Gods of the Game #3, Chapter 11

Sindre

“Well, that was a merry shitshow,” said Virgil, pouring himself a glass of white wine.

Sindre moved uneasily in the office chair. “I thought you weren’t supposed to drink.”

“Oh, that’s only most times. Now-times, however, is the only-times I can get away with it.” Virgil held up his wineglass. “While I’m in the full bloom of health, as it were. Allow me my weaknesses, Sindre.”

“Sure.” Sindre clasped his hands over his hard belly. “But yes. Not an ideal outing.”

“His taking Berserker.” Virgil shook his head in sad dismay. “I mean, it was, I suppose, obvious in hindsight that he might go that route, but to tear about the field like a bull in heat? What a waste.”

“He took out six opferns, a jäger, and was still up for taking on the schloss.”

“You mean, he only took out six opferns and a jäger. What we’re angling for, here, is a far superior player to that kind of meager accomplishment.”

“They were a mix of A- and S-rank foes.”

“Pah. Bloodless computer-generated opponents.” Virgil waved a hand dismissively and sipped his wine. “I just can’t devise a better way to have handled it. Any prodding in the direction I wanted him to go would have resulted in immediate friction.”

“Perhaps you shouldn’t have mocked and insulted him as you did.”

“Oh no, every Iago must play his part. Had I not belittled and teased him, he’d have been even more suspicious. I had to cast myself as a known quantity. Also, Charoen is delightfully predictable in certain respects. Show him a cruel, Machiavellian figure, and he’ll rebel.” Virgil gazed slyly over the rim of his glass at Sindre. “Show him a mysterious, all-powerful female player who disdains friendship and is shockingly attractive to boot, and, well. Like I said. Bull in heat.”

“Is that why you paid Silence that ungodly sum?”

“It doesn’t hurt that she’s a remarkable player in her own right, and in hiring her we’ve deprived the Platinum Suns of their prized mörderin. But… yes. At the risk of mixing metaphors, you could say she’s our Judas goat.”

Sindre felt a cold, heavy resignation settle upon his shoulders. “She know about this plan?”

“Of course not!” Virgil raised both brows in mock outrage. “You think I’m that dense? I just warned her that he’s Charn Chai’s son, a broken Echo filled with endless fury and lust. I made of him a modern Frankenstein’s monster. She’s wary, dismissive, but no doubt curious. The perfect alchemy for yet another doomed love story.”

“To what end?” Sindre fought to keep the anger from his voice. “Why are you making this boy’s life any harder?”

“Harder? Hate sex can be absolutely invigorating. And! Simmer down, Sindre—and a bull in heat needs to be led by the nose. If we can tether those two together, she can keep his flame burning long enough to win us the championship.” Virgil considered. “It’s a thought, at any rate. Better than having him just throw himself headfirst into the closest mess of enemy opferns.”

Sindre ran his hand over his shaved pate. “I’ll leave these mind games to you. What I want to focus him on is his gamma. He’s remarkable in every way else. 87 hz is nothing. We need to break him into his Quantum powers as soon as possible.”

“Hmm, quite.” Virgil sipped his wine and closed his eyes. “Suggestions?”

“There’s obviously the conditioning chamber. We could demand he spend a couple of hours in there, spread throughout the day.”

“Fair enough.” Virgil sounded unimpressed. “But that won’t do much for our boy.”

“No?”

“No. His mind, Sindre, is a blasted heath. A wasteland devoid of emotion, love, snuggles, and butterflies. What our boy needs is a reason to care beyond blind rage. Only then will his focus fall into place, and his gamma rise up.”

“So, Silence?”

“Or Clovinn.” Virgil paused as if considering. “But Clovinn… she works better as a friend. Let’s do the following. Pair him up with Silence as often as you can, then have him eat his meals with Clovinn and Lars as often as possible. Throw in some conditioning chamber work, because why not, and let’s plan a little shindig soon, a team bonding party, with plenty of alcohol and room for mistakes. We need him rutting, Sindre. Rutting and rutting and loving life and suddenly discovering a reason to live. I know it’s unorthodox, but I do believe I’m onto something here.”

Sindre stood. “I’ll let you plan the party.”

Virgil snorted. “Probably a good idea. I can only imagine what you’d throw together. I’ll surprise the team five days from now. You, in the meantime, get Charoen to spend as much time with Silence as possible. Have them duel in the VMU, then partner up against jäger-opfern foes.”

Sindre glowered at him.

Virgil met his stare easily. “What? Upset at my tactics? Feel free to lodge an official complaint, Sindre. I’m all ears. Just let me know if your salary is insufficient, or if I’m not pulling enough levers to help with your sister’s medical treatment. You can always, always walk away.”

