Chapter 418: Shit in the milk

Mason raced after Streak, trying to understand all the strange, mechanical or at least metallic noises coming from different parts of the maze. He still hadn't smelled or heard his opponent, but he trusted Streak's senses.

Passages whipped by in flashes of different shades of dark. There was a metallic roof over the corridors and even Mason's enhanced eyesight revealed everything in a hard to distinguish, gloomy sameness.

Streak stopped suddenly and growled, sniffing at the air. Then he turned and ran straight back the way they'd come.

Mason said nothing, though he was sure the wolf felt his skepticism through their bond. Whatever Streak was smelling couldn't just up and vanish to the other side. Probably...

But he didn't have any better ideas, so he followed and kept trying to get a sense of the ever-increasing clanging's distance. It was definitely getting closer.

Streak and Mason both found what they were looking for in the same moment. A dark-haired man with glowing red eyes came out from a passage and turned towards them. Behind him, coming down the main tunnel, was what could only be described as a giant, metallic mouth, chomping over and over as it came forward at about a man's jog.

Mason lifted his bow and loosed a Power Shot, the missile whistling with force as it flew straight on target. It crackled as it hit some kind of shadowy sphere, the arrow swallowed and sent into a constant spin around Mason's enemy. The man grinned, then bolted back into a side passage just as the mouth came by, blocking any attempt to follow.

And also before Mason thought to turn on his Mark.

"Great." Mason grabbed Streak and pulled him away from the main passage. The wolf struggled to chase his prey, but Mason yanked him along. "We don't eat if we get crushed."

As he ran he gave one of the metallic walls a brutal front kick for science, but the metal didn't even dent. He jumped and punched the roof, but it seemed equally thick and strong.

He shook his hand then remembered Wayfinder, activating the power with a sigh of relief as he watched everywhere he'd been in the maze flash open like a transparent map. It didn't show him anywhere he hadn't been, but he could see all the way back to where he'd started. It was a hell of a lot better than nothing.

It looked like he was playing Apocalypse Pacman in the dark, but at least he wasn't blind. Now the question was why the hell did his opponent seem so confident?

Clearly he could see with whatever power had changed his eyes, but in theory he'd be as lost as Mason. Unless he had some kind of even better mapping or scouting power. And if he did, what then?

Obviously his plan would be to bait Mason (or probably Streak) into a trap, putting them into some kind of dead end that would end in an unpleasant metallic mouth hug.

It seemed he could teleport, too—based on Streak's nearly infallible sense of smell getting turned around so quickly. So not only might the man know where he was going, he might be 'free' in a way Mason wasn't.

At least it seemed best to assume these things until proven otherwise. Mason thought it wise to overestimate his foe and let things take longer than necessary, rather than underestimate him and end up crushed. So what was the plan? The cold, calculating side of his brain seemed to be waking up.

Don't worry about the kill. Ignore him. Stay ahead of the danger. Get the whole maze mapped. Then we hunt him down and trap him with speed and teamwork.

It seemed as good a plan as any. And with the seemingly ever-increasing emotional impatience, Mason was just glad he could still think clearly. He took a moment to communicate himself to Streak, but the wolf was already whining in unhappy acceptance, ready to follow Mason's lead.

Trying not to feel trapped like a damn rat, together they raced through the metallic jungle, mapping one corridor at a time...

* * *

"Shit in the milk, look at him. He hardly blinked. I'd be pissing myself," said Julio. "I can't believe that shit rat Karthik got given a fucking arena like that. Unbelievable."

Chinua squinted and looked at his friend and ally, glancing away from the same monitor as his small team of 'rebels'.

“’Shit in the milk’? Who says that?”

“What? Oh. We say it in Spanish all the time. Not my fault translations are weird.”

Chinua grinned. The man wasn't wrong, of course. The arena Mason Nimitz had been given was a special kind of nightmare, which incredibly benefited the emperor's finest scout.

Karthik ‘the cat’ seemed almost preternaturally environmentally aware, and Chinua suspected he had a kind of permanent map of his surroundings. He could see in the dark. Set traps. Move through walls. Who knew what else.

