Outlive (The Baggers Trilogy, #1) (20 page)

             
Baggs looked upward and noted that the bars that surrounded the Boxers did not go all the way to the ceiling; instead, they rose up thirty feet and then just stopped. There was no covering on the cage. Baggs didn’t see this as a problem; there probably weren’t many people that could climb bars like that, and if a competitor tried, they would be forced down by their Choke.

             
There were roughly one hundred tables situated around the ground floor, each seating ten people. The tables were covered in pale pink tablecloths that were encrusted with sparkling gold. The people at these tables were dressed in expensive dresses and suits. Further away, partitioned from the center of the room by a plastic net, were the cheap seats. These were stadium seats that rose out and up to an amazing height and sat thousands of people. The people in the stadium seats were dressed mostly in t-shirts and jeans.

             
The baseline continued to thrum. Larry said something, but Baggs couldn’t hear what it was over the noise.

             
The flickering lights continued and Baggs realized that the flashes were coming from cameras all around. Cameras were going off from the stadium seating, and then there were also dozens of small drones flying around, taking pictures of the contestants. One flew over the top bars and hovered down into the cage with the Boxers. The black robot descended low, until it was right in front of Baggs’s face, and then began to take pictures while illuminating Baggs with a blinding flashbulb. Baggs had an instinctive urge to swipe at the drone, knocking it to the ground. The flashing, along with the baseline and the crowd, was unnerving. However, Baggs kept his hands to himself. He was too aware of the shifting Choke on his neck to try something like impeding the camera.

             
The hovering camera took a few more pictures of the other Boxers and then flew back over the top of the metal bars. Baggs’s vision was spotted with green and red spots and was very limited in the dim room.

             
Suddenly, the blue lights went completely out, and the crowd screamed with delight. The flash photography occasionally lit the room in certain areas. The bass died away until it could not be heard anymore.

             
I feel like an animal on display at a zoo,
Baggs thought. The flashing occasionally illuminated him, making him feel naked and exposed.

             
Four more sources of light appeared—one along each wall. The light was dim at first and then grew to a substantial glow. Baggs saw that the glowing objects were giant HoloVision Boxes, each twice as tall and wide as Baggs’s apartment.

             
Inside the Holovision Boxes, holograms appeared, but were detailed and fluid enough to look like there were actual objects floating inside of the glass enclosures. The first thing to show was a series of levitating, spangled, gold letters that rotated slowly. They spelled:

OUTLIVE

              The letters began to waver and melt and then became steam that drifted up towards the top of the box, where they disappeared. Then, a man began to sprint from the right to left side of the box. He was dressed in gladiator garb with leather and metal armor. His face looked worried, and he glanced behind him. A spear came rushing from the back of the box; it came through the back of the man’s neck and out the front, splattering blood on the front of the display. Inside of the specks of red, the blood made out these letters:

SEASON 10, EPISODE 8

              The crowd cheered again. The blood and the corpse disappeared. Then, horrified, Baggs watched as his face, giant and dark, filled the HoloVision Box. He was wearing eyeliner, and his face was harshly shadowed from an intense top light.

             
The voice that came out of the hologram’s mouth was deeper and even raspier than Baggs’s natural voice; the producers had altered it in some way.

             
“I just wanted to kill him,” the hologram of Baggs said, looking straight at the camera.

             
Then, the HoloVision box showed Baggs punching the police officer in the Outlive office that morning. An unrealistic amount of blood sprayed from the officer’s nose as Baggs hit him. The hologram shifted to show Vinny Tartuga. He spoke in his nasally voice: “He came into the Outlive office of the Media Tower and got into a fight with the cop. It seems as though he was unprovoked. His name is James Baggers, he’s on the Boxers, and he’s completely insane.”

             
“I lost it,” Baggs’s voice said, and then the HoloVision Box showed a close up of Baggs and the cop. Baggs reared back, drove his fist into the police officer’s face, and the officer’s eyes rolled into his head after the impact. The crowd absolutely loved it, and the cheering became loud enough to injure eardrums.

