Chapter 6

CHAPTER 6

If Calla hadn’t grown up in the Palace of Heavens surrounded by maps and encyclopedias, she might have believed that a different kingdom beckons at the edge of San-Er, right where the land ends and gives way to sea.

She stands at the cliffs, looking out into the water. Each wave collides with harsh impact. Sprays salt up onto the city in droplets and splashes. There’s nowhere else in San-Er that feels like this, like she could dive past the jagged rockface, slice into the water, and then just keep going and going. Ten paces to her left, she would merge back into the alleyway and the city of San would envelop her again. But so long as she stands here, she is the ruler of this new kingdom, the conqueror of a large, unknowable terrain.

Calla breathes in deep, folding her arms over her chest to fight off the chill. Along the rest of the coastline, the twin cities have built small bays to let fishermen push their boats out to sea, but the truth is, no one goes very far. South of San-Er, there is only nothingness. Venturing too great a distance risks complete disorientation, losing all chance of return. Some of Talin’s bravest travelers say there are other island-nations out in the waters, but if they do exist, they are of no use to the kingdom. As far as Talin is concerned, their only foreign contact is in the north, past the rural provinces and bleeding up into Sica.

A shiver dances along her spine. Calla turns over her shoulder.

The palace claims that, before there was just San and Er in the southeast, ruled by one family and two kings, there used to be a third island city along the edges of Er, hundreds of years ago. A third king, who had also held some part of Talin, fleeing when Sica came. Then its ruler was struck down by divine intervention, deemed unfit to govern, and when he refused to relinquish his throne despite edicts from their gods, the entire city sank into the waters along with its civilians.

Calla has always had trouble believing that story. In the era before surveillance cameras and electronic records, the palace could change the truth whenever they wished, and their tale about a third city that once stood in the distance seems too convenient to be true. Unlike the rest of the kingdom, Calla doesn’t even believe in divine will. If there are gods, then they are cruel for letting Talin carry on like this. Day after day, with no end in sight.

Calla finally steps away from the cliffs. She returns to the alley that will take her back into San, ducking into the tight passage with resolve tightening in her stomach. The time for lingering has passed. Her course of action today, which is not so different from these past few days since the Daqun, is to linger around the busiest parts of San, where she’s most likely to find the other players. It’s early morning, but the streets fall darker the moment she leaves the city periphery, moving farther inland. Grimacing, she pinches her nose to block out the acrid smells as she passes a row of factories. They rumble belowground, machines churning long bundles of noodles running side by side with those producing coat hangers and rubber plungers.

“Careful!”

Calla is ducking before the call even comes, swerving away from two men and the stepladder carried between them. They’re covered in sweat, stripped down to the waist from the factory heat. Some cramped streets in San exist without fuss, where one can only hear the all-surround symphony of their dripping pipes. Others are their own revolving worlds, bursting with activity of every sort. When Calla finally reaches a quieter walkway, she releases her nose and takes a deep breath. The air still stinks. Water collects in every grimy nook, but wet rot is better than the stench of trash.

She looks at her wristband. No alarm. The day of the Daqun is always a whirlwind, followed by silence thereafter. The palace does this on purpose, giving the games a false lull before they start sending their location pings. In such a dense environment, players could hide themselves away forever if they wanted to, and because there’s nothing entertaining about that, each player is sent an alarm once a day to direct them toward their nearest competitor. Without these daily pings, they would be playing entirely based on luck, hoping to catch a flash of a wristband in the open. One round could last years. Even if Calla watches the newsreels and tries to remember her competitors’ faces, most will change bodies at breakneck speed. Only Calla stays unchanging, opting to put a mask over her face instead.

She adjusts her mask cover, her face growing hot when it traps in her sigh. There is only one objective to playing in the games. Wipe the other players out as fast as possible, get her victory, kill the king. The quicker she does it, the quicker they are freed from this awful state of living. The quicker this collective suffering can ease and stop clanging through her ears every second.

