Scene 17
Ivana stumbled into the woods, her leg threatening to buckle under her. By some providence, she had not been hit during the few moments without any sort of cover that to her had seemed like an eternity. Now she moved more deliberately, threading through the moss-covered trunks as quickly as she could with her untrustworthy leg, which was beginning to send hot fiery bolts of pain through her with every step. Now that she finally had time to assess the overall situation, Ivana was having to fight down a rising sense of panic. She was fleeing, injured and unarmed, in a place unfamiliar to her, pursued by a person – or maybe several people – that wanted to kill her. This wasn't the Tournament; there were no matter reconstructors here. She could die.
She paused behind a large spruce tree, trying to calm her breathing and think. She couldn't hide in these woods – there were dim, but well-lit enough to see anyone and there was no bushy understory. Running, she was prey – dumb and predictable, easy pickings. She had to do something unexpected, which meant attacking. Ivana knew fifteen different ways to kill someone with her bare hands, and she'd used all of them in the Tournament. Gun or no gun, she was a Gladiator, one of the most dangerous people in the world, and she was not going to die here!
Peeking around the trunk of the spruce, Ivana's mental pep talk came to a screeching halt. There were two large figures in carbonium plate armor and helmets creeping through the forest, peering around and up into the trees, sweeping their weapons along with their line of sight. One of them carried a rocket launcher, the other a shock rifle.
Shot through with icy dread, Ivana huddled back against the tree. Both had yellowish mechanical eyes, like Gorn. But judging by the fluidity of their movements, they were clearly human rather than combat 'bots. What was this? Ivana regretted that she would never know. Clearly, she was going to die. Being an experienced gladiator unfortunately also meant that she knew an impossible situation when she saw one. What had happened to Anna? Was she already dead? No matter, now. Blood trickled down her leg, soaking the stolen jeans. She waited, listening intently, ready to spring when they were close enough. With luck, one of the bastards would go down with her.
They never arrived. Out of the corner of her right eye, maybe twenty yards off, Ivana saw a flicker of movement, like a grey shadow sliding behind a tree. It had looked like a man, and a large one too, almost Gorn's size. But how could someone that big move so silently? An instant later, it moved again – adjacent to her, towards her pursuers. The man, if that was what it was, moved more quietly than a ghost. Ivana began to suspect that if she were its target, she would already be dead. A friend, then?
She peered cautiously around the tree again, and regretted it immediately – one of the two armored assassins spotted her the instant she did, and with a yell fired a rocket at the ground to the side of her tree. To avoid the explosion, Ivana had to dive the other way, feeling the heat of the blast against her legs. Rolling awkwardly in the loamy soil as she landed, she scrambled to get behind another trunk and get a peek at the positions of her attackers. They were running towards her now, and as the one with the shock rifle fired a shock ball where she had dodged, she was forced to dive away in the same direction to avoid the blast of the combo, once more frantically seeking cover.
Realizing she would soon run out of options, Ivana prepared to charge her pursuers, who through the smoke and dim light didn't seem to have an exact lock on her position. Just then, she heard Anna's voice yell from behind the attackers, ¨Hey you stupid motherfuckers, over here!¨ They wheeled, one firing off a rocket in the general direction of the voice. It exploded against a tree trunk before reaching Anna, and she taunted, ¨Is that your best? Try a bigger gun!¨ Oddly, the two seemed unsure of what to do, pausing as if pondering the decision.
In that instant, the grey shadow that Ivana had seen earlier darted out from behind a tree trunk right next to the man with the rocket launcher, coming at him with a flying kick in the back that landed with a resounding crash of metal and sent him flying towards his partner. At the sound, the other man spun and, seeing a large body flying at him, reflexively nailed it with a shock primary beam. The rockets-man fell with a thud, unmoving. Recovering quickly from the surprise, the other turned his shock rifle towards the grey shadow, which had flitted behind another tree. Calmly, the assassin shot a shock secondary ball just to the side of the tree. It all happened so quickly, but Ivana still had time to think he'll never escape that blast….
CRACK!
The assassin pitched forward, firing his shock primary shot intended to detonate the combo off into the air. Ivana leaped out from her cover towards him, unsure of what had happened but prepared to take his weapon; instead she stopped and smiled in pure relief. Coming through the trees ahead, a shock rifle held at the ready, was Gorn. Anna melted out of the woods into his path to join him. ¨Nice shot, chief,¨ she said quietly.
