Arena 4

by Logan Jacobs

  Tempest closed her eyes, and I watched in fascination as an identical copy of herself appeared like a mirage. The copy dropped, grabbed the lip at the bottom of the doorway, and hung there one handed. Tempest handed the copy one of the assault rifles.

  She repeated the process two more times so that there were now three copies of her hanging onto the bottom of the door with one hand and clutching automatic machine guns with their other hands. Tempest Prime then nodded at me to signal that we were as ready as we were ever going to be.

  I took a deep breath.

  “Once more unto the breach,” I whispered to myself and pulled the lever.

  The door opened with a hydraulic hiss, and the three Tempest copies, with unreal strength, propelled themselves one handed up and through the open doorway. Their rifles chattered on full auto and the chaos began.

  Tempest and I used the diversion to fling ourselves through the door as well. I hit the ground in a roll and came up behind a large workbench. At first glance, the floor of the building was nothing but a titanium steel skeleton with walls. Obviously, renovation work had been started, but it was a long way from being completed. There were tools, work benches, empty takeout food containers, and just overall construction mess everywhere. The storm of bullets that flew in all directions wasn’t helping matters much either as dust and debris clouded the air.

  Over by where a large window should have been, I caught sight of the President’s telltale hairdo. He and his daughter were surrounded by several of the Skull-Goons. One in particular, who was a foot taller than the rest, was obviously in command. He gestured wildly to another goon who controlled a couple of camera-bots and was clearly trying to orchestrate some type of spectacle.

  Our sudden appearance had thrown a monkey wrench in the whole thing.

  The Tempest copies had done their job very well and had taken out at least ten of the Skull-Goons who were now little more than bleeding husks on the floor. I thought we might actually stand a chance until a hover-van pulled up next to the large open space where a window should have been and ten more of the death’s head mask wearing terrorists jumped out and stormed over to our side of the room.

  Tempest Prime and I tried to take out as many as we could, but they had numbers on their side and caught the Tempest Copies in a horrible crossfire. When the bullets and laser fire tore into them, they flickered and disappeared in a puff of smoke like ghosts, their guns clattering to the ground. Tempest winced, and I could tell that whatever telepathic link she had with the copies transferred at least some amount of their dying pain.

  I loaded my last mag into the assault rifle and tore ass across the open space to join Tempest behind a palate of large granite blocks.

  “Any chance you can conjure up a few more of those?” I asked out of breath as laser blasts blew chunks of granite all around us like hail.

  “Not at the moment no,” she said and shook her head. Sweat poured from her brow, and she sucked in air like she had just run a marathon. “It requires a lot of effort and dodging bullets tends to take it out of me.”

  “I feel you,” I said and loosed two quick bursts of auto fire from the rifle.

  “And now, megaverse, you shall witness the swift justice of Skalle Furia!” I heard the Skull-Goon in charge bellow.

  “Look here, punk,” the President’s voice rose above the din of gunfire. “The only swift justice you will get is an American boot in your--”

  The rest was cut off because a grenade got tossed near our position.

  “Grenade!” I shouted as I tackled Tempest and dove in the opposite direction. I had no idea what kind of grenade it was, but I knew the farther away we were from it the better. Tempest’s body shivered in my arms, and I felt a sort of static electricity ripple through my body.

  The two of us hit the ground hard and rolled to our feet. I saw a brief glimpse of a Tempest copy huddled over the grenade as it exploded. There was a muffled FWUMP, and the grenade and the Tempest copy evaporated in a ball of flame and shrapnel. A tiny piece of jagged metal grazed my right temple, and I felt warm blood ooze from the cut. The cut gushed blood for a few seconds before my regen mod kicked in and began to stitch my ripped flesh back together again, but not before a curtain of crimson had covered the entire right side of my face. The blood was hot and salty and smelled like pennies that had been left out in the sun.

  “Tempest,” I grunted as we crashed into the hard unforgiving metal of a large workbench full of tools. “I thought you were too tired for more copies?”

