The black cloud dissipates even as we watch, and we see three Contender figures, tiny from the distance, climbing the Red post, while two have already scaled the platform, and are circling each other around the pedestal with the little grail on it.
“Shelter,” says Chihar the Scientist. “Now is the best time to find shelter, quickly . . . while everyone else is looking up stupidly at those famous popular players.”
“You’re right.” I look away from the action up on top of the Red platform. “We need to move. Whoever gets the Grail now will probably not keep it—not with four long days left to hold on to it.”
Larahat nods anxiously, fiddling with the loosely-wound net on her arm. “Inside there—we go inside to hide and wait. Yes, we have four days.”
She points to the boxy shelter structure before us. We all start walking, stepping over and around the recent fallen bodies of the Artist and Entrepreneur, and trying not to slip in their pooling blood.
The interior of the yellow shelter is a plain, room-sized box. There’s nothing there, only walls and floor, and two doorways cut in two of the walls, one leading outside, and the other connecting into another similar box shelter. Now that we’re inside, away from Hel’s brilliant glare, I notice two weak light fixtures—or rather, four-color beacons, familiar to me from Qualification on Earth—positioned like sconces on both ends of the rectangle room, on the short walls near the ceiling. They cast a faint glow, just enough to illuminate the room. The beacons also likely contain surveillance cameras and other tech—surveillance in addition to all the swirling nano-camera “snow” that currently fills the arena. And yes, it’s here, even in this weird room where it’s visible like dust-motes.
“Everybody take a corner,” the Scientist says, as we survey the room.
“And two people guard each door,” Zaap the Animal Handler says.
We glance at the four corners and two doorways, making split second decisions. Larahat goes for one of the corners closest to the doorway connected to the other box room, and crouches down, examining the floor for any unpleasant surprises.
“No traps?” Chihar asks, pausing before making his selection.
“No,” she replies—after running her fingers over the flooring, then getting up and stomping hard on the floor there. She then plops down and sits cross-legged, watching us and the doorway next to her.
Zaap, the Animal Handler kid, follows suit and takes the corner on the other side of that door. He sits in a strange crouch similar to the Japanese seiza sitting form, kneeling while resting his rear end on the balls of his feet, ready to bolt up at the first sign of danger. His constantly darting gaze flits to the door and to us.
The Scientist and I take the remaining corners and outside doorway duty.
I settle in my corner and watch my three new companions, seeing Larahat sniffle her nose and wipe her sweaty forehead several times with the back of her hand. She seems to be in somewhat worse shape than the rest of us, and by shape I don’t mean her physical training. Her uniform has multiple burn holes surrounded by orange stains, and in some places I can see blood seeping from them. She also appears to be suffering some kind of respiratory distress, as she keeps sniffling and coughing, then digs in her equipment bag and retrieves a small nose mask. “Inhaled too much of that chemical powder,” she mutters. “Orange dust, very bad, my lungs burn.”
“Sorry to hear that,” I say. “Hang in there.”
“Could be worse,” Chihar says, watching her wheeze into the mask. “At least you can still breathe. Avoid speaking. If you have water, drink it.”
In answer, Larahat nods silently.
Zaap merely glances at her seriously, then glances at all of us and at his current responsibility, the door.
Several long minutes follow, during which we all remain on high alert, listening for any newcomers. From the outside we hear swells of arena noise as the stadium responds to various Contender actions. I can just imagine the giant scoreboards going nuts with recording the Kills and the AG points. . . .
I wonder how Aeson is doing . . . whether he sits frozen in the Imperial Box and watches the screens, and is aware of me holed up in this yellow shelter room. He must know I am safe, I think, while my eyes start to brim with tears, until my vision swims momentarily.
So tired. . . . It’s only been about an hour into the Games, and I’m already feeling drained, exhausted from the stress. . . . I find it difficult to lift my eyelids, and I glance periodically at my companions as they huddle in their corners. They’re also looking beat, all of us waiting for lord-knows-who or what. The Scientist leans his balding head against the corner wall, and sighs deeply, while Zaap appears to droop also, and his eyes are narrowed as he glumly watches his own lap. Larahat wheezes painfully into her nose mask. We make no other sound, no small talk.
