Team Irtiu arrives first, streamlined figures of Contenders slowing down like vultures to surround us. They hover around the Safe Base, holding onto their bags, and come up close to strike the hard glassy wall.
We hear their shouts and thick blows against the wall, but the exterior sound is dampened somewhat. However, we see their fierce angry faces up-close as they take turns plastering themselves against the surface and gesturing obscenely. A huge Red Warrior puts his forehead against the plastic-glass then pulls back and slams his head against it with a fierce grin. Others place palms flat against the wall mimicking desperation.
“Just ignore them,” Kateb says, settling down on the floor.
“Easy for you to say,” Lolu mutters with a shudder at the sight of the enemy Entrepreneur gesturing and snapping a cord to imitate a strangling noose.
Tiamat “Thalassa” Irtiu herself hovers high above the Safe Base and then lands with a soft thud on our roof. She walks around on top of our heads and from our weird perspective we can see the soles of her shoes and the pant leg folds of her green uniform, the bottom edges of her shirt, and her hands moving gracefully.
“Gwen Lark! Imperial Bride!” Thalassa cries out in a brazen, resonant voice then stomps her feet on our ceiling. “Come out! Come out and dance with me!”
I try to ignore this unsettling situation outside and sit down also, keeping away from the clear wall just in case.
Don’t look, just don’t look. . . .
I happen to glance to my right and recognize the Team Irtiu Vocalist, Fawzi Boto, who levitates close against the transparent wall, staring directly at me with an insolent smile. As soon as he sees me looking, he salutes me with a flourish.
“Hey! Are you guys sure this thing will protect us?” Brie paces around the small room, tapping with her knuckles on the interior of the wall then brushing her fingers against the smooth surface.
“No,” Tuar says. “We can’t be sure of anything.”
“We’ll be safe for now,” Chihar replies calmly. “If this Safe Base can be breached, it will take them some time to figure out how to do it.”
Just then the noise level outside changes because Deneb Gratu and his gang have arrived.
It gets momentarily quiet as the two major teams take measure of each other, rearranging their positions around the Safe Base. Thalassa’s people turn their backs to the wall to face the newcomers. Weapons are readied. . . .
And then we hear Deneb call out, “Truce! Truce!” He raises one huge brutish hand, gives a slow deceptively easy smile then hops onto the roof next to Thalassa.
Deneb might be a giant man but he’s a skilled skyball jumper, powerful and light on his feet, so this particularly hard and jolting landing must be intentional. He’s making a point by causing the Safe Base to rock and flounder.
Now we see the soles of his larger shoes above our heads, in addition to Thalassa’s pair of smaller ones, as the two celebrity Contenders stand opposite each other.
While this is happening, Lolu sits down before the surveillance screen and activates the various feeds. She scrolls though them until she finds the view directly above our own Safe Base—which now shows us Deneb and Thalassa standing across from each other on top of our ceiling. Lolu zooms in so that we can watch their faces, movements, everything.
Far in the distance the audience noise rises. . . .
“What are they doing?” Zaap asks, crouching to stare at the screen.
The sound from outside is dampened by our shelter but it’s possible to try reading lips.
“They’re just standing there, talking,” Lolu says. “Blue haired chazuf is sexy-posturing, Gratu is being fake-friendly. Now she says something about a temporary alliance.”
“Yes, I can hear them from here,” Kokayi says, standing up on his toes and raising his face as close as possible to the ceiling. “They are interested in picking off the weaker teams one by one—”
In that moment the two killers above our heads apparently come to an agreement. Thalassa watches while Deneb Gratu suddenly gets down on his hands and knees and brings his face extremely close to the surface of the clear roof, making Kokayi pull back nervously. Then Deneb peers down at us through the transparent ceiling. His cold, blue-eyed stare is just as terrifying now as I remember it.
