14. Snare

“Which one?” Sonnet asks. He looks at Barley with grip in his jaw and desperation on his tongue. There is no good answer to his question. Because the answer is, obviously, both.

“That one.” Barley pings the nearer cashbox. It’s stuck in a jail cell on the northern edge of the legislature district.

Two minutes on the clock. Two cashboxes in the arena, so far unclaimed, worth twenty-two thousand MultiBucks apiece. Neither alone is enough to get us into the finals, not for sure. With a few more kills, twenty-two thousand could be enough to top the Adjusters, but that leaves the other box in the wind. A box the Adjusters could plug, and likely defend.

And the Adjusters aren’t the only other team on the board. The Overdogs being in first doesn’t mean they’ll sit back and watch. No, they’ll want to keep the rest of us off balance, and maybe pick out their opponents for the next game.

The Vogues, I think, are in the same boat as us. They need both boxes in one cashout station. If they get a box, they’ll make the right play. OK. So we need to grab our box and hope the Vogues snatch the other.

No such luck. About two hundred meters southeast, the Overdogs tag a box. Sure, why not? It’s money literally lying on the ground. I try not to pay them too much mind as I follow Sonnet through the jailhouse fence.

Inside, we pass through a waiting area with wood-patterned vinyl walls. The stiff chairs are vacant. So is the glassed-in intake desk, no one to stop us from delving into the cell blocks behind it all. Don’t see or hear any signs of other contestants. That’s a good sign.

Beyond the desk, the space yawns into vast, yet cramped, rows. Cells like teeth. Sonnet cavities the molar where our box resides. He sets it to hatch. With the clock down to a minute, we don’t have time to wait. Barley finds an exit route while I set mines around corners the way we came in. Then I join her and look for a good jump pad spot. A bit of terrain or structure with a nice angle. Best spot depends on where we’re going, and that I don’t know. Looks like there’s a cashout station on the southern tip of the legislature district and another in the colosseum. The legislature spot’s not much of a hike from here. It’s our best shot to get the box in on time. I find a basement window angled south and curtain it with a jump pad. Inside, one of my gas mines goes off.

Not good. We can’t take any distractions. I rush inside, where I see the Adjusters drawing on Sonnet. They popped the second gas mine too, in their hasty entrance, and their avatars let out raspy coughs to indicate they were affected. Should make their massive health pools a bit more manageable, at least. I lay into Rydr, who’s closer and an easier target than the rest. I need to draw their fire, or Sonnet’s dead.

Rydr doesn’t pay attention at first. He keeps lobbing grenades down the hall to the spot where Sonnet zigzags and tries not to die. My teammate hits himself with an invisibility grenade. For the next handful of seconds, he’ll be a tough target. Doesn’t matter to Rydr though. His grenades don’t require a precise target. I step closer to land more headshots. Finally, when his health’s in the drain, his mesh shield goes up. He turns so that the shield’s width faces me and keeps me from hitting his teammates too. Maybe I can’t deal any real damage, but I’ve done enough. Rydr can’t shield and shoot, and without his firepower, the others are in the dark.

When Sonnet’s cloak expires, he reaches for the cashbox and throws it over my head. Behind me, Barley catches, then she’s out the door. Sonnet throws something else underhanded and grapples to follow her. He only just outruns a pyro grenade from LadyLuck.

My exit’s on fire. Through the wall, I hear the sci-fi whoosh of my jump pad jettisoning a body. Forty-something seconds. They’ll have to make it without me.

The Adjusters haven’t coined me yet. Probably because they’re still reeling from Sonnet’s parting gift of a flashbang. I don’t have any good options at this point. But there is a solitary decent one. Near where Sonnet hatched the cashbox is a stock of explosive red barrels. Just lying there, a breakout waiting to happen. I launch into a full-bodied sprint for the barrels. LadyLuck gets a handful of shots in, but she is powerless to stop me as I breach the side of one barrel and set it back amidst the others so that they erupt in a chain around me, tearing my body into coins that scatter to a hundred winds.

I’m with Barley. Twenty-eight seconds until the match ends or we slide into overtime. She’s in the right building now, and we actually have a solid chunk of time to spare. She says token. I say I will, in three, two—

The Overdogs deposit. They deposit in the colosseum. A hundred-plus meters from our box. The other cashout station sits lunging distance from Barley.

