Read Assessment Day :: Chapter Sixteen

I lay there on the bridge, thinking over the past thirty seconds. Donald had decapitated the man with the blonde hair. In that moment he had finally let his guard down and I had gone for him. It turned out that Donald was far more prepared than I was though and things went south real quick. In fact if it wasn’t for Millicent’s intervention I would probably have already been bisected. I got up to my feet, slowly, and saw Millicent standing over Donald’s body, my pistol held in her shaking hands. She offered it back to me and I stepped over Donald’s body and took it.

“Thanks.” I said, for my pistol and for… for saving my life. Millicent didn’t respond. “Are you going to take his tag?” I was surprised to hear myself say that but she had just saved me and killed Donald. She deserved his tag.

“Norm… are you not… sad?” Millicent made no move to get Donald’s tag.

“Sad?” I was confused, “Why would I be sad? I’m alive. I’m still in the running for a job.” Millicent still made no move to get Donald’s tag.

“Norm your friend just died…” her voice was small. I shook my head, Millicent was still talking nonsense.

“He was an enemy Millicent.”

“So am I also your enemy?” she asked. I couldn’t answer.

“Are you going to take his tag?” I asked again. Millicent didn’t say anything for a moment, staring ahead at Donald’s corpse. Then she shook her head. “I can’t do this Norm, and I don’t want you to do this either… Please why do we have to fight? Is any job worth this much pain and conflict? Is any career worth so much that you have to kill or be killed for it?”

Things became very clear for me in that moment. I realised why Millicent bothered me so much. She was trying to stop me. She wasn’t just trying to stop me from getting this job, she was trying to stop me from getting any job. Her way of thinking, her very being, was the antithesis of everything I was. She was dangerous, as I had suspected. She would have me throw away everything I’d been working for in the last eighteen years.

“I see.” I said. And I did see. I saw what I had to do. I reached out and pulled Millicent’s tag off her neck. “I’m sorry.” I lied, then pushed her off the edge of the platform.

Donald had made the interesting choice of hiding his tag in the inside pocket of his jacket, rather than attaching it to him in anyway. I also searched the body of the man with blonde hair, his blonde haired head sat some distance away staring at nothing. I had to search rather thoroughly but found three tags on him, hidden in various places. Taking stock I counted out my tags. Seven, including my own. I shivered a little. I had seven of the seventeen tags, all around my neck. It was beginning to weight surprisingly heavy on me. I stowed my pistol back in my jacket and set off once again, leaving the bodies behind.

You will study hard, with all your heart and with all your soul and all your strength and with all your mind. You will learn and you will experience and you will train and you will graduate university. You will get a job, and you will never work in retail.

I repeated the words to myself over and over again as I walked. The world stopped making sense without them.

I encountered no other candidates in the large concrete tubes, and the tone sounded for the third time. I took another pill and sat in one of the tubes for a while. The couple of life or death struggles I’d been in had tired me out. So tired was I that I didn’t notice Cyrus Beem standing at the mouth of the tube.

“Oh it’s you, good.” Cyrus Beem said, very calmly.

“You shouldn’t be here…” I said, less calmly. “I still have your tag.” Cyrus Beem’s eyes widened at that. He chuckled a little.

“I admit it. You got me and you got me good, Norm.” He already had his pole out and span it around a couple of times. He had just enough space in the tube to do so. “But I guess you haven’t thought over the rules properly. Any tag will do, and I just so happened to find one.”

“Ah, that’s useful.” I realised that, based on that, my rather heavy neck wear was effectively seven lives.

“Still only got the one tag though. How many do you have?”

“Just mine and yours.” I was beginning to regret hanging all my tags around my neck rather than hiding them in various places like that blonde man had.

“Oh really?” Cyrus Beem looked curious, or more accurately he looked like a man pretending to look curious. “That’s odd. I have reason to believe that you may have a couple more than that.”

He’s bluffing, he has to be. He just wants to see how I’ll react to that.

“Why would you think that?” Stay calm stay calm. I got to my feet slowly, watching Cyrus Beem to make sure he didn’t attack.

