Endgame (Voluntary Eradicators)

by Campbell, Nenia

  Catan fastens her into her seat. Vol stares straight ahead and avoids looking at him. “You are not going to die,” he says, letting his fingertips feather down her cheeks from the electrodes he has affixed.

  “I don't want to speak to you.”

  He presses his lips together and nods. She only raises her head when she is sure that he is gone. Catan Vareth. The Regent's son on the wrong side of the sheets. She feels ill-used. Is this what their relationship is? A mere display of power, of possessing the unattainable?

  Soon it won't matter. None of it will.

  Program: Voluntary_Eradicators_2.exe

  Class: N/A

  Summary: N/A

  The floating words scorch her eyes and Vol cries out in fear when she realizes she cannot turn away.

  “Stop struggling, Vol,” someone says coolly. “The pedestals are set on a time-release. No cheating.”

  Choose an item, the game flashes at her. Impatiently, it seems. She accepts, and a large gray box immediately pops up to fill her entire field of vision. Inside the box are forty smaller boxes, each holding a pixelated item designed in 8bit style and labeled in all caps.

  Vol stares at them. There is no apparent rhyme or reason to the collection. Some are beauty products (MIRROR, PEARL NECKLACE, PINK RIBBON, PERFUME); some are tools (HAMMER, SCREWDRIVER, BUCKET OF PAINT), some are toys (BAG OF MARBLES, SLINGSHOT), and some are just weird. She shakes her head over WHITE FLOWER, EMPTY METAL CAN, and CUT DIAMOND, wondering what purpose they could possibly serve.

  As she wavers, she notices several of the boxes — GUN, MYSTERIOUS VIAL, LIGHTER, SWITCHBLADE — have gone black. When she tries to select one of the items, she gets an error message. Looks like it's one per customer.

  She tries for CUT DIAMOND, figuring she can use it as currency or in trade, but it disappears before she can even complete the thought. Same with KITCHEN KNIFE, LARGE KEY, and PEARL NECKLACE. Frustrated, she snatches out at MIRROR.

  Finally, she thinks, as it's added to her inventory. What now?

  Mission objectives: KILL THEM ALL.

  “What?” She tries to access the archives and a painful shock bursts from the nape of her neck, to sizzle down each and every one of her nerves. Pain — real, unadulterated pain — slices into her knees. She's fallen to the ground, sending up a cloud of dust.

  ACCESS DENIED.

  Vol goes back to the player data and gets the same screen as before.

  Program: Voluntary_Eradicators_2.exe

  Class: N/A

  Summary: N/A

  Mission objectives: KILL THEM ALL

  She tries to tap into the class and summary data and is rewarded with another surge of pain for each attempt, and that glowing red chastisement: ACCESS DENIED.

  “Fine, then,” she growls, and gets to her feet. A desert wasteland surrounds her, but it's different from The Dying Moon. Dolorian was dying. This place, whatever it is, is already dead. The earth is a blackened scorch mark, all traces of civilization — and any other kind of life, even rural vegetation — simply … eradicated.

  The title of this game is Voluntary Eradicators. I wonder ….

  She receives another electric pulse that makes her see flashes of light in the corner of her eyes.

  THIS IS WHAT REMAINS OF EASTERN BASTAN TODAY.

  Vol freezes.

  TWENTY-SIX YEARS AGO, THE EASTERN BASTANI WERE COMISSIONED TO DESIGN THE ULTIMATE KILLING MACHINE. THEIR SUCCESS WAS THEIR FAILURE.

  AT FIRST THE REGENT WAS SATISFIED WITH THE BASTANI. HE USED THIS NEW RACE OF SENTIENT BEINGS AS TOYS, PITTING THEM AGAINST SOLDIERS AND CRIMINALS, TO FIGHT TO THE DEATH FOR HIS OWN ENTERTAINMENT.

  BUT THERE WERE PROBLEMS.

  AS WITH ALL LIVING CREATURES, THE NEW RACE WAS SELF-AWARE. AND IN SPITE OF THE PROPAGANDA RELEASED BY THE REGENT PROCLAIMING THAT THEY WERE NO MORE CAPABLE OF SENSATION THAN ROBOTS, THE NEW RACE SUFFERED. THEY WERE FULLY COGNIZANT OF THE PAIN THEY WERE INFLICTING AND IT WAS AGONIZING. WHEN THEY CEASED TO COOPERATE, THE REGENT USED CHEMICAL AGENTS TO FORCE THE NEW RACE INTO COMPLIANCE. DURING THESE PROCEDURES, THE NEW RACE WAS FULLY CONSCIOUS OF THE HORRORS THEY WERE FORCED TO COMMIT AGAINST THEIR OWN FREE WILL.

