Game Slaves (25 page)

“Long live democracy!” I howled, wondering how long it'd been since someone used that word. “No dickless bounty hunter can take me alive! King Arthur was a wimp! The Black Knight wets his armor! Space aliens taste good on toast!”

I don't know what I was yelling. All I wanted to do was create confusion, smoke, and some small blasts and get everyone's attention.

It worked.

As soon as I started my tirade, out front, Dakota and Mi jumped from the line of shoppers and yelled “FREEZE!” at the seven guys who surrounded Reno.

This time, they aimed working weapons. One shotgun and one machine gun, both courtesy of Jevo.

Mi let loose a small stripe of lead that cut an XMart logo clean in half. You can bet those guys froze. In an instant, while I was still acting like a lunatic behind them, the men were on their knees, kicked to the cement, and stripped of their gear.

My end of this still had another act to play out. We had to flush out the rest, if there were any. And I can tell you, from the way I'd gone postal, I had the attention of the managers in their interior security booth.

In just a few more aisles, two mall cops
were on my heels. Then three. One of them actually took a shot at me, but I heard the safety click off and dodged left through fishing supplies and then right down children's books.

Man, I hoped they didn't shoot me. I wasn't planning to shoot them.

Meanwhile, York was dead ahead. Warlord York. Standing near the exit as I did my best fullback impression, lowered my head, yelled one more “Never trust packaged foods!” and ran through the exit out into the lot.

The remaining XMart guards—the ones not surrounded by Dakota and Mi—followed close on my heels.

“Stop right there,” York said calmly just as they got outside, leveling a pair of pistols at the whole bunch.

He didn't shoot a single one.
Good
for York. He'd come a long way. Not all the way, as I'd find out, but his mayhem dial had definitely turned down a notch.

It took only a minute to clear the store of shoppers. Even less for the underpaid, exploited employees to flee.

With the front gates down and covered, we set up a grid to sweep the store. Two clerks were still in the back. We found one more trooper coming out of the bathroom. Out they went. York and Dakota doubled back to cover some areas twice. Now the huge space was empty. It was ours. And it was closed for business.

We turned off the signs. Outside, a good stretch away, we saw crowds of shoppers gather, then get turned back by the ejected mall cops.

Dakota asked about the handful of doctors in the hospital wing. I told her to set them free, only keep the oldest one, the smallest threat, to care for the sick and injured strapped into the racks. I also asked her to help Reno up onto one of the tables and get him some real medical attention.

Finally, we could get a clear view of things. The XMart roof was dead flat with a nice waist-high ledge all the way around. It's a great defensive construction technique, just like a castle wall. Plus, the whole thing channeled rain into a catch basin. They could run that pipe into holding barrels if they were low on water.

Not that we were. Remember, this was the one general store for the town. Everything they had to eat was downstairs. All those chalky packets of food for the poor. Plus a smorgasbord of tasty fare for the rich: hams, turkeys, fruit, vegetables. It looked like one of those feasts medieval lords used to set at long tables while their serfs begged for scraps on the wrong side of the moat.

Once the place was locked tight, we met on the roof. With the cleared lots, no one could make an approach without us knowing. Five hundred yards away, the city began, and we had an unobstructed view. Three people could cover multiple directions with our turret weapon placements and shoulder guns.

“They could put sixty-cal snipers on the roof way out there,” York mentioned.

“They don't want to kill us.” Mi coughed.

“She's right,” I said. “But we started a countdown for them. BlackStar can't afford to disrupt commerce. Their workforce needs the food inside. The company needs that wall. And even the rich gotta eat.”

“This was a nice move.” York was looking at me. “
Finally
. But I might have tested our luck in the wasteland.”

“Thanks,” I answered with a nod. “I gambled. I bet they expected us to jack some vans and run for safer ground. And thought this place wasn't within our capabilities.”