As if the wristband heard her urges, it suddenly buzzes against her skin. Calla’s heart begins to pound. Finally. She almost forgets her training, tempted to surge forward immediately in her eagerness. But her body knows how to regain control, its muscle memory running through the same series of commands: Breathe in, calibrate, formulate action . As she whips her arm up to tap the screen, she heaves a deep breath, letting the stench of the street still her nerves. They’ll ping players in pairs or in small groups, which means it won’t happen until they’re within range of one another. The palace is always watching the wristbands move; they’ll put in the alarm when the players aren’t close enough to be ambushed, but aren’t far enough to engage in a wild goose chase. Calla has time. She lets the rush of incoming battle temper her bones.

2 players nearby. Choose.

An arbitrary decision. She keys in the number 1 at the bottom of the screen, then looks around to take inventory of her surroundings. To her left, an impenetrable wall. To her right, another wall, but with a window that peers into a gambling den.

11 meters up.

Calla moves. She shoves her foot against a jutting brick and climbs in through the window, drawing cries of concern when she lands with a thump on the sticky den floor.

“Don’t mind me,” she says. She blows a kiss, which is rather difficult through the mask. “I’m only passing through.”

Outside the gambling den, she skids into the main stairwell of the building, then sprints up the steps three at a time, boots clunking. Calla calculates the eleven meters, bursting through the first inner door she sees and emerging in a busy market area, shops on both sides and her wristband trembling incessantly. Her hair whips into her eyes as she peruses the scene, trying to catch an attack before it comes. Nothing seems out of the ordinary.

Nothing except Calla, standing in a leather coat with her sword sheathed at her side while shoppers in their plain cotton button-ups stare at her.

“Where are you?” Calla mutters under her breath, gauging the distance between floor and ceiling. About two meters, probably. Flat floor, flat ceiling. How many other levels has she climbed? Six? Which means…

Calla hurries through the market, searching for some other exit. She passes a candy store. A noodle shop. Finally, in front of a butcher whacking his cleaver down onto a pig’s carcass, Calla spots a hatch inside his stall.

“Using this, thank you!” Calla calls, diving for the hatch and lifting it with a grunt. She jumps down before the butcher can respond, dropping into the passage running below the market. Vendors store their perishables here to keep them fresh, cold air running at a temperature that raises goose bumps on her arms immediately. She lands among a row of animal carcasses hanging by large hooks, her hands slapping onto the bloody floor to steady herself. Though she would have assumed the blood to be dried and old, when she lifts her hands and stands straight, her palms are marred with bright crimson. It’s fresh.

She’s already late to the party.

Calla’s gaze whips up. Her eyes adjust to the back of the storage space, just in time to catch a player slash his knife across the throat of another, splattering more blood everywhere. The body drops, red pooling onto the floor. In seconds, it has flowed within distance of Calla’s boots, the dimly lit passageway reeking of the metallic stink.

“Fuck.”

She presses the first button on her wristband, stopping it from trembling. If the low sound didn’t already signal her presence, her voice has certainly summoned the attention of the surviving player. He turns, tossing one of his knives into his other hand, wiping the blood from his face. There’s a drop hanging just by his lip, and when his finger reaches it, he puts it right into his mouth, licking the blood clean off.

Absolutely depraved.

Calla draws her sword. There’s not a moment to spare when she lifts it against his strike, one knife in each of his hands now, clanging down upon her. The crescent-curved blades stop inches from Calla’s face, and she stifles a wince, eyes darting to take in her opponent. Her first instinct is to wonder if this is a Crescent Society member, but she sees no markings. A coincidence that he carries their usual weapons, then.

Suddenly, the player hooks his blades down hard, and Calla almost drops the sword. He’s good. Too good. When he looks up, his eyes are black, and Calla blinks, certain for a moment that this is August. She lets go of her sword intentionally, taking the player by surprise when both their weapons clatter to the floor and her gloved hand whips toward him. She grabs his neck. Hooks her foot behind his knees.