  WHEN THE BASTANI PEOPLE LEARNED OF THE ATROCITIES COMMITTED BY THEIR SCIENTISTS, REBELLIONS ENSUED AS PEOPLE FOUGHT TO LIBERATE THE NEW RACE. FEARING THE REPERCUSSIONS IF THE NEW RACE WAS EVER ALLOWED TO BECOME FREE, THE REGENT HAD THE ENTIRE AREA DESTROYED. HIS EXCUSE WAS TREASON: THAT HE HAD DISCOVERED A PLAN TO DISRUPT PEACE AND UNITY.

  THE SORROW OF THE BASTANI PEOPLE AND THE NEW RACE WERE BURIED BENEATH THE RUBBLE OF THEIR CIVILIZATION, AND THEIR STORIES BURNED TO ASH —

  UNTIL NOW.

  WITH YOUR ONE ITEM, YOU WILL BATTLE TO THE DEATH AGAINST YOUR OWN PEOPLE. YOU WILL LEARN WHAT IT IS LIKE TO BE FORCED TO TAKE HUMAN LIFE, AND TO LEARN THAT YOUR WILL IS NOT YOUR OWN.

  I HAVE PROGRAMMED THE GAME TO SEND AN ELECTRONIC PULSE TO THE BIOFEEDBACK LOOP UPON STARTING. THIS HAS RAISED THE PAIN THRESHOLD OF THE GAME. YOU WILL NOW EXPERIENCE SENSATIONS WITHIN THE GAMESCAPE THE WAY YOU WOULD IN THE REAL WORLD.

  WHEN YOU DIE IN THE GAME, YOU DIE FOR REAL.

  FAILURE TO COMPLY WILL RESULT IN SHOCKS TO THE BRAIN AND SPINAL CORD, CAUSING PAIN IN STEADILY INCREASING INCRIMENTS, EVENTUALLY CULMINATING IN DEATH. YOU ARE THE 'VOLUNTARY' ERADICATORS.

  HAPPY HUNTING.

  The screen goes blank. Vol imagines the other players are receiving similar messages. As if in confirmation of this a gunshot rings out from somewhere in the vast emptiness.

  Val shudders and forces herself to keep walking.

  Her boot hits something soft. She sees Tash, collapsed on the ground. Her lips are parted, and something is sticking out of her mouth. It's the white flower, no longer in 8bit but in all its three-dimensional glory. She feels a chill; it's oleander.

  “Oh gods, Tash. No.”

  She encounters Drove a few paces later, his throat punctured by a pair of scissors. Kira has the pink ribbon wrapped tightly around her throat, like an inappropriately festive garrote. Jade is beside her and seems all right at a glance, though when Vol attempts to move him she realizes that the back of his head is bashed in.

  All around her, people she has worked with for years — people she likes, people she hates, people she might even one day trust with her life — are dead. Forced to kill each other, to fight for the one basic right everyone with a soul should be entitled to: life.

  Footsteps crunch on the earth behind her and Vol belatedly remembers her mirror. She smashes it on the ground and turns — only to see her own face leering back at her with more wickedness than that which she thought herself capable.

  And then, she is falling — falling into the jagged cracks of the mirror, slashed by glass, and old memories, and fear.

  It is difficult to say which hurts the most.

  She is in a chamber surrounded by mirrors. Twenty pairs of eyes regard her from every angle. As Vol flicks her own from reflection to reflection, she realizes something horrible. All these images of her have silver eyes and strange yellow scars running up and down their arms like the striations in poor-quality marble. She recognizes the marks because now she remembers. She used to have some of her own. Vol stares down at her pale forearm and sees the ghostly track marks, glowing with light.

  “Oh gods,” she whispers.

  Laughter echoes piercingly off the cold stone and colder glass.

  The Vol that steps out of the mirror is dressed as she is, in lightweight armor that molds to her body like a second skin. She has the same easy, loping stride as a predator and Vol finds herself backing away instinctively, filled with a dread that borders on being physically ill.

  “Oh, Vol, why are you so frightened?” That horrible laugh again. “You've seen worse in your own bedroom mirror. There's no escaping what you are.”

  “You're not real.”

  “I'm real enough to do this.” She fires her weapon and one of the mirrors explodes. Vol screams and ducks, covering her face with her hands. She cries o
ut as the glass slashes through her leather gloves, shredding bare skin. It hurts. If I die here, I die for real.

