Reaper

by Janet Edwards

  Hawk paused and frowned. “I’m not sure how the bomber would persuade Tomath to help him again though. He can’t offer Tomath much of an additional bribe now that his record has already been cleared.”

  “The bomber wouldn’t use a bribe but a threat,” I said grimly. “Tomath’s record has been cleared, but the black mark could be put back again. The bomber might even threaten to pin the whole blame for the bombing on Tomath.”

  I thought for a moment. “Tell me more about Tomath. Exactly how old is he?”

  “A month short of eighteen.”

  “Where is he living? What class of accommodation block?”

  Hawk glanced sideways at something he could see in Game. “Tomath was living in a class B accommodation block but he moved to a room in a class D block three weeks ago. Is that important?”

  “Yah,” I said. “I’m trying to build up a picture of what Tomath’s like, what he’s been through, and how he’ll be feeling right now. He was living in a class B room, which is the best accommodation you can get unless you’re a career cadet. That tells us that Tomath was one of the glitz crowd, spending money on luxuries now rather than concentrating on saving for his future in Game. What did he do to get into trouble, or rather what do Unilaw think he’s done?”

  Hawk did the glancing sideways thing again. I guessed that he was reading a report in Game.

  “It happened the day after the Leebrook Ashton bill became law. Tomath was at a party where a boy was stabbed and nearly died. It sounds like it was a confusing situation, with flashing lights, loud music, and a couple of hundred teenagers packed close together dancing. Nobody saw what happened. The stabbing victim didn’t see who stabbed him either, but said he’d had an argument with Tomath earlier.”

  “So Unilaw brought Tomath in for questioning. Did they have any hard evidence that Tomath had stabbed the boy?”

  Hawk shook his head. “Unilaw found the knife in a dish cleansing unit at the party venue. The knife had already been through the cleansing cycle, so any fingerprints and DNA were gone. Unilaw seem convinced Tomath was guilty of attempted murder, but they had no evidence so they ended up releasing him. Tomath moved to the class D accommodation block the next day.”

  “So Unilaw had no evidence, but they put the fact Tomath was guilty of attempted murder on his record. Typical.” I ran my fingers through my hair. “So Tomath was one of the glitz crowd. He spent his money on luxuries and having fun with his friends. He was too young to get into Game before the Leebrook Ashton bill raised the age of entry to nineteen.”

  I paused. “The glitz crowd held parties the day after the Leebrook Ashton bill became law. Wake parties, where they all wore black and mourned being stuck in the real world for another year.”

  “You seem to know a lot about the glitz crowd,” said Hawk.

  “I was one of them for a few years when I was a medical cadet.” I smiled as I remembered the friends I’d had back then. Gina, Diane, Bevan, Chen, and the obsessively creative Falcon. “There was a group of six of us, and we had a lot of fun at the parties, especially the fancy dress competitions. Our first effort at fancy dress was when we dressed up as Game monsters. We had a delivery trolley playing the part of a dragon, and laying egg shaped parcels.”

  “That was the delivery trolley dragon that escaped in the middle of the night?” asked Hawk.

  “Yah. After that, we moved on to doing proper re-enactments of Game events. The best one was when we staged a re-enactment of your last two fights in the Battle Arena. Falcon was playing you, I was playing the woman you fought in the semi-final round, and Chen was your opponent in the final. Falcon had us practising the combat sequences for weeks.”

  My smile faded into nothing. “That was the last event I took part in before I was dropped from the medical course. I couldn’t keep in touch with my friends after that. I didn’t want to get them in trouble with our instructor, and I couldn’t have stayed part of the glitz crowd anyway. I had to work much longer hours and save every credit that I could.”

  I gave an angry shake of my head, dismissing the irrelevant past. “So, Tomath went to one of the glitz crowd wake parties. All the kids there would have been in a bad mood and having arguments. Someone got stabbed. The victim’s medical chip would have sent out an alarm call. Unilaw and the medics arrived, and Unilaw took Tomath in for questioning and decided he was guilty.”

