Redlock awoke to the sensation of healing magic flowing through his body. A moment later his mind was clear, and all the pain was gone. He lifted his left arm—the only flesh limb he had left—and flexed his fingers. He’d have to be more careful about grabbing ledges if he intended to keep it.
“How does it feel?” Dr. Holland’s voice managed to sound both polite and disinterested.
“Good.” With a thought, Redlock called up his implanted biomonitor on his virtual display. “Still showing some minor damage, but nothing my augmentations can’t filter out—” He felt a sudden rush of panic. “The game! What was the final score?”
“You know me, I don’t really watch sports.”
“Doc...”
“All right, your team won, four to three.”
“Fatalities?”
“We lost two: Hopper and Prowler. Thunderheads had five fatalities. I’m told three of those kills were yours. Quite an impressive debut. You’ll want to pace yourself, however. I’ll be discharging you in a couple hours, but I’m ordering you to restrict yourself to light activity for the next 48 hours.”
“Doc, I’m feeling just fine. Mind if I scram? I promise, light activity only.” Redlock didn’t wait for a response before heading out the door. For once, he was looking forward to debriefing with his personal coach. He realized with surprise that she’d finally have something nice to say to him. Years of tough love, never a word of praise, but she’d made him tough. He’d prepared for the real thing and proved himself beyond what had been expected of him.
His mother’s apartments were located only a couple of blocks from the Seattle Screamers’ headquarters building, so he decided to walk.
“Hello, Mother! Ready for the debrief?” With a self-assured smile, Redlock strutted into his mother’s luxurious den. The room was lavishly furnished, and decorated with mementos and awards celebrating the career of the Scarlet Widow. The centerpiece was an elaborate entertainment system, which boasted multiple trideo projectors. It was an excellent place to host a VIP party to watch a game while server drones delivered hors d’oeuvres and drinks to her many guests. Now it was empty except for Redlock and his mother, who turned from the bar at his approach.
While three decades older than Redlock, she moved with the fluid grace of top-shelf cyberware. Her face looked a decade younger than her fifty-two years, with black hair cut short, just like she’d worn it during her glory years. In her EvoWare biometric suitjacket and matching slacks, she could almost be mistaken for a sports agent or manager, until you saw her cold, steel-gray eyes—the gaze of a predator, constantly sizing up everyone and categorizing them as competition, prey, or not even worth her time.
“You seem to be in a good mood,” she said, her expression neutral.
“We won. And I’m feeling pretty good. The wonders of magical medicine.”
“That and a significant fortune in replacement parts.” His mother shook her head. “I’ve given you the best training anyone ever had—and you wrecked yourself in your first play. Your team managed to pull off the win, but it was in spite of your actions, not because of them.”
Redlock frowned. “I took out a third of the enemy team, including the blaster.”
“Against the explicit orders of your team captain,” she retorted as she brought up the trideo of the match. “Sit down. We have a long debriefing session to get through, and it will go much better if you don’t try to argue every point I make.”
The hazards of the match Redlock had just survived were nothing compared to his mother’s lacerating commentary about his tactics and overall play. During the next three hours, she tore through everything he did. He hadn’t followed orders. He had endangered his teammates. He hadn’t thought ahead. He’d wasted ammunition. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.
“Thanks to the magic of trideo, your teammates and fans will see your performance as a great success. They’re all dead wrong. You played terribly.”
A long silence passed as Redlock focused his attention on the legs of an elaborate coffee table in the center of the room. Down was the only safe direction to look without being faced with trophies, medals, framed photographs and other mementos to the Scarlet Widow’s career.
“Well,” she said. “What do you have to day for yourself?”
“I fragged up.”
“Repeatedly. And?”
“Next time...I won’t?”
She sighed heavily. “You don’t even understand, do you? You think I’m being unfair. You took too many risks. Your team coordination was almost entirely absent. You may have killed three players in your first play, but you used yourself up doing it. You didn’t even last a single play!”
She strode over to him a pointed a finger in his face. “I leave it up to you to remember the training you managed to forget, despite all of the work I’ve put into you! Rookies who play like you did don’t last a season, and that’s not something I’m going to see happen to you!”
She gestured at the trophy case that took up more than half of one of the room’s walls. “This isn’t just about you. It isn’t just about a play, a score, a season, or even a team. You have a legacy behind you. My legacy. Don’t squander it. Understand?”
Redlock didn’t quite meet her eye, but nodded.
She sighed again, then brought up Redlock’s training schedule on her AR. “We’re getting a late start today. I want your workouts done before eight.”
“Medical ordered light duty for 48 hours,” he mumbled.
She glared at him. “What are you, a wageslave? I can read your biomonitor’s output. Don’t forget who paid for your damage compensators. Now quit whining and get moving!”
Redlock gritted his teeth, his face reddening. He wanted to snap back at her, but knew he would only sound petulant. Instead, he just nodded, and told himself getting some exercise would feel good, as if it was something he had decided himself.
He was willing to leap off a building at an enemy armed with a machinegun, but asking for trouble from Savannah Chiba, the Urban Brawl legend The Scarlet Widow, was beyond his courage. His mother was a hard trainer, but she knew what she was talking about. From the time he had been old enough manage a pull-up, Redlock had been presented as the Scarlet Widow’s promising protege and a future Urban Brawl star player in the making.
Now, he just had to live up to that hype…and not get himself killed while doing it.
In the next Screamers game, versus the Oakland Terminators, Redlock did just what he was told: He held back, followed orders, and played cautious. It paid off when the opposing team made a serious rush for his position. For the better part of a play, he drew nearly all the fire from their blaster, outrider, and two of their heavies.
He thought of a dozen ways to parkour his way around his opponents for a better shot, but they were all too risky. He felt his mother’s disapproval hold him back each time. So he stayed put and took cover, snapping off shots using only his gun cam to aim without exposing himself to fire. It was less accurate, but he scored enough flesh wounds to keep his opponents from overrunning his position. And it set his team up for an excellent pincer move.
He didn’t get to score any of the kills himself, but knowing he made just as good an anvil as a hammer contented him.
Afterward, he thought his mother might let up in the debrief, but she glossed over every success and went right to his mistakes. It wasn’t all that bad, and he bore it, determined to learn the lessons she had to teach. She was an Urban Brawl legend, after all, and he was a rookie in his first year. It’s not that he minded taking his lumps. He made mistakes, and wanted to learn from them. Was it too much to ask to also celebrate his victories, too? The team coaches and his fellow players said something encouraging sometimes, but just once, Redlock wanted to hear it from her.