"The Pawn Shop"

As the darkness increased, I found two buildings.

The first turned out to be a hospital of some sort, operated by people who wore their hearts on their sleeves, as well as on their faces. When I walked through the door, they looked up at me and then went back to their work, which appeared to be patching up other players of this "game." It is good to know that the devil who brought us here wants us in good health.

One of the heart-faced workers came up to me and handed me a device. "For your asthma," she said.

"How did you know?" I asked.

"We knew as soon as you were here," the woman said. "We know the conditions of all the players. It is our duty."

I gave a short nod and looked at the device - it was small and strange, made partly of metal. The heart-faced woman showed me how one end goes into my mouth and if I pushed the other end, it would spray something into my lungs that would allow me to breath easier. As I said before: what wondrous technology.

I thanked her and then left. I could see another building nearby, this one in the shape of what looked like a pawn.

The building was busier than I realized at first. There were quite a lot of players inside - although none were fighting each other, which I deduced was because of the quite large men with spades on their faces that carried weapons around. Obviously, they were the soldiers for this "Game Master" and kept the peace inside the buildings, although I noticed several fights going on outside them of which they took no notice.

A few well-placed shots with the Mauser and those fights dispersed into the wind. And so I walked into the pawn-shaped building and found it, appropriately enough, to be a shop, where the proprietors had clubs on their faces.

I was sensing a theme.

The shop had quite a bit of food in it and supplies which I would need, though I had no idea what price anything was. They had bags of jerky and as I grabbed one, one of the club-faced men said to me, "That is two points."

I gave him a confused look and asked, "And how many points do I have at the moment?"

"Ninety-two," he said. "Each time you eliminate another player, you gain from eighty to one hundred points, which can be redeemed here."

"'Eliminate,'" I said. "You mean 'kill.'" The club-faced man nodded his head, as if this information did not bother him in the slightest. "We are rewarded for how many we kill." A nod, not even a glance, just a nod. "And those spade-faced men?"

"The Spades guard the Game Masters' property," the club-faced man said. "Anyone damaging the buildings or those who belong to the Game Master will be punished by the Spades."

So they were slaves. I had fought in a war to free them and here I was again in their presence. Was my life merely repeating in stranger ways?

I paid for my jerky and left and nearly bumped into another player. I hesitate to use 'he' or 'she,' for I honestly could not tell their gender, but they were in a hurry. Their skin was a dark olive color and their hair was shorn quite short. "I'm sorry," I said, but they weren't listening. Instead, they turned their head to look backwards and I knew that they had been running.

I saw the one they were running from: a man with a spade mask wielding a quite large curved knife.

I do not know why they wear masks. It was not bulletproof and after I set down the Mauser, I did not have a chance to ask him. Though it was good to know that even in my old age, I am still a good shot.

The kid still looked scared, as if he was frightened not only of the masked man, but of me as well. Perhaps he had been here long enough to become scared of everybody, no matter if they attacked or not. I well understood this. I knew enough not to step near him or try to pat his shoulder in comfort, for even that could be a sign of aggression.

So I merely raised up my bag and asked, "Do you like jerky?"