Merc's cob house was half war-room, half cozy cottage. Three rooms. The central room housed a big table covered in notes, maps, carved wooden figurines, flags and empty cups. There were a couple of wooden armchairs chairs, a fireplace, and an actual rug. I took up about half the remaining floor, but was able to lay down and stretch out on said rug, which felt pretty nice - though not as nice as the coffee that Angel was drinking. I watched her sip it from a painted pottery mug, radiating envy.

"Think you could get a cup of that and pour it into my mouth while she's not looking?" I pleaded. "Or hell... just tell her that Reapers are speed demons that love caffeine, or something."

Angel shot me an amused glance. "Merc, do you mind if we get Noodles some coffee?"

"Noodles?" Merc turned from the stove, where she was pouring her own coffee, and looked back at me. "Your Reaper?"

"Mmhmm."

"His name is… Noodles?" She regarded her with the patient expression of a woman who had seen and heard everything, except this.

"Give her the full name," I replied. "I insist."

"No," Angel signed beside her thigh.

"C'mon. Or I'll challenge her to a duel and Chorus will shout it in the arena for me.”

[Technically, it would be my Arena Master subroutine shouting your name, but yes.]

“Yes. His name is Noodles,” Angel voiced. Loudly.

"Because of the tentacles?" Merc asked, turning back to fix another serving.

Angel sighed. "Because of the tentacles."

"C’mon, don’t do this to me," I insisted. "Be sure to tell her the M.T stands for 'Maximum Testosterone'. No, wait… ‘Mighty Tumescence.’"

Angel flushed, and waited to sign until Merc's back was turned. "Shut up and drink your coffee."

“Hey, come on. I promised not to hit on YOU. I didn’t say I wasn’t gonna hit on other women.”

“She’s MARRIED.”

Merc returned with her own mug, and what looked like a dog bowl with coffee in it. She set it down in front of me. "Careful, boy. It's still hot."

"Thank you, mommy." I mlem'd at my coffee, and managed not to splash it all over my face this time. "Blech. No cream, no sugar. I take it back. I’m not going to flirt with this woman. She’s a fucking barbarian."

“Stop whining.” Angel made a face at me, discreetly chopping her fingers against her other palm before tapping her chest. She dropped the sign as Merc settled in.

“Bah.” Even black, the coffee was still good: the beans didn’t get much fresher than they did here in the Jungle. I relaxed a little, and leaned against Lulu. The Limne lay pressed against my side, snoozing in the shadow of the fire.

"So, first things first," Merc said. "I appreciate the way you pulled your weight back there at Victory and Goldrush. As far as I'm concerned, you're a guest, not a prisoner. As long as you keep those rifles of yours in your inventory while you're inside the walls of Eden, it stays that way. Sound reasonable?"

"Sure," Angel replied.

"Next question. What made you want to join the Centurions? Let alone advance up the ranks."

Angel shrugged. "I thought they were the safest option."

"You thrown in here alone? No memories?"

"Some. More memories than most."

"Hard to say if that's good luck or bad." Merc gave her a penetrating look. "The Centurions sure seem like a safe bet, don't they? Orderly. Disciplined. Didn’t the servos tip you off that they catch free players and slave'em?"

"I wondered, but whenever I asked anyone - including the servants - if they were slaves, they always said no."

Merc grunted. "They have to, or they get their tongues cut as familiarus and collared. If they’re lucky. If not, they’re sent to the mines in Fortuna and worked to death."

"I couldn't tell if they were speaking or not most of the time," Angel admitted. "I'm deaf. I follow you and almost everyone else by lip-reading."

That was no longer strictly true, given I was sometimes translating for her on request, or in times she accidentally missed attempted communication. It wasn't just for Angel's benefit, either. The weird thing about digital brains is that they were pretty much like real ones, minus the water and fat. Exercising them, whether through translating languages or solving puzzles, helped build and repair connections between your virtual neurons. There was a lot of data that had been cleanly snipped from my memory, but there were also a lot of fuzzy recollections hanging just outside of my reach. I had a feeling that converting speech from English to ASL or Russian to ASL had been helping me recover some of those experiences.

