by J. N. Chaney
“We’re not tying you down,” Elon said firmly. “It was my fault. I fell asleep. If I had been awake to see you change, I could have brought you back like I did just now.”
“We can’t risk it,” Arun said, shaking her head. “I won’t be the cause for Legion taking another life.”
“Listen,” I said, interrupting the brother-sister feud. “You two need to figure that out on your own. I have news.”
I told them everything about the images on Jezra’s data pad, finding the Rung in our walls, the way we captured him, and the white flag he had come to offer. When I was done, Arun and Elon stared at me, digesting the information. Then they looked at each other, almost as though they were silently coming to consensus before speaking.
“The Rung could be lying,” Arun pointed out. “The only real proof we have at all are the images Jezra captured. This could all be an elaborate ruse to get us out of our walls and into the open.”
“I don’t think so,” Elon said, shaking his head in disagreement. “Apart from the images Jezra captured is the fact that this Rung risked his own life to bring us the news. He has to know we wouldn’t have accepted him willingly. He put himself in great danger to come here. At any point, we might have killed him.”
“He could have killed me,” I pointed out. “Almost did when he took off the way he did. The bottom line is that we won’t know for sure unless someone goes with him and reports back.”
Elon and Arun both looked at me as if I’d lost my mind.
“You’ve been through so much already,” Elon said with a grimace. “I can’t ask you to go with him.”
“We’ve all been through a lot,” I said, nodding to Arun. “And you don’t have to ask because I’m volunteering. Maybe I’ve been hanging around Jezra and Lou too much, but I’m starting to believe that maybe I am here for a reason. I have a very unique set of skills that seem to get me through most situations. Let me go with this Rung. If he’s telling the truth, I’ll report back, and we’ll have the way to kill Legion.”
“And if not?” Arun asked. “If he’s lying and this is a trap?”
“Then he gets one of us instead of all of us,” I said, shrugging and spreading my hands palms up in a “whatever” gesture. “We can’t afford not to explore the few options we have at this point.”
Arun gave a long sigh, too tired to argue.
Elon, on the other hand, still had some fire left in him. “You’re not going alone,” he said so definitively that I understood at that moment he would fight me the whole way on this one. “We’ll ask for volunteers from those we know we can trust. A few are better than one. Even if it’s just a handful to cover your back.”
I opened my mouth to argue but didn’t get any words out before Arun interrupted me again. “Save your breath,” she said, exhausted. “You know well enough he’s not going to give in.”
Elon nodded along with his sister as if to punctuate her statement. I looked from sister to brother and back to the sister again, then I raised one side of my mouth in a half-smile.
“Elon, if I could have a moment alone with Dean, while I’m still in my right mind?” Arun asked, looking over to her brother with questioning eyes. “It won’t take more than a few moments.”
Elon looked unsure at first then regarded his sister with a wistful smile. “Okay, I’ll be right outside if you need me.”
“Thank you,” Arun said, smiling weakly but reassuringly at him.
Elon passed me with a tilt of his chin and left the interior of the Orion.
I looked around at the metal walls and ceiling of this section of Arun’s new home. Memories of the magnificent seed ship now brought to ruin poked at my mind. Thinking too hard about this situation we were in and how it occurred could bring on madness akin to Legion’s possession of hapless individuals, so I avoided those too-dark thoughts.
“I need you to do something for me if I don’t make it,” Arun said, pulling me from my thoughts. “Before you go on a rant about how I shouldn’t think like that and be positive, you can save it.”
“I wasn’t going to say that at all,” I said, going over to the side of her bed and giving her a sad smile. “I know you don’t want that.” It was only a partial lie. It was on the tip of my tongue to do as she’d said, but I stopped myself. She didn’t need it.
“Thank you,” Arun said, running her right hand under her sheet. She came back with two folded pieces of paper. “I have a note for my brother and another for Ricky. If I’m not able to fight off the Legend virus, I want you to kill me and give them these notes.”
My stomach clenched in my gut at the same time my mouth went dry. I had done my fair share of killing people infected by the Legion virus, but I hadn’t known any of them. Maybe I was a bad person for thinking that taking someone’s life I did know was worse than a stranger’s, but that was how I felt.
Could you really kill her? I asked myself. Could you really put Arun down for the count if she couldn’t fight the virus’ infection?
“It shouldn’t be Ricky or Elon.” Arun cleared her throat, blinking back tears. “They’re not strong in the same way you are, Dean. I hate to ask anyone for this favor, but you’re one of the few options I have. I’ll ask Stacy if you say no.”
I stood quietly, thinking over her request. Four little words that were anything but simple ran themselves over and over through my mind. Will you kill me? There was a huge amount of trust that went with that request. In a perverse way, it was an honor to be asked.
“I need you to promise me, Dean.” Arun looked at me through pleading eyes. “I need you to swear to me. If I’m gone for good, you have to kill me. I don’t want to live my life as a puppet controlled by Legion. I won’t give him that satisfaction. Please promise me.”
I couldn’t bring myself to voice the words, but I nodded.
