They both glowered at the door as it opened.
“Do ya fonking mind, ya dumb piece of shizz?” barked the one in the towel. His accent sounded like it came from New Jersey, and not one of the nicer parts. It was nothing like it had sounded back when they’d been on TV. “How about a little privacy?”
“Look at this fonk, barging in here, trying to catch us naked,” sneered the bubble-blower with the cigarette in an accent not dissimilar to the first. He made a gesture Cal had never seen before, but which he was fairly certain was not in any way complimentary. “Get the fonk out of here, ya pansy.”
“Yeah, ya dinky-dink,” spat the larger puppet. “And take your big-titty boyfriend with you.”
Bryman closed the door just as something heavy smashed against it on the other side.
“Jesus,” said Cal, covering his chest with his hands. “Those puppets were mean.”
“They’re actually lovely guys,” Bryman insisted. “Everything just gets a little tense ahead of recording.”
“We can still hear ya, ya homo!”
Bryman smiled, showing off some truly impeccable teeth. “Let’s move on.”
And so, the tour continued. Bryman took them to see the Puppetopia set, the Puppetopia prop room, and the Puppetopia bathroom facilities. Although, now that Cal had found out that the puppets were A) such total shizznods, and B) not actually puppets he wasn’t all that interested in any of it.
Mech and Loren were even less interested.
Miz was apoplectic with scarcely contained rage.
“What about the other show?” Cal asked, as Bryman showed them around a room containing all the awards Puppetopia had won over the years. There were six of them, which Cal wasn’t sure required an entire room to display. A moderately-sized cabinet would have done. “What was it called? Hunters?”
“Oh, you mean, The Hunt?” said Bryman. “That’s the jewel in Viaview’s crown. We’re building up to that part of the tour.”
“How quickly are we building up to it?” asked Mech.
“Let’s see,” said Bryman. He looked up and chewed his bottom lip in thought for a moment, then began to count on his fingers. “I was going to do Obstacle Smash, then Who’s Got the Pants On? I’ll swing us by the shopping channels on deck eighty-six. If we’re lucky, we’ll get to see some of The Kid Caper, Boongoids Do the Funniest Things, and I think—I can’t promise, but I think—that we’re shooting a new episode of The Geronimo Brothers.”
“Or,” said Cal, “alternative suggestion—we don’t do any of that, and just go see The Hunt.”
“Cut short the tour?” asked Bryman. “No Who’s Got the Pants On? No Boongoids?”
“I mean, I’m sure they’re classics,” Cal replied. “But we’re running a little late for our next appointment, so if we could just skip to the end, that would be awesome.”
Bryman shuffled uneasily and glanced across the faces of all four members of the group. It was the expression on Mizette’s face that really sold the idea to him.
“I mean, I guess The Hunt is the big highlight, so…” He brightened, plastering on a big broad smile that showed off those whiter-than-white veneers. “Let’s do it!”
The Hunt, Bryman explained, had been the network’s breakout smash hit. It had first aired over ten years ago, intended to be a one-off event. It had immediately proved so popular, though, that a full series was commissioned. Since then, it had been run live every night, with an edited highlights episode showing at the end of each week.
The concept was simple. Take one or more criminals, place them into the first in a series of custom-built environments filled with danger, and point them in the direction of the finish line some ten miles away.
If they made it to the finish, they won ten million Viacoins and, more importantly, their freedom. If they failed, they died.
In all five thousand plus episodes of the show, no one had ever reached the finish line.
Sometimes, they were killed by the environment. Some drowned in the Swamps, others fell from the Cliff. Many were torn apart by Sloorgs.
More often, though, they died at the hands of the real stars of the show, the Hunters. There were three of them—Juggacrush, Eviscerator, and Plasmoid—each with their own special skills and abilities, but with the same bloodthirsty desire to kill.
If the contestants—or Prey—were caught by one of the Hunters, it was all basically over but the screaming and the sponsorship messages. It was a savage, brutally violent show.
And the audience loved it.