             
The real Baggs’s face burned with embarrassment. He saw his teammates stealing glances at him out of the corner of his eyes.
It was worth it, though,
he thought to himself.
I’m glad that I did the commercial. The CreditCoins will really help Tessa out.

             
Then, Vinny Tartuga’s face came on the HoloVision Box again. His skin looked sallow and sickly under the harsh light. “Who do I think the most formidable competitor will be in this episode?” his resounding voice asked, as though the hologram was speaking to an interviewer. “That’d have to be Chobb Lowe on the Pirates.”

             
Vinny’s face was now replaced with a man standing in his underwear. Baggs was glad that he hadn’t been asked to strip down for his commercial.

             
Vinny’s voice played as Chobb Lowe’s figure turned in the hologram displays. “He’s six feet three inches, and built like a bull. He’s a powerlifter. If he wouldn’t have gotten into trouble with the law, he would have been the world champion.”

             
Chobb Lowe’s figure was impressive. He had a small amount of fat lining his belly, but not much. Vinny hadn’t been exaggerating much when describing the man as looking like a bull. The hologram’s back bulged with muscles. Chobb had no neck; his enormous trapezius muscles were threatening to pass his chin. His forearms were as thick as some peoples’ thighs, and covered in hard vascularity.

             
“Wow,” Larry murmured.

             
The presentation went on like that, going through fifteen players with descriptions of why they were formidable from Vinny Tartuga (“This girl won’t be afraid to gouge eyes out”) and different contestants either standing in front of a camera, or reciting lines. None of the displays got nearly the response that Baggs’s did, which embarrassed him more.

             
The last competitor to be introduced to the audience surprised Baggs; it was the piercing-covered face of the woman sitting two places to Baggs’s left; it was the woman that he had noticed while the room was being elevated.

             
“Tonya Wolf,” Vinny Tartuga said over an image of the woman scowling. “She has killed fifteen people. She liked to kidnap them and cut their stomachs open. The court was lenient in granting her a chance to compete in Outlive; we lobbied hard for the opportunity to have her. We felt that her aggression would do well in the arena.”

             
The hologram of the woman spoke; her voice was soft, almost a whisper. “My name is Tonya Wolf.” Her eyes were flat, almost bored. “I like to watch people bleed. That’s why I cut open their stomachs. I like to watch people die, and I like for it to take a long time.”

             
This disturbing speech got as much applause as the shot of Baggs punching the police officer.

             
Then, the HoloVision Boxes went dark, and the blue light came back on in the room. An announcer’s voice came over the speakers: “Ladies, gentlemen, and competitors: Feel free to eat and drink what is set out on your tables. If you wave your hand, a drone will come over and assist you by retrieving more food or drink. Please note: While you are allowed to take pictures with the Outlive competitors, it is encouraged that you not get too close to the bars. Thank you.”

             
The announcer stopped speaking and the dining hall was quiet for a moment. After a short time, the sounds of conversations and the tinkling of silverware began to permeate over the space. Men and women were pouring glasses of wine and serving themselves from covered trays in the middle of tables.

             
Spinks uncovered the Boxers’ trays, revealing roasted herb chicken, crab macaroni and cheese, butter and garlic mashed potatoes, a cabbage salad with fruits and nuts, dinner rolls, and rolls of sushi atop an ice cold sheet of metal. Baggs began to eat with a mixture of delight and guilt. The food was even better than what he had had in Tartuga’s office.
But it probably costs enough to feed a starving London family for a whole month.

             
Baggs listened to the English conversations taking place around him. When Emperor Daman’s predecessor, Pat Blue, took office forty years ago, he ordered that English be made the official language of New Rome. Citizens who were caught speaking another language in public were fined. As Baggs understood it, people used to speak French in Paris; now, this was a dying language.
I bet that no one under the age of thirty-five can speak it fluently anymore.
German and other languages were dying in the same manner. To Baggs, this was a tragedy. Possibilities for thought were expressed in language, and Baggs couldn’t help but think that each language must have its strengths.