  “I… am…” she said and gave a half-hearted smile. “Go kick their asses, Havak. I’mma go night-night now.” A second later, Tempest passed out.

  I looked around me.

  The world slowed to super high-speed photography clarity, like I was Quicksilver and everyone and everything else moved at a snail's pace.

  The head Skull-Goon shoved the POTUS toward the open window as the cameras followed him.

  His Daughter screamed and reached out to her father while another Skull-Goon held her back.

  Four assault rifle carrying bad guys came around the side of the workbench. A barrel moved in an upward arc and began to spit bullets. The muzzle flash licked the air like a snake hungry for prey. Bullets stitched the floor in a line toward where I was huddled with Tempest.

  Across from me the other elevator, the one with my friends and the girl I loved in it, doors began to open. The three other Skull-Goon's rifles turned toward the opening elevator.

  My face flushed hot, and my hands shook.

  A red rage descended over my body like the blood that had flowed so freely over my face and had now dried into a maroon mask of death. I hated bullies. They sent me into a fit of anger so complete that I lost myself to it.

  Once, in elementary school, I’d been picked on by a kid who’d been left back twice already by the fourth grade. Derek Hutcherson. He’d shove me in the hall. Knock my books from my hands. Shoot spit wads at me. Derek had been almost a foot taller than I was since he was almost two years older and I’d been a late bloomer. I was a runt and easy prey. For the most part, I took whatever he dished out. It had been embarrassing, but I was afraid to fight him.

  One day, I’d come home with a bruised face and blood crusted around my nose, my face hot with shame. My great uncle Joe didn’t need to ask what happened. He knew. Uncle Joe grabbed a bag of peas out of the fridge and held them on my face.

  “You have three choices, kiddo,” he’d said that day in my kitchen. “Take it, run, or fight back. If you take it, they may get tired and move on, or they may not. Run and you’ll be running forever. Fight back, sure, you may get your ass beat, but they’ll know they don’t scare you anymore and bullies like fear more than anything else. The choice is up to you.”

  The next day Derek picked on a friend of mine, Donny Valenty. Donny was a new kid and had asthma. He liked Ninja Turtles as much as I did so we’d hit it off. Derek had him shoved up against the wall of the school where the teachers couldn’t see during recess. Donny tried to suck air into his lungs, but he’d dropped his inhaler. He couldn’t run away if he tried. Derek had laughed and that’s when the red rage came over me. I remember shoving Derek into the wall and my fists flying and that was it. Later, in the nurse's office when the world seemed to come back into focus, I was told three teachers had to pull me from Derek, who’d cried for his mother. I had a black eye and a very bloody nose but it had been worth it. Derek never bothered either Donny or me ever again.

  Take it, run, or fight back. The only choices you have. Die, flee, or take as many of them with you on the way out.

  I felt my jaw tighten and a sneer pulled at the corners of my lips.

  The world sped back up, and I moved.

  In one motion, I’d drawn my Glock as I rolled across the workbench. My left hand found a ball peen hammer and griped it tightly.

  A line of bullet holes chased me as I moved.

  My right arm shot out and fired three shots toward the Skull-Goon
in charge. They missed, but it got his attention and he ducked for cover which stopped his move to throw the President out the window.

  I shoved myself off the bench, and the hammer came across my body in a massive upswing that connected with the nearest Skull-Goon’s head. It hit so hard his head snapped back like a Pez dispenser and his body dropped.

  The Glock fired point black into the chest of the next Skull-Goon who’d turned back toward me as I put my left shoulder into him. I dropped to a knee and whipped the hammer back around into another Skull-Goon’s knee. He cried out and pitched forward almost like he was going to hug me. I pulled the Glock’s trigger three times. Tennis ball sized pieces of the Skull-Goon flew out of his back and splattered on the ceiling.

  By now the elevator had opened and my friends rushed in, guns blazing. Skull-Goons began to fall.

