Ch 15: Tough bargain
“The dull sound coming from a windy cavern sends an eerie vibe to most people. It doesn’t matter if it’s heard on the spot or through a recording, the sensation of pressure on the ears, moving down to the rest of the body is otherworldly for many. Imagine that, then add in the faint sound of panting and hard breaths of someone who seems to be dying next to you. Thrilling, isn’t it?
You try to stand on your feet, but soon discover that my panting body is sewn into you; I am but a husk now, a lifeless weight that is dragging you down. What say you, engineer, do you still want to go on?”
Vivar wakes with a sensation rarely remembered by him, that of cold sweat. Like all of the C.T.Ds, his brain was the only biological left untouched by the R.O.C process, and he was left with one side-effect: whenever his body entered a deep search, his mind would enter a dormant state. And, like any good human, some of his dreams would guide him through his past.
It wasn’t even worth it, though, as besides a few tips and uses of their emergency Medgel, he couldn’t find another way to heal the clone. “Brush the thoughts away and concentrate on solutions”, he murmured. Then he injected a second dose of MedGel, stabilizing Siete only to a point where they could be carried around.
Vivar scoured, scanned, and trenched system after system of carved rocks, but all of them either were a dead end or corridors so tight that even Siete couldn’t slip through. To make matters worse, the clopy started sweating profusely, panting and was burning with a fever. Vivar feared most that his scans missed some possible internal damages and he lacked the skills to fix it.
It took the two some good few hours before a slight breeze in the air raised a bit of hope in Vivar. “Possible exit”, he thought and rushed his pace, but then a second thought stopped him in his tracks. “Possible ambush as well”.
His attackers had ample time to check the outside for other cave entries. Or maybe they didn’t, but he couldn’t take any chances, not with his left hand stuck carrying his wounded patient. So, after hiding them under a gathering of lichen and moss, he scouted ahead and had the right idea to do so, as there was someone at the entrance. Two individuals, a large gangly robot with four hands and a human that was sniffing the air.
It was Marcos and his C.T.D, D’zin.
-”Did the clopy build a rapport with team 6? I hoped so, but he was a real wrench in our plans”, deliberated Vivar, unsure of how to deal with this new challenge. “But still, there’s his C.T.D- who has better medical equipment than me.”
After calculating their option, Vivar decided that the best course of action was to show himself to Team 6, pointing his canon-right hand at them, which he was resolute on using it only as a bargaining chip. Well, for now at least.
Vivar -“ Patient 6 Marcos, C.T.D 6 D’zin, confirm your identities”, he screamed from a long enough distance to hit one of them, or at least one at which dodging was much more difficult. Something that D’zin noticed.
-” Vivar?” asked a surprised Marcos. “What are you doing here?”, but before he could approach him, his partner’s hand stopped him in his tracks and pointed towards the knight.
– “He does know by now about the first round’ non-streamed rule, right?”, whispered the boy to D’zin.
-“ Yes, this information should have gotten to C.T.D Vivar as well. I believe something else is at fault here”, said D’zin.
Not wanting to waste anymore time, the young man took initiative and put his hands behind the back of his head, yelling a reply
-” Vivar, I’ll step closer, just a bit closer, just so we can talk, alright? See, D’zin can’t get to me in time now, right? Good. Now, I’ll ask again, did something happen? Is Siete alright?”
Vivar -” Affir…No. Another team attacked us and Siete was hurt, possibly with internal injuries. I am familiar with D’zin’s abilities, so I don’t believe it was you who did it, but-”
Marcos- “ But we are on opposite teams, I understand.”
-”Agreed.But to properly help my companion, I would need your C.T.D’s more advanced scanners for a proper check-up. I don’t know what your purpose in this game is, Marcos, but here is my proposal. I’ll take you hostage, while D’zin checks up on my partner to discover if there are any problems with them.”
-” Done”, answered the boy quickly. “I’ll come closer and you let D’zin take the lead, ok?”
-” Oh…ok. Thank you?” the swiftness of Marcos’ actions broke Vivar’s flimsy attempt at masking his robotic mask, an action that only the young man caught on to.
Marcos -” No problem. I was amused by Siete’s presence during our training camp, and I kind of root for them a bit, you know. So the whole threatening thing isn’t necessary, and I get why you took this action, but word of advice for the future…don’t ever try that with me again.”
Vivar picked up on the hostility and the way it made him feel could only be interpreted as goosebumps. D’zin even shook her head a bit when passing by Vivar, not as a threat, but as a warning to not aggravate the situation anymore.
-“ Show us the way”, mentioned the boy to his captor.
Not before long, Vivar and the rest got to Siete’s resting place and D’zin started her part of the deal, while the other two took baby steps to loosen up a bit.
Marcos -“ So you mentioned the attackers were someone different from us? Can I guess that they had some kind of weird weapon?” Marcos tried to poke some information out of his kidnapper who, in turn, responded with his own poking queries.
Vivar -“ Our escape made a lot of noise, and that is probably what made you come and explore the cave. Right?”
