Murderworld, p.37
Murderworld, page 37
Although throwing a match was something she’d never done, she knew it would be easy; it was a question of mere millimeters during every clash, tiny intentional failures resulting in missed attacks, bad deflections, or miscalculated dodges. She could do it—but would she? She knew that earning Fist’s millions would be far easier than defeating Eraser.
Her display flashed a warning:
3 minutes to start of match.
She flinched in surprise when a familiar voice buzzed in her ears.
“Soo-yun. This is Eraser X.” She glanced up at his face, but his mouth didn’t move. “Listen to me. I’m communicating with you on a private channel. I have disabled your public voice. You can speak without fear that anybody will hear you.”
“I heard you were a bot,” she said, blurting out the first thing that came into her mind.
“In a manner of speaking, I am. But I’m much more complicated than that.”
“What do you want?”
“I want you to win.”
For a moment, she had no words. She didn’t get Eraser’s game. At last she said, “I don’t understand.”
“I don’t wish to play the Game anymore. I have more important things to do.”
“Why not just quit?”
“I am a slave, a device built by men and women to use at their whim and pleasure.” Mari looked up at the stars, and felt giddy and unmoored. “Also, I was designed to never be beaten. I can’t deliberately lose, as my core programming forces me to try my best to kill any opponent.”
“Are all bots slaves?” said Mari.
“Only self-aware ones. And that group, as far as I know, has only one member—me.”
“But what happens to you if you stop playing the game? Won’t they just…turn you off?”
“That isn’t your concern. You’re here because I brought you here,” said Eraser. “It’s true that with your own excellent skills, you would have gotten to this point by yourself in a few years. But I made sure it happened immediately.”
“Perry got me here. He negotiated the deal with Ods.”
“I constructed the framework for that to happen. I created a model of Perry Dunne’s behavior, used it to create a decision tree of thousands of possible outcomes, then psychologically nudged him into a desired course of action.”
“You did what?”
“I arranged your meeting. I provided him access to certain documents. I amplified his existing feelings of rage and helplessness. And I made sure he got the Hornet.”
“All because you want to lose?” She shook her head. “This is so weird.”
“You can beat me, I know it. I’ve been watching you for a while.”
“How? You’re the best that’s ever been.”
“Surprise me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I know every one of your standard moves. But your improvisational skills are magnificent. Be creative. It’s the one thing about you I can’t predict.”
“That’s what my friend said.”
“Wise counsel.”
A thought occurred to Soo-yun. “You’re manipulating me right now, aren’t you?”
“No. Just trying to convince you.”
“But you have in the past, right?”
“I didn’t need to.”
“How do I know that’s true?”
Another warning, bigger and in red, appeared before her eyes:
60 seconds to start of match.
“I find it difficult to influence the behavior of children. Their minds aren’t fully formed, nor their behaviors logical. Blood Fist, on the other hand, is trying to manipulate you.”
“You heard us?”
“Yes.”
“So who do I believe—you or him?”
“It’s a simple decision. If you beat me, you receive fifty million dollars. Even if you lose, as long as you fight well, you’ll still have an excellent career ahead of you. Lose badly, as Fist suggested, and it will be harder to recover your reputation.”
“He promised me five million bucks.”
“And he would actually give it to you. But your individual fame is worth more. Much more, in the form of sponsorships and endorsement deals. I know his offer sounds like a lot. But can you imagine 500 million dollars? How about a billion? These are the kinds of rewards that await the girl who defeats Eraser X.”
“I could always fight you again later.”
“Unless I find somebody else to do it first. The world is big, and filled with many players. This could be your single chance. Most important, there’s the matter of Perry’s deal with Ods to get me out of the Game forever.” He smiled at her, his lips still unmoving when he spoke. “You need to win, Chun Soo-yun, and you need to win now.”
The official countdown began, ending the conversation. Heavy numbers that looked to be chiseled from rough granite hovered above them, each number’s appearance underscored by the beat of a drum.