“Oh? Millicent Lute told me.” Figures. Cyrus Beem ran at me, wielding his pole and ready to strike. Dammit. I hadn’t done a good enough job of dealing with Millicent Lute. Ah well it was time for a second round against Cyrus Beem, who had knocked me about rather thoroughly last time. I had learned a lot from that battle though. For example I learned that I could not, under any circumstances, let that pole touch me. Cyrus swung at me. It was an awkward swing, he really hadn’t thought very hard about attacking me in the tube. I raised my arm to block the attack and the pole clanged off my metal arms. Wait what had I just said about not letting the pole touch me? Fearing another electric shock I kicked at Cyrus Beem, catching him in the stomach, but not quickly enough and and electricity surged through me. This time I dropped to my knees. Cyrus Beem kicked me and I fell backwards. I was letting myself get into this situation too frequently lately. The pole was coming down again. I rolled out the way, onto my front, leapt up and dashed away, running from Cyrus Beem towards the end of the tube. I remembered something and turned to see Cyrus Beem throwing his pole at me again. I stepped to the side and reached out to grab the pole mid-flight. I missed, and the pole sailed right by me. Then Cyrus Beem tackled me and we both tumbled out of the end of the tube. We seemed to do this a lot. We weren’t too high up this time though, only a few metres, so when we hit the ground we both rolled back up onto our feet. Cyrus Beem pulled out yet another pole, which he extended quickly. Just how many of those did he have? I needed a weapon, and fortunately for me I had one nearby. When I’d left the bridge with a few bodies near, on and below it I’d taken a few things. Firstly I’d taken the tags, of course, but I’d also taken Donald’s sword, which I now picked up from the ground where I’d left it. It was far too large to wield in the tubes so I’d left it nearby. Now I had it, and my shoulders were complaining loudly as I swung it at Cyrus Beem. Cyrus Beem raised his pole to block it but the sword cleaved right through, cutting the pole in half. Cyrus Beem cursed and chucked the two pieces away, pulling yet another one out of his jacket. I swung again but this time Cyrus Beem dodged with ease and moved in as I was carried sideways by my overzealous swing. I let go of the sword, letting it fly off away. I hadn’t trained much in sword combat anyway, it was an uncommon weapon for sure. What I had trained with were guns, and I just happened to have a couple of them. I pulled out the gun I had found in the jacket of that man with the blonde hair. A Coca-Cola Protest Suppression Rifle of all things, that man may have said he didn’t want to fight but he’d been packing some serious heat. I opened fire at point blank range, spraying Cyrus Beem with bullets. Cyrus Beem stumbled back but didn’t, as I’d expected, erupt into a red mist. That idiot with the blonde hair had his guns loaded with rubber bullets! Useless! I cast the weapon aside. In the end I would have to rely on what I’d brought with me. Cyrus Beem was in close and was swinging with the pole again. I went in close as well and, with one hand, grabbed the central section of the pole, the part that Cyrus Beem also had his hands on. Before Cyrus Beem could work out what I was doing I caught him with an uppercut. Cyrus Beem reeled and I used the opportunity to bring my knee hard into his stomach and pulled the baton away out of his grasp and off into the air. We both stumbled out and, in that moment, both went into our jackets to pull out a weapon. I drew my pistol, swung it to face Cyrus Beem and opened fire again, this time with real bullets. This time Cyrus Beem’s chest exploded with red and he fell backwards. I stood there for a moment, arm holding the pistol still pointing in the direction of Cyrus Beem’s now lifeless body. I returned my pistol to its usual home and, after considering it, took back the Protest Suppression Rifle and one of Cyrus Beem’s poles, hiding them all in my jacket. Then I walked over to Cyrus Beem, who lay with a hand in his jacket and a look of… Disappointment on his face. I checked his jacket and found no more poles. He’d run out. I probably had that to thank for my victory. I found the tag that wasn’t his in one of his pockets and took it. I went to put it round my neck like all the others but stopped and instead put it in my pocket like Cyrus Beem had. I wanted to find different places to hide all eight of the tags that I now had but I needed to get out of the open before I could do that. As I set off once more in search of a new hiding place I considered that just over an hour ago I had never killed a person before.

Now I think I’d killed two.