The Final Trial, page 42
part #3 of Level Up Series
Manu’s icon went gray. A new system message informed me of losing yet another clan member.
I activated a new level, leapt to my instantly restored feet — only to be frozen again.
You are now dead, test subject.
Lives remaining: 1.
Time left until resurrection: 3... 2... 1....
I had to resurrect right there and then because by now, there were no neutral hexagons left.
Warning! You have one last life left!
If you lose it, you’ll be stripped off of all your achievements and taken back to the day when you’d been selected as the Trial participant. Your memory of the accompanying events will be wiped clean and the interface will be uninstalled.
Warning! You’ve lost all of your hexagons!
Time left until full disincarnation: 1 Pibellau day
Warning! Your clan has been disbanded!
Your vassals (Leti) are free again!
I suppressed a scream of pain in my already-healed legs. Luckily, as I stealthed up the moment I respawned, no one seemed to have noticed my arrival.
I stole back to the place where I’d died. Unbelievably, all my gear was still lying there. Juma’s clan was too busy finishing off a new wave of doughboys to pick up the loot straight away. That was normal: we’d done it ourselves too many times before.
I picked up my staff, then checked whatever my clan members had left, stuffing everything into the backpack I’d kept while respawning. Not that it made me any happier: the loss of my friends still smarted, plus the fact that I’d lost all chances of winning.
I had only one option left now. I had to attack Juma when he least expected it. If I killed him, I’d get all of his hexagons.
And then we’d see.
By then, Juma’s clan had finished off a new wave of doughboys, a couple of duxio and an odzi snake. They gathered by the dome, cheering, as Juma gave a triumphant speech.
I could understand them. They had as good as won. Tafari couldn’t survive the combined power of the 2/3 of the Trial field’s resources.
Leti stood next to Juma, smiling. The crowd guffawed as their leader slapped her backside, then asked her something. Leti nodded. Juma barked a stream of orders, then pulled the girl toward him and led her under the dome.
I heard the rustling of footsteps next to me.
“Get out of here,” a voice said in Russian. “I’m not the only one who can see you. There’s another guy who might notice you, and you’re lucky he’s too far away.”
I turned round. It was Ken.
“This place is very well balanced,” he mouthed. “For every cunning stunt there’s a stunning……”
“Why didn’t you raise the alarm?”
“Suppose I just don’t want to be a rat. I know you’re gonna forget everything, but I won’t. We’re gonna win and I’ll get my money out of Juma. I don’t want to spend the rest of my happy life thinking I betrayed someone who had the same values. What’s your social status level?”
“It was 17 just before my abduction.”
“Respect! I only just made it to 9.”
“Ken,” I whispered, “Talking about Juma’s invulnerability, do you know its cooldown time?”
I was still obsessed by the idea of attacking him again. Depending on Ken’s reply, I had to decide whether it was worth sitting it out here waiting for Juma to reappear.
“What’s up, Ken?” someone bellowed. “Is it a new wave?”
I turned round. It was the swordsman who’d battled Manu.
“Nobody, Patrick,” Ken replied. “Listen, I keep looking at these stars but I can’t seem to recognize a single one. Here, look — one, two, three…”
Counting to fifteen, Ken put his arm around Patrick’s shoulder and pointed up at the heavens as he spoke, “Fifteen stars, all so close to each other! What do you think the distance between them is? Is it light hours or light minutes? I have a funny feeling it’s minutes, Patrick…”
“What are you talking about, Kenny boy? You can’t measure distances in minutes — or hours even!”
“Can’t I, really? Never mind. See if I care! Come on, let’s go now. You’re not on watch tonight, are you? Who are you gonna spend the time with? Christina or Scheherazade?”
Ken led the swordsman away, telling him his vision of Christina’s “virtues”.
Fifteen minutes. Which meant that I wouldn’t be able to kill Juma tonight. I had very little time left until my disincarnation. All I had left to do was to try and farm some more existence resources.
Otherwise I wouldn’t live to see the hour out.
Chapter 24. Revealing the Concealed
All the young people out into the world should have their own goals, and use their abilities to their fullest to contribute to society.
-Teru Mikami, Death Note
IT WASN’T the interface alarm that woke me up but a vague feeling of uneasiness. Before I’d even opened my eyes, I recognized the distinct smell of a hospital.
I could hear rustling and yawning next to me. Had Alex and Laura come uninvited to see me while I slept?
I opened my eyes and saw a flaking white ceiling. This definitely didn’t look like a five-star Vegas hotel.
Also, I was dying for a smoke.
“What the…..” I said out loud, then dissolved in a bout of coughing.
