The Immortality Game

“Bunny! Stop!” Tavik yelled. He shoved Irina away and reached for his shard pistol. Bunny’s eyes swung around and met Tavik’s. The grin widened. Tavik brought the gun up, but hesitated as he thought of Viktor. If he shot Bunny here, aboveground, there was no way Viktor would buy any story he had to tell, and Viktor would almost surely kill him. The hesitation cost him. Irina leaped onto his back, and as he tried to keep his balance the shard pistol skittered across the floor beneath a row of chairs. He grabbed hold of her forearms and flung her over his shoulder onto the thick carpeting.

“Here!” It was Zoya who had yelled, her voice sounding funny, as if her mouth was half-full of sand. She was holding up what looked like an overly long slot card. “This is what you want. Take it and leave us be!” She flung it and it sailed past Tavik’s head. Bunny had turned his attention back to Zoya again and was advancing on her. “You’ve taken everything from me,” she cried out. “Everything!”

When Bunny got close, Zoya kicked him hard in the stomach. He gave an ‘oof’ sound but stood his ground, lashed out with a fist, and caught her in the chin. Zoya spun back and landed in a pile of chairs.

Tavik looked toward the place where his shard pistol had vanished, decided he didn’t have time to look for it, and rushed at Bunny’s back. “Motherfucker!” he yelled and rammed his shoulder into Bunny’s side as the big man turned. He landed atop Bunny, their faces so close that their cheeks brushed. Bunny looked into his eyes for a moment, then cracked his forehead into Tavik’s. Everything went gray, then faded to black.

Marcus would have given up and called his father if not for the fact that when he exited the metro station he had caught a flash of movement from the corner of his eye and seen Tavik running in the distance. With a groan at his own idiocy, he had set off at a jog, the only thing he could manage. He saw the gangster leave the sidewalk and enter a crumbling, gray building with a sky cycle parked in the lot. Now as Marcus drew near, a blonde woman ran from the entrance door. She stopped near the cycle and held her hands up to her face.

Marcus looked from the door to the woman and back to the door. It’s suicide to go in there, he thought, and pushed through the door anyway.

The room was a mess. Plastic chairs were tossed about every which way. Tavik looked either dead or unconscious against the far wall. Zoya was trying to raise herself to a sitting position, a hand on her jaw, but she seemed too dazed to defend herself from the huge gangster who towered over her.

“No!” he yelled, hoping to distract Bunny. He ran forward but got his feet tangled in the legs of a chair and fell flat on his face. Lifting his head up, he was astonished to see the long slot card that he had found outside Zoya’s apartment building lying just under his nose. An odd feeling of déjà vu struck him and he snatched up the card as he pushed himself back to his feet.

Bunny had lifted Zoya up off the floor and was holding her up in the air with both of his hands circled around her neck. Zoya’s legs kicked feebly at Bunny’s abdomen and her face reddened as Bunny’s fingers squeezed together.

Ah, Dios, help me now! Marcus charged at Bunny and leaped up onto his wide back. He latched one arm around the big man’s neck and tried to bite into his neck. Pain jagged through his mouth as his teeth came down on metal, and he understood that he had bitten Bunny on his slot.

His eyes caught Zoya’s, but there was no recognition there. Snot sprayed from her nose as she tried vainly to breathe.

The edges of the long slot card dug into Marcus’s palm as he clung desperately to Bunny’s shoulders. He couldn’t think straight, his mind overcome with panic, with fear for himself and for Zoya, with the sheer helplessness of not knowing how to stop the massive gangster. Several times he jabbed the edge of the slot card into the side of Bunny’s face, trying to catch him in the eye. He saw the bloody teeth marks around Bunny’s slot, and his mind in its desperation seized on one final, unfathomable idea—he jabbed the slot card into the gangster’s neck. It took three tries before he could get the card into the slot and jam it home, but the effect was instantaneous. Bunny’s body went rigid. Unable to maintain his grip, Marcus slid to the floor. Zoya dropped down in a heap, coughing and gasping for air. Bunny staggered to one side and tripped over the dais. His body flopped and jerked on the carpeting, only the whites of his eyes showing. The spasms slowed and Bunny’s big body curled up into a fetal position and became still.

Moscow

Sunday, June 8, 2138

9:30 p.m. MSK

Marcus scrambled across the carpet to where Zoya coughed and wheezed, one hand cradling her throat and the other her jaw. She looked terribly pale to Marcus, except for the raw redness of her neck and…