The Immortality Game

by Ted Cross

  Georgy rubbed the kisses from his cheeks with his shoulders. “You’re such a cliché, have I ever told you that?”

  “Ha! Thank you!” Tavik said, throwing his arms wide. “Capone, Corleone, Azad the Impaler…‌my heroes. Why be anything else?”

  Georgy met Tavik’s gaze again. “It should’ve been me. Lev should have promoted me, and you know it.”

  Tavik raised one eyebrow and slowly stroked his thumbs over Georgy’s cheekbones. “You did this for revenge? Something this stupid because you were passed over?” Tavik dropped his hands and straightened up. “That’s not like you, Georg. You were always smarter than that.”

  Georgy turned his head away from Tavik, glancing around the apartment as he did so, searching for any means of escape. The door was not an option—it was too far away and one of the goons had thrown both of the locks. The balcony door stood open, a gauzy white curtain blowing gently in the cool summer breeze. That wouldn’t do either; the apartment was four floors up and the courtyard below was concrete.

  “So many places I could have gone; how did you know I’d choose this one?” he said.

  Tavik just smirked.

  Georgy puffed out his breath. “Let us live and I’ll find it for you.” He knew this would never happen yet felt a strange compulsion to play out the scene, as if he were an actor in a bad movie. He heard the strain in his own voice, and more salty sweat trickled into his eyes.

  Tears streaming down his face, Ilya said, “I knew nothing—”

  The goon behind Ilya smacked the boy hard with an open palm. “Shut up.”

  Tavik leaned down onto the back of the couch and draped an arm over Georgy’s shoulder. “You know we can’t let you live. You know that.” Georgy felt Tavik’s head nodding near his ear. Then Tavik grabbed Georgy’s hair again and forced his head up and down, mimicking his nod. “You know that, right?”

  Georgy said nothing.

  Tavik let go of his hair and squeezed Georgy’s shoulder again. “I can let your family live, though. I can promise you that. You know you can trust me.”

  Georgy had known this was coming, but still a blade of panic thrust into his gut. His mother and sister were all he had left in this shitty world. He shook his head. “I’ve seen you make these promises before. You always kill anyway.”

  Tavik leapt up and clutched his hands to his heart. “Ah! Ah! You wound me. You know how much I like Zoya. And your mother—she always kisses me and makes me tea with those little sugar cubes. I have no desire to harm them, I swear to you. They’re family.”

  Doubt crept into Georgy’s mind, a tremulous thread of hope. Would Tavik truly let them live? He knew Tavik lusted for Zoya. He pursed his lips and shook his head again. It would never happen. Never. Tavik always took care of business.

  “No?” Tavik said.

  The silence dragged out and Georgy tried to make his mind blank; tried not to think about what was coming.

  The goon to Tavik’s right grasped Ilya at the neck and shoved him forward. Georgy looked over just in time to see the other thug step up and put the .45 to the back of Ilya’s head.

  Ilya screamed, “No—”

  Georgy’s right ear rang from the blast of the gunshot. Blood sprayed out across the carpet in front of the couch. He saw gray bits of brain in the mess and had to choke back his vomit. Tears and sweat stung his eyes. “Dammit! Bastards! He only did what I told him.”

  He knew no one had heard the shot, not out here in a deserted dormitory in Yugo-Zapadnaya. Despite his wish to protect his sister, an irrational compulsion to tell everything to Tavik consumed his mind.

  Tavik chuckled softly. “Who cares about the kid?” Tavik sauntered around the end of the couch and crouched in front of Georgy. He pulled one of the new Glock shard pistols from behind his back, thumbed the safety, and jammed the nose into Georgy’s crotch. “I’m so disappointed in you, my friend.”

  Georgy burst into tears. Dying quickly was fine with him, but the thought of Tavik eviscerating his balls was too much. How is it I always thought I was strong? Now he wanted to die. “I can get it,” he blubbered. “I swear! I’ll get it for you. I swear on my mother. Please!”

  “You’re going nowhere, Georg!” Tavik shouted. “Tell me where it is right now or I swear…”

  “My sister!” At that moment, Georgy loathed himself more than he had ever hated anything. “Don’t hurt her, please!”

