Strike

by Jim Heskett

  Chapter Ten

  As the warning bell sounded to indicate three seconds until the start of the round, Yorick sweated. The rifle in his hands felt slick. The last two days had been a whirlwind of activity, and he hadn’t had the time to adjust and think through everything.

  But that didn’t matter now. He was about to begin another morning’s round of battles. Another chance for him to rank last and be carted off to… wherever.

  The final alarm sounded, and twenty Blues tore out of the starting point at the northeast edge of the battlefield. To replace the one who had been sent away yesterday, a standby had joined the team from the cafeteria staff. The kid couldn’t have been over fourteen years old. Most likely, he would end up last. The fresh recruits didn’t even have time to figure out what they were doing before they were thrown into battle. In the winter, when the battles were less frequent, they could adjust. Learn. Not in the frantic summer.

  Hamon darted into the warehouse quadrant, as they’d determined on the walk to the battlefield this morning. A flat, paved area consisting of two rows of three large warehouses each, stacked inside with pallets and long-dead vehicles and other objects to use for cover. Plenty of hiding spots to lie in wait for unsuspecting attackers.

  Rosia tilted her head left, indicating she’d follow her own path. Yorick nodded and continued straight, toward the middle of the three warehouses. None of his teammates followed him, which was fine. He was prepared to find a space to hide and sit in waiting. His knee still ached a little, but not enough to cause problems. Maybe he’d pick off a few of the Reds before they stormed the warehouses. He did run the risk of missing some or all of the battle, though. If the skirmish took place out in the foxholes or the forest, and Yorick stayed here, he might end up ranking last because he’d taken out no targets. It was a significant risk, and one he had to evaluate minute by minute.

  But he had a feeling that wouldn’t happen. He thought Diego and his crew would come looking for him this morning. After Diego had spied them talking to the big farm serf Tenney at the play last night… good chance the elder bully wanted to make an example of Yorick.

  He pulled back the door to the warehouse and slid inside. The quiet unnerved him at first. He paused, listening. He had to wait a few seconds for his breathing to slow so he could focus. Outside, the shuffling of feet rushed across the ground. But no gunshots yet, so that meant the Reds had not descended.

  “Okay,” he said to the empty room, heart thumping. “Just another day like any other. Think fast, act fast, and you stay alive. Slow down, and you’re dead. But, no pressure, or anything.”

  He blinked as his eyes adjusted to the space. The vast room was dark, except for meager light shining in from windows high on the walls. The interior of the warehouse looked like a junkyard. Across the floor, hunks of painted metal and glass littered the area, almost completely covering the floor. Only recently had Yorick learned the proper name for these giant machines. He’d seen a description in one of the contraband books shared around the dorms describing “airplanes,” but he’d known them as aviónes. He had no idea why there were two different words for the same thing. But, the pieces seemed to be bits of broken aviónes. These massive metal birds used to fill the sky, all the time, apparently. He’d never seen one, which made him doubt the rest of the alleged facts in the books. Why would they so suddenly stop flying if there used to be thousands of them up there?

  Beyond the junkyard interior, one wall of the warehouse was covered with doors, leading into three small, single-story rooms. The rooms were part of one long, self-contained structure within the warehouse itself. The warehouse roof was ten meters overhead, and these self-contained rooms had their own roof, half as high.

  These doors were inaccessible except for one. The other two contained no knobs or access panels, and the metal doors had been welded to the frames. Probably some prior leak on the other side, sealed shut for safety. There were windows on all the rooms, but they’d been painted over in the past. The rooms were effectively invisible.

  But Yorick didn’t care about the content of these rooms. In the one he could access, there was a way to climb up the interior and get above the rooms, to their roofs. That way, he could gain a vantage point and pick off anyone who happened to wander inside the main warehouse.

  The door was hanging off the hinges, a pile of rubble a meter deep on the floor. Bits of yellowing and crinkly paper hung on the walls inside. Some had words and pictures, but the images were so faded, he couldn’t read most of it. Some were in a language he didn’t recognize.