In twenty-five seconds, the match will enter overtime and our unplugged box will be removed from play. We could deposit here and hope for the best. If I were in her shoes, I might, on impulse. So long as we held this station and the Overdogs held theirs, we’d be safe. Maybe. It’d come down to the difference of a couple kills, most likely. I don’t know what’s right. I don’t know.

If Barley freezes, it is only for a second. Then she wheels around and passes the box to Sonnet. He bolts away with the considerable speed of a zephyr, boosted by the momentum of a grappling hook reel-in. I flick to his view and see him darting weightless in the sky. The colosseum’s dome grows fast. Good. We might—

Barley cuts in, clear as thunder. “Token.” Oh, right. I spend another token and feel stupid for the pain it brings. If we don’t make it through here, the tokens don’t matter anyway. Still, I already miss the security of a stockpile.

I don’t see how it happens, but Sonnet plugs the box into the Overdogs’ station and promptly dies. Their prospective earnings double. We get a decent cash bonus for the plug. Not enough to overtake the Adjusters, though, and at this point the small sums don’t matter much. Not when the cashout is worth forty-four thousand MultiBucks. It’s enough to put anyone at the top. When I spawn just outside the colosseum’s high rounded walls, I see the outline of another team taking an entrance to my right. I ping their location and call out the Vogues’ arrival. Barley bids me into the building, says there’s a route I can take to her through tucked-away stairwells and corridors that should keep me clear of the others. I follow the path she’s laid out and find her in a luxury viewing box. From here, we get a good view of the cashout station, which lies on its side near the rim of the main arena below.

The vantage point doesn’t do us much good right now, because no one’s down there. Under a minute-thirty on the clock, and no one’s doing anything to take the point. Seems absurd, but makes perfect sense. The Overdogs probably don’t care much; they’re going to the finals regardless. They’ll definitely stir the pot if the opportunity arises though. Adjusters aren’t here yet, but they wouldn’t have any reason to jump the station either. They’ll end up playing defense for the Overdogs, I figure, seeing as they have more to lose from anyone else taking the point.

Then there’s the Vogues and us, stuck at an impasse. The pros call this a ‘twin snare,’ and seeing as I’m categorically a professional now, I’ll call it that too. The twin snare happens when two teams need the same cashout to qualify, but the first to make a play is almost certainly doomed. If we dive for the station right now, we’ll force the Adjusters out into the open as they protect their standing. Maybe the Overdogs too. The Vogues will then have a shot at capitalizing on the chaos and actually getting the robbery off. Same goes the other way around. If the Vogues go in, we’re in a great position to strike at them and anyone else who comes out to fight.

If neither team goes in, we both lose.

With this in mind, our best option is to apply pressure without going all-in. Sonnet provides an opening as he tokens in and reports movement from the Adjusters. They’re entering the colosseum, he says.

“On our way,” Barley responds, and I follow her out of the box. We go the way I came in. Under my headset, I am damp and shaking. We’re running out of time. Barley winds us over to Sonnet, who stalks the Adjusters from shadows and corners. He’s followed them up to a string of vacant vendor stations situated behind the nosebleed seats. The space is pretty defensible. Only two points of entry: the one we used, and a wide opening that leads down into the spectator seating. Barley pings LadyLuck with a deep red marker. A command. She wants us to attack.

Before I can protest, she starts. Her grenades tumble down the navy-pigmented concrete walkway. The detonations can surely be heard from anywhere inside the dome. Sonnet gets close, but not too close, and hurls knives at the machine-gunning stalwart. Since I don’t know what else to do, I add my AKM rounds to the mixture.

We’ve already done an incredible amount of damage by the time the Adjusters begin to return our fire. We could finish LadyLuck before she can get out a single gadget. But that’s not what Barley has in mind. When our target’s health is down to maybe a third, Barley bumps her ping to Rydr. We hit him hard too.

“Google, mine their position.” Barley doesn’t stop firing as she gives the order. I nearly protest, but the clock dips under a minute and I block out my instincts. Barley’s the captain. When it comes down to the wire, it doesn’t matter what I think about her strategy or her character or the ways she has hurt me. It’s her call. I weave closer to Sonnet and toss my plate-shaped mines high and hard like frisbees.