“Nefero niktos, Imperial Lady Gwen Lark!” he says loudly, looking right at me. “A pleasure to see you again. Come, don’t be afraid, join me outside. We have much to discuss, and I still have a place for you on my team. No need to surround yourself with lesser Contenders. Your team is too weak—”
That’s when Deneb Gratu notices Kateb among my team. “I see Nuletat is with you. He can come too. Leave the others and come—”
I watch him speak from my seated position on the floor. And then I force myself to simply look away.
“Don’t worry,” I tell my teammates. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Neither am I,” Kateb says coldly, keeping his own gaze averted from the ceiling.
Brie slaps her thigh. “Good! In that case—” She moves to stand directly underneath Deneb Gratu’s position on our ceiling. And then she grins at him and, Earth-style, gives him the finger.
The two teams remain outside our Safe Base only a little while longer. Seeing that none of us are coming out, and that the thick walls hold up very well against the impact of their blows and kicks, Team Gratu and Team Irtiu decide not to waste more time with us, at least for tonight.
Deneb rises and goes airborne, giving Thalassa a mocking nod, then speeds away with his crew.
Thalassa watches them leave then leaps off our roof and floats down slowly to reach our floor level. She hovers just a few feet from where I’m sitting and sweeps her palm against the transparent wall in a slow disturbing caress. I can’t help watching her out of the corner of my eye as she smiles at me, baring her very sharp white teeth, and then shapes a kiss with her sensuous lips, pressing them against the smooth surface.
“You and I will dance very soon, Imperial Lady Gwen,” she says to me with a terrifying smile. “Remember, in the very end, you are mine. Nefero niktos—dream of me.”
And Team Irtiu flies away.
Once they’re gone, we all stop pretending we’re doing something and breathe in relief.
“They have to sleep sometime,” Chihar says tiredly. “I believe they decided to rest before terrorizing the Game Zone.”
“Less than three hours until Midnight Ghost Time,” Lolu says. “We should sleep also then get back to the outermost land ring before the clock begins the new day.”
Exhaustion sets in, and this time I fall asleep immediately while someone takes the first watch—or maybe no one does and we just set alarms to wake us up at midnight—the details are hazy.
It feels like no time has passed when we’re wakened by the acapella hymn. Unfortunately, it’s time to vacate the Safe Base. Unlike the previous stages of the Games, we cannot simply stay here indefinitely—we’re on a daily clock, which requires us to begin each new day on the outermost land ring.
We voice-key our bags and fly back over the concentric circles of land and water to the outside, watching the Games staff descend from the sky to clean up the Game Zone during Midnight Ghost Time.
During this time the Hot Zone changeover also happens. A deep rumble comes from all directions interspersed with the occasional noise of gushing water. . . . The water rings roil with strange turbulence and dull thunder as their contents shift deep underneath the surface—the hazards are being rearranged with whatever machinery is involved in their making. When it’s done, the currents disperse, ripples fade, leaving the surfaces all smooth and calm. Only small waves lap softly at the edges.
Once again the lurking dangers in each water ring are a mystery for us to uncover. . . .
But that’s for later.
Technically we may begin the daily task of crossing the rings at any moment after the end of Midnight Ghost Time, but yesterday we only started at seventh hour of R
a. . . . So we take advantage of the precious few pre-dawn hours to sleep like the dead. And apparently so do all the other teams.
As soon as we get to the outermost land ring, we settle down to sleep, with two people at a time keeping watch.
When the dawn comes we begin the task for day two, and the drudgery starts once again.
We deal with it the best we can.
The one thing that must be said about Stage Three is that it feels like we’re stuck in some kind of hellish time loop. Every day is the same yet different, and events start to all run together.
Maybe that’s why they call it the Ordeals stage.
Mindless exhaustion prevails. We suffer the painful monotony of constant exposure to water and ocean wind, merciless sunshine and glare from an incandescent white sky. . . . And we have to keep going like clockwork—to perform thankless body-and-soul-draining tasks of swimming, moving partially through dangerous water or above it, and methodically testing the nature of each water ring before braving to cross it.