“Oh look, User’s back with us!” Ensign grinned from his cot next to mine while picking his nose.
User? Did he mean me? Where did I know him from?
“Not again,” Ensign said, looking concerned. “Been dreaming again, User?”
“Dreaming about what? Where am I?” the cot groaned its protest as I sprang from it. “What the fuck’s going on?”
“Oh,” he drawled through his nose. “So you have been dreaming. You’d better sit yourself back down. Dr. Gauss will be very upset. He thought you were making good progress. And now this! What was it about this time?”
“Has User had a new escapade?” Krasko’s voice said. I seemed to know him too from somewhere. “Listen User, how are things going with what’s her name now? Ensign, do you remember?”
“Which one?” the old man perked up. “He’s got a whole harem of them there! He has Yanna, and Vicky, and Veronica, and also Stacy… Is that all of them?”
While he was mumbling something about my company, mentioning Alik and Mr. Katz, I tried to figure out why they were calling me User. User… user… aha!
I peered at their strange but eerily familiar faces which floated in and out of focus. I wasn’t wearing my glasses.
Mechanically I reached out for my bedside table, picked up my glasses and put them on. The faces came back into focus. Much better.
Now, let’s take a look. Who did we have here? Ensign, Krasko and Nick. I was almost home: in the months that I’d been here I’d gotten very used to the place.
That had been one hell of a nightmare. I must have been completely off my trolley, confusing reality with dreams. Luckily, there was no curse, no Trial, just a good old local hospital.
“Here we go again,” I heaved a sigh and reached for the cigarettes. The pack was empty. “Have they brought the smokes around already?”
The old man called Ensign shrugged guiltily. “You were sleeping. But I can spare one.”
“Thanks.”
Ensign offered me a cigarette. He was funny, really: a youthful gray-haired old man with a cavalry mustache. How did he manage to look after us all here?
“Excuse me,” I addressed him, “could you please remind me why you’re calling me User?”
“That’s because you are!” Krasko guffawed. “You keep telling us you have some alien interface in your head. You’re a user, so you say.”
“Ah, yes, yes, of course…” I cradled my head in my hands, trying to untangle a complex flurry of thoughts. How sure was I I really knew these people?
“So have you won your boxing tournament?” Ensign asked. “You didn’t finish the story the last time.”
“A tournament?” I strained my memory, but those boxing events seemed vague and distant. “But… but that’s exactly how it ended.”
“Also, you didn’t tell us what’s gonna happen to your company,” Krasko added, scratching the back of his head. “Did you make it?”
“Ah, yes, of course, of course. I won the tournament, then took them all on as partners. I hired Alik as a maintenance manager, Veronica as PR, Kesha Dimidko as commercial director…”
“We know, we know,” Krasko grumbled. “Now why did you have to take on Gleb? That’s something I don’t understand. And you shouldn’t have left that redhead — Veronica, right? — to Alik. You should have screwed her yourself. Never mind. Tell us what happened next. Don’t leave anything out. Come on, tell us.”
“Let’s go have a smoke and I’ll tell you all about it.”
For a couple of cigarettes spared by Krasko, I told them all about the last developments in my dream — or was it my parallel life?
They listened attentively, with the exception of Stinky Nick who waltzed around alone to a music only he could hear. I could only imagine what I might have seen had I really had an augmented-reality interface.
Nicholas “Stinky” Vostrikov
Age: 46
I tried to envision those words hovering above his head. It didn’t really work.
Those dreams. Just think there used to be a time when I really believed I’d been fitted out with an alien interface. I was so grateful to Professor Gauss who’d sorted my head out. I’d hate to disappoint him.
“So it all ended in America. But it looks like I’m going to lose my interface, anyway. Either that, or the curse will finish me off. Then I woke up here with you. Have I been sleeping long?”
“Nap time has just finished,” Krasko replied. “Will you be going to tea?”
“Sure,” I rose from my haunches but staggered and very nearly fell over.
My head was spinning. Trying to keep my balance, I waved my hands and collapsed on top of Ensign. My breathing seized up. Everything went dark.
Then I woke up again, still tasting the bitter taste of the cigarettes.
I pulled my head away from a sticky wet pillow, then realized with relief I was where I was supposed to be.
This was Cesar’s Palace in Las Vegas.
My vision was perfectly clear. I didn’t need glasses.
The dream, so real only a moment ago, faded into nothing, erasing the faces of my ward buddies from my memory. The interface flooded my mental view with alerts reporting my elevated heart rate.
Then my standard morning greeting came into view,
Good morning, Phil!
Today is Monday August 27 2018. The outdoor temperature is 27 C (81 F).