There is one lightbulb in the passageway, hanging from the short ceiling. Going off her hunch, she seizes his jaw roughly as soon as they hit the floor, but when she turns his eyes toward the light, they come back flashing purple, not blue.

Not August. Someone else.

“Number Fifty-Seven,” he says suddenly. He slams an elbow to her head, and when Calla spits a curse, he’s quick to twist upright and press her into the bloody floor instead, his arm pinned upon her clavicle. In an instant, Calla turns her face away from the light, shaking her hair into her eyes. Where did his knives land? Nearby?

“How do you know who I am?” She reaches for her sword. The player stretches out to stop her. As soon as his attention snaps elsewhere, however, his hold on her eases a smidgeon, and she takes the opening to aim a hard kick to his middle and send him flying. Sword and knives alike lie scattered on the floor. The two of them pause, a standstill in the fight as they draw up their next moves.

The player smiles. The expression radiates into every line of his being, screaming with an appalling confidence, the kind that lights up a body no matter the vessel being occupied, no matter what sort of mouth is snarling its corners up.

The player lunges for his knives; Calla gets there first. By the narrowest margin, her fingers close around her sword grip, sending the blade up, which only makes the player smile harder when he swerves away. She’s almost inclined to respect his terrifying boldness. This isn’t what she expected out of the other combatants. A part of her likes it. It has gotten monotonous to be leagues above everyone else. Calla Tuoleimi is positioned to win every battle—that is not up for debate—but every once in a while, a challenge does enliven her spirit.

“Of course I know who you are,” he replies, bringing his knives to his side. “It’d be very hard not to take notice.”

Calla lands a strike, cutting his arm. He hisses and surges back, but Calla follows fast and slashes with her sword again. This time, he defends himself faster, and her blade only meets the carcass hanging to his right.

She yanks the sword out of the dead cow. “You’re probably mistaken.”

“I never make mistakes,” the player replies. He hovers in his stance, watching her carefully. He’s waiting to pick out a flaw in her fight patterns, waiting to sight a weakness he can exploit.

In a smooth arc, Calla transfers her sword from right hand to left and swings. “You must be some sort of god, then.” He swerves, the blade missing his throat by the barest hairsbreadth. “What an honor it is”—she tries again, nicking his chest—“to kill a god.”

The player wipes a smear of blood from his temple. He finally cannot back away any further, coming to the wall. Beside him, the player he already killed lies unblinking. The light is strong here, coming directly from that one bulb.

And somehow, his smile is back.

“You’re beautiful.”

Calla snorts behind her mask. “You can’t see me.”

“Who says I have to?”

“Do you flirt with every person you’re trying to kill?”

“Only you, Fifty-Seven.”

Finally, when she attacks again, he lifts his knives to meet her. They move in a blur, in a brutal and coordinated dance, making a mess of the storage room around them. It is difficult to decipher whether it’s a piece of a carcass or a real limb until a beat after the strike, when congealed black blood bursts from the pig’s ribs and splatters to the floor.

She can hear him breathing heavily. So long as they keep up this dance, she will outlast his maneuvers, and at his first stumble, she can strike—

The hatch into the storage room opens. A burst of sound drops in from the market above, and the other player looks up, giving Calla the chance to plunge her sword into his chest without hesitation.

Only as soon as the hilt of her sword strikes against chest bone, there’s a blinding flash of light. Calla flinches, forcing herself not to look away. When the light clears, the body before her has murky-gray eyes, his mouth agape in surprise.

Calla tears out the sword, her teeth gritted in irritation. Without looking, she holds down the second button of her wristband, summoning emergency services. The body before her might survive if they stitch it up fast enough.

“Hey,” Calla shouts. She grabs ahold of the ladder, hauling herself out of the storage passage. “I know you’re still here!”

The people around the market stare at her in horror when she emerges. She stares right back, easing herself up from the hatch, sword still in her grip. He left his knives down there. More importantly, he left his wristband down there, and when players jump in the games, they need to move their wristband from body to body too, or else they face elimination at the twenty-four-hour mark when they haven’t entered their identity number.

