Game Slaves (26 page)

Mi walked up, and I had her tested and asked for some meds for that cough. Doc Winters swung over a jug of syrup that Mi began gulping like she'd been lost in the Sahara and had just found water.

I asked, “Why'd you say that about my eyes?” I realized I had a lot of questions for this experienced woman.

“Oh, you know.” She smiled again. “The corporate people I treat over at BlackStar, they have one kind of look. Lots of money stress, but at the same time, that attitude like no one in the world would have
anything
if it weren't for their brilliance. They stare at everyone below them like they deserve their place. Like anyone not smart enough to program games is just a tool for them to exploit.”

“Just like the shot callers in a game.” Mi slurped more syrup. She was already hooked on the stuff. So were her lungs.

“But the people out
here
”—Doc Winters waved to the racks—“they have another look. Defeat, but with that stray glimmer of hope. Like maybe, after the wall is built, they'll have it easier or they'll get more food or some time off or pleasant moments with their families.”

“That gonna happen?” I asked, remembering what Screw had told us.

Winters shrugged. “But you, son, aren't like the corporate guys
or
the grunts. You're a fighter. You don't seem to blink, either. You've got a hard, hard stare for someone so young.”

“We've all been through the grinder, ma'am.”

“Stop calling me ma'am. Well, you couldn't have survived the wasteland, so what that tells me is these wanted criminals who've taken over my hospital came out of BlackStar's big R and D toy box up the hill.”

“You got that right.” Dakota was rubbing an ice pack on her neck. “But where did we come from
before?
I can't believe we were born up there. I have memories.”

Now the woman smirked. “
Are
they memories? Or maybe dead ends or blind alleys or fake suggestions they tested when they started pouring things into that hole?”

“I don't know how to tell the difference.”

“Ninety percent of brains are on their own program. They make changes, absorb random events and block out others. Many times they try to make the best of things so they can live with the hardships. You might just be holding on to a movie you saw or a game world you liked.”

Dakota stared back. She looked angry. I think she was trying to connect the dots. She'd had those dreams about swim lessons, but then it turned out she was perpetually underwater in a slave tank.

And of falling. But we all have those.

My memories, well, what was the point? Maybe my hometown in Arizona was a closed-off city-state just like Redwood was about to become. Did it really make any difference? I had
here
problems. We had
now
problems. We were desperate. Sick. Hunted morning and night. That was the real world for me.

Doc Winters interrupted my thoughts. “The biggest danger for people like you, son, is in that stare of yours.”

“My stare?”

“Your hard eyes. When people get that cold, they tend to forget what's really important. They neglect the things that make them decent. That make them kind or generous or sympathetic. I've seen it in men
and
women. Soldiers. Police. Homeless. The guys who scavenge the wasteland for metal. They're saturated with so much war and brutality that it drowns any sliver of kindness they've got left. And you're almost there. You're on the verge of forgetting.”

“What makes me human?” I asked.

“What makes you happy,” she replied.

There were two ways BlackStar could play this. For one, they could send a test invasion, see how we responded, and adjust. I didn't think they cared much about the people in the sickbeds, but they risked destroying their own supplies and not having any until the next shipment arrived.

The other move was to wait. To play mind games. And I figured that was their plan. The twin in the limo was solid evidence. What a way to cause dissension in my team. To make Reno, York, Mi, and Dakota suspect that
I
was a mole. That
I'd
given Jevo our position.

Mi was still certain she'd seen my double. And I believed her.

York and I pulled bunks and couches from the furniture section and made a circle with them in the electronics department. We had a brand-new CO, and on the screens, this one gave us a 360-degree night-vision view of our entire perimeter. In our old CO, we'd had no idea what was on the outside.

But straight up, they were both prisons.

How long would BlackStar wait? No more than a day. They had to have this food. They had to regain control. The trade had to continue: scrap metal and game systems go out; food, supplies, and wall panels come in.

We had our pick of clothing, but everyone went after military-style gear. It's nice having extra pockets.

One section of the store was stocked with supplies for the troops. We also found heat guns and a stockpile of high-tensile plastic. Helmets were customized and weapons modded, and we began to look a lot more like my old crew and a lot less like escapees from a mental institution.

I'll tell you, though, my eye was just stabbing with pain. Mi saw me cringe once and walked over.

She pulled back my hair.

“Oh, Phoenix,” she whispered, reaching for a tube of anticoagulant, her fingers red with my blood.

“It's worse?”

“Its . . . something,” she muttered, and spread whatever she could on it. “It's swollen, and there are white pus balls all around just waiting to pop. I mean, it looks
revolting
, and I'm not the squeamish type. You took the penicillin?”

“Do I need more?”

“Buckets.”

So I popped a pile of horse pills. The pain stayed, though.

Stupid port. Those holes in our heads were tough to deal with. Dust in the air was just one enemy. Imagine having metal running behind your eyes. Then it gets cold. Now it seemed to be infected. When I found the guy who'd drilled this thing, well, you can imagine, I was going to hold him down and drill a few holes of my own.

Jevo, though, he had some kind of plug. A safety cap. I guess that's one perk of being on BlackStar's side in this war.

With nothing happening, I set up sleep shifts. Just an hour at a time. It would help. We were sick and needed rest. Two would rack in the bunks while the other three watched the monitors and made rounds. Luckily, we could stay in the middle of our fortress in electronics. We had excellent vision and multiple firing positions if troopers breached a wall.

Reno and Mi were off to the sack first. Outside, clouds had covered the late-afternoon sun. Low light and fog are great if you're laying siege but major problems if you're trying to hold a position. Still, the cameras covered every inch. That ring of BlackStar trucks and troops just sat and waited.