  “They could be right about that,” said Hawk.

  “Possibly,” I said grudgingly. “When Unilaw released Tomath, he went back to his room. Some of the other kids living in his accommodation block would have belonged to the glitz crowd too, and been at the same party as him. Those kids would know Unilaw thought Tomath was guilty of the stabbing, and want him to leave before he caused any trouble for them.”

  I shrugged. “Tomath decided to do the smart thing. Grab what possessions he could, and leave fast before the other kids forced him out. He’d want to move far enough away that no one would hear about him being questioned by Unilaw. How far did he move?”

  Hawk glanced sideways and blinked in surprise. “Six hundred miles.”

  “Tomath wasn’t taking any chances,” I said. “He travelled six hundred miles before looking for a new room. He had to rent one in a class D accommodation block, because getting anything better would involve his Game record being checked. He’d been used to an easy life surrounded by friends. Now he was living among strangers in a comfortless, basic room.”

  I paused for a moment. “I know what that feels like, because I went through something similar after being dropped from the medical training course. Tomath had bigger problems though. Unilaw had put an accusation of attempted murder on his Game record. No Game world would accept a murderer, so he was a Game reject.”

  I sighed. “I was nearly in this situation myself. Tomath’s life was in ruins. He would have to hide the fact he was a Game reject from the other kids or they’d force him to move again. He’d be limited to getting temporary jobs for a few days at a time, so that no one would bother checking his Game record. He’d know that even worse problems lay ahead. As he got older, people would start asking why he hadn’t entered Game.”

  “But our bomber was looking through kids’ Game records,” said Hawk. “He was searching for a Game reject living close to the Avalon server complex. He found Tomath and contacted him.”

  “Yah. Tomath would eagerly agree to do whatever the mysterious Game Tech wanted. He was being offered the answer to all his problems. With a clean record, he could get a better room, a proper job, and enter Game as soon as he was nineteen. Just think how shocked Tomath must have been when he saw the news about the Avalon world crash.”

  “You’ve almost got me feeling sorry for Tomath,” said Hawk, “but then I remember that he probably stabbed someone and definitely helped the bomber kill eleven thousand, two hundred, and ninety seven people.”

  “Possibly stabbed someone, and the bomber wouldn’t have told Tomath that the packages held bombs.”

  “Maybe not,” said Hawk.

  “I expect Tomath is hiding in his room right now, too terrified to come out. What if another kid goes and talks to him? Tries a bit of blackmail. They’ve seen something suspicious, and worked out that Tomath helped a Game Tech bomb the Avalon server complex. They’re another Game reject, with a black mark on their record that will block them from entering Game. They say that Tomath has to get the Game Tech to help them, or they’ll tell their story to Unilaw.”

  Hawk nodded. “Tomath might co-operate if he thinks it’s the only way to stop Unilaw finding out what he’s done. What background story would the kid tell Tomath?”

  “It should be similar to what happened to Tomath, so he can identify with it. The details will have to be different of course. No glitz crowd. No party. The kid has to be in serious trouble, preferably involving at least one death, but nothing too violent. Perhaps the kid was delivering illegal fertility drugs and a customer died.”

  Hawk gave me a bewildered
look. “Fertility drugs are illegal?”

  I couldn’t help laughing. Hawk really was incredibly out of date. “Black market ones are. A woman who has twins will get double baby bonus for going through one pregnancy. Since a lot of women have no children, women having more than two children are rewarded with a higher rate baby bonus. If someone has two sets of twins, she gets a huge amount of credits.”

  Hawk still looked puzzled.

  “Some women aren’t rated for twins for medical reasons,” I continued, “so they just get one embryo implanted. There are drugs that can make an embryo divide into identical twins. In certain circumstances, that can happen naturally, so no one can prove if it was done using illegal drugs. If the pregnancy is successful, then the woman earns a lot of extra credits.”

  “I see,” said Hawk. “So the drugs are illegal because these women are taking a risk by having twins.”

