Chapter 35: The Return

Miguel was half expecting to be taken immediately back into the room where he had participated in the last contest and get wired up again. However, it appeared that Bratislav had other ideas; he began to lead the small group of players back towards the hall where they had practised their combat skills the previous day.

As they went, it occurred to him that Sid had not been among the group who Bratislav had just spoken to. And just as the thought came into his head, Bratislav stopped, holding open the door of the gymnasium for the others to walk in ahead of him. “I’ll leave you with Sid Geraghty, my friend. Work hard.”

“Wait – aren’t we going straight away to complete this tie break, Brat?”

Bratislav paused, his eyes flicking to one of the other players and then the next as they filed past, and then he stepped back and beckoned for Miguel to come closer. “You might have thought so,” he said in a quiet voice. “But something has gone wrong.”

“With Demon Hunters?”

Bratislav nodded. “I guess. All I know is that they weren’t able to close the simulation that you were just in, even when all the players had come out. A glitch of some kind, I guess. That entire game world is still running.”

Miguel briefly thought of the vast, monstrous Razor-lizard Rex terrorizing the landscape alone, its hunger rising by the hour, and shuddered. “So, they’ll put us right back in there?”

This time, Bratislav shook his head. “I don’t think so. Every challenge is a new arena. They’ve just... well, somehow they fucked up. Or more likely, something fucked them up.”

“Sabotage?”

“Yeah. Nobody says things like this out loud, but the popular theory is that it was some folks from Technoburbia that did it. Espionage, you know? There are rumors that the generals there have created some kind of copy of Demon Hunters, and that they are using it to train mercenaries. They might have the technology to hack into our contests somehow, too. And it won’t stop there. They will destroy all of our city’s virtual recreation, workplaces, schools... you name it.”

Miguel frowned and shook his head slowly. “Those assholes. They need to be stopped.”

“Perhaps, but...” The others had now entered the gym, and Bratislav regarded his friend carefully. “You said you saw something unusual in there. Can you tell me about it?”

“Yeah. There were a couple of people inside. In the bunker we found. It was... weird. Like, they said they weren’t part of the game, and had got there by accident.”

“Whew.” Bratislav’s eyes widened, and the young man looked away towards the lake for a moment. “That fits the theory. If it’s true, it’s really worrying. It all adds to the real reason we are here, actually.”

Recalling his conversation with Aluna back in the cave, Miguel regarded his friend carefully. “Are you talking about the war?”

Bratislav nodded. “Yes. You and several other groups are being prepared for a special kind of war. We have had one front in the real world for a long time, the border between the two cities’ areas of control. And even though we are stronger than them, it’s hard to make any real progress. Not everyone trusts the city’s response, you know. It is too slow, too traditional. But things are changing, man. And the new war is going to take place on two fronts – real, and digital.”

“And Kampion is training people for this?”

“Sure. People don’t trust the, uh... leadership. Hers and other groups are preparing to take their shot. She’s going to need several squads of a new kind of trooper. People with the skills and creativity to move between the two.”

“So, I’m to be a grunt in this new force?”

Bratislav give a half smile. “Well, we are hoping that you will lead a squadron when the time comes.”

Miguel paused for a moment, and then nodded decisively. “I’ll be ready,” he said.

With this, he turned his back on his childhood friend, and walked towards the gymnasium.

Sid was standing near the doorway, holding a long iron pole in both hands as Miguel walked in. There was a sense of coldness in his manner, and Miguel immediately sensed that he couldn’t count on the camaraderie of the arena carrying forward to their training.

“Hey, Sid,” he said, beginning to walk past.

But Sid held out the pole in front of his chest. “Stop there, Rubio.”

Miguel looked around at the bearded man. “What’s up?”

“Miguel. Why is it that once again, I take all the hits and get killed, and you run off with the girl.”

“What? It wasn’t like that, man. We were trying to help you down there by the shore. I shot they guy you were fighting on the jetty, didn’t I?”

“Well it, seems you got what you wanted, anyway.”

Miguel scoffed. “Look, it sucks that you got shot, but I didn’t know that Chloe’s team would get out of the water and back on their feet so soon. If anything, I assumed they would run for the trees like we did. And when you got hit, I was shooting them with my crossbow.”

“I noticed that you didn’t hit her.”

“Well, I...” Miguel hesitated. Sid had a point about that, he knew. He had a reluctance to fight his former ally.

He held up his hands. “Yeah, okay... my bad, dude. But I hit her teammates, and then me and Aluna carried on with the plan. We would have taken down Chloe and her team, if the game hadn’t, well...” He tailed off, and shrugged.

Sid glared back at him in silence.

“So... training?” prompted Miguel, keen to change the subject.

Sid looked him up and down, eyes narrowing, and Miguel glared back, a sense of injustice rising in his chest.

“Well?” Miguel was getting impatient now.