  “Zoya has them?”

  Georgy tried not to nod, but found himself doing so anyway. He wept.

  Tavik stood. “Okay.”

  Georgy rocked himself back and forth, hearing one goon approaching round the end of the couch, but not caring. He just wanted it all to stop. Rough hands jerked him upright and propelled him forward and out the balcony door. Through his tears Georgy saw crumbling concrete, a blur of gray sky.

  There was a flash of movement in the corner of Zoya’s left eye, and she heard a hoarse scream. Her nerves jangled; she turned her head just in time to see a body hit the concrete near the building across the street. Her brother’s building. The body twitched several times, and even from this distance she saw a dark puddle begin to spread on the pavement like an oil slick.

  Clasping a hand to her mouth to stifle a scream, she looked up to see where the man might have jumped from, but every balcony looked the same. She forced her feet to move again. She didn’t believe anyone could truly help the dead or dying man, but she felt compelled to try. Then she saw the figure’s shirt…

  Georgy!

  A whimper escaped her throat. She halted and again glanced up at the deserted balconies. He wouldn’t have jumped. Not Georgy. There was no sign of movement. She rushed to Georgy’s side and knelt, carefully avoiding the pooling blood already dotted with poplar seeds.

  Georgy’s body was broken every place she looked. With one hand Zoya swiped at her tearing eyes, while with the other she reached out to touch the purple silk of his shirt.

  She yelped when a ragged whisper came from his bloody mouth. “Run…‌little Sis.”

  She looked into his ruined face, but his eyes were squeezed shut. She didn’t recognize the croak of her own voice: “Georgy!”

  Soft but emphatic his whisper came again: “Run!”

  I can’t just abandon him here, can I? She looked up at the dormitory, expecting to see gangsters run through the black doorway with guns in their hands. She steeled herself and looked down at Georgy again.

  “Georgy. Activate your distress call. They’ll come get you. You’ll be okay, I promise.” She silently cursed her pride for refusing Georgy’s repeated offers to upgrade her slot to wireless; she could have called the ambulance herself.

  A sound from the building—a door banging open?—startled her, but she still saw no one coming. She looked once more at her brother. “I’m sorry, Georgy.” She kissed her fingertips and touched them to Georgy’s lips.

  Then she ran.

  Moscow

  Sunday, June 8, 2138

  10:27 a.m. MSK

  The wizard Xax peeked out from behind the boulder at the cave entrance. The dark hole was at the back of a small rock-strewn ravine in a wall of crumbling limestone. He glanced over at his three hirelings.

  “You’re sure that’s it?” he whispered.

  The slender red-haired woman with all the knives nodded and leaned close to him. “It’s as they said it would be. It must be it.”

  Xax stared back at the cave mouth. “Doesn’t look so bad.”

  There was an odd stench here, something Xax couldn’t place. Little grew other than some patches of brown grass.

  No one in the nearby hamlets could say exactly what sort of creature made this its lair. Some said a dragon, which was absurd given how small the entrance was. Others said it was a huge snake, or perhaps some large spiders. The only thing they all agreed on was that no one who had entered the hole had ever returned.

  Xax hadn’t come here for whatever beast might inhabi
t the lair. A priest of Pelius had told him that a member of their sect had carried a knucklebone of St. Cletus into the lair. They wanted it back, and they were willing to pay a lot of gold if he would retrieve it. And I need that gold if I’m ever to find my sister again, he thought.

  He caught the eye of the huge baldheaded fellow with the crisscrossing scars on his face and the rusty mace. “What do you say, Surly? Lead the way?”

  Surly scowled and grunted, which was about as articulate as the man got. He slid around the edge of the boulder and stalked toward the lair entrance.

  The red-haired woman, Telia, readied a pair of throwing knives and followed.

  The last of Xax’s companions, a nearly blind old man with a rusty voulge, grinned and said, “Go on, sorcerer. I’ve got your back.”

  What good a blind man would do, Xax had no idea, but the sparsely populated nearby villages had offered few henchmen for hire. “With a blade like that and bad eyes, Lovash, I’d much rather have you in front of me.”

