“What is it?” Thao said.
“Hold on.” Church said, “Give me your stun baton.”
Church skimmed his hands over the walls and searched until he found a tiny pinhole in one wall. Bashing into the surface with his fist, Church reached inside and yanked out a tiny camera attached to a thin cord that looked almost biomechanical in nature. The cord led back to a thick, vinelike cable. Thao handed over his folded baton. Church unsnapped it and jammed the fork into an exposed part of the twisting cable. It overloaded with a shower of sparks and the light overhead in the closet dimmed for a moment then came back on. Church handed the baton back to Thao.
“This thing is coming in more useful than I thought.” Thao said.
“That should knock out the cameras, hopefully all their listening devices as well, at least for a little while. Little trick I picked up the first season they had me on this show.” Church said, “They grow the cameras in organically, like kudzu, so it’s all interconnected except for the drones.”
“So, what? Why?” Thao said.
“You said it, they’re always watching, but we need to come up with a plan without them looking over our shoulders.” Church said.
xXx
“Our feed from the clinic has gone dark, sir.” One of the control room techs said.
“I can see that, what are doing to get it back?” Roland said, “Move a couple of drones inside and crank up their mics for any and all vibrations.”
“Sir, when do you want to move into the real end game?” The blonde host said.
“Soon, let’s get the cyborg back in the game first, got to admit I didn’t think the little guy was going to take out Kohler and Slim.” Roland said, “Did someone get me a big red button to push? I wanted a big red button to signal the end game.”
xXx
The other one and a half teams still outside the medical clinic were across different sides of the arena’s central lake. Santa Muerte and Priest were the furthest away. They had been circling the same part of the arena not far from where they’d come ashore, where they had killed Runner and T-Bone West. They had been aiming to take out Church and Jeannie, or Titama and Anaconda, but when the two teams had joined forces Santa Muerte and Priest had turned back to prowl patiently in wait. Baxter Webley was to the south of where the three teams had gathered, having avoided the attention of any of the ringers.
Gibbering to himself, Baxter stalked down one of the arena’s many crooked streets. His new, artificial right arm hung at his side, the fact that he was now missing a flesh-and-blood arm already almost forgotten. In his left fist, he was holding his remaining sword, its razor-thin edge humming gently. His dirty suit hung loosely around his flabby body, thin, blondish hair askew.
“I’m not trapped in here with you, you’re trapped in here with me.” Baxter said, “You want to make a deal with me? There’s no deal to be had, bitch, just your death!”
Baxter stopped in the middle of the road, twisting and turning as he jammed his vibroblade forward. He stabbed at the air wildly. After only a few moments he was already breathing hard but then he had managed to take out Ursula Paxton and Dogboy with the same sword, and lethally wounded Wolf Hutchins. Two camera drones circled overhead and captured Baxter’s clumsy show of force. He was so caught up that he almost didn’t hear the sound of loud and heavy footsteps stomping up the road behind him, legs whirring. Finally taking notice, Baxter whipped around and then scrambled for cover behind some ruins off to one side of the road.
Crushing rubble underfoot, Puppy the mech trotted up the road. Its bulky body swivelled from side to side with gears whirring, ignoring Baxter. The mech’s hulking minigun turned along with its body. It noted the camera drones buzzing overhead like carrion flies but kept moving forward rather than search for Baxter. Without a master or a purpose, the ex-military mech kept heading toward the centre of the arena. Baxter watched the mech disappear down the end of the block as he emerged from cover.
“Yeah, you better run, motherfucker.” Baxter said.
Across the other side of the central lake, Santa Muerte and Priest were moving toward the water as well. The two of them were weighed down with guns from a weapon drop. Santa Muerte had her handguns holstered, strapped to her hips under her long, flowing robes. Strapped around her shoulders were a couple of M4 assault rifles, both of them the same silvery colour as her handguns and covered in beautiful engravings. She gripped the handles and let the assault rifles hang off their straps. Priest was carrying a hefty energy weapon, shaped like a huge blunderbuss with glowing rings down its barrel, his auto-shotgun lashed to his back.
