The Eye of the Bedlam Bride — Chapter no 37

[ 37 ]

“OKAY, HERE WE GO,” ODETTE SAID. “AS WE SPEAK, ALL THE CRAWLERS in the dungeon are being teleported to a choosing arena for phase two. We’ve gotten special permission to watch you enter the second area live. You’ll go straight from here to the choosing room.”

“Wait,” Donut said. “Does this mean we’re never going to be on your show again? If you’re in the dungeon, we won’t ever come back here. Is that right? Oh my god, that’s so sad! Odette! It’s the end of an era!”

Odette’s bug mask stared impassively down at Donut.

“I hadn’t really thought about it that way, but I suppose you’re right, Donut. Not unless we can work something out, and they let me do the show from down there, then this is it. Though I’m sure we’ll see each other on the inside.”

She said it so casually, so cheerfully that I just wanted to erupt. If we did see each other, it would be on the battlefield. Would Odette spare us if we were in her path? I doubted it. It made me feel ill. I kept my mouth shut.

Donut leaped to Odette’s desk and pretended to headbutt one of her massive boobs. “I suppose this is goodbye, then. If we don’t see you, take care of yourself, Odette.”

Odette just looked down at Donut. I could tell she was surprised. She slowly reached over and gave Donut a small, virtual pat.

“That…” Odette paused, as if Donut’s show of affection choked her up.

She recovered quickly. “That’s our show folks. Stick around and watch the Royal Court choose their destination! And come back tomorrow night for a

special episode!”

Transferring in twenty seconds.

Zev: Donut, Carl. Don’t freak out. Only Donut will transfer. Carl, you’ll remain on the couch. This is a small twist they just announced.

Only the squad leader will enter the choice chamber. Then you’ll have your first fight. It’ll be just you, Donut. Don’t worry. It’ll be an easy opponent with junk cards. As soon as it's done, Carl will transfer to you.

Try to draw the fight out as long as possible.

Oh, shit.

Donut jumped to my lap.

Donut: I DON’T WANT TO DO IT ALONE. NOT A REAL FIGHT.

“Carl,” Donut said, looking up at me. “I don’t want to be by myself.”

“Remember the plan,” I whispered, trying to sound confident. I stroked her side, and she was shaking. I didn’t want her to do this alone, either.

“You’ll be okay. You’ve been practicing. You got this. It’s only one fight.”

“I’m scared.”

Transferring now.

The room blinked, and the lights went up. Donut disappeared. Quasar was gone. It was just me, Odette, Zev, and Lexis.

The screen remained turned on, and it showed Donut appearing alone in the featureless room with the globe. There was no sound. She ran around in a circle a few times, completely panicked. Then she stopped and tried to calm herself. She pulled Mongo out and leaned up against him. She stopped and peered up at the ceiling. There was an announcement I couldn’t hear.

“Okay guys, we only have a minute,” Zev said, moving deeper into the room. “I don’t know where Harbinger went, but…”

Zev blinked and disappeared.

Odette sighed as she pulled off her bug helmet. She stepped back, peeling away her massive breastplate. She remained attached to the crab, which made her look terrifying.

“That was the best choice for adjutant,” Odette said as she came around the desk. “Ripper is a media whore with a stick up his hairy ass, and Drick is psychotic, out to make a name for himself. You were right to ask about the Valtay. It is strange they let him in. The Baroness is a humorless bitch, but she’s the only one who’ll put up with your bullshit. She’s a big fan of allowing legal loopholes get exploited. I wasn’t sure at first about that lawyer of yours, but I’m moderately impressed he advocated for her.”

“What the hell just happened?” I asked, still looking at the spot where Zev had stood. “What did you do to Zev?”

Odette waved dismissively. “They just called an all-hands at headquarters, so she got pulled away. An unmanned liaison spy ship was just

shot out of orbit, so it’s an automatic security response. Right now, all crawlers except the squad leaders are in a temporary stasis while they do the changeover. This is completely off the record. We have maybe 15 minutes to talk.”

My head swam. “You shot down a spaceship just to talk to me?”