“So, it’s like The Running Man, but in space,” Cal said, as they all waited for the elevator doors to open. “The Space Running Man. Wait, no. The Running Space Man? I mean, technically it should be Space The Running Man, but that just sounds awkward.”
“Oh, no, there’s nothing else like it,” Bryman said.
“Well, there is, so…”
Bryman shook his head. “It’s an original concept.”
“It was when Arnold Schwarzenegger came up with it in the 80s,” Cal said. He rocked on his heels. “I mean, I don’t actually know if he came up with it, but—”
The elevator doors opened, revealing a grand hallway with a ten-foot-tall granite figure standing imposingly in the center.
Cal whistled quietly as he stepped out and approached the statue. “Holy shizz, who is this guy?”
“That’s Juggacrush,” said Bryman in reverential tones. “He’s the face of The Hunt.”
“I can see why,” Cal muttered. He stopped in the statue’s shadow and looked it up and down. Mostly up. “This guy’s a monster.”
Juggacrush had a face that only a mother could love, and even then only if she was partially sighted and had a strong stomach.
From this angle, his head was sixty percent jaw, twenty percent teeth, and everything else had to fight for whatever space was left over. His torso was the size of a small family car. His arms and legs resembled tree trunks that had been roughly fashioned into limbs. His hands and feet were the size of paving slabs.
A series of interlocking stone plates covered his chest, stomach, and modesty. Cal couldn’t tell if they were part of him, or a suit of armor he was wearing. Either way, they helped add to the overall ‘Do not fonk with this guy,’ vibe that Juggacrush had going on.
“I mean, Jesus. Look at him,” Cal said, whistling through his teeth. “He’s a Hulkadillo. You know, like the Hulk crossed with an armadillo? Hulkadillo?”
“We have no idea what you’re talking about,” Loren told him.
Cal went back to staring up at the statue. Some of the carving work was incredible. He’d never seen so much detail in a statue before. It was all very impressive.
“Weirdly small crotch, though,” he remarked, pointing to the area in question. “I mean, look. That’s out of proportion, right? What happened? Did that part forget to grow with the rest of him? Does he tuck it away?”
“Uh, please stop,” said Bryman.
“It’s not a criticism, it’s just an observation,” said Cal. “I’m just saying, if someone made a statue of me and skimped on the down below like this…”
He rapped his knuckles against the comparatively small armor plating that covered Juggacrush’s groin. “I would not be happy.”
A hand the size of a paving slab caught Cal by the shoulder. Juggacrush’s head tilted down, the tiny area of his face dedicated to forehead and eyebrows furrowing into deep creases.
“Aaand this isn’t a statue,” Cal realized, just a split second before he was launched screaming toward the ceiling.
Twenty-Three
Cal’s breasts cushioned his fall, inflating to six times their regular size a moment before he hit the floor. He bounced forward, flipped once over his head, and landed upright with a look on his face that suggested he was just as surprised as everyone watching on.
“Ta-daa!” he said, because he felt the moment needed to be marked in some way, and that was the best he could come up with.
Juggacrush glared dow
n at him, but made no other move to attack. Mech was chuckling to himself, but had a finger and thumb on his dial, ready to crank his strength up. Loren’s hand rested on the butt of her blaster pistol. Miz loomed menacingly behind Bryman, her teeth bared.
“Easy, guys. Easy. That was my bad,” Cal said. He smiled up at Juggacrush, while putting all his weight on his back foot so he could make a fast getaway if required. “I was out of line. I shouldn’t go casting aspersions on another man’s… you know. We’ve all got what we’ve got, and that’s…”
Cal stopped talking. He waved a hand in front of Juggacrush’s face. The giant’s eyelids scraped across his eyeballs as he blinked, but he otherwise remained motionless.
“Uh, hello?”
“We’ve neutered him,” Bryman explained.
Cal’s eyes went to Juggacrush’s crotch again.
“Psychically, I mean,” Bryman explained. “The Hunters are too unpredictable and dangerous to just leave to their own devices, so the Controller set up some psychic locks and protocols. They usually just stand around all day until we trigger them for the show.”
