Solarversia: The Year Long Game (61 page)

In front of her, Arkwal lurched into action. He placed his telescope onto a couple of gooey hands that had risen out of Emperor Mandelbrot’s base. The wide end of the ’scope beamed a projection onto the giant screen in the north stand of the stadium. A strange-looking man came into view and addressed the crowd.

“Greetings, Super Nova 2020! Congratulations on winning the first Year-Long Game. My name is Mandelbrot. You’re seeing me as I once existed, tens of thousands of years ago, before I evolved. There’s a long-established tradition within the Intergalactic Gaming Commission that says the second Year-Long Game always takes place in Nakk-oo’s solar system. The Game that commences in 2024 will be far more complex than the one you just played, and as Grand Champion, you’ll help to design it. So, player number one, congratulations on your win. But please understand, that as far as you and humankind are concerned, the Year-Long Game has only just begun.”

During the walk to the float for the victory lap of the stadium, Nova’s mind went into overdrive. She had a thousand ideas for games — but the knowledge that the next one was to take place on Nakk-oo had thrown her. Also, her new number felt weird. It was the most coveted spot in the Player’s Grid, worth millions in sponsorship alone. Yet it represented another significant change in her relationship with Sushi. They’d no longer be grid buddies, snuggling up together in ring 359.

Not only would she be leaving Sushi behind, she suddenly realised, but her new position also meant that she’d be diagonally across from The Beanstalker. She only hoped she wasn’t in too many number groups with Holly. The thought didn’t bear thinking about. At her side, Burner spoke at a million miles per hour, while Charlie, who seemed as overwhelmed as her, lent her an arm for support. Her parents couldn’t stop beaming at them both.

Once they were aboard, the float lurched forward to begin its slow circuit on the outermost ring of the stadium. The giant screens displayed February’s completed portrait. Right in the centre, wearing her gladiator outfit, was Nova, surrounded by smaller portraits of the other finalists. Loud popping sounds emanated from the stands as balls of confetti and glitter were fired into the air to rain down on her. Lasers lit up the sky and fireworks banged and whizzed above their heads. Beside Nova, Burner kept bowing to people as if
he
was Grand Champion. Her mum had taken to waving like the Queen.

Her dad leaned in, wearing the headset that Zhang had placed onto his head. “These things can be rather fun once you’ve worked out how to use them. Wherever I look, there’s a sea of information. It’s like it’s always been there, but was invisible until now. I can zoom in to someone and see the messages they’re sending. Multicoloured words are flying from one side of the stadium to the other. I can see lyrics radiating from the speakers and tell whether objects are hot or cold. I feel as if my brain’s had an upgrade.”

Nova squeezed his hand and left him to his augmented paradise. She loved that he was finally getting a glimpse into her world. She already knew what she’d do with some of the winnings — buy her parents headsets of their own. The best ones money could buy. Perhaps they might even play the next Game? It would be so cool for the three of them to play together; it would be a family activity that would bring them closer.

It felt like a perfect moment. She contemplated the concept while she waved at the crowd. Were perfect moments even possible? Had anyone in the history of mankind ever experienced one? Did this qualify? She’d worked with friends, family, and millions of strangers from around the world to foil a major terrorist attack,
and
she’d been crowned Grand Champion of Solarversia, ahead of a hundred million other people.

Yet, she realised, even
this
moment was imperfect. Her Solarversia Sister wasn’t there celebrating with her, and never would be, not in person. Now
that
would have been perfection itself.

***

Casey Brown didn’t know what to think. He knew his brain function was pretty far from what would be described as normal. It stopped being that a long time ago. But it still processed thoughts, just like it’d always done. And right now, he kept having the same one:
why didn’t he shock me just then?

He was six rows back from the running track at the Olympic Stadium in London for the Solarversia closing ceremony, where the winner’s float had just started its victory lap. It would have been a great seat in normal circumstances, would have cost top dollar for sure. Packed to its full capacity of eighty thousand, the place was buzzing. People were having the time of their life. Casey wondered whether he was the only person experiencing something closer to a nightmare.

