Game Slaves (16 page)

“How old? What was the oldest file?”

“Near as I can tell, you've been in the tank about four years.”

I asked my next question, the obvious one. “How old was
Dakota?
What were the earliest dates on her files?”

Jimmy smiled. “Less than half that.”

“So she was the beginning of the problem?”

“Not the
beginning
of a problem.” She got angry. “The
solution
to a problem.”

So we were fugitives. My team, which had spent almost every minute on offense, was running like rabbits. But with no hole to hide in.

We watched three black vans roll up to the mansion. Helmeted men with body armor and matching assault weapons spread quickly around its perimeter, but we knew that the guesthouse was next on the list.

Just like that. Just like our lives back in the tank. We went from total relaxation to terror.

“How much do they know?” Reno asked Jimmy. The boy had run down
from the mansion and was watching out a window with us.

“It's house to house now,” he said. “They're desperate. Grasping. You slept in the delivery truck for days. We snuck you out the back when it made its regular stop here.”

“Is it shoot to kill? Wanted dead or alive . . . ?” York began.

“It's a panic. I erased what
I
did, but you weren't showing up for missions. That's bad. They need you. They figure a competitor probably snatched you out of the tank, since you can't walk or move at all. I saw a bulletin to be on the lookout for large, unusual canisters.”

I gathered the food and clothing the kids had lifted. Reno watched the troop movements. Mi was by my side, but Dakota had one leg over the windowsill already. She was eager to move. She wanted more of whatever was out there.

We beat feet swiftly across the property, keeping the guesthouse in direct line of sight with the main residence. This shielded our movement from the search party.

York cut some fence. Then Reno pulled it together so no one would see our route. Up over another barrier, using our clothes to stop our flesh from getting snagged on the razor wire.

Just like that, we were out, and the whole world was down in front of us.

 

Jimmy and Charlotte's neighborhood was more than nice. It was almost idyllic. Trees swayed in a cool mountain breeze, and the streets looked new. The lower we walked through the hills, the smaller the houses became, but this was Sims-style living at its best.

Most houses had a small car in the driveway. Many had swimming pools. The paint was fresh and brightly colored, and toys were scattered in picket-fenced yards.

A school bus rolled by.

So did a military police van. What were they searching for now? Still the canisters? Or had they discovered we could walk and talk just like any free human?

To be safe when they approached, we'd split into twos or go solo, then reassemble a block later. They were looking for five. For a team.

Overhead, the sky was the sweetest blue. I loved how it wasn't just one shade of an artist's brush. Near the sun it was pale, but as you moved to the horizon, it got darker and colder.

We hadn't seen a bird yet. Or a plane. Nothing up there. I liked it that way. It was so . . . unthreatening.

The vans the troopers drove were sleek, like short buses, but streamlined and armored. Solid military vehicles. Impressive, sure, if you were a civilian. But everything has a weak point, and I'd already come up with a dozen ways we might ambush one between houses.

That would alert BlackStar, however, and we were locked into stealth mode now.

“Freakin' mosquitoes!” Dakota barked, slapping the back of her neck. A red smear appeared on her hand.

“You liking the real world now?” York mocked her. “Because the bugs sure seem to like you.”

“You've got sweet virgin blood,” Reno added, not mentioning that he had a few bites of his own. He wasn't the kind to let you know he hurt. Dakota, however, had always let the world know every single thing she was unhappy with. To her credit, she didn't just complain—she also did something about it.

Street after street, we wandered away from the mansion, and we watched the city of Redwood turn from executive to working class.

Our clothing blended in well. Hoods or sunglasses—courtesy of Jimmy and Charlotte—would hide our skull ports for the time being. Tape covered the tattoos.

Not bad. Not bad at all. This might work. Get jobs. Share expenses. Hide in plain sight until we came up with a master plan.

More luck went our way. As we tromped down the streets, the BlackStar patrols began to thin. So we spent less time hiding behind trees or fences or ducking down in tall grass.

