Mask of Humanity

Nicolai kept on through the misty forest and its endless temptations. Then the path ended and the mist dispersed and now he was in a desert, the sun pouring down on him, dazzling his eyes, and there was another statue.

He glared at it and it glared at him.

‘The Trial of Combat,’ it uttered. ‘Your opponent has been chosen. Kill them.’

Nicolai frowned, unsure. Another trick?

He heard breathing and feet sliding over sand and turned around to see a young man with sandy blond hair who was in a similar state as Nicolai, red and burned from the lava, covered in scrapes and bruises, looking thoroughly wretched. Nicolai found him familiar but couldn’t work out why.

The young man closed his eyes and said, ‘now you want me to kill someone?’ He ran a hand through his hair and let out a miserable laugh. He turned and raised his arms and said, ‘I’ve had enough! I’m done with this shit! I want to go back home!’

There was no answer forthcoming. The statue had vanished.

The man turned back to Nicolai, who was staring at him with interest having decided this probably wasn’t a trick but indeed, the next part of the trial. Apparently, it was going to give him exactly what he’d wanted.

But now it wasn’t so easy because he found himself actually feeling something like empathy towards the other man, someone who had been through the same things as him, who was similarly tired of it all. Even as he had these thoughts he eyed the young man and concluded he was relatively free from augmentation and inexperienced, which gave rise to a slight disappointment.

‘You are real, aren’t you?’ asked the man, seeming uncertain.

‘Unfortunately,’ Nicolai managed, wishing the guy would just come at him.

Instead the young man said, ‘I’m Carl.’ He had blue eyes that were bright and alive in the sunlight.

‘Nicolai,’ said Nicolai, and this felt right, sort of. Like they were following the proper ritual. The name was familiar, catching at his mind, catching at the odd familiarity he’d felt when he first looked upon Carl’s face.

That was when he remembered, the shock strong enough that his eyes widened despite his intent to control his features.

‘You…’ he began haltingly. ‘You were at the Del Brougnie mansion. Outside.’

‘Yes.’ Carl frowned at him. ‘Were you, too?’ He looked doubtful.

‘You were saved,’ said Nicolai, numb. ‘The explosion. A piece of shrapnel. You were saved.’ This was the man he’d saved with one of the gun limbs. The Governor had been upset with him.

Carl frowned harder, seeming confused. ‘I don’t really remember. There was some kind of fight, an explosion.’ He shrugged. ‘Not a good day.’

‘I suppose not,’ said Nicolai.

‘So… what do you think of all this?’ said Carl, raising his arms, expressing… something.

‘I think we are supposed to fight and one of us is supposed to die,’ said Nicolai, increasingly irritable. Wasn’t it obvious? He didn’t want to get to know Carl, he wanted to kill him. Wait. That wasn’t what a normal human would feel in this situation. His mask was slipping. But it didn’t matter, did it? There was no choice. His simulation of morality was even more pointless than usual.

‘That’s one view,’ said Carl, and he sounded disappointed. Then, looking around, shading his eyes from the sun, he said, ‘but maybe there is another way.’

Nicolai followed his gaze. They were in the middle of a vast and endless desert and he was still thirsty and the heat of the sun was rekindling the pain of his burns. The sand was hot under his feet. All of it made the ever-present anger curdling in his gut grow and rise.

‘Did you find any other way to complete the other trials?’ he asked, still thinking of the moment where he’d saved Carl’s life, barely cognisant of what he was saying, increasingly intolerant of the discussion. He knew his impatience was coming across in his clipped words.

Carl smiled, a stupid, sad little smile. ‘No.’

Nicolai spread his arms in a meaningless gesture of his own. ‘Ok?’ And he gave his own stupid smile. He wanted out of this place. Why this man?

‘Are you so eager to kill?’ asked Carl.

Yes, hissed something. ‘No,’ snarled Nicolai. ‘But I want to move on.’

‘Fine,’ spat Carl, and raised his fists. ‘Fucking fine. At least I can say I tried. Don’t know why I bothered, for a Raw.’ His voice shook and Nicolai knew he didn’t want this.

Nicolai wasn’t sure when Carl had realised that he was a Raw. That seemed to be the reason for his confidence, as it was clear to him that Carl believed he was going to win this fight, that his efforts to prevent it stemmed from a desire not to kill, rather than from any significant fear of being killed himself.

Nicolai shifted his own stance and began to move. Sand wasn’t good to fight on, because throwing powerful blows requires good footing, the weight of the body reinforced by the ground. But they both suffered from the same disadvantage which meant there was no disadvantage. He suspected the fight would end on the ground, as they often did.

As he moved forwards he stooped to grab a handful of sand. Carl hadn’t moved, watching him with growing wariness. His implants, whatever they were, would be giving him a threat assessment, reading Nicolai’s movements in order to do so. Nicolai guessed that Carl couldn’t attack, had to wait for him to make the first move. That would be because he had a standard combat drive that wouldn’t allow itself to activate except in a self-defence situation. It cost a lot of money to get unlocked ones.

‘You’re smiling,’ said Carl, and now there was a hint of fear in his face, a burr of unease in his voice.

Nicolai hadn’t realised. ‘Sorry,’ he said, uncertain what for, and schooled his face back to an expressionless mask.