He’d woken up yesterday morning in a self-driving car on the way to Dallas/Fort Worth airport, just like Father had said he would. He’d received a remotely administered electric shock every hour, just like Father had said he would. The flight, the transfer, the check-in at the hotel — everything had gone to plan.

The old man seemed to have found a sweet spot regarding the intensity of the hourly shocks. They reminded Casey of the Chinese burns that characterised recess at elementary school — they were painful enough to remind him that he didn't want to experience another one, painful enough for him to plead for it to stop.

Forty-five minutes into each hour he’d be nonchalant.
I can take it
, he'd think,
give me your worst
. The second it started he’d beg for it to end, for it not to intensify. He wished he was stronger.
Take it like a man
, he'd will himself through gritted teeth.
Take it like a warrior
. But it was no good. He was no longer a warrior, not of the Magi, not of any
one
or any
thing
. He was no longer his own man. He was nothing more than a slave to the Order.

The first part of the evening’s mission had been the trickiest. He’d got into the stadium OK. The guards had pulled him to one side when the machine had detected his arm and noticed his box. But once they’d realised that the arm was a prosthetic, that the box contained nothing more than a load of Solarversia-themed confectionary, and Casey had offered them one of his simpleton expressions — a half-witted smile and a shrug — they’d immediately relinquished him with something of an apologetic tone and wished him a pleasant evening. And the special ceramic darts — the ones tipped with nanoengineered blood cells and hidden in the heel of his shoe — hadn’t even been noticed.

His early arrival and VIP ticket — secured at great cost on eBay — had allowed him to stash the harmless box under Nova’s parents’ seats before he’d made his way to his other seat for the rest of the evening. Having loaded the special darts into his hand during a visit to the washroom — one for each of Nova and Artica, and a spare should either of them miss — he’d been primed to carry out his mission, to fulfil his destiny. Except destiny had taken a funny turn about fifteen minutes ago.

A rush had gone down Casey’s spine the moment he spied Nova Negrahnu on the giant screens. Wearing the black bodysuit with her hair swept back like that, she was no longer a cartoonish avatar who lived in a giant block of squares on a floating palace. She was a real girl made of flesh and blood. More real than he was. As real as Mary-Ann had been. Flawed and fallen, but human.

The realisation had caused time to stop functioning normally. Everything going on around him at the stadium had melted away into nothingness while he’d stared at her image. Nova was someone else’s Mary-Ann. People somewhere loved her as their own.

Seeing her out there, alone in her rig, valiantly battling the crazy old man, he’d seen the truth about himself for the first time in a long while. Casey Brown wasn’t a killer. His soul hadn’t left him after all. Electric shocks be damned — Theodore could fry him on the spot for all he cared. He’d rather die than commit murder. He didn't care what the pain could do to his body.
Bring it on
, he thought. And this time he knew he meant it.

All thoughts of completing his mission had evaporated at that point. He couldn’t have cared less if Theodore had won, but he knew he didn't want anyone else to die. Wallace and Ivan, the victims of the various attacks, the two guys who had failed the initiation … enough was enough. No more deaths.

He’d spent the next fifteen minutes cheering with the crowd. Cheering from the bottom of his heart — and meaning it. He’d even got involved in trying to solve the puzzles — had clapped harder and whooped louder than anyone each time one was solved. He knew Theodore would be as good as his word, however insane. If the puzzles were solved, the bombs wouldn’t go off.

As the float pulled round the corner into the home straight he knew it was game over for Theodore and the Order. The darts might have incorporated the latest self-directing military technology, but they weren’t
that
good. If Casey pointed his arm at the ground, it wasn’t like they could fly where they wanted. He’d learned that at the shooting range. A series of test shots had exposed their limitations. The darts could only self-correct themselves ten percent or so. They weren’t infused with magic.