The sky was still going dark. Some of the streetlamps and lights in the surrounding buildings had flickered to life but soon it would be too dangerous to move around in the dark. Traps and minefields still littered the arena. Robes flapping around her, Santa Muerte kept striding purposefully toward vaguely the same area the pair had started the game.
“Seek justice, seek righteousness, seek fealty and humility, so you may be passed on the day of God’s anger.” Priest said, “What is it precisely that you are seeking, sister?”
“Death.” Santa Muerte said, “He waits dreaming but now he is beginning to stir.”
An expression of uncharacteristic nervousness fluttered over Priest’s ritualistically scarred face. Santa Muerte gestured at the wide, dark body of the saltwater lake occupying the middle of the arena. The lights from the arena’s central tower shimmered across its surface. The sky was too murky for moonlight or stars so the water just appeared to be a vast and inky mass. Santa Muerte’s brightly painted features puckered into a smile.
Chapter Twenty.
At the head of a packed courtroom, a foreperson stands in front of a jury of eleven other stern faces. The judge, lawyers, and an impeccably dressed defendant, a white male in his sixties with well-groomed, grey hair, wait expectedly.
“On the charge of first degree fraud, we find the defendant, guilty. On the charge of embezzlement, we find the defendant, guilty. On the charge of insider trading, we find the defendant, guilty.” The foreperson says.
The defendant hangs his head in shame and then gestures helplessly at his pack of high-priced lawyers.
“The worst day of your life? It doesn’t have to be! Not if you spend your sentence at Caged Meadows Minimum Security Correctional Facility.”
“Caged Meadows is a special kind of correctional facility, where you can do your time for victimless white-collar crimes such as investment fraud or Ponzi schemes. To give you the best chance of rehabilitation away from all the real criminal riff-raff. Caged Meadows includes courts for tennis and racquetball, an Olympic-size swimming pool, spa, sauna, hot stone massage and twenty-four-hour concierge.”
“Ask your lawyer how, with a generous contribution to your judge or district attorney’s re-election campaign, you could serve your time at Caged Meadows Minimum Security Correctional Facility instead. The best justice money can buy.”
Layla woke up surrounded by Thao, Titama and Jeannie. Finished with its surgery, Dr Robot gave Layla a short jolt with one of its arms that roused her, and as soon as her eyes were open they widened in surprise. The soldier shot upright.
“What the fuck?” Layla said.
Thao had placed Layla’s P90 back on a nearby table but it was out of reach. Her left hand balled into a fist instead, whirring, and she started toward Titama. Thao stepped in between the two of them, holding his hands in the air.
“Wait! Wait, they’re with us!” Thao said.
“With us?” Layla said, “You still don’t get how this game works, do you?”
“If they’d wanted to kill us while you were sleeping, we’d be dead, right? They’re like me, well, Jeannie and Titama’s partner Anaconda are, they have no memories.” Thao said, “There’s something going on, and we’ve got a plan!”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Layla said.
A drawer popped open from out of the wall, its door previously unseen, and
revealed a set of body armour and webbing that matched the damaged set Layla was already wearing. Layla probed the new synth skin where her bullet wound had been. It had left a star-shaped purple scar on her shoulder that stretched across her collarbone. The droid had repaired her facial cuts as well. Two pale purple scars carved up Layla’s face around her right eye but the staples were gone and the wounds would stay closed now. Stripping off her damaged armour, Layla adjusted the tank top underneath it and replaced it with the fresh set from the drawer.
“Robot, you good to fix up my partner now?” Titama said.
“I’m sorry, I’m afraid I’m not authorised to help more than one patient at this time.” The medical droid said.
The droid retreated backward on the track that held its mechanical arm. A hatch opened in the ceiling, ready to draw the bot in.
“Thought so, hey, Church!” Titama yelled.