Overhead, a blue sky stood empty. That scarcity of jet fuel was a bonus. We had higher position, so ground forces were going to have a hard time breaching our walls without destroying their own supplies. But a single attack helicopter? That would be difficult to fight.

Around the perimeter, but within range, a row of security vehicles began to assemble. One by one, nose to tail, they made a truck wall circling the giant store. Troopers stood around, pointing, looking, but without assembling or raising weapons. Just waiting.

“How soon before they start taking potshots at us?” Dakota asked.

“Why, to avenge what you did to Jevo?” York joked.

“But he wasn't one of
them
,” Dakota argued. Her eyes were wild. She was starting to look like a dog turning rabid. “Jevo turned on us. Had it coming.”

“I thought a simple revenge plot line was beneath you, Dakota.”

“They stole me from my home. Enslaved me. And spiked my eyes. I'm gonna make them pay and get what's mine.”

“Seriously?” I patted her shoulder. “You've come around to wanting to make them
pay?
I thought you just wanted to be free and work on a wall all day so you could go home and eat mystery grub, then tune out into fantasy game worlds.”

“Is this freedom? Living and dying within a few blocks of where you're born? A single overlord who controls every one of your days? Some distant warehouse that gives you supplies based on your work performance?”

“What did you expect?” Mi snarled back. “Some kind of Sims utopia where food and toys are free for the taking? Cheap cars? Unlimited gas? You
had
that. Before. But it wasn't enough, was it?”

“That wasn't real.”

“No, but how many people out here would have traded places with you in there?”

Dakota was still determined, eyes wild, darting around. “I'll figure it out. There's got to be a
third
option. I gotta find it.”

“Knock yourself out,” York barked.

A long black limo began curling around inside the wall of security trucks. Almost idling along. Here's what was funny: you could
hear
a major engine under the hood. Powerful. Not like the smaller patrol trucks. This thing burned high octane and would throw your head back if you stomped on the gas.

It'd been a while since I'd heard that throaty roar. I missed it.

Mi looked at the speed machine through her fancy scope.

“The big kahuna makes his entrance?” York smiled, and I noticed something disturbing: There was blood on his teeth. Like his gums were leaking. But it couldn't be a lung injury. He hadn't taken any bullets.

“I can't tell,” Mi replied. “There's a guy in there, I can see him on the x-ray. He's yelling into a phone. Waving his hand. He's worked up about something.”

“Plenty to be worked up about,” I agreed. “This is a one-horse town, and his labor force is locked out of their pantry. Without a wall, the hordes come back, all the way up into his grassy yards.”

But Mi didn't answer. She just followed the vehicle around. “He's . . . uh, familiar?”

Then I heard her suck in a breath.

She whispered, almost violently, “He lowered his window. I SEE him. I SEE him.”

They were creepy sounds coming from her. Rasping as she coughed it out, “I SEE him . . .”

What was freaking her out? A man? A BlackStar executive? Nothing did that to her. What?

She blinked. Mi rubbed her watery eye with one finger and slammed it up against the scope again. She had to be sure, but we could tell whatever she saw just wasn't registering.

“I . . . SEE . . .” She kept choking on the words.

“What?” Dakota urged.

“I see him,” she finally said with some clarity. I'd never really seen her lose it like that. Mi, she was as cool as dry-ice underwear.

“I saw him.” She'd come back from wherever she'd gone. “Then he rolled up the car window again, but I saw him, clear as day. No mistakes.”

“WHO?” York demanded. We were an elite unit. No time for babbling like that, and Mi of all people shouldn't get caught up in it.

“I saw YOU,” Mi replied, pointing a finger right at my chest. “I saw you in the car, Phoenix.”

We were all quiet for just a split second, but my mind clicked into gear. What a move. “It's fake. An illusion. Mind trick, using a hologram or something. Nice one too.”

“Nope,” she answered firmly. “I've got x-ray
and
infrared. Dude is
real
, honey. I've got no doubt in my mind that
you're
the one out there in that limousine, calling all the shots.”

What? Like a twin?

