Outlive (The Baggers Trilogy, #1) (19 page)

             
Baggs thought about it. “And, if you were careful not be too flamboyant with your money, no one would notice. You’d just be another rich guy.”

             
“Exactly! The only thing that keeps the poor down and the rich living in those mansions are those codes. If you change the codes, you change everything.”

             
“That’s interesting,” Baggs said.

             
Larry’s face lit up with a smile. Baggs thought Larry was fleshy and short—he wouldn’t be much help in Outlive. He also said things in a roundabout way that were hard to understand. But for some reason, Baggs liked the guy.

             
There was a knock at the door. All conversation stopped, and everyone looked to see who was going to enter.

7

              All of the contestants on the Boxers turned their head toward the knock.

             
Baggs put his glass of water down and clasped his hands together under the table.

             
The door opened, and a man entered. He was black, with thick shoulders and a protruding brow. He smiled at the contestants, but the smile was not kind; it was menacing—threatening. There was a large gap in between his front two teeth on the top row that was impossible not to notice. The man had a pointed gray beard that ended neatly at the bottom part of his throat.

             
Though Baggs had never seen this man before, he guessed that he was looking at Byron Turner. The man had confidence that couldn’t be faked. The way he stared at everyone was close to aggression.

             
He shut the door behind him.

             
“Hello, hello,” he said, facing them. Baggs took note of the man’s large faced watch, which was sparkling with white diamonds. The man smiled, showing the gap in his teeth again. “We have a bit of a journey ahead of us, this coming week. And, hopefully, we’ll know each other longer than that. My name is Councilman Byron Turner. I am your owner. Congratulations on becoming a Boxer.” He lifted his upper lip in what was supposed to be a smile.

             
So my other teammates haven’t met Turner yet,
Baggs thought.
I’ll have to find out if they know each other. Maybe they don’t know that Eldridge died and that I’m a replacement. Maybe he’s hiding that from them.

             
Turner looked at his watch. “I don’t have terribly long to stay here,” he said. His voice was deep and booming. It had a lisp, but somehow this seemed to make the man more threatening, instead of less so. “But I wanted to peek my head in to talk. I wanted to see your faces before the others did.” He gave another menacing sneer.

             
Across the table, a hand went up. Spinks stared at Turner, hand raised as though she was a schoolgirl.

             
“Yes?” Turner asked quietly.

             
“I was wondering if you could answer a question for me about what this next week is going to be like.”

             
Turner was stone-faced for a moment, staring down at Spinks with her pink hair and sixteen earrings. It was clear that Turner didn’t like interruptions. But he didn’t want to be seen as rude, either. “I suppose.”

             
“Are you going to rape or molest us during training?”

             
Baggs was shocked by this question, and he felt his own face grow red hot as he watched his owner stare down at his fellow teammate. The room was quiet; no one breathed much, or stirred.

             
Spinks didn’t seem to have sensed the tension. She took a noisy slurp from her drink. “You know, like you raped that custodian in your office. I’m curious, did you not know that her family had money to get a lawyer, or did you just not care? Either way is understandable; you didn’t get in trouble.”

             
Turner breathed in and out of his nose like a bull; his massive chest rose and fell. Slowly, Turner calmed his breathing until it was almost normal. Then, he raised his upper lip in one of his aggressive smiles. “I know what you’re talking about. Yes, I was accused of rape in court. And, no I did not commit the act. I was shown innocent through trial. It’s one of the great aspects of such a democratic and fair court system.”

             
There was another moment of silence in which Baggs thought that Turner was actually calming down. Spinks took another loud sip of water.

             
“I would prefer you not accuse me of things that the court has ruled I didn’t do,” Turner said.

             
Spinks turned to the other Boxers and said through the corner of her mouth, “Our boss man raped some lady.”

             
Turner’s voice rose: “I will not stand for this kind of talk!”

             
Spinks turned back to the Boxers again: “He says he didn’t do it, but there’s a video of it on the internet. I watched it. He definitely raped her.”

             
Turner grunted in rage and slammed his hand down onto the table, making a resounding boom.
“The man in the video wasn’t me! It was dismissed from court! That’s illegal to watch!”

             
Spinks looked up at him. “It’s illegal to rape, also.”

             
Turner puffed through his nose. “What is this? Who are you?” He looked at her for a moment and then understanding came over his face, flattening out the angry lines. “Oh. I know who you are. You’re Sally ‘Spinks’ Nooks, the computer hacker.”

             
“At your service.”

             
Baggs furrowed his eyebrows. He had heard that name before, when he was reading the newspaper yesterday. He had come across a story about Sally ‘Spinks’ Nooks while Krass was cutting his cast open.

             
Baggs looked around and his throat closed a bit. It was strange to see how much had changed in less than forty-eight hours. Yesterday morning he had thought there was hope that he could continue on life as normal.

