Fortunately, my sudden arrival—and the cacophony of my shots as I pulled the trigger several more times—distracted the men and let the woman dash from her alcove to greater safety behind a large metal box with rubbish spilling out the top. I met her there, putting my back to the trash receptacle, feeling a thrill of excitement.

“You know this area better than I do,” I told the woman. “Which way should we flee?”

She studied me. She was pretty, her face angular with dark skin. Then she raised her weapon at me and fired.

I dodged the shot.

Well, technically I didn’t dodge the shot, so much as get out of the way before it was fired in the first place. I engaged my mental boosts—slowing the world to my perception—which allowed me to judge where the woman was going to point her weapon. I didn’t move any more quickly while boosted, but the advantage of watching her muscles and studying her posture let me twist to the side so that when she actually shot, the projectile missed me.

It was close nonetheless. The shot passed by my side as I fell backward to the ground, disengaging my boosts—I usually only wanted to use them for short intervals—and leveled my handgun toward the woman. From this close range, I was able to manage the weapon well enough to plant two shots in her chest, all the while thinking about how primitive it felt to be using a metal tube instead of the powers of the Grand Aurora.

One projectile left in your handgun, Your Majesty, Besk sent. He was at his happiest when he could count things for me.

Thanks, I sent back, though I didn’t think I’d need the weapon. As the other men came for me, I tossed the handgun toward one of them and grabbed the end of something sticking from the top of the trash receptacle. A thin metal bar. I spun it in my hand, getting a feel for its weight, then turned toward the nearest aggressor, a man who was trying—and fumbling—to catch the weapon I’d tossed him.

I swung. The bar wasn’t Indelebrean—my enchanted sword—but it had a good heft to it, and made a satisfying whoosh in the air as I connected with the man’s hand. Bones crunched, and he dropped the handgun with a cry of pain. I stepped forward, raising the metal bar, hoping my healing boosts would be enough to handle getting hit by one of those shots from the other—

“Stop!” cried the man in front of me, falling to his knees. “Holy hell, are you crazy?”

The other two raised their hands, turning their weapons away from me and backing up. “Calm down, stranger,” one said. “Time out, pause.”

The man closest to me cursed, and I stepped back, cautiously wary.

“Raul,” one of the standing men said to the one I’d hit, “this is your own fault. You got into a melee.”

“Doesn’t mean he can hit me with a freaking bar,” said the man on the ground, who was cradling his broken wrist.

“Actually it does,” said the other man.

I stood there, alert and confused, metal bar held in a swordsman’s stance.

“Damn,” the third man said, looking down at the woman I’d killed. “He got Jasmine. What faction are you, stranger?”

“. . . Faction?” I asked.

“We’ll just see what registers,” the second man said, checking a small device strapped to his wrist.

Nearby, the woman on the ground groaned and pushed to her feet. I gaped, then pointed my weapon at her, ready. Necromancy? Healing boosts? No . . . with surprise, I realized that my shots hadn’t pierced her clothing. I glanced toward where the shot I’d dodged had hit the ground, and found that it had made a bloodred streak on the street.

Paint. The shots exploded into paint when they hit.

“What kind of trap was that?” the woman demanded, pointing at me. Nearby, her friend—the other woman—roused as well. “Did you think I’d believe that someone was coming to my aid last-minute, Raul?”

“It wasn’t us,” said the man whose wrist I’d broken. This wound, it appeared, didn’t simply heal. “He’s some other faction.”

They all looked to me.

“I’m . . . uh . . .” I cleared my throat, standing up straighter. “I am Kairominas of Alornia, God-Emperor of—”

“Oh hell,” the woman said. “A Medieval Statie.”

“Yup,” one of the men said, looking at the device on his arm. “The kill was registered as a wildcard.”

“I see,” I said. “It’s a . . . game?”

They ignored me, the woman—Jasmine—flopping back on the ground, paying no attention to the paint stains on her jacket and shirt. “You mean I’m going to spend the next two weeks invisible to the local AIs, and nobody relevant even got points for my hit?”

“At least he didn’t break your wrist,” Raul complained. He’d climbed to his feet. “How am I going to get this fixed? Maltese doesn’t even have bone-knitting technology.”

“Who cares,” Jasmine said. “Killed by a wildcard? Do you have any idea what that will do to my rankings?”

“You agreed to the civil war, Jasmine,” one of the other men said. “It’s not our fault you let us ambush you.” He reached out a hand to help her to her feet. She looked at him, then turned her glare toward me. “It’s his fault.”

They all regarded me again, and I felt conspicuous there, holding my improvised weapon. I met their gazes anyway. I was an emperor.

So are they, I reminded myself. I could see it in the way they held themselves—the way Jasmine refused the hand and climbed up on her own, the way Raul had shoved down his pain and ignored his wound. He was instead calling upon someone—speaking into a device on his good wrist—to dispute my kill, claiming it should be credited to him because of his trap. Each of these people was accustomed to being the most important one in the room.

Once they’d determined I wasn’t relevant, they dispersed, speaking into wrist devices or to one another. The third man, the one who hadn’t been speaking much, wandered off with the woman who had already been dead when I’d arrived.

“Fantasy Staties,” he was saying to the woman. “You should have seen him, charging in here, ready to rescue Jasmine. All that was missing was armor and a horse.”

“I can’t understand why the Wode would do such a thing,” the woman replied. “Making them grow up in such barbaric and primitive surroundings.”

“It’s not the Wode’s fault,” the man said, their voices trailing away as I was left alone on the street. “They match the State to the emerging personality of the individual. He belongs there.”

And not here, that tone seemed to imply. I tossed the bar aside. Lords, I hated this place.

Your Majesty, Besk’s voice said, sounding frustrated, in my head. I have contacted the Wode. They seemed responsive at first, but soon sent back a note saying that you would be fine. They . . . they sounded amused, my lord.

Great. And now I looked a fool to the Wode as well. I walked over and retrieved my handgun from the street, then fired the last projectile into the ground, noting the splat of paint it made.

Your Majesty? What happened? Besk asked. You seem in pain, judging by the empathic link.

I’m fine, I replied as I walked away from the scene of the game, leaving only some paint stains that still looked startlingly like blood to me. It was a game, Besk.

A game?

You’re right; the weapons are transformed by this State’s programming. They fire non-lethal projectiles; Liveborn have used that fact to make a game out of assassinating one another, or something like that.

Curious, Besk sent back. It says in our tome that there are consequences in Maltese for firing such weapons, and I interpreted that to mean the Wode forbade it.

No, I sent back. The consequence seems to be that if you’re ‘killed,’ the local Machineborn can’t see you for a few weeks.

It made sense. If the overriding politics of this State involved currying favor with a voting public, being effectively ‘timed out’ for a few weeks was a real consequence. It was a way to make the game more thrilling, but not dangerous. Though most of this State was a calm place for meetings, dining, and nightlife, the political subtheme allowed Liveborn to come play as well. Join one of the gangs, try to take over a portion of the city and run a criminal empire.