4 days remaining

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  John stepped out of the beam of light into the familiar setting of The Outback Sleep Shack to find Truffle snorting loudly as he scarfed down a bowl of unidentified meat chunks.

  Buck looked up from the glass he was polishing, with a rag so dirty it had turned from white to dark brown, as the tired cowboy stepped into the room.

  “Sounds like you’ve been busy,” he remarked sullenly, “Truffle here’s been telling me all about your big upset on the intergalactic stage. A human beating all those avatars for the top spot. Quite the feat indeed.”

  “Quit pretending like you weren’t watching the entire thing from your menu TV, Buck,” John replied casually as he pulled up a stool.

  “Boss!” Truffle squealed, looking up from his meal, meat juices dripping from his snout, “you’re back, you’re back! It feels like I haven’t seen you in days.”

  Something about Truffle’s turn of phrase worried John and he quickly pulled up his interface screen to check the countdown. If it really had been days, then he might almost be out of time.

  Countdown: 4 days remaining

  He sighed contently and wiped the sweat from his brow. Thankfully, it seemed that he hadn’t been penalised for his participation in the tournament. Four days should be plenty of time to grab his final card and find the torii gate. After all, he’d managed to secure his first three cards in the same time frame.

  “It’s been a long few days, buddy,” he said, a little belatedly, in reply to Truffle’s greeting. John scratched the pig behind the ears and then ruffled his head. “Have you gotten bigger?”

  “I evolved,” Truffle proclaimed proudly. “I’m E rank now, whatever that means, and it’s made me bigger and tougher.”

  John knew about his companion’s upgrade to E rank having been there at the time, still he wasn’t expecting the oddly sculpted look it had given the pig. He’d told his wife that there was no such thing as a micro pig and that they all eventually got bigger.

  Who would have thought that it’d take the introduction of the system to prove him right.

  “Harder to kill?” He asked.

  “Naturally,” Truffle replied, puffing his chest out.

  “Good,” John nodded his approval and then turned his attention to Buck. “I need one more card and then I can do this E rank evolution thing too right?”

  “Yep, though it’ll be a little different for you than it was for Truffle, having four cards and all.”

  “How so?”

  “Truffle’s soul devourer is a full stack card which means it’s the only card he can hold in his space. You’ll have four cards which means you’ll trigger a soul card creation first, then you’ll have to find a levelling stone. There should be loads of them in the next round.” Buck explained, “I’d love to tell you all the juicy details but I can’t, it’s in my contract. Section 5Z, employees must uphold the integrity of Battle Royale at all times, allowing viewers the pleasure of experiencing the genuine surprise of contestants with regards to levelling, card acquisition and other specified game elements.”

  “I can’t believe you have that memorised,” John replied with a slight smirk as he reached over the bar, grabbing a half empty bottle of whisky.

  “Tenants to live by,” Buck shrugged, “or die by in my case, breaking those rules could literally cost me my life.”

  “So you can’t tell me what this soul card thing is?”

  “Nope, all I can say is that it’s a unique card that’ll be created from your own body, experiences, personality and a bunch of other stuff the system chooses to base it on. The cards you’ve been finding were all once a contestant’s soul card created in previous seasons. That’s how they’re created and it’s how the Inter-Planetary System Council has managed to keep this game interesting for so long.”

  I thought he couldn’t tell me, John thought but didn’t say anything. The idea that his current cards were created by other contestants sickened him. How many had died in this game over the centuries?

  “Then why is my frontier justice card two revolvers? Those are human inventions.”

  “Ha!” Buck exclaimed, spitting coffee all over the diner’s countertop. “You think you’re the only species to have invented guns? That’s ridiculous.”

  “Wait, so our inventions aren’t unique to this planet?”

  “Not in the slightest, at least not your scientific inventions. Art and cultural stuff differs vastly by species.”

  “Ok,” John said slowly, his head was spinning but he needed to focus and get back on task. He needed to be able to get through the torii gate. It was his top priority. “Can you tell me where I can find my last card?”

  “No,” Buck sighed, placing the unclean glass down on the bar. “Sorry kid, even if I knew for sure I couldn’t just tell you that. But I can tell you where I’d go to look for one. You’re not going to like it though.”

  ***

  John tapped his foot irritably; Buck’s news had not been the palatable kind and he just knew that it would plage his dreams when he finally went to bed – an event he longed for. He had four days left, but it was still early in the morning, so early in the morning that most people would still have been fast asleep if the world hadn’t ended.

  Information was power in this game and, at Buck’s request, he’d forced himself to stay awake long enough to watch the highlights reel. It had aired at midnight and it was now more like three or four in the morning, but Buck had been given permission to tape the episode since John and Truffle had been in the tournament.

  He was quite out of the loop having spent the past few days on a space station and out of contact with the rest of humanity, so he was pleasantly surprised that the dinosaur had managed to arrange something so useful for him.

  Still not as useful as cheating in the finales to keep me alive though, he thought bitterly.