Odette grunted. “That thing had to go one way or another. And it was more like a probe. They thought they were being sneaky, but we’d pegged that thing the moment it appeared. We just timed it to our advantage. Now, listen.”

Up on the screen, Donut stood before the giant globe just like before, but only a handful of locations were highlighted. Two were in the United States.

One was clearly the Bahamas. And there was another in the Mediterranean.

I watched as Donut pretended to hem and haw with her choices. She was laying it on a little thick. We already knew what one of the choices would be, thanks to the hidden message given to Donut on our earlier appearance on Rosetta’s show.

“No, you listen,” I said. “You fucked us when you chose not to be an adjutant.”

Odette grunted. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t allow you to set me up for an assassination?”

I didn’t even pretend to appear surprised. “What are we going to do now?”

“Don’t worry,” Odette said. “She’s going to want Katia with her down

there more than ever.”

“And if she doesn’t?”

Odette shrugged. “Then you have to come up with an alternative. I suggest you make Katia eat that orchid sooner rather than later. Force Huanxin’s hand. This is part of what I want to talk with you about. Don’t trust anything that grixist bitch says. She’s out for revenge. That’s it. Nothing more. She is not going to help Katia out of any altruistic sense. She’s the most evil person I know, and that’s saying a lot. She’s also smart, so we must be… delicate in how we deal with her.”

Up on the screen, I watched as Donut reached up to pick Miami. A door appeared, leading off to another chamber. Donut was putting on a brave face, but I could tell how frightened she was.

A wave of anger washed over me. People were always taking advantage of us. Telling us what to do. Bullying us for their own purpose.

Using us.

“We? In how we deal with her? You know what? Fuck you, Odette.

We’re not playing your game anymore. There is no we. I appreciate everything you’ve done to help us so far, but goddamnit. All we are trying to do is survive, and every time we turn a corner, there’s someone new standing there waiting to use us. And yet, somehow, you’re always involved. You say she’s evil? What about you, Odette?”

Donut hesitantly moved to the next room, stepping through the door into the great room of a large, older house. She seemed outraged at something, but I couldn’t tell what. She started shouting and waving her paws up in the air like she did when she was mad.

And then, her first opponent materialized, causing her to stop mid-tirade.

A deranged-looking man appeared in the room, facing her. The hunched man was about 70. He wore what seemed to be a white, old-school sailor’s outfit that was much too small for him. There was a nametag that read “Gene” on his breast, but the note floating over him said his name was Robert the Human. He was level 40, and he twitched slightly as he stood down Donut. He clutched a group of cards to his chest. That’s all I could see.

They froze. This was the start of a boss battle. Or a level description, telling Donut how to fight using the cards. I suspected this was going to take a while. The description was likely more for the benefit of the home audience than Donut, who already knew how this worked.

Sure enough, the screen changed, showing a bunch of cards on the screen while the orange announcer guy appeared. He started going over all the card types. Mordecai had warned us this would happen. Donut was going to sit there frozen for several minutes while they went through all this.

“You think my motivations are money,” Odette said, whom I realized was staring at me with laser focus. “Or fame. They’re not. It’s about Mordecai. It

always has been.”

I blinked.

“Mordecai? Bullshit.”

She suddenly looked very old and tired.

“I’m going to tell you something, Carl. You’re not going to believe me, but I’m telling you anyway, and you are going to listen to me because I have waited a very long time to say this out loud to somebody.”

“Uh,” I said, taken aback at her sudden change. “Okay…”

“I had a cousin. His name was Pieter. I also had a friend named Armita.

We were friends since birth, and Pieter was a few years younger. He’d always tag along wherever we went, even though we didn’t want him to.

We’d been having a picnic that day it happened. Armita and I were both in our pre-courtship, so about the equivalent of 17 years old in your culture.

Pieter was around 13. He’d followed us. I’d made sweet pastries, and he really liked them.” She rubbed her aged hands together. Her nails were so long, they curled like claws.

“I’d thrown a rock at him, telling him to go home. I’d hit him in the head, and he’d cried. He didn’t have any friends.” Odette paused, taking a moment to compose herself. “And then it happened. The three of us, along with a few others, we entered the dungeon together.”

