Survival Game

by Gary Gibson

  I looked up at the empty windows of the buildings. ‘How safe is it?’

  ‘Perfectly safe, as long as it’s daylight,’ said Nadia. She nodded up at the midday sun, reduced to a silvery disc behind grey clouds. ‘That gives us a good seven hours – not that we’ll be here that long.’

  ‘You said there was something you wanted to show me?’

  ‘This way,’ said Jerry, setting off down the street. I followed after him, Nadia walking by my side. ‘But remember it’s a secret,’ he added over his shoulder.

  ‘At some point soon,’ explained Nadia as we walked, ‘we – by which I mean, the Pathfinders – are going to become excess to requirements. The moment the Authority can build and program their own stages, they won’t need us any more. We’ve been offered no clear plan for what happens to us when that time comes, and that doesn’t strike us as fair. So we decided to make our own preparations in advance.’

  We had arrived outside an enormous complex facing out from the park. A sign outside read METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART. The two Pathfinders led me inside, crossing a marbled hall with tall Grecian pillars, the air thick with the scent of animal droppings and decay.

  We climbed a flight of stone steps before coming to a halt outside a service door. Jerry produced a key and unlocked it, pushing it inwards.

  Increasingly mystified, I followed them up a narrow stairway and into a corridor lined with open doors. They led me through one of the doors, and I found myself inside a high-ceilinged room, its walls stacked with paintings, their canvases scarred by moss and fungus.

  The centre of the room, however, was taken up by piles of mostly new-looking equipment. Just at first glance I saw a dozen field-pillars, several control rigs, engine parts, the dismantled chassis of a jeep, desalinization units, crates of medical supplies, and much more.

  Nor was the room unoccupied: Yuichi was there, standing next to an open crate, sorting through its contents with one hand while consulting a clipboard held in the other. His face widened into a grin when he saw me.

  ‘Hey,’ he said, bounding over to shake my hand. ‘You made it.’

  ‘Will someone,’ I said, ‘please tell me what the hell is going on?’

  ‘You’re here,’ said Jerry, ‘because we decided we can trust you enough to show you all this.’

  ‘We’re just as worried as you are,’ said Nadia, ‘about the chances of the Authority going looking for any more Hyperspheres.’ She nodded at the stockpiled contraband. ‘If that’s their contingency plan, then this is ours.’

  ‘Our missions have pretty much dried up since we brought you back,’ said Yuichi. ‘Everyone’s spending so much time hanging out at the bar they’ve pretty much drunk my entire stock of beer dry.’

  ‘And whenever we’re there,’ said Jerry, ‘we mostly talk about what we’re going to do next.’ He stepped over to the jeep chassis and patted it. ‘We started stealing bits and pieces just after we got back from the Crag.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘I know we turned away from you when you needed us,’ said Nadia, ‘and I know we have no right to ask this, but we’re hoping we can persuade you to find us some other alternate we can someday make into our own permanent base of operations. Preferably one that’s deserted like this is, but safe to occupy.’

  ‘You want me to find you your own alternate universe?’ I asked faintly.

  ‘We weren’t sure if you’d want to help us or not,’ said Jerry, ‘otherwise we’d have asked sooner. But when it comes down to it, we can’t do a thing without you. Until they found it and took it away, that secret stage we were keeping hidden offshore was our one and only escape route in case things ever got bad between the Pathfinders and the Authority – and now that they know about that stage, things are about as bad as they’ve ever been between us.’

  ‘But surely whatever alternate I find for the Authority,’ I said, ‘would be big enough that you’d have plenty of room to hide from them if you wanted?’

  ‘Unless they bring back another of those Hyperspheres,’ Nadia reminded me. ‘No, we want to find some place far away from whichever alternate you find for them.’

  ‘And I don’t want to stop exploring,’ said Yuichi. ‘Neither do most of the rest of us, frankly, not when we’ve got the whole of infinity out there waiting to be discovered. Believe me, once you’ve lived this life long enough, just the one universe starts to feel a little cramped.’

  ‘All we ask,’ said Nadia, ‘is that at the same time you’re hunting for viable coordinates for the Authority, you look for coordinates for us as well.’

  I gaped at her. ‘You can’t be serious.’

  ‘Why not?’ asked Jerry. ‘You said yourself you’re going to train other people how to build and operate the stages, even search for other alternates. Once they have all that, they won’t need you any more. You’ll be just as surplus to requirements as we already are. So why stick around?’

  ‘You’re . . . asking me to come with you?’

  ‘Nobody’s going anywhere just yet,’ said Yuichi, putting up his hands. ‘We still need a lot more in the way of supplies and material if we’re going to set up properly on some other alternate. But now you’ve got yourself that shiny new transfer stage back on the island, it’ll be a lot easier to move things around without fear of being caught – if you let us use it.’

  ‘But . . . what if the Authority find out?’

  ‘They won’t,’ said Nadia, gazing at me levelly, ‘unless someone tells them.’