  Vol does the first rational thing that comes to mind. She runs.

  “How does it feel, Vol, knowing that you're in love with the son of the man responsible for the death of your kin and countrymen?” Vol presses herself against the back of a mirror and hears the echo of not-Vol's boots come perilously close to her hiding place. “He's the reason you're here in this dumping ground of the human race. Did you know that? But like a worm, you keep crawling back.”

  No, no, no, no.

  “We ran. When the country was destroyed, we ran. And Catan Vareth found us. He's a smart boy. He recognized us fairly quickly. But he didn't like daddy much, so he strung us along for a while, trying to figure out how to use us to his best advantage. But then pretty boy started to fall, hard and deep.”

  Not-Vol falls silent. Vol nearly says something, remembers just in time she's the one being hunted.

  “He thought he knew sorry,” says not-Vol, and now her voice is bitter. “A life of disgrace and dishonor is better than a half-life, or, worse — no life at all. Oh, but he understood at the end. When he caught the girl he thought he was protecting in bed with the man he thought he was protecting her from. Then he lost it, and we were installed in the Colosseum parlors, killing fools in two worlds as once. They started to prod at us with medical implements, to see if we could be cloned, or bred.

  “But the Regent didn't like sharing his new toy. He began to remember why he had Bastan destroyed in the first place. Powerful, genetically-engineered humans, with eyes tuned to see on the wavelength of human emotion and the strength of five human men. And he came to a simple conclusion: get rid of the advantage that makes us such a threat, that makes us more than mere brutes with super-strength.

  “Blind us. After all, one doesn't need vision to kill or fuck.

  “I couldn't let him do that to us. I had plans, you see. And when the scientists tried to disfigure us, I killed them all. I tore them apart. Their screams were music to my ears, Vol. Their blood on my hands was my benediction.”

  Vol feels something warm on her face. Tears. Tears for the loss of a nation, for a world that has grown so horribly corrupt that genocide is a more acceptable solution than freedom. She raises a hand to dry them and an iron-strong hand closes around her throat.

  “Here you are. Hiding in the background like a coward, the way you do in our own body.” Not-Vol smiles, and Vol thinks, with a shudder, Do I really look like that? And then the meaning of the not-Vol's words sinks in and she says, “Our body?” Or tries to. She doesn't have enough air to manage more than a squeak. But not-Vol nods sagely, as if she can read Vol's mind. And Vol supposes in a way, she can.

  “Haven't you figured it out yet, Vol? I'm you. The better you. I truly am the voluntary eradicator.” She laughs cruelly. “I'm better at sex, too. Better enough to make Catan think real hard about any interest he has in you — hard being the operative word, of course.” She leans in, and Vol can smell the metal on her breath. “Does he gasp when he kisses you, too, as if every breath is his last? Does he scream for you?”

  Stop it, Vol thinks. Stop it. Don't talk about him that way. Don't talk about me that way.

  Not Vol's nails break through her skin and the pain sears a ring of fire around her throat. She chokes and the not-Vol laughs again as she wrestles Vol to the ground. “You're weak,” she says. “Human. Just as human as they are. You could have been a goddess, and instead you chose to be a slave.”

  Her fingers gouge deeper, tearing into her throat. Vol feels a bubble of blood form and burst from her lips, spattering both their faces with garnet beads. She lashes out and broken glass from the mirror slices into her palms. She closes her spasming fingers around it, trying to ignore the liquid trickling out of her closed fist. One shot, she thinks. That's all I have.

  “Any last words before I rip out your larynx?” the not-Vol says pleasantly. “A few words for Lover Boy, perhaps?”

  “Fuck you,” Vol mouths. The not-Vol's brow wrinkles and whatever she is about to say next turns into a piercing scream as Vol plunges the point of the glass all the way into the not-Vol's right eye.

  12.

  The only thing worse than hell is oblivion. An eternity of nothingness, of being perpetually in-between, of never knowing if one is dead or alive. That sounds like hell. When Vol opens her eyes and finds herself in a white room in a white bed, she panics because, for her, it is.

  She hops out of bed and feels the burn of cold tiles on her bare feet. Hands close around her shoulders, holding her place and keeping her from falling down. “No!” she moans. “Leave me alone.”

  “Vol, no — it's all right.”

