The monsters howled as they fell, their paws scrambling for purchase on the stone. Cal couldn’t tell if they’d fallen all the way down the mountain, or were clinging on just a few feet below the drop, and he had no intention of hanging around to find out.
He set off limping, one hand clutching his side, the other holding the blaster. As he walked, an archway appeared ahead of him.
Sector Four.
He didn’t care what was through there. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered now. She was gone. Loren was gone. They had killed her.
They had killed her, and now he was going to kill them.
If it was the last thing he did.
Thirty-Eight
Had he been in a more receptive mood, Cal might have been impressed by the theming of the next sector. It was, from what he could gather, a hodge-podge of some of his worst memories and most vivid nightmares.
The scarecrow in the maze. The clowns in Funworld. The time Billy Minchin from High School had invited him to his fancy-dress birthday party, only for Cal to turn up at the venue dressed like Sloth from The Goonies and discover it had been booked for a televised Holocaust Memorial service.
The holographic images of all those horrified old people and Billy Minchin’s laughing face were eerily lifelike and accurate, but Cal didn’t care. He ignored them. He ignored everything.
He stopped for a moment when he saw his wife and daughter getting into a car. He almost called out to them, but what would be the point? This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real. It had already happened, and there was nothing he could do about it now.
He limped on. On through the creepy gas station bathroom he’d once got locked in. On across the frozen lake where, as a five-year-old, he’d found the body of a dog frozen below the ice, its eyes pleading for him to help it.
On through the nightmares. On through the memories. On through a whole load of shizz designed to freak him the fonk out.
But he wasn’t having it. He wasn’t having any of it. They’d killed her. They’d killed Loren, and no damn mind tricks were going to stop him getting his own back.
He was striding through his uncle’s creepy basement, where he’d once been trapped in the dark for three hours with only a million imaginary spiders for company, when Splurt attacked. He came leaping from the shadows at the corner of the basement, a thrashing mass of gelatinous green limbs all forming forked blades at the ends, and all of them aiming for Cal’s head.
“They killed her, Splurt,” Cal said, not flinching.
Splurt collapsed into a ball, his limbs whipping back into his body. Cal didn’t miss a step.
“They killed Loren.”
Splurt shuddered, then trundled after Cal.
“Wait, what’s…” asked the voice of the host, then it was cut off. There was a faint screech of feedback. The thudding of a microphone being moved.
Cal ignored it all and kept walking, with Splurt rolling along at his feet. The ground was undulating like the deck of a ship, but he felt that was more to do with his loss of blood than any fancy TV trickery.
Up ahead, a finish line appeared. Cal hurried for it, each step leaving a bloody footstep on the wooden floor of his uncle’s basement. Splurt rolled up Cal’s back and perched on his shoulder. He nuzzled against the side of his head, offering his sympathies in the only way he knew how.
“Thanks, buddy,” Cal said, his voice hoarse.
Behind them, a Sloorg howled. Then another. Then another.
Two of the creatures padded out from behind a stack of shelving and a rusted exercise bike ahead of them, blocking the route to the finish.
Cal kept walking. A Hovercam swooped in low to watch as the two Sloorgs up ahead pounced. Splurt exploded into a terrifying mass of whirring blades and pointy spikes. The dog-monsters yelped briefly, then both fell to the ground as a series of identical neatly-dissected pieces.
The Sloorgs behind them made their move, too. Cal didn’t see what happened to those when Splurt sprang into action again. He didn’t care. Whatever it was, the fonking things had it coming.
Cal continued to the finish line. It swam sickeningly, his vision fading in and out as what little blood was left in him continued to vacate the premises. He stumbled a few feet from the end, his legs finally giving up on him.
No.
Not now. Not when he was so close.
Splurt wrapped around his torso, becoming dozens of tiny feet beneath him. They crawled him onward to the finish, escorted him over the finish line, then deposited him unceremoniously on the floor.