They don’t fly like grenades, but they travel enough to put them nearer to the Adjusters than us. The gas mines are dark for a second before coming online. One of the many reasons I tend to use them defensively rather than. . . like this. Another reason is they’ve got a pretty sizable danger zone, which Sonnet and I still inhabit. If Barley’s grenades trigger the mines—

They won’t, because she’s stopped firing. The Adjusters retreat from the mines, and I realize the message Barley has written by my hand. A threat. We’ll wipe them out if they don’t leave. And there’s only one way out: toward the arena. I watch Indemne lead her teammates out into the main atrium. Barley follows then. She keeps just out of her own effective range so that her grenades detonate about a meter back from the nearest Adjuster. She’s herding them down, down, toward the cashout.

She’s breaking the snare.

Ironically, the Adjusters will have a better shot at staying in the game if they go for the steal. More eyes on them, sure, but the violence will be less directed. In a head-on fight, we would have wiped them, but now we’ll have to contend with anyone else who shows up for the cashout as well. Plus, if they actually swing this, they’ll top the Overdogs, a practically mythical feat. The chance is too good for the Adjusters to pass up. Rydr, LadyLuck, Indemne; they know what this game is about as well as I do. All else second to glory.

It works. Barricades go up, and Indemne begins to steal. From out of a crevice high on the arena’s opposite side, the Overdogs skitter like wasps. They shoot from where they are at first, but it’s not enough. Not with the Adjusters’ dual mesh shields up and running. The Overdogs’ composition is great for most ranges, but it falls apart at the extremes. Right now, they’re too far for their guns to really work. So they’ve got to make a choice, and they do. They make the one I expect. They slide through the seats and go in close. And why not? They’ll qualify no matter the outcome. Better for their image if they fight for the station, keep the rest of us from sharing their spotlight.

When the Overdogs land on the main field, that’s when I see the Vogues. They emerge from one of the cave-like vomitories leading into the lower seating areas. Plume bombards the clash between the Overdogs and the Adjusters, splashing both sides, and now it’s really begun.

Indemne completes her steal with thirty seconds remaining. The bleachers in the sky explode with roaring cheers and boos. Barley leads us down into the pit of the colosseum as corpse-coin seeds the green.

The Overdogs take out Indemne. They already coined Rydr and LadyLuck too, per the killfeed, so that makes a wipe. Interesting they got the final blow on all three, considering the Vogues’ involvement. No, not just interesting. Deliberate. I flick the cashboard onto my screen for a few frames, and I get what they’re doing. Those last few kills have earned them enough cash to keep the crown if the Vogues or us manage a steal. After that last wipeout, even the Adjusters can’t make it to first.

If this is our end, it’s not a bad one. Here we are, on the world stage, laying siege to what opponents we can. The frantic flavors of the game spill over my ears and eyes. My body sings. The screen between worlds is fragile, thin. A pulse greater than and enveloping my own hammers on the microsecond. The server ticks, and I can feel it.

The most terrible thrill shudders my body. It is the game, alive, and me only a tiny cell in its sprawling organs. I am nearly nothing. There is no meaning in victory or defeat. Either way, the game remains the same. A voice screams through the violence of the primordial chorus, and it calls my name.

Again the shout. My name rips ragged through Barley’s vocal cords. Then, “steal.”

The cashout station lies ahead with her mark on it. I realize my AKM is in hand and empty. Killfeed says I gave OppenHyper the bullets. I coined OppenHyper. Me.

Think about that later. There’s a cashout up for grabs and fifteen seconds for the grabbing.

I move in, leaving a turret to watch my back. I hear a flurry of action just out of view to my right. Plume and Skillish trade lives, their coins clattering together on the floor. My palm slaps against the blast-marked cashout station. Sirens. Barley falls on the hot end of Ermex’s three-eyed shotgun. A flashbang from Sonnet blinds me. No way to gauge my safety now.

“Keep going,” says Barley, disembodied. Knives clip by my head, the sound of them whip-cracking the air barely audible over the sirens and ringing in my ears. One second passes. Sonnet coins Plume. Two seconds now. Time drifts like a glacier. The scathing white clears out of my eyes, and a maven forms ahead of me. Proc, looking me down through the iron sights of her AKM. She’s a gilded mirror. Her trigger depresses. Her bullets needle over me and lay Sonnet all over the ground. I assume I’m next.

I’m wrong. There’s one more Vogue in the mix, launching themself between us. I recognize Harrident by their demeanor even before I see the rifle. The rifle that doesn’t sound. The siren shrieks three, and the contestants in front of me appear frozen. Harrident could end this with a couple bursts to my head.

