“As the F and W lock the gates and seal the windows with hurry

among walls of newly-raised gardens,

there is worry. 

The wolves are baying

and morale is fraying.

Will the walls hold-

or, will the Proxies fold?“ 

- The New Garden, poem by Irhan Govi, written during the Frantic Forties, currently not banned by Federated decree.

“Hello!”

“Hi!”

Martin shook himself. Reflex had kicked in, and his response had come naturally.

“Do you think this is as weird as I do?”

“We haven’t even covered the basics of what a Chassis can do. I can summon mine, but that’s it.”

The other boy nodded, his teak skin shining sallow in the neon light. Brown eyes went up, pupils focused on the LED that must have been old in the time of the Devastation.”What’s with the ambiance?”

“I think they’re going for an old school look?”

“Ever noticed that they always go for a pre-Dev look? I mean what about the brutalist architecture of the Frantic Forties? Or those glowing structures in ’60?”

“They got a one trick, and one trick only,” Martin responded. He knew about the Forties - that was a time period covered well history - but made a mental to check up ‘glowing structures in the 2060’.

The boy nodded, brown eyes twinkling. “I’m Somchai Saolirin, of Bangkok Arcology, given to these cold and quiet latitudes by an uncaring-

“Enough banter. Somchai Saolirin, ready?!”

The automated voice had an odd Trade. It sounded like some of the North American refugees, albeit more archaic.

Saolirin shrugged, the shoulders of his embossed jacket rising.”Guess so.”

“Martin Solieri, ready?!”

Martin nodded.

“FIGHT!”

A beat. A pause. “So, what do you think of my jacket? It’s the latest edition from the House of R.”

Martin stared, mouth open. Weren’t they supposed to fight?

“Well?”

The part of the brain that deals with politeness, the hindbrain drilled to automatic responses by one’s mother, surged past the tip of Martin’s tongue.”I think the color makes you look distinguished. I have the blue one, with white stars.”

“Oh, you’re a fellow connoisseur?”

“A friend picked it for me.”

White light covered Somchai Saolirin's nodding figure and Martin summoned his Chassis. The white bandages soothed away his worries and he stood tall, Martin did.

“You’ll have to introduce me to this friend of yours, Martin Solieri,” Somchai Saolirin said, still covered in the light.”After.”

Two great forelimbs broke the surface of the light, each the size of Martin’s torso. An elongated chest terminated in a skull whose mouth could swallow him in two bites. Last to manifest was the tail, perhaps the length of two of the tram that had brought him inside the arcology.

“Now, then, Martin Solieri, let’s begin,” the sibilant voice cursed.

The huge snake-lizard turned on itself like a mirage, vanishing before his eyes. Shit. He threw himself to the left, neatly avoiding an object that caused the air to shift. Shit, shit, shit. That was Somchai in his Chassis.

The blue outline around his Chassis blew incandescent, like lightning and the world stopped. The air seemed hazy and he could make out a blurred outline, tense like a coil. No, that was the wrong way to think of it. The world was normal; it was just that he was so much faster.

Mindful of a Field that would extinguish itself given time, he took a single step to the left. Saolirin shot past, and the Field became a normal aura.

He took a breath. The Field surged again and he took a step to the right. Another wake of air struck him. The Field returned to normalcy. This was the lesson of the parking lot writ large. Use his Field to much, too quickly, and it would go out.

Yet Saolirin could not maintain his offence forever. Sight, to turn invisible. Sound, he thought running full track, for he could hear nothing of that great bulk.

And he knew that while a Chassis could grant a Proxy superhuman abilities, the more you pushed the Field, the easier it gave.

“Fight me!”

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Martin shrugged, the bare seed of an idea formed.”I’m done running. So, why don’t you come at me?”

Saolirin became visible. He towered above Martin. Just like that deviathan, only Martin wasn’t some kid anymore. He wondered: was the baseline strain on each Chassis the same when it came to the Fields? A Chassis the size of Saolirin’s couldn’t come without weaknesses, otherwise everyone would be wearing them.

Their gazes meet across the cell.

Saolirin bunched himself up.

Martin removed the Field.

His breath echoed inside the flimsy-looking wrap that could withstand a bullet fired point-blank. Now or never!

Saolirin launched himself like an arrow in flight and Martin focused the Field into the hand held up in the universal stop sign.

