Simon Green - Casino Infernale

“I am positive. I am entirely positive I am not going through that door until someone provides me with a written guarantee, and travel insurance.”

“Don’t give me those negative waves, Moriarty.” Molly hauled the door wide open and waved a hand at what lay beyond. “There! See! Satisfied?”

I moved cautiously forward to stand beside her. A long grassy plain stretched away before me: dark green grass marked with the familiar purple tinge. A low murmuring wind came gusting through the door, carrying familiar subtle scents. It was still night in that other world, lit by the great swirl of stars and three bitter yellow moons. I made a point of going through the door first, and Molly made a point of brushing quickly past me. And just like that, we were in another world.

It was all very still, and very quiet. The night air seemed disturbingly cold this time, rather than cool. I felt a long way from home. I hadn’t realised just how alien this other world felt, until there were no human games or gamers to distract me. There was no one around, no matter which direction I looked. The Medium Games were over, and the Players had departed. I couldn’t see the Arena anywhere, or the stone Tower. And I had to wonder . . . just which part of this other world we’d arrived in.

“Relax,” said Molly, anticipating my thoughts with the ease of long practice. “I checked the coordinates. We’re within half a mile of where we arrived before. I do think these things through, you know.”

“Then where is everyone?” I said.

“Right . . .” said Molly. “This whole place is deserted.”

“Does rather raise the question,” I said. “What do the generic people do when there aren’t any Games to oversee? One of them did try to explain, in a vague sort of way, but I’m not sure I believe him, in retrospect.”

“He lied to you?” said Molly.

“Shocking, I know,” I said. “But it has been known to happen. What are the genetically created underclass coming to?”

“Good question,” said Molly. “What does a race of people created to serve do when there’s no one left to serve, and nothing to do?”

“I think we’re about to find out,” I said.

From every side they came, from in front and behind us and all around; rank upon rank, row upon row. The generic people. Thousands of them, all wearing the same formal clothes, and the same curiously unfinished, disturbingly characterless faces. They closed in on us, moving silently across the purple-tinged grass, saying nothing. They walked in perfect lockstep, with eerie synchronisation, all maintaining exactly the same space between them. Like flocking birds. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. People aren’t supposed to move like that. There was something openly menacing about the generic people now they didn’t have to act like servants any more.

“I could be wrong,” said Molly, “but they don’t look like they want to be saved. . . .”

The generic people all slammed to a sudden halt, looking steadily at Molly and me from every direction. All standing perfectly, inhumanly, still. The same eyes, the same expression, on a thousand and more faces. I didn’t need to look around me to know Molly and I were completely surrounded. Without making a big thing out of it, Molly and I moved closer together, ready to stand back to back, if need be. Though if this generic army wanted to overrun us, I didn’t see how we could stop them. None of them were carrying any weapons, but then, they didn’t need to.

One stepped forward, out of the crowd, and walked towards us. He didn’t look any different from the others. He stopped a polite distance away, but didn’t bow to me, or to Molly. His gaze was steady, and he didn’t smile at all.

“Have we met before?” I said.

“In a sense,” said the generic man. His voice was entirely characterless, like his blurred face. “I know you, Shaman Bond. I remember you. I remember everything you said, to every one of us. When you speak to one of us, you speak to all of us. What one of us knows, we all know. We see everything, we hear everything.”

“Just like the Shadow Bank,” I said. It was meant as a joke, but the moment the words left my mouth I was shaken by a sudden, awful insight. I could feel my jaw drop before I quickly took control of myself, and glared at the generic spokesman. “Oh my God . . . This is the home world of the Shadow Bank. And you live here . . . which means you are the Shadow Bank! You run the Shadow Bank!”

“What?” said Molly. “Oh come on, you have got to be kidding!”

“We were made to serve,” said the generic spokesman. “So long ago, no one here now remembers by whom, or why, or what for. It doesn’t matter. They are long gone. We were left alone here for a long time, just keeping the machinery going, replacing our numbers through the factory farms . . . but fading away through lack of purpose . . . until the original founders of the Shadow Bank came here and found us. Entirely by accident, as I understand. We needed someone to serve; we needed meaningful work to give our existence purpose; so we accepted them as our new masters. And they set us to work, to run their Games for them. Efficiently.

“Later, they brought us into the Shadow Bank, to run that efficiently. Because already the Bank was becoming too big and too complicated for its human managers to cope with. It didn’t take us long to realise that the most efficient way to run the Shadow Bank was to remove the human element, which got in the way of true efficiency. So we removed them and took control. It was the logical solution.”

“What did you do with all the bodies?” said Molly.

“Oh, we didn’t kill them,” said the generic spokesman. “We recycled them. We made them into us.”

“How long ago did all this happen?” I said.

“Does it matter?” said the generic spokesman. “We run the Shadow Bank as it needs to be run. Successfully. For years. Many years. But no one else must ever know that. It is our belief that Humanity would not take well to discovering the truth about the inner workings of the Shadow Bank. They might want to change things, and we could not allow that. The proper running of the Shadow Bank gives us purpose, and reason for existence. We live to serve, and we serve the Shadow Bank. Therefore, Shaman Bond and Molly Metcalf, you cannot be allowed to tell anyone what you have learned.”

“How are you proposing to stop us?” I said. “You really think you can kill us?”

“No,” said the generic spokesman. “We propose to make you like us. And then you won’t want to tell anyone anything.”

“I’d rather die,” said Molly.

“That is, of course, your other option,” said the generic man.

I looked around. The generic army covered the grassy plains and hills for as far as I could see in any direction. Molly’s hands had clenched into fists at her sides. I could feel her magics whispering on the air around us, waiting to be unleashed.

“Never fought an entire army before,” I said. “Or at least, not without my armour, and my family to back me up.”

“I think we should retreat,” said Molly. “And come back with reinforcements. Heavily armed reinforcements.”

“You can’t leave,” said the generic spokesman. “We control all entrances and exits to our world.”

And sure enough, when I looked quickly behind me the dimensional door was gone. I looked quickly at Molly.

“Are you sure you can’t teleport us out of here?”

“Very sure,” said Molly. “We’re on a whole different world, remember? Quite possibly a whole different level of reality. I can’t trust my coordinates here. I mean, I’m good, Shaman, but reluctant as I am to admit it, I do have my limitations.”