by Chad Leito
From the position of the sun, Baggs gathered that he was traveling south. The Colosseum was Southeast, and so it was ruled out as a destination. He hadn’t looked up where Turner lived, and so he didn’t know if he could be heading to his house.
He was concerned about Tessa, Maggie, and Olive. He knew that they would have surely found his note by then. It was even possible that Tessa could have jogged up to the Media Tower in an attempt to convince Baggs not to enter Outlive and sacrifice his life for them. Baggs tried to shove these thoughts from his mind, though. He would have time to be sad about them later.
As he slumped down in the leather seat, Baggs was thinking about Paul Higgins, the man who supposedly died of a heart attack after surviving a round of Outlive on Byron Turner’s team. The more he considered the idea, the more sure he was that the man didn’t die of natural causes. The first piece of evidence was the series of events that led to Baggs flying through the air in a helicopter; a woman named Regina Eldridge was killed so that Baggs could be on Byron Turner’s team. Turner wasn’t opposed to killing. He probably looked at poor people as no more important than a rat. He probably thought that there was something fundamentally different between himself and Eldridge that made it okay for him to end her life. It wasn’t a stretch to also believe that Turner had also felt comfortable having Paul Higgins killed. It would have been especially advantageous to have Higgins killed if the man had somehow seen evidence that Turner was cheating—and this was likely. As Tartuga had suggested, Outlive was not conducted on an even playing field. Perhaps Higgins was given a hint as to what kinds of obstacles he would face in the Colosseum before he got there. Perhaps Turner was afraid that Higgins would reveal the fact that he cheated in Outlive. Baggs compared this to George Thurman pointing the gun at him after he tried to take the cake out of the garbage bin. Some people are so far removed from the poor that it’s as if they can’t realize they’re dealing with real people who breathe, think, and feel things just like them. If Turner thought Higgins might blab, I’m sure he would kill him. Another thing that made Baggs believe that Turner was responsible for Higgins’s death was that Byron Turner was a practicing medical doctor, specifically a cardiologist, before going into politics. Given the other considerations, it seemed like too much of a coincidence that Higgins died of a complication of the heart, which was Turner’s specialty. Baggs would bet that there was no diagnostic testing done on Higgins after he died—there was no one who would pay for it. If Turner declared that the man died of a heart attack, it wouldn’t be questioned. Turner probably wrote up the medical chart himself.
Baggs sipped on his water. It was cold and refreshing.
He supposed that there was still the possibility that Higgins had naturally died of a heart attack after winning in Outlive. But Baggs didn’t think that this was likely. He thought Turner had caused the death. Baggs would soon be in the same house that Higgins had died in.
What can I do about this?
Baggs had a very organized, systematic mind. When things were worrisome, he liked to mentally list out the steps that he could take to make things better. He wasn’t going to accept the proposition that there was nothing that he could do to escape death; he would not accept that, on the off chance he survived Outlive, Turner was going to kill him. He was going to find a way around this.
What’s the first thing I need to do?
Baggs decided that he would need to keep his senses alert, looking for clues as to what happened with Higgins. It would be hard to justify taking certain risks without more proof. For the next eight days, Baggs would be watchful, trying to further determine if Turner caused Higgins’s death. There were many things that could sway him. For instance, if Baggs and his teammates were somehow exposed to Turner cheating, that would be a red flag; this would mean that Turner had a motive to kill Higgins; it would also mean that Turner would have a motive to kill Baggs, if he survived Outlive. Baggs would also examine Turner’s character to see if he seemed like the killing type. Not all rich people treated poor people like mutts. If Turner treated his contestants like equals, Baggs would be tempted to believe that Turner didn’t kill Higgins.
If at the end of the eight-day evaluation Baggs decided that Turner had probably kill Higgins, then it would be time to make up a plan to prevent his own death. Whatever the plan involved, there would be parameters that it would have to lie within. The first parameter was that Baggs had to compete in Outlive. He couldn’t make a plan to run away before the contest; all of the CreditCoins that Tessa had been given would be taken away from her if he did that. He would then be caught, and probably put to death. Baggs also did not want to break any laws. He would not be morally opposed to killing Turner in order to save his own life, but he did not want to be a wanted murderer. He wanted to be able to return to his family and continue on with his normal life.
Baggs decided that the best thing would be to convince Turner not to kill him. As he sat there, staring out the window, he frowned slightly. Convincing Turner not to kill him would be difficult. Baggs thought about his options for a long time. It would not be an option to physically threaten Turner. Baggs was certain that Turner would have K9s, and maybe other security robots that would viciously defend their master. There were more subtle techniques Baggs could employ, however. He could try to convince Turner that he wouldn’t reveal the dishonest techniques that were used in the competition. Maybe I could just tell him; I could approach him and let him know that if he doesn’t kill me, I won’t tell.
Baggs paused.
But why would he believe me? Why would he risk that?
Baggs was troubled. He had been cruising through the air for two hours when he felt his stomach drop and the helicopter began to descend towards the earth. He did not yet know what he was going to do if Turner wanted to kill him. All he knew was that he was going to try to stop it.