  ‘It’s not as simple as just going some place and setting up,’ I said. ‘You’d be starting from scratch. The difficulties would be enormous – and you’d have only each other to rely on.’

  ‘Believe me,’ said Jerry, ‘we know. We’re hoping that having you along for the ride might help us overcome those difficulties a little sooner. We could really use you, Katya.’

  ‘So?’ asked Nadia. ‘The question is, are you in?’

  Yuichi shook his head. ‘She’ll need time to think before she—’

  ‘No,’ I interrupted. I had the vertiginous sense of teetering on some threshold, much as when I had first escaped the Crag with Tomas. ‘I already know. When the time comes, I’ll go with you.’

  Jerry walked back with me through the deserted streets, while Nadia remained behind to help Yuichi with his work. ‘A post-apocalyptic similar to this one is our best option,’ he explained as he walked, ‘because it has the advantage of a nearly intact infrastructure. Unfortunately, the things that come out at night here make it uninhabitable even in the short term. The best option is to find an alternate that closely resembles this one, but where the threat – the thing that triggered the extinction event – is long gone.’

  ‘And what would I do there?’ I asked him.

  We came to a halt by the circle of field-pillars. ‘Build more stages for us, I guess. Help us to find other alternates to explore.’

  ‘Forgive me if I’m being paranoid,’ I said, ‘but I can’t help but sense there’s something else behind all these grand plans. I’ve become very skilled at working out when somebody isn’t being wholly truthful with me.’

  He opened his mouth, then closed it again. ‘Well . . . maybe there is.’

  ‘I think now would be a good time to tell me,’ I said.

  He sighed. ‘I think the Stage-Builders are still out there somewhere – and that they’ve been watching us all this time.’

  It took me a moment to absorb this information. ‘That’s not possible,’ I said. ‘They were wiped out. It was all in the beads—’

  ‘No.’ He put a finger up. ‘What Lars Ulven witnessed was in the beads. Maybe there were other survivors that he didn’t know about.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘But anything else is just speculation, surely?’

  He shook his head. ‘I met one of them. Or at least I’m damn sure I did.’

  My jaw dropped. ‘You met one?’

  ‘There was a Pathfinder named Haden Brooks, long before you and
the rest of those Russians ever turned up. He saved my life one time. Just appeared out of nowhere on an alternate he couldn’t possibly have known I’d be on, and he did it without using a transfer stage.’ He shook his head as if he didn’t quite believe his own words. ‘Okay, he didn’t actually say he was one of them, but in the few brief moments I got to talk to him, it seemed to me to be pretty heavily implied. Then he disappeared – and by disappeared, I mean literally vanished into thin air, right before my eyes – and none of us ever saw sight or sound of him again.’

  I listened to him continue as he powered up the transfer stage. ‘And to me,’ he explained, ‘that means they’re still out there somewhere, or their descendants are, at any rate. Maybe there’s only a few of them – or maybe there’s a whole lot. Or maybe it’s just Haden, all on his own.’ He shook his head. ‘But I don’t think so. I think he was sent to keep an eye on us, and I’d really like to know why.’

  ‘You want me to help you find him, then. That’s your grand purpose behind all this?’

  He nodded towards the transfer stage, now fully powered up, and I followed him inside the circle of field-pillars. ‘Life’s more interesting when you’ve got a goal in mind, don’t you think?’

  ‘I couldn’t agree more,’ I said as the light swallowed us up. For the first time in what felt like a very long time, I realized, I neither knew what the future held, nor did I fear it.

  And in the next moment, we were somewhere else.

  SURVIVAL GAME

  Gary Gibson has worked as a graphic designer and magazine editor and began writing at the age of fourteen. He lives in Glasgow and previous novels include the Shoal series (Stealing Light, Nova War and Empire of Light) plus the stand-alone books Angel Stations, Against Gravity, Final Days and The Thousand Emperors. He’s also written a stand-alone novel, Marauder, set in the Shoal series universe.

  You can find Gary on www.garygibson.net

  By Gary Gibson

  Angel Stations

  Against Gravity

  The Shoal Trilogy

  Stealing Light

  Nova War

  Empire of Light

  Final Days

  The Thousand Emperors

  Marauder

  Extinction Game

  Survival Game

  Acknowledgements

  I owe a debt of gratitude to my editor Bella Pagan for her enormous input into multiple drafts of this book. Thanks also go to my agent John Jarrold. Also appreciated is input from Jim Campbell regarding weaponry, and from Jamie Scott regarding acts of sabotage. Thanks also go to my wife, Emma, for her continued suport and encouragement.

  First published 2016 by Tor

  This electronic edition published 2016 by Tor

  an imprint of Pan Macmillan

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  Associated companies throughout the world

  www.panmacmillan.com

  ISBN 978-0-230-77278-6

  Copyright © Gary Gibson 2016

  Cover illustration by Steve Stone

  The right of Gary Gibson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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