The Entertainer

In the Dark Zone, extraction points and insertion points were not so much physical passages as they were concepts.

Set foot through an insertion point and you were deployed into the Dark Zone. Set foot through an extraction point and you escaped back to reality.

A little time lag, a handful of extra conditions — that was all it took for the idea to lock into place. The way the thing actually worked never changed.

"There really is no helicopter pilot, is there."

"You don't meet living humans in the Dark Zone."

Even if the tenth-anniversary update had slipped something into the world I didn't know about, this rule, at least, had to be absolute. The military helicopter we were using to extract was proof enough. There was no pilot anywhere on board, and the thing was flying itself.

And it wasn't helicopters alone. Armored cars, trains, ships, aircraft — every vehicle in the Dark Zone ran without a soul at the controls. From a gamer's seat it was nothing but a crack in the immersion. For the prisoners who lived this place as reality, though, it was the kind of thing that could make a man decide the vehicles were haunted and freeze up on the spot.

Fortunately, Lucy was not that skittish.

"More importantly — did you grab what I told you to?"

"Yes. I picked out the backpacks and the useful gear from the prisoners the machine guns tore through and loaded them onto the helicopter."

"Good work."

A helicopter only lifted off a minute after every designated passenger had boarded. Drop from two people to one, and the countdown reset from the top. We used that. We kept the bird grounded as long as we possibly could, stripping backpacks and kit off the prisoners the machine guns had mowed down, then sorted the useful from the useless at our leisure while the helicopter carried us out over the water.

Most of the gear was grimy with someone else's hands, cracked or worn down to junk, so I threw it into the sea without a second thought. A few small valuables and a handful of electronics survived the cut. Among those, the pieces that actually caught my eye were the bodycams and the GoPros.

I'd been the one who told her to grab every piece of electronics that looked intact — electronics were expensive, end of discussion — but even a glance was enough to know these bodycams and GoPros were not Made in Dark ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Zone.

Prisoners went out of their way to buy these and put them on?

Technica had started setting up shop inside the prison, and the other megacorps, the government, and the military had filed in after them, one after another. That still didn't give any prisoner a reason to walk up to those counters, buy a rig like this, and strap it to their own body.

Which meant someone had gotten to the inmates before deployment and encouraged them to wear the things.

The engineer girl with a screw or two loose? Unlikely. That woman had no interest in anything except the Cuties she built with her own two hands. Ted Chang, the implant fanatic? He was not even in the conversation.

Which leaves Vladimir Borshch.

A General Store like his could flood the block with merchandise of exactly this grade, and he had the reach to "encourage" particular prisoners to put it on. The question was why. If I had to guess — and I was guessing carefully — it was his personal tastes sitting on top of a business reason.

I waited until Lucy was buried in a backpack like a busy little opossum, then quietly pressed Crazy Clock against one of the bodycams where she couldn't see.

"Read the recorded footage."

"I knew it."

I'd already known he had the soul of a collector and that he was unhinged about money. I had not expected him to take it this far.

Someone out there would ask what you'd even do with a pile of one-hundred-percent-real, deeply moving Dark Zone survival documentaries. Vladimir would use them. No — he would have drawn up the plan a long time ago to turn this into a flagship product and push it out in volume.

In EFD he had been a simple merchant NPC, buying whatever gear and jewelry and rare collectibles the prisoners dragged back and selling a warehouse of goods in return. Here, the actual merchant in him had come through a little harder.

The government buried everything about the Dark Zone. These ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠videos would never see a public screen. That narrowed the client list considerably.

The top 0.1 percent of the world's upper crust — the rich, the powerful. And the ones who treated even that 0.1 percent like a foot rag. A heaven above heaven.

Those would be the customers. And Vladimir Borshch was the kind of merchant who wouldn't just get a line to people like that. He'd look them in the eye and sell them the product.

That was when I finally understood why he'd treated me so generously after I'd wrecked his shop. He hadn't put a proposal in front of me yet, but he had clearly decided I would sign a contract like these idiots and become a future partner.

"Lucy."

"One moment, please. I'm almost finished sorting the backpacks."

"That's enough sorting. They weren't carrying anything impressive to begin with, and what we've already farmed is going to print money on its own."

There was something else worth worrying about.

"How would you feel if you had to record every last thing you did in the Dark Zone and sell the footage to a merchant?"

"…That would not be a particularly welcome choice. Recording my every move and handing it to a merchant is the same thing as leaking my information straight out."

"And if that information was guaranteed never to reach other prisoners?"

"Then it would be even worse. There are inmate outfits that do nothing but buy and sell intelligence. If someone is gathering this kind of information and not selling it to that market, they're using it for something else — and that is suspicious in the extreme. The whole thing smells even dirtier."

"Same. You already know that. These idiots apparently didn't."

I pulled out only the bodycams and GoPros with intact memory chips, packed them carefully into a pouch, and started bracing for the scenery to flip over into the isolation chamber.

"Ah—!"

Lucy's little gasp came at the same instant we were flung out in front of the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠isolation chamber's extraction gate, still sitting in our helicopter seats. That was what escaping the Dark Zone meant. It felt like crossing from one world into another.

"We don't."

"I don't need any either."