Sindre bit back his words. Forcing his frown into a sneering smile, he inclined his head. “No problem, Virgil.”

“Good.” Virgil closed his eyes and took another sip. “I knew there wouldn’t be.”

Jessie

The fundamental problem with being trapped on an island that was mostly training camp was the inability to get away. Sure you could lock your emotions down deep and become a walking block of ice that forbade intimacy and probing questions by simply staring through anybody that tried to talk to you, but actually finding a quiet corner in which to collapse and sob was just about impossible.

Your best bet was to simply walk right out of the narrow valley that housed the training camp, find a sheltered lee and just crouch and hug your shins while you broke down. That signaled to Dr. Bierhals and therefore Sindre and Virgil, however, that you were emotionally unstable and still in need of careful handling, if not another in-depth evaluation as to your ability to execute the mörderin function on the team in a reliable manner.

Another option was to cajole pills from Mandeep who could acquire them from one of the camp workers. These deadened the emotional jags and brought one’s mood to a neutral throughline, which was nice, but that benefit was offset by a dampening of the epinephrine system and consequent loss of edge and urgency in training and game.

Not ideal.

Finally, there was good old fashioned and mostly reliable compartmentalization. It took a certain rigidity of thought, and brought about a brittleness of temperament that kept others from relaxing around you, as all kinds of unexpected comments could bring to mind random memories that broke down your walls, but when all was said and done, its negatives were offset by the burgeoning pressure of emotional distress that could be vented in game, leading to brutal successes at the cost of one’s personal well-being.

Ideal, unless Charoen’s Echo actually shows up in the flesh, and throws all the iron-locked doors wide open so your traumas can come out to play.

Of course, this begs a simple question: why not just quit? If one’s bank account is overflowing with North Canadian dollars, you can simply fuck the hell off and not have to face your dead brother’s unwilling incarnation, right?

Right.

Unless you have a deep and dark and utter conviction that leaving the only meaningful structure and fucked up family you have left in this world will result in a deadly spiral of drugs, alcohol, and nihilism that will most likely leave you dead or wishing you were after you wake up with your organs and biometric-related parts harvested and your account emptied out.

Plus, being a mörderin is the only thing that’s ever made sense. And denying there was a problem worked for a while. Things were almost—almost—feeling normal again until—

Until he showed up.

Charoen.

Jessie stood behind her dorm building, back to the hills, and pressed her knuckles into her eyes as she pushed her brow against the wall. The warm wind rushed by, and her stomach was gnawing with hunger, but all her physical sensations felt as if they were coming from a million bazillion miles away.

Right in front of her, though? Hovering as if in a neutral-state VMU field?

Her brother’s face.

Almost. It lacked a certain cast, an emotional intelligence, a unique tension to the jaw, around the eyes, that had made Charoen Charoen. This man? He didn’t quite climb out of the uncanny valley, but came close enough to make her want to scream.

To scream and tear off his fake face, to reveal what actually lay beneath the skin and muscle and fat.

Jessie hunched her shoulders as her bile rose, a hot streak that seared her gullet. For a moment it was all she could do to not spew all over the wall, but she mastered herself.

No tears.

Dry-eyed, eyes as dry as the bottom of a dead creek bed, she glared out at nothing, through the wall, and at the Charoen-boogie man.

She’d not played in VMU game that morning. Not enough opferns had entered the end zone. So all she’d done was stand there staring as the Charoen Echo went crazed like a faulty droid and threw himself—itself?—at the opferns.

God, but the real Charoen would have loved to have played as a jäger. It was galling, disgusting, horrifying that only his Echo got to live that dream.

The way Virgil was just drooling over the freak was nauseating. Only the horror and overwhelm on the remaining part of Brutal Deluxe kept her even marginally sane. Nobody knew what to say. What to do. Word had got out—probably Clovinn—that Charoen had forbidden resuscitation as an Echo. And she’d seen the way Langley and Aadhya had stared at the Charoen freak during introductions. Lars looked like he wanted to cry. Only Clovinn was putting a brave face on it, and only because Clovinn hated to admit anything was too much for her.

“Fuck,” whispered Jessie, and shoved her knuckles deeper into her eyes till stars shone out against the velvety darkness. “Fuck fuck fuck.”

She couldn’t keep pretending. She couldn’t leave. She couldn’t accept the freak as her brother, nor as his own entity. Sure, it wasn’t his fault he’d been… created in a vat. But that didn’t make his existence all right.

Jessie dropped into a crouch and fought back the urge to sob.