At about noon every day we gather our daily drinking water at the island of the Green Grail, then begin the return trip back. In addition to all the details we constantly have to keep track of, we must remember not to stay on any interior land ring longer than an hour, so as not to invoke the Cold Zone hazard—the surface of the land ring starts to ice up, becoming a painful discomfort and then a freezing danger to our extremities.
The other Contenders we encounter during the day seem intent on their own business, saving their best strength for finishing the task, and no one engages us in combat. That will come later, after dark, when the teams roam the night and the chase is on. . . .
By this point in the Games only three major celebrity teams remain—Team Gratu, Team Irtiu, and Team Kukkait. While the Games commentators might place my own team in this group, Team Lark is nowhere near the powerhouse level of the other three. Those guys are out for AG points while we’re basically in survival mode.
Whoever is left—those other Contenders who make up the low-profile lesser teams—they’re also hanging in, for the most part, just trying to stay in the Games. Some of them also hunt, but they present less of a danger as long as we’re careful and avoid being seen.
My fellow teammates are dealing the best they can. Every day our bodies and uniforms are newly covered with choonu residue and the various contents of the other water rings. The filthy wet clothing layers cling to our already irritated skin, causing more abrasions.
We take rest breaks whenever possible, but I can tell Chihar is on his last ropes, especially toward day four when every moment is an ordeal in itself. Brie is more quiet than usual, which tells me she’s also near her own endurance limit, although she doesn’t ever admit it. However, her sarcastic commentary is down to a minimum, which is significant.
Lolu and Zaap, the youngest among us, are tired and grumpy, but keeping up. Tuar, Kokayi, and Kateb have the strength and endurance to be less affected than the rest of us, but they too suffer in grim silence.
As for me—I’m barely functioning. I am sunburnt, every muscle aching, feverish and dehydrated, trembling with weakness, shivering uncontrollably at night until I remember to attach the small heating devices to my uniform. . . . Even singing the basic voice commands has become a chore for my parched throat and straining lungs. . . . To be honest, I don’t know how I’m even alive. . . .
Throughout the endless hours, during the few moments of rest, I reach inside my uniform inner pocket to feel Aeson’s black silk armband, wet and crumpled, but solid enough to remind me of why I am here, why I’m doing all this.
Breathe, Gwen, breathe. . . .
Im amrevu. . . .
Each late afternoon when we finish the task of crossing the rings and back again, we immediately look for shelter in the form of a Safe Base, but we’re never so lucky again. The Safe Bases we find during our speed-hovering exploration across the rings are always occupied.
So we end up sleeping in the open on the outermost land ring, with our backs against the outside wall, right in front of the noses of the audience. . . . Sleep only happens very late after midnight, and consists of a few stolen hours toward dawn, since we spend most of the night in motion, keeping away and hiding from those who hunt us.
That would be Deneb Gratu and Thalassa.
We spend the evening and night of days two and three speeding through the air. . . . Never staying in one place, swerving and descending low, we attempt to remain invisible while Deneb and Thalassa’s crews—working alone or together—range throughout the Game Zone. Sometimes there’s also Hedj Kukkait’s team, but they seem to be less inclined to hunt and, so far, we’ve been lucky not to encounter the White Bird’s lethal group.
Despite our best efforts, there are times when we’re seen and pursued. That’s when things get surreal indeed as we reach unbelievable hover speeds and engage in evasive maneuvers until Midnight Ghost Time—which gives us a desperately needed reprieve.
The other reprieve is the eventual need for sleep. Even brash celebrities like Thalassa and Deneb need to be able to perform the next day’s tasks, so they abandon the chase at some point to catch a few hours of sleep.
And then everything begins all over again.
So far, we’ve been surprisingly fortunate. But our luck is about to run out.
By the end of the afternoon of day four of Stage Three, when all Contenders are suffering excruciating levels of physical agony and stress, things finally fall apart.
And it all begins with the black water and the tif-nu-sha.