  The hover-van that had pulled up started to float away from the side of the building as the head Skull-Goon shoved the President inside. I knew that if they got away, the President was as good as dead, and no matter how much advanced technology I’d won for Earth, I’d forever be Marc Havak, the guy who had let the President get killed.

  I took off at a sprint, my legs pumping as hard as I could make them go toward the President and the large open window area. The last of the remaining Skull-Goons formed a rough gauntlet of guns between me and the window. On instinct, I found my mouth opening as I sucked in a huge lung full of air.

  “LEEEROY MOTHERFUCKING JEEEEEENKINSSS!” I shouted with every fiber of my being and cut a swath of destruction through the gauntlet.

  Bones broke.

  Brains splattered.

  Blood flew.

  As I danced a ballet of death and bullets.

  The Glock clicked empty as its slide locked open just as I hit the edge of the window and leaped toward the open side of the hover-van ten feet away.

  I saw the city below me as my body flew through the air. A chasm of steel and glass a hundred stories deep. Then I sailed into the van and crashed into the Head Skull-Goon as he put a gun to the President’s head.

  The gun clattered to the floor of the van and slid away. The Skull-Goon who drove the van was too stunned to do anything but watch in slack-jawed astonishment.

  Head Skull-Goon and I grappled furiously. I felt his fists as they pummeled my face and moved me toward the opening. My hand reached up as I tried to shove him off me. The fucker was big and very heavy. His fingers scrambled across the floor of the van as he tried to reach for his gun. I shoved an elbow under his chin then remembered the knife in my suit pocket.

  My left hand snaked into my pants pocket, and I pulled the MicroTech OTF knife out. A flick of my thumb and the three and a half inch razor-sharp blade emerged from the handle and gleamed in the city lights. I shoved it into the Skull-Goons side where I imagined his kidney to be.

  He screamed in pain and I was able to shove him off me.

  Head Skull-Goon stood and pulled the knife from his side. He held it out menacingly.

  “Now you shall feel the swift hand of Skalle Fur--”

  His sentence was cut short as laser holes appeared in his chest and he fell out of the open door of the van without a sound.

  I whipped my head around and saw the President of the United States of America with the pistol in his hand, its barrel smoking.

  “You’re fired!” he said with authority.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Thirty-six hours later and I truly understood the term “No rest for the weary”.

  After our LARP of True Lies, there had been a ton of police, press, and paramedics which had occupied the rest of the night.

  Then it was right into a full day of prep and planning for the next match.

  Which was about to start.

  We were all dressed lightly. The parameters of this part of the match had only come in fifteen minutes before it was set to start. I had on my motocross inspired combined with flak jacket body armor and my space Viking axes holstered in the magnetic sheaths on my back. They’d been altered so that the blades would only cut inorganic material. I had no idea how that had been done, but then again, I didn’t understand most of the technology or how it actually worked according to any science or physics anyway so… I just went with it.

  Other than that, I only had my rapier-like wit and ruggedly handsome good lucks to rely upon. And a Val’Keerye jetpack. Just in case.

  Oh, and my bad-ass teammates.

  Aurora was back in her normal Aurora-garb. Nova wore a lighter version of her traditional space knight themed armor, and PoLarr had her flight suit, fixed jetpack, and Equalizers, although they were set for stun.

  We were as ready as we were ever going to be.

  All of us stood in a loose circle around the Command Center. The tension was palpable, but no one actually wanted to call out the big ass elephant in the room.

  “I… I can’t believe this could be the last time we are all together,” Artemis finally said through barely held back tears.

  “In my years as Champion,” Grizz said. His voice cracked with emotion as he choked back his own holographic tears, “I have never known a group so full of honor, loyalty, and commitment to one another. If this truly is the last we shall see of each other, and I pray to all the gods of my homeworld that it is not, it has been my greatest honor to be your trainer.”

