Jaeia was right in the middle of composing a message to the Healer when Triel sent her another. Don’t stop by. Please give me time.
Jaeia let her arm drop to her side with a defeated sigh and decided it would be best to walk back to her command post instead of summoning a lift. Consumed by her thoughts, she failed to notice the crew’s greetings as she passed by. With so much at stake, so many battlefronts, she didn’t know where to start. If only for a brief second, she wished she was back on Fiorah where their enemy was clear, where what they needed to do was relatively simple. Back when they were three.
“Jahx,” Jaeia whispered, wiping her eyes. “I need you now more than ever.”
JETTA DECIDED THAT she hated Earth cuisine, or at least her captors’ choice of food. It was nothing but prepackaged, instant-cook meals that were worse than anything she had ever eaten.
Blech. Even the rat skins on Fiorah had better flavor and texture, she thought, spitting out her last mouthful. It all tasted like a heap of chemicals, and it upset her stomach every time she forced it down her throat.
“Hey, princess, you don’t like the food?” Agracia said, her finger wagging to an imaginary beat. “Then maybe we’ll jam a tube down your throat. You gotta eat or you ain’t fightin’. And if you ain’t fightin’, we selling you. The puppet show is in two weeks, you know. There be plenty of Joes that’ll sucker for you, even if you ain’t a looker.”
Bossy laughed and chinked her bottle against Agracia’s. Jetta had never heard of a puppet show, but she had some pretty good ideas about what it meant by the way she said it. Humans had made the prostitution circuits on the Homeworlds a legitimate intergalactic business centuries ago, but one of the few attractions of the dead world was the syndicates’ freedom to run their businesses without regulation.
Jetta gulped down the remaining lump of noodles and synthetic meat, making a conscious effort to control her gag reflex. Whatever they were eating was old anyway, making the meat slimy and the noodles hard and crunchy.
“She’s onstage in an hour. You got any rags for her?” Agracia said, downing the remainder of her booze.
Bossy stumbled over to Jade’s old chest of clothes and rifled through it. “Nah, unless she wants to look like a frumpy old witch. We could rip off one of the Dogs and get her some Earth fatigues. That would be sweet!”
As the Scabber Jocks schemed up their next move, Jetta thought of Jade. It was still exceedingly difficult to circumvent the parameters of the cuff, but she had discovered another small way around the sensors. Under the same premise of passive acquisition, she found that if she thought long enough about the person she wanted to sense, and they were in close enough proximity, she could glean faint impressions of their mood. It wasn’t great, but it was something.
Jade hadn’t returned since her spat with Agracia and Bossy, and Jetta sensed danger in that. From what few interactions she had witnessed between them and other Scabbers, including Jimmy the ringside medic, Agracia and Bossy had a reputation.
Now, when she thought of Jade, she sensed something unpalatable and bitter. She had felt it many times before in many different minds and knew exactly what it was: the roots of betrayal.
Jetta didn’t know what to think. Should she warn her captors, or should she wait it out and see what happened? Both scenarios played out in her mind, but neither had a pleasant conclusion.
As Bossy staggered back from the chest of clothes, she knocked into Agracia, sending her headphones flying across the room. Agracia looked as if she was about to yell at her tiny friend, but instead the color drained from her face. She dropped her bottle of booze, spilling its precious contents, and made a strange noise, as if she were being strangled.
“Hey—hey! What’s wrong with you?” Bossy said, shaking her shoulders. Agracia’s mouth moved, but no sound came out, nor would her eyes focus. She appeared distant, distracted, seized by some unseen force.
Jetta let her mind relax in an attempt to catch anything she could without being direct, but she didn’t sense much before the cuff began to buzz.
Agracia is in some sort of trance, Jetta deduced from what little she could feel. Like she’s caught in some kind of feedback loop.
“What the hell?” Bossy exclaimed as Agracia stumbled to her feet.
“God,” Agracia whispered, her eyes wide with fear. She anxiously snatched up her headphones off the floor and fit them over her ears. Seconds later her eyes glazed over.
“You!” Bossy screamed, grabbing the remote and mashing a series of buttons.
Jetta would have screamed if she could, but her mouth clamped shut as bolts of electricity shot through her body, setting fire to her viscera. She fell to the ground spasming and writhing.
“It wasn’t her!” Agracia yelled, grabbing the remote from Bossy.
Jetta wanted to jump out of her skin as the residual shocks dealt their final insult. Sickness danced its way up her stomach to the back of her throat, and her last meal presented as a greasy, yellow pile on her flattened cardboard bed.
Both of the Scabber Jocks were too wound up to notice her