  “We’re going to need to make good use of your card, buddy,” John said to Truffle, pulling himself from his thoughts. They needed to strategize more and he knew it.

  The pig was perched in front of John on the bar counter. He turned his head, looking at him over his broadened shoulder.

  “You mean I get to fight?” He said hopefully.

  “There’s no way I can do this alone,” John replied, eyes hard. “We’ve been missing a trick anyway by not using you more. If we want to stay alive we’re going to need to use all the tricks we can right?”

  “Yes sir!” Truffle squealed, evidently delighted at the prospect of being included in a battle plan.

  Of course, John was no idiot. He’d understood the value of Truffle’s card from the start. He simply didn’t want to put the pig in any unnecessary danger.

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  Of the few fights Truffle had been part of, he’d nearly fallen to his death, almost gotten blown up and been a hairs breath away from being devoured. John didn’t want that for the pig, Anne would kill him.

  Would have killed him, he thought with a grimace.

  But Buck was right. The game wouldn’t take any prisoners and Truffle was growing more powerful by the day. He’d already levelled up, unlike John. It was the pragmatic and correct choice to use him. Even if it did make John’s stomach churn.

  “We’ll see if we can’t find you some corpses to snack on when we set out later today. You can store up to three at a time right?”

  “Yup, and!” He squealed as he suddenly remembered, “they last for twenty-four hours now and I can choose one to keep permanently! My soul devourer upgraded when I evolved.”

  “Really? We’ll have to make use of that then. Don’t go choosing a permanent power on your own though, we should decide together. I know how impulsive you can be. This is great though, good job buddy.” John said, a wiry smile splitting his face, “I wonder what my cards will do when I evolve. Speaking of my card,” he turned to Buck, “my newest one says I can get new ammo on the black market. Any idea how that works?”

  “Arms dealer?” Buck replied, looking suddenly very interested. “I’ve seen that card in previous games. Someone up there must really like you to have given you a prize card that synergises so well with your frontier justice.”

  “God?” Truffle asked, staring at the ceiling in wonder, but they both ignored him.

  John nodded; he hadn’t considered that the card he was gifted was chosen by someone. Though of course it made sense, everything in Battle Royale was planned out by the show runners and the IPSC.

  “Perhaps we’ll find out when I get sponsored?” He shrugged, more interested in the immediate application of his card’s ability.

  “Maybe,” Buck replied, “as for how to use it, it works directly with the interface you bought. You should be able to see your cards in there right?”

  Opening the interface, John navigated to the cards section and mentally selected his new one. He’d tried to do this with his other cards too but usually it just gave the same description as the card itself.

  This time, however, a virtual armoury seemed to open before him. In his mind’s eye he saw his revolvers hovering in front of him. It reminded him of a customisation screen in a video game.

  Welcome to the black market, John Doe.

  The system screen said, hovering above his guns.

  Do you want to activate card: Arms Dealer?

  He mentally asserted yes and a new screen popped up as his guns seemed to disassemble themselves in front of him. The cylinders on his revolvers popped out and he reached out with his mind, feeling his way forward, and mentally spun them.

  There were six slots in each cylinder, just like a real revolver. One of them was lit up whilst the remaining five were blacked out.

  Frontier Justice Ammunition Slots:

  Available: 2/6

  Slots:

  Slot 1 - .38 Special (unremovable)

  Slot 2 - Unassigned

  Would you like to assign a new ammo type to slot: 2?

  John mentally asserted that he would and a list of ammunition appeared in front of him. Most of them were blacked out, but two choices glowed before him and he knew he had a choice to make.

  Available ammunition:

  Dragon’s Breath (cooldown 30 seconds)

  Noxious Standard (cooldown 10 seconds)

  Grinning as he took in the potential his new card had granted him; John took a moment to think about the options laid out before him.

  Noxious bullets could be useful. He had to assume that meant poison of some kind, though even if it made his opponents violently ill that still had its perks. The shorter cooldown was also quite appealing.

  However, he’d seen dragon’s breath shells in action before. It was a fearsome type of shotgun shell that spat out magnesium pellets in an incendiary flame. Assuming that was what the interface meant; it was a mean shell indeed.

  Though he didn’t understand how a revolver which fired .38 Special rounds could also fire a shotgun shell, he didn’t question it. Power was power and with that same logic he should have questioned Joanna’s card allowing her to produce flames or Truffle’s allowing him to gain power from eating people and mobs.

  He’d have to accept that the system had its own rules, no matter how insane they were, and use them to his advantage.

  And dragon’s breath shells were definitely to his advantage. He clicked on them without a second thought.

  Closing down the interface he found himself back in the bar.

  “I’ll take it from that look on your face that you figured it out?” Buck asked, a bemused grin plastered onto his face.

  “Oh yeah,” John replied, “let’s just say this new ammo has got me all fired up.”

  Buck and John exchanged a knowing glance and the dinosaur nodded at him, locking eyes with him.

  “I don’t get it,” Truffle said, “what kind of bullets did you get?”