             
He also thought that other cultures must have strengths, too, but Pat Blue had unified New Rome’s culture as much as possible. For example, he had brought all of the best baseball leagues oversea and completely done away with cricket. Pat Blue was from the United States, and when his forces began to take over New Rome, he didn’t want to learn new systems or customs. As another example, Pat Blue grew frustrated when he would go to purchase something in New Rome and the measurements were in the metric system, so he ordered that all New Rome measurements be changed to what was known as the U.S. Customary System. Pat Blue wanted people measured in pounds, and feet, and inches, and long distances expressed in miles instead of kilometers.

             
There was a jazz band playing music on a stage in the corner. Larry drank several cups of wine and started ranting about the government and how corrupt it was. This made Baggs uncomfortable, as there were council members present. Stairs were erected around the cages that held the contestants, and people came and stood in front of the bars to have their pictures taken in front of the Outlive participants. The Boxers cage was an especially popular place for people to take photographs. Looking around, Baggs noticed some more celebrities. The most famous was probably Nikki Wild, a musician who Maggie loved. Baggs spotted Bob Winters, the councilman who had bought Hailey Vixen as a prostitute. He was enjoying the evening with his wife and kids while Hailey was being gawked at behind bars.

             
Hailey Vixen attracted attention for two reasons; the first was that she was a celebrity, and the second was because she was unusually attractive. She kept her head down most of the night and did not smile, but she was unable to make herself blend in with the others. Her porcelain skin and golden hair were angelic. She was not able to cover up her eye-catching body because of the skimpy, tight black dress they forced her to wear.

             
Men whistled at her, and cat called; “Eyy, Bob told me you were easy!” “I’m a lawyer, not as good as a councilman, but you’ll do it for money, right?” Some even reached inside the bars, trying to touch her, but she was seated too far away for them to reach.

             
As it got later, more and more people got drunk. Baggs didn’t drink. He wasn’t especially opposed to drinking, but he didn’t want to muddy up his thinking process at a time like this.

             
One of the people who drank the most, though, was Modd Harvey, the best heavyweight boxer in the world. The man had a shaved head, diamond earrings, and shoulders that couldn’t be hidden beneath a suit jacket. He was known for his loud mouth and his aggression, both inside and outside of the ring.

             
He made it apparent what he wanted Hailey Vixen to do.

             
“Hey, honey, I know you’re locked up in there, but come over to the bars, sweetie.” That was the kind of thing he said at the beginning of the night, as he was still relatively sober. As the night wore on, he drank glass after glass of clear alcohol that was brought by a drone. The wine was free, but other drinks were not. Each time the drone came by, Mobb Harvey had to place his thumbprint on a pad to pay CreditCoins.

             
At first, Hailey Vixen ignored his calls, as anyone would do. But the calling became incessant. “You opened your legs to the Councilman, why not to me? Is it ‘cause of these bars. C’mere, we can get around them.” The call that made Hailey respond to Mobb was perhaps his thousandth that night. He was swaying on his feet, as though only one punch away from being knocked out. “Come here, you whore.” Mobb saw something on Hailey’s face and continued on. “Oh, what, you don’t like being called that?” A silent tear fell down Hailey’s face. She had been bombarded with comments all night while Bob Winters had a pleasant night out. “What? You don’t think you’re a whore? You think he loved you or something? You think he loved you more than that pretty wife of his. Sugar, let me tell you something, a lady like Michelle Winters is worthy of a man like that, okay? I mean, she’s got a personality, you hear? She’s able to talk to Bob, entertain Bob, and he needs that, okay, baby? She’s there for him. Then there’s you, and you’ve got a nice body and I’m sure he loved being with you, but he doesn’t want to
be with you,
you get what I’m saying? No one’s going to ever
love you,
sugar.” Tears were falling harder down Hailey Vixen’s face. Baggs wondered why Mobb’s current words were having such a strong effect.
Maybe she has feelings for Bob Winters. Maybe she fell in love with him.
Mobb began to call through the bars at her again. “So c’mon over here, sugar. He doesn’t love you. He won’t mind sharing. I ain’t gonna love you either, but you’re pretty. That’s all you were to him, don’t you get that?”