You wanted to wake up at 6.30. It’s now 6.24 a.m, which is the best awakening time based upon your sleep cycle.
The state of your health: Good.
Warning! Last night you had a nightmare caused by extreme nervous pressure. We recommend you take it easy today, remove the source of stress and limit the amount of intellectual work in order to allow your nervous system to restore.
Based on your activity levels, we'd recommend you start your day with a breakfast containing no more than 600 calories from proteins and complex carbohydrates.
Here are the tasks you set for today...
I threw the sheets back, rose and began working out. I needed to get my blood going and my body toned up because this promised to be a hard day, one of less than two I had left. Panchenko hadn’t been found and with him, my hopes of lifting the curse were fading.
I was trying to be positive and look for something good in the situation. Like, I’d finally had a good night’s sleep even though I’d had to wake up again in order to level up Agility.
My latest Optimization had finally run its course, too. I’d completely forgotten how to take pictures — and in return, my Learning Skills had gone through the roof. Now I could learn 23 times faster than a regular person.
Once that done, I was about to go out for breakfast to meet Alex and Laura. You never know, they might have something on Panchenko. My map still didn’t show any sign of him.
Just as I was about to go out, my phone rang. I stared at the screen, momentarily transported a few months back, to a time when life had been much more simple.
“Hi, Sveta,” I said, unable to hide my surprise.
“Hi, Phil!” said the cheerful voice of the fourteen-year-old Sveta Messerschmitt, the owner of Richie the German Shepherd. “It’s a bit late to call but I have real good news for you!”
“Out with it, then.”
“Richie’s become a daddy! We were promised a puppy. Which means that very soon you’ll be able to pick him up!”
“Yes,” I shouted into the phone in excitement as my feet started dancing a jig. “Outta sight!”
She laughed too, sharing my joy.
That made me think about my first interface days. I remembered finding Richie and taking him away from the fake “Gypsies”. I’d spent the last of my money taking him to the vet and buying him dog food. Those days breathed such warmth, simplicity and clarity that I was now dying to get the puppy in the naïve belief that with it, I could acquire peace.
“Thank you, Sveta.”
“You’re welcome! I’ll give you a call when we have the puppy. Would you prefer a boy or a girl?”
“I’d rather have a boy. I hope he takes after his father.”
“Good. What are you gonna call him?”
“I don’t know yet,” lost in thought, I said the first thing that came into my head. “I might call him Carter. Or Ola.”
* * *
I heard a tactful knocking on the door followed by some coughing and a soft female voice,
“Phil? Are you awake?”
I hurried to wrap a bathrobe around myself and opened the door.
“Good morning,” Laura said, looking wide awake for a change. She was holding two paper coffee cups.
“Hi,” I said. “Where’s Alex?”
“He and Sanchez left for Langley last night. They seem to have run into problems. They should be back tomorrow.”
“Anything on Panchenko?”
“Nothing,” she shook her head sadly. “I’m the one minding you today. Can I come in?”
“Of course,” I stepped aside, letting her in, then shut the door.
Laura walked in, picked up the remote and switched the TV on. A news footage came on: the flickering of images which were so recognizable Middle-East.
“Have you been watching the news?” she asked. “It’s absolute havoc over there. They all suspect each other of being the grass.”
“As long as you guys don’t let the grass grow under your feet, otherwise I’m as good as dead. I’ll go take a shower.”
Laura’s expression turned pensive. “You guys? Okay.”
Squeezing my eyes shut from the freezing shower jets, I tried to rethink the entire situation. When I’d initially agreed to cooperate with the Americans, I’d actually imagined it all to be rather straightforward, a bit like with Major Igorevsky. Like, I’d give them the coordinates, then they find their targets, leaving their source undisclosed.
Now I’d begun to realize that this scenario was involving a whole lot of people — way more than a lone Russian police investigator from the sticks had at his beck and call. Let’s count: Hector Sanchez, Alex Tomasik, Laura Flores, Norman Doherty plus the mysterious Angela Howard, the supposed US Embassy worker who I was yet to meet, — that made five already. Our plan must have involved any number of operatives, undercover and otherwise — which meant that I’d gotten on the radars of far too many people.
Not that I cared. The twenty-four hours remaining until the activation of the curse weren’t going to change anything. As it was, the fund was getting off the ground and new money transfers kept pouring into its temporary bank account.
When I returned to the room, Laura was munching on her sandwich, looking all focused, while scrolling through the list of new targets on her iPad.
“I’ve ordered some breakfast,” she said. “I agree, it’s probably better you keep a low profile for a while.”
