Start the Game (Galactogon: Book #1)

by Vasily Mahanenko

  “Ignoring the official side of this question…It is true—I really did not want to lose a hundred levels—a whole class…”

  “Lex, are all your AIs like this?” Eunice asked me quietly. “Stan, Braniac, the snake…All of them have personality matrices, but you talk to them as if they’re real people…I mean, I understand them—but, I swear, they seem to be arguing with you.”

  “You know, everyone you just listed is much dearer to me than most of the Earth’s population. What difference does it make who created sentience—whether it was us humans or some almighty? If a consciousness is subtle enough, why not treat it on equal terms?”

  “What are our plans, Cap?” asked the snake. “Where we off to now? Are we going to go troll some Zatrathi?”

  “No. And look up how to use ‘troll’ properly. The Precians are about to load us into a cruiser and then we’ll be off to their capital, Zalva.”

  “Yalrock,” the dispatcher’s voice came over the comm. “You will now be transferred to a transport ship. Please do not engage your engines. We will arrive in Zalva in thirty minutes.”

  “Braniac…”

  “Understood, engaging sleep mode. Captain, I really did my best to follow your orders…”

  “Alright, forget it. Actually, I should say thank you for not self-destructing immediately. I really don’t feel like traveling around Galactogon without Yalrock,” I said and turned to Eunice. “Listen, we have thirty minutes of flight time ahead of us. Want to pop back IRL? I don’t see any point in staying in-game. What do you say?”

  “I’m all for it! I was going to mention it myself. My head feels like it’s about to explode. I’m exhausted. Want to race to see who can get out of the cocoon faster? Loser has to order dinner.”

  “Roger that. Ready, set, go!”

  Sign out.

  I had never opened the cocoon’s lid so quickly. It was silly of course, but Eunice had gotten me into it. Could a girl really beat me out of a game? Never!

  “Look at that,” I heard an oddly familiar voice as soon as I jumped down to the floor and threw up my arms in triumph. Eunice had only just begun to descend from the platform. “Why, you popped out of that cocoon like a cork out of a bottle. It’s like some kind of race or something. Oh no, no—keep those arms up. You should raise them too, little darling. Oh and it’s not a good idea to make any sudden movements right now. It’s really not. Who knows, my trigger finger could slip…”

  Without putting down my hands I turned around and saw Constantine, smiling spitefully. The very same Constantine I met on the first day of the bet. The very same one I thought was dead. Sprawling in an armchair with a blasé air, he was sipping some kind of beverage through a straw and holding a gun in his other hand. The gun was aimed in our direction. Perhaps the strangest thing however was the absence of Stan’s voice.

  “Since we are all together again and at last, I propose we have a conversation. We will begin with the most important thing—which of you two will bring me that billion?”

  Chapter 15

  The Decision

  “You two look like your mom just caught you smoking and you have no idea what you’re gonna tell her,” laughed Constantine, lowering the gun. “Reminds me of a famous painting by Goya called The Third of May.”

  “What is the meaning of this?” Eunice asked angrily, dropping her hands. “We were told that you’d been killed.”

  “Hands up,” our guest barked, raising his gun again. “Let’s all be real clear about what’s going on here. I’d rather you not get any brilliant ideas. Eeny, meeny, miny, moe,” Constantine moved his gun between me and Eunice as he read out the counting rhyme. He ended on the girl and said, “Perfect. This way we’ll be even for that first day too. You didn’t give me any…”

  A silenced gunshot sounded. Eunice jerked and looked at Constantine with astonishment. A red spot appeared on the girl’s shoulder—my wife collapsed to the floor.

  “Are you completely nuts?” I yelled and darted over to the girl. That idiot had shot Eunice! “She’s pregnant!”

  “Shut your hole,” our visitor said tersely, tossing me a small white object. “Press it to the wound. It’ll stanch the blood. Only the fact that she is pregnant saved her life just now. Hey! Princess! Can you hear me? Can you talk?”

  “You piece of…! Go to hell!” Eunice whispered.