“So, how come he fired me at the ceiling?” Cal asked.
“The psychic blocks aren’t perfect,” Bryman admitted. “Strong emotional triggers can disrupt them.”
“Like anger?” Cal asked.
“Exactly. Like anger.”
“Or happiness?”
“Sure, or happiness. Any strong emotion.”
“Jealousy? Would jealousy work?”
Bryman twitched, almost imperceptibly. “Any strong emotional trigger. Anything at all. Anger, happiness, jealousy. Just any emotion you can think of.”
“What about indifference?” Cal wondered. “Is indifference an emotion? Or is it more, like, a state of mind?”
He scratched his head, suddenly thoughtful.
“Actually, what even are emotions?”
“Moving on,” said Bryman, ushering them toward the mouth of a corridor that led off from the entrance hallway. “If you guys promise to stay real quiet, I’ll show you one of the Sloorgs.”
“Real quiet suits me just fine,” said Mech. He shot Cal a look as he padded past him. “Fonking ‘indifference.’”
A few minutes later, Cal and the others stood in a darkened room, looking through a strip of reinforced glass at one of the most horrifying things any of them had ever seen.
If you had a very vivid imagination and really pushed it to its limits, you could almost convince yourself it was a dog, Cal thought. It had two more legs than a dog, its tail seemed to be an extension of its rectal passage, and its head was shaped like a testicle, but there was a vague sort of canine quality to it, all the same.
The wrinkled, ball-shaped head was eyeless and earless, with only a thumbnail-sized hole in the center to suggest a nose. What it lacked in everything else, though, it more than made up for in mouth.
The bottom jaw was recessed behind the upper one, curving upward at either side in a way that gave the impression the thing was grinning. Its teeth had been inserted liberally, and with no obvious strategy involved. Some followed the traditional route of sticking upright from their sockets, while others freestyled by poking out sideways, jutting straight forward or, in a few cases, erupting through other parts of the head like shrapnel.
Size-wise, it was somewhere between a large tiger and a small rhino. A haphazard checkerboard of black and purple markings covered its scarred, pock-marked skin. All six ankles were ringed with cuffs of dirty yellow hair, and finished with paws that individually probably weighed as much as Cal himself, and certainly had more claws.
It padded back and forth in its otherwise empty cage, its tail occasionally twitching as it ejected blobs of runny black scat onto the floor.
“Usually, I’m not one to judge someone on their physical appearance,” said Cal. “But I can’t help but make an exception in this case. That’s… I mean… that’s one of the worst things I’ve ever seen.”
“You ain’t wrong,” said Mech.
“And, like, you’ve seen Loren naked,” Miz remarked.
“Hilarious,” Loren sighed.
“You mean you’re hilarious,” Miz retorted. She moved to thump Loren on the arm, but Loren deflected it without looking.
“Don’t,” Loren warned.
“You don’t.”
“Please, don’t make too much noise,” Bryman whispered. “We do not want to get the Sloorg riled up.”
Loren and Miz glared at each other, then returned their attention to the creature in the cage.
“Look at those teeth,” Cal muttered.
“They look scary, but actually a Sloorg’s bark is worse than its bite,” said Bryman.
Cal’s eyebrows raised. “Oh? So, what? They’re actually big softies?”
“Oh no,” said Dryman, shaking his head emphatically. “I mean their bark is literally worse than their bite. The sound of it can shatter bone.”
“Oh,” said Cal.
“It makes some people go blind.”
“Right.”
“In one episode, a guy shizzed himself inside out.”
“Jesus.”
“Its bite is horrible, too. I mean, it’ll eat a grown man in four-to-six bites. But the bark is what catches people off-guard.”
“Gotcha.”
“Is there only one of them?” Loren asked.
“No, we have eight at the moment, but we have to keep them separate,” Bryman explained.
“In case they kill each other?” Mech guessed.
“Not exactly,” said Bryman, blushing a little. “They’re very… sexually motivated. And, well, nobody really wants to see that.”
Cal turned to the others. “Is it wrong that a tiny part of me absolutely does want to see that?”