They were closer, Nicolai having closed the ground, only a couple of metres between them. Carl had adopted a standard stance, and from his rigidity and textbook positioning Nicolai knew his combat drive had come online and he was chipping into it, gaining unearned skills. His eyes were on Nicolai’s hand which held the sand, aware of the threat it posed, but clearly his combat drive wasn’t sure what to do in this situation.

No deserts, in New London.

Nicolai mimed throwing it as he crossed the remaining distance. Carl twisted his head to the side, closed his eyes, put a hand over his face, and took a few quick steps back in an attempt to get some distance. His chip, unsure which defensive option to pick, had apparently chosen all of them. The sand wasn’t easy to manoeuvre in and Carl didn’t get far.

Nicolai kicked Carl in the stomach while the man’s eyes were pointed the wrong way. There wasn’t much power in the blow but it was enough to send Carl sprawling backwards, sliding down, and as he tried to regain his footing Nicolai threw the sand for real which went in his eyes and mouth and nose and he gagged and spluttered. Nicolai kept close and kicked him in the head next. Another weak blow but it kept him down and disoriented.

Now Carl was struggling, flailing around. ‘Stop!’ he yelled.

That’s obviously not an option, Nicolai thought as he fell on him, enacting the grappling phase of the murder-in-progress. Carl responded better than before because this was something his chip knew how to deal with, but he was slower than Nicolai because that was one of the limitations of such artificial skills—they weren’t in your muscle memory. Nicolai kept his weight on the other man and looked to control his limbs.

Nicolai was working his way towards getting a good hold, intending to choke Carl to death, when Carl screamed, ‘what is wrong with you!’

‘I don’t know!’ Nicolai roared, tearing a defensive arm aside and slapping Carl in the face to disorientate him. ‘The doctors could never work it out,’ he added, an uncertain defensiveness in his words.

The young man was panicking now and this must have interrupted his connection to his chip, because he made the mistake of rolling, trying to get away. But this only gave Nicolai his back so he squirmed forwards and sunk in a rear naked choke, his arms worming around Carl’s throat then flexing as he applied all of his significant strength. The crushing pressure on the sides of Carl’s neck—where the carotid arteries and jugular veins ran—prevented fresh blood from reaching his brain.

‘I saved you,’ Nicolai hissed, holding tight as Carl bucked and thrashed, knowing he was trapped, knowing he was dead. He tried to go for Nicolai’s eyes but Nicolai kept his head tucked, using the back of Carl’s head and his own arms for protection. The fingers scrabbled uselessly over his forehead, nails ripping at his skin.

Carl went limp in roughly six seconds. Nicolai maintained patient pressure, laying there and holding tight as the man’s body changed states from unconscious to dead. While he waited his empty eyes stared at nothing.

He kept on the hold for a full minute after he was sure Carl was dead, just to be certain. It would be quite embarrassing if he let him go only for the man to resume breathing and wake up. Then he relaxed and the young man fell away, flopping into the sand as Nicolai rose. Carl’s glassy blue eyes stared up at him with the familiar accusatory stare, bulging out from his purpled, swollen face.

For a moment he considered whether he ought to pretend that he felt bad about what he’d done, but he realised he simply didn’t have the energy. In truth, all he felt was annoyance and as though he’d been scammed. What had been the point of saving this man? That had been no fight at all. Not a single tingle of thrill or twist of savage joy. Just one mechanical action leading inevitably into another.

He pulled his foot back, snarling, about to kick Carl’s corpse, but his movement caused the sand to shift and Carl shifted with it, his mouth opening. Inside, Nicolai saw a little pale thing. Stooping, he pushed Carl’s mouth open and plucked it out. It was a Seed, and it lay limp, still, dead. As he held it, he felt his own wriggling in his mouth, so he opened it and let it out to crawl around on his other hand.

It seemed excited, moving in the direction of Carl’s Seed, so he brought his hands together and watched, some interest returning as he observed.

His Seed fell upon Carl’s with a savagery reminiscent of his own, and it had grown a little mouth that took bites out of the dead Seed, working its way in until it gobbled something at the centre of Carl’s seed then stopped, apparently satisfied, rolling around fat and sated.

Nicolai let the remnants of Carl’s Seed fall and popped his own back in his mouth, rising to his feet. Something was turning over in the back of his mind as he imagined the future, imagined himself feeding many more dead Seeds to his own, their owners dead at his feet. While these thoughts twined through him he stood there staring over the dunes at nothing.

The sand shifted before him as a statue rose and animated. It was, again, a different member of the same species they all depicted.

‘You have completed the Trials,’ it intoned with a smile, spreading its arms.

‘Ok,’ said Nicolai.

‘Stand proud, for you have proven yourself a true member of the People,’ it added.

‘Ok,’ said Nicolai, impatient to see what would happen next.

‘Feel no guilt, for you—‘

‘I don’t need to hear all this stupid shit,’ he spat.

It gave him a glare of such pure loathing that he almost took a step back, his eyes widening with surprise. It was the first time he’d seen one of the statues show such strong emotion.

The statue said nothing more, instead it cracked apart and fell into the sand and where it fell the sand began to shift and pour as though a hole had opened up underneath, at first small but rapidly growing, all the sand around Nicolai beginning to shift.

Nicolai tried to step away but he was already caught as tonnes of sand began to hiss and slide, seizing him and dragging him down with it, smothering him in a shifting blanket of millions of tiny hot little grains.

Challenge complete, said his Mark.