A Bio-Scan swept through us once. When nothing tripped it, the bulkhead sealing the isolation chamber off from the outer corridor rolled open. We went straight to the Value Assessment & Inspection Room and sold off nearly everything we had farmed.

Nearly. Lucy refused assessment on the security case she had secured for the first time, and I refused it on the bodycams and GoPros I'd set aside. Every inmate in the place had already been converted to death-row status. None of us were ever walking out of this prison, so that much freedom, at least, was permitted.

If you wanted to move goods you hadn't sold through assessment, you had to go through a merchant NPC or another prisoner anyway. That was exactly why they'd stood up a twenty-four-hour auction house.

"Looks like you failed to break the individual yield record this time, Super Rookie. Team yield, though — you set a new one. You're allowed to be proud of that."

A guard who had followed us all the way to the elevator, just to keep an eye on us, said it with a pleasant little smile. The same officers who had cut their connections with the inmates were sidling back in, which told me they no longer needed to watch the upper floors. Long-term prison life went smoother if you had a line to the guards, so I didn't bother looking annoyed, and Lucy had enough sense to play along.

"If we broke the team yield record, I take it the new teams deployed this time underperformed?"

"More or less. Most of them were odds and ends who got shoved in the second they flipped to death row, just so they wouldn't eat a penalty. The veterans ran it the way they always do. They didn't get greedy."

"I see. Are the inmates' yields shared with the guards in real time?"

"You didn't know? Every Dark Zone insertion sector has its own assigned officers. A high yield out of a sector feeds into those officers' performance reviews. That's why every guard in this place is always hoping a competent prisoner walks into his zone."

"So we picked this sector, and you came out ahead."

"That's the size of it. Last time, every inmate in the sector except you died, and the officer in charge had a face like a funeral."

"Haha…"

That, for the record, was not my fault. I had wanted a nice, happy farming run. A pack of trolls who weren't even worth chewing up had gotten in the way. I'd shown a little mercy this time and killed fewer of them. Most of the ones isolated in the warehouse would still die, but a fair number had been sharp enough to extract. This Dark Zone's numbers would land somewhere around the statistical average.

"Good. We're here. I know you just got back from a Dark Zone run and you're wound tight, but don't go looking for trouble. For every guard and inmate who likes you, there's a mountain of them who don't."

He said it as he put us out through the elevator doors. The smile had been friendly and the tone had been warm, but I could tell he didn't feel a thing about any prisoner in this building.

"The type who knows how to work a room."

"Someone excellent at controlling his emotions — or just very quick at running the numbers."

The block he dropped us in was, of course, Cell Block H-088. There was a standing custom among certain guards of taking kickbacks from the merchant-inmates and steering high-yield prisoners into H-088. The smiling officer didn't look like he was on the take, but he almost certainly had deep connections with the important NPCs here. Vladimir Borshch, for instance.

"Perfect timing. We'll stop by the General Store on the way."

"Eugh."

"…What's wrong?"

"We're going to that man's shop? I'd rather…"

"You don't need to be scared of him. He looks rough, and he is a bad— all right, yes, he is a bad guy. But he's not a beast that starts shooting or baring its teeth without thinking."

The reason Vladimir Borshch was called the best middleman in this world was simple. He knew, with surgical precision, when to step in and when to stay the hell out. He tested his customers — the prisoners — until it felt nitpicky, graded them, and differentiated what he would sell them, all because he had no interest in getting tangled in other people's disasters.

So if Vladimir Borshch ever shot you "for no reason," the correct assumption was that you had crossed a line without noticing.

Getting shot is still less frightening than being served Radioactive Black Tea without ever knowing it.

Who else but a Russian would keep such a colorful catalog of ways to ruin a man's day? In EFD, if you kept needling him, you picked up a debuff called Radioactive Black Tea. The nasty part was that it shredded every cell in your body. Unless you went through an extreme implant overhaul, a flood of medical nanobots, and a full-body cellular regeneration — the whole miserable pipeline — shaking it off was a nightmare. For a veteran like me, with every system already in place, it was the kind of one-off event you might try for a laugh.

Anyway. Setting that aside.

We headed straight for the Special Merchant district and knocked on the door of Vladimir Borshch's General Store.

"Super Rookie? I'm sorry, but we have important business inside today. Unless you have a reservation, we are not receiving guests."

"I figured a few of those reservations got canceled. I came in their place."

"What are you talking about…"

I said nothing and pulled the bodycams and GoPros out of the pouch. The guard's face changed. He put a call through on the radio at once. As expected: a sizable number of the prisoners deployed today had been wearing these things, filming every move they made, and were supposed to deliver the footage to the General Store.

"…The boss has granted you entry. You may go in."

"This friend is coming with me. That all right?"

"As for her… so long as she doesn't ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠cause any trouble, I don't mind."

I saw Lucy's eyebrow twitch. I walked in first anyway. This hellfire peninsula was a place where even fellow Koreans despised one another and could barely wait to eat each other alive. If a couple of Russians happened to hate each other a few thousand miles from home, that wasn't exactly a plot twist. I wasn't the kind of idiot who jammed his head into other people's business without thinking, anyway.

I just walked back into the tiger's den on my own two feet. This is where it gets interesting.

I looked over the first floor — so immaculately restored you'd never know there had been a riot here last time — and waited for the Siberian tiger to come walking out.