“Swear to me.” Arun reached out and grabbed my wrist with more strength than I would have thought she was capable. A brief flash of blackness raced over her eyes and I was afraid she was reverting into madness again. “Swear to me, Dean!”
“If you turn and there is no way to bring you back”—I paused, swallowing hard—“I’ll be the one to end you.”
“Thank you, thank you,” Arun said gratefully, releasing my arm. “I hate to put this burden on you, but you’re different, whether you see that or not.”
I ignored that comment. I had enough to deal with at the moment. I had just agreed to kill one of the few people I considered a friend.
“The letters?” I said instead.
“The one I wrote to Elon gives him my last instructions on how to save the colony,” Arun said, biting her lower lip in concentration. “The one I have for Ricky explains what he’s come to mean to me.”
“Why don’t you just tell him?” I asked. “I mean, you still can now. Why wait to let him read it from a letter?”
“He’s been nothing but wonderful to me since I’ve known him,” Arun said, shaking her head sadly as she stared at the ceiling of the Orion. “He doesn’t deserve to hear how I feel about him now only to lose me if I should die.”
“No way,” I said.
Arun looked over at me, confused. “What?”
“No way,” I repeated myself. “You don’t get off easy. If I’m supposed to kill you, you don’t get to die without having these hard conversations. You tell Ricky what he means to you while you have the time. I wish I would have told my wife what she meant to me more often before she was gone. If you have the chance now, you take it.”
“He’ll be devastated if I don’t make it,” Arun said.
“He’ll be devastated anyway reading it from a note,” I said, tossing the letter with Ricky’s name back to her. “At least this way he gets to hear it from you rather than a piece of paper.”
“Dean—” Arun said, about to try and convince me again.
“Not doing it,” I said. “You tell him. If you care about him, give him that at least.”
We regarded each other a
moment longer in the quiet of my words before we were interrupted by a familiar voice.
“Arun!” Ricky dashed through the tent flaps into the room. He looked at me with a happy smile that worried me. “Oh, sorry, I came as fast as I could. Stacy is on board with the plan to help the Rung as long as Elon and Arun are. I mean, did you tell them already?”
“Oh, I told them,” I said, placing a hand on Ricky’s shoulder and giving Arun a meaningful look. I headed out of the tent. “I think Arun has something to say to you.” I left them both staring after me.
5
I ducked out of the tent a moment later to let Arun and Ricky have their much-needed conversation. Elon stood outside, his arms folded across his chest, his head bent forward in desolation. He had a mountain of problems weighing on his shoulders. I didn’t envy him the slightest.
“Need another drink?” I asked, remembering how I had found him in the downed Orion before as he tried to drink his problems away. “Or maybe you just need to break something?”
“Both,” Elon said with a sigh. “I know I should tie her down, but how do I bring myself to do that? Am I really going to restrain my sister?”
“We have got to believe that the Rung are telling the truth,” I said, trying to navigate the conversation away from his personal problems to the more global ones at hand. I wasn’t really one for making people feel better, preferring to change the subject when things became too emotional. “I’ll head out tonight. If the Rung are telling the truth, we’ll know soon enough.”
“Thank you,” Elon said, fixing me with those bright blue eyes of his. “I mean that, Dean. I don’t know where this colony would be without you.”
“Just doing my part,” I said with an offhand shrug as I headed toward our tent city. “I’ll talk to a few others today to see if I can round up some volunteers to go with me.”
“Maybe I can go with you.” Elon brightened a bit. “If Ricky stays here to watch over Arun and Stacy oversees the—”
He shut up as I turned to give him a hard stare.
We both knew he couldn’t come with me. He had too much of a responsibility to these people.
As if he could read my thoughts, he slowly nodded with a rueful smile. “Be safe.”
I smiled back and turned, making my way through the city of tents, passing people as they washed their clothes, prepared meals, or whatever work they were given to do that day. Everyone, unless they were too sick, too young, or too old, had a job to do to benefit all.
While Elon oversaw the entire colony, Stacy had taken over security, and Boss Creed managed to bring order to the everyday chaos that was our lives. He set up a system dividing people into groups and having each group work on a different project. These projects ranged from cooking, to washing clothes, to scavenging parties going into the Orion, and more.
Boss Creed had a knack for order, and he was a natural born leader. To be honest, I didn’t want to take either him or Stacy with me on the mission to the Rung. If anything did happen to us, they were too important to the colony to be lost.
These thoughts ran through my mind as I rounded a corner leading to the Civil Authority tent. I heard grunts and the familiar sound of fists hitting a punching bag.
That noise made sense to me in a world out of order and I didn’t bother to suppress the grin. I walked to the back of the tent to see John Bower training on a heavy bag he’d fashioned from a thick piece of canvas and sand.
John wasn’t just a suit, he had previously been a gladiator back on Earth. He was a brother and a hard man who knew what it was like to be locked in a ring and only come out when your opponent was unconscious, or you had inflicted so much pain on him that he gave up in defeat.
Next to John, sitting on a bench, was Lou. I was surprised to see the older man lifting weights and doing bicep curls. He looked over at me and smiled as if he had expected me to show up the entire time. Lou was a deeply religious man who often seemed to have a direct pipeline to his supposed man upstairs.
