[Brackets] (13 page)

“Somebody called the cops?” asked Killergremlin.

“Could be a neighbor. I saw one that looked pretty mad about the music.”

Killergremlin stood up. “Well, I don’t think they’re really going to like what they find in that party. Let’s get out while we can.” He made a move to hop over the fence to the next house. Perry hesitated. He wondered if someone should go down and warn them that the police had come. After all, Lazaro was part of his team, and a good leader left no man behind.

“Wait up, I’m going to yell down the stairs,” Perry said to Killer’s back, already
struggling
over the fence.
Perry went down a few steps.

“Hey down there, the cops…”

The girl in black clomped very quickly up the stairs and pushed by him with her head down. She was whimpering. Perry stepped aside to let her pass, then looked back down the stairs. There was a burst, and a sharp pain on his right cheek that knocked him down. His shin hit an unforgiving cement step and he fell down onto the stairs, shoulder first. Catching himself, he looked down the stairs, eyes wide and furious. There was Lazaro, both his arms raised, the air gun on the floor. Everyone else was frozen, looking up the stairs at something behind Perry. The cops.
He checked his cheek and noticed that it was covered with chocolate shards, some caramel filling, and a trace of blood. In a delirious, irrationally funny flash of thought, he wondered what all of this would do for his fertility that year.

*
             
*
             
*
             
*

The next day, the General showed up at his post a bit late. He had been up all night trying to explain to the police what had
happened, and then his sleep had been restless and anxious. He was proud of himself for getting up and returning to the city when a lesser man would have taken a day off. A good leader leads by example, and for him that meant coming in to fight even when at considerable sacrifice. But that didn’t mean that he was in a good mood, and he was intent on taking it out on some unsuspecting and soon-to-be-massacred tribe. Of course, he would have rather taken out his frustration on Lazaro. Instead, he had done the work to ensure that Lazaro had his KM Center clearance revoked. He considered it an unwritten rule that any tribe member who nearly kills another tribe member with a chocolate egg canon is, without argument, removed from the tribe.

Before he went down to the city, the General hastily checked his messages in several e-mail accounts. More spam from ESPN about a contest he could win, which he deleted without reading. But one message did catch his eye. It was an official dispatch from the Ahtzon Communications Division to all tribes.

The tribes are reminded that all large-scale tribal alliances are strictly prohibited. Please be advised that the Ahtzon will be searching for members of any such alliances and exacting the prescribed punishment of ritual sacrifice and a one-month ban from the city. The Ahtzon have also issued a reward for information leading to the arrest of anyone involved in organizing such alliances. This reward will include exclusive, monitored access to Ahtzon files on select tribal leaders. As always, the Ahtzon are here to promote fairness and justice in the city.

The General reread the message several times before putting his head down on the table and sighing with mental exhaustion. The last thing he wanted at that moment was to make a decision. He needed to think. He needed to shoot something. On his way down, he wondered if there was still a drama llama out in the open.

[
West Division
: Sweet Sixteen]

[Thursday, March 26]

Very early on Thursday morning, the General walked down a narrow dirt path into one of the thick jungle regions north of the main city, where the Kaah Mukul Hunting Grounds were zoned off. He didn’t have an entry pass to the region itself, nor did he want one. The Grounds were just for shooting and fighting
,
and he had long ago given up on such simplistic games. He hadn’t gone down there to play; he had business. He made his way down the path to the gatehouse that guarded the entryway into the Grounds. He could hear snaps of gunfire coming from the thick green foliage behind the tall fences that enclosed the area, but his eyes were fixed on the Ahtzon officer posted outside, who waved briefly as the General approached.

“What’s new, Studblood?” asked the officer, who had a distinct southern boondocks accent.

“Nothing. Anything going on with you, Halley?”

“Plenty,” the officer replied. “Lots of people nervous about this Mascaab thing. You going in on that?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the General said, just in case his exclusive secret source in the Ahtzon wasn’t very exclusive. “Are you guys any closer to hunting them down?”

“Not that I’ve heard, but they’re
trying
. From the looks of it, they aren’t using the standard KM system. They patched in somehow.
T
he higher-ups in the Ahtzon are waiting for the h
igher-ups
at ChangZhang to
come in and wipe them out
, but the rumor is that Noh doesn’t want to get involved. That dude loves to let things ride, know what I mean? Truth is, rules or not, I think anyone that gets in with
the Mascaab
could actually get away with it as far as
ChangZhang is
concerned
. Of course, the Ahtzon will still be on ‘em.”

“Yeah,” said the General, who always wondered if his source knew as much about Noh as he always bragged. “What about this reward? Are the Ahtzon files all that good?”

“Are they good?” Halley guffawed. “Yeah, they’re good. They’re good enough that most Ahtzon patrols don’t get to see them
because if they did, the tribes wouldn’t stand any kind of chance. That stuff is controlled
from
the top. I don’t know how much they would actually let you see, but that’s good info right there. And that’s your lifeblood as a tribe, ain’t it? Info? Headquarters, recruit numbers, arms caches, code histories, maps... Rumor has it that Noh has his own personal notes on each general, too.”

“So have you seen the files?”

“A few times.”

“Have you seen mine?”

“Now that there,” said Halley with superiority, “is confidential information.”

The General opened a pouch on his belt and handed some coins over. “Now. Anything on there that could compromise us?”

“I dunno,” said Halley as he pocketed the money. “Haven’t seen it.”