Doc Winters was listening to a little kid's lungs through a stethoscope when I went by on one of my laps, and it seemed a good time to pry more information from her.

“You came in on one of those trucks as a captive, didn't you?” I asked her, watching the cold metal disc make the boy squirm.

She nodded, then pushed the kid down flat and hit a button on the rail. The bed slid back and rotated away.

“How'd you know I was born in another city?”

“Your education.” I pointed to the charts. “I haven't seen
any
schools for the poor. And the rich all work for BlackStar making games. So you must have learned medicine somewhere else.”

She frowned, nodding. “I was bought. Then shipped. XMart does good business in skills trade.”

“You had no choice?”

“No one does. Work or starve. Go where there's work. I do all right. Better than most. Long hours, but that's the same for everyone, even up at BlackStar.”

“Human trade? That's where they got the game programmers who live in the plush section of town?”

Another nod. “Their own kids will learn the skills and go to work for their parents. It's almost a monarchy now.”

“But the people down here”—I was looking at the racks—“never get a chance to learn any kind of valuable skill that can bring them up out of the gutter, do they?”

Doc Winters signed some sheet and yawned for a long second. “How could that happen? The separation between rich and poor is always something the rich are very interested in keeping in place.”

I looked at my hands, so comfortable around the molded grips of my gun. “And
they
own all the guns.”

“I think that was the first thing corporations did after oil ran out,” Winters said. “They had to disarm the poor. They're clever, too. It was a simple matter of changing calibers on new weapons . . . forty-fives to forty-sevens. Fifty-cal to fifty-five. They stopped making ammunition for the size of firearms that were still in the hands of the people. It took no time for the masses to expend all their bullets. After that their weapons were no more useful than cars with no wheels.”

“So they got turned in for scrap?”

“Metal for food. That program continues. Now it's slave labor for food. Good people do anything they can to survive.”

I thought of Screw. “Rumor is that once the wall's complete, BlackStar isn't going to have any more need for a working class.”

Now the Doc just stared at me. She kept peering with those tired gray eyes. Finally, I had to break the silence and asked, “What's in that spray they coat the ghettos with? From the helicopter?”

A wrinkle appeared on the edges of those eyes, like a squint. Like she knew something she wasn't proud of knowing.

She answered, “BlackStar tells the people it's vitamin boosters to keep them free from horde diseases that blow in from the wasteland.”

“Makes sense, but total BS, right?”

“Of course.”

“What are they doing, poisoning everyone? Slowly?”

She shook her head. “That would affect labor productivity and increase health problems. Most people don't even realize that the rate they pay at this store for food or clothing doesn't fully cover the cost of the goods we get shipped in on those trucks.”

“What?” That didn't make sense to me. How could they not be charged the cost, unless . . . “You mean BlackStar covers the rest of the expense? Out of gaming profits?”

She nodded again. “Corporate charges people every dime they can, but in the end it's not enough to pay XMart's rates. So eventually, when the wall is up and we don't need so many people, it makes sense that not everyone will be allowed to stay.”

BlackStar. Can you believe that? So they weren't poisoning everyone slowly. No, they needed hard workers.

“The spray is a dopamine aerosol,” Doc Winters said flatly. “I ran it through my scanner one day. A low-dose hallucinogen that's full of THC, LSD, and some tricky military compounds.”

“What's it do?”

“It's their pacifier, like happy gas. A modern Soma. Makes the people work harder. Stops them from organizing or revolting. Tricks them into thinking they're happy and valuable and part of something bigger and more important.”

“
We
breathed the stuff”—I lifted my gun a bit—“and we're not getting in line to work for their cause.”

She looked at her hands, smiling. “Well, it takes a while to learn your place, Phoenix. Once you absorb a few more doses, you might even
like
living in the projects, hammering metal all day under a hot sun, then tuning out into fake game worlds all night.”

I stared at her. “Do you like your life?”

She was still staring at her hands. How many people had those hands helped? Millions? What a remarkable use for ten frail fingers. Was
that
the feeling Dakota had been looking for that day she'd tried to reattach those limbs to our hostages?

“Do I like my life? Son, I accept my life. I do what I can. I have friends across the country in my chosen game world every night. So yes, Phoenix, this is enough for me. It has to be. I can't change a whole planet.

“But you,” she continued, “I don't think you could ever make my life work. You don't have the . . . skill set.”

“We didn't come in on that truck, did we?”

“I can't tell you for sure. They bring in babies all the time. The top brass trade wives and families more often than they trade programmers and designers. You just might have been some of those infants.”

“Have you ever met Max Kode?”

She shook her head. “But he has masters too.”

“Does he look like me?” I then asked, hoping she'd seen a picture or something.

Winters paused. “You're definitely products of the same environment. Always playing angles. Working your advantages.” She took my hand and began tracing the tattoo. “And it's not like you or your team would ever be banished. You're company property. The chosen ones. After the full wall goes up, everyone inside will get these markings.”

“One big happy commune?” I pulled my palm back. “What will everyone else get?”

“Overrun. Cornered right up against the outside of the fence they themselves built.”

“What's to the north?” I asked, mentioning the other wall gap, which was less secure.

“Nothing,” she answered quickly. “There's nothing up there. But I don't think the answers you seek are on the other side of the barricade,” she finished, turning away. “I think if you're really interested in who you are, you need to go back to where this all started.”

I've never felt closer to death—to real death—than I did thirty seconds later, when I returned to our furniture fort in the middle of the store.

I saw Reno. And Mi. Lying together on one of the wide couches. He'd shucked all his weapons, over in a pile with hers, but it was the two of them that made my lungs seize up and my heart nearly stop.