Light flooded in. The basement floor had become a pulsing white glow beneath his fingertips. Cal’s face was pressed against his, one cheek shoved up into his eye.
“Splurt?” he said. He prodded at himself, and discovered that the little green blob was no longer wrapped around him. “Buddy?”
Cal pushed himself up onto his knees, then got shakily to his feet. Not as shakily as he’d been expecting. In fact, barely shakily at all.
He had stopped bleeding. Or rather, he hadn’t started bleeding. His hands and clothing were crimson-free, and the myriad of agonies that had been scattered throughout his body were gone.
Cal prodded gingerly at his side where Miz had slashed him, but found no wounds. He checked his shoulder and his hips, but neither of those had sustained any damage, either.
After checking himself over again just in case he’d missed anything, Cal turned to look back in the direction he’d come. Where he’d expected to see the archway leading to his uncle’s basement, he instead saw nothing but white.
It stretched out around him in on all sides—around, above and below—an endless gulf of empty whiteness, with nothing noteworthy to be seen in any direction. No archway, not basement, no Splurt.
No nothing.
“Great. So, I’m dead,” Cal said.
“Yes. You are,” said a voice from behind him. Cal spun to find the Controller standing there, his silver frame reflecting the whiteness, his multiple hands tapping on his many devices.
“You!” Cal hissed, his fingers bunching into fists. He threw a punch at the Controller, but it was easily deflected. A quick shove sent Cal tumbling to the floor.
“Yes. Me. Of course, it’s me. It’s always me,” said the Controller. “Whether I look like this. Or like this.”
He changed shape before Cal’s eyes, becoming Floora. She giggled.
“Guess I did too good a job of keeping you alive!”
Her voice changed, becoming the Controller’s again. “Or this…”
Floora’s form twisted, transforming into the Host.
“Commiserations, Reduk Topa,” said the Controller in the Host’s voice. “You came so close, but nobody beats The Hunt!”
“I beat it,” said Cal, getting to his feet. “I beat your stupid game!”
The Host became the Controller again. “I’m afraid not. We couldn’t possibly allow that. Imagine the outrage.”
He gestured at a patch of nothing, and it immediately became an oblong of something. Cal watched in stunned silence as Splurt tore him apart, uncoiled all his internal organs, then popped his head off like a Champagne cork.
“What the fonk is this?”
“That? That’s what the sector is watching right now. The grisly, long-overdue death of the pirate, Reduk Topa. They’re loving every moment of it.”
He tapped and swiped one of his devices and a little pie-chart appeared in the air beside the moving image. It was mostly just a bright green circle, with only the tiniest sliver of amber visible in it.
“Audience satisfaction score,” the Controller explained. “They’re lapping it up.”
“But… But it’s not real,” Cal said.
“Of course it isn’t real! It’s television. None of it is real,” the Controller snorted. “We know you aren’t Reduk Topa. We know there was never any possibility of you winning, but the herds of imbecilic cattle watching at home don’t know that. Those idiots believe anything they see. A
nd I’m the one who decides what to show them.”
Cal’s head was spinning as he tried to figure out what all this meant.
“So… I’m alive?” he asked. He was fairly confident he knew the answer to this one, but felt it best to start with the basics.
“Technically, yes,” said the Controller. “For now.”
“Right. OK, so… Wait. What do you mean ‘for now’?”
“The sector saw Reduk Topa die,” explained the Controller. “And so, die he must. You will be disposed of. It shall be swift and painless. You have my word.”
“Uh… thank you?” said Cal, feeling this was probably the response the Controller was looking for.
“You are welcome. You have made the network a lot of money today, and earned some of the highest audience satisfaction ratings we’ve ever had,” the Controller said. “The least I can do is kill you quickly.”
“That’s very generous of you,” Cal said. “But, I have to know. What happened to the others? Mech…” He swallowed. “Loren?”