Calla stands, her knee twinging. She must have been hit at some point. She hardly noticed.

“Come out, come out,” she sings, searching the faces before her for some signal of recognition. The lighting is too dim to find his black eyes. She turns on her heel…

Calla was expecting the player to return to the hatch so he could retrieve his belongings. Except at that moment, she catches a blur of movement farther down the market, and spots another open hatch in the floor.

Shit . There’s more than one.

She breaks into a run. The crowd gets in her way immediately, as does a stack of chicken cages squawking one atop the other. When she finally circles around both roadblocks and skids to a stop beside the other hatch, it has slammed closed and won’t lift when she tugs.

Not good. Too long has passed. Calla whips around, the hairs at the back of her neck standing ramrod straight, eyes pinned on the first hatch, now in the distance. The player would have to leave through that one, but has he come out already?

The people around the market shrink back as she lifts her sword in preparation. Where is the player, and how did he—

Calla feels a pressure on her left arm. Then a lack of weight when her wristband is plucked right off.

She whirls around.

“Goodbye!” the boy cries, his black eyes flashing under the market lights as he turns and runs.

Calla blinks. She is so taken aback that the player managed to occupy a child that she doesn’t give chase until he is almost out of sight. By the time she sprints after him, he has already turned the corner. By the time she turns the corner too, the child is in the middle of climbing out through an unpaneled window.

They’re six floors up from the ground. What does he think he’s doing?

“Hey!”

He leaps. Calla rushes to the window, unable to believe her eyes. Once she glances down, however, she realizes the building has a net at its side, catching all the trash and debris to protect the temple below. The child bounces on the net, facedown, but the two wristbands slip through the gaps, dropping to the pavement around the temple. There’s a flash of light.

The player has gotten away.

Calla touches her bare wrist. He has eliminated her from the games without killing her. She can count on one hand the number of times a player has made a non-lethal elimination over the years, not out of kindness but out of strategy. If someone absolutely cannot make a kill, they can force a withdrawal instead. Most players prefer the blood spilt. This one clearly recognized that he could not best Calla and chose to wait out the twenty-four hours until her wristband is deemed inactive.

“Well, that was fucking annoying,” Calla mutters. She forces herself to take a deep breath. She’s not a regular player; she has August to keep the wristband active. So it doesn’t matter. She can get it back and stay in the games.

But she certainly underestimated whoever she just came in contact with.

One room in the palace controls all the surveillance cameras across the cities, and so it is in a constant state of upheaval, each cubicle barely managing its responsibilities by the skin of its teeth. There used to be half the number of wires jutting out from the middle of the room and running across the floor like live snakes. Then the Palace of Union took in Er’s control centers too, and now the electric companies break into a cold sweat every time they have to check the gauge for this part of San.

At the far cubicle, Pampi Magnes taps a series of commands on her bulky keyboard, eyes tracking the security cameras and conciliating them with the screen to her left. Her wrist itches, but she doesn’t scratch. Even as a wisp of hair slides out of her ponytail and irritates the side of her cheek, she only resolves to tighten her ponytail tomorrow, maybe slick back her pin-straight black hair with gel.

She stays focused, her mouth puckered. Where the larger screen peruses footage of the twin cities, shuffling between different streets under her watch and showing movement from both outside and within the buildings, the small screen propped above her desk is a lay plan of the sector, showing only pinpoints that move when the players and their wristbands do.

Number Ten and Number Sixty-Four start to get nearer and nearer. She waits, observing whether Twenty-Three—lingering at the very border of her surveillance sector—will move in the same direction, but Twenty-Three walks away before long. Pampi hits the arrow keys until she can see Ten and Sixty-Four on the larger screen.

She presses more commands. The location pings go out.

14 meters to the left.

14 meters to the right.