“Dean,” Lou said with a toothy smile. “Come on over. We’re working out. Or at least John is. I’m just pretending.”
John stopped hammering at the bag to give me a measured look and wipe the sweat out of his eyes. “Heard you went a round with a Rung spy today and got that shoulder of yours popped out of socket. Looks like you took a good shot to your eye as well.”
I touched the spot over my eye that had been opened. It had bled fiercely, but head wounds always looked worse than they were. After I wiped the blood away, there was only a small gash to show for the blow I had taken.
“Don’t you worry about me,” I said. “I’ve still got more than enough to put you down in the first round.”
John held my gaze steadily as if he were about to take offense, then he broke into a smile.
“You’re lucky I like you, Steel Hands,” John said, using my gladiator name from back on Earth. “Or I’d challenge you to a friendly fight right now.”
“Might have to put that on hold,” I said. “The Rung have given us an offer to join forces against Legion. They say they know how to kill him. You in?”
“Sign me up,” he said, looking around at the meager weights he had and the improvised bench. “I’m getting kind of bored here anyway. No offense, Lou.”
“None taken,” Lou said, lifting another weight to do a bicep curl. His veins popped out of his neck at the effort despite the weight only being ten pounds. “I just have to finish this set and get a nice pump going, then I’ll grab my things so we can go.”
“We?” I asked.
“Oh, you didn’t think you were going to leave me behind now, did you?” Lou winced in pain as he raised the weight again. He was definitely wearing down, close to ending his “workout.” “You remember how I did against Legion when we went out to the coast? I may not have been a gladiator on Earth, but I’m still spry. I’ll be of use. Besides, I know where Legion’s heart is, remember?”
“The lightning-bolt-shaped rock in the jungle,” I said, recalling when Lou had taken me to the top of the Orion to get a view of the oddly-shaped landmark.
“Anybody else coming?” Lou asked. “I mean, besides Stacy?”
“Why would you think she’s coming?” I asked, stiffening. Had we been so transparent?
“Please, you think that woman is going to stay behind when there are things needing to be done?” Lou looked at me like I was stupid.
“Fair enough,” I said. “We don’t need anyone else outside of us. Tong will be coming along with us to translate, as will, of course, the Rung.”
“One hundred and ninety, one hundred and ninety-one,” Lou said as he counted out his reps. “One hundred and ninety-two…”
John and I exchanged a grin. More like twenty-one, twenty-two…
I looked over at the crudely-fashioned punching bag, missing the feeling of my fists hitting something. Being a gladiator had always been more than just a sport to me or a means to make a living. It was my vocation, a way for me to be the person I knew I was created to be. Everything else fell away when I was fighting or training. The world made sense then, and I missed that.
“You know, I mean, unless you want to fall back on the excuse that your shoulder is still messed up, we can always go a round or two,” John said, catching my gaze and playing on the uncertainty and desire he probably saw. He knew he could tip me over the line I was mentally walking and get me to go a few rounds with him. He knew what being a gladiator had meant to me. “We’ll wear the heavier gloves, so I don’t mess you up too bad.”
There were mountains of reasons why I shouldn’t. We were going to depart that night to meet with the Rung and preparations had to be made. Still, it would only take a few minutes.
You can put him down in a minute or two, I told myself. It might do you some good to limber up before you embark on a mission that could be your last.
“I mean, if you don’t think you’ve still got it, then that’s completely understandable.” John shrugged offhanded
ly as if he was going to forget the whole thing but still somehow come out the winner. “I get it. I wouldn’t want to fight me either. You had your heyday and you’ve moved on. I—”
“Get me some gloves,” I said suddenly, unshouldering my rifle and taking off my shirt.
John gave me a victorious grin, having goaded me into doing what he wanted. That would be his last victory for now, I thought. I was going to give him something to smile about. He rummaged around an open crate for an extra pair.
“Boys, boys. I mean, is this really the best use of our time before we depart on a mission? If someone gets hurt, I don’t want to have to be the one to explain to Stacy what happened,” Lou said, exasperated. “To be honest, she kind of scares me.”
“It won’t take long,” John assured him, coming back with a pair of black gloves.
“John will be out in two minutes,” I said.
“Well, if I can’t talk you out of it, maybe we have an opportunity here to bring some people enjoyment. That’s been a rare commodity these days,” Lou said, dropping his weight and running off. “Give me a few minutes.”
I looked over to John with a shrug.
“He’s a few sandwiches short of a picnic, but I like him,” John said as he moved around the workout area. He started making room, positioning the equipment to form a rough circle.
I stepped in, dragging the workout bench to the side so we could have more room to maneuver.
“Full contact?” John asked. “Knockout or submission?”
“As long as you think you can endure that and still be ready to go out tonight,” I said. “I just don’t want you making excuses later that you’re too hurt to go on the mission.”
John stopped, looking down at me with mock condescension. He was a few inches taller and a good thirty pounds heavier than I was. He grinned and shook his head with a laugh. He thought this fight would be a lock on his part.