  “When I became Champion for Tartarus Major,” PoLarr started to say quietly, her head held high, “I had to leave the only family I’d ever known since the death of my mother. My Val’Keeyre sisters. What I have found here, as part of this alliance, has not only filled that void, it has surpassed it.”

  “You are my family,” Aurora whispered. “You are all that I have.”

  “We have fought, we have shed blood,” Nova picked up where Aurora left off. “We have also laughed and rejoiced. Our fraternity is one that no one, not Hann-Abel, not the Aetherons, can ever take from us. Ever.”

  I thought about what all of them had just said. The words and feelings swirled in my head like a typhoon. For once I couldn't think of anything to say. I had no funny tension breaking joke. No witty retort.

  “I’ve been told by those that don’t know what it’s like to fight for your life that I have survived on luck,” I finally said. My voice low, but strong. “To them, it seems like I just get by on chance. The fate of the universe. But all of you are the reason I never quit. That no matter the odds I never stop fighting. If it wasn’t for all of you, I’d have been dead a long time ago.”

  Without another word we all moved toward each other and hugged and let the tears flow. In that moment we were just six people who cared tremendously for one another. We were as vulnerable as we could ever be. And that was stronger than any enemy, any challenge, any trial.

  The ten second warning bell rang, and our hug broke.

  “Okay, enough of this sappy nonsense,” I said as I wiped away the saline remnants of the moment from my eyes. “Let’s go show these dick munches what Team Havak is capable of. Let’s go kick some ass.”

  We all nodded and then moved to our positions.

  “Okay,” Artemis said into all our ears over the comm-link as PoLarr, Aurora, Nova and I stepped up to our respective teleportation tubes. “You all have your assignments. The time to beat is twenty-five minutes and forty-eight seconds.”

  As I stepped into the mat-trans tube Artemis dashed over to me.

  “Go protect our family, okay?” She said and kissed me hard on the mouth.

  “With all I got, baby,” I replied and winked as the door of the tube formed in between us, and my atoms were blown apart and shot across the universe.

  A second later those same atoms got smashed back together, and I found myself in a large hanger. My teammates had materialized right next to me and we all stared at each other for a long moment rather incredulously.

  Normally there was some kind of imminent danger when we got thrown into a match so it was weird to just all be standing there looking around an
arched, metal ribbed hanger like room. In front of us was the gunship that Muerdock had piloted during the first part of the challenge. To our right was a rack of stun pistols and rifles. Off to the left there were various cutting implements like a laser torch, welding equipment, and a large hyper powered Jaws of Life looking thing.

  A big digital display hovered in the air about three feet over our heads. Instead of counting down, this one acted like a stopwatch. We had just passed the thirty second mark.

  “Team Havak, this is Mission Command, do you copy?” Artemis’ voice filled our ears. Comms were up and running well it seemed.

  “We read you Artemis,” I said for the team. “We teleported into a large hanger with all kinds of goodies.”

  “Hold on, I’m homing in on your location,” she said, and I could hear her typing away furiously on her computer. “Let me see if I can hijack the feed from one or your Occuhancers.”

  There was more clicking and clacking and then I felt a little tickle behind my eyeballs.

  “Got it,” Artie said after a second, “it’s not great and probably going to cut out the second you guys start moving, but I can see what you see right now.”

  Before I even had to be asked I turned my head slowly from one side of the room to the other.

  “Interesting,” she said quietly. “Well, we don’t have too much time to ponder this. The train has left the station and is hell bent on reaching the bottom of the mountain.”

  “Let’s stick the plan guys,” I started to say and then caught a glimpse of some gleaming metal out of the corner of my eye. “Actually, hold up…”

  I walked over and resting against the wall were three sled like devices. They were made from tubular black metal and were a cross between an auto mechanics creeper sled and street luge. There was a slim, molded seat in the middle of the sled and two joystick like controllers on either side. I walked over to inspect one. The bottom had miniature versions of the mag-lev devices that the train used and four small turbine engines ringed the headrest.