-” Well, we thought everyone followed the unwritten rule for round 1, so a cave-in was a bit of a mystery. We thought that maybe it had something to do with a challenge device; or the unemployed runaways”,thought the young man.
He seemed honest enough, and Vivar knew that his current way of dealing with rivals wasn’t the best long-term solution, so driven by his experiences, he put down his right hand.
Vivar -“ I apologize”, he added. “ We are each other’s competition, but I believe you when you say that you want to, at least for now, help out Siete”.
Marcos -” No problem, the little clo- cloppy seems like an interesting character for this year’s game, and I don’t fight dirty against people I like.”
-”…I find this odd. Pardon me for mentioning this, but you didn’t appear this confident before”, confessed Vivar out of the blue. To his surprise, Marcos didn’t seem bothered by it and took it as an innocent remark.
-” Learned how to hide it from my job; it’s useful not to give out everything from the start. So then, I uhm, was thinking, what do you say if we make another…deal? I know Siete can be trusted, and youuuu, well, listen to them.”
Marcos wavered a bit and turned his blushing face towards D’zin, who gave him four thumbs up and encouraged him to continue. “You’re doing great”, indicated supportively the four-handed robot.
-“ So, I was thinking, maybe we should form a group of our own. For the moment. D’zin is a veteran, but you seem to have more knowledge of the contest than anyone expected from a C.T.D. And Siete has quite an eye for tech.”
Vivar pondered a bit, and while he agreed with his reasoning, all of his senses told him that the boy was still hiding something.
-“ All of the information I have agrees with forming a group…but just with D’zin, not with you. My alert system has been painted in red ever since we met. The fact that you already had military tech implanted from the start, your knowledge of system admin commands, and now, the utter confidence that you could escape untouched from my railgun-”
-” Wait, that’s a railgun?” At that moment, Marcos got paler than Siete and jumped back, putting some distance between himself and Vivar. “ I thought you had a normal weapon, like a minigun, stuff I could dodge. Why the hell do you have a…an…arm cannon? Did you always have this?”
-” What?” Vivar replied in a somewhat shocked but also deadpan way.
-” Ok, listen”, said Marcos while swallowing deep breaths. “ Want to know some of my history? Well, here is what I can tell you: I work as a corporate security force, of sorts, ok? Family business in my case. My gear, which I got because of the job, is irremovable until death, so I’m stuck with it, but on the plus side it boosts me up to do some inhuman stuff;
-”Such as?”
-”Like, enough to calculate bullet trajectories and give my body short ‘kicks’ to dodge them. But a rail-gun can shoot big, giant bullets and stuff that I can’t dodge up close, right?” The visibly shaken boy awaited, red as a lobster, for Vivar to say something. It was not in his nature to give out that much information, but he knew that there wasn’t any other way to gain the C.T.D. trust. Or, at the least, part of it.
Vivar -” I understand. Thank you for telling me and to answer you, no, but I got it upgraded in secret a few years ago, while the logs for it were not…properly updated. And I think we can form a united front, after only one question. Why do you want this?”
A visible tilt made Vivar understand that Marcos was genuinely unsure of why he was asked that.
-”Because I have no reason to win this? C.T.D 8, after everything I told you, do you believe I need more equipment?”
-”Supposedly not, but-”
The young man paced around the robot, shirking once more any concern for their safety, confident in his success once again. “ I am here with another mission, and it’s going to be a lot easier to move around with another pair of eyes watching my back. I don’t need distractions, I don’t need needless fights…unless it’s for the fun of it.”
-”…Alright”, replied Vivar.
-”So, do we have a deal?”, to which the C.T.D only shook their head in reply.
After the two shook hands, Vivar started telling them about the brush with the attackers, and the most surprising for Marcos was the nature of the attack, speculating that it could be some sort of sonic gun.
-” It was a pulse wave, either a new model or” Siete tried to say, coughing in between words “refurbished one. Either way, it seemed directional, so they had to point it towards their target”, finished the clopy with a pained, parched voice.
D’zin -“ Siete will survive, but you were right Vivar, some of their internal organs were damaged and need to be replaced. A clones’ organism is tougher than a human’s but is not invulnerable, so staying like this is dangerous for them”, reported D’zin. “Fortunately, if it’s done quickly then Siete might still be able to function properly and not become paralyzed. We just need to get past Round 1 to enter one of the clinics though.”
Vivar and Marcos now stared at one another, then the boy moved their gaze towards their companion.
-“ I stand by whatever decision you make, Marcos”, D’zin responded in a kind voice. After a quick sigh, he gave Siete a little smile, and he pulled out of his bag three small devices. Vivar did the same after he received a weak kick from the clopy. Marc grunted a bit at the lack of trust from the knight.
Marcos- “ As the rules mentioned, most of them are duds, so we should try all of them…On three, press the switch on one of them”, he said, while the others nodded in agreement.” One, two, three”, after which an alarm started to beep from the C.T.Ds. The start of the first round was announced.