The print of his hand shone like a supernova and Saolirin and his Chassis stopped with an abruptness that hurt the eye, a shockwave washing over them-

-and as Martin’s Field died out, the wave returned to its point of origin, a bubble collapsing in the reverse.

Saolirin’s left arm crumpled, a dozen dents, each the size of a fist manifested, plating his skull and a series of metallic pops echoed in tune with his screams. He fell, a marionette cut without strings.

Martin glanced at his hand, and the lack of Field. Please don’t get up, please don’t get up. He checked the ceiling, hoping for his victory.

Saolirin rose, unsteady.”Clever…”

Martin had grown up in a provincial camp, peddling vice on the streets and so he was not without mercy. Despite, or because of that upbringing, he knew a facet or two about mercy. 

So when his arms grabbed that ruined left limb, squeezing blood out of a thing closer to a bloody sock than an actual arm, he asked a single question.

“Will you yield?”

The red stained the white of his Chassis.

There was a pained grunt.

“Would you?”

Martin shook his head, and though it disgusted him, what he intended to, though he hated how other criminals had done this, he would do it ten thousand times if it made him a better Proxy. If he didn’t have to lie broken in a parking lot.

“Saolirin Somchai has been deemed the loser in this contest of wills,” the automatic voice declared.

The loser sagged; the victor swallowed.

Martin took a step back, to give both him and Somchai space. Would he really have have…tortured a person to break their will?

The answer - if there was one - did not come to him.

The world splintered and with a suction-noise Somchai disappareared. If only this twisted feeling could so easily be removed.

“Will he be fine?”

“The Administrator themself will heal Saolirin Somchai. Your next opponent will be Ronja Somaronov.” 

Martin shrugged. He didn’t know the name, but by the end of their fight, he would, one way or the other.

“Is there a time limit or…?”

“Somaronov requested to fight two of your classmates at the same time and is currently undergoing a quick review as to whether a her victory falls under the current guidelines or not.”

“Current guidelines?”

“Instructor Sviratham has declared her victory ‘ethically reprehensible but legally acceptable’. Your fight will start in ten seconds.”

Martin…just stood there. A Proxy that would earn a remark like that by Raja Sviratham, who hadn’t hesitated to tramautize a student, well, that was someone to give you pause.

The world fractured in that glossy, mirror-pieced way, and a Proxy exited.

Ronja Somaronov’s Chassis didn’t look like much. Human-sized, blue, made to in the image of a… musketeer. The helmet even had a raised section, shaped like a feather.

She nodded, and Martin returned the gesture.

“Ronja Somaronov, are you ready”

She shrugged.

“Martin Solieri, are you ready?”

Martin took a stance, weight on the balls of his feet. The Field had began to surge back. He’d strike her the once, and it’d be over. Yes. Somchai’s bones slipped under his grip.

“BEGIN!”

He hesitated. Martin’s muscles tensed, and the world rippled.

A series of cylinders, each stacked precariously on top of the other rose from the floor of the battle cell. A path, well-trodden, zigzagged between the leaning towers. A smell, of oil, weed and sweat stained the air. The ground itself seemed to rise, creating sections both even and uneven.

Martin could make out pillars of smoke on the horizon, and cries that sounded just like- he shook himself. It was just a illusion of Redsjö, not the real deal.

He swept a hand at the mirage, his Field pulsing in tune with the gesture. The ‘space’ directly in front of him wavered, the texture pixellating, greying, before it snapped back. Fuck.

An annoying technique, but it couldn’t stop him. He would just push his Field further.

“Martin,” she said, her voice both kind and familiar. He knew that timbre. And just like that, he was ten years old. For what child doesn’t know their mother?

He turned on his heels.

They shared the colours of their eyes.

She smiled and Martin took a step back, still staring.

Her hair was short and fuzzy, and she would always cut it herself because she didn’t think any white woman could do it.

He remembered the laugh lines around her eyes. His father would kiss those lines and call them linages of wisdom. His mother would swat his father, but she’d secretly enjoy it.

Chani Solieri, his mother, dead and illusion, smiled. His Field roared to life and the illusion faltered, but even the motion of the Field was hesitant, almost reluctant.

He stretched out a hand, as if to touch her. Even knowing that it was a fake, that she had been dead for over a decade, he had to do it.

He didn’t notice the absence of his Field.