  Lovash’s grin widened. “Don’t hurt to try.” He hopped up and crept after Telia.

  Xax tightened his grip on his staff and peered over the top of the boulder. Telia was lighting a torch, while Surly stood across from her at the entrance, ready to hand her a second torch once she got the first lit. Lovash poked the blade of his voulge into the blackness of the cave entrance, then grinned back at Xax and waved him forward.

  Xax breathed deeply three times before scurrying out from behind the boulder. He imagined the dead eyes of a vast scaly snake bursting forth from the darkness to plunge long fangs into his side. He panicked, stumbled, and fell directly into the hole.

  Gravel bit into his arms as Xax desperately tried to stop his slide. He couldn’t see in the darkness. He twisted to his side and crashed into hard stone. With a groan, he blindly tried to assess the damage. His hands and arms burned from deep scrapes, and his hip bone was bruised. He had no idea where his staff was.

  Then there was light, and scuffing sounds as the three hirelings entered the cave. Xax groaned again and looked up at Surly as the bald man drew near, a flickering torch held high.

  “You all right, old man?” said Telia as she crept in next to Surly. “Didn’t realize you were that eager to get inside.”

  “You see it?” Xax said, unable to keep the fear from his voice. “Anything moving?”

  “Only Lovash,” Telia replied. “I don’t see…‌oh, hellfire!”

  Surly moaned.

  “What?” said Xax. “What is it?”

  “Pick him up, Surly,” Telia said, her voice shaking. “We’ve gotta get outta here now.”

  “I can’t see nothing,” Lovash said. “What do you see?”

  Surly stuck the torch in Lovash’s hand and reached down to yank Xax up by the clasp of his cloak.

  Xax was too frightened to care about the rough handling. The pillar of stone that had halted his fall was not a stalagmite as he had thought. It was a statue of an armored man, perfect in every detail. He looked past the man and saw that they were in a large cavern. Dozens of such statues filled the room, some holding their hands up in fright, others gripping stone weapons. Xax turned his wide eyes to Telia and saw his own horror reflected in the flickering light in her eyes.

  “Surly,” she screamed.

  Xax whirled to see the huge bald warrior frozen in place, his eyes blank and his mouth gaping. Like a pebble dropped into a pool of water, a ripple spread from Surly’s eyes, flesh turning to stone with the slightest of crackling sounds.

  Telia yelled, “Run!” and scrambled up the gravelly slope toward the light of the entrance.

  “What is it?” cried Lovash, dropping the torch and swinging his voulge in a sweep until it clanged against one of the stone statues.

  Xax had trouble catching his breath. “Basilisk,” he whispered. He tried crawling after Telia, but was yanked back by Surly’s stone hand, still gripping his cloak.

  Lovash dropped the voulge and rushed after Telia.

  “Ah, gods!” Xax finally found his voice. “Come back, Lovash. I’m stuck!”

  The old man ignored him and vanished into the sunlight pouring through the entrance.

  Xax heard Telia’s voice shout something and the sound of running before all was silent save for the crackling of the two abandoned torches lying on the floor. He saw his staff lying near his feet and reached for it, but Surly’s arm held him up.

  Xax froze as a slight scraping sound reached his ears. Scales slithering over stone?

  He redoubled his efforts to reach his staff, but his fingers came up inches short. Blood pattered onto the stone floor from the scrapes on his hands. He grasped for the clasp, but it was buried in Surly’s stone fist. In desperation he thrust himself up and let himself fall, hoping his cloak would tear.

  A hissing sound came from somewhere just behind, much too close. Xax wedged a foot up against Surly and pushed with all his strength, but the cloak didn’t give.

  A tiny flashing light appeared in the upper left corner of his vision. The torchlight stopped flickering as the scene froze. Tyoma accessed the game interface and switched it off. He opened his eyes, seated on his favorite sofa in the living room of his apartment. Vera sat beside him, naked but for a pair of black stockings.

  “Aaah,” Tyoma said. “What is it?”

  “Urgent call from a Dr. Vladimir Glek.”

  “Volodya?” Tyoma said. The anthropologist had never called him at home before. “What does he want?”

