Page 25 of Immortal Longings
“I will,” he promises. It doesn’t sound convincing even to his own ear. “Soon.”
“Didn’t you walk away from the Daqun with the most coins?” Sulian continues with a raised eyebrow. “I watch the reels, you know.”
Anton grumbles under his breath. It’s his own fault for letting Sulian glimpse the number on his wristband earlier, but of all the weird old men to trust in San-Er, Sulian is high on the list.
“Yes, but I don’t have them anymore.”
Sulian sighs, giving up. He returns to the kitchen, retrieving used plates and dirtied napkins from the three other customers along Anton’s row. They barely notice, too enamored with their screens, which are actually moving instead of freezing on a blue panel as Anton’s has.
The café is chaotic—and loud—enough for Anton to blend in unseen, but he also chose this computer on purpose. The three seated to his left would get in the way of an incoming pursuer, and the café’s back exit is only two paces to his right, leading into a labyrinthine set of back corridors. It’s too early for another location ping, since they tend to go off once every day, but he won’t be taken unaware.
There’s a sudden noise, and Anton swivels his gaze back to the computer. Nothing on the screen has changed. The noise is from his belt, where his pager hangs.
Your bill for the next month has been posted.
Anton unclips the pager and throws it at full force onto the table. The loud bang of plastic striking laminate doesn’t bring him much satisfaction, though it stirs the laughter of teenagers behind him. He prefers Sulian’s assumptionsabout his frivolous spending in casinos and brothels over this, the actual truth. That the hospital swallows every cent he manages to scrounge up, then spits its acid reflux back at him with more bills.
The screen finally unfreezes. Anton shuffles his chair closer, waiting for the modem under the table to stop whining. When he pulls up the browser, he keys in a stolen identity number to access the archived newsreels—good old Cedar Yanshu, the man living one floor above Anton’s actual apartment who never checks his accounts and doesn’t have the memory to refute Anton’s activity under his identity—and navigates to the archives from the night of the Daqun.
Line by line, the page begins to load. Anton’s eyes swivel to the side of the keyboard, where he has set the wristband out in the open. A few other café patrons have eyed the object curiously, trying to determine if it is indeed a wristband from the games or only a convincing replica. He’ll bear the risk of attention to keep it within sight, needing to catch the moment it blinks out.Ifit blinks out.
He doesn’t know why he didn’t toss it as soon as he escaped Fifty-Seven. But he held on to it, and now he has far more questions than answers. He expected the wristband to shut off earlier today—even if Fifty-Seven typed in her identity number just before their fight at the market, twenty-four hours elapsed more than an hour ago.
Yet the wristband remains active, the57flashing each time he taps the screen. It even started whining when Anton’s did to signal a nearby player, and he had to press a button quickly to shut it up before shoving the whole strap into his pocket. He could pull the chip out and deactivate it himself, but that feels like cheating. Especially when it’ssupposedto blink out on its own.
Whoisthis player? Skipping the Daqun, wristband active without its daily identity check. The requirement of a check-in is the main safeguard against random civilians stealing wristbands from dead players and cheating their way into the games. The palace would never allow for it.
So why is Fifty-Seven’s still going? Is it a fluke? Is she a spy from within thepalace? Perhaps King Kasa has no intention of paying a victor this year and put in a plant that he’ll help to win.
Anton sifts through the digital archive, clicking recent files at random in search for the clip he saw. It takes a lot of loading and buffering, but eventually the server pulls up a video in a familiar weapons shop. The footage is as he remembers. Fifty-Seven, plunging her sword in, then yanking it out with an eerie smoothness. He doesn’t know what exactly has captivated him so thoroughly. It’s the same rapture he had when engaged in battle with her: she is never still enough for him to make out a clear detail, but the energy that bristles from her every move overwhelms him.
“Are you watching the Er massacre footage?”
For the second time that afternoon, Anton almost draws his knives on an innocent bystander.
“Felo,” he says as he glances over his shoulder. Felo is too young to be jumping bodies, but even if he could, his pale-red eyes are so distinct that he would be recognized from any distance. It sometimes looks as though he has no irises, only permanently dried, irritated eye whites. “Hasn’t anyone taught you not to sneak up on people?”
“I didn’t think anyone could sneak up on you.”
“Usually not,” Anton grumbles. He’s been so focused on watching the front for intruders that he forgot the people who know their way around can use the back entrance too. Felo is always hanging out at the café, coding games on the computers with his friends.
Felo shakes his head, as if chiding Anton in disappointment. Anton flicks the boy in the head.
“Why would I be watching the Er massacre?”
“That was my question to you,” Felo retorts. “They have it everywhere if you just ask. Most video shops will throw it in free with a porn order. You don’t need to waste money logging on to the internet.”
Anton braces a hand against the back of his chair, turning fully now. “What the fuck are you doing watching porn? Aren’t you thirteen?”
Felo crosses his arms. “Aren’t you eighteen?”
“No! I’m twenty-five.”
“Oh.” Felo looks him up and down, unfolding his arms sheepishly. “You act younger.”
Anton rubs his eye. “I’m going to try my very best not to take that as an insult. Go toschool, Felo.”
“I hate school.” Felo leans closer to the screen now, squinting at the footage. It’s zoomed in and heavily pixelated, cutting off most of the weapons shop and focused only on Fifty-Seven. “Never mind, it’s not the massacre. That’s my bad. I’ve watched the footage too many times. I thought it looked familiar.”