It’s so dull, this painful waiting, that I almost wish someone did come in, making us come alive, forcing us to fight. . . .
Suddenly there’s a loud clap.
I am jerked awake, out of some kind of hallucination nightmare. I inhale a breath and for some reason feel my lungs burn, while my gut reels with nausea.
“Hey! Wake up!”
I blink, trying to see the speaker, and find that someone is leaning over me, a vague shape. My eyes appear to not work properly. Are my protective sun shade lenses malfunctioning?
“You! Gwen Lark! Snap out of it!”
“Huh?” I mutter, and then I cough. I continue to blink, trying to see. It occurs to me, the speaker is using English.
“You’re being poisoned, wake the hell up!” the loud, aggressive female voice continues.
This time the word causes a jolt of adrenaline to course through me, rousing me sufficiently.
I bolt upright from leaning against the wall, my eyes wide, tearing. Then someone—the owner of that same female voice—thrusts a breathing mask at me. “Here, take this—quickly! Use it to breathe—while I deal with—”
The voice is interrupted, while I hear a tussle and the sound of bodies colliding, hard thuds against the walls and floor, at the same time as I place the mask over my face and take a deep breath of safe purified air.
Holy crap!
Just as my vision clears sufficiently in the next few seconds, I finally see the owner of the female voice, struggling in a fierce combat roll with Larahat the Inventor, who still has her nose mask on, and who appears to be feeling very well, as she easily lunges at her opponent with her intricate fish-scale net and a long dagger. The two women struggle, and I see the one who helped me—she’s wearing a white uniform with the Entrepreneur logo on the back. I see the back of her head, a flash of long dark hair with purple streaks in it.
From this vantage point I still can’t see her face, but I’m sure who it is.
It’s Brie Walton.
Just as I realize it, Brie turns around and does a skillful martial arts disengagement, then takes hold of Larahat’s wrist with the dagger and turns it on her.
Larahat flings her net over Brie’s head, but Brie is too agile to be caught. There is another moment of struggle, fierce grunting, and just as suddenly it’s over. Larahat slumps, with her own dagger imbedded in her neck. Blood flows over her yellow uniform, starting a puddle in the middle of the room.
Brie does not wait. She goes to the corner where Larahat’s equipment bag sits, and she finds a small open vial with a stick of some solid substance inside. “Here’s your poison,” she says, taking the vial carefully, and tossing it through the door outside. “Subtle, odorless, slow-acting crap. Perfect for overpowering your opponents effortlessly over a period of several hours, while sitting in a small enclosed space such as this idiot-hole. Now that it’s out there, the air here will clear up in minutes.”
“My God. . . .” I whisper, coughing through my mask.
“It’s Walton, by the way,” she says, examining me with her astute dark eyes, flipping back her purple streaked hair. “You remember me, right? Brie Walton, from Earth.”
/> I nod. “Yes, I know, of course. And thank you, Walton! How—how did you find me?”
Brie cranes her head sideways, continuing her sarcastic examination of me.
“Well, Lark, considering you’ve been a sitting duck here in the same spot for the last half hour, and your ID tracker is still functional, it took me only forty-five minutes of fighting across the arena to get to your location.”
“ID tracker? Wait—you mean all Contenders can track each other?”
“Nope, only very special girls such as me can—and probably assassins such as her.” Brie points disdainfully at the bloody mess on the floor. “I was relayed your ID frequency as soon as it was available, and you can bet your sweet buns that a similar transmission went out to all the secret bad boys and girls tasked by a certain high-ranking someone to take you out—and I don’t mean to the park or on a date.”
I shake my head, trying to clear my mind, and set down the breathing mask. “Wow,” I say, glancing sadly at the dead body of Larahat. “I trusted her. I—we even saved her damned life.”
