The Immortality Game

Zoya nodded, then clambered up the ladder. She put a hand on the manhole cover and pushed, but it didn’t budge.

“You need more leverage. They’re heavy.”

Zoya climbed another rung, bent her head, and put her shoulder to the cold iron. Slowly she was able to shove the cover to one side, welcome daylight flooding through the hole. She stuck her head up and saw that she was just outside the refugee camp in Kolomenskoe. The smell of the camp was nearly as bad as that of the sewer pipe. A few trees and a black iron fence separated her from the people in the camp. Relieved, she scrambled out of the hole and turned to peer down at Sveta. Their eyes met and held for a few moments. Sveta smiled and gave a small wave. Zoya nodded in return, then struggled to push the manhole cover back into place.

Poplar seeds floated everywhere under the overcast but still bright sky. It was hard to believe it was the same day. Her brother’s murder felt like it had happened a week ago. She considered where to go. The morgue? But her colleagues would be at home on Sunday, and anyhow Tavik knew she worked there. Her friends? Her uncle? The short mobster had threatened them all. It mattered little what she thought; she knew she must check on her mother. Stupid. You’re going to walk right into their hands. Then she thought, Do I care? And what about the lost card? It’s one of my only bargaining tools, and I lost it somewhere.

Sveta had brought her to a perfect place. She could cross the street and approach her apartment block from the rear. There was a wall behind her complex that she had climbed many times as a kid. She hoped she could see signs of the mobsters without them seeing her.

As she walked, constantly scanning her surroundings, her mind kept turning to the data card in her pocket. It still made her nervous, but curiosity itched inside her. What could be so important that good people had to die?

She stepped off the sidewalk and approached two trees that looked like they would make a decent screen. Leaning against one of them, she pulled the card from her pocket and reread the label: ‘K3 - v2.6’. What could it mean? Since finishing school, she’d mostly used cards for music or reading. Sometimes she would pore over collections of art.

She brought the card up to her slot, hesitated, then pushed it in, wincing as the card clicked into place. Nothing happened that she could detect. She probed the interface for data access and saw an enormous index. It was overwhelming, but she noticed many of the features fell into categories: a multitude of martial arts sims; military history; combat strategy and tactics; weapons of all types. The list went on, but she lost interest. Georgy risked his life for a stupid military chip? It looks like something they’d give to draftees for training. Why would the mob care about this?

It made the deaths of her family members feel even worse that they had happened over something so trivial. She glanced about quickly to see if anyone was around, then returned to the sidewalk. To the left was the camp, and she suddenly noticed something strange about the refugees—each of them had a yellow aura. She halted and stared openmouthed at all of the faintly glowing people. She reached up and ejected the card, and the glow vanished.

That’s really odd. What is that for? She reinserted the card and the glow returned. She sent a query to the interface, and it provided a short report from the combat category. Yellow aura is for unknowns. Red is for enemies. Green is for friendlies.

She was about to eject the card again when it occurred to her that perhaps the card’s features might prove useful for eluding her pursuers. A quick scan all around showed no red auras. Even with the oddly-colored people, the view wasn’t too disconcerting, so she left the card in place and continued on.

It took half an hour to circle around to the rear of her complex, but at last she climbed the short wall and peered over into the parking lot. No one was in sight, but an expensive-looking air car hovered a few meters above the ground not far from her entrance door. That can’t be good, she thought. Someone from the military, perhaps?