Baggs looked out the window and saw that he was flying towards a city made of a dense jungle of concrete that stretched out to the horizon. Massive buildings were everywhere, with straight lines of organized streets. Some sections of the city were punctuated with bunches of trees, but these areas were rare. There was a deep blue river running through the heart of the concrete, crossed in various places by cracked and crumbling bridges that used to be for vehicle traffic; now, they were probably only used for people on foot; cars were rare—people usually either rode in helicopters or walked places. Baggs stared down at the river, and after a moment, he recognized it from a book he had once read; it was the Seine in Paris. He looked over, and saw the Eiffel tower reaching up towards the sky.
Baggs was confused. He didn’t remember crossing over the English Channel, which he must have done in order to arrive in Paris from London. However, he had been lost in thought and believed it was possible that he could have not noticed as the helicopter flew over the body of water.
Does Turner live in Paris? France, like England was now a part of New Rome, so Baggs hadn’t flown out of country. He looked outside and watched the buildings grow closer as the helicopter continued its steady descent.
The machine landed atop a massive building that took up most of an entire block. Baggs believed that the structure was roughly ten stories tall, but most of its size came from how much it sprawled out. He looked out the window. The roof he had landed on was the size of several soccer fields. Other helicopters stood at odd intervals around the surface. Baggs could see scattered staircases that led downwards, into the structure.
Surely this is not Turner’s house, Baggs thought. He had never seen a house this big. The grainy white stone roof and walls lining the perimeter of the roof looked like materials that would be used to make a government building. If this is Turner’s house, it doesn’t feel very hospitable, Baggs thought. The structure was reminiscent of a prison, but without bars or barbed wire.
A figure emerged from one of the staircases and began to walk towards the helicopter. After evaluating the strut, Baggs determined that he was looking at a female.
She strode towards Baggs, checking her watch repeatedly as she moved. She walked until she was standing ten feet away from the door to the helicopter, and then came to a halt with her hands behind her back and her eyes fixed upon the door. From close up, Baggs noted her unusual appearance. She was a fit, young woman with toned muscles and good posture. The oddities started, but did not end, with her hair. She had a sort of mohawk, but it was unlike any hairstyle Baggs had seen before. He stared at the top of the woman’s head for a moment before realizing exactly what was different. The black hair atop her head did not look like human hair. It looked like horse hair; it was thicker, straighter and shinier than any hair Baggs had seen on a human. Perhaps it is horse hair, he thought. They may have implanted it into her skull and surgically removed her real hair. Baggs moved over to another window to get a better look. From a different vantage point, he could see that her hair ran in a thick strip all the way down her neck before disappearing into her shirt, between her shoulders. Baggs couldn’t help but wonder if the woman also had a tail. Judging by her other features, he supposed so. The woman had eyes like a horse, also. They were wider than a normal human’s eyes with big brown irises, but the oddest thing was their positioning. This woman’s eyes were situated further apart than a normal human’s; they were almost at her temples. Her nose had been sliced off by some surgeon and reconstructed to be a dome with two wide nostrils, shaped like a horse’s. She wore a tight white and black scaly dress that appeared to be made out of snakeskin.
She’s waiting on me, Baggs realized, looking at the horse-woman’s patient face as she gazed at the door. He sat his bottle of water in the cup holder, slid to the door, and opened it. The air outside was warm. Even from ten feet away, he could smell the woman’s perfume.
As soon as Baggs was visible in the doorway, the horse-woman’s posture fell into a more relaxed position. “Who are you?” she asked. Her voice was slightly muffled and indistinct, which was probably caused by her teeth, which were large, white and blocky—like a horse’s.
“James Baggers.”
The woman sighed, and reached into her bra for her phone. She typed on it for a moment before saying. “I don’t have your name on the list. Why are you here?”
Baggs looked at the high-rises that surrounded in the warm Paris sky. “Is this Byron Turner’s house?”
“This isn’t a house. Why are you here?”
“I’m a contestant in Outlive. Or, I’m supposed to be.”
“I figured that,” she said, eyeing his clothes with her big brown eyes. “You’re certainly not a guest at a place like this. You look like a vagrant.”
Baggs didn’t respond.
“Well, I don’t see your name on my list of contestants.” She said, consulting her phone again. “James Baggers. No, I don’t see a James Baggers on here.”
“Where am I?” Baggs asked.
She didn’t answer his question. “Why don’t I see your name on this list if you’re an Outlive contestant?”
Baggs shrugged. “I’ve just been added. There was a death on a team, and I’m here as a replacement. I was sent here by Vinny Tartuga. I’m replacing Regina Eldridge on the Boxers.”
“Hmmm,” she consulted her list some more. “I see miss Eldridge. If you replaced her, I would expect that to be reflected in my list. However, you did fly here. I can tell by your clothes that you certainly don’t own that helicopter. I guess I believe you. Why else would a vagrant like you arrive in a helicopter in a place like this?”
Baggs did not answer.
