by Al K. Line
She became the numbers. Read the code and watched the information relayed. Images of herself, of six others in a room at the opposite end of the street to where she stood. She corrupted the data, made it flow in different combinations, the signal meaningless.
Again, again and again.
She turned this way and that, seeking the bright spots that told her of the watchers, and she shut them down one by one, then two by two, faster and faster, her mind at one with The Noise, awareness expanding until she almost lost herself in the virtual spaces between worlds where data became energy and energy became data.
Turning, Arcene worked her way down the street in her mind until all cameras were dead, nothing but black boxes of nothingness, their lenses useless. Then she switched direction, toward those involved in The Hunt, staring at a box with a digital readout just like hers. Theirs flashing 17:09, hers the same, she assumed.
She repeated her actions until there was only one camera left uncorrupted. It was in the room where the people were, high up, the camera pointing down the street.
Arcene paused, reversed her actions, replayed the scenes, tracing where the cameras and their leads all led. They wound their way to junctions, bundled and spliced into thicker cables, until eventually all that remained was a fat snake of black data moving incredibly fast away from the city and into a tunnel, a tunnel she assumed she had traveled through. Eventually, the data emerged above the water and ended, in a room she had thought completely destroyed.
So that was it, how they were transported from The Island.
The area watched over was large, but if cameras were anything to go by then the action was to be limited to just the main street and a few side streets. After that all was quiet. No digital feeds, no power. Emptiness. This was the hunting ground. Their arena.
Knowledge was power. Arcene had all she needed.
With a sense for the dramatic, Arcene turned her attention to the final camera. She let her mind drift back to a simpler reality and suddenly she was back, snapped into her own skin, her own mind. Her dog sat beside her in the middle of a street.
If they want a show I'll give them a show.
Static
Two thousand, three hundred and seventeen pairs of eyes stared at the screen, captivated. The shot was from far in the distance. They were unaware it came from a camera at the far end of the street in a ruin of a skyscraper on the seventh floor, so the angle was slightly downward.
The vista was bleak, washed out, grainy and monochrome save for a dark blue tinge that made the day seem like dusk approached.
The devastated city.
A world they were lucky to have no part in revealed itself on all sides. The legacy of all that was wrong with the old world.
Tsccccccccccccch.
Static. Then the camera zoomed to a closeup of a girl and her dog. The Prey.
Wind blew Arcene's loose hair across her face, the skin flawless. She brushed it aside with her hand, hair almost white on the screen as the sun hit.
The dog's teeth were bared, snarling as if insulted by their watching. The crowd gasped and many took an involuntary step back.
But it was Arcene that was the focus. Her pale eyes shone with an intensity hardly real, as if all color was centered there, shining bright, defying the poor image quality. She turned at a slight angle, hands on hips, slender legs pale where flesh showed between the hem of her kilt and the over-the-knee socks.
She reached behind her languidly, arm bending at the elbow. A flash of red, the pommel of the sword. Then steel, catching the light like ice. The sword pointed to the sky. Slowly, it moved forward, until pointing at the camera. Accusing.
Arcene's eyes bored into theirs, as if she could see them huddle closer together.
Suddenly, without warning, the image cleared.
Pixels danced for a moment then rearranged into hyper-clarity more intense than reality itself, definition impossibly high. Arcene exploded into a rainbow of color, her silver hair impossibly luminous, her eyes impossibly blue, the red pommel redder than blood and the pink bunnies on her socks almost coming to life and dancing around her legs.
Tsccccccccccccch.
Another zoom. Up close on her face. The snub nose, the high cheekbones that swept to a somewhat pointed, dimpled chin. Her confidence radiated out at them. The full lips, punishment red, parted slightly. She smiled. A knowing smile. Not one of friendliness. An insult. A barely disguised sneer.
Tsccccccccccccch.
Closer still. Color blaring out of the screen.
She winked.
The screen contracted to a white dot, the eye smaller and smaller. It was gone.
The image cut off. All that remained was static.
The show was over. There would be no more entertainment for those on The Island.
Now The Hunt was personal.
Tsccccccccccccch.
09:47
"Ha, that'll show 'em." Arcene smiled, just for herself this time, and felt a weight lift from her shoulders. How was she supposed to focus when she would keep wondering if her bum looked big on the screen, or if her hair was all right?
Knowing her actions would drive Vorce crazy, Arcene understood the importance of moving fast. They were isolated, where he wanted them, and she knew he would have a plan of action. The tables had to be turned. Never do what your opponent expects, keep them guessing. Do the opposite of what they think you'll do, do what they themselves wouldn't think of.
Or, run. Just run, and deal with it when you could. Arcene looked at her countdown timer. 09:47. Would Vorce honor this unspoken agreement? Or would they already be out the building and after her? No time to think on it now.
"Leel, how about we run? Now, and fast?"
Woof.
Leel bounded over on clumsy legs, like they were made of floppy rubber. How she was still uncoordinated after all these years was just one of those things, or maybe it was how all Great Danes were — because of their size? And Leel was the biggest of them all.
"Good girl. Come on, this way. Oh, Wait." Arcene hauled the pack onto Leel's back, and secured it quickly with nimble, confident fingers. "Right, now we can scoot."