             
Turner spoke flatly—serenely: “Perhaps you’re aware, and perhaps you’re not, but disobeying me is a form of breaking your contract. Do you
know
what they do to people who break their contracts, Spinks? Probably not, so I’ll tell you. They don’t get a trial; their owner is their judge and jury. They strap them down to a chair with these large, leather straps.” Turner held out pudgy fingers to indicate the size of these straps. “One around each ankle. One around each wrist. One around your waist, and one around your neck. You’ll be in a wooden chair at a local police station; thousands will have died in the chair you’ll be strapped down in. Then, they’ll take a dirty syringe; the syringe will have been used to inject countless other people. It won’t matter that it’s dirty, though. Whatever infection or virus you may contract from the dirty needle won’t ever make you ill, because you’ll be dead before you have a chance to succumb to any more sickness. Then, they’ll inject you with potassium. Potassium is one of the body’s electrical conductors, and your heart works on electric signals. They’ll inject it in you until your heart stops. Death won’t come quick, because they won’t want to waste any potassium. So, they’ll inject you with a few milligrams. It may not have any effect at first. Then, they’ll inject you with a few more. You’ll be sweating and nervous—then you’ll start to feel an odd fluttering sensation in your chest. You may think it’s a placebo. Then, they’ll give a little more. Now, you’re sure it’s not a placebo. Every ten beats your heart feels like it’s skipping a beat.” He was whispering, talking in a dramatic manner as though he were giving a monologue on stage. “They’ll feel this in your pulse, step back, and monitor you. They may even tell you ‘some people die with this amount, we’ll watch and see.’ Because they won’t want to waste any on someone like you. Then, after a few minutes, you’ll get a little more.” Turner’s eyes were twinkling. “Your heart will start beating wildly, skipping beats, then beating hard five times, then skipping more beats. I hear it’s an awful sensation. It’s fatiguing. You’ll be sweating, Spinks. Your body will be going haywire trying to keep your heart beating. But, your body is simply a machine—there’s only so much it can do. Then, they may inject you with a little more. A lot of people gasp when their heart stops. It’s a reflex—you’re not getting enough oxygen, so your mouth instinctively starts gulping air. People have brainwaves for up to thirty seconds after their heart starts beating. So, you’ll feel it. Your hands will go numb, then your arms. You’ll have an awful pain in your chest. Then, the world around you will start to go a bit dimmer. Your mentation will slow. Then, black. Over.”

             
Baggs thought that Turner’s speech sounded rehearsed.
Maybe he tells it to all of his contestants to make sure that they are obedient.

             
Spinks did not seem phased. “What’s your point? Do you want me to stop accusing you of rape?”

             
Turner shrugged. “Do I want you to? Yes. Will I kill you if you don’t? I don’t know. It depends on what type of asset you are to the team. It depends on how hard you work in practice.” He smiled and then steepled his fingers in front of his belly. “However, if you try to spread that trash to other people during this dinner, I will have you killed.”

             
“Is that supposed to scare me?” Spinks spat.

             
Turner nodded. “It is. And I think that it’s working. Just think about it.”

             
“I’m about to enter a death match, you idiot! Death doesn’t scare me.”

             
Turner smiled.
Can he also hear that her voice is shaking?
“Fine. You’ll just be killed. No sweat.” He looked at his watch again. “I really need to leave now. Thank you Spinks, for the lovely new relationship you have started with me.” He turned and walked out.

             
Baggs took a drink of water. His mouth was dry. He thought;
Turner certainly doesn’t see us like equals. He probably killed Higgins. And if one of us wins, he’ll probably kill us too.

             
Baggs had a flashback to the episode of Outlive he had watched at Greggor’s yesterday. He imagined standing in sandals on the hot sand, the sound of the crowd roaring around him. He imagined looking up and seeing the sword that would kill him gleaming in the sun. He imagined watching it swoop down in a blur of speed so fast that he didn’t have a chance to stop it. He imagined feeling it mercilessly chop through the tissue in the front of his neck. He imagined gasping for air, not being able to take any in.

             
He shuddered.

             
Get it together,
he thought.

8

             
A few minutes after Byron Turner left, a humming noise filled the air and the room began to elevate upwards.

             
Baggs inhaled, exhaled, and looked around him. The ceiling fell away and as the room went up, the painted walls were replaced with unpainted concrete. Looking upwards, Baggs could see flashing lights far above him. There was cheering now, and the sound of an announcer’s voice playing in conjunction with a quick baseline that was reminiscent of a beating heart.

             
“AND NOW!”

             
There was a roar from the crowd.

             
“I present to you, for the first time ever, the competitors of SEASON TEN EPISODE EIGHT, in person! Who will OUTLIVE?”

             
The flashing above was quick and continuous, always coming from different directions. Baggs could see glimpses of his teammates faces in the flickering light. Larry was crouched forward in his chair with his arms crossed, almost in a fetal position. There was a thin layer of sweat on his face. Spinks was leaned back, trying to appear confident, but Baggs thought that she was faking it.
She’s probably thinking about being restrained by those huge leather straps as they inject her with potassium.
There was one face among his teammates that genuinely seemed unafraid. Two spaces to the left of Baggs sat a female. She had dark, sunken in eyes. Her face was relaxed and covered in piercings; metal jewelry was situated in her chin, her lips, her nose, her eyebrows, her cheeks, and through her forehead; she did not have earrings. As they rose, she seemed to be serene, not intimidated by the screams and cheers as they were lifted into the dining hall above.

             
The baseline continued, along with the flickering and the cheers.

             
After rising over ten stories, the platform that held the Boxers came to a rest in a giant dining room that was lit by blue, smoky light. Spaced throughout the dining hall were thirty circular cages enclosing elevated platforms filled with the tables which the competitors were sitting at.