Ben leaned against the metal barricades that encircled the sacrificial pit. He leaned hard, sweat dripping from his forehead, as his knees shook. There was no wind to cool him, never any wind in the tutorial zone, just as the light never changed. The false sun blazed at the apex of the false sky as hot as ever.
Buildings loomed behind him. The schooling towers. Smoke-streaked skyscrapers ringing the pit like teeth. A quest blinked in his left-hand vision, telling him to make his way to room A22 of Learning Tower 23D. He had one hour to get to class and complete the quest, but before he went, he had to watch.
He had to witness the culling. He owed Mandy that much.
It was the third day and, as promised when they first arrived in the tutorial zone, the one percent who made the least progress would be eliminated. Would be killed. Fed to the tutorial dimension in order to maintain this pocket world.
One hundred and fifty thousand people in a colossal spiral around the angular pillar in the center of the pit, their ranks corralled by the armored elite of the Crimson Armada. They should be screaming, charging at the guards, anything to protest their deaths.
But an overwhelming technique kept them compliant.
The scene made him sick, but the scale numbed him.
Ben was not alone. Wives, husbands, parents, children, and friends, all leaned against the barricade and watched as someone they knew stumbled toward the bladed tree. They wept, and gnashed their teeth, but even on the outskirts of the pit, that subtle technique stilled their rage.
Save it for yourself, whispered the technique, and save it for your classes.
Ben ignored the voice as he searched. Somewhere in that crowd, shuffling forward a few feet at a time, Mandy waited for her death.
He tried to find her, but the distance was too great. The sea of faces became a blur. He wiped away tears and forced himself to keep watching. Someone should remember this, even if it was him…
But the nobility of the gesture didn’t erase the nagging guilt. He should be in that crowd, but instead, it was Mandy.
Yesterday, the assignment in the learning tower had been to kill boglings. They were split into pairs. Two students received a cage of four limp and bloated creatures. The students could poke through the bars, or enter the cage if they desired a greater boost in experience. Some of their class already craved the cold rush of death energy — these students would never have to worry about their place in the sacrificial spiral. But Ben still felt revulsion when he gripped the spear, or the sword, or the axe. He was a doctor! Not a dealer of death.
But that wasn’t true anymore, was it?
He had entered the cage, and he had decapitated the drugged but snarling boglings one by one. All four of them for himself, taking all the cold death energy, while Mandy watched on with a blank gaze. Nobody said they had to share the boglings, but everyone else in the class did. The experience took him to the top of the class and sent her to the bottom. She knew what he did to her, even before he realized the truth himself. Later, when he tried to apologize, the words couldn’t even come out.
And why should they? Why waste time lying about an apology to the woman you sentenced to death?
The spiral before him was smaller now, shockingly so. One hundred and fifty thousand people is so much, too much, but the razor-studded roots embraced a handful of people every second. It would take hours for the tree to consume them all, but it would happen, and in full view of the learning towers. Students need only glance out the window to have a reminder of their fate should they slack in their lessons.
Their lessons in the nature of the Crimson Armada System, in its truth.
Conquest.
Hadn’t he learned that lesson, internalized it, long ago? He used Zoe, for her skill, and the money that skill could make. How had she reacted when she found his notes? He could imagine her quiet footsteps as she walked down the hall of the surgery. Would he have been able to talk his way out of that problem?
He sighed. His tongue was magic, but not that powerful. Hell hath no fury and all that… The quest to get to class continued blinking. He didn’t have much longer. The smell of blood came to him, the smell of cut bone and burned flesh, as overwhelming as any operating room, as any slaughterhouse floor.
He detested that the smell didn’t make him sick. To him, it had always smelled of money. Of the road to success.
The quest blinked, and he turned away. Time to go to class.
###
Later that day, though it was always day, Ben jogged toward his designated sleeping tower. His powerful body made short work of the miles. Trees lined the pavement, providing shade, and a sense of wealthy urban life. It reminded him of postcards of Manhattan. If there were people in those postcards, they would look like him. Healthy, handsome, and driven. Hell, he looked, and felt, like a goddamned superhero.
Today’s class had been a stepping stone to something greater, he knew it. The class of thirty-four coordinated together to take down a demonic bird. Taller than any human, the bird could hardly fly inside the confines of the classroom. Though every wingbeat produced blistering heat. Ben formed a spearhead with the other leading students. Together, they cornered the bird and pelted it with weapons. One of the slower students — he forgot the name — was immolated by the arterial spray. But Ben survived. He was level 6 now.
An assessor had been present in the class. A woman wearing a cloak of bladed leaves. Her head hidden by a helm carved of delicate ruby into the shape of a single staring eye. Had her gaze passed upon him as blood sizzled and smoked from his hands? It must have. Had she seen his potential?
How could she not?
He allowed himself the slightest grin, the slightest pride, as he jogged through the throng of people making their way to their designated zones. No familiar faces, not anymore. He came to the tutorial space with Mandy, and with three hundred and fifty million other people. They were all given the same choice on day one: pet, slave, or warrior.
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Even thinking about it made him shudder.
A hundred million chose pet. Fifty million chose slave. The remainder selected warrior.
It was then that the rug was pulled.
The guards marched the new pets to the sacrificial pit. There, the humans were spayed and neutered. Their genitals burned like refuse. The smoke still stained the towers. There was no wind to clear the lingering pall, and no rain to wash the buildings.
No wind, no rain, no night, and no relief from the brutal reality of their imprisonment.
The slaves and the pets were already gone. Shipped off to other galaxies. Only the warriors remained, and every three days their numbers would dwindle. On day thirty, the tutorial would end. Ben spent every night praying until he fell asleep. Praying that he would make it through the end of this nightmare.