He was so close. Close enough to- Chani Solieri vanished. His Chassis froze. Martin froze. A hand seized his chest. What? Pain exploded from the inside and he fell to knees. His chest constricted, but the ache in heart was worse. She had been so close.

She had been before him, close enough to touch… then gone. His world became chiaoscuro, an interplay between black and red as another Field covered his Chassis.

His lids rose, then fell.

That Field was a veiled white, as close to air as anything. It surrounded him like a wildfire.

No. He screamed, hoarse and wild. He tried to summon his Field, but the other Field smothered it. Mucus bubbled up through his nose.

His sight was more black than red now.

Fine. He called on his Field, not to break the other Proxy’s hold, but to hurt, to rend, to create suffering. Fine. He felt for that ache, the pit in heart and dug deep - fine - and blue-white lighting splintered in a spiderweb extending out from his form.

It coruscated out from him, a network of suffering.

Martin took a knee. One eye…was simply gone. Black.

The noise inside his helmet was frantic and continuous.

Soon, soon he’d have to-

He only knew the success of his tactic as the foreign Field around his body fluctuated, but victory was the last thing on his mind. Don’t let her get away.

The Field around him vanished and he drew a clear breath, mind like a vice. The greater illusion followed suit and Camp Redsjö receded on horizon. 

A musketeer in blue appeared. 

He spun strands, focusing them on that kneeling figure. The hazy, gauze-like Field tried to maintain its defence but she had worked it too hard.

Inside his helmet, Martin’s lips arced up in a corpse’s stiffened smile.

She thrust out a hand, and Martin flew-

-bouncing on the floor, shards of agony radiating through his entire being, legs bent at an unnatural angle and yet all the same he maintained the link of lightning that bound the two of them. Blood flowed out of his mouth. Had he bitten himself as she threw him just now?

The Field around her winked out and that automatic voice called out. “Victory to Martin Solieri!”

Victory?

Martin began to crawl towards Somaronov’s still form. He was cold, cold fire in his chest. The strands of pain still bound them. She twitched, a person caught in a nightmare. As Martin had been.

He wasn’t done. Not done yet.

“Enough.”

A..something broke the lightning between them. Martin threw himself on his back, meeting Raja Sviratham’s unsmiling gaze. His arms were crossed and his mouth was flat.

“She got what she had coming. Anything more, and we’re out of bounds.”

Martin leviated himself up, floating in a boneless manner.”Do you know what she did? The things she showed me!?”

“Do you know what she did to the other Proxies?”

“Oh, I might have an idea or two.”

“She won, but victory is not the most important thing, not when it comes to fighting other Proxies. The manner of victory counts. As you’ve just shown. She tried to break you, and yet you remained strong.”

Was that pride Martin heard? It disgusted him as it warmed him.

“You say that the way we win matters, but only as long as we fight other Proxies, correct? When it comes to the Host, anything goes,” Martin spewed, suddenly tired.”At least tell me she will be punished.”

“Anything goes when it comes to the Host,” Sviratham echoed, ignoring the question. “For now, that sentence is just an abstraction, child.” His face hardened, the wrinkles of his forehead standing out momentarily in sharp relief. “But as you see the split roof of an arcology, when you descend through habitats that have been cracked open and you spot broken bodies like dolls splayed across the various levels, you will know. In that time, you will remember my words.”

Sviratham created a fractal-portal.”Go on. I will grant you another ten minutes to rest and heal, then you’re up for the semifinals,” he said, voice softer now.

One of Martin’s legs snapped back, his Field returning his body to its normal state by default. He landed on it, and made his way through to the portal.”You know, we’re fighting for a better world, but I can’t help but wonder if it’s a better world we’re getting if we become too much like the Host.”

Silence. Martin craned his head. Of course. Sviratham had teleported away. He entered the portal-

-and out into another battle cell.

He felt…weary. The heavy weight of his limbs began to ease up, and the aches of atleast one of his legs was diminishing as the Field healed his body. But his mind…

What he had been about to do to Somchai, what he had done to Somaronov, the casual ease with which Sviratham had just brushed him off, it all served to make him tired and frustrated.

He stared at the ground, eyes dull, seeing nothing, ears hearing nothing. 

Another Proxy entered.

They had long silk hair and the harsh light glinted, bouncing off from goat-horns. Isla Calix.