The three gathered around the two fallen assassins. Thanks to their heavy-duty armor, both were alive but thoroughly stunned – the shock rifles had been cranked up to their highest setting, enough to kill almost anyone in one shot. Gorn bent down to inspect the assassins, but Ivana suddenly said, ¨Wait. Did you see the guy? The uh….¨
¨What guy?¨ asked Gorn.
¨The other guy, the one that was here. He kicked one off these…¨ she indicated the unconscious assassins.
¨Good guy or bad guy, Ivana?¨ Gorn asked hurriedly, readying his shock rifle.
¨Good guy, I think. Didn't you see him?¨
Gorn and Anna gave each other a questioning look. ¨What did he look like?¨ Anna asked her.
¨I didn't see him very well. He moved really fast. And quiet. Almost like a ghost.¨
¨Hm.¨ Gorn didn't say more than that, but she could tell he didn't believe her. ¨It doesn't matter now anyways,¨ he said, ¨he's gone. Let's focus on what we've got here.¨ She nodded agreement. There would be plenty of time to talk about this later. Right now, she was bleeding.
Anna reached down and appropriated the shock rifle that one of the men still clutched. He moaned, his hands twitching feebly. Anna snorted in disgust, raised the shock rifle, and dispassionately shot him. He lay still.
¨Anna?¨ asked Ivana, surprised at her friend's sudden, uncharacteristic coldness, ¨do you think he'll, uh, survive that?¨
¨I doubt it. But we only need one to question; he was just a liability.¨ She stared straight through Ivana. ¨Why?¨
¨Wow. I mean, um, no reason.¨
¨Good. Take this rifle and stand guard, there may be more. Gorn, can you help me get this guy's helmet off?¨
¨They don't come off,¨ he said absently. ¨It's not a helmet.¨
¨What do you mean, it's not a helmet? It's made of carbonium, and it's on his head. Now we need to talk to this guy, ask him….¨
¨Anna,¨ he insisted, ¨that IS his head.¨
¨What are you trying to say?¨ she demanded. ¨They're not 'bots. You saw them move.¨
¨No,¨ Gorn agreed, his face troubled, ¨they're not bots. They're like me…. modified. Only more so.¨
¨Well, I'm taking a closer look either way,¨ said Anna. She crouched next to the fallen assassin, who was breathing a little more now, if jerkily, and struggling to move. Anna leaned towards his metal face to inspect it more closely. Once you knew what was going on, it was obvious it wasn't a helmet – fit too tight, with plates that covered all the contours of the man's skull. His yellowish mechanical eyes stared ahead, unblinking and unseeing, waiting for the brain to recover enough from the shock to begin bombarding it with visual information once again. The rest of his body appeared to also be custom-fitted with titanium and carbonium skin rather than wearing an armored suit, however this turned out to be an illusion caused by the superior form in which it fit his body. Clearly, the armor had been custom-made for only one person.
The yellowish eyes flickered and blinked, and the man craned his head to sit up. Anna stood up quickly and put her foot on his chest, pressing down with all her weight. ¨Don't move, you goddamned freak of nature, or we will shoot you without hesitation. Your buddies are dead, and you will be too, if you don't answer my questions. You hear me, you walking insult to God?¨ The man stared at her, giving no indication that he'd heard anything. ¨Gorn, shock rifle.¨
He passed the gun to Anna, which she pointed directly at the assassin's face before talking again. ¨Let me refresh your memory of something, you pathetic 'bot wannabe. You and your jackass buddies just tried to kill me and my friends. Given that fact, I wouldn't feel the least bit sorry turning that ugly head into a brand new alloy… made of carbonium and brains. I think I'll call it carbranium. So answer the fucking questions! Who do you work for?¨
This time the man responded, though perhaps not in a way they'd hoped or expected. He wheezed once, then again. After a few more fitful noises, it became clear that he was laughing. It was a sound made by a human throat, not synthesized, but somehow also totally mechanical, emotionless, like a machine's idea of a laugh. It made Ivana shiver. Then he spoke, his voice as cold and flat as that horrible laugh.
¨Interferers,¨ he said. ¨You have no idea what we are doing. You will be eliminated for standing in our way. Don't worry, it won't be long now.¨ He wheezed as if to start laughing again, and Anna made carbranium.
