The Immortality Game

Zoya looked back down the tunnel but couldn’t see any sign of her pursuers. Calm down, she told herself, and tried to get her breathing under control. She watched Leonid step up onto the makeshift stairs and was surprised when they didn’t collapse. Taking another deep breath, she carefully stepped around the bodies and followed Leonid up the creaking steps to the platform. She gasped when she saw that many more of the corpses were splayed out in the station. They were huddled in small groups around the pillars. It smelled like a charnel house, but faintly enough that she knew these people had died long ago. The only sound was a rustling so low that at first she thought she might be imagining it, until she spotted the red gleam of the lamplight reflected from the eyes of several rats.

Zoya caught Leonid by the arm. “What happened here?”

He shrugged off her hand and knelt by the nearest body. “Look,” he muttered, lifting something near the skull. Zoya edged closer and a small metallic box implanted in the left side of the skull, the slot interface, and a tiny wire ran from the slot toward the nearby pillar.

“Meshing did this?” She thought back to what she had seen at the station near her apartment. There had been Mesh addicts there, but there had also been people to tend to them. “Where were their minders?”

“They all chose to succumb,” Leonid said.

“But…‌why?”

Leonid looked about, seeming to examine the darkness of the station. “You think this is an easy life? Begging for food up above? Making stew from rat meat?”

The vehemence in Leonid’s voice made Zoya take a step back. “Why stay then? Why not live with the rest of us out there?”

“We don’t belong there. You are not our people.”

“We are all Russians, no?”

He shook his head and rubbed a hand at the back of his head. Zoya remembered the scar where his slot should have been, and everything clicked into place.

“That’s why you stitched shut your slots.” She pointed at the bodies around the pillar.

Leonid nodded. “We chose to live.”

A distant clatter came from the tunnel from which they had come. Leonid stood up and pointed. “That way is the exit.”

Zoya took a step, then turned back. “You won’t come?”

“I’ll shutter the lamp. They won’t find me.”

“Perhaps I should hide with you. When they give up—”

“Go,” he said, shaking his head. “You belong up there.”

“But I have no light. I can’t see to climb the escalator.”

He shrugged. “Go carefully then.”

She turned and tried to pick out a path through the bodies with the dim light. The center of the long hall seemed to offer the best chance of clear floor, so she stepped carefully in that direction. Darkness enveloped her and her ears picked out the faint squeaking of the rats. She placed her steps carefully to avoid tripping over the dead, and every few moments she looked back just so she could see light again. Leonid held the lamp higher and pointed toward the exit, and she realized how easy it was to lose the direction in the gloom. She corrected her course and imagined that she could just make out the ticket booth at the end of the platform.

The light vanished. Zoya clapped her hands to her mouth to stifle a scream. She turned her head back toward Leonid, but there was only utter blackness. Bastard, she thought. Acid flooded her mouth and she spat it out. Don’t panic!

Now light flared behind her again, but when she looked it came from the distant tunnel entrance. Tavik! Her stomach clenched and she lurched forward two steps, dropped to her knees, and retched. Wiping her mouth with her coat sleeve, she wondered if she shouldn’t grab a blanket from one of the corpses and pretend to be one of the dead. The thought made her retch again. Sweat beaded her clammy forehead.

The combat card! She’d been ignoring its various messages while she concentrated on following Leonid through the tunnels, but now she wondered if it could help in some manner. She noticed a red arrow pointing in the direction she thought must be the exit. When she turned her head the arrow turned as well, and tiny letters to the side of the arrow changed as her head swung around. It’s a compass! A giggle escaped her lips. She still couldn’t see a thing in the direction the arrow pointed, but she decided to trust it and began walking ever so slowly. She held her hands thrust out in front of her and stepped over bodies when the toes of her boots found them. The light behind her grew stronger and the sound resolved itself into that of running feet.