Chapter 15: Cruel of Law

Ash and Kiara shared the same cell on death row. Kiara stood from the long bench lining the back of their cell and moved to the bars. She pressed her face against the iron grid, trying to see where the military police had wandered to. Ash remained bent over on the bench.

“Lewis better show,” Kiara muttered to herself, although she expected Ash to respond. “Did you hear me?”

“Yeah, I heard you,” Ash said, staring at the floor. The first time he went to prison, he had spent less than a day behind bars. He had met Lewis, or rather, Sander, during that short stint. He learned a lot from their initial conversation and their dramatic escape from the prison at New Cistern. This time, he was locked up with Kiara, who, as far as he knew, didn’t really exist. She might have saved his life, but she was still an NPC.

“Man, you make for bad company. All you do is whine,” Kiara said, pacing the length of the cell. “You’re definitely not from these parts. When Lewis said you had never killed anything before that pronghorn, I didn’t believe him. Seeing you over the last few days, there’s no doubt. You’re soft. How you survived, I have no clue.”

Ash remained silent. He disliked the disrespect, but he knew her words rang true.

“Hey!” Kiara shouted through the bars. “Can we call a friend or something?”

One of the guards, in dark grey, moved along the edges of the room, stopping in front of their cell. By the flashes on the uniform, Ash realized it was the head of the six soldiers who had captured them.

In a calm, soft voice, the soldier spoke: “If you shout one more time, I will drag you out of this cell and cut out your tongue.”

Kiara stepped closer to the bars, trying to threaten the guard by her mere presence. The soldier in front of her, however, stood taller and wider. She was trying to intimidate someone more physically imposing.

“You want to know why these bars are here?” the soldier asked rhetorically. “It’s to keep you safe from us.”

Kiara refused to flinch or break eye contact. The soldier, whose face was concealed by a helmet and a black half-face mask, stared back.

Kiara tried a more delicate approach. “I’m sorry,” she said in a lightly flirtatious voice. “I’m just scared. That’s all. I want to make sure that someone knows I’m in here.”

“Your message was already sent,” the soldier responded brusquely.

“But how do I know if it arrived at the Blackguard Inn? Brigid expects me.”

“She’ll have to wait.”

“Will you allow her to enter? Or her brother? Or Lewis Hopkins?”

“If they have the caps.”

Kiara grew frustrated. Her honey-coated words and flirtatious demeanor did nothing for her cause. She snapped from the ruse.

“It’s all about the caps for you. Useless! You men are all the same.” Kiara loosened her grip on the iron bars and returned to pacing the cell.

The soldier started to laugh.

“What’s so funny?” Kiara asked sharply. When she looked back, the soldier had pulled down the half-face mask and removed the military beret.

The soldier was a woman. She undid the tight bun of her hair, releasing a glistening bundle of red hair. She shook it out before retying the bun, slightly looser.

“Surprised to see a woman?” the soldier asked. She finished retying her hair. “Why is that, huh?”

Kiara was too stunned to speak.

“Once more, politely, darling, your message has been sent. Now, if you ask me again, I will drag you out of this cell and break every bone in your body in front of your friend there.”

Ash stared back at the woman. Her eyes sparkled with the most piercing shade of green. Despite the beauty of her eyes, no warmth could be sensed behind them.

“Now, if you please, sit down and be quiet.” The woman pulled her mask back over her nose, framing the bottom of her eyes, and readjusted her hat, which seemed to dissolve her mass.

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Kiara wandered beside Ash. “I’ll show her,” she whispered angrily.

Ash failed to understand the animosity burning through Kiara. He couldn’t grasp her storm of emotions, her sense of betrayal, feeling as though all women ought to stick together in a common cause.

Ash remained seated, listening to the various muttered oaths Kiara spoke to herself.

Suddenly, she snapped out of her trance. “Tell me,” she asked, “Does she exist too?”

“Huh?”

“You said I didn’t exist, right. Whatever. Does she exist?”

Ash hesitated. “I don’t really know.”

“How don’t you know?” Her voice acquired a sharpness that Ash loathed to be targeted by.

“I have to ask her a few questions.”

“Questions?”

“You know, like the ones Lewis asked you,” Ash said.

“Yeah. If I was strong. Or, like, if I was lucky.”

“Not quite,” Ash corrected. He stood from the bench, feeling uncomfortable sitting beside her. As they had spoken, she had twisted her body closer to him, drawing herself nearer.

“He asked about your Strength, your Luck.”

“I just said that!” she snapped.

“No, those are stats, numbers.” Ash stopped speaking, deliberating whether or not he would reveal the secrets of this world. “We live in a video game. Or, at least, I do.”

“A video game, really?”

“Yeah. I died in the real world and I awoke in this one. This isn’t my body.”