  At one corner, the rubble had been pushed into a pile, creating a path that led to the roof of the rooms. There, Yorick slung his rifle over his back to climb up into the ceiling. He scooted along to the next room, keeping alert as he stepped foot over foot.

  Yorick marched to reach the edge for the best view, and the roof underneath him creaked. He paused. He felt the structure shifting. If it collapsed, he wouldn’t have far to fall, but also didn’t want to receive a metal bar or chunk of glass to the face. No telling what dangers were in the sealed room below him.

  He spread his hands out. “Okay, now, roof and floor. Hold together. I’m just passing through. No need to punish me.”

  He scooted forward another meter, and the creaking grew worse. He pivoted back around and was now too far away from where he’d climbed to reverse course.

  “Mierda.”

  With a creak and a squeal, a chunk of the roof gave out underneath him. He rode it down like an elevator, hands and legs spread wide as it smacked into the floor. A cloud of dust spewed into the air as inertia thrust his face into the floor, too. He tasted blood in his mouth.

  Yorick sat up and coughed as the dust filled his lungs, a haze of material floating in the surrounding darkness. He blinked a few times and looked around. He was inside one of the locked rooms along the edge of the warehouse wall. Head thumping, brain foggy. He stood and felt around for his rifle, which was still slung over his back.

  His eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness as the dust upheaval from the crash began to settle back to the ground. Then he noticed the strangest thing. Inside this room, with its aging bits of paper on the walls and rotting wooden desk, was something that didn’t fit.

  A door.

  Not the door leading out into the main warehouse, this was a door at an angle on the floor, like a cellar entrance. And it looked new. Or, relatively new, compared to the rest of this building. The large metal door contained no rust and no years of wear, like everything else did.

  “What is this? The warehouse has a basement?”

  Yorick drew his weapon and took a step toward the door, then he knelt and squinted at it. His eyes scanned the thing from top to bottom until they landed on something he hadn’t expected to see.

  There was a symbol on the door, carved into the metal. Sloppy, made with a knife or screwdriver. Near the bottom, where anyone might miss it who wasn’t looking for it. Two concentric circles, the outer one broken. Inside that, a cross, with a triangle sitting on top of the cross. Intricate and simple at the same time.

  Yorick reached out and touched the symbol. Fingers drifting along the rough indentations in the surface. He had no idea what it meant, but he knew it contained power.

  And he knew he wasn’t supposed to be here.

  Chapter Eleven

  Yorick spent five minutes trying to open the cellar door on the floor of the warehouse room. As far as he could see, it had no handle, no lock, no way to slide it up or down or sideways. He wasn’t even sure if he should call it a “door.” More like a giant grate, maybe.

  Enough time had passed for Yorick to decide two things. First, no way was he going to break into this door by force. And second, that he shouldn’t waste any more time in here trying. Wherever the Reds and Blues were fighting, it was not in the warehouse quadrant. The fight had not come to him as he’d expected.

  Sitting alone in a quiet space during a battle was a great way to rack up z
ero points and end up last on the leaderboard. A great way to end up disappeared forever. The thought of never seeing Rosia again jabbed pins along his back. Maybe she would be fine without him. Maybe she didn’t need him. But he thought they needed each other, and he didn’t like the idea of abandoning her over something so stupid as a fascination with a weird door in a warehouse.

  He was still inside the three standalone rooms along the wall. Since the door to his current warehouse room was welded shut, he opened an interior door into the next one, rifle up. He left that room, ventured back into the main space, and then crept across the cement floor toward the exit. With a deep breath, he hurled the door open.

  He found himself face to face with a Red guerrero named Xander, three meters away. Yorick knew him. They'd both arrived at the plantación around the same time, at age five or six. Both had been in the little kid education program until a few years ago when they had graduated to guerrero at the same time. They even trained in the gym together before they’d been assigned different colors and had been told to become enemies.

  Yorick pressed the trigger on his rifle and shot Xander in the chest before he’d even had time to raise his to aim. The red glow from Xander’s suit dimmed and then faded completely.