They ran away from the Hunters, down the street in the opposite direction, easy strides that wouldn't see them tire. Leel bounded ahead. Arcene pumped with strong legs, her arms moving with a practiced ease she could keep up all day.
Damn, shouldn't have untied my hair. She blew through the side of her mouth at the annoying strands and decided as soon as she stopped she would plait it. If she got a moment's peace.
How long would it take to get to the boundary? What then? She hadn't actually seen it, not with her own eyes, just the sense of it through The Noise, so she wasn't sure what to expect. It couldn't be that bad, could it?
They ran on, no point trying to hide as it would slow them down. They moved in a straight line to see what they came to at the end. It wasn't easy to keep up a good pace though, the road became dangerous, too many remnants of the past to maintain speed — if she twisted an ankle it would be the end of everything.
Bricks hid under grass. Sheets of rusted steel and broken glass threatened to slice through arteries, and everywhere was rubble. Chunks of concrete, bits of cars, old signs, fallen lampposts, bones and carcasses. Some of it not quite right, like it had been done on purpose to make the terrain more interesting. To make it harder to escape, or at least escape uninjured. Easier Prey.
They took it carefully. It was better to stay in one piece than gain distance only to be slowed by injury. Leel scrambled over a pile of rotten beams, and concrete with exposed reinforcing rods poking out, while Arcene resorted to using her hands to help gain traction as the pile shifted beneath them. But they were up, at the top, and moving down the other side.
She checked the timer. Less than three minutes left, and still no sign of the edge of the enclosure.
It can't be that far. How would he have done it? Ugh, stupid, he could have done it at any time. He could have
fenced it so he had somewhere safe when The Lethargy happened, or when there were still millions of people walking about and the city would have been crowded and noisy, and everyone would cheer him for being so kind and keeping them safe. Not that they would have been, but still. Arcene had seen it before. Whole villages, even large cities were ringed with fences, many fallen long ago. Sometimes there were massive stone walls, built to keep people out, those on the inside believing it would stop The Lethargy, as if it was carried person to person and contagious. It didn't work like that, but they weren't to know.
She ran.
It was obvious, Vorce had probably done something centuries ago. He'd built The Island, after all. Enclosing a city would be nothing in comparison as all it would take was manpower, materials and money — you could accomplish anything with that combination.
The day grew warmer as the sun rose above the buildings, shadows gone, grass sparkling with pure intensity, the sky as clear as new glass. On they ran, breathing deeply, a faint tang of salt in the air almost overpowered by the stink of rotting vegetation that spilled out of buildings, where it festered and decomposed in damp interiors where the light never warmed and nothing could dry out.
Leel's ears pricked up and she picked up her pace. Arcene did likewise, trusting her friend. She followed as Leel turned a corner at the end of the street, disappearing out of sight before her barks echoed back and Arcene caught up, turned too.
"Oh, my. Well, I wasn't expecting this."
The plan would have to change. Wait, she didn't have one anyway, did she? No, just run, wait for something to happen and turn the tables on them, that was as far as it went — it felt like wishful thinking now.
Just stop, deal with the here and now.
Heart rate consciously slowed, fingers steady, Arcene removed the red ribbons from her left wrist and tied her hair in bunches, no time for plaits. That done, she unbuckled the backpack, grabbed a bowl and poured half a bottle of water for Leel. While Leel lapped at it greedily, she drank the other half.
With uncharacteristic vehemence, she threw the empty bottle at the seemingly unsurmountable obstacle. The metal wobbled under the impact, a section moving slightly, the whole unaffected. The glass smashed, tinkling to the ground as it landed in the grass. A bird squawked and flew from its perch up high on the fence, anger directed at Arcene before it was lost on the other side.
"We need wings, Leel, that would solve our problems. Or the mole people, they could dig us out. Aah, Hmm." Could it be that simple? This would have been erected to stop people getting in. Would there still be underground tunnels for sewers and water? No, bad idea, they would be clogged up, they always were, and too gross anyway. Dark and dirty, probably with weird animals. Or she could get trapped. No, stay above ground. She'd had enough of tunnels lately anyway, and they never delivered on anything but danger and near-death experiences.
What then?
00:03. Out of time. If they hadn't left yet then they would be in seconds. Arcene doubted Vorce would keep to the countdown anyway, now there was nobody back home watching.
Faulty Technology
Vorce watched in utter dismay as the tiny images on the screen on his lap snapped to black. He'd snatched the tablet from Janean the minute the Elder in charge of monitoring and controlling the camera feeds had warned him of an issue. He couldn't believe it. This had never happened before. The images blinked out, until only one remained. He spread it to take up the whole screen with a flick of his fingers. Arcene stared back at him. Defiant and cocky. Smiling.
She winked. All that remained was black. And anger.
"That damn girl, she's cut the camera feeds, all of them. The ones for the street, the fence, the interiors. The lot." Vorce handed the tablet to Janean in disgust.
She tapped at the screen frantically, trying to find a solution. He knew it was no use; Arcene had corrupted them. Batteries would be dead, circuits haywire. There would be no more screening back on The Island and they would be hunting blind. It made it a very different game to the one he had played so many times.