And here he was in small metal spaces, almost pure darkness, chased by huge metal crushers that might even kill his terrifying opponent. It was obviously an attempt to balance the western leader's...advantages.

But Chinua still expected nothing would. Not after what he'd seen when the 'warlord' fought the emperor.

"The man let Jeong beat him half to death to make a point," said Adela beside him, giving him a meaningful stare he ignored. "I don't imagine a moving garbage compacter frightens him. But we're running out of time, Captain."

She was also correct. This young man had done the impossible. Chinua and his soldiers hadn't dared face the emperor on their own.

When ‘the holy city’ had been formed, and Jeong had demanded his 'Proclamation of loyalty' Chinua had been forced to decide: could he and his soldiers kill Jeong together, if they somehow got him alone? Or did they have no choice but to run into the wilds and hide?

The answer had been a brutal reality check. Chinua knew the dangerous Brazilian Damian was always at Jeong's side. His spies and scouts like Karthik were always watching, his 'council' of other powerful players never far.

So the chances of getting him alone were already negligible. And the simple fact was—or so Chinua believed, but with good reason—that Jeong could kill him and all his warriors by himself, maybe without so much as a scratch.

And still, yes, still. Chinua wouldn't serve him. Not ever. Nor would the players who had fled at his side.

Chinua and his team had all been soldiers or agents of the state, serving different nations and armies in the real world. Some of them had done terrible things, groomed as children to be soldiers in wars they hardly even understood. They had seen the very best and worst of mankind, the spiritual crucible of combat revealing them and those they knew in a way no civilian would ever understand.

For some of them, the apocalypse was a welcome relief. A chance to start over. And for awhile they had.

Despite the terrible nature of the tutorials and many of the circumstances after, they had found each other and begun to build something like a family.

But Jeong had been building, too. Far faster. With far more purpose. Before long he and his loyalists had 'joined' with half the settlements on the continent, subduing them all with intimidation and violence.

Chinua hadn't seen everything, but he'd seen enough.

He and his players had all agreed it was better to die than serve a man or an organization like that. Not again. Not in this 'new' life.

So they'd run and nearly starved in the mountains. Without a proper system settlement they had been forced to live like ancient man, building their own shelters, their own fires, hunting and gathering to survive.

Fortunately, they had a dozen brave, like-minded civilian supporters with invaluable skills and access to the system market, without whom Chinua knew they'd all be dead.

It was for them mostly he finally turned to his second in command and nodded. He owed his soldiers, of course, but they were like him—players in a game that had existed long before the alien.

A game of life or death that burned away any real hope for a better life, a better reality. An understanding of violence and violent men and the harsh reality of the world. But he was also a kind of feudal lord in this new existence, and he owed the men of peace more. They had trusted him and his with their lives, and it was his duty to protect them.

"He may be as bad as Jeong," he said, knowing it was an old argument.

"His players are loyal," countered Adela.

"Yes and maybe he bribes them with slaves and the best of everything." Chinua added, mostly for the sake of it. "What's your girl been saying?"

"She says the civilians of Nassau are fat and happy," said his capable Sergeant. "They're buying up everything in the bazaar. So they're rich, too."

Chinua argued on—maybe they'd only brought the favored civilians, that maybe the rest were living lives of desperation. That they couldn't know how things truly were unless they saw them with their own eyes.

"We voted," said the almost always silent Ayden, eyes far away now as he looked out into the promenade. "We voted. It's done. Stop wasting time and breath."

Chinua snorted and looked around the table, and his soldiers all took turns giving him little grins. Ayden the Turk didn't say much, but when he did it was always straight to the heart of the thing.

They all knew they had to risk it. It was Mason Nimitz and the slim hope of some way to cross the sea. Or it was hide until Jeong found them, then fight to the death.

It wasn’t the first time Chinua had faced an unpleasant choice. And though by temperament he might wait until he was sure a mortal decision had to be made, when the moment came, he didn’t hesitate.

"I'll talk to him," he said. "As soon as he's out."