She looked at Baggs—her gaze appeared challenging to Baggs, though he had to admit she was hard to read because of her odd facial construction. As he looked at her more, he decided that she wasn’t as young as he had first thought. Her skin was youthful, but Baggs was able to pick out certain things in her voice and movements that made him think she was in her forties. She blew a strand of her horse mane out of her eyes. “C’mon, let’s go. Time is not on our side; it appears as though we have a lot of work to do with you.”
The woman began striding in the other direction, and though Baggs’s feet were already swollen, he jogged to catch up with the woman. He felt the rough surface of the roof beneath his bare feet. “Where am I?” he asked again.
“Paris,” she said, not supplying the answer he wanted. She continued to talk before he could ask for more specifics. “You look terrible. Is that blood on your shoulder?”
“Uhh, yeah. It’s dried, though.”
She rolled her horse eyes. “And your beard is nasty. The color is so bland. When was the last time you dyed it?”
“Like with color?”
“Yes, fool!”
“Never.”
She rolled her horse eyes again. “No wonder it looks so terrible. Your muscles look good, though. That will help you here. Are your bicep implants silicone?”
Baggs didn’t know how to respond. “My bicep implants?”
“Yeah, your bicep implants.” She stopped walking and ran her fingertips over his arms. They were cold on his skin. Her nails were painted black and filed to sharp points. She squeezed his biceps, his deltoids, and then his trapezius muscles. “Yeah, silicone.” She turned and then continued to walk. “They’re very nice. Don’t be embarrassed. A lot of people don’t know what materials their implants are.”
Baggs thought it was strange that the horse-woman believed that he could afford muscle implants; if I could afford aesthetic surgery to make my biceps look better, why would I enter Outlive? He looked at the woman’s toned body. She had rock hard deltoids protruding from her shoulders. Baggs would never before have guessed that the muscles were fake, but now he supposed they were.
“What’s your name?” Baggs asked.
“Caballas,” she said.
Baggs had never heard of anyone named Caballas before. “Where am I, Caballas?”
Caballas gave another frustrated sigh and then flicked her mane back and forth. “Paris. I already told you that.”
Baggs was used to people thinking he was stupid. People assumed that poor people weren’t as smart as them. “I mean this building. Why am I here.”
“I thought you said you were an Outlive contestant.”
“I am.”
“Well, there you go. You’re here as a contestant.”
Now it was Baggs turn to sigh. “I mean, what do contestants do here?”
She turned to look at him, as though to see if he was joking. “The Competitors’ dinner is hosted here.”
“I don’t know what that is,” he said.
“Don’t you watch Outlive on TV?” she asked. Then, after a moment’s thought she added. “No. I suppose you couldn’t afford a TV or a Holovision Box.”
They were about one hundred yards away from one of the staircases that descended into the building.
“What is the Competitors’ Dinner?” Baggs asked.
She chuffed out of her horse nose. “It’s a dinner in which all the contestants and owners and some celebrities attend. Sometimes Emperor Daman comes. Last episode Nikki Wild showed up. It’s a lot of fun. You’ll be in a cage, though, of course.”
“A cage?” Baggs asked.
“Yeah, like with metal bars. It’s so that you don’t attack any of the guests. It’s also to keep you partitioned so that guests can appraise you.”
They reached one of the staircases and began to descend undecorated concrete stairs. The stairs continued down, but the two of them turned off onto a hallway and walked until they reached an elevator. The hallway was lined with closed offices with nameplates on them. They got into the elevator, and Caballas pressed the button for the basement. The machine began to hum and they were taken down.
“What do you mean by appraise? Why would someone want to appraise me?”
Her eyebrows rose from atop her eyes near her temples. “You really don’t watch Outlive—you weren’t kidding. The betting. They want to appraise you so they know who to bet on.”
Baggs nodded, and then scrat
ched the back of his head. As he did so, Caballas’s eyes widened.
“Wait!” she said. She looked at his arm. She took it in her hand, examined it, and then looked up at Baggs. “Are your muscles real? Like, actually real?”
“Uhh, yeah.”
Caballas smiled and showed her blocky white teeth. “Oh, honey, people are going to be spending a lot of time looking in at the Boxer’s cage. You’re so lean, though. How do you keep on so much muscle with so little fat? Hormone therapy? Liposuction?”
Baggs shrugged. “I’ve just always been like this.”
She chuffed again. The elevator dinged, and opened up into another hallway. Baggs walked behind Caballas for a few hundred steps over tiled floor before she turned and led him into a room. “This will be your suite,” she said to him.
The room wasn’t too big—roughly the size of Baggs’s apartment—but it was tastefully decorated. The room had many floor to ceiling mirrors, and a glossy brick floor. There was a circular bathtub in one corner; it was as big as a king sized bed. On the porcelain steps leading into the bath were bottles of unopened soaps, adorned with bows made out of metallic ribbon. There was a leather sofa and a coffee table further back. Atop the coffee table were bags of chips, cookies on a tray, and bunches of grapes and bananas. There was a sleek metal fridge flush with the back wall. In the middle of the room was a barber’s chair.