The bright dots start to surge toward each other. The chaos on the larger screen is instant, food carts and trash bins overturned as the players break into a run and hurry to spot their opponent first. Pampi finally scratches her wrist, glancing over her shoulder. When she sees that the cubicles to either side of her are occupied with their own pings, she drags the clicker along her screen and sends a command over to the printer in the corner of the room.

Just as she is rising from her chair to go fetch the papers, the palace guards filter into the surveillance room.

“Pull up the border,” Leida Miliu demands, and Pampi quickly slides her chair back into her desk again, hunching into her stall. She won’t be seen. Not now, not yet.

Her colleagues who are unfortunate enough to be seated near the door scramble to their keyboards. One by one, their screens flicker to a different section of the wall around San. From what Pampi can see, peeking over her shoulder, the scene looks quiet. Leida Miliu, however, leans close to the screens, eyes narrowed like she’s searching for something else.

The colleague next to Pampi peers over their cubicle divider, cigar dangling from his mouth.

“You have any clue what they’re looking for?”

Pampi’s eyes shoot to the printer. She swipes a hand across her clicker and clears her recent activity history.

“Aren’t they always looking for something?” she asks.

“Yeah, within the city,” the colleague replies. He puffs on the cigar, and Pampi wrinkles her nose, brushing a hand along her pressed collar, hoping the silk won’t reek of the smell. “I hear the alarm is up for intruders trying to sneak into San-Er without citizenship.”

He says it without conviction, merely repeating what others are whispering. It’s a near impossibility, and most of San-Er is unconvinced. In all the years that the wall has been up, not once has anyone entered without permission, nor taken an illegal step in without being caught within seconds. Citizens of San-Er are either assigned an identity number at birth or granted one through immigration from the outside. Rural dwellers flock to the twin cities by the hundreds of thousands every year, especially right before the games. A handful will get citizenship; the remaining disperse to the nearest villages outside the wall, trying and trying each time the citizenship pool opens, usually to no avail.

Since Er’s palace went down, it has become San’s task to process the new immigration requests. They’re still letting people in day after day. San-Er has long been full to the brim, one uneasy exhale away from collapsing in on itself. But even among such chaos, the twin cities are inhospitable to anyone without citizenship. Its streets are filled with thieves who snatch bodies like candy, and the rich will try their hardest to make it difficult for those playing imposter. Forget jobs and bank accounts being accessible only by identity number. Homes and offices open to identity numbers; public buildings have turnstile systems at their entryways requiring identity numbers for visitors passing through. Someone who sneaks in from the provinces could perhaps beg on the streets all their life, but even then, there’s only so much time until a palace guard accosts them, demanding proof of their government-assigned identity.

“ I hear,” Pampi says, “that they’re not merely intruders, but Sicans .”

The man with the cigar grimaces and starts to ease away from the cubicle divider. There’s too much unrest in the outermost areas of Talin right now to be speaking such nonsense. Pampi knows it, but she wants to test just how much she can get away with inside the palace.

“There cannot be Sicans in the kingdom,” he says, though his surety of the claim wavers before he has even finished his sentence. San-Er is safe, but Talin is not. And if Talin is unguarded, then isn’t it possible that foreign intruders might have arrived, that they might have found a way to enter the capital after time spent lurking in the provinces?

Pampi sneaks another look at the guards. When her colleague sits down at his desk and turns back to his computer, she allows herself the ghost of a smile. Under her sleeve, a blue crescent-moon tattoo is inked into the white of her skin.

Leida slaps her hand on the surveillance room door, startling those who are pretending not to watch her.

“Back to work,” she shouts. “Keep the games in order, understand?”

She receives a series of affirmative responses. Everyone is too afraid of the captain of the guard to argue, lest they end up like the people she has hauled into a jail cell for no reason other than because they looked at her wrong.

Pampi hunches over her screens and waits for the palace guards to exit. Once the room returns to its usual activity, she goes to fetch the papers she’s printed. Good. This will be useful.

In the handbag under her desk, her own wristband flashes the number 2 , sitting idle in wait.