  “I’ll assume that’s a yes. Excellent! We understand each other clearly now. I am here neither for your edification nor your entertainment. As soon as either one of you gives me a reason, I’ll be shooting to kill. Are we clear?”

  “If you do that, you won’t see that check any more than you can see your ears!” the girl growled through her teeth. The bullet had passed clean through her shoulder, so the wound did not seem too serious. The object that Constantine had tossed me turned out to be a miniature first aid kit. As soon as I pressed it to the wound, some kind of mechanism whirred up inside, Eunice received several shots and the blood ceased to flow from either end of the wound.

  “And that is precisely why I’m here. We are now going to negotiate an agreement,” smiled Constantine, lowering the gun again. “Isn’t that right, guys? Guys…?”

  “About what?” I replied, standing up.

  “Well, here’s the deal. I want the coordinates to the prize planet. Yeah, yeah—I know that you’ve basically got them in the bag by now. I’ll admit that I didn’t expect you to pop out before your meeting with the emperor, but…well, since you’re out, you’re out. You could have died peacefully and painlessly.”

  “Died?”

  “Yup,” laughed Constantine. “Died! Did you really think I was going to let you live? So naïve…What’re you getting all tense for? Want to try and tackle me? Well, well…You know, you can use the capsule just as well without your legs. You don’t actually need them in there.”

  Another silenced gunshot followed. My right leg was pierced with a sharp and fiery pain. Or did the pain come first—before the gunshot? I can’t remember anymore.

  “Press the kit to your wound. We wouldn’t want you to bleed out.” I heard Constantine say through a layer of fog.

  A moment passed and I felt a cold numbness pour over my leg, extinguishing the blazing wound.

  “There you are. Now that no one is in a hurry to go anywhere, we have twenty minutes before you two sign back into the game. I suppose we should use this time to chat. I will begin—let me reiterate: You will die. That’s a fact. But! There are some details.”

  Without looking away from Constantine, Eunice gripped my hand anxiously. Judging by her evident trembling, the girl was on the edge of complete panic.

  “It turns out,” went on our tormentor, frowning a little, “that one of you is pregnant. Now, I don’t kill kids. So instead of killing you two right away, I can give you one small chance. We can help each other.”

  A pause followed. Constantine was looking at us and we were looking at him, neither of us saying anything.

  “Eh…it’s not very interesting this way,” our visitor spoke up first. “Where are the inevitable questions? ‘How?’ ‘Why?’ “What?’ Where are the lamentations and the begging? The others were more talkative. Alright, let me tell you the whole story. Allow me to reiterate again—you’re both dead meat. You may as well come to terms with this fact. However! I can simply destroy this lovely girl’s mind and leave her body whole and healthy. Then, it will be able to carry the child to term and give birth. That would be quite kind of me, wouldn’t it?”

  “Constantine, why are you doing this?” I asked. In my view, the important thing at that moment was to stall for time. Stan wasn’t saying anything and neither was Eunice’s smart home—so most likely that jerk had turned them off somehow. And yet we were under surveillance! The old man said that we couldn’t even expect privacy in the bathroom. If that was so, the SWAT team should be arriving at any moment. All we had to do was waste time.

  “You trying to waste time?” came the cutting answer. “I don
’t want to disappoint you,” said Constantine glancing at his phone beside him in the chair, “but at the moment the surveillance team thinks that you two are sixty-nining. Look at that! Why Eunice, how masterful you are with the…”

  “Shut up!” hissed the girl, blushing deeply.

  “That’s right. The entire surveillance team—mouths agape and hands in their zippers—is watching you two do the deed. No one will disturb us for at least thirty minutes—so we can continue our negotiations in peace. Now, what do you say to my offer?”

  “Kill both of us—or kill just me and turn Eunice into a vegetable?” I answered his question with mine.

