The Immortality Game

There was no sign of Tavik’s green car, the police, or the sky cycles. The muscles of her arms strained to hold her chin up above the wall, forcing her to make a choice. She pulled herself up and dropped to the dirt on the other side of the wall. The expensive car showed no movement or any other sign that someone had noticed her, so she cautiously made her way toward the entrance door. Her eyes never paused, flicking between the car, the door, Pig’s broken window, scanning the surrounding area.

Shouts from her right startled her, but it was just the three boys running back into the parking lot, one carrying a football. The card took a moment before deciding on a green aura for them. She didn’t know the boys well, but she’d seen them around enough to know they were harmless.

She picked up her pace as she drew near the door, and breathed a sigh of relief when she reached it safely, punched in her code, and pulled the door open. There was no sign of anyone in the entry hall, so she cautiously made her way to the stairs and started up.

As she climbed flight after flight, she kept imagining various traps that Tavik had set for her. Mobsters would trap her in the stairwell, or perhaps they would be waiting in the apartment. She ran into no one, though, and heard nothing until she approached the tenth floor landing. Here she heard voices, muffled by distance; one sounded menacing and the other scared…‌and speaking with a strange accent.

She considered fleeing back down the stairs, but decided to risk a peek through the doorway.

She saw one of the mobsters who had been with Tavik, the larger one, limned in red and pulling a gun from his coat. He was stepping back from a short, pudgy dark-haired man with a yellow aura. Everything became strange. Zoya felt her heart pounding like she’d never felt it before, a roaring thud within her mind, and it seemed she could hear the blood rushing through her veins. The slot card began feeding her an incredible amount of information, and somehow she could process it all—there was name, configuration, and history of the Gsh-18 handgun the mobster was holding to the small man’s head; trajectory lines pointing like lasers from the barrel of the gun; a multitude of tactical suggestions, listed in order of estimated success, and changing moment to moment with each movement the mobster made.

Zoya tried to turn around and flee down the stairs, but incredibly she found herself rushing at the mobster, taking an angle along the left side of the corridor to reduce his chance of catching her out of the corner of his eye. Her body was betraying her, moving of its own accord. Even more incredibly, everything she looked at appeared to be moving in slow motion, though she felt as if she were moving at full speed. Why am I doing this? I don’t want to do this. Am I insane?

Her heart continued to pound at normal speed, but the small man’s head turned toward her ever so slowly, his eyes widening. She was nearly there when the mobster’s head began to inch around in her direction. The tactical display blazed with choices, but she had no idea how to use the card or even if she was in control of her own body at all.

The mobster’s eyes finally caught sight of her and his mouth began to open just as she twirled her body and slammed the edge of her hand at full strength into his adam’s apple. The man reached toward his neck and began to fall. It happened so slowly that Zoya was able to recover, swing about, and kick the man in the groin. She saw the man’s eyes roll up, his head cracked against the wall, and he slid unconscious to the floor.

Zoya spun to confront the man cringing on his knees. His aura remained yellow, and he held up his hands as if to surrender, fear plain on his face. Zoya’s heart stopped thudding and time seemed to return to normal speed. Her body felt like her own to control again. What in God’s name just happened? She never took her eyes from the man as she knelt to retrieve the gun the mobster had dropped.

“Who are you?” she asked. She noticed that the man had strange clothing. It looked expensive, but not at all like the kinds of clothing worn by the rich people she saw downtown. The man was pale and slicked with sweat. He had hair even darker than Zoya’s, and thick expressive brows. His brown eyes were puffy with dark circles under them, as if he hadn’t slept in a week. He was flabby and pot bellied, which was unusual given that exercise sims and nanobots could make up for most inactivity.

The man’s mouth worked for a moment, making him look like a dying fish. “I…”

Zoya pointed the gun at the man’s knee. “I said, who are you?”

Moscow

Sunday, June 8, 2138

4:18 p.m. MSK