  “Damn it, Yorick,” Xander said. “You might have just killed me.”

  Yorick shrugged. “I’m sorry, Xander. It’s not personal. I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

  Xander frowned and slung his rifle over his shoulder as he turned to walk toward the neutral area beyond the battlefield. The look on his face said he wanted to blast Yorick with his rifle out of spite, but it wouldn’t have mattered. When the suits deactivated, so did the bullets’ ability to register a hit.

  As he strolled away, Xander turned and walked backward, facing Yorick. “Diego knows you’re getting chummy with one of those field serfs. He’s trying to figure out how to use that against you.”

  Yorick lifted a hand to block the rising sun. “Thank you for telling me.”

  “Sure. He’s my leader, but I know what an idiota he is.”

  Xander disappeared beyond the edge, and Yorick watched him go. And out of the corner of his eye, Yorick noted a burn of black tearing across a field. Hamon, sprinting toward the battlefield’s block quadrant.

  But his suit wasn’t glowing.

  “Help!” Hamon shouted, his eyes flashing at Yorick. If his suit wasn’t glowing, why was he still sprinting around the battlefield? If a guard saw him, he’d probably catch a punishment for disobeying the rules. Something serious must have happened for him to take such a risk.

  Yorick drew in a breath. He understood. Hamon had lost his chip, and he was trying to recover it.

  Yorick took off after Hamon. Chasing Diego, who grinned as he fled across the battlefield, toward the apartments. In one hand, Diego clutched his rifle, and in the other, he held a small device, pinched between two fingers.

  Hamon’s chip.

  Diego had somehow stolen Hamon’s chip, which meant Hamon would forfeit any points in the round this morning. Separation of a guerrero from their chip was an offense tantamount to refusing to take part in a round. There were few crimes more serious among the lord's laws.

  Would reinserting the chip even work at this point? Yorick didn’t know, since this had never happened before, as far as he knew. He bore down and forced his legs to work harder. Pounding the concrete along the warehouse quadrant, which butted up against the block.

  Four buildings of various heights made up the next quadrant, much like the dorms where they slept. Inside were rooms, places where people used to live, presumably. Old, decaying furniture filled the apartments, much of it in pieces. If you touched something, it was likely to disintegrate and send a cluster of bugs scattering.

  He strode across the warehouse concrete, then onto the strip of grass separating it from the block quadrant. A head poked up, a Red prone in the grass. A bullet whiffed by his shoulder, and Yorick aimed. He spat three shots. One of them smacked the Red in the temple, and the kid yelped. That would leave a bruise, for sure. Two targets Yorick had now tagged. Maybe he wouldn’t end up last in today’s round, after all.

  Up ahead, Diego turned past one of the apartment buildings, black hair swishing with each long stride. Hamon hot on his heels. Yorick wasn’t sure about Hamon’s goal. He couldn’t shoot Diego without his chip. The rifle would be disabled. Even if he caught up to him, Hamon would have a hard time wrestling the chip away from the older, taller bully.

  Yorick would have to shoot Diego and make him give the chip back. It was the only option.

  As Hamon rushed past the apartment building to chase Diego, Yorick chose to turn before the building, hoping to cut him off. He darted left next to the glass windows, many of them broken for years. He could see inside to kitchens with non-functioning appliances, bedrooms with sagging mattresses and peeling wallpaper.

  The warning blip came from the battlefield sound system. Two guerreros left. Yorick and Diego.

  At the end of the building, he raised his weapon and jumped around the edge. He saw Diego in mid-stride, his mouth dropping open and eyes wide at the sight of Yorick. The Red leader skidded, trying to reverse course.

  Too late. Yorick raised his rifle and squeezed off a shot. It hit the Red leader square in the stomach, but his suit didn’t change. It stayed lit.

  Diego shot in Yorick the chest. Yorick didn’t understand what had just happened. His suit blinked a few times and then faded, the blue highlight dimming to black. Over his shoulder, Yorick watched Hamon sprinting around the corner of the building.