  “And, importantly, save your child’s life in the process. Or—if you prefer—all three of you can die here. Then, I’ll miraculously come back to life, convince the old fogeys that I was simply in hiding, undergo all the necessary checks (got my alibi ready and everything), return to the game and begin grinding my Rapport with the Precians. I’ll meet the emperor and find out the planets’ coordinates…You get it. Basically, I’ll return and peacefully play on my merry way since I’ll have no competitors left.”

  “WHAT?!” I exclaimed. “No more competitors?! You killed Lucille?”

  “Lucille?” Constantine furrowed his brow. “Oh! The cute uppity girl? Yesterday. Her and her retarded husband. I’ll admit that I couldn’t help myself and just had to see what those titties looked like…But—let me be crystal clear—I did not touch the little boy. So, believe me when I say that you really do have the opportunity to leave the fruit of your perverted tryst to this world.”

  “You bitch,” I hissed like Eunice. Alonso and Lucille were dead! If he had simply said “yes,” there’d still remain a doubt in my mind, but in mentioning their son, Constantine had shown that he was not bluffing—you couldn’t make that up. My best and only friend in this reality was dead!

  “We don’t have much time,” the killer smiled again. “We’ve only ten minutes left, so I will repeat my terms—you will return to the game, meet the emperor, find out the coordinates from him and then die a painless and peaceful death. In the process, you make no unnecessary movements or notifications. If you do—if you try to play the hero—you will become the reason that your unborn child dies.”

  “You never answered me—why are you doing this?”

  “Can you not think of a dumber question to ask? We all know the answer—a billion pounds. They’ll be all mine. You two are all that stands in my way. Accordingly, you must cease to be…”

  “How about an option in which we remain alive,” I began to improvise. My thoughts were darting in my head faster than a flyer gone supersonic. I needed to think of a way to survive—but all the while I kept stumbling over the idea that this was all just some kind of dream. Eunice’s wounded shoulder and my wounded leg said otherwise. That kind of pain didn’t happen in dreams. “We made a new contract with the old guys, under which instead of the original prize of one billion, we would get two billion pounds. A billion apiece. They’re yours if you let us live.”

  “Yes, I already considered this,” Constantine scratched his head with his gun pensively. “That’s why I left you two until the very end—I wanted to see the bettors’ reaction to you guys almost reaching the finish line. I can confidently say that I didn’t like this reaction one bit. Specifically, I have seen an internal document stating that you will not be given the two billion. In the organizers’ view, only Alexis found the planet, whereas Eunice joined him only at the very end. So, thank you—but no thank you. This option is just too risky for me. Plus, it’s much easier to kill you now than worry about you two paying up later on down the road.”

  The room grew quiet again. I tried to wiggle the toes on my numbed leg but nothing seemed to happen—either the anesthesia was too strong or the bullet had hit some nerve. A video game would normally use debuffs to simulate such injuries. In reality, everything was much more complicated.

  “Okay. I agree,” Eunice whispered in a deathly voice, “But I need a guarantee that my child will survive.”

  “I repeat: I don’t kill kids. Have you heard of a thing called a lobotomy? I’ll admit—I am very skilled when it comes to this little procedure. You will cease to exist as an individual—but remain a fully functional vessel for your child. Alexis, what do you say? Are you with us, or are we sending Eunice back on her own? Though, as I understand it, all the missions are yours—so there’s no point in sending her without you. Without you, this deal won’t work.”

  “Lex, please…” Eunice screamed wordlessly. “He will live…”

  Goddamn! What the hell was going on?! When agreeing to participate in the wager, I never imagined I’d be faced with the choice of either helping some bastard and dying but saving a child in the process—or helping no one at all and dying with my head held high. But dying either way! That bitch!

  “But you repeat yourself,” smirked Constantine—it seemed that I had said that last word aloud.

  “Let’s say we agree and give you the planets’ coordinates,” I went on stalling for time. “Then you’ll be the last one left—you’ll reappear in the world and instantly become the main suspect. The betting masters will pick you apart molecule by molecule—and they’ll find out everything. On the other hand, we are ready to give you our money. It’ll be much less of a headache for you.”

