Mai sipped from a bottle of bio-mass boost, taking her bio-mass up to one hundred and seventy five per cent. Usually it didn’t really taste of anything, but today it felt as though she had consumed gallons of lemon juice. Every swallow seemed as though a stone was passing down her throat.

Butterflies danced in her stomach, the feeling so strong that it felt they might burst free. She took a deep breath, relishing the cool air, even the smell of burning which still lingered in the air. Never before had she contemplated her mortality in such a way. Never before had she contemplated taking the life of a friend in such a cold and considered manner.

“You okay?” asked Dakota. She hadn’t left Mai’s side since she’d made the decision to force the issue with Jock. As far as they were aware, they hadn’t executed any of the prisoners they held. Jock and his people were too busy building up interest in the event.

Mai had been surprised that the Celestial Court, or even the programmers, hadn’t done something about it, but assumed that such an event would provide entertainment not only for the inhabitants of the game, but also anyone in the supposed real world, expanding the potential audience by an unfathomable factor.

“Not really. I can’t decide if I want to puke, piss, or shit myself,” Mai tried to smile, but gave up before her lips even had the chance to twitch.

“Try not to do it all at the same time, not really befitting a story for a hero,” Dakota took the bottle from Mai and drank deeply herself.

“I’m not a hero,” sighed Mai, raising a hand to show her friend how badly it was shaking. “I’m just me. All I want to do is get back to my sister. Even though I now know she’s not really my sister and that it’s probably a programmed response. Makes me wonder if this urge to burn the whole fucking place to the ground is also programmed.”

“If it is, it’s a bloody stupid piece of programming,” chuckled Dakota. “Although the way that they fucked you up doesn’t say much does it?”

A thought occurred to Mai at that point. Mouth hanging open, she just stared at her friend.

“What? Have I said something so blindingly clever that I’ve robbed you of thought?”

“You have. What if it wasn’t a mistake? What if the programmer responsible for the mistake didn’t like the idea of creating something like me, so they deliberately built in an error. One that would slip through testing because it wasn’t activated until much later in my ‘life’,” she made the air quotes around that.

“Whatever it is,” Dakota pulled Mai into a hug, “it matters to you now, and you shouldn’t let that, or the memories of your parents be diminished. Fuck those bastards.”

Dakota slowly pushed her back out of the hug.

“Now, are you ready to get this done?”

Mai nodded, mouth dry, palms suddenly sweaty.

The plan was simple. Whilst the rest of her people kept a cordon around the canteen, Mai was going to challenge Jock. If she won, his people would surrender, and the players would be saved. If she lost, then Jock would take command of the rebels. And the players would suffer a horrific death, most likely signalling the end of the rebels and everyone she cared about. There was no way that the players would let this sort of treatment go unavenged.

Simple plan, kill one of my closest friends and confidants in order to keep the people who put us here in the first place alive, even the sound of her thoughts left a bitter taste in her mouth. Slowly, she approached the canteen, arms spread wide to demonstrate that she wasn’t armed. Yet.

“Jock! Let’s resolve this without too many people being hurt!'' She spent a little bio-mass to boost her voice, it was negligible at less than a tenth of one per cent and made sure that no-one could pretend they hadn’t heard it.

“I’m listening,” he boomed back.

Mai explained the terms. There was silence, which Mai thought signalled the fact that Jock and his people were discussing the terms. Finally, as she began to think that he wasn’t going to accept, she heard the barrier behind the doors to the canteen being dismantled.

A little while later, the doors opened and Jock stepped through, similarly unarmed. His face was creased in a frown, and he sported an unhealed bruise on his cheek. Behind him, his supporters took up firing positions in case of a double-cross.

“So we just fight? First blood and all that?” His voice was gruff, arms still held out to his side, but this time to emphasise just how much bigger he was. She was a descendant of the original colonists, or so the story went, and his ancestors had followed on. Whether it was from a separate planet or the same planet but another area, was lost in time. Her people and his tended not to mix, no matter how far most of her people fell, they always felt slightly superior to those they called gweilo, the foreign devils.

She put his attempt to intimidate her to the back of her mind. In no way could he be as intimidating as Sharktooth, and she was very much a different person to the one he had first met.

“If you’ll accept first blood then I’m happy with that,” Mai replied, trying to look as casual as she could.

“But that’s not really going to work, is it?” he tilted his head. “You’ll never be able to trust me again, and I damned as hell will never be able to trust you. There will always be a niggling doubt, worming away at the back of mind. No, I’m just going to have to kill you.”

A sword slowly grew out of his right arm, whilst his left formed a shield. He smiled, somewhat sadly, and gestured for her to choose her own weapons. She went with a tomahawk and knife pairing. Slowly, they circled each other, Jock holding his shield which was no bigger than a large plate in front of him, the blade of his sword resting on the rim, body hinged at the waist as if he was in the rice fields.

Mai’s stance was only slightly bent, knife hand in the lead, tomahawk to the rear. The weapon configuration of the tomahawk allowed her to shorten or lengthen her ‘grip’ on the tomahawk at will, and at no bio-mass cost so long as she didn’t try to grow the handle beyond its original length. Her knife was held blade up at a forty-five degree angle. She activated her USE TOMAHAWK, USE KNIFE, DIRTY BOXING, STREET FIGHTING and STREET SMARTS skills. The latter might not help her use her weapons better, but it would allow him to read his body language, judge better when he was likely to attack.