It'd take them forever to search all those homes. And by then we could be
any
where.

The diversity was overwhelming. No two houses the same. All the toys had been played with, broken, repaired, stickered. Garbage cans and recycling bins. A kite stuck on a power pole and a sheet of lost homework—math—marked with a
B
. A woman with shopping bags returning from the store. Another on a corner, arguing with a man in coveralls about poor reception. This was the pace of their lives.

Low buildings began to appear. We'd reached the city. Cracks in the pavement became more common. Litter. Rubble. Potholes filled with broken glass.

We walked, we marched, always staying to the edges of streets or along the dark sides of the alleys.

It changed so quickly.

Now,
this
was not anything like a Sims game. Late clouds rolled in. A light rain came, went, and left behind a knee-level mist that was as pungent as swamp gas. Fortunately, it provided an instant hiding place, if we wanted to lie flat in a muddy gutter.

But the mist did not hide the reality of the urban decay. We'd gone from where people had plenty to where they had nearly nothing.

It was like falling off a cliff, but skipping the fall part. You were at the top, and
splat
, now, at the bottom, you were nothing.

Out here, if urban living was my only choice, I too would spend as much time as I could in the safe, cozy, virtual playrooms that BlackStar made.

Because the rest of your world? It's a hard place.

When true darkness fell, we found a place inside, out of the rain. Sleep came, but not as easily as on a plush bed. And in the morning, we were all hungry, so our supplies took a good hit.

Then we walked. Not quite daylight. Everything was still so deserted, so abandoned.

“There are no cars anywhere,” York said, patting me on the arm. He'd been talking nonstop about jacking one. The whole way down out of the rich neighborhoods.

He was right. The streets seemed uncomfortably wide without taxis or buses or vans parked along the curbs. Block after block, we peeked into underground garages and saw nothing, not even the remains of a bike or scooter.

No wonder security was so tight up in the hills.

This meant we had to keep moving. Nothing is slower or more exposed than a group of unarmed stragglers on foot.

Gone were the bright colors, the grass, the care. Weeds pushed through seams in the pavement. And it was darker, as if the electricity for signs or lights had already been sucked dry by those who could afford that luxury.

“The streetlamps have all been sawn off at the base.” York pointed. “Look at the windows, too.”

He was right: every pane of street-level glass on the storefronts was missing. But it wasn't about the glass. The metal ridging had been the target, and it was all stripped bare.

“They're cannibalizing their own steel,” Mi reasoned. “Like in the World War Two games, where there's a huge iron shortage and the whole country has to ration its resources.”

“Or like what came after,” Reno added, “where everyone was stealing copper and aluminum and anything else they could sell.”

I didn't say anything, but I was sure they were on the right track. So there was a war out here? Well, at least in our new home, we'd speak the language.

“You looking for work?” a voice suddenly barked behind us. “Right now?”

I spun, both my hands reaching for weapons that I knew weren't there. It was an old habit. When surprised, I usually came out shooting.

Not now. All I had in my pockets was bread and beef jerky.

It was a younger guy, hard-looking, tanned, walking with a group. They'd just come out of one of the buildings with the vacant street-level shopping outlets.

Those stores scared me. There were no shelves. No counters. Even the wiring had been torn from the walls.

I guess I half expected the voice to belong to a gaunt, malnourished old-timer with grim warnings about the horrible devastation into which we'd been dropped, but it wasn't quite that bad.

And—you know this—I think all of us had been scanning for a mangy dog licking a rotting corpse. Signs of the times. Real-world suffering. But maybe, probably, the dogs had all been eaten long ago.

Not if you looked at this guy, though. The one with the job offer. It might not be all bad down here, out of the elite neighborhoods. He had some flesh on him. A bit of muscle. And while his clothing was closer to ragged than new, it only had a few holes and had been recently washed.

“Work?” he asked again. “As in, your lucky day? Right place at the right time and all that?”