Unless they can’t. Unless the game has broken. Oh, God. It’s happening again where everyone can see.

But there is no freeze. Harrident wheels around on the ball of one foot, and I understand their calculus. They can coin me now and maybe have enough time for a steal of their own—big maybe, with Proc still up—or they can coin Proc and wipe the Overdogs off the map. Finally, as a fourth second escapes like a breath, Harrident squeezes their trigger. The bullets aren’t meant for me. Proc takes the shots in her ribs. She returns fire, dancing arrhythmically while her AKM rattles out little flickers of hurt. The shots that miss Harrident streak past me too. Harrident’s between us, so Proc couldn’t get a clear shot on me if she wanted. Don’t think she cares anyway. She’s tangled with Harrident in a feint-counterfeint that probably looks pretty stupid to casual viewers. They fire, pivot, crouch, hop, slide, fire again. Millions of voices storm in the sky to herald the last knell of my steal. It goes through.

This is the critical moment. A pair of seconds, a double-doored opening, where the cashout station may be claimed by someone else. Can’t let that happen. Proc and Harrident are still at it, so I do the safe thing and break out the defib paddles. Barley’s totem shocks to life beneath my hands. Proc loses form while Barley gains it. Harrident eyes the station. The moment has passed. They don’t shoot or do anything at first. Then they eye me. I look back. Don’t know what I expect to see. There’s nothing in those eyes. Just cold, electric blue. 

Then Harrident reloads. Ah, that’s why the peace. Well, my AKM’s still got enough bullets. I beat them to the punch. As their trim blue coat rips to reveal gleaming coin innards, I feel a strange pang. I really don’t want to do this, though my finger doesn’t leave the trigger. Harrident just saved me. Maybe it was done out of pure self-interest, taking Proc out of the equation in order to get the steal themself, but that doesn’t change the result. Without Harrident, without the Vogues, I wouldn’t be here.

I coin them anyway. What would it look like if I held my fire? Can’t fuel any speculation on a truce. Harrident crumbles, and they suck the color from the world with them. No more Adjuster orange, or Overdog yellow. No more Vogue blue. Only Ranzio purple, overtaking every other team on the cashboard as the station expires. A bell rings, cheers follow, a billion feet stomp on the sky, and the world burns red.

The Ready Room is quiet. None of us bother starting up a conversation because we know what’s coming. And there it is, the alert I’m sure we all see coming in.

Edmondo’s calling.

---

I knock gently. When there’s no answer, I knock harder. The screen door rattles against the frame. It’s cool out, and the hairs on my arms perk up. The sun looms large, high, heatless. Not so different from Naturata’s sun. The garden’s a mess. Dirt strewn around gaping holes in the soil. Pops has been busy.

I go around back. He’s not there. A few chickens mill around their coop. I bang on the back door and feel them staring at me. That does it, I guess. There’s shuffling inside, and after a few moments, the door unlatches.

“Hey, Pops.”

“Quinn,” he says, raspy, “come in.”

Potted plants crowd the back room. Some are fairly inobtrusive, others brush the ceiling. Explains the holes. I frown at Pops.

“Tell me you had someone help you out with these.”

He sticks a lip out at me. “No need. Ain’t my first go-round.” The words don’t carry the stubborn strength he surely intends. They come out flat and soft. He sounds so tired.

I make a disapproving groan, but I don’t have any words to back it up. He does know what he’s doing, and besides, what alternative can I offer? It’s not like I would have helped. Instead of pressing him further, I change the subject.

“Did you see the game yesterday?”

“Course I saw it. Called too. You see that?”

“Yeah,” I admit, “I see all your calls, but everything’s been really crazy, and—”

“You here now, ain’t you?”

I wince. “Can we talk?”

“What are we doing right now?”

“I mean, talk talk. Maybe the living room?”

He raises an eyebrow. “What’s wrong? No, don’t tell me yet. Go on ahead. I’ll put something on. You want coffee, tea?”

“Coffee’s always good. You OK? You sound a little rough.” I find my way to the living room, where Pops has a fire going. I sit on the dusty loveseat, taking the side nearer the fire. I leave Pops his prized recliner.

“Ah, it’s nothing. Getting over a cold.” He hadn’t told me he was sick. Then again, maybe he tried. I’ve racked up a whole lot of missed calls.

