: In there, everyone gets to go to Re-Sim. Out here, tough luck, the game is really over. This guy must have had strict orders not to harm us. He
couldn't
kill us on sight or he'd fail his mission, so he
didn't
hold all the cards.