The Immortality Game

She rocked and rocked on the floor for what felt like hours before she became aware of a reddish glow through her tear-blurred eyes. She choked off another shuddering sob and gasped for air, knuckling the tears from her eyes with both hands…‌and before her, outlined in red, stood the short mobster with the long leather coat, a smirk plastered to his unshaven face.

No! No more! she thought, and held her hands up toward the man in silent surrender. I can’t take any more of this.

“Very artistic, yes?” the man said in a conversational tone, as if he were speaking about the weather. Zoya didn’t know what he meant until he nodded his head toward the place where Oksana lay. “You didn’t like it?”

Zoya wiped mucus from her mouth with the back of one hand and shook her head at the incomprehensible horror of what was happening.

The man sighed and held his hands up in a shrug. “I came up with it myself. You see, we use just a touch of it to, well, to extract information from reluctant, uh, customers. Never used a full syringe before.”

He stared silently at Zoya for a minute, apparently expecting some reaction from her. Eventually he put on a perplexed expression and leaned toward her. “Aren’t you at all curious about it? It was the warmth of your touch that triggered it. Would you like to try it? I don’t have another full amount, but I have enough—”

“Shut up, you…‌monster,” Zoya gasped. “She was…” Her eyes welled up again, but through her fresh sobs she found her voice. “Why do this? I never wanted your cards. I’d have handed them over any time if you’d only given me a chance. My mother. My brother. Why?”

The man listened carefully and frowned in thought when Zoya finished. “We never meant to hurt your mother. I wasn’t there, but I’m told it was Bunny. Sorry.” He held a hand out as if to help her stand. “Anyway, if you’re so eager to give them up, please…‌it just might save the rest of your family and friends.”

“What…” Zoya said, trying again to stifle her weeping. “What did you do to her?”

The man looked at Oksana’s body, then back at Zoya and grinned. “Nanobots. Programmed them specially for the old man. He likes creativity in his subordinates. Inject these in the blood stream and an outside touch can set them off. A small number of them will hurt like nothing ever felt before. A whole injection…‌well, I think the bots boiled her blood. What do you think?”

Zoya knew she should be horrified anew, but her mind was racing. She saw the Gsh-18 half a meter away hidden from the man’s view by the corner of the couch. She really had wanted to hand over the damned cards, all the way up till now. These bastards had gone too far, and the card in her slot was blinking a ninety percent chance that she could get the drop on her enemy. The thought was all she needed.

Time slowed with the pounding of her heart as her hand went for the pistol. The man’s eyes widened, and ever so slowly his hand reached into the breast of his coat. He never had a chance. Zoya put a bullet directly through his forehead and watched his dark blood spatter the ceiling and the wall behind him. She was heading for the exit before the man’s body hit the floor.

Moscow

Sunday, June 8, 2138

5:59 p.m. MSK

Seeing The Pyramid up close was unsettling for Tyoma. When he had pensive moods, which was often, he would listen to jazz while standing at the wall screen of his seventy-ninth floor apartment and gaze down at the brilliantly lit monstrosity that now filled the air car’s entire view screen. No buildings in Moscow could rival the size of the central skyscrapers, but The Pyramid made up for its lack of great height with ostentatious audacity. The glittering pyramid that gave the casino its name straddled the Moskva River near Gorky Park, while the twin arms of the accompanying hotel towered more than a hundred stories into the sky, curving upwards like a warped horseshoe or the claws of some grand alien crustacean.

Tyoma had always admired the view…‌from a safe distance. He knew, of course, that the casino was run by Lev Abramovich Romanishin, one of the two most powerful mob leaders in the city. Who else could force the city government to grant The Pyramid exclusive gambling rights within all of Russia while outlawing online betting? Who else could keep such a vast open area like Gorky Park free of refugees when such land was so desperately needed by the authorities? The only real question Tyoma’s friends had when discussing Romanishin was: did the Russian government control the mobster, or was it the other way around?

The shorter thug, Oskar, puffed vapor from his sim-cig and grinned at Tyoma. “You ever been here before? If not, you’re gonna love it.”

The air car dropped steadily toward a dark mouth in one side of the pyramid. Tyoma held a hand up to his eyes to shield them from the nearly blinding lights that flashed silver and blue from every pane of the structure.