  “No…”

  “Vol!” and through the haze of fear, she recognizes the voice, though it doesn't bring her much solace. After everything she has learned about Catan — about them — knowing that he sold her out, that he betrayed her — she feels overwhelmed. And looking at his face and the amber eyes that glimmer with trapped bubbles of topaz makes her feel weak. She lets him walk her back to her bed because she has no choice.

  “Where am I?”

  “The infirmary.”

  His eyes are watchful but he relaxes a little when she makes no move to jump out of bed and run. He still hasn't let go of her, though. “You've been given a mild tranquilizer. Your brain was sick.”

  “Are you saying that this — that everything was in my head?” It's like something out of a holladrama. A bad one.

  “No. It would be easier if it was.” He pinches the bridge of his nose. “What do you remember about your life before you came to Karagh?”

  “Don't you know that already? You know everything.” Her voice is flat.

  “Humor me. Please.”

  “You want a recap?” She glares at him, hating him in that instant. “You found me. You slept with me, stringing me along until you could figure out what to do with your big prize. And then you, — ” his eyes are too sharp, too hot. Like twin suns, she has to look away from his gaze or risk being blinded, — “your father screwed up your plans. So you screwed up mine. And you sold me to a Gaming Coliseum where I was forced to battle for my life.”

  She pauses. Catan is leaning forward, chin in hand. “No, go on,” he says. “This is fascinating.”

  “They were going to cut me. To cut into me. To blind me. Somehow — somehow I managed to escape, I think — by killing — and there was blood, and screaming — and — ” She stares down at her hands. They look so innocent. So incapable of evil. “I came here. And then you found me. And all those dreams I had, with the blood, and the screams — they were real.”

  “Whose blood?”

  “Scientists. Civilians.”

  Catan looks furious — but for once, it isn't directed at her. This surprises her. She thought her claims would throw him into a rage, the way she had lost all control when confronted in the gamescape.

  “Volera, you are a genetically engineered human being.”

  “I know,” she says.

  He pauses, then continues, “Your eyes were designed to see on a wavelength ordinary humans cannot see. You can read emotions and even some thoughts, picking them up like a transistor radio.”

  “I know.”

  Catan studies her. “Yes. Well. Not everything apparently. The Regency did commission the Bastani to design their toys, that much is true. I've been doing some research of my own, and all my father's talk about hubris is bullshit. He learned about an ancient civilization that pitted soldiers against soldiers, other animals, and death traps meant to inflict agonizing pain upon failure. All for the entertainment of an audience of thousands. We already had the Gaming Coliseum. Someone came up with the brilliant idea of designing a new race — one with the intellect and the rights of animals — for military men to fight and slaughter in the arenas. The most dangerous game, in all senses of the word.

  “It worked, but too well. Once set
into action, the new race was difficult to stop. They almost never lost. They could anticipate actions well before they were even attempted once their nascent genes were activated through epigenetic manipulation — injections,” he adds, at her blank look. “Luckily, the new race happened to be just as vulnerable to weapons as the old. The Regent, my father, ordered five thousand tons of explosives to be dropped on the Eastern Bastani regions, wiping out all the laboratories with creators and creations both trapped inside.”

  “Why?” she rasps.

  “Easier to silence a man with a bomb than a bribe.”

  “But I remember the smoke and the fire. I remember killing innocent civilians — ”

  “No. You killed Xylepti soldiers. The Regent's men.”

  “No! There was a boy. There were people in white, watching — ”

  “Volera — ”

  “He was so young. Why that poor little boy?” Her face pales. “Oh gods — the other Players — Tash — what happened to them?” She grabs his wrists. “Are they all right? Are they — ”

  “I'm getting to that,” he says, patiently. “You need to hear this.”

  “I don't want to!” she cries. “Tell me — ”

  “Vol.” He silences her with a look. After a pause, he says, “The Regent didn't want to destroy all of the new race. Just the ones that weren't already in his possession. However, they were all prototypes and had a rather severe drawback. Nobody took into account that the ultimate killing machines would have little use for a conscience. But they did, because they had been cloned — and their genetic template had been taken from — humans.

  “Even if the Bastani hadn't been killed, the new race would have eventually destroyed itself. Not from killing each other, but by killing themselves. The killing drove them mad. The ones who didn't commit suicide managed to dissociate from their lives, which would result in fugue states, where they would then engage in all kinds of illicit acts that their 'human' side wouldn't know about. It was driven purely by emotion and self-preservation. When not engaged in fights to the death, they had a penchant for debauchery, and an innate hatred of their weak, core personality. The killing fractured the new race's personalities, forcing them to create a self that could handle the destruction, the pain, the cold-blooded murder.”