  “Yah. Sometimes the medical reason for not rating for twins is because there’s a danger to the mother; sometimes it’s because there’s a danger to the babies. Either way, anyone caught supplying illegal fertility drugs faces a minimum charge of endangering human lives, and potentially murder charges as well.”

  I thought the idea through and nodded. “I’ll go and talk to Tomath.”

  “I’m not sending you to do this, Jex. Remember that Tomath will be desperate to stop a blackmailer from going to Unilaw. He could easily get violent.”

  I grinned. “Do you really believe that Nathan would be better than me in a fight?”

  “I wasn’t thinking of sending Nathan either.”

  “I’ll do it,” I repeated. “We’ll only get one chance to fool Tomath, so we can’t mess it up. I know exactly the right things to say. A woman died after taking fertility drugs. Unilaw thought I was involved, and brought me in for questioning. They let me go in the end because they couldn’t prove anything, but I’ve got murder allegations on my Game record that will stop me getting into Game.”

  Hawk hesitated for a moment. “Since the original Game Company was based in America, English has always been the official language of Game. Those Founder Players who didn’t know much English to begin with, all learnt it within their first decade or two in Game, but Tomath is a real life teenager from an area of Europe that didn’t speak English in my day. Wouldn’t you hit language barriers if you tried to talk to him?”

  I shook my head. “Whatever his native language, Tomath will speak English as well. All kids have to learn to speak fluent English, because new players have a limited choice of worlds when they enter Game. They could have to spend decades living on English speaking worlds before they get a chance of becoming a resident of a world that speaks their own language.”

  Hawk sighed. “All right, I’ll let you go and see Tomath and do the talking, but you aren’t going alone. I’ll find you a bodyguard who knows how to fight and use a gun. He can pretend to be your boyfriend. Would it be plausible for you both to have been involved in delivering the fertility drugs?”

  “Yah,” I said. “We should start by telling Tomath we were innocent, because any kid would say that, but we want to give him the impression we’re actually guilty. That way Tomath will understand us trying to make a deal with him instead of taking our story to Unilaw.”

  “You have to be very careful when you do this, Jex,” said Hawk. “Make sure you don’t get hurt, because I don’t want anything bad to happen to the potential mother of my possible future offspring.”

  Chapter Eleven

  “Remember that it’s your bodyguard’s job to handle any violence, not yours,” said Hawk.

  I laughed. “You’ve said that six times now.”

  “That’s because it’s very important. I don’t want you getting hurt, Jex. Dying in Game is painful, but you wake up safe and well in your home a few minutes later. I’m horribly aware that you’re not in Game but in real life, where death isn’t just painful but very, very permanent.”

  “I’ll be careful,” I said. “Now get back inside the carriage. If anyone comes by and spots the legendary Hawk using a controlled droid, word will spread round the whole neighbourhood and we’ll never get away with this.”

  Hawk went back inside the long-distance carriage, and it started accelerating away, leaving me standing at a deserted transport stop. I stood there for a couple of minutes, thinking through the part I had to play. I wasn’t Jex now, but a girl called Emma. I wasn’t chasing a bomber, but trying to salvage my Game future.

  A group of delivery trolleys came rushing up from a neighbouring storage area. They’d be calling pods in a minute, so I hastily called one myself rather than get stuck waiting a long time. It was only a two stop ride to the apartment block where Emma shared a room with her boyfriend. I walked the length of three corridors to reach a battered door and unlocked it.

  I stepped into a room that was shockingly like the one where I genuinely lived. There was the familiar off-white shelving, paper-thin brown carpet, and a plethora of random Game images on the walls. There were even the same patches of rust on the metal frame of the mirror on the wall. The only real difference was this room was larger, and had a double instead of a single bed, because I was supposed to be sharing it with my boyfriend.

  I was hit by the thought of what would happen when the hunt for the bomber was over. There’d be no more chasing round after Hawk’s controlled droid, no more luxury carriages and fancy meals. After the last few days, it would be hard to go back to my cheap room, basic food, and the stultifying boredom of patrolling the body stacks.