Merc's eyebrows shot up. "No wonder you signed up for safety. I'm surprised you survived long enough to make it to recruitment."

"I’m not the helpless damsel type. I grew up on a cattle ranch down near the border of Mexico and am a champion shooter in the women’s three-gun, trap and skeet circuit." Angel scowled. "But there's only one of me and lots of Hell Pigs, and the Centurions were slightly less likely to rape and eat me."

"Slightly." Merc sighed. "Not a fan of the Pigs either, huh?"

"I'd kill them all if I could." Angel's pale fingers tightened around the mug.

"Well, here's a piece of information that should banish any lingering guilt you may have about turning on the Centurions," Merc said. "Something I wish every gladiator on the server knew. The Centurions are run by the Russian Mafia, operated directly by an agent of this ‘Paragon Society’ that owns the server. ‘Imperator Argent’ is a sponsored Russian captain named Nicolai Kaban. Half of the members of the guild were probably trafficked here by them."

My head reared up from my bowl of coffee so fast that it drooled out past my fangs. Nicolai Kaban. Where the hell had I heard that name before?

"Don’t suppose this mafia happens to be led by the Solonovs?" Angel gave a nervous laugh, glancing at me in disbelief before her eyes shifted back to Merc.

Merc’s brow furrowed. “How do you know that name?”

“I woke up with a letter from a Solonov in my inventory.” Angel leaned into the lie flawlessly, shrugging with a worn, tired expression. “No idea why, because I was just a college student. It’s full of threats telling me to be a ‘good piece of scenery.’ My hunch is that I accidentally saw something I wasn’t supposed to see and died for it.”

"Huh. Well, highly recommend you don’t tell mention that name to another soul from this point on. If Kaban learns you’re throwing around the S-word, he and his goons will hunt you down and kill you. They’re all sponsored, with bound weapons that don’t usually exist on this island. There won’t be a damn thing you can do about it if they catch you alone," Merc said bluntly.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“Been there, done that. Bought the t-shirt,” I thought to Angel. “At least that confirms who our mystery sponsored hunters were working for. My hunch? Falks is a Solonov plant in Targent’s camp, keeping tabs on him to make sure he’s on his best behavior. When we waltzed into Fort Hope together, she sent word back to her real boss, Kaban.”

Angel couldn’t reply without giving herself away, so she nodded, as if to herself. “Yeah… don’t want to draw that kind of attention. How do you know about all this?”

"I was a Dux. One of the Centurions’ generals."

Angel was halfway through a sip of coffee. She coughed.

"YOU were one of the Imperator's Generals?" she squeaked, once she'd choked it down.

"Yep.” She sighed. "When I landed here, I though the same way you did: the Centurions seemed like the safer bet. And don’t get me wrong: I turned a blind eye to a lot of bad shit on my way to the top, so I can’t pretend I’m any kind of saint. But once I realized what a racket this place is, and I saw the ways Kaban pulls all our strings… well, there’s a good chance I was sent here for the same reason you were. So in addition to the systemic slavery and crime, I didn’t feel like working for my likely murderers."

I wracked my brains. The memory of Kaban’s name felt more recent than my others, but I had to circle around and around it while Merc and Angel talked, chasing the shadow that was just barely out of reach. But then it hit me.

“Huh,” I thought to Lulu. “Kaban… he owned that fancy electric trap you got caught in.”

Lulu shuddered. “Oooo.”

"Nicolai Kaban." Angel repeated the name aloud to make sure she'd picked it up correctly. "What do you mean by a ‘racket’?”

"Short answer? This place is a money machine for Kaban’s handlers. The longer answer involves the way Survival of the Fittest is structured to MAKE money."

