by Joel Ohman
“Now why would I want to go and do that? Maybe I like the System. Ever think of that?” Chappy’s eyes bulged as he questioned Charley from his office chair.
“Why would you like the System?”
“Come on. I thought you were Mr. Fancy-Pants High Score! It’s all about the money, my friend. I have a nice little racket going here. Our highly esteemed leader—” Chappy paused before drawling out his name with more than a touch of sarcasm—“Commander Orson and I have a special arrangement. He looks the other way from my business dealings, and I don’t stir up any trouble with the System.”
Charley hesitated, unsure of what to say next.
Chappy continued. “I may be slick, but I’m not that slick. Isn’t it obvious that I want the System around? Don’t you think I’ve considered all the angles already? The System allows me to make the most money possible. It’s as simple as that, my young upstart.”
Charley suddenly felt stupid. And naive. His face grew red. This was not how the conversation was supposed to go. Without an alternative, he decided to charge ahead anyway. “But the System is oppressive—why would you be willing to put up with something that decides your worth to society and whether you live or die?”
Chappy guffawed. “The System’s not oppressive to me! I decide my own worth to society. And so should you, my high-Score friend.”
“Those without our high Scores might feel differently.”
Chappy shrugged. “They probably do, but that’s not my concern. The survival of the fittest, might makes right, and all that jazz. Didn’t you pay attention underground in school? That’s the way the world here works, my friend. Like it or lump it.”
Charley could feel his anger rising, but he gritted his teeth and continued. “You could still make money, even without the System.”
“Well, of course I could! I can make money in any situation. That’s what I do. But I didn’t get this way by making rash, misguided, and risky decisions. Aligning with a young revolutionary like you is a surefire way to get some undesired attention from Commander Orson and put the lives of my labor force in jeopardy. It’s just not good business.”
“But—”
“Hold that thought!” He pointed a fat finger at Charley. “Let’s forget all your talk of revolutions for a moment. I want to make you an offer.”
“An offer I can’t refuse?” Charley couldn’t keep the sarcasm from his voice.
“I’m flattered, or maybe insulted. I’m just a humble businessman trying to scrape out a living in our fine town of Meritropolis.” Chappy chortled and gestured expansively around his office. “My offer is this: why don’t you come work for me? Someone with your Score could be useful in a number of different ways. And you can fight, too; I’ve seen that.”
“Thank you,” Charley said carefully, “but I’ll pass on your generous offer for now.”
“I can guarantee your safety.” Chappy leaned back on his chair and eyed Charley. “In fact, I can guarantee the safety of anyone you want in Meritropolis. Your little friend Sven, maybe a girlfriend? You name it. Come work for me and you won’t have to worry about their safety ever again. No one gets zeroed when they’re under my protection.”
Charley hesitated before speaking. “Can you guarantee the safety of everyone in Meritropolis?”
“Well, of course not. There’s no money to be made in that. Who cares about that?” Chappy rocked forward on his chair, his bulk squeaking and sliding against the plastic surface, long since worn smooth.
“I care.”
“Why?”
“Because even Low Scores have value. Everyone has value—whether they are deemed ‘useful’ to society or not.” Charley clenched his fists. “And everyone has value whether you can make money off them or not.”
Chappy abruptly stopped rocking in his chair, the rhythmic squeak—squeak—squeak replaced by a heavy silence. Charley remained motionless, refusing to look away from Chappy’s gaze.
Chappy was waiting for him to say something: an apology, a retraction, maybe some other type of groveling. But Charley remained silent. He would wait it out.
Eventually, Chappy’s round face blossomed into a smile and the squeaking began again in earnest. “You’ve got pluck! I’ve always said I liked that about you.”
Charley’s heartbeat slowed and he allowed himself a breath. “I would appreciate it if you could keep Sven under your protection.” Charley paused. “He’s a Low Score.”