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After Ivana had thrown up, she turned to face her comrades. ¨I know,¨ she said, ¨I'm a gladiator. I see that kind of thing all the time in the Tournament so it shouldn't bother me. But it's not real! Well, I mean, it is, but it doesn't have real consequences.¨
¨It's normal, Ivana,¨ Gorn reassured her. ¨I don't like to see real death either. But you might say that I already have plenty of experience with it.¨
¨Ditto,¨ said Anna. ¨I'm sorry Ivana, I know that seemed very cold, but the man had to be killed. You understand, right?¨
¨Yeah,¨ she replied shakily, ¨I suppose I do. Let's forget it, okay? It's just too bad we didn't figure out who those guys were.¨
¨They are the Corrupt.¨
All three gladiators jumped at the unfamiliar voice, turning just in time to see a man emerge from the trees with no more sound than the wind might in ruffling a woman's hair. He was medium-sized, but built like a gladiator – solid and big-chested. He wore a full suit of hard Kevlar armor – outdated, but an excellent design, made of cloth and interlocking plates that covered his entire body, colored dirty grey and decorated with more strips of grey cloth that suggested urban camouflage. The man wore no helmet on his pale, shaved head, and his flinty grey eyes flashed alertly over a triangular metal grill that covered the part of his face where his mouth and nose should have been, fitting snugly into the high neck of his armor.
Anna pointed her shock rifle menacingly at him. ¨If I don't get a name in two seconds, I swear to fucking God…¨
¨Hunter.¨
¨ You with these goons?¨
¨Hardly.¨
¨Chatty, aren't you? So are you against them, or just taking a stroll around the park?¨
¨You might say that I have made it my life's work to be against them. Will that suffice? I prefer conversing without a weapon in my face.¨
¨Anna,¨ interjected Ivana, ¨this is him! This is the guy I tried to tell you about. He helped us.¨
Anna kept the shock rifle raised, eyeing the man suspiciously, deciding. Finally she took it down. ¨Good enough for me. Where you from, Hunter?¨
¨Listen,¨ he said seriously, addressing them all, ¨I would like to tell you about that, and who these…people are – but we need to get out of here right now. When Corrupt fall, they know right away, and more come.¨
¨How soon?¨ asked Gorn.
¨Any minute now, from the closest Terminal. I can help guarantee your safety for awhile, if we can get to Victoria.¨
Ivana looked at her teammates. ¨Uh, guys? Maybe we could take them, but this isn't the Tournament, so in the event that we can't, the consequences would be more permanent. As captain of this squad, I'm calling a strategic retreat.¨
Gorn grimaced. ¨Seconded, and while I do hate running, I know how to get us out of here. Let's bind up that wound of Ivana's and get going.¨
He led them back to the destroyed pagoda, Ivana limping along with support from Hunter. In the white gravel walkway, she noted the crumpled form of the first attacker they had seen, figuring Gorn had taken care of him. Instead of going down the path from where they had come, Gorn led them past the pagoda and back into the woods, taking a faint trail that gradually sloped downhill. Ivana heard birds singing, and realized the forest was beginning to lighten – it was morning.
After a few minutes of moving down the trail as quickly as they could, considering Ivana's condition, Anna's curiosity got the best of her. ¨So, big fella,¨ she said, ¨you have a magic translocator booth tucked away in these woods somewhere?¨
¨Not exactly. Today we'll be making our dramatic escape in something a little… slower.¨
¨Thanks, that really explains it.¨
¨Hey, I didn't want to spoil the surprise, but since you insist… we're going to catch a boat to Victoria.¨
¨A boat? Jesus, Gorn, that could take hours! And wasn't Victoria destroyed?¨
¨They'll never expect us to use something so low-tech. And Victoria's only mostly destroyed. Look, we're already getting close…¨
It was true. Through the trees up ahead, Ivana could see the glint of delicate early-morning light off the steely waters of the strait and she thought she heard the lapping of gentle waves against the rocky shoreline. In a few more minutes, they had arrived at a small rock cove, a protected inlet maybe twenty meters wide with a two-pronged wooden dock attached to the rocks on either side, and a small sailboat moored in the middle. The curved white prow was emblazoned with the words ¨The Script Kitty.¨
¨Hey,¨ commented Ivana, ¨Isn't this stealing?¨
¨Yes,¨ Gorn admitted, ¨but we're going to leave the boat where someone will find it, and they'll get it back. I don't feel so bad, since we have no choice.¨
¨Yeah, but do you know how to sail?¨