“Yeah, well, let that be a lesson to you,” Brie tells me in a cool tone. “It’s the goddamn Games. These Goldilocks are all bad news. Trust no one, not even me.”
“Yeah. . . .”
With a grim jolt I recall my other two companions and glance at the remaining occupied corners. Chihar and Zaap are both still semi-conscious, but starting to cough and come awake, now that the air has cleared of poison. “Are they going to be okay too?”
Brie frowns and looks at them carelessly. “No long-term harm, since I got to you in time. Now, who are these clowns?”
Chapter 38
“Oh,” I say, just as Chihar sits up, coughing deeply, while Zaap wipes his face and scrambles up in an alert crouch. “These guys are friendlies, we’re working together—”
“Really?” Brie snorts mockingly. “You’re sure? The dead one over there wasn’t all that friendly.”
“You’re right, I can’t be sure.” I pause, then take a deep breath and cough—my lungs are still smarting slightly.
“You—did you do that?” Zaap says with a frown, in passable English, staring hard at Brie. He points to Larahat’s body.
“Yes, I did, you’re welcome,” Brie replies, as she straightens, with one hand on her equipment bag, and takes a careful stance so that she’s facing everyone equally.
There’s a long pause.
Then Zaap nods. “Good. She was unreliable.”
“Yes, thank you,” Chihar says to Brie, also in English. He clears his throat and adds, “She used yadu poison which sublimes from solid to gas once coming in contact with air. I should have suspected her when she put on the mask.”
“You should have.” Brie’s reply is cool. “So why didn’t you?”
“I am Chihar Agwath,” the Scientist says, without making any move to stand.
“Unless it’s the Atlantean equivalent of a holy saint, that tells me nothing. What makes you trustworthy? For all we know you’re the next-in-line backup assassin, planning to off Lark here in the next half hour.”
The Scientist says nothing, then exhales slowly. “You are correct, of course. I could be planning treachery. But then, so could you, or he—” and he points to Zaap.
“No, I already told you, I’ll kill you later,” Zaap replies in a sullen voice, switching to Atlanteo. “I said we work together now, no lies.”
“Okay, that’s enough,” I say. “We all know nobody can be trusted. But let’s think about it this way—if we agree to work together for as long as possible, we stay alive longer. So, it’s in everyone’s best interest to keep truce with each other—at least for now.” I glance at Zaap. “And yeah, I know . . . you can kill me later. . . .”
“He can try.” Brie’s expression is equally mocking and menacing.
Zaap is undaunted and frowns back at her. “You think I can’t?”
But Chihar seems to have realized the main tension is over. He stands up, intentionally moving slowly and unthreateningly—while Brie watches him like a hawk. “The body will smell soon,” he says. “We should move into the next room and occupy it instead. This one can be used as a latrine.”
It occurs to me then, we’ll definitely need latrines if we’re to hole up here for days. . . . Ugh.
But it’s a good idea, and we carefully check the doorway before stepping into the other room in this boxy shelter. Chihar goes in first, since he suggested it.
Fortunately, there’s nothing and no one, another empty chamber, just like the first. Four walls, two beacon light sconces, two doorways—one of which we just used, and the other again leading outside. It’s an exact replica.
“We take corners again, two of us guard each door,” Zaap says.
His words are drowned out by a grand roar of noise outside as the stadium screams. And then we hear the announcer say, “It’s official, the Challenge is completed! Sarpanit Latao has in her possession the Red Grail of Stage One! Now, the big question is, can she keep it? Four long days, Grail Games worshippers, four long days still ahead!”
“Sar-pa-nit! Sar-pa-nit!” the crowds chant.
“Okay,” Brie Walton says, ignoring the ruckus. “So your plan of action was to do what? Sit in these four corners and paint your nails?”
“Pretty much,” I say, watching her. “You have a better idea?”