“They are perfectly unharmed,” said the Controller.
Cal sagged down, placing his hands on his knees to stop himself from falling all the way to the floor.
“Oh, thank God.”
“They were never physically present. Not like you were. What you experienced, what those at home saw, was…” The Controller’s reflective brow furrowed a fraction. “How can I phrase this so that an intellect as limited as yours may understand?”
“Hey, I can handle it. No need to dumb it down on my account, pal,” Cal told him.
“It was a mesmofield sensory equivocation.”
Cal blinked. “OK, maybe dumb it down just a tiny bit.”
“It was a simulation,” the Controller explained. “Of sorts. You were physically present, but the Hunters were merely projections of themselves. An actualization of their consciousnesses, projected directly into the simulation, psychically manipulated so they would follow the script.”
Cal blinked again. Twice, this time.
“Like robots?”
“No. Nothing like robots,” said the Controller.
“Gotcha,” Cal lied. “But… they’re all alive?”
“Alive and unharmed,” said the Controller.
“Great!”
“But they now belong to me.”
“Oh.”
“They are now my Hunters,” the silver figure continued. “There was some resistance to the psychically implanted commands, but this was through familiarity and affection for you, and will not prove to be a problem once you are dead. From here on in, their performances should be seamless.”
Cal watched himself on screen. He was now essentially a grisly reddish putty, but Splurt was still hacking and slashing away at him.
“You really think you’ve got this all figured out, don’t you?” said Cal.
“I do.”
“But there’s one thing you haven’t factored into your calculations,” Cal said.
The Controller’s thumbs all hesitated. “Oh. And what would that be?”
“This!” said Cal. He swung with a right hook, putting all his strength and power behind it.
The Controller leaned back a fraction. Cal missed, pirouetted on the spot, then stumbled to a stop, feeling equal parts embarrassed and dizzy.
“You are correct. I had not factored that in,” said the Controller. “Fortunately, I can improvise.”
His smooth silver face twisted into a smile. “Now, all that remains is to kill you, have your remains disposed of, and I think we can call this a wrap.”
He placed the back of a hand beside his mouth and stage-whispered. “Between you and I, I think we’ll get an award for this one.”
“We’ll stop you, you piece of shizz. Even if you kill me, the others will get out. They’ll stop you.”
“I’m afraid not,” said the Controller. “How can they possibly stop me? How can they possibly do anything to me? I’m the most advanced artificial intelligence in the galaxy.”
“Second most advanced, sir.”
Cal and the Controller locked eyes for a moment, then both looked up.
“Kevin?” said Cal.
“Indeed, sir,” Kevin intoned. “I trust you are well?”
“Uh, things are looking up,” said Cal.
“What is this?” the Controller demanded. “Who are you?”
“I am K-Zeven-Zero-Dash-Nine-Three-Three-Zero-Seven-Dash-Zeta. But my friends call me ‘Kevin.’”
“Kevin?” the Controller echoed.
“I said my friends call me Kevin, sir. That does not extend to you.”
The footage of Splurt murdering Cal became vapor, then the colors rearranged to show Cal and the Controller standing in a perfectly white room.
“What is this?” the Controller demanded. The smaller image of him repeated his words with a half-second lag. “What? Why is…? How can…?”
“This is what is actually being broadcast, sir,” Kevin explained. His own voice repeated, too. “Oh, that’s quite fun, isn’t it? Hello? Echo… Echo… Echo…”
The Controller’s thumbs swiped and tapped madly. He shook his head. “No. Impossible. We’re showing the simulation.”
“I’m afraid I simulated the simulation, sir,” Kevin replied. “I assure you, everyone in the sector has been watching you explaining things to Master Carver.”
“But… the audience satisfaction!” the Controller said.
“Also simulated, sir,” said Kevin.