  “He won’t say. He wishes to speak with you. Says it’s urgent. I told him you didn’t want to be disturbed, but he insisted.”

  Tyoma scowled. He hated being interrupted mid-game, and Volodya was the last person he wished to hear from. “It better be urgent. Put him through the proxy.”

  There was a beep as the wireless interface in his slot registered a handshake with the incoming connection.

  «Tyoma, you there?» Tyoma’s mind supplied Volodya with a bland male voice.

  «I’m here. Why are you dis—»

  «Come in. Now! Everyone else is already on the way. Your…companion didn’t want to listen to me.»

  «What’s going on?»

  «I’m not telling you over an unsecured connection. Just trust me that it’s important enough to take you away from your doxy.»

  «I’d tell you to mind your manners, but we both know that’ll never happen. I’ll be there in half an hour.» Tyoma severed the connection before Volodya could reply.

  “I must go to work, Vera.” He glanced at his clothes to see if they were still decent enough for the office.

  Vera turned on her most smoldering blue-eyed gaze and bit her lip. “Do you have time for—”

  “No, no,” said Tyoma, waving one hand in the air. “No time for that. You’re dismissed.”

  Vera vanished.

  Tyoma rubbed his stubbly cheek and considered whether he needed to shave. If it’s so important, who cares how I look?

  Volodya’s insinuation that he was a dirty old man rankled. So what if I’m nearing seventy? It’s not like Vera is real.

  “Weather?” Tyoma asked the apartment.

  “Cool and windy, sixteen degrees,” replied a brisk male voice.

  Tyoma grabbed a light solar jacket from the rack near the door and said, “Door.” The door hissed to one side and he stepped out into the hallway. “Lock door,” he said, turning toward the elevator.

  Moscow

  Sunday, June 8, 2138

  10:30 a.m. MSK

  A stitch ate at Zoya’s side and she pulled up panting. She had reached Prospekt Vernadskovo and left the decaying student dormitories behind. A handful of people shopped at the kiosks flanking the old metro entrance. A small girl playing a battered violin stood near one kiosk, an open case at her feet.

  Zoya looked back but saw no sign of pursuers. Stupid, she thought. Should have hidden there and seen who came out. Then you’d know who murdered Georgy
.

  She massaged the ache in her side while considering what to do next. Her hand found the package in her pocket, and she pulled it out. It was rectangular, smaller than a playing card. She thought about opening it to see what could be so important, but then a terrifying thought struck her. If they’re looking for me, they’ll start at home. Mama!

  She whirled about to look for an air taxi. One was just hissing by fifty meters overhead. She waved at a second one, but it was going too fast. Again she wished for wireless so she could ping the bastards. Two more taxis whipped by before one finally slowed and hovered in the street nearby.

  It was a gypsy cab, so there was no meter. No autodriver either. She negotiated the price down to merely criminal and hopped into the back. The screen on the seat showed the agreed price, so she pressed her thumb to the rectangle until there was a beep. The scruffy driver smirked into the rearview mirror and took off.

  Zoya reached for the Web connection but saw only a broken wire.

  “Where’s the cord?”

  “Broken.”

  “I need to call home.”

  The driver shrugged.

  A decade ago she’d have been able to use a handset to call home, but the cash-strapped government had sold the bandwidth off to Goom-Zon, and now prices were unaffordable on her salary from the morgue. She guessed how long it would take to reach her place near the Kolomenskoe refugee park. Ten minutes, perhaps.

  “Could you go a little faster?”

  “Cops harassing us. Too expensive to pay fines.”

  She rocked in the seat, staring out the window as the buildings grew newer and taller. They were approaching the ancient first ring road and the familiar hurricane shape of the central city, with its funnel cloud of vast skyscrapers broken in the center where the Kremlin stood.

  Zoya pulled out the package again, untied the string, and folded out the wrapping paper, revealing two black chips. One looked like the standard slot data card, but the other was slightly longer. If inserted it would jut out from her head. The markings on the chips told her little: the long one had a tiny label with ‘AVK 6-6-2138’ printed on it, while the small chip had a similar label marked with ‘K3 - v2.6’.