“It's just a trick,” I argued. “They're messing with you, sending that limo. To let us know we're not up against mall cops anymore.”

“Nope. I know what I saw. Real life.”

We all went quiet.

No one knew what to say. Maybe he was another tank body? A copy of my flesh, out here?

But wouldn't a copy be on
our
side? He'd be on Mi's for sure.

Or it was just a mistake. After all, Mi wasn't well. That cough. The teary eyes. She might be hallucinating. Time to get her to those pharmaceuticals.

And then the black stretch, speeding up, turned and rolled out of the XMart cordon zone.

The hospital wing was basically a huge Plexiglas case for patients who could afford to pay. The bed racks were all motorized, delivering the patients to a treatment station where a human doctor would stitch or patch them up and punch in the code for how long they'd be warehoused before release.

That's where I found Reno, at the treatment station, sitting up on one of the hard particle-board slabs.

The doctor we'd kept was working quickly, but honestly, it was hard to make a guess at her real age. Maybe ninety. Maybe double that. Her hands, though, were strong enough and quite good with the tools. Reno only winced slightly as she used a laser to cauterize the insides of the bullet tunnels.

“He's lost a lot of blood,” she said without looking up. I turned her tag in my fingers. It just had a last name.

“Please replace it, Dr. Winters,” I said, and slumped into a chair.

“The good stuff?” She smiled, still not looking up.

“What do you mean good stuff?” I asked, but I thought I knew what was coming.

“We have different supplies,” Doc Winters explained. “Cheap stuff for citizens. A private supply for corporate.”

“Yeah, give him the corporate stock.” Then I asked, “So all this, the blood, the medicine, it all comes in on those cross-country trucks?”

She nodded. “Everything. Can you imagine there's a city or colony out there in which the only way they could survive and stay on the XMart supply routes was to begin selling
blood?
”

I thought about that.

“Freaks me out,” the old woman spat. “But we gotta have it. Every burg in the network has to chip in something or that town goes to the horde.”

She was winding bandages now. Then replacing Reno's blood bag. It made me wonder what they put back in the poor people—red Kool-Aid? With just enough vitamins to get them back to work?

“Your eyes must see some interesting things from right there.”

“Oh, it's all the same.” She finally looked at me. “You look like yours have seen some things yourself, son.”

She called me “son.” I couldn't remember ever being addressed that way. It felt good.

Doc Winters pointed. “Those outlets in your heads are quite a piece of work.”

“Yours?” I asked, motioning to the truck bay. Maybe right after the captives got off, they came over here for the drill press.

“Oh, no.” She laughed. “You can't do
that
to a person.” I felt someone walking up behind me, quiet, and knew from the pace it was Dakota. Mi and York were setting up defenses. She must have finished wiring the cameras to the electronics section.

“Why can't you?” Dakota asked for me. “
Some
one did it.”

Doc Winters looked closely at Reno's port. It was red around the edges, kind of like mine, but not nearly as infected and gooey. I was here to get antibiotics too.

“See?” She tapped it with a nail and wiggled her fingers like jellyfish strands. “It goes in, then the tendrils are woven back into the brain. This is
way
beyond my capabilities. Plus, the orbital bone has grown in around it. Locked tight. Part of the temple now. So—best guess—they went in when you were all very, very young. Newborns. Possibly even
earlier
, while your skulls were still soft and they could muck around with the connections and not risk snipping the critical brain functions.”

I wasn't too sure what all that meant, but Dakota was definitely interested.

Doc Winters motioned that she was done with Reno for now, then turned to us. She pulled a drop of blood from Dakota's finger and stuck it in a scanner, then did the same to me. A moment later she handed me a clutch of big pills.

“The private stock?” I asked. “Let me guess. Workers get something different to swallow?”

She nodded. “I'm just amazed at those sockets,” she kept saying. “I don't think whoever took the trouble to implant them can be too happy you all got off the end of your extension cords.”

“No, they're not happy.”