He let himself calm, forced his body to relax. It was no good moaning about it, and certainly not a good idea to show concern to the others, especially not Talia and her two aides. He had to be strong, fearless. In control.
But damn her, how had she even done that? Vorce knew he couldn't manipulate binary code, let alone the matter that made up the admittedly almost already dead batteries, but she had done it somehow. Physical manipulation through The Noise was meant to be impossible. It was too ephemeral, there for you to see more than others, experience more. To take control of your own mind and body, that of others too, but this?
Maybe that was it? She had taken control of the ghost in the machine, the digital minds that constitute the circuits, memory boards and chips within the cameras, which were more like computers anyway than anything he would have called a camera in his youth.
Heck, he still remembered when if you wanted a picture you had to take a roll of film to a photographic store and get it developed, always annoyed that you'd spent so much money and most of the results were terrible. Then it all changed when everything became digital. You printed what you wanted, although most never were, eventually lost on phones or computers when they died, just like all his had just done. Could she do that, infiltrate and destroy non-sentient digital minds? How? Rearrange the binary code, it must be that, or fry the circuits somehow.
Could he get replacements? Set them up and continue with the feeds? He turned to ask but thought better of it. The way Janean acted gave him the answer to his unspoken question — there would be no more feed. Even with cameras working, the cable that sent the images to The Island was corrupted, he could sense it by looking at her.
Janean, Boehn, and the three younger ones stirred uncomfortably in their positions, shifting from leg to leg. The three friends looked at each other nervously, unsure how to act, or whether they should say anything. This was all new to them, a world they had never known. They had been thrown in at the deep end and already it was going wrong. He had to keep them confident, to focus on the years of training they had gone through to make them fighters. Strong, agile, reflexes as quick as snakes.
"Well," he stood and turned so all could see his face, "it looks like we truly have a worthy adversary. Be warned, she is more powerful in The Noise than I believed, and she will not be so easy to trace now she has disabled the cameras. We can't see her, neither can The Island, so we will do this the primitive way."
"What's that?" asked Talia.
"Why, good old fashioned leg work. We will track and find her. The Hunt will continue."
"That's how it should be done anyway, isn't it?" asked Erato, before getting a nudge in the ribs from Talia.
"Yes, well, it never hurts to have an edge."
To Cheat...
None of them had even known they would have been able to track Arcene via cameras. It seemed like cheating to Talia, like having a hidden pile of cards up your sleeve. Not exactly sporting.
Talia knew her friends were thinking the same. That it wasn't right to find the Prey so easily. It was less real hunting, more following a clear route and killing — different thing entirely. Where was the chance to get away? To her this seemed fair. There must always be a chance.
Hunts they had witnessed on The Island had never made mention of this aspect, and they had never been shown Hunters with this — what did they call it? — tablet, that showed all the images. Talia had only ever seen the screen back home, same as everyone else. All of this was a different world, full of marvels that were apparently commonplace.
Why did they not have this technology if it was so readily available? Why were they so limited? Was it done on purpose? Vorce had always said it was too precious and rare, that their screenings of The Hunt were next to impossible because of the state of the batteries and the energy required. But if he could run all of this, something she admittedly had never really considered, not understanding the need for
all the cameras and whatever else made it work, surely he could do something to make life very different back home.
To be involved in a Hunt was an honor, and she had been the one to Judge Arcene, and her dog, but this? Following them on a screen, being able to sneak up on them unawares and without a chance, that was wrong. Hunts never made it look like that. There was always drama. Sometimes people from The Island even got killed. Now she wondered if maybe it was done on purpose, Vorce allowing the occasional death to increase the tension and the apparent, but nonexistent, risk of danger they really faced.
No, he wouldn't do that, would he? He was a good, if stern man, looked out for his people, treated them all fairly and equally. He knew what was best, and she had chosen. Arcene must die. For her lack of manners, her rudeness, her terrible greed. She even held a sword to an Elder — that was unforgivable. Didn't she know how important they were?
Well, of course she didn't. She came from here, this terrible place full of crumbling buildings and foul stink, as if the air itself was rotten through and through. How could she cope? How could anyone, and not go insane?
Talia, Cashae, and Erato kept quiet after Vorce's outburst, exchanged glances as Vorce and the Elders spoke quietly with heads close together. Very different to the loud outbursts when they realized The Hunt would not go as had apparently been planned. It was all too much to take in. Too many changes to her usual life happening too quickly. One minute she was on The Island, the next she was coming out of a mild drug hangover finding herself walking through the ruins of a society she had never known, only heard about, or seen in pictures. Part of her had always thought of it as a fairytale, a myth, something to frighten small children into behaving, and being grateful for what they had.
It was worse than she had been told. Terrible, overpowering and foul.
Everything stank, was decaying and broken. This huge city was nothing but rotten to the core. This was why Vorce had constructed their Island, to keep them away from this terrible reality. To protect them, and let them live peaceful lives without fear of accepting this as the best there was. He wanted something more for people, for himself, so had given them the gift of clean air, order.