That he would make it back to earth.
###
The sleeping zones were a city unto themselves. How else could they fit everyone? The population of a country squeezed into an enormous city. The sleeping zones were row upon row of stacked cubicles. Each stack stood ten high with spiraling staircases leading to each front door. They stood on a perfect grid, two hundred cubicles to a block, and all it took was time to find the one assigned to him.
Jogging through the moans and groans of the cubicle occupants. Desperate pleasure, or despondent grief, each emotion made indistinguishable by the thick alien cement.
He jogged for an hour before he reached his apartment. His body refused to tire, but he needed the escape of privacy. The surrounding faces, the grim expressions, the hopeless eyes, ground away at his sense of achievement.
He needed to be alone.
So the sight of his fourth-floor front door ajar, made him pause. Almost made him run back down the spiral staircase to the street. And then on to… where?
There were guards. Elites of the Crimson Armada who took their responsibility of enforcing peace seriously. There had been no mayhem in the streets, no matter the doomsday scenario the tutorial participants found themselves in. But did he want to put himself on their radar, after performing so well in class today?
Many of those sacrificed — poor Mandy — had gone to the guards at some point in the last three days. They had complaints about their conditions, about the behavior of others, about anything and everything. Those who complained loudest, found themselves in the bottom one percent. Was it correlation, or causation?
Ben decided not to find out, and entered his quarters.
It was dark inside his living room. The drawn curtains blocked the constant sun with near-perfect efficiency. Dark and cool. Normally, he would make his way to the shower, and wash away his day, before stumbling into bed, where he would pray, or weep, until he slept.
But not today, voices were coming from his bedroom. He crept down the narrow hallway. The voices stopped.
So much for stealth.
He burst into the room. Someone sat on his bed. He leaped for them, but an iron grip hoisted him out of the air and slammed him into the wall. Ben’s ribs cracked against the alien plaster, but the wall remained intact. He slumped down on the ground and a familiar voice robbed him all of bravado.
“Hello, Benjamin, it’s time we discuss your debt.”
Mr. Biggs sat on Ben’s bed. The fat man wore the same black and grey suit he wore when they met two years ago. And, just as he had two years ago, Giuseppe, the thin and sallow right-hand man stood with his singlet and slacks and sour odor. Ben’s heart sank as Giuseppe slowly closed the door and sealed off the meeting.
The room was hardly big enough for one, and with three it was cramped beyond belief. Ben sat in the corner. The miracle of Vitality was fixing his ribs, but he was under no impression that he could fight his way out.
“Hello, Mr. Biggs,” Ben said, and he smiled with all the Hollywood charm that got him the loan in the first place. “What are you talking about, debt? Surely the world ending has cleared my account. I mean,” he laughed and hated that it sounded nervous. “What’s a few million compared to the apocalypse?”
Giuseppe cracked his knuckles.
“Let me eat his toes, boss, that’ll make him talk.”
Mr. Biggs held up a thick-fingered hand for silence. He didn’t smile, or scowl, his pudgy face as flat and fish-cold as ever.
“Benjamin,” he pronounced every syllable of the name. “Do you know how I found you?”
Ben blinked. No. he didn’t. There were millions of people in the tutorial city. He knew there must be some people he knew here, but how could he find them unless he went from door to door?
“How did you find me?”
Mr. Biggs sniffed. The air in the room stirred. Pale threads of Skein sucked off Ben, and towards Mr Bigg’s nostrils as he fanned the scent up into his brain.
“I can smell your debt. The filthy, sweat-stinking sense of owing someone. You reek of it, for you have taken your whole life without giving back. Now it is time for me to claim what is due, in the name of all those who you short-changed.”
Giuseppe flexed a wiry bicep and planted a kiss upon the muscle.
“We reached level 10 today,” he said. “It’s quite the experience.”
Mr. Biggs nodded.
“Suffice to say, we have abilities now, Benjamin. Abilities that let us find people, that let us get into places we shouldn’t be in,” he nodded at Giuseppe. “And these abilities will only grow. So too, our power will grow. Power enough to take over the world,” his flat voice trembled slightly with trepidation. “But first, we must survive the tutorial. That is where you come in.”
Ben swallowed.
“What can I do?”
Mr. Biggs sniffed.
“Work for me. Pay off your debt in servitude. You will find there are perks, such as maintaining your position at the top of the class. My network is growing, and we can ensure that you never slip into the sacrificial pit.”
“What would I need to do?”
“For now, simply excel in your classes. Help others who work for me. Enlist those you think will be assets and cull those who will get in our way. When we leave the tutorial, the true work will begin.”
“If you found me, can you find…” Ben’s heart hammered in his chest. “Do you know if Zoe is alive?”
Mr. Biggs sniffed.
“The debt you owe her is most pungent. She is alive, for otherwise, the smell would fade. Don’t worry. We shall find her when we leave, and she shall pay back what she owes me.”
Ben frowned.
“The money?”
“What use are millions in the face of the apocalypse? No, there are far more uses for people than mere money.”
“What if I say no?”
Mr Biggs smiled like a fish smiles, with too many teeth, and too little emotion.
“You can always do the honorable thing. You can continue in the tutorial on your own and hope that you make it to the end. You could even try to stop us right now, surely you’ve learned some tricks in your classes.”
Giuseppe hopped on his feet. Eyes bright with a ferret’s eagerness to play, and to hunt.
Ben shook his head.
“I just wanted to know,” he held out his hand. “It sounds like a fantastic deal. Sign me up.”
Sorry, Zoe, he whispered to his shrinking conscience, but a survivor has to put themselves first, or else they’re not a survivor. They’re just dead.