While he makes the coffee, I let myself relax a little. The fire smoke wafts into my nostrils, laden with the memories of twenty-six winters. I inch my legs closer, let the smell seep into my pants. Wood shelves on the opposite wall shelter Ma’s book collection. Her bibles, her prayer guides, her Augustine and Eckhart. Scrapbooks, too, full of photographs and other mementos. She always wanted her photos in print.

I don’t normally pay so much attention to the place. I guess it’s all become background. I know the house so well, I don’t often bother becoming reacquainted. I’m not surprised today is different, given the circumstances.

“Good work, by the way,” he calls from the kitchen, “I’ll tell you, I didn’t know about this game when you got hooked. Thought maybe it was gonna mess you up. I mean, you see what that shit does to people. You hear about these kids brainwashing themselves?”

“Yeah,” I say. On another day, I might have argued, tried clearing up whatever misconceptions he holds about the ascetic practices of the terminally online. Today, I let it slide. I think he wanted to get a rise out of me, because when I say nothing, his tone shifts.

“Anyway,” he says, “that ain’t the point. Point is, I still may not know much about the game, but I see you play. You ain’t just good, Quinn. You’re the best. Gotta be proud of that.”

“I got lucky.”

“Don’t give me that.” Pops enters the living room with a tray holding two cups of coffee, cream, and Ma’s favorite fudge cookies. “Now, what’s going on with you?”

I cream my coffee, swirl the colors with a silver spoon. The first sip warms my throat, then the rest of me as it travels down. It’s strong, but not bitter. The cream is rich, richer than I’m used to.

“That’s not dairy, is it?” I ask.

“Yeah,” Pops sinks into his recliner, “Su and me took a ride out to the Dutch farms this Friday past. Got some cream, butter, all that good stuff.”

“Took a ride?” Light rail doesn’t go that far north.

“Yeah,” Pops grins, “her kid’s got one of them all-terrain vehicles. You might have seen it before.”

I’m horrified. “Was she there?”

“Su don’t drive. Don’t worry, I didn’t do nothing to embarass you.”

“Pops.”

“She’s a nice one, ain’t she?”

“Pops, I’m leaving.”

“Hey, come on. You know I’m just teasing.”

“No, I mean I’m leaving. Like, moving away.”

He frowns. “What?”

“It’s Ranzio. They want me onsite.” That’s half the truth.

“Wait, but that’s all the way over in, what’s it. . .”

“Italy. Turin, Italy, to be specific. Tomorrow.”

He bolts up straight. “And you gonna do it?”

“They aren’t giving me much of a choice.”

“Always got a choice, Quinn.”

“Not this time.”

He sets his coffee back on the tray. His hand is quaking. “How about your place? How about all the stuff you got here? How about that girl?”

“I have to go,” I whisper, “It’s for the game.”

“What’s this gotta do with the game?” he shakes his head, “You play just fine here, don’t you?”

“They just want me there. I don’t know how to explain it to you.”

“I see.” His eyes fall to the floor. Guilt burns my chest. I could explain everything, in theory, but I think I’d better not. He’d worry about Ranzio keeping me prisoner. I’m worrying about that enough myself.

“I won’t be there alone,” I say to cheer him up, “Barley’s already there, and they’re bringing in Sonnet too.”

“Guess you got all your people, then.” He hacks out a pitiful cough. I can’t tell whether it’s an attempt to elicit sympathy or the genuine article. “You break it to Rahmat?”

“Not yet.” In truth, I’ve already decided not to see her before I go. Easier that way.

I down the whole lower half of my coffee and stand up. I haven’t touched the cookies. “I’ll call you. I mean it. And you call me. I’ll answer whenever I can.”

“Quinn,” he looks up at me, firelight glistening in his eyes, “You know, I. . .” He falters. I think I know what he’s saying, so I say it first.

“I love you, Pops. Nothing’s gonna change that.”

He’s quiet, all the considerable wrinkles on his face deepened in thought. He looks at the fire a while, then back at me. He eats a cookie.

“This is what you want?” he asks through a mouth of fudge-stuck crumbs.

“I think so.” It feels true enough when I say it. Despite the less-than-ideal circumstances, I can’t help but feel a thrill every time I think about it. After all, we’re going to the finals.

“Then I ain’t getting in your way, kiddo.” He stands, slowly, and pulls me into a firm hug. “Love you, and your Ma, wherever she is, she loves you too.”

I think about that a lot on the plane to Turin.