There had to be a solution.

There had to be something she could do.

Because she couldn’t continue like this.

Not while her brother’s wishes were being so horrifically violated.

Hammer

Once, he’d been a good whistler. Pretty good! But life had been tough, and over the course of his career his face had taken a lot of hits. A lot of hits. Such that his lips were kind of all permanently busted up, and the best he could do now when he tried to whistle was a rough, wheezy tune, lips pursed so that his busted up teeth could do most of the heavy lifting.

Heh. Teeth doing the lifting. That wasn’t the right way to phrase it!

But still, it felt good to whistle. A jaunty tune. Like his walk. Jaunty. The benefit of a stimpack and top grade genetics was lots of energy. A big ol’ body built like a humanoid rhino, and energy for days as long as you got enough food.

Luckily the camp served some of the best Indian food he’d ever had. And you could ask for seconds—and thirds!

What a world.

Hammer walked into the community center, training jacket slung over his bowling ball shoulder, whistling as he went, and saw a knot of the old Brutal Deluxe players gathered at one table, expressions blue.

They’d been chatting about something, but gone quiet when he entered.

At least they hadn’t broken into sobs like some kids did when they saw him!

Hammer tried to wink at the table and strode up to the kitchen window. Amazing smells came from beyond. He caught sight of gleaming steel counters and blue fire under black pans. Mandeep and his assistants were hard at work making magic happen.

“I’m so hungry!” Hammer announced happily to the others. “Hello! Could I get some food?”

Mandeep slung his dish towel over one shoulder and came up to the window. “This is the cafeteria, you can get food. What would you like? We have—”

Hammer raised on massive, scarred mitt of a hand to politely cut Mandeep off. “I’ll have all of it.”

“All of it?”

“All of it,” grinned Hammer, then rubbed his rock-hard stomach for emphasis. “I’m hungry today!”

Mandeep eyed him, then gave a grudging nod. “All of it coming right up.”

“Thank you, Mister Mandeep!” Hammer gave a mock salute, turned about, whistling low under his breath again, and decided to grab an empty table on the far side of the room. His looks tended to ruin appetites, and people who were intent on being blue tended to ruin his own.

Still, better to be careful with a new team. So he gave a polite wave to the small crowd, ducked his head into what he hoped was a polite nod, and was gratified with the short opfern with black hair and blue eyes—Clovinn? Waved back.

Hammer reversed one of the chairs so he sat with its back against his chest. An old teammate—who had that been? Had once told him gunslingers did that because the chair protected them from an attack. Which was silly, wasn’t it, because bullets would go right through a chair! Still, it made Hammer feel like a gunslinger, which was a feeling he liked, so he did it whenever he could.

“Oh boy, what a world,” he whispered to himself, and rubbed his hands in anticipation.

Food was coming!

Clovinn

“Look, I’m not denying this is all completely fucked up, but what choice do we have?” Clovinn looked around the rest of the group. Lars wouldn’t meet her eyes. Harper was giving her soup the saddest look she’d ever seen. Fireball was chewing on the inside of her cheek like it was jerky. They were all that remained of the original opfern crew. The rest were all gone.

Or mostly gone.

“Our choice,” said Lars evenly, carefully, as if removing a wooden block from a balancing tower game, “is to quit as a group and go find work somewhere else.”

Fireball frowned ferociously. “I ain’t quitting. I’ve worked hard to get this far, harder than any of you all know, and if you think I’m just going to bow out and start fresh you’re seriously mistaken.”

“Then what, Fireball?” asked Lars, tone sad. “What are you suggesting?”

Fireball leaned in and hissed, “that damn fool of an Echo could have an accident.”

“Accident?” asked Clovinn. “Are you serious?”

“He’s not a person. He’s an Echo.” Fireball cast a cautious glance in the direction of Hammer, who was happily devouring six plates’ worth of food on the far side of the room. “And while I don’t have a problem with them, I also don’t have a problem offing them, if you know what I mean.”

Clovinn rolled her eyes. “Grow up, Fireball. For one, you can’t just kill him, he’s a person, no matter what you might think. Two, they’d know it was you. We’re all sensored up. You’d be arrested in moments. And three, that’s just plain psycho.”

“What’s psycho is allowing Virgil to do whatever he wants with this team,” said Harper, tone low.

“Which is why we should just quit,” said Lars. “Look, I’m not happy about it either. I’ve already hit rock bottom once, but this, this would be different. We’re Premiere League material now—”

Fireball snorted.

“Fine, just barely, but we could negotiate this into some pretty lucrative contracts,” insisted Lars. “Like Kristoff, or—whatever. Virgil will never listen to reason, and no, I agree with Clovinn, murder isn’t the answer either.”