Chappy laughed. “That’s not the way it works. We only protect our own, my friend. If you’re saying that you’re with us, then, yes, we will take care of him for your sake. But you’re either in or out.”
Charley straightened himself to his full height. “I have an alternate proposal for you.”
“Oh, do you now? By all means, continue. We always make exceptions for worms fresh from the dormitories and with above-ground experience numbering only in the weeks.” Chappy’s eyes glinted as he licked his big fat orangutan lips.
“I will owe you.”
“That’s it? You will owe me?”
Charley nodded.
“You talk to me as an equal. What great favor could you have to offer me?” Chappy showed his teeth, reveling in this cat-and-mouse game with Charley.
“Think of this as an investment for the future. We live in uncertain times. Dictatorships rise and fall; rulers come and go. Whether you help or not …” Charley shrugged. “Stuff happens.”
Chappy roared his approval, slamming his massive bulk against his chair back and pounding his thighs. Rocketing to his feet with a speed that belied a man of his size, Chappy wiped a tear from his eye. He thrust forward his meaty hand. “A-ha-ha, stuff happens! Well, this could be interesting. Our self-centered donkey’s rear end of a commander might have more than he bargained for in you. For that alone, I would almost pay to see whatever you have in store for him. You have a deal, my friend.”
Charley nodded and shook his hand.
* * *
“They had another gate ceremony while you were gone,” Sven said, his face expressionless.
“They what?” Charley asked, numbness seeping in.
“While you and the other High Scores were away last night, Commander Orson put three people outside the gates. You probably didn’t see any of their, umm, remains, when you came in, did you?”
“No …” Charley said slowly. Charley couldn’t believe his stupidity. It suddenly all made sense: Orson had sent them away all night not only so Grigor could indoctrinate them with Orson’s message but also so Charley wouldn’t interfere with a new gate ceremony.
“There wasn’t anything I could do.” Sven’s voice was monotone. “They didn’t announce it until the very last minute. By the time I got to the courtyard, they were already pushing them out.”
Charley took a deep breath. He was afraid to ask, but he had to. “Did you—did you know any of them?”
“Two of them were older. I had never seen them before.”
“And the third?”
Sven ducked his head, and his hard exterior broke. He erupted into tears. “It was the little girl.” Sven’s small shoulders shook between ragged gasps. “It was the same little girl. Her name is—was—Bree. I talked to her older sister, Elena. I tried, Charley. I tried. I didn’t know what to do. I just didn’t know what to do.”
Electricity surged through Charley’s veins. Hate fizzled and popped, sending flares of frenetic energy throughout his body. The analytical part of his mind knew that Commander Orson was trying to send him a message, and it wouldn’t be wise to respond in anger. But the rest of his mind didn’t care.
Charley’s thoughts drifted back to when he was a young boy. His younger self was walking down a hallway between classes below-ground, when, on a whim, he turned right instead of left. Because of this split-second decision, his impression of the world changed forever. In the room he passed, three boys stood in a huddle. At the center was Alec. The others had cornered him and were cruelly taunting him. As Ch
arley approached, Alec turned toward him, tears streaming down his cherub face. The face that was usually so happy and oblivious to other’s opinions of him was now confused and scared. Charley had seen evil that day. And he hadn’t handled it well. “A meltdown,” one of his teachers had later called it. It was the first time Charley had lost control—abandoning himself to the call of the destroyer—the rage he would come to discover brimmed just below the surface.
Alec with the tears in his eyes. The little girl tripping over the cobblestones. Charley couldn’t keep the thought from his head: Now they are both dead.
There was about to be another meltdown.
But this time, Charley had weapons.
* * *
Charley ran for the Tower, his limbs crackling with sparks of angry energy. The wind lashed his face as his twin blades whipped against his back. For a second, he was outside of time, looking down on himself as he ran: sinewy muscles straining in a rhythmic pacing of left–right, left–right, left–right. And just as quickly, he was back in the present and back in his own body. The ever-present now. He couldn’t change the past, and he couldn’t control the future. But he would beat the present into submission.