"Go on."

Merc pulled a battered tin from a belt pouch. She began to roll herself a cigarette. "Well, everyone knows there's four realms in this ‘game.’ Think of them as being like the floors of a casino. There’s a general access gaming floor, then one for a slightly higher class of patron, all the way up the VIP suites. Each realm of Survival of the Fittest is more exclusive and difficult than the last, designed for a different kind of audience. As far as we know, the viewers on the outside think this place is a hardcore, adult-themed survival sim with voluntary players."

I lay my head down, listening. I'd been right about that part of the puzzle, too.

"Viewers join the free-to-view Fourth Realm to get a taste for the action," Merc continued. "They can join any player stream from mild to wild. Romance? There's a stream for it. Tragedy? Military action squads? You name it, there's a player here doing it. The viewers get attached to their favorite gladiators and start throwing money at them. As soon as the algorithms pick up that someone's paid for a Patronage, laid down a big bet, or bought a gift, they start working on the patron to go up to the higher tiers. The higher the tier, the more expensive the subscriptions and the more intense the gambling gets, right?"

"Right." Angel's brow furrowed.

"Kaban is an agent of someone on the outside. I don’t exactly know who, but he’s not just any old sponsored player. His job is to incentivize viewers to get hooked on our misery, so they patronize gladiators, and subscribe to the pay-per-view realms." Merc paused to take a deep drag off her cigarette. "And he does that by playing the Centurions and the Hell Pigs off each other in such a way as to create a stalemate. The Centurions could win the war in a day if he wanted, but he intentionally pulls back to let King Pig push his forces forward and keep the war going.”

“Why? For the tension?”

“Sort of. The war is exciting for new viers. But the warfront is static and doesn’t really change enough to be exciting for long. Players can't move up the ladder, and there's so few Legions to go around - and weapons to capture them with - that it's a bit of a tease. The viewers get a taste of what they can expect on the upper realms even as they get bored with our little predicament here. They want more dopamine, right? So they either drop out and free up bandwidth, or they move up to the more expensive options."

Angel's knuckles were pink, she was clenching her mug so hard. "Kaban is preventing players from reaching the next realm?"

"Pretty much. No one player can get all three mandalas and advance unless Kaban lets them. He controls the third and most difficult Daeva spawn and the Gate of Ascension… there’s just no chance." Merc replied. "If he thinks a player is charismatic enough to earn his people on the outside a ton of money moving forward, he’ll give them a pass. If they’re his buddies from the outside, they get waved through. The only other way people get out of here is if someone they know pays his handlers enough money via ransom. These are some of the reasons I left and formed the Maroons."

I had no reason to disbelieve Merc, but I viewed her with suspicion all the same. By the faint tremble in her cigarette hand and the distracted way she fidgeted with her mug in the other, I knew she wasn't telling us everything. She wasn't necessarily lying – just not speaking the whole truth.

"Some of what she's saying doesn't add up," I remarked to Angel. "If she was a general, where are her Legions?"

I could tell Angel had been thinking the same thing, but she didn't ask that straight away. "So... why are you telling me all this stuff? It's dangerous information to give to a stranger."

"Because Chorus might be filtering it out for the audience, but you and I can hear each other just fine," Merc replied, gesturing at her with her cigarette. "Well… I can hear you, I guess. No disrespect intended.”

Angel brushed off the unintentional insult and nodded.

“Anyway, I look at you - two guns, one of the best Legions in the game already - and I see someone who wants to advance to the next realm. Who SHOULD advance, if we got Kaban out of the way,” Merc continued. “You might be one of three people on this island who has a chance at beating Vanara, Karkinos, and Rachini, but all of us are stuck here in the Jungle until Kaban goes down. The Maroons are the best chance we have at breaking the stalemate and opening up the boss arenas again. In the meantime, we can help bring some humanity back to this place."