  Above their heads, the klaxon sounded. End of the round.

  “I got you,” Yorick said. “That’s not fair. I shot you first.”

  Diego chuckled and tossed the chip on the ground. “Good try, but a little too late,” he said as he slung his rifle over his shoulder. “There’s an order to things, muchacho1. When you mess with that order, the universe has consequences for you. This is an example of what happens when you try to mess with the universe.”

  He strolled away, grinning to himself.

  Hamon walked to his chip and then knelt to pick it up. He met Yorick’s eyes. “I’m dead.”

  1 Muchacho: young man

  Chapter Twelve

  They crossed toward the neutral zone. Yorick, Rosia, and Hamon, shuffling through the grass. The sun had climbed a quarter of the way up into the sky, sending heat down across their faces. Today would be a sweltering one. Hopefully, a smattering of afternoon rain might cool things off.

  Yorick contemplated the weather because no one would say anything. He and Rosia could read the look on Hamon’s face. This was it; his last battle.

  Rosia faced him. “We could run. Back to the block, and then hide inside one of the apartments. Then, at night, all three of us find a weak spot in the wall.”

  “Keep your voice down,” Hamon said. They were walking apart from the others, but not far enough. Yorick checked the faces of those around them, but no one appeared to be eavesdropping.

  “It wouldn’t matter,” Hamon said. “It’s taller than you can climb, and it's sheer. No footholds, anyway. There is no weak spot on this wall. Never has been.”

  “You don’t know that,” Rosia said.

  “I do know it. All that will accomplish is to put all three of us against the wall to face the firing squad. That’s not what I want.” Hamon stopped walking and turned to face both of them. “You have to go on. Find a way to escape the plantación, but you have to take everyone with you.”

  “We need you,” she said.

  “You can do it without me. I know you can.”

  Rosia looked to Yorick for support, but he didn’t know what to say. The notion of Hamon abandoning them gutted him. “It’s not fair,” Yorick said. “I got him. I know I did.”

  Their leader reached out and touched both of them on the shoulders. “I hope you fare well.”

  And then he stayed silent as they continued walking toward the platfo
rm near the mansion. They were the last to arrive, and everyone turned to watch them approach.

  Wybert was already giving his post-battle speech and waved a hand toward the screen nearby. Yorick studied the leader of their team, the sturdy and loyal Hamon, as his face sank when Lord Wybert revealed the scoreboard. With few kills during the round, Yorick was low in the ranks. His excursion to find the cellar door with the strange marking had cost him plenty. But it hadn’t cost him everything.

  Hamon was at the bottom. Diego had stolen his chip a couple minutes into the round and then had played keep-away for the rest of the battle. With no chip, Hamon couldn’t record any scores, which was equivalent to being eliminated within the first few minutes.

  “No,” Rosia said, gripping Yorick by the shoulder. “This isn’t fair. This isn’t fair!”

  “It’s okay,” Hamon said. “Rosia, please, don’t do this. Remember what I said.”

  Teeth gritted, Rosia looked like she had no intention of calming down.

  “Please,” Yorick said. “Don’t make a scene.”

  She pushed him back and raised her hands, waving to get Wybert’s attention. “This is a lie! This whole thing is a lie, and you know it!”

  Wybert, who had been in mid-sentence, congratulating the Red team on their resounding victory today, paused to gawk at Rosia.

  Guards leveled their weapons. They crowded closer to Lord Wybert, protecting him. Except for one, who dropped from the edge of the platform, raising the butt of his rifle. The guard threw a shoulder into a random guerrero to knock him out of the way. When the kid hit the dirt, the guard gave him a swift kick to the ribs.

  The guard looked almost pleased as he marched toward Rosia.

  At that moment, Yorick made a decision. He’d had enough. They were serfs; they were slaves. Made to perform unfair war games at the whim of this weird and awful man Wybert. Never allowed to see the outside of this plantación. Never allowed to know about their parents. Never allowed to have a normal life.