Sid now raised the pole and pointed towards the far corner, where Tarja, Aluna and Noah were standing by a set of spears. “I’ve decided that you could all develop your teamwork and communication a bit more. Over there. Tarja will explain the task.”

“Fine.” Miguel practically spat the word, and began to walk over in that direction.

He hadn’t realized that Sid would be quite so salty about getting killed in the task. It was all part of the contest, wasn’t it? And all for the greater good, as Bratislav had just been saying.

As he walked, he pondered another detail that he was missing. He now knew that Kampion was training people to engage in some kind of elicit warfare with the rival city of Technoburbia, whether she had actually started to do so or not. And he was all in with that idea – Technoburbia was the enemy. Every child in New Baravia had been taught so from a young age.

The thing is, who was Chloe working for, and what did her employers want?

That remained a mystery.

“This is all about hand gestures and body language,” said Tarja. The blonde woman was standing alongside Noah – the tall, paunchy man with the wispy moustache who had rapidly got himself killed by a razor-lizard in the previous task. Miguel noticed that unlike Sid, Noah hadn’t complained about the outcome of the task, and seemed quite relaxed.

Miguel was standing beside Aluna, and the pair were opposite Tarja and Noah, with about around ten feet of space between then at the end of the gymnasium. Tarja was holding a spear.

“Now, spread out a little,” she continued, so that we form the four corners of a square.

The others complied. Miguel felt impatient to get his hands on a weapon again and begin to boost his skills, but on some level he could see the value of what Tarja was wanting to do.

“Now,” she continued, “I am going to throw this to one of you, and you’re going to catch it.”

“Isn’t that...” Miguel was about to say ‘stupidly dangerous’, but recalling the dressing down he had received on their first training session, he fell silent.

“Yes, Schmoop?” said Tarja, her eyebrows raised.

“Nothing. Carry on.”

“Very well. You’re all going to need to focus. You can catch this thing if you are ready, but if you don’t pay attention and don’t read the signals, you’ll miss it, and potentially get injured. In the field, we need to be able to read our teammates’ actions before they even happen. That’s how we coordinate.”

This time, Miguel felt that he couldn’t bite his tongue. “Tarja, wouldn’t it make sense to develop some hand signals or something? So we know what our allies are going to do, and the enemy don’t?”

She narrowed her eyes, twirling the spear in her hand for a moment, and then passing it from one hand to the next. “And what if we have our hands full, Miguel? Or get injured, or have some crazy giant lizard bite our hands off? What then? Huh? Huh?”

Miguel wasn’t entirely sure if she was joking, but it didn’t take long to find out.

Tarja looked towards Aluna as she continued: “We have to be focused, all the time, for the smallest shift in body language. We need to read each other, and understand that actions can speak volumes.” With this, she leaned back for a fraction of a second and then flung the spear directly towards Aluna’s stomach. It wasn’t quite full strength, but the best Aluna could do was to leap to one side. She only narrowly managed to get out of the way; the spear then slammed home into the flooring of the gymnasium with a deep thud, where it quivered for several seconds.

“What the hell, Tarja?” Aluna exclaimed. “That could have gone right through me!”

Tarja folded her arms. “That’s what I’m talking about,” she said calmly. “You need to read the signs.”

Grumbling, Aluna pulled at the spear, but it was so firmly embedded in the floor that she struggled to free it.

Now, Sid was walking over. “What’s up?”

“Tarja just tried to fucking kill me,” said Aluna angrily. “She threw this spear right at me.”

Tarja shrugged, looking as if she was trying not to smile. “Part of the training.”

Sid looked from one to the other. “All right. I think we all need to remember that Tarja missed out on the chance of, well...” – he paused and glanced at Miguel – “of getting to feel like part of the team.”

“I’m not bitter, you know,” said Tarja. Her voice was cold, with barely suppressed anger, it seemed to Miguel. It was very unlike the manner that she had shown in the earlier tasks.

“Okay, okay,” said Sid, making a chopping sideways motion with his hands. “Time out. I will work on the teamwork skills with Aluna and Noah. Tarja, I want you to take Miguel for an endurance test outside. Understood?”

Tarja raised one eyebrow. “I can do that.”

Miguel noticed that Sid didn’t look to him for comment, instead handing both Tarja and himself a clipboard and sheet with their stats. And after a brief and awkward silence, Tarja and Miguel both turned away and began to walk back across the huge hall, clutching these in their hands

They walked in silence. Miguel glanced sideways at Tarja a couple of times as they walked. Her eyes were fixed ahead, her head held high, her face hard to read.

”I guess you watched the contest?” said Miguel at last, breaking the silence as they pushed their way through the double door and back outside.

“Ha!” Tarja give a bitter half laugh. “I think you know how I feel about that. I should have been there. But yeah, naturally I had to watch. I tell you, I’d have lasted longer than Noah, and I’d have taken out your brunette friend – you know I would. I owe her.”

“I thought you and Chloe put that behind you?”

Tarja looked to the side at Miguel at this as they kept walking towards the lake, but said nothing.