The only thing concerning him now was why he was still alive. Why hadn’t he been shocked? The shocks still worked here in the UK. His brain was still wired into the Epicenter. He’d received a shock forty minutes earlier, on the hour, like clockwork. Perhaps Theodore had killed himself when Banjax had been defeated. Perhaps the Compound had been found and raided like the first one had. He decided to find out.

If you can hear me, old man, this is my message. Fuck you. Fuck you sideways. You don’t own me. You hear that? You don’t own me and you never did. You lost, in front of the world, you crazy old bastard. Wanna shock me? Go ahead. I don’t care any more. Fry me to death. There’s nothing left for me here. The one thing I won’t do is your bidding.

As the float pulled closer he caught sight of Nova. She looked radiant, beautiful even. Artica stood next to her, waving at the crowd. Casey smiled and clapped, ecstatic to have made the right decision. Then he noticed something. At first he thought it was coming from one of the drones overhead, or maybe even one of the lasers — a beam of red light. It took him a couple of seconds to realise that
he
was the source of the light. His knuckle had popped open.

Perhaps it was all the clapping. Theodore had mentioned something about the calibration of the targeting mechanism back at the range. It sounded like a sensitive piece of technology, and he’d probably shaken it loose in all the excitement. He clasped his other hand over his fist and shook his hands together while he cheered.

But as the truck pulled in front of him, he felt an almighty spasm ripple through his body from the top of his skull to the tips of his toes. It felt different to the previous shocks he’d received. His temples still felt like they were on fire, and it had robbed him of all breath, but this attack was moulding his body into a particular form, extending his arm outward, bolting his eyelids wide open and clamping his jaw shut. It felt like a powerful being shaping his anatomy from the inside.

Everyone around him stood up at once to cheer the victor. Another seizure coursed through his body, making him join them. The pain in his jaw was so fierce he couldn’t make a sound, not even a whimper. He watched as the little red dot of his laser beam performed a drunken dance, jerking from place to place. He struggled to regain control of his bodily functions, but it was useless, his body was as good as frozen in place.

People around him stopped clapping and started pointing. Questions were being asked. Was he alright? Did he need assistance of some description? What was the red light coming out of his knuckle? Whispered questions became shouts and screams. One of the drones swooped closer, and then a couple more. He watched the red dot sober up and settle down. It was aimed directly at Nova’s heart. He felt an electrochemical impulse travel from his brain to his arm, and a soft recoil as the dart left its chamber. A split second later his arm jerked to the left and fired again.

***

For a brief moment Nova thought that her dad had become mentally unhinged by his synaesthetic meanderings. He thrust his head in her direction and stammered a few unintelligible words. Before she could ask him if everything was alright, he’d leapt through the air and smashed her into Arty. The three of them tumbled to the floor in a heap, and for a few seconds her world went black.

The float jerked to standstill. She gasped for breath and tasted the coppery blood of a bitten tongue. Above her the cloudy sky was dappled with light from the lasers that continued to beam, seemingly ignorant of her plight. There were drones everywhere, hovering in a diamond formation as one. Was synchronised floating to become a new Olympic sport?

A couple of Charlies appeared in her blurred vision. Had someone flicked a switch and de-augmented her perception of reality? Perhaps someone had DoppelGanger Scannered him. Charlie helped her to her feet, and Arty to his, while an MI6 agent fired off dozens of commands to the people around him. People kept asking if she was alright. She held her fingers to her tongue, showed them the blood. Apart from that, the winding, and the double vision, she supposed that she was just about alright.

And then she noticed her dad lying unmoving on the floor, a team of medics attending to him. Others comforted her mum, who looked like she might collapse at any second. She just said, “Derek, Derek,” over and over and dabbed at her eyes with a hanky. Nova grabbed her tight and didn’t want to let go. She still had no idea what any of this meant.

Had she really survived all of the attacks — on New Year’s Eve, in The Game, and here tonight — just to see her dad taken down? From the worried expression on the faces of the medics, there looked to be something seriously wrong with him. For the first time in her life, she wished she'd never heard of Solarversia, never even worn a headset. Had her obsession just killed her own father?