Odette’s crab body shifted. Lexis was suddenly sitting on the couch next to me, silent. She had her ever-present tablet clutched in her hands.

Odette’s voice started to break as she talked. “Eventually, they forced me to choose. Pieter or Armita. I picked my friend. Simple as that. It was the right choice. Still, I think sometimes, I wonder… He was so sweet, and this place… It had broken him into so many pieces. And those pieces, Carl. They were wrong. My friends. My family. I had pushed them all. One more floor, I’d said. Surely we can push through just a little longer. They’d all died because of it. One by one. All except for me and Armita.”

She had tears streaming down her face.

She continued. “When I made my exit deal, I thought I could help others, and I chose to be a game guide. Armita had left a little before me, and she picked Celestial Attendant, which is the best, they say. The safest. I could’ve done the same thing, but I didn’t want to have anything to do with them.

Those rich assholes running it all. I wanted to be of use to other crawlers.

Back then, we could offer to be managers, and that’s what I did to Mordecai.

I offered to help him escape this place. I promised him I’d do my best. He reminded me so much of Pieter, the way he looked up to his brother. Once, he’d transformed into a human, and he even looked like him. Like my little cousin.”

She took another moment. She now had my rapt attention. The screen continued to show its card lesson.

“I was near the end of my contract. All I could see was the light at the end of the tunnel. You know that spider you have in your card deck? Shi Maria?

She exists in my own mythology. The Bedlam Bride. That extra eye of hers, the one she opens that blinds you and drives you mad? It’s a metaphor. We

had a saying, my people. Never stare into the blinding eye of the Bedlam Bride. What it means is don’t become obsessed with something, lest you’re blinded to everything else. When it shows itself, it’s all you can see. And that’s exactly what I’d done. Despite my promise to Mordecai, I was staring into the eye. I wanted nothing more than to finish my contract and finally, finally escape the dungeon. I had pushed Mordecai and his brother and friends, just like I had pushed my family. I pushed them further than they

could go.”

She wiped her eyes.

“I made an illegal deal with Huanxin to rig the game in exchange for credits. It was facilitated by Armita. Huanxin would help me, and I’d give her th money, part of my bonus for getting Mordecai to the 11floor. But it went bad. She was driving a goddess named Dodola, and she’d asked for more money, and I was so tired of it. I felt just like you feel right now, Carl. I broke the deal at the last minute. I tricked her. We trapped the goddess in a containment, and Chaco killed her, causing her to lose the Ascendency game before it even started. Mordecai made it to the next floor, but Uzzi, Mordecai’s brother, died.”

“Odette,” Lexis said, speaking for the first time. Her voice was soft. “We only have a few minutes.”

Odette ignored her. “Huanxin was enraged. I was soon to be released, out of reach. But Armita was stuck here for a few more seasons. A few weeks thlater when Mordecai finally made his deal at the end of the 11, I was released. But, I wasn’t really free. I had my money. This was before they changed the rules. Now you guys are all citizens once released, but for me… I had to buy my way into the center system primary zone. But I felt so goddamned guilty about what had happened… I admitted what I’d done.

There’s this form you can fill out, admitting to crimes. And I did it. I was sure Armita would’ve turned me in, but she hadn’t. She was stuck in the dungeon, in mortal danger while I was finally free, and still, in the end, she remained my friend while I betrayed her.” She paused. “I never got my legs fixed. It felt wrong.”

She shook her head sadly. “By the time anyone even looked at my confession, it was too late. The very first thing Huanxin did when she returned to the dungeon the following season was kill Armita. It was like it was nothing. After all, it was the dungeon. Perfectly legal. But then some bureaucrat finally read my statement, and I was arrested. Huanxin was given

nothing more than a token punishment. She was barred from participating for a while and permanently banned from Dodola. I was put on trial. I got lucky, however, and my warrant was purchased by the man who’d eventually become my husband.”

“Okay,” I finally said after a moment of silence. The screen was now just the announcer guy talking. “That’s… that’s really rough, Odette. But I still don’t see…”

“I watch him every day,” Odette said, interrupting. “It’s been so long.