  “Well, look. Officially, it is the fourth week now that I am bedridden in a comma in my city’s hospital. After the failed attempt on my priceless life, I suddenly didn’t feel right—and my mind suffered some kind of breakdown. The contest organizers visited me several times and checked my DNA to make sure that it was really me. So my alibi really is ironclad. But thank you for your concern,” Constantine quipped. “I find it touching. You have seven minutes before you have to sign in again. Are we choosing the long way or the short way?”

  “The short one,” I barked once I realized that he was talking about himself. “Before we get back into the capsules—tell me—how did you do all of this?”

  “Do you want me to play the movie villain and tell you all my plans?”

  “You already told me about your alibi,” I shrugged, “why not explain how it all started as well?”

  Time—I needed time to think of something. Surely Eunice and I wouldn’t make love eternally on the screens of the surveillance agents. At some point they would have to notice that the video was looped.

  “Well…I guess, you’re right. I told you the first part, so I may as well tell you the second too. Everything started that first day when they brought us to the palace with the old men. I did a good job of playing dead drunk that night. You think I don’t remember how you two left me alone on the floor? In the middle of the hallway? You two went off to make your baby—while I remained lying there. Even the servants refused to touch me, since I had vomited and pissed all over. All they did was cover me with a sheet to keep me out of sight and left me lying there until morning.”

  “You hacked into their system?” Eunice spoke up.

  “Yup! Carefully, delicately and—most importantly—stealthily. I dug around their network and discovered many interesting things about who the bettors were, about the rules and about the prize. For example, did you know that you don’t actually have to find the check? It’s enough to simply step on the correct planet! That’s why I showed up today—victory must be mine. I uploaded a Trojan of my own concoction onto their network and then spent several days planning how I would acquire my billion pounds. All I had to do was ‘dispose’ of myself and then dispose of any competitors. We three are the last of the twelve. Sabotaging a personal flyer and then a transport flyer, changing the temperature in a sauna—I did my best to be creative in my methods. Alright, there are only three minutes left. Please take your places in the capsules. Any last wishes?”

  “Die,” hissed Eunice getting to her feet.

  “You’re a mean one,” smirked Constantine and raised his gun. A series of gunshots followed and Eunice collapsed to the f
loor with wounds in her legs and arms. Four shots—four limbs.

  “You have half an hour to get me those coordinates,” the lunatic said spitefully. “After that, I tear up our contract. As for this bitch,” he looked over at Eunice who was lying unconscious on the floor with a puddle of blood spreading beneath her, “she’s got no business in Galactogon anymore. While you work for me, I’ll have some fun with her. I prefer them when they don’t resist.”

  The shock of everything that had happened dampened my fear of dying so much that I actually began to see things much more clearly. The life of our child suddenly ceased to be some kind of obstacle for me. Who could guarantee that this psycho was telling the truth? It didn’t cost him anything to shoot Eunice one more time and end her life for good. I needed to act and do so now without waiting for outside help.

  Suddenly, I began to perceive everything like a game: Constantine was the final boss and I needed to take him out. Eunice was the medic/tank/barbarian and I needed to save her. The boss cast bolts of lightning that could basically one shot me. But! If I turned one of my flanks to the boss, then the lightning bolts would only strike that side of me! Then, the other side would remain okay and I could go on fighting!

  But how?

  What could I do against this boss? I wouldn’t be able to respawn, so I had to act only if I was sure of what I was doing. And, all the while, I’d have to take into account that the boss was very smart and fatally dangerous.

  The first thing then was to look shocked and freeze—as if I was paralyzed with fear. I’d have no problems doing that—I was at the edge of consciousness as it was.

  “What’d you freeze like a statue for?” smirked Constantine. Perfect! The boss was now following my rules. I didn’t answer him, remaining silent and still. I had to keep thinking…

  “Hey! Ground control to Major Tom! Come in!” the killer said with mounting mirth. Seeing no reaction from me, he added, “What a sad bunch of enemies I have. Buddy—don’t croak prematurely on me, alright?”