Brie snorts. “For starters, you could find a better shelter. An actual designated Safe Base would be ideal. Here, you’re just sitting ducks. It’s on ground level, so anyone can just walk in, and it’s easily accessible with two entrances—not even proper doors! These walls are probably cardboard. Anyone shooting heavy rounds out there points in this direction, and you’re dead. Don’t let these crappy walls fool you, this is not a proper shelter.”
“Then what is it?” Chihar says.
“Think of it as a fast food takeout container,” Brie says cheerfully. And then, because the Atlanteans stare at her without comprehension, she adds, “It’s a deathtrap.”
In that moment, we hear a loud siren noise fill the expanse of the arena.
Oh, no. . . .
An alarm indicates a Hot Zone change.
Just as we freeze, listening, the two light beacons on the walls start changing. The weak four-color light slowly fades and then brightens again, this time changing hue, until the whole beacon is glowing bright angry red.
Apparently we’re now in a Hot Zone.
Zaap cusses softly in Atlanteo.
“Oh, great,” Brie says, looking around. “Now what?”
Me, I’m just getting a sickening déjà vu here, thinking of Qualification Semi-Finals back on Earth, and those marked hot zones we had to cross, with all the surprise horrors they contained such as killer drones and automated explosives. . . .
We stand looking at the beacons, burning solid red, not knowing what to expect. The room is filled with the glow of a wicked red hue, reflecting the light.
“Should we go, maybe?” Chihar says, glancing around at the walls and the doorways, even the ceiling, looking for dangers or traps.
“Well, let me think,” Brie says. “Yeah, getting out of here is a good idea.”
“Before we move at all,” I say, “let’s make sure the floor is safe to walk on. Careful!”
“Yes. Could be motion sensors,” Zaap says, and suddenly we all freeze in place nervously, afraid to breathe in case something somewhere is activated.
The room all around us is so menacingly red that for a moment it looks like the glow is not merely staining the walls but emanating from them.
And then it’s definite. Yes, there’s heat coming from somewhere, and the air is rapidly warming up.
“Oh, crap!” I say, raising my hand slowly and reaching out to touch the wall closest to me.
The surface of the wall is hot.
No, it is burning.
“Damn!” Brie cries, as the realization strikes all of us. “Get out of here, run!”
But the moment
we take a step, the doorways come alive. One-inch thick metal bars descend from the ceiling at both the entrances, slamming down with spring-loaded force into the floor to form a row at each threshold. They are spaced only three inches apart, and there’s no way anyone human can squeeze past them.
We’re trapped in this room—a crematorium.
“No! No!” Zaap cries, as he reaches the doorway first and grasps the bars with both hands. At least they appear to be neutral to the touch, generating no additional heat of their own, only picking up the surrounding heat which is rising.
“Crap, crap, crap . . . okay, can we cut through these bars?” Brie says, looking around at all of us wildly. “Bolt cutters? Saws? Quickly!”
Chihar rushes to look in his equipment bag, and so do I. Meanwhile Zaap pounds at the bars and wails angrily, then drops down on the floor and starts examining it for any release mechanism. In futility he tries to pull the bars up by force. Seconds tick, and the heat now feels well over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and rising.
My mind swirls in panic and my pulse pounds while the burning air around me scalds my skin, as I rummage through my bag for any kind of cutting tool—anything!
The walls of the room are no longer red but incandescent pink. It’s an oven, and we’re being roasted alive.
Aeson . . . I’m never going to see him again.
My parents . . . Gracie, Gordie, George.
Chihar finds a small saw, and Brie has a bolt cutter-like set of pliers, and they get to work frantically on the bars, because they must do something. . . . Even though, on some level all of us know there’s not enough time, and even if we somehow could saw through a single bar, there’s way too many of them, and our tools are not equipped for this.
I freeze and shut down, as my mind is working in a kind of muddy swirling soup of pitiful choices and solutions.
“Lark!” Brie turns around fiercely to glare at me. “Don’t stand there, do something!”
But I raise my hand to her in a stopping gesture.
And then I sing.