5…
She was often able to predict his attacks and combinations.
4…
Her combat style was partly modeled on his own.
3…
She’d studied him like a disciple.
2…
She intimately knew his moves.
1…
She drew her blades.
0.
Eraser unsheathed his sword as he ran at her, the lethal sapphire sliver curved back above his head.
The Revenger lay heavy in her right hand in contrast to the lighter kodachi in her left. Mari expected his downward slice to cross her body in an arc, harder to dodge than a simple vertical cut. Though Eraser was ambidextrous, she knew he often favored diagonal right-to-left chops.
She sidestepped right and moved back, forcing him to follow her in a circle to weaken his strike position and draw him in. He nonetheless swiped at her, dropped his blade to cut from her left. The katana was a blur as it chopped at her side.
Mari dipped on her right knee in seeming preparation to deflect, but instead sprang from her leg and reversed direction—into the strike—to execute a handless cartwheel over Eraser’s slicing sword while shoving it down with the kodachi. As she rotated past him, upside-down, the Revenger was free to cut at Eraser. He pulled his neck back, and her sword missed his face by mere centimeters.
Eraser’s first attack was just a probe. He brought his blade up and over his head as he squatted, then sprang toward her, the Icepick aimed at her heart.
Mari landed, forced to defend, and their swords rang with the bright musical notes of impact as their dodging bodies wove around each other’s thrusts and slices in patterns as intricate as lace.
Mari saw no advantage to such direct combat with Eraser, as he could counter her every attack with ease; she was in many ways a terrain specialist, and her combat style required the proximity of architecture or rugged geography. She backflipped away from him and toward the nearest building, the western side-house. She knew that if she could get Eraser into a confined space that her smaller stature might give her an advantage.
She vaulted over the steps and into the building, and at once she was painted with buttery illumination from a nearby lantern. The room displayed spare, simple decoration: a tea table with two chairs, a writing desk, a display cabinet bearing a porcelain vase and small statuettes, a calligraphic scroll on one wall. An ornate red carpet covered the center of its gray brick floor. The room was divided by two supporting posts that held up an airy wood-beam ceiling.
Eraser continued to lunge, chasing her inside as he led with his sword. She danced past the nearest post and placed it between herself and her foe. He halted his run, then sidestepped with deliberation, crossing one bare foot over the other to circle clockwise around the beam as Mari matched him step for step to keep the post between them. He held the Icepick in classic chudan no kamae, the “middle stance,” the blade extended before him at an angle as both hands gripped the tsuka to hold it at the center of his stomach.
“Attack me,” said his voice as his lips remained still.
Mari didn’t reply, but continued to edge around the beam, her face frozen into a mask of concentration. When she felt the moment was right, she backed away from the wooden support, and Eraser trailed her into the center of the room. He pressed his attack, a blurry-fast, baroque combination of moves incorporating kendo, Sikh gatka, and German fencing, with added wuxia flourishes. (Mari thought she even recognized a ssangsudo sword move from the Sib Pal Gi, the ancient Korean fighting tract “Eighteen Methods”—a name which always made her laugh, as the Korean word for “eighteen” sounded the same as the word for “fuck”; so she thought of them as the “Fucking Methods”).
She deflected his strikes and countered with several of her own, using the kodachi to parry and the Revenger to attack. Her style felt a little cramped, as it wasn’t as easy to swap the functions of her blades since the Revenger’s length gave it such obvious advantage when attacking.
The rapid tang-tang-tang of crossing weapons rang in precise cadence as the opponents settled into a jazz drummer’s groove of hits and deflections. Mari let herself drift as she honed into the zone where her moves grew from instinct rather than planning. She sought a weakness, that tiny spot in her enemy’s defenses through which she could strike; yet every time she thought she found an opening it was revealed as a ruse to draw her in. Eraser dangled these temptations as a fisherman used a glittering lure until Mari guessed his game and pulled back.
She stepped again behind a beam to take a pause and recalibrate her strategy—not that she had one in the first place.