Nobody spoke for a spell.

“I owe Virgil for my life,” said Clovinn at last. “Without him? I wouldn’t have a functioning spinal cord.”

“Boo hoo,” said Fireball. “We all got our sob stories. That doesn’t mean we owe Virgil for life. What he did he did of his own free will to build his team. There wasn’t charitable about it. The only thing that matters? Our contracts.”

“Which we can break,” said Harper softly. “But…”

“But what?” demanded Fireball. “Don’t tell me you feel any loyalty to that degenerating degenerative piece of shit?”

“I…” Harper’s brow furrowed even more. “I don’t know what I feel. Lost, more than anything else.”

“Same,” sighed Lars. “But what I don’t feel is ready for the Platinum Suns.”

“Look.” Clovinn leaned forward, elbows on the table, only to realize she didn’t know what she wanted to say. The other three stared at her, waiting, but all she had was a feeling. “I’m not ready to call it quits yet. Not because I think we can or can’t win in the Premiere League. Not because I care about Virgil. But I want to stay around for Jessie, and I want to stay around for the Echo.”

Lars frowned. “He’s not Charoen.”

“Didn’t say he was.” Clovinn stuck out her chin. “But he’s a victim here, isn’t he? Who knows what Virgil’s said and done to him. I think… I mean, I know Charoen didn’t want an Echo brought back, but if he knew it had happened anyways? I think he’d want us to help the Echo out. Whatever that means.”

“What does that mean?” asked Harper, raising her face at last.

“I think…” Clovinn tongued the inside of her cheek. “I think that means we need to be good people. Good teammates. And try to help him and Jessie out.”

“That’s not Charoen,” said Fireball again, tone low and heated.

“Fucking—!” Clovinn bit off her nascent tirade. “I know. Trust me. But he’s a person. And I can’t begin to imagine how fucked up he is. If we just walk away? That’ll be on us for the rest of our lives. He’s a teammate. He’s Charoen’s Echo. Maybe it’s loyalty, or misplaced affection, but I can’t just…” She tried to find the right words, then shrugged. “I can’t just walk away.”

Lars sighed deeply, shoulders sagging. “Fine. If you’re convinced we should stay, I’ll stay. A little longer.”

Harper glanced back and forth between them both. “All right. I’ll stay, too. For now.”

Fireball stood up abruptly, shoving her chair back as she did. “No guarantees. About anything. That fool gets in my way? He’ll regret it.”

And she strode off.

Clovinn sighed. “What a fucking mess.”

Silence

She waited until the locker room was completely empty. Stood in the shower stall alone till the last echoes died away, and then counted slowly to five hundred to give everyone plenty of time to clear the premises.

There were no cameras or sensors in the bathroom and showers. The team doctor could access her live biometrics, but by hacking the neural link she was able to place them on a three minute loop, enough to escape immediate pattern detection.

Then, and only then, did she give herself the release she’d been looking for.

Silence navigated through her menu, found the subroutine she’d coded into the programming, and activated the StormFire protocol.

Her tattoos became liquid black flame. She’d had nearly every inch of her body inked, so that only the majority of her face remained natural. The rest was dark.

And now her black-market Inauen-Morf discharged an electric current into the graphene-titanium nanofilaments and micro-capacitive nodes embedded in the transdermal conduction lattice and modulated by her tattoos to prevent destructive arcing so that she experienced a continuous full-body surge that left her shivering and vibrating in place.

Agony and ecstasy became inseparable.

Pain, pressure, and temperature receptors were activated simultaneously, creating a static symphony that resulted a moment later in a cascade of endorphins. To mitigate the body’s natural internal opiate defense, the stimpack began to oscillate the charge, so that her body trembled in waves rather than convulsing.

Then it cut out.

Her body overreacted, and then Silence was floating upon an ocean of almost narcotic euphoria, a sense of disembodiment, with all thought stripped away, leaving her in an eternal sense of now.

It felt, as always, transcendent.

Gasping, smiling foolishly, she leaned against the shower wall and hugged herself, after-shocks causing her to shake.

And in that moment of bliss, an image came to her: the Echo, Charoen, hurling himself headlong into combat and guaranteed pain.

Perhaps.

Perhaps in him she might find a kindred soul.

Someone who could learn to revel in torment.

Who could understand that pleasure was the mirror of pain.

Who could find meaning only in self-destruction, and purpose in the quest for the bleeding edge of annihilation.

And if not?

Silence pushed off the wall and turned on the shower.

Then she’d leave him broken in her tracks like all the others.