The Tower loomed above him, and he drew himself up short. Where there had been just two guards posted at the outer fence last time he was here, now there were six. And they didn’t look like the sort of pushovers Charley and Sandy had toyed with before. All six turned to look at him as he crested the incline leading up to the Tower. The largest guard turned and muttered to a smaller guard next to him, who immediately set off toward the Tower door. Reinforcements were on the way.
Commander Orson was no idiot—it was clear he had been expecting him.
Within moments, guards began to pour from the front door of the Tower.
These guards were not like Shane or Sharif—these guards were large, violent fighting men, Orson’s inner circle of guards, hand-picked to beat Meritropolis residents, like Charley, into submission. And now there was an easy baker’s dozen of them, maybe more, all in one place, and headed right for him.
Charley’s mind was roaming again, catching on strange and inconsequential little snippets of memory that suddenly stood out in vivid detail. The hands of the guard that had taken Alec were the red-hair-covered chapped and worn hands of a farmer or rancher, a working man. The rough hands had grabbed Alec’s collar, causing Alec to reach his own chubby hands up to the man’s hand for reassurance. Charley could never forget those hands. Big, rough guard hands that had hauled him away while the boy latched onto him in full trust.
Charley’s face broke into a leer. He grew feverish with a rage he knew was unhealthy—for everyone involved.
He unslung his blades.
The guards drew closer.
Charley raised both elbows, each blade held inward, and advanced in a fighting stance he had learned from Grigor. The guards twirled their bats menacingly and moved forward in response.
The first two guards didn’t stand a chance. Charley’s blades had a longer reach than the guards’ bats, making their half-swings futile for the split-second before they each hit the ground, out of the fight before even landing.
Charley scythed his blades with all the power and grace that had been drilled into him. He moved from ox stance to plow stance to roof guard, just as Grigor had taught him.
Charley planted his left foot on a fallen guard’s back and used this leverage for a cat-like spring at an advancing Blue Coat. He landed with so much force he overshot his mark and compensated by continuing the movement into a barrel roll. He rose, leaning sideways on one foot, before righting himself.
The guard swung his metal bat in an ax-chop right at the spot where Charley’s head had been a split-second before. Charley deftly sidestepped from the guard’s reach, torqued his hips and swung both blades in a sideways arc straight into the guard’s side. The guard went down. He didn’t rise again.
Charley fought his way through the cadre of guards until only one stood before him.
The guard had a bristly red goatee and wide shoulders knotted with thick cords of muscle.
Charley recognized him: it was the redheaded guard from his dream—Officer Red Caterpillar Eyebrows—and the one who had shoved the little girl forward with a curse when she tripped on the cobblestones during her first trip to the gates. Charley’s eyes narrowed.
The guard was empty-handed, yet he smiled at Charley with unbridled confidence, suggesting he knew something that Charley didn’t. Charley advanced cautiously, treading lightly on the balls of his feet, eyes cutting left, then right, up, then down.
Just as Charley was about to draw within attack range, the guard reached both hands over his head and drew his own twin blades from behind his back. With a roar, he charged Charley, one blade held in roof guard and the other in plow stance—the point of each aimed directly at Charley’s throat.
Charley hopped backward and parried both blades to the side with a twist of his wrists. After just a few feints, moves, and countermoves, he quickly realized that he was fighting a far-superior blade master. The guard chopped and maneuvered with brutal efficiency, a disciplined swordsman who showed no weaknesses for Charley to exploit. The guard’s skill with a sword was nearly as good as Grigor’s, and Charley had never been able to best Grigor in training. The guard was also deceptively strong. Charley’s forearms ached. The only things keeping him alive were his speed and youthful energy, but they wouldn’t last for much longer. It was all he could do to counter the increasingly aggressive slices and stabs. He began to retreat.
It was time to try something new.