I stepped up, not even eye to eye with him. I muttered, “What
kind
of work?” It was going to be hard to get used to not being one of the tallest, strongest men in the city.

He actually grabbed my arm to turn me, to walk me along with his group. That was almost an attack where I was from, but he wasn't threatening, just insistent.

“Look,” he said, waving to the group that followed, “a panel fell yesterday. We lost six. Now we're getting behind. We can't get behind. Help us out, man, really. All of you. We need ya.”

He was still walking me, kind of like a prison guard walks a death row inmate. And my team, well, they were on autopilot, following along.

“What's the pay?” I asked, making sure now to move my feet fast enough to loosen this foreman's grip on my arm.

“Standard six chits a day,” he said, almost as if it was boasting.

“Six dollars?”

“Chits—company script, of course.”

“What's the job?”

“Where you been?” he laughed, and again, I just didn't feel a threat. Not much of an opportunity, either, but if this guy wanted to, he could probably have beaten me to a pulp and not broken a sweat.

“We, uh—” I was searching for a story when he interrupted.

“Who cares. Seriously. I'll get you
seven
a day, each, if you all help us out. Like I said, we can't get behind. You know what's at stake.”

So we followed. The whole group bunched together for safety, but from what? Alleys were deserted. Dark corners stood empty. And every other group we saw for that long mile was also headed in the same direction.

I'm not sure what we heard first. The shouts of men at work? Or the clang of tool on bolt? Perhaps it was the creak of overloaded cables stretching and straining, trying not to spill deadly cargo down on the extended hands of laborers below.

Around a final corner. There in front of us we saw where all the city's metal was going.

We'd reached the outskirts of the Redwood ghetto. And this was where its people spent their days.

At first we caught just a glimpse of something between the buildings and beyond the edge of the city streets. Just a solid line above the tops of the outermost structures. It was different heights in different places, but we could see pieces being added to some sections. It dwarfed everything around it.

As we got closer, we saw this massive structure was made from heavy plate iron and was a swarm of movement. Huge girders were being anchored into concrete footings while multi-ton panels were hoisted, placed in position, and hammered with rivets.

One Tetris block after another, each as big as a garage door, the citizens were building a
wall
.

This was no ordinary barrier. Not some kind of flood levee or cattle fence. It looked like a patchwork of projects that, once joined, would surround the entire city and the suburbs with sheer, unclimbable steel. And what was on the other side? Why so much
bulk?

When complete, would it be a hundred feet high? Two? No matter. From down here, it simply towered, sealing the city off from . . . what? Wild animals? Raiders? Armies?

Old men, older women, small children, the base area was a hive. Hauling, hoisting, running, scampering out of the way of jagged plate. It was like the panic on a World War II Pearl Harbor troop carrier—All hands on deck! Everyone work for your lives!

We walked with the man and his group. No need for introductions, no need for anything more.

One section seemed to be moving nicely. Another was struggling. Foremen yelled. Laborers cringed and picked up the pace. It was barely daylight and every one of them was already dripping sweat and wrapping dirty bandages around pockets of blisters.

“It's the building of the pyramids,” Dakota whispered.

“I don't think they're slaves,” I said. “I don't see anyone with whips.” She and I had played the same thug roles in those Egyptian games. There were
always
whips.

“They're
paid
workers.” York spat some road dust, and it was clear he had no great desire to jump in and lend a hand. “Each group has a foreman, like ours, coordinating the delivery of rivets and girders and plates.” He pointed to a simple lever device with a wooden fulcrum as large as a cement truck. “By hand, that's how they hoist the sections up to vertical.”

“What's it for?” Mi asked. “To keep something out?”

“Or to keep a lot of small things in?” Reno surmised.

We'd reached this foreman's
work section. It was hard not to notice a square area on the ground, exactly the same size as one of the panels, where dirt had been rubbed into a rectangular reddish stain.