Titama waded forward with her sledgehammer. She slammed the hammer into the body of the droid, rattling it. Lifting the hammer even higher, Titama brought it down as hard as could on the droid, which let out an ugly crackling sound. Its multitude of spidery limbs flailed.
“This is most unprofessional, please desist.” Dr Robot said
Church rushed into the room with his SPAS-12. He fired at the retreating, bulbous droid and the blast hit the joint of the medical droid’s arm, the shot scattering and ricocheting across the other side of the room. The robot hung from its arm at a wonky angle. Titama heaved her sledgehammer around again. The droid broke loose and hit the floor with a crash. Its spidery, specialised limbs weren’t enough to support its rotund body although the droid seemed to be attempting to stand up as it scrabbled at the tiles. Standing over Dr Robot’s broken and smoking body, Titama brought the head of the sledgehammer down on the multiple lenses that passed for the droid’s face.
“How’s that for a levity subroutine, bitch?” Titama said.
“What the shit is going on?” Layla said.
“You’re the engineer, right? See what you can get loose off this thing.” Church said to Thao.
Two of the camera drones were hovering in the waiting room since Church had taken out the building’s cameras. They watched the contestants with suspicion. Anaconda was still holding his injured midsection. Holding a bunch of parts he’d stripped off the medical droid, Thao followed Church out to the front room with Jeannie. Jeannie took one of the dispensers from Thao and sprayed some of the synth skin manually onto Anaconda’s wound where it started to harden.
“What now?” Anaconda said.
“Only one team left, right? Those two psychos, we take them out and then-, we’ll just have to figure out where to go from there.” Church said.
“One and a half teams if that little freak, Baxter Webley, is still crawling around out there.” Layla said, “He’s not showing up on the map but that doesn’t mean anything. You know they’re not going to let the six of us out, right? There’s only one winning team, every year. If they suddenly decided to go back on that just because the six of us decided to-, I don’t know, unionise, then no one would take the game seriously ever again.”
“You’ve just got to trust us.” Thao said.
Thao glanced toward the hovering drones. Meanwhile, Layla saw the bodies of Kohler and Jackrabbit Slim heaped against the wall.
“So, you guys took these two out for us?” Layla said, “Thanks for that at least.”
“Actually, I managed that on my own.” Thao said.
Thao wasn’t sure if he should be proud or ashamed. Jackrabbit’s body had burnt out quickly after he’d been killed but the tall man was lying in the corner, surrounded by blackened walls and carpet, looking like a giant, charred piece of beef jerky. Donny Kohler was splayed, still completely covered by his hulking armour, where Church had dragged him. The bullet hole in his visor seemed to stare at Thao no matter where he was in the room.
“What? You took out both of them while I was resting my eyes in there?” Layla said, “We’ll make a soldier out of you yet.”
xXx
“Here we go, this is what I’m talking about!” Roland said.
A tech rolled a small panel over to the head producer. Covered by a plastic box there was nothing but a large, red button mounted on top of the panel. Roland flipped the plastic box open and his hand hovered over the button. His eyes were shining with excitement but after a few moments his lips pressed together in a thin line.
“You remember the first season? I wasn’t head producer then, of course, but I was still working behind the scenes like these lowly proles.” Roland swept his hand around at the room, “The contestants were just a bunch of nobodies we dropped on an empty island in the middle of nowhere. We didn’t even give them guns to start off with, people forget that! Just knives and bats and that-, big Hawaiian guy, you remember he had the-, the spikey thing? They had to complete challenges just to get firearms and body armour.”
“I remember, sir.” The blonde host said.
“But then, we got ourselves in the spiral.” Roland said, “Because every season had to be bigger and better than the last one, something new and different every year. They call that serial escalation. Now look at how much time and money has to go into putting something like this together! And we still have our missteps, like the Murderdome, we thought that could be our one arena for the next several seasons but then everyone shit all over it.”
“I liked the season in the Murderdome.” One of the nearby technicians looked up from his screen with a hopeful expression.