“But you just said…”

“I said that whether I had or had not seen your file was confidential. Now you paid me, now you know.”

“Oh, come on! Don’t do that to me.”

“Calm down there,” Halley cautioned lazily. “I’ve got something else to tell you, and it’s important.” Halley’s voice got lower as he looked around. “I’ve been asked to set up a meeting with you.”

“With who?”

“I have a guess, but they didn’t tell me for sure. All I know is that you have to be outside the Central Temple this evening, on the southeast side near the arena, at 7:30 KMT, that’s 5:30 your time, right? And listen, trust me on this, you gotta go.”

The General evaluated the helmeted face of the officer. “Fine,” said the General. “See you around.”

“See yah. Oh, wait!” Halley called. “I forgot to congratulate you on the bracket. That’s pretty amazing what you done right there.”

“Huh?”

“Your bracket. I’ve never seen anyone get them all right like that before.”

“How did you know about that?”

“Your name is right at the top of the ESPN tournament list. You and two other guys, which, by the way, is pretty cool in itself. It’s right there, anyone can see it. ‘Studblood, 100%.’ Course there’s a while to go yet. We’ll see where you are by the end of the day. And thanks for having Georgia go all the way. Them’s my team.”

The General was more troubled by this than he let on. He didn’t like there to be information about himself that he didn’t control, much less information that he didn’t know about.

“Yeah,” said the General. “Speaking of that, have you heard word about any Ahtzon passing codes using brackets on, um, bracket sites?”

“You mean, after you put ‘em in online? How would you even do that? You can’t change them once the tournament starts, it’s just a one-time deal.”

Perry stuttered. “I, I don’t know, I heard about something like that.”

Halley shook his head. “Sorry, man. No idea what you’re talking about. I’ve never even heard of out-of-city codes. The game stays in Kaah Mukul, you know what I mean?”

“Yeah, I know,” said the General. “You think my perfect bracket is in my Ahtzon file?”

“How would I know?” asked Halley, returning to his post.

The General walked back down the path to the city. Looking at his watch, he realized that he would have to move fast. He had
to be at work in seven minutes, and he had already been late twice that week.

*
             
*
             
*
             
*

Killergremlin and Psychopedia usually had the Tribal room to themselves until Perry got off work at 5 pm, so when the door was flung open at 3:45 that afternoon, they looked up in surprise.

“Woah, what happened to you?” Killergremlin asked.

Perry’s face was red and unsmiling. He threw down his equipment on the table with excessive force. “Nothing happened.”

Killergremlin and Psychopedia glanced at each other. “Um, nothing happened?”

Perry tried to tie the bandana around his arm but was so flustered that he fumbled the knot several times.

“I just quit my job.”

“Woah. Why?”

“Guys, I really don’t want to talk about it. It’s over, it happened, I’m here now. So what do we got?”

The General stared at his fellow tribesmen in an uncomfortable silence. Finally Psychopedia spoke up, his voice cracking.

“We got a message from the Mascaab.”

Finally
, thought the General. “Show me.”

The message came up:

Ready to join the team? Come play at the Montezuma, Saturday, 2 PM KMT. Small entry fee of 2000 KM credits. You pay, you play. Bring the whole tribe. The view from the stands is worth the price of admission.

“Alright. So, in the stands at the Montezuma, Saturday at noon. What do you think?” asked the General, challenging his two officers with his stare. The outrageous price tag felt like yet another punch to the gut on an already painful day, but at the moment he only cared about getting to the heart of the Mascaab issue.

Killergremlin spoke slowly, analytically. “We still don’t have any good intel on how secure these guys are. I’ve asked everyone, I’ve looked everywhere—as far as I can tell, Mascaab doesn’t exist, which means they want to stay anonymous, which means they can disappear whenever they want and leave us with the consequences. I don’t think we should trust them.”

“Not to mention,” added Psychopedia, “this message probably went out to everyone that was at that meeting last week. So if any of the tribes want to betray the group and get the reward from the Ahtzon, they have all the info they need to turn us in.”

“That’s a good point,” the General said, thinking. “But the Mascaab must have thought of that. They aren’t dumb. They either want the Ahtzon to be there because it’s a diversion and they’re really going to attack a different place, or they are going to be at the Montezuma because they plan to do something to the Ahtzon right there in the arena and they don’t think they can be stopped.”

Killergremlin and Psychopedia exchanged a glance, and then
Killer sighed and said, “It doesn’t matter. We can’t afford the fee anyway. Have you looked at our account recently? It’s way too much for something so risky.”

“I got it,” the General said firmly.

Killergremlin gulped. “Uh… didn’t you just lose your job? I mean quit?”

The General stared him down. “This is important. We have the chance to be part of something big here. It’s worth some sacrifice. I can get another job, but this opportunity is right now.”

“
Y
ou
really want to join the Mascaab
then
, huh
?”

The General looked out at his counselors, the skinny, goblin-like twenty-something and the hypoallergenic teenager, and decided to be decisive. A good leader was decisive. Besides, he was tired of just letting things happen to him.

“Yes. I think it’s our best shot at moving up in the world. The Ahtzon are only out for themselves, so we have no reason to let them control us just because we’re scared of the alternative. Also, I have it on good authority that ChangZhang is letting this play out, so there isn’t an immediate risk of getting kicked out. And I’m tired of spending so much time recruiting and getting money and supplies when we could be taking over some serious ground. This is what we need to do to get out in front in DR.”