Silence reigned. Jock feinted, darting forward, lead leg taking a step forward. Mai mirrored the movement, darting backward, keeping the distance between them constant. The circling resumed. Although his shield was small, the way it was presented before him meant that he was able to cover a larger part of his body than if it had been held closer. It also meant that he only had to move it slightly in order to defend against her attacks.

His blade moved slightly, and she flicked out her knife, aiming for the tip of his blade. He lifted his blade slightly, moving it out of the way, shield moving with it. Her tomahawk flashed as she threw it forward, aiming past the shield. As the handle landed on the rim of his shield, she hooked the tomahawk straight back to her hip, the curved axe blade trapping the shield.

Her knife stayed on the inside of his blade, allowing her to push it aside, letting her slip in between the opening to deliver a quick kick to his shin.

HIT! 2% DAMAGE

Jock grunted but said nothing further as he reacted to her attack, dropping his shield even further and bringing it around so that it freed itself from her tomahawk. It hooked around, the rim flashing towards her brow.

Shit! She barely managed to duck under a blow which would have opened her forehead to the bone at the very least. Pushing his sword even further out, she turned the movement into an overhand thrust. At the very last millisecond, he flinched backward, the tip of her blade scoring the faintest of lines across his cheek. So faint that it didn’t even register as a hit. She turned outwards, away from his blade so that he would have to turn before he could use it to counter-attack.

The circling resumed, both of them panting heavily after the exchange. Whilst both were fit, adrenalin and the aerobic nature of the explosive movements was taking its toll. A trickle of sweat rolled down Jock’s face.

He went on the attack, blade licking out over the top of his shield in an overhand thrust, his body moving in behind. She met the heavier blade with her dagger, chopping downward with her tomahawk. Her blade rang as it struck the rim of his shield.

HIT! 3% SOAK

His blade angled around her dagger, her parry not powerful enough to have his attack completely stopped. Twisting, she avoided the tip, but winced as his blade scored a burning line across her shoulder.

DAMAGE! 5%

1% BLEED PER SECOND

She activated her HEAL, glad that she had the advantage of bio-boost where he clearly had none. The pain immediately left her, all function returning to her arm. She gave a slight smile, baring her teeth and giving a mocking tilt to her head.

It worked, He snarled, lunging in with a deep thrust to her gut, shield leading his attack. She batted the shield aside with two strikes from her dagger and tomahawk, dragging his arm down as she shifted to the inside, spinning on her rear foot to clear his blade. With his shield down, his whole left hand side was open to attack. Targeting boxes for her tomahawk gave her a plethora of choices.

Whilst his head would give her a chance to finish the fight quickly, it was the hardest to hit, with only a three per cent chance of a critical hit, and a thirty per cent chance of actually being able to hit. It was too risky.

His arm, however, had three target boxes. The first was at his wrist, giving a fifty per cent chance to hit and a ten per cent chance at a critical hit. She had a higher chance of hitting due to the fact that her dagger was pressing down on the shield, giving her a point of reference. Striking there would shatter bone, forcing him to either drop the shield, or causing his hand to close permanently. Such an injury would be devastating.

Next was his elbow. She had a thirty per cent chance of hitting the elbow, and a seven per cent of a critical hit. Getting a critical hit there would possibly sever the tendons on the inside of the arm. Not only would that mean he wouldn’t be able to use it but would have to spend a large amount of bio-mass to fix it. Bio-mass he couldn’t afford.

Finally, the last target box was on his bicep. That had a thirty-eight per cent chance of hit, and a three per cent chance of a critical. Again, hitting there would severely damage the arm, forcing him to use more bio-mass to fix the damage than he could probably afford.

All of this took less than a second to work out, and she was striking before she even had a chance to realise that she’d made the decision.

HIT! 15% DAMAGE

CRITICAL HIT! 20% DAMAGE

BLEED @5% PER SECOND

Jock screamed as her tomahawk bit into his wrist, the bones shattering, blood jetting from the awful wound, the shield clanging as it struck the ground. Reeling, hand dangling from a gory mess of cartilage, tendons and veins, Jock dropped his sword as his other hand instinctively clutched at the awful wound.

Mai’s gorge rose as she saw the damage she had inflicted upon her former friend, the stench of his blood filling her nostrils. She quashed her feelings firmly, shoving them to the back of her mind. No doubt could enter her mind and there could be no pity.

Ripping her tomahawk back and over, she went for the killing blow. With no defences, her chance at hitting his head had risen to eighty per cent, critical strike thirty per cent. Whistling as it descended, the tomahawk crashed into his crown, the blade biting a full thumb’s length into his skull.

HIT! DAMAGE 50%

CRITICAL HIT! DAMAGE 10%

BLEED @10% PER SECOND

STUNNED

STAGGERED

INTIMIDATED

PANIC

Blood gushed from his ears and mouth, his left eye popping out from its socket due to the pressure caused by the strike. Even before he had a chance to realise her strike had landed, she followed it with an upward thrust to the base of his chin.

KILL!

There was a crunch, the tip of her dagger punching through the top of his skull. Jock made a snoring, whinnying sound before dropping to the ground, legs and arms twitching as his dying brain continued trying to send signals.

Absorbing her weapons, Mai straightened her back and stepped away from her friend’s corpse. Turning, she looked at the still silent crowd.

“Get the prisoners out of there.”

Ignoring their stares as she walked through their ranks, Mai kept her emotions hidden, heart pounding, throat sore, eyes prickling.