“You would.” Roland replied, “Point is we’re getting killed by shows like Real Gladiators and DeathChess.”
“But, sir, this year’s ratings have been phenomenal! Record breaking!” The host said, “Shows like them are nowhere near as popular as Slayerz!”
“But they also run for months at a time, and are dealing with a lot less overhead than us.” Roland said, “We’ve got to keep spending bigger, keep finding more, quality contestants. Meanwhile, people don’t care about narrative, about character arcs, quality spectacle! So long as they can watch some sucker get ripped apart by dogs or decapitated by robots, same damn thing week after week, then they don’t care. It’s a war of attrition, we keep spending bigger and bigger and they just chip away at our market share, year after year.”
“But, sir, still-, you should enjoy your moment of triumph!” The host said.
“None of you were there last season, were you? At the end?” Roland said, “One of the contestants, Dali Dawson, took us to task about manipulating the outcomes on the show. Maybe he was right, maybe we got too far away from that reality. In all other respects, he was a crazy fucker, but still, maybe we should have gotten back to basics.”
“Sir, uh, are you ready?” One of the technicians asked.
“Yep, ready to enact protocol Friendly Stranger on my mark.” Roland’s palm smacked the button into the panel, “And, mark!”
Out by the beached cargo ship, where Church and Jeannie had killed Drake Mooney and Billy-Bob Boomer, huge pockets of air bubbled to the surface. Water frothing, a massive cylinder cranked its way out of the depths. Like a submarine, it breached the surface with water running off its sides.
Spotlights painted the glistening cylinder. An enormous biohazard symbol was stamped onto its side. Its armour was thick and reinforced but something still shook the cylinder from within. With a blaring alarm, the rounded cap on top of the mysterious container started to roll open. The container was still shaking as a deep, wet snarl reverberated from inside, and something inky black begun to pour over the lip of the opening.
xXx
“Congratulations, contestants! You’ve made it so far but now that you’ve defeated the ringers there’s one more round to go!” The Slayerz host said.
Back in the medical clinic, the voice of the blonde woman who was filling the role of the game’s host came through the screens on the group’s sleeves. The screens displayed the giant biohazard container as it rose from
the water, illuminated by spotlights.
“You’ve beaten animals, robots, traps and other contestants, you might think by this point in the game you’re ready for anything!” The woman continued, “But if there’s one thing that all sane individuals fear it’s our final addition to this season of Slayerz! It’s time for the Abomination Round! In another world first, Slayerz brings you a captured Abomination in ultra-high definition!”
“No, no, you’ve got to be kidding me!” Layla said.
Layla stumbled toward the clinic’s doorway and into the dark street. The spikes along the top of the arena’s border wall had started to glow. Layla craned her neck back to watch while Thao followed her out the door of the clinic. He remembered earlier in the day when Layla had said a real Abomination Round was impossible, the Slayerz producers would never be able to get permission to transport a real, live Abomination onto New US soil.
A series of glowing lines were fired into the air from the spars on top of the wall. They created a net over the arena. Thao could tell immediately it was some kind of domed force field being projected so that nothing could escape even over the tops of the wall. The net cast a gentle glow across the ruins, soft and blue but crackling with electricity. Layla shrunk in on herself. The hulking soldier suddenly looked like a small and frightened child.
“Not an Abomination, why? They can’t-, do something like this.” Layla said.
“Layla! Don’t freak out, okay?” Thao said.
“We’re all going to die in here now, like my original unit, we’re all going to die.” Layla said.
Across the arena, blackness oozed out of the top of the container that had risen from the water. A series of monstrous talons gripped the edge of the cylinder and the captured Abomination hauled itself out of the opening. The huge bioweapon supported itself on massive, clawed tentacles. Swarms of eyeballs moved across its surface. Mouths peeled open filled with hundreds of razor sharp teeth. Half a dozen black metal spikes that had once been building girders bristled from the Abomination’s back like porcupine spines.
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