Day One - Mafia Hit/Serial Kill

Don't be alone. Ever.
-Dink.

“So what do we know about these other guys? Anyone?”

“What about that Pinual kid? Real section 8, that kid’ll slow us down for sure.”

“You see his standings? Little weirdo spends all his time playing the mind game, can’t shoot to save his life.”

“Yeah. Maybe we need to send him a little ‘message’.”

“What kind of message you talkin’ about?”

“Just something to scare him in line. That’s all.”

~*~*~*~

“They know, they know, they know it’s me, the buggers know, everyone knows…” Pinual paced the empty classroom, his eyes darting from one side to the other as he moved. His cheek twitched; it did that sometimes, when he was under a great deal of stress. He couldn’t help it any more than he could the paranoid mumblings under his breath.

An anonymous email from a user known only as The Battle School Mafia had demanded his presence here tonight. They wanted to discuss his standings in past armies…in person. The tone was threatening.

The second email he’d found waiting for him in his inbox was worse. “I know. See me in the gym, 23:00.” Signed Sheppard, another pseudonym.

The ones who called themselves The Battle School Mafia trickled into the room, lining up against the far wall. Pinual knew what was coming; it was painfully obvious that they were displeased with his past performance record. What they didn’t understand was that he was learning new things, different things from the other kids. The fantasy game was showing him another life, another possible Pinual aside from the one trapped in a space station.

And he was so close to beating the Giant’s Drink Game.

“We've got a problem. You look at the standings, Pinhead?”

Pinual nodded, looking down at the floor.

“You see where you are?” Feet shuffling closer. “At the bottom, pinprick!” Pinual continued nodding his head. I know, I know, I know.

Suddenly the space around him cleared as the group took a step back. The voice took the tone of a kindergarten teacher rather than an angry bully, causing Pinual to look up in wary confusion.

“Now. Pinual. What are we all doing here in Battle School? What is the –most important- reason we are here?”

Pinual hesitated for a long moment before mumbling an answer.

“…beat the buggers…”

A hand clapped down on his shoulders and the mafia crowded around him once more. The voice whispered dangerously low; Pinual felt hot breath on his face.

“Wrong. Answer.”

Looking down at the ground was no longer enough; Pinual closed his eyes, trying to shut them all out. He wished they would just leave him alone. The voice, however, went on.

“We are here for one reason, and one reason only. To –win-. Got that, Safety Pin? –Winning- is why we’re here. And to win, we all have to work together and not drag the team down, right? Think you can wrap your measly little brain around that?”

A menacing crack of knuckles. Pinual flinched at the sound.

“You know what you have to do. Best get your act together, boy, ‘fore we do more than talk.”

His throat was too tight to answer; he simply nodded weakly, praying that they would turn around and leave before his knees gave way and he crumpled to the floor. With a final glare, they did just that, walking single file and, he noticed, in sync. Marching.

With a strangled sort of sound, he slumped onto the nearest desk, not sure if he was relieved or terrified. They didn’t know the truth, then: the buggers were communicating through the fantasy game, dissecting his dreams while he slept. If they knew, if they believed the secrets of his mind…but no, of course not. These were simpletons, bullies out to steal his lunch money, nothing more.

Even so, that had been a close call. He had almost given himself away. And he still had another meeting left to go; he would have to do much better than this. If only he could beat the Giant’s Drink. Everything would be okay then – he could stop playing the fantasy game, do better in his classes. Some part of him knew that the fantasy game was making him worse – his paranoia, his delusions.

But he couldn’t stop until he won.

~*~*~*~

“…see his face! I thought he was gonna piss himself!”

The noise echoed through the corridors; not exactly subtle, but most of their fellow soldiers made more noise than a herd of buffalo. The figure slipped into the doorway of the bathroom and waited for the group to pass. When it was quiet again, they stepped out, and proceeded toward the gym.

The students at Battle School weren’t given anything beyond the basic necessities – anything else they wanted, they had to imagine or steal. The rope that the figure carried under one arm was a little of both; stolen socks, tied fast together.

The soldier slid down the pole to the lower deck, landing soundlessly at the bottom, and padded along to the exercise room. The gravity there was slightly higher than earth’s; it would make the job that much easier.