  John and Buck shared another conspiratorial glance and John began explaining the ammo to Truffle. As he was doing this, Buck began fiddling with the menu behind the bar. “Let’s watch this recap and then you can get your heads down for a couple of hours before the sun comes up,” he said. “Don’t think this will become a regular thing, if you hadn’t been trapped on the stadium ship there’s no way the show runners would have allowed this. As it stands, this is a concession from them because you lost two days during their tournament. You should be grateful.”

  John didn’t feel very grateful. This was a nice gesture, but one that was only necessary because they’d invaded his planet and forced him into a death game. The show runners deserved precisely none of his gratitude. He didn’t say that aloud though, he needed all the help he could get.

  Buck fiddled with some wires in the back and the menu flickered, turning into a TV. The two alien presenters lit up the screen, talking animatedly.

  “Welcome back, humble viewers, to another daily recap of Battle Royale Earth!” Said Frank the praying mantis. He was wearing the same brown suit as last time and sat next to him was the green orc, Grend.

  “Good show. Lots to see. Death, fire, blood,” Grend said, slamming her ham fists on the table.

  “Indeed there is, Grend, indeed there is,” Frank replied, his mandibles chittering disconcertingly as he spoke. “We’ve got a lot to get through tonight so without further ado, here are this evening’s highlights.

  The screen flickered and John watched with unsated curiosity as a hooded figure crouched ominously atop a derelict glass building.

  Their armour was completely black, kind of like batman but somehow even more emo. They wore a dark cloak which swayed gently in the breeze, their face completely obscured. John had no idea who this person was, but he was intrigued.

  Far below the hooded figure at street level, a militia camp seemed to have been set up. The street was barricaded on either side with piled up, burnt out cars and other wreckage they’d managed to gather.

  Two men stood atop the cars at either side dressed in a raggedy assortment of makeshift armour and modern clothing. Each man held a ranged weapon as they guarded either side of the camp from intruders.

  In the centre of the camp itself stood a group of patchwork tents as dozens of militia members lolled around, drinking and playing cards.

  A muscular man in an army uniform exited the big tent in the middle and all the other militia members dropped what they were doing, standing to attention.

  That was when the camera panned back to the hooded figure, who produced a bow and took aim. An arrow flew from the bow like a bolt of lightning, striking the muscled man in the dead centre of his chest. His body dropped to the ground in a pool of blood and suddenly the hooded figure was stood over him.

  Was that a teleportation skill? John wondered.

  “Y’all work for me now,” the hooded figure said in a husky, yet oddly feminine southern drawl. Then the screen flickered and another clip began.

  A scared-looking man in a hoodie walked through a deserted school. He passed lockers, jittery and quick to point his gun – a Glock of some kind – at every little noise. The breeze itself seemed to startle him.

  Why does this guy seem familiar?

  He turned a corner, entering the gymnasium. Standing at the other side was a huge ogre holding volleyballs with lit fuses sticking out of them. The man cried out. The TV flickered and he was stood over the hulking corpse of the ogre, his hoodie was torn and blood splattered. He was heaving for breath. His hood obscured his face the entire time. Then the screen flickered again.

  A man with a polearm waltzed brazenly into a dark castle.

  “He was on last time,” John said, “I remember watching him fight off a horde of zombies.”

  “Yeah, it tends to be like that,” Buck replied, “not many contestants are that interesting in the beginning, but this guy… I can’t wait to see what he does tonight. A few days ago he rode a werewolf through a deserted city whilst vampire spawn chased him. Honestly, I know I’m your guy and all, but this dude knows how to entertain.”

  “Did you not watch this when it aired a few hours ago?”

  “No, I had to wait for you this time since we were given permission to tape it. This is my first viewing too, now shush and watch.”

  John glared at Buck for a short moment, shook his head, then returned to watching the polearm wielding man.

  Shrouded in silver armour, the kind a knight’s errant would wear, he kicked open a pair of old wooden doors inside the creepy castle.

  Outside it was black as night and the moon hung low and crimson in the sky. It looked like some kind of horror flick. The man stepped through the doors and in a voice which wasn’t as deep as John had expected, he called out.

  “I know you’re in here, Dracula. I’m taking that damned card from you whether you like it or not.”

  Out of the shadows a tall, cloaked figure emerged.

  Then the menu screen turned to black displaying the word: “redacted” and John, Buck, and Truffle were left dumbfounded.

  “What the fuck, Buck?” John asked, “I wanted to see that armour dude fight Dracula.”

  “Don’t blame me,” he shrugged, but it was clear that he was also disappointed. “Polearm man must have done something the show runners don’t want the rest of you to see. I bet it was really juicy too, usually they let contestants watch if its normal stuff, or at least see the ending like they did with that guy in the school.”

  “Now I want to watch it even more,” Truffle complained. “We are going to find that guy in the next round!”

  “It might be better to stay away from him,” John mused. “We have no way of knowing if he’s friendly or not.”

  “He just challenged Dracula to a duel, Boss,” Truffle protested. “Once we find Mistress Anne, we are going to search for the silver knight.”

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