"Is that why you protect the gladiators who sit out?" Angel asked. "The old people?"

"Kind of." Merc grimaced. "Almost all of them are long-timers. They've been here for months, sometimes years... and they're burned out. Some of them were slaved for a while and got too broken to fight. Some of them were taken down to one life and lost their edge when they realized they had to choose between a year of reasonably peaceful living or getting perma'd and eaten by cannibals. Those people still have a lot to offer us. A lot of them know the game inside-out, and advise and train new guerillas. They handle the crafting and the gathering. They keep the warriors fueled and running so we can fight. They counsel the traumatized and heal the sick and injured."

"Right." Angel watched her lips carefully.

"My man, Richard, was a doctor on the outside. Just an ordinary civilian who got rounded up during a gang raid on a missionary hospital in Haiti. He was working as a volunteer. Some gangers sawed his head off with a machete and sold his data for a quick buck." Merc shook her head, pressing her lips into a grim line. "Not everyone here is suited to fighting, and just because they aren't doesn't make them worthless. Everything about this place tries to strip our humanity from us. The day we forget who and what we are is the day we lose our souls."

Angel didn't reply. She briefly glanced to me.

"The cynic in me says they're full of shit, because while you were in the bathroom, me and Lulu sat there and listened to Merc saying she wanted to recruit you to fill a blank spot in her team.” I pushed the rest of my now-cold coffee to Lulu. She stirred to semi-wakefulness, then happily oozed into the bowl to soak it up. "But I did see them evacuating the old folks at Camp Victory."

"You alright?" Merc asked Angel. "You went awful quiet all of a sudden."

"Just thinking." Angel blinked a couple of times. "You want me to join the Maroons?"

"Pretty much."

Angel's face hardened a little. "How much meaningful progress have the Maroons made against the Centurions stranglehold?"

"Good question," I remarked, resisting the urge to nod in agreement.

Merc sighed. "Not as much as I'd like. The whole system is rigged against us: the Hell Pigs control most of the oil nodes, the biggest reservoir of which is located around the entry to Karkinos' arena about a hundred kilometers to the east. The Centurions control almost all the metal on the island. A few copper nodes here and there aren't enough to produce bronze armor or weapons. Everything we have that isn't primitive-grade shit was looted from kills. And of course, Sponsoreds don't drop on death and get to take their gear with them when they die. We're pretty sure that someone on the outside manipulates the server’s front-end so that Maroons don't show up on feeds or searches, so we have fuck-all in terms of subscriptions."

Angel wasn't stupid. She could read between the lines as easily as I could. The Maroons were well-intentioned, battling against an unfair system, but they weren't in a position to win against the likes of Kaban and his real-world stakeholders. The reason for them taking, stripping, then abandoning Camp Victory now made perfect sense. They were resource-starved.

"You don't have to make a decision now," Merc said, as if listening to our thoughts. "We don't pressure people into signing up. If you don’t join us, we can't afford to keep you here longer than a week, but we'll let you go without grief. Eisenblatter will provide us with information about the metal and oil we need, so like I said, your tab’s paid up for now. Stay if you want, walk if you want. I can guarantee you'll have a better shot at both daeva if you work with us, though."

"Thanks. I believe it." Angel smiled at her, a little tensely. "I'll definitely think about everything you've said. Would we be able to get somewhere to rest and sleep for a night or two?"

"Sure. Have a few spare houses." Merc nodded, and rocked up to her feet. "Only one of them is big enough to house you, your Limne, and Noodles here is up high. Hope you don't mind heights."

"Nope. Heights are fine." Angel's expression warmed a little. "We don't need a big house, though. Anything with solid walls and a roof will do."

"It's not a special residence or anything. Just so happens one of the spares is large enough for your Legions to be able to sleep out of the rain," Merc said. "Come on. I'll show you to your room. Don’t mind the bridges, either: they look fragile, but they’re stronger than they seem.