Pinual was there already, waiting. He looked unduly frightened; this would be easier than the soldier had thought, and frankly they already thought it would be a fairly simple matter to push this kid over the edge. Pinual was a prime example of the way the adults mishandled their charges – he was too caught up in the fantasy game, it was just unhealthy. And what did the teachers do? They encouraged him. The kid clearly had problems, but did they give him the help he so desperately needed? Of course not – they relied on the genius that lay so close to the insanity that they dare not disturb it.

“Relax. I want to help you.”

“…help me?”

With a fixed smile, the figure tonelessly replied, “I think you have a problem. Don’t you?”

“What’s that in your hand?”

“There is a way out, Pinual.”

“I’m…I’m leaving now…”

The soldier’s voice went hard. “No, Pinual. You’re not.”

~*~*~*~

“…had that new security system, we’d –know- who was out of their beds last night! Budget cuts my ass!”

“…alarms didn’t go off, I can’t understand it…”

“…in a BODY BAG for Christ’s sake…”

“…parents…”

“…leave a note?”

Graff resisted the urge to bang his head on the desk and instead took a bracing breath before standing up and addressing the room at large.

“You are all under strict orders to not discuss this event. My office will have an official announcement by the end of the day. Dismissed.”

He only had to repeat himself twice before most of the teachers gave up and began trickling out of the room. Finally only Dap and Dimak were left, standing patiently and waiting to see if Graff would order them out as well. He waved his hand, irritated, and gestured for them to sit.

“Sir…” Dap began, hesitantly. Graff merely grunted his encouragement to go on and quit wasting his time. “…we may need to consider taking Pinual’s parents into custody. If they react badly…the press…”

Graff waited more on this unsettling suggestion, but none was forthcoming. He peered down at the young counselor, assessing him for the first time since he’d learned that young Pinual was dead. Dap’s face had regained some, but not much, of its color, but his mouth was thin and he looked older around the eyes. The program was hard on them all, but this day was harder than most, particularly for Dap.

Hard or not, though, they had a job to do.

“I have no intention of telling the boy’s parents what happened here tonight.”

That caused a whole new uproar that Graff had to bang on his desk to silence.

“Let me put this another way. News of the suicide –will not- leave this school except through channels deemed appropriate by me.”

Dap and Dimak both blurted out arguments at the same time, almost entirely drowning each other out.

“We don’t know it was a suicide…”

“…could have foreseen this; the signs were all there…”

Graff honed in on Dap’s argument to respond to, as he didn’t have an answer for Dimak. “Good God, my worst enemy here isn’t the buggers, it’s –hindsight-. Always twenty-twenty, isn’t it, but we all saw the same files, all watched the same vids, and even the psychologist didn’t see it!”

Dap seemed to be struggling to speak. When he finally croaked out a subdued sentence, it was only to fall back on his previous objections. He seemed to know he had crossed a line in second guessing Graff.

“We have a responsibility to his parents…”

“If I tell the boy’s parents now, Battle School is finished.”

“Pinual.”

“What?”

“You called him ‘the boy.’ His name is…”

“I know what his name was!”

Dap had the grace to flinch.

~*~*~*~

“This morning at oh five hundred…”

Dimak had said little in the meeting, feeling it was best to let Dap get his hand-wriggling out of his system, and let Graff feel as though he were taking charge of the situation. He couldn’t let the insistence that this death was a suicide go without objection, of course, but even that was just a token effort. He knew he wasn’t going to get anywhere with those two.

“…a credit to this school, and the International Fleet…”

The unenviable task of explaining the situation to Dragon Army had fallen to him, and though at first he felt uncomfortable with the assignment, he quickly realize that this was a perfect opportunity. Now, as he looked down on a sea of faces, he was even more certain of what he had to do.

“…know you will all join me in mourning this exceptional soldier…”

These children had just lost one of their own to an apparent suicide, but their expressions were as inscrutable as ever. Did he detect a look of naked shock on one student’s face before they schooled their expression? Did a few of them look more uncomfortable than sad? He knew that his imagination was filling in the emotions he was expecting; it was impossible for him to tell for certain.

The students, though, were many times more adept at reading these sorts of situations.

“…but this doesn’t have to tear you apart. Let it bring you together, as Pinual would have wanted…”

Trite words, useless in the face of this disaster. He got to his point before the children’s eyes completely glazed over.

“If anyone, -anyone-, has information on Pinual that might help us understand this senseless tragedy, I urge you to come forward as soon as possible…”

There. Let that little seed grow in their brilliant minds.