Kern watches as the man reaches casually into his coat, as though for a pack of cigarettes, and takes out something the size of a phone but from the way he holds it Kern knows it’s a weapon.
In the laptop’s library, there’s a video, very grainy, at least a century old, of an old man with white stubble on his cheeks explaining the secrets of fighting with knives. Kern guessed he was in his eighties, and his accent was southern, possibly Argentine, and he seemed like any other dumb old hick until he spoke of fencing, at which it was as though he were illuminated from within. If your adversary is unskilled, he’d said, then, even if you’re unarmed, his weapon is most dangerous to himself. Kern had studied this video for weeks, practicing its moves to the exclusion of all else, and now he slips to one side, just a little, the way the old man said—Get out of the way but stay close enough to hurt them—and he feels the motion of the air as the weapon, a taser, passes through the empty space where his abdomen had been; he notices the taser is a uniform matte grey, probably fabbed. Get the knife, the old man had said. Let him hit you a few times if he wants to, but get the knife. And then he’s got the man’s wrist, and is prising his fingers from the taser, and as it clatters away his fear flowers into rage.
For a moment they sway in close embrace, and at first it’s like holding a lover—he’s aware of every shift in the stranger’s body, his rough cheeks, rank armpits, floral cologne—and then it’s like fighting a child, for, though the man is determined, he has no art, really none, and it’s only seconds before Kern has the clinch, his forearms trapping the man’s neck, his palms cradling the back of his skull, pulling him in. The man tries to duck out of it, a beginner’s mistake and a fatal one, and Kern, full of joy and a sort of technical pride, drives his right knee into the man’s face, and then the left, and then right again. He finds himself supporting the man’s limp weight, hesitates, and then, putting all his weight behind it, spikes the man’s skull onto the concrete floor, and screams, though he hadn’t meant to, a raw cry, torn from within, and the paroxysm seems to last a long time, but when it ends the vendors are just turning to look, and he picks up the phone as tears wet his cheeks and walks away.
It’s like a cloud has settled on his mind and he keeps laughing a little to himself as he takes turns at random, putting the fight into the past, and he knows the body will be gone soon, taken to some out-of-the-way place and picked over by scavengers, and if the man was in good health and not important enough to register his DNA then his organs will be harvested for the open market and whatever’s left will disappear into the cold water flowing out through the Golden Gate, and he thinks of the sharks there, swarming in the deep channels, how it’s said they’ve multiplied since the ocean got warmer, and then the street turns again and widens into a labyrinth of low, rebar-studded concrete barriers leading circuitously to the gate in a breach in the favelas’ walls, and beyond the fence is the wide unbuilt cordon of cracked earth and dried weeds and rotting garbage and then the city.
There’s a marine in armor watching people trickle in, a white kid with a buzz cut and bad skin, not much older than Kern, his helmet retracted. They’re not picky about who comes into the favelas but getting out can be trickier—they’ll usually let you past the checkpoint in the mornings, if you don’t give any attitude, and say you’re going to a job, but if you get the wrong soldier you can get arrested, maybe not come back. The marine is staring into space, and seems not to have seen him, and Kern hears bass-heavy redneck music rumbling from his armor, and then he remembers the phone.
He puts it to his ear and the girl says, “Listen to me. Please just listen. Don’t close the line.”
He raises the phone to chuck it but stops when he feels the marine’s eyes on him, remembers how nervous they can be, how they’ll light up anyone they think might have a grenade, or even a stone, and the phone is still close enough to his ear that he can hear her shouting, “No, don’t do it, don’t leave listen to me I can help you you need me please,” and she sounds young, younger than he is, and the rawness of her panic seems unfeignable, and for some reason he’s reminded of the desperation of the dead, how they say that ghosts linger in the world looking for someone who will listen.
He puts the phone back to his ear and says, “Who is this?”
“Okay. Good,” says the ghost, composing herself. “So the first thing is to not get caught. You want to leave the favelas right now.”
“I’m good here.”
“They can fly drones there. No one cares what they do there. In the city the cops control the airspace. You’re not getting away if they have air support.” Kern eyes the checkpoint doubtfully and the ghost says, “Go, now. They’ll be coming.”
Kern doesn’t like soldiers, and there are other, safer ways out of the favelas, but the checkpoint is right there, and his fear pulls him down the winding path between the barriers. The marine looks down at him with blood-shot eyes, and he hears the rush of the suit’s air scrubber, then smells the pot. “Go on,” the marine croaks, uninterested, dismissive, in a Spanish so heavily accented that Kern wouldn’t understand it if he didn’t know English too, and it’s clear that the marine thinks it’s better to be high and peaceful and watch the evening go by than to waste time harassing some punk favelino, and Kern accepts this and goes on.
On the worn track over the open stretch of earth he feels exposed, like he’s about to be shot in the back, and it’s a relief to reach the asphalt road, dodge between the cars, go in among the buildings whose age and rectilinearity tell him he’s not at home. He glances back at the favelas’ outer walls, the only surface there that never really changes, its graffiti a solid mass, and in it, for a moment, he sees a greater shape, as though the writing had come in waves, and the waves frozen.
Surprised still to be alive, he walks away quickly. He remembers how he’d felt the first time the laptop started, and he wonders if this, somehow, is the game’s next chapter; the last five minutes have had the same sense of wonder, dislocation, shocking arbitrariness. The sidewalks are crowded now, the blank faces of the houses giving way to restaurants whose windows frame candlelit tableaux that have nothing to do with him. He puts the phone to his ear and says, “What is this?”
“I did you a favor, right?” she says. “I’ve established that I’m your ally? All I had to do was nothing and you’d already be dead.”
“That’s true,” he admits, imagining the taser’s prongs hitting his chest, then convulsions, helplessness, the unrecoverability.
“For now will you take my word for things so we can get down to business?”
“I’m listening,” he says, poised to hear the new game’s terms.