“Yes,” Loren confirmed.
“Ew,” said Miz, wrinkling her snout in distaste.
“That ain’t right, man,” Mech added. “That shizz ain’t right.”
Beneath Cal’s jacket, his breasts wobbled with disappointment.
“I said a tiny part!” Cal protested.
Bryman made a show of glancing around, then leaned in closer and placed the back of a hand next to his mouth. “You know something I bet you’ll all want to see?” he stage-whispered.
“The exit?” Miz guessed.
“Topa,” said Bryman, then he grinned excitedly and crammed a fist into his mouth as if to stop himself from squealing with delight.
Cal glanced around at the others. “What’s that?”
Bryman’s excitement segued seamlessly into confusion. “Topa. Reduk Topa. The pirate? You must have heard of him.”
The expressions on their faces told him that no, they hadn’t.
“The Reduk Topa. Scourge of the spaceports. Commander of the Infidel Legion. Slaughtered millions on Piptush V.”
Cal checked the faces of the others for any indication they knew what Bryman was on about, but found none. “No, I can’t say we’re familiar with the gentleman you’re referring to. Sounds like a piece of work.”
“Oh, he is. He is,” Bryman confirmed. “I mean, technically he didn’t do the Piptush V thing, but it really fit with the show’s narrative, so we embellished a little. But still. We caught him and have him locked up, ready for tonight’s show. It’s going to be huge. We’re expecting record audiences. Topa’s horrible. Just horrible.”
The slightly dreamy way in which Bryman said the word ‘horrible’ suggested he felt quite the opposite.
“We generally don’t let people meet the Prey, but… Well, we’ve saved a lot of time by skipping the other floors, and I like you guys, so… You interested? I can make it happen.”
Bryman shifted his weight from foot to foot and chewed a knuckle in excitement. “He’s the most anticipated Prey we’ve ever had. Once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. You interested?”
“I mean, I guess it could be cool,” said Cal. “He sounds pretty famous.”
Loren shrugged. “Meh.”
“Oh, wow. It sounds, like, totally awesome!” gushed Miz.
Cal and the others regarded her with suspicion.
“That was sarcasm,” Miz continued, her enthusiasm evaporating before their eyes. “I want to leave.”
Cal turned back to Bryman. “Is it on the way out?”
“Kind of,” Bryman replied, in a way that suggested it was a very tenuous ‘kind.’
“You hear that? We practically have to pass right by the guy. Let’s just pop our heads in and say hello,” Cal suggested to the others. “We could get an autograph. It might be worth something.”
Splurt rippled beneath Cal’s jacket, straining the zipper.
“Relax, buddy. It’s fine. He’s under lock and key,” Cal said, giving his left boob a reassuring pat. “Trust me. Nothing bad is going to happen.”
Cal stood with his hands up, surrounded by the bodies of several security personnel, trying to come up with a scenario where none of this was his fault.
His best defense so far was that the door control button had been fixed to the wall in a very silly place. Specifically, directly at his eye-level. Whoever had made it bright red and marked, ‘Do Not Press,’ on it had been asking for trouble, too, and he felt that they should share at least a portion of the blame.
“Everyone stay calm,” pleaded Bryman, tears spraying from his eyes and showering the floor at his feet. “As your guide, it’s my duty to protect you, and I will. I swear, I will. Just, please, stay calm!”
Reduk Topa had been something of a disappointment, pirate-wise. He had no eyepatch, no pegleg, and both hands were present and correct. He was roguishly handsome, with a crop of fair hair, a squared-off jaw, and piercing blue eyes that made even Cal go a little weak at the knees.
He also now had a gun, which he’d taken from one of the guards immediately after snapping his neck. It was currently pointed at Mizette, who Topa had identified as one of the two most dangerous people in the corridor, and the least blaster-proof of them both.
“Look, we don’t really care if you escape,” Cal said. “I mean, obviously we’d prefer it if you didn’t, because I just know I’ll somehow get the blame.”
The Hunt for Reduk Topa Page 20