Charley took three quick steps back and pivoted on his toes. He twisted one of his blades into a javelin hold, and flung it directly into the guard’s right foot.
“Aaaaargh!” the guard screamed. His eyes widened at the sight of the blood pooling around his foot.
Charley used his speed to close the distance between them. With two hands on his remaining sword, Charley powered the blade like a broadsword and took the final and fatal swing.
That was for the little girl.
Now to find Orson and settle up for Alec.
Charley’s eyes darted up at the Tower. Commander Orson must have been watching this. Charley marched toward to the front door.
The door opened before he could get to it.
Commander Orson stepped through. He surveyed the fallen guards and nodded appreciatively at Charley. “Impressive. Half those moves you came up with on your own. That last move—whatever that was—Grigor definitely didn’t teach you that one. You’re a natural.”
Charley rotated his wrists and tensed his shoulder muscles ever so slightly, his blades ready to strike.
“Don’t,” Orson said, his face impassive.
Charley lifted his blades.
Orson sighed. “Mist him.”
Doctor Svetkalm stepped out from behind Orson and hit Charley full in the face with a squirt from a bottle full of greenish-blue liquid.
Charley stumbled back and fell.
He was asleep before he hit the ground.
CHAPTER 14
Prison
“I know you’re awake.”
Charley moaned and rolled over on his cot at the sound of the familiar voice. Grigor was seated on a stool on the other side of the small room. A prison cell, but without the bars. Charley’s head pounded; it was as if someone had stuffed his skull with cotton balls, turned him upside down, and then shook him vigorously for a half an hour. “What was that stuff they sprayed me with?”
Grigor smiled and waved his hand dismissively. “Why are you asking me? You were the one with your own bottle of magic potion against the snicks.”
Charley attempted to sit up, instantly regretted it, and settled for half-propping himself against the cool concrete wall to the side of his cot. “So, what are you doing in here, anyway? Did Orson send you in to try to talk some sense into me?”
“That he did. But I wanted to as well. You know I d
islike the System just as you do. But the answer is not vengeance.” Grigor leaned forward, on his face the most earnest expression Charley had ever seen him wear.
Charley let out a derisive snort. He rubbed his hands on the sides of his face, trying to wipe away some of the blood caked on his skin. “And what would you have me do instead? Just wait around and watch little girls being sacrificed to those monsters outside the gates? You want me to do nothing?”
“I did not say that.” Grigor clasped his great hands together and rocked forward on the little stool. It creaked under his bulk. “I am saying that we can work within the System to change it for the better. Reformation, not revolution, if you will. We take the incremental approach; we work little-by-little for improvement so that, one day, no one is ever zeroed.”
“So, the little girl didn’t really matter. Is that what you’re saying? Just give it some time. In the meantime, there might be a child sacrifice or 20. But, hey, they’re only Low Scores; they don’t count, right?” When Charley glanced again at Grigor, he saw him as a lesser man.
“No. That’s not it at all.” Grigor’s face twisted in agony. “Listen, we can’t save them all. And it won’t do them or anyone else any good if you get yourself killed. Orson is only half-heartedly keeping you alive because of your high Score. Which increased, by the way.” Grigor motioned at Charley’s forearm.
Charley glanced down. The number now read 153. Did he now have the highest Score in Meritropolis? The last time he had seen Commander Orson’s Score, it was 146.
Grigor continued. “But no matter what your Score is, Commander Orson can only put up with so much. He—”
Charley interrupted. “So this is a message from him, then, is it? You’re just his lackey—his mouthpiece?”
Grigor dropped his head, his massive shoulder muscles bunching up and then drooping. He took a breath and looked Charley directly in the eyes. “It’s his message, but it’s also the truth. I don’t have to like it and neither do you, but it’s still the truth.”
Charley narrowed his eyes. “Well, maybe I would rather die trying to save little girls like that one. Dying is better than doing nothing or—even worse—” Charley paused and jutted his chin at Grigor—“actually working for the System.”