“Are you mad?”

“I didn’t expect you to understand,” he said. “Only Lewis is from the same world as me. There might be others.”

“So Lewis died and got reincarnated into that body?”

“Not reincarnation. It’s more like having your consciousness put on ice. The Wasteland is like one large waiting room for people like us. We got to choose these bodies from a bunch of options.”

“Uh-huh. So, me, the one who was born into this world, lived in this world, ate, played, worked, laughed, loved, and nearly died, I’m not real, but you, who, if I’m getting this correct, suddenly snapped into this world with no memory, are the real one.”

“I have some of Casper’s memories, but they’re foggy.”

“I don’t believe you. You’re crazy. I’m real. It’s you who isn’t real.” Kiara crossed her arms and leaned back on the bench. She closed her eyes and spoke to the ceiling. “I see the world through my own eyes. I don’t know what the world looks like from your perspective or from Lewis’ perspective or anyone else’s. I can believe they exist like me, but, at the end of the day, I’m the only certainty. Everyone else could be a zombie for all I care. I’m the only rational one in this holding cell called the world.”

Ash could not believe his ears. Kiara said that he didn’t exist! He had lived a completely different life before entering this post-apocalyptic world. He could conjure his stats with pinpoint accuracy. He could feel experience points gather as he fought and survived in this world. He knew that he was Level 1, but he also knew that he was going to level up shortly. If Kiara felt these things, she wouldn’t laugh at the idea that this world was a video game.

“I’m real,” Ash said firmly.

“Nah,” Kiara said with an extended drawl. “Don’t believe you.”

At that moment, the soldier returned to their holding cell. Sander stood beside her.

“Sander!” Ash said out loud.

“What are you doing?” Sander responded with squinted eyes.

“Isn’t he Lewis Hopkins?” the soldier asked.

Kiara and Sander said “Yes” at the same time.

“Whatever,” the soldier said. “You have thirty minutes. Then, I toss him to the streets. I’ll be watching the three of you with the end of my pistol.” With that said, the soldier walked away.

“What are you doing, kid?” Sander whispered to Ash in a hostile tone.

“Casper’s telling me that we’re in a video game.”

“You what!?”

Ash cowered at the anger in Sander’ voice.

“Kiara says I don’t exist,” he said meekly.

Sander ran his hands through his hair. “It doesn’t matter what she thinks. You can’t run around saying these things.”

“So you believe him?” Kiara asked.

“Argh! There’s no point hiding it now. Yeah, what the kid probably blabbered is probably the honest truth.”

“So you died and got reincarnated into this body?”

“Not reincarnated, but more or less. I’ve been ‘playing the game’ -- so to speak -- for five years. Ash is still in his first week.”

“Ash? His first week?”

“It’s been a hard week,” Ash said.

“Of all the men in the forsaken Wasteland, I find myself amid two touched idiots who think life is a video game.”

“See, kid. This is why it’s better to keep your mouth zipped. Nothing we say will make her believe. You either know or you don’t. There’s no convincing people who can’t see reality as it is.”

Kiara laughed to herself. “Reality.”

“Alright,” Sander said, getting serious again, “we need a plan to get you out.”

Kiara asked sarcastically, “You going to bust us out, chief?”

“No, but I got the best offer possible: 100 bullets.”

“100 bullets!” Kiara shouted.

“Each.”

“This is madness,” Kiara said. “How long do we have to make up this amount before they hang us?”

“Three days.”

Kiara broke out in uncontrollable laughter. She wandered over to the long bench and lay upon it. “I should pick a fight with the lady and see if she can just put a bullet through my head now. To think, this is how I’m going to die.” She sat up straight with a raised hand, as though to correct her speech. “Sorry, before I respawn.” She lay back down on the bench. “It’s impossible to find 200 bullets in three days.”

“I didn’t even do anything,” Ash complained. “Kiara shot the bullet.”

“Oh, yeah, let the NPC die in your place,” Kiara shot sarcastically into the air.

“Yeah, well, you’re in the cell because of the shot I fired at the Blackguard,” Sander said with a cynical chuckle. “Still, it’s not impossible. Between the three of us, we have some of the funds. Casper, you have roughly two dozen between the SMG and the Bolt-Action. Kiara, you have over twenty, plus the shotgun shells. And I have fourteen from the sales earlier.”

“That’s only enough for half of one of us. I guess you get to pick whether you want the top half or the bottom half,” Kiara said bitterly.

“I can sell our guns, the motorcycle. I can try to get a loan,” Sander said.

“Why don’t you let the NPC meet his execution,” Kiara said.

“Stop it!” Sander yelled. “Enough with this nonsense. I’m getting both of you out, even if I have to die!”

Sander felt a hand touch his shoulder.

“That could be arranged,” the soldier said.