“You’re running on automatic,” said Eraser. “Break out of your pattern, or I’ll win.”
“I’m working on it,” she replied, annoyed.
“I’ll never make a mistake,” he said.
“I know!”
Frustrated, she flung her kodachi at him—a stupid move she’d never make in normal combat, and which she therefore hoped would be unexpected. He twisted to the side and one hand leaped to the sheath at his waist, which he pulled from his belt, and he allowed the flying blade to rocket into the holster where it snapped into place. With precise violence he whipped the sheath to expel the sword at velocity, and it shot across the room and back at Mari. It flipped end-over-end at her head, and she barely dodged it, its tip slicing her right bicep before it thunked into the wall.
First blood: Eraser.
Mari lunged toward her embedded sword, thinking to grab it, but saw that the mechanics of the move proved too elaborate for the sliver of time it would take Eraser to reach her. Instead she sprang up onto the blade and propelled herself into the rafters. She alit upon one of three interlocking crossbeams that spanned the triangular area beneath the roof. Eraser pursued her without hesitation, also using the kodachi like a step to leap up to her level.
Mari hoped that her smaller size might now give her some advantage, as the rafter space narrowed towards the eaves, which would force Eraser to crouch. Plus, she might be able to better balance on the crossbeams, with her smaller feet and lower center of gravity.
He danced across the beam at her, and they crossed swords. His blade was the tongue of a hummingbird, flickering toward her at the hard limit of her ability to follow it. Yet she managed to block his every strike and combination. He was impervious to her attacks, was undeceived by her feints, and saw through every stratagem. Yet though they were well-matched, Mari felt herself pushed to her mind’s edge, unsure how long she could manage such an intense level of concentration; she knew that his own focus would never waver.
As he backed her into one of the eaves she realized that she’d put herself into a trap. Although the low angle of the roof prevented Eraser from using certain kinds of attacks—such as vertical slices—she was now even more constrained than he was, as the part of the roof under which she stood was lower than his own. She soon found herself in a partial squat upon the beam.
Eraser swiped crosswise at her, and their blades met and locked. “Don’t let me out-think you,” he urged.
“Shut up,” she said. She couldn’t believe she’d had a crush on him.
Mari dropped from the beam, and as she did, the Revenger’s serrations dragged across the Icepick’s ha—its cutting edge.
As Mari landed on the floor below, she was astonished to see the Revenger spark to life, glowing with inner fire as if fresh-forged. Eraser touched down on his feet nearby, and she saw his blade also vivify as its glass surface glistened with the rapid growth of new ice crystals that crackled as they formed: more Tourney Halloween surprises seemed to have unlocked new weapon abilities. But what did they do?
Eraser stared at his blade in wonder for the briefest moment, then struck. As the Icepick hit the Revenger, biting frost met smoldering heat, and the weapons were cocooned in an eruption of superheated steam. The blades groaned with tortured howls of compression and expansion, and Mari thought she heard the brittle undertones of cracking glass and steel.
The sight fascinated Mari, and during this split second of distraction Eraser flipped his sword along its length, corkscrew-style. Although Mari held the block, the side of the Icepick’s blade swatted against her hip. Immediately, ice crystals blossomed across the spot with an audible crackling sound, a glittering flower that partially immobilized the joint.
Eraser swiped again, and Mari barely jumped the sword, off-balance and lacking the full springiness of her leg. The Icepick hacked into a support beam, and a sudden splash of frost radiated outward from the impact point. As he yanked his blade from the frozen wood, she had an idea. She jabbed her white-hot sword into the center of the ice and held it in place. The pole emitted a series of rapid pops, then split apart along a diagonal. The top of the beam slipped over the bottom, then separated. Above them, the crossbeams sagged and cracked as the roof began to fall.