Chapter 80
We’re in the middle of our makeshift “shark cage” swim across the black water ring, with multiple nets rigged together to form our safety enclosure while the hungry tif-nu-sha swim around us, poking from all sides at the relatively flimsy netting.
“Keep moving . . . slowly, slowly . . . no sudden movements,” Tuar reminds us as usual in a quiet, low voice, taking the lead position in our swimming lineup. He’s the one gently guiding the whole cage contraption, in addition to the four bags hovering to keep each top corner raised above water level.
We swim in a close bunch, panting with exertion, trying to avoid inhaling or getting the disgusting black water in our mouths. Chihar sputters often and Lolu coughs.
“Hush . . . amrevet, not so loud . . .” Kokayi whispers nearby, helping to keep Lolu afloat to minimize her choking.
Zaap just keeps his mouth tightly closed and stares grimly at the moving sides of our cage where the tif-nu-sha noses appear, glistening pale gray, tracking us with hunger.
Brie and Kateb swim in the center while I bring up the rear.
This is our return trip, with just one more water ring remaining to cross in addition to this one, before we’re done for the day (and this third Games stage), with only the hours of darkness to survive until midnight.
Hel is dipping lower in the fading sky of late afternoon. . . . The hour is late, and we’re beyond tired. We’re almost there, not too far from the outermost land ring, so we can hear the roar of the audience as it greets the major teams who have completed the daily task long ahead of us.
Much earlier today Team Irtiu got to the center island first, and Thalassa retrieved the Green Grail. This also shut off the fresh water fountain and deprived all the rest of us of drinking water from that point forward. So now we’re parched and lightheaded with dehydration in addition to everything else, with maybe a swallow or two of liquid remaining in our flasks.
Maybe that explains the poor job we did in putting together this net cage for the last time. Because about two-thirds across the water ring, after a particularly strong bump from a hungry tif-nu-sha, our pitiful cage falls apart.
The cords holding together two of the sides come undone, and the nets separate and partially sink while the hovering bags continue advancing forward carrying the mangled netting by their corners. This opens up the cage interior to the sha, leaving us completely vulnerable.
At once two la
rge grey bodies burst in, and Tuar cries out in pain. A tif-nu-sha latches on to his side and shoulder with its great teeth while Tuar uses his powerful arms to strike back, defending himself bravely.
The rest of us wallow and flounder, yelling in panic, using what’s left of the netting to defend us. Lolu gets pulled under, apparently tangled by a net, then comes up again coughing water.
Tuar is bleeding profusely from his upper body, and now red blood stains the black water around us—something that will soon drive the sha into a feeding frenzy. . . .
Brie struggles with the second tif-nu-sha, grabbing it around the sleek upper torso with one arm to keep the teeth away from her face, slamming it with her equipment bag. But there’s red coming from Brie too. . . . She’s been hurt, I don’t know how badly.
“The nose! Hit the nose! Hard! Hit them on the nose!” Zaap cries, then starts moving crazy-fast. He swims right at the sha that’s savaging Tuar and slams into it with his fist, which immediately sends it fleeing. Then he turns around and fist-slams a third sha that approaches us.
Kateb and I are nearest Brie. As she continues to bleed and hold the sha at arm’s distance from her vulnerable throat, Kateb strikes the sha with his fist, making it retreat.
Brie curses, wild-eyed from adrenaline and pain. . . . And at that point we find a small pathway in the water seemingly clear of sha, and we start swimming like crazy, dragging each other and the remainder of our nets.
Go, go, go!
I don’t have a clear recollection of the next few seconds. . . . It’s a jumble of panic and splashing as I swim as hard as I can, pulling something with one hand—it’s Brie—and then seeing a grey body heading for me.
I ready my fist and slam the tif-nu-sha as hard as I can, feeling the slippery angular surface of its nose and seeing a flash of pale pink open maw with rows of teeth. The sha reels backward away from me and disappears into the black water. . . .