  I shook my head. It would be hard going back to my old existence, but I’d cope the way I’d always done, enduring the grimness of life in the real world and dreaming of my future in Game.

  I closed the door behind me and started methodically inspecting the contents of the room. The wall shelves held a clutter of cheap personal items, and an assortment of male and female clothes, mostly faded blue overalls like the ones I was wearing now.

  I checked the tags on the clothes. I didn’t know who’d set up this place for us, but they’d done a good job. The smaller overalls were in my size, and presumably the larger ones would fit my “boyfriend” when he showed up. There was one dress, which was clearly the outfit Emma wore on special occasions. On the bed was a scanty item in black, which looked as if it was intended to please the boyfriend rather than provide any warmth.

  I hoped that the fake Game records for Emma and her boyfriend had been set up with as much care as this room. If I managed to talk Tomath into helping us, then the bomber would be studying every detail on those records.

  I wandered restlessly round the room again, and then stood looking into the mirror for a while. Our rogue Game Tech could have been spying on Hawk and seen me with him, so I’d removed my flower tattoo and made a few precautionary changes to my appearance using temporary dye and makeup. My brown hair was now blonde, my skin tones were a shade lighter than usual, and I had a different hairstyle. The end result was enough to confuse me when I saw my reflection, so hopefully it would be enough to confuse other people as well.

  I combed my hair, gave myself a squirt of cheap perfume, and then sat on a chair, waiting impatiently for my pseudo boyfriend to arrive. Hawk had organized the bodyguard for me at least twelve hours ago. Obviously the man would have to travel to get here, but I’d had to travel a long distance myself. Was my bodyguard coming from halfway round the world, or had he just got lost?

  I’d left my new secure phone in the carriage with Hawk, because my old phone was far more suitable for the part of Emma. I couldn’t call Nathan to chat on an unsecured link, so I just checked yet again for messages from my mother, and then put the phone away again.

  I’d been waiting for about an hour and a half when the door finally opened. A skinny lad in blue overalls came in. He was totally unremarkable, and perfectly believable in the part he was playing. A particularly convincing touch was the fact his black hair was in desperate need of a haircut.

  “Hi boy
friend.” I grinned at him.

  “Hi Emma,” he replied. “I’m Michael. I’m told you have to use a fake name for this operation, but I can use my own.”

  I looked him up and down. “How old are you?”

  “Physically? I entered Game three days after my eighteenth birthday. I’ve spent the last two years in Game, and defrosted to do this job.”

  Now I understood why I’d had to wait for him to arrive. I’d been assuming my bodyguard was already in real life like me, but he’d had to be defrosted from Game. There’d be a delay while his freezer unit was moved from the body stacks to a medical unit, three or four hours spent defrosting, and then yet more time taken up adjusting to being back in real life and travelling here.

  “My physical age can be my age for this operation as well,” he continued. “I’ve been told our cover story is that I was tempted into making some fast credits running errands for a fertility drug supplier. I talked you into helping me, and the first couple of deliveries went smoothly, but we hit disaster the third time. The woman who took the drugs died a few hours later.”

  I frowned. “Why did she die so quickly?”

  “The person making the fertility drugs had made a bad mistake. We’ve no idea what that mistake was, because we’re not medical experts. All we know is that Unilaw caught and charged three of the people involved. Unilaw dragged us in for questioning as well. They couldn’t prove anything, so we weren’t charged, but the whole thing went on our Game records.”

  Michael’s shoulders sagged in despair. “Life has been a nightmare since then. We lost our jobs in the body stacks, and had to move to class D accommodation. Two weeks later, the kids in our new accommodation block heard about us being questioned by Unilaw. We had to move again, and decided to travel all the way from England into Europe. We’ve been here for three months now, and we seem to have managed to leave the past behind us this time, but our big problem is that we’ll probably be refused entry to Game.”