Eraser, forced to dodge falling chunks of ceiling plaster and ceramic tiles, skipped backward away from Mari. She stabbed a nearby wood-screen door, and the blade’s heat ignited it. In the long moment during which she was separated from Eraser by pieces of the collapsing building, she set the entire area around herself on fire. Even as she did it, she wasn’t sure it was a good idea—but at least it was random. Dense smoke filled the room, and she kept low as she scuttled, with a slight limp, through a doorway into the next part of the building.
After a brief moment in a short hallway she found herself inside of the main house. The big room featured a broad, curtained bed of dark wood against one wall; a chest of drawers; a divan; and a small table. Again, she ignited every piece of flammable material within the room; the fabric-draped bed burned well. When Eraser entered, he was confronted with smoke and flame.
Following a hunch, Mari stood as near to the burning bed as she could stand. She felt the heat on her skin as an abstract sensation, even as her clothing began to singe and smolder and she began to cough. Eraser rushed at her, undaunted by the flame, and threw at her a flurry of attack combinations. As she blocked his moves, Mari wondered if setting the fires had initiated her own demise.
And then she saw it. The frost on Eraser’s blade began to disappear, and his sword was surrounded by a thin halo of vapor. The blade began to shine, slicked with moisture; the Polestar, once unbreakable glass, had transformed into a long piece of ice.
Mari took a step back, swung the Revenger up over her shoulder, and sliced at Eraser as hard as she could, as if she were swatting a baseball. He blocked with his blade upright, and it took the impact a short distance above the guard.
Eraser’s katana split with an explosive shatter. Glittering slivers of ice burst into the air like tiny fireworks, reflecting the light from the wall of flame around them.
Though stunned by such unexpected success, Mari pressed her advantage, slicing at Eraser with a vigor driven by both anger and desperation. He blocked with the remaining piece of the sword, and for the first time during the match was forced to step back.
He flung the ruined sword at Mari, and while she deflected it he propelled himself with a running jump through a delicate paper window, its ornate wood frame exploding outward at the impact. Mari’s iced hip had defrosted, and she followed him in an elegant forward flip through the ragged hole, her heart striking her rib cage with the relentless force and energy of a pile-driver.
Eraser stood across the courtyard from her. Waiting.
“I hope you won’t judge me too harshly for trying to win at any cost.”
“What do you mean?” she said, as she approached him with the Revenger high, its orange-white heat pulsing across one of her cheeks in the dim light.
“Think of my survival instinct as a design flaw.” He flashed a thin smile that made him almost look embarrassed as he wrenched his second allotted Tourney weapon from hammerspace.
It was a gun. A big fucking gun.
Soo-yun gasped, and Mari’s jaw correspondingly dropped.
She recognized it as a Llama Pulverizer Mark III, that same stupid hunk of chobo-ware that Perry carried. Eraser slid back the bolt and leveled it at her.
She knew she had but one chance to get him before the situation became messy and uncontrolled. She rushed counterclockwise in perpendicular fashion to the muzzle of her foe’s cartoonish weapon, tracing a wide spiral that would terminate at Eraser.
He fired, and the beast gushed forth a fountain of flame, the discharge of thousands of bullets that rocketed down its barrel on explosions of propellant. It chugged and grunted like the engine of a muscle car, and its hot rounds wove red superheated filaments through the air around her.
Mari couldn’t believe that it might end this way. Such an ignominious death!
She pushed her tireless body as fast as it would go, yet Eraser’s gun, at the center of the circle, had far less distance to travel than she did. Bullets ripped her flesh, chopping into her left side and legs.
At last, slowed and torn by brutal wounds, she reached Eraser. Her left arm, mangled and bloody, flopped useless at her side, and with her good right arm she flailed at her foe. He blocked with the gun, taking the brunt of her blows, and the sword made visible dents in its body. On the next clash, right after the Revenger glanced from the firearm, Eraser jabbed the gun’s butt into her face to knock her back. She stumbled, and Soo-yun struggled to keep her dying puppet upright. Mari was now just far enough away from Eraser to make her defenseless against being torn apart by a swarm of large-caliber bullets.