You need to understand, a few seasons into Mordecai’s indentureship, they changed the way the NPC pools worked, separating them out by organization, which greatly extended everyone’s contracts. Yet, I found myself watching him every chance I could, drinking himself into oblivion. Crying over his brother. His family. His friends. I’d think to myself, I did that. I killed Pieter.

I killed Armita. And this one. This one I broke. I broke him into so many pieces that there’s no hope for him. That’s what I used to think, Carl. I used to hope he’d find a way to get himself killed before he was free because I just knew that would be the final cruelty, releasing him without purpose into the empty, cold universe. He has nobody.”

She looked up at me. “The eye of the Bedlam Bride. I’ve stared into it once again. I see nothing else. My purpose in this universe is singular.

Everything I do, it’s to assuage myself of this guilt I feel for what I have done.”

I swallowed. I kept wavering between thinking she was absolutely full of shit and believing every word. I didn’t know what to say, so I just blurted out the first thing to come to me.

“Mordecai told me to just do whatever Huanxin says.”

“That’s because he’s afraid of her, Carl. And he should be. She’s older, smarter, and richer than she was way back then. This is the first year she’s back. I’m sure she has a plan to help you get those protections turned off. She wanted me in the dungeon as an adjutant so she could legally exact her revenge. But instead, Carl, we’re going to do something a little more extreme. It’s going to kill me, most likely. But that’s okay. It’ll kill her, too.”

Next to me, Lexis took in a sharp breath.

“How is any of this helping Mordecai?” I asked.

She shook her head. “You don’t get it, Carl. If this doesn’t work out, I’ve already done everything in my power to make his transition into freedom as smooth as possible. I’ve set aside a large trust for him. Chaco, too. Along

with a few others I’ve managed along the way who are still in the system. But this goes beyond Mordecai. Everyone this cruelty touches, it shatters. We need to stop it.”

“You’re a part of it,” I snapped, anger bubbling over. “Goddamn it. You are the highest paid cheerleader for all of this. We die, and you applaud. We suffer, and you’re there with a microphone pointed in my face. And now you’re sponsoring a god? How can I trust you?”

Lexis tapped her tablet. “Almost out of time.”

The screen returned to Donut. The Robert the Human guy summoned two cards. One was a tall, faceless doll also wearing a sailor suit. The other was a little, stuffed dog with rolling, bug eyes. The doll was named Robert the Doll. The dog was named simply Dog.

“You don’t understand,” Odette said. “We have no choice. If it wasn’t me, it would be someone worse. I had to position myself in order to make it right. This whole machine exists for a reason beyond what you see. The mantises mine and resurrect the AIs and then graft them into the planetary engines for a reason. The elements they mine, what do you think they’re for?”

I was distracted by Donut’s fight. She summoned Geraldo, who appeared with a ridiculous, over-the-top explosion. The monk seal started flipping through the room at the doll. “I… What? What does that have to do with Huanxin? How did we get from her to this?”

Odette had a wild look in her eye. “All planets used for a crawl or any other game, such as Battle Royale or Land War are used to collect fuel. The elements. The byproduct of the biological overgrowth of the seeded systems.

The entertainment aspect of it all came along later, but it’s necessary in its own way. It’s expensive, what they do. But without it, it all gets shut off. All of it. We need to shut the crawl down, but we have to do it in a responsible way. Lest we kill half the known universe. If we do this right, future collections will be humane. It will be done in a way that removes all the suffering. What I did to Mordecai. To Armita. To Pieter. What is happening to you. It will never happen again. And it’s all coming together this season.

This is our chance. Finally, after all these centuries. It’s our chance.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

On the screen, just as Geraldo started to attack the doll, Mongo flew through the air and chomped onto the throat of Robert the Human, killing him instantly. The fight abruptly ended. All the totems poofed away. Donut

jumped across the room, and the first thing she did was collect the dead human’s sailor hat. Several cards appeared floating in the air, and she started to examine them. She could take and keep all of the non-totems, but if she wanted to keep the totems, she’d have to ditch one of our existing ones. That was unlikely given what I’d just seen.

“Sorry,” Lexis said. “Time’s up. Transferring now.”

Odette smiled sadly at me.

“See you on the inside, Carl.”