The Immortality Game

“Is there a way out?” Zoya cried. She yanked the gun from her waistband and whirled about to point it at their pursuers. “Stop, Tavik!”

Marcus turned in time to see the smaller man skid to a halt. The huge man looked like he intended to come lumbering on until the smaller one—Tavik apparently—grabbed him by the arm and pulled him to a stop as well. “Don’t shoot,” Tavik said. “We don’t mean to hurt you.”

“You’re too late for that, fucker!” she screamed. Marcus thought she was going to shoot, but she stood still, her arms thrust steadily out in front of her, the gun aimed at the bigger man.

“You’re not a killer,” Tavik said. “Right, Zoya? Just give us the cards and get out of here. I swear we won’t touch you.”

Zoya adjusted her aim but otherwise remained still. Marcus looked at the women on the platform. Two of them were attempting to shield themselves behind stacks of equipment, one with pink and green neon hair was hefting a long-necked guitar (Marcus knew little about music, but he assumed it was what was called a bass), and the fourth was vanishing through a doorway as pitch black as the wall. He tugged lightly on Zoya’s jacket.

“There’s an exit here,” he whispered.

“Then go,” she replied.

“You’re coming, too, aren’t you?”

She began to edge backward, keeping the gun leveled on the pair of men.

“Give me the cards, Zoya!” Tavik cried again, a note of desperation in his voice. “I must have them.”

“You can go to hell, Tavik,” Zoya said in a measured tone. “After what you’ve done, you’ll get nothing from me…‌except this perhaps.” She jerked the gun as she spoke the last words.

“Don’t you want this to end?” Tavik said. “Please, just drop the cards there and go. Otherwise we’ll have to keep chasing you.” He and his partner were pacing forward at the same speed as Zoya. Tavik pulled a gun from his jacket and leveled it at Marcus. “You don’t want your friend to get hurt, do you?”

Marcus had reached the doorway, but now he froze and stared at the hole at the end of the barrel of the vicious-looking gun.

“You’re a bastard. You shoot him, I shoot you.”

Tavik slid around the end of the bandstand. “A standoff. It doesn’t have to end ugly. No one needs to get hurt. Give me the—”

Marcus saw what happened as if in slow motion, but he still couldn’t believe his eyes. After Tavik had passed her by, the woman with the bass guitar had gripped it by the end of its neck and swung it around to smash against the back of Tavik’s head. It made a jangling smacking sound and Tavik pitched forward onto the floor with a cry.

“Get out of here,” yelled the woman. “Go!”

Marcus saw the huge mobster turn on the woman and take a swing at her with a meaty fist. The woman snapped her head back and brought up the guitar again to block a second swing.

Zoya grabbed Marcus’s arm and pulled him through the doorway.

“Shouldn’t we help her?” Marcus said.

Zoya didn’t respond. A dark hallway led in two directions, and Zoya took the right-hand way.

“You could shoot that big guy, at least.”

Zoya picked up her pace. “You want the gun, you can have it, but I’m getting out of here now!”

Marcus kept expecting to hear a scream from the woman behind them, or at least the sound of pursuit, but so far all he heard was the thumping of his heart in his chest and his panting as he scurried to keep up with Zoya. They passed several doorways until they came to one at the end of the passage that had a backlit red sign that the translator told him read ‘exit’. Zoya yelled for the door to open, but it didn’t; it appeared to be an old-fashioned style of door with a metal push-bar. Marcus heard a shout from behind them as Zoya slammed the bar down and shoved the door open.

They stumbled, blinking, onto a cracked and weed-choked sidewalk. A handful of pedestrians stared at them, but Zoya wasn’t paying attention. Her gaze was fixed on a vast complex of buildings straddling the river ahead of them. Even in his frightened state Marcus had to admit it was a beautiful sight—a huge gleaming pyramid, and two larger, brightly-lit spires hooking oddly into the sky.

“That’s where we need to go,” Zoya said.

“What?” was all Marcus could manage.

Zoya pointed at the absurd structures. “That’s where all these bastards work…‌where my brother worked. That’s where this will end.”

Marcus had a sinking feeling in his stomach. He didn’t want to go there. He wanted to find someplace safe and eat something and sleep for about a month. But all Zoya seemed to want to do was get herself killed. “We shouldn’t go there,” he murmured.

Zoya looked at him and pointed down the small road. “You go that way and catch a taxi. This is for me to deal with.” Without waiting for a response, she turned the opposite direction and took off running.

«Let her go, Marcus,» said his father. «Do what she said.»