Caine Black Knife

freeze. I didn’t have the faintest fucking ghost of a clue what could possibly be going on, or what I should be doing about it. Which led me to do maybe the only really smart thing I’d managed since I got off the boat yesterday morning.

I called out in English, “Hey-what the fuck, huh?”

All eight of them clustered at the alley mouth, slowly, squinting into the moonshadow. The one carrying his own left arm let it dangle forgotten by his leg. “Holy shit-it’s you, isn’t it? You’re really you?”

I replied, “Back the fuck off. All of you.”

They didn’t.

I swung the pistol down into line. “You can see well enough to see this gun, right?”

They all kind of shrugged and nodded to me and each other-except the one with no head-but kept inching tentatively closer. “Yeah-yeah, Caine. . yeah, it’s not even really dark out here, not for us.”

“This isn’t one of the civvie pieces I shot you with before,” I told them. “This is a Social Police Automag.”

They stopped.

“Hey, no, shit, no-Caine, we’re not after you-” One-Arm said. “I mean, Jesus Christ, this is so fucking awesome, you’re like my hero- ”

“Oh, he is not,” another one said.

“He is. You are,” One-Arm assured me earnestly. “You’re the greatest-I always said so-”

“Packard, you are such a buttsuck.” The second one cocked his head toward me confidentially. “He never bought a cube of yours in his life-his whole collection is like some K’Trann and Jhubbar, and some old Pallas softcores from before she met you that he beats off to-”

“Shut up-!” One-Arm backhanded him with his severed arm hard enough to knock him sprawling. “It’s not my fault-my parents-”

One of the others snickered in my direction. “Ass-Packard’s mommy won’t let him have your shit because you say fuck all the time and stuff. Doing it’s one thing, but she gets weird when you say it-”

“Will you drop it? Jesus Christ-!”

I found myself sagging against the alley’s wall. “Who are you fuckers?”

They told me. Their names were a roll call of Earth’s Leisure Congress. Packard, Rand, Windsor, two Sauds, a Walton, a Bush, and-the one whose head I’d shot off-a Turner.

“Turner?” I said, blinking at the headless hulk of ogrillo. “You’re one of Wes Turner’s kids?” Back in the day, Westfield Turner had been the president of Adventures Unlimited.

My former boss.

The headless one waved this off and pointed at One-Arm-Packard.

Packard said, “Leisureman Turner’s his grandfather. Little Turner’s the one who gets us the berths, y’know. Usually he plays really well-it’s hysterical you blew his face off like first thing-you should see how it looks when your eyes explode, it’s so awesome-”

I let the Automag fall to my side. “How old are you?”

“Fifteen.”

The one he’d knocked down-Bush-snickered. “You are not. He’s not.”

“I will be in two weeks.”

“Two weeks makes you a lying sack of fourteen-year-old shit.”

“I am so gonna beat your ass.”

“Oh, sure.” Bush got up. “Try it, Lefty.”

“I mean after. I am gonna fly down to your broke-ass daddy’s dinky little white-trash island and I am gonna pound you.”

“You’re kids. .” My brain had somehow turned into a wet wool blanket stuffed inside my skull. “You’re all kids.”

“Well, sure,” one of the Sauds said. “This is still in beta, and they need play-testers, and Turner’s really pretty all right, you know, he set us up, it’s a real party, even though everything’s virtual. The simichair hookup cost my dad a bundle, and he’s itching to play, too. Maybe once they smoke the bugs out and get this ready for release. This is way sweeter than even firsthanding, because, you know, first off, the Studio hasn’t even done that in like forever, and even then, if we were like firsthanding you, we’d just be riding along while you kill people. This way we get to kill them ourselves-”

“And eat them.” Bush’s tusks gleamed pale and wet in the moonlight. “We get to kill them and eat them. This is way harder core than even your stuff-no offense, y’know; I’m a real fan, not like Ass-Packard. I have your Collector’s Platinum Edition box-set, plus I’ve got a bootleg master of Servant of the Empire-”

“Just ’cause your mom sucked Turner’s wrinkled old grampadick for it,” Packard sneered.

I shook my head. “You little shits understand that these are real people? You get it? This isn’t just a fucking game-”

“Sure it is,” Packard said. “Our pack gets points for every civilian we take out before the Knights knock us to pieces. We get extra points for taking out armsmen, and killing a Knight’s an automatic win, unless another pack gets a Knight too, and they’ve got more civilian kills than-”

“And you get points too just for duration, you know?” Bush nodded enthusiastically. “We’re short on kills, but just standing here talking to you we’re racking our score, and that’s bone grippy, because we get to meet you and everything, and we can still do our mission objective, because we came down the river-these grills we’re piloting are already dead, y’know, they don’t have to breathe-and the Knights aren’t here yet-”

I couldn’t get my mind around it. “You’re just sonofabitching kids-”

Packard smirked at me. “Yeah, right. How old were you the first time you killed somebody?”

“The first time I killed somebody I was fighting for my life, you little bastard.” Which was a damn lie, but what the hell. “You’re a pack of spoiled Leisure brats sitting in simichairs a universe away-”

“Well, sure,” the other Saud said, shaking his head at me like I was a goddamn idiot, which was exactly how I felt. “You think our parents would let us do this if we could actually get hurt? I mean, check it out-” He lifted his loincloth to show a ragged stump where the Smoke Hunter’s cock had been severed at the root. “We can’t even fuck. What are we supposed to do except kill people?”

“I never killed anybody just for fun-”

“No, you killed ’em for our fun.” Bush’s smirk was almost identical to Packard’s. “You were good at it too. The best. You know you’re still in the Top Ten? Sure, the Studio hasn’t released anything fresh from anybody in about forever now, but you’d probably hang in there even against the new guys, they’re such pussies-”

“Shut up. Everybody fucking shut up a minute.”

I was not going to have this argument with goddamn Leisure brats who were playing at being Black Knives in a virtual sonofabitching game.

Especially since this was an argument I’d lose.

I came to Overworld-became an Actor in the first place-to taste the kind of power I could never have on Earth. Sure, wealth. Sure, fame. Adulation, and even some political influence. But all that was just perks, y’know? The real prize was power: to ignore the laws that circumscribe the lives of Earth’undercastes. To live without law altogether. To bow to no law except my own will. But that’s more abstract than it really was; when you get right to the bone, it was about being a god.

To kill without consequence.

It’s never been a mystery to me that I’m more than a little crazy. It’s also never been a mystery that if I hadn’t been an Actor, I’d have died in prison. So I got myself to a place where bloodlust is power, and casual murder is the point of the game.

Same as them.