The mostly green circle became a mostly red one. “I’m afraid they’re not as impressed as you may have been led to believe,” Kevin said. “By me,” he added, quite proudly. “They really didn’t appreciate being referred to as ‘herds of imbecilic cattle.’ The green section took rather a large hit at that point.”
The Controller’s thumbs all stopped tapping.
“Of course, it didn’t help that I played them this,” Kevin said.
The opening bars to the Cagney & Lacey theme blared out, then were abruptly silenced.
“Wait, no. Not that.”
There followed a series of chicken-clucks and a long, drawn-out mooo.
“No. Hang on,” said Kevin. “I know it’s around here somewhere.”
The next sound to emerge from the direction of the ceiling was the Controller’s voice.
“You had to go mess everything up, didn’t you?” it said.
“What is this?” the Controller demanded.
“You had to go screw with the narrative. Killing the Hunters is one thing, but do you have any idea how much processing power I’ve dedicated to the story of Reduk Topa over the years?” his voice continued.
“He recorded it,” Cal realized, a grin spreading across his face as he realized he was listening to the Controller’s earlier rant. “He recorded it all.”
“Do you have any idea how many people I had to have killed in order to build up his legend, so that those facile lumptards watching at home would finally have the villain they so desperately crave?” the Controller’s voice demanded.
“Six?” guessed Cal, in perfect timing with his voice on the recording.
“Thousands. Tens of thousands! Reduk Topa was nothing before I found him. No one. Just another vermin pirate in a galaxy infested with them. I made Reduk Topa. I am Reduk Topa! I built his legend from nothing so that The Hunt would have its greatest villain of all. And now you’ve ruined it!”
The recording cut off. Kevin quietly cleared his non-existent throat.
“Yes, they weren’t fans of that at all,” he said.
The Controller shook his head. “No. No, it’s impossible. There’s no way you could’ve remotely breached my security. It can’t be done. You’d have to have someone inside the station.”
“Yes, I would rather, wouldn’t I?” said Kevin. “Ideally, equipped with some sort of remote interface device that could be plugged into your systems.”
A patch of empty whiteness exploded, creating a smoking hole in s
pace. An armed guard came tumbling through it, bloody and unconscious.
A moment later, Tyrra strode through, a blaster in each hand, a foot in her mouth. The guard on the floor had both feet, so Cal had no idea where this one had come from. He decided it was probably for the best that he didn’t.
“Found him,” said Tyrra, after spitting the body part onto the floor.
“So I see, miss,” said Kevin. “As do several trillion others watching at home. Say hello.”
To Cal’s surprise, Tyrra blushed slightly, then gave a little wave at nothing and no one in particular.
“Hello.”
“Actually, I say several trillion, but that number appears to be dropping rather quickly,” said Kevin.
The Controller stiffened. His thumbs all leaped into action. “What? What do you mean? What are you saying?”
“It would seem that people are switching off, sir,” said Kevin. “In their droves.”
“No, no, no, no!” the Controller whimpered. Two new arms sprouted from inside him. Each hand grew more thumbs. They all frantically swiped at the screens he held, his eyes flitting from one to the other as he studied the incoming information. “It can’t… It isn’t…”
“Well, well, well. Looks like this episode is tanking badly,” Cal gloated. He put a hand to the side of his mouth and whispered loudly. “Between you and me? I wouldn’t go clearing a space in the cabinet for that award just yet.”
The Controller’s head spasmed. His reflective silver surface turned a base metal gray.
“N-n-no. Cannot… Processing. Processing.”
“What is happening to him?” Tyrra asked.
“Nothing good,” Cal said. He put a hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Thank you.”
“It was the voice’s idea,” Tyrra said.
“My idea. Her execution,” said Kevin. “Isn’t it amazing how successful one can be if one occasionally does what their told?”
Tyrra’s eyes flicked up. “Shut up.”
“Very good, miss,” said Kevin. “Whatever you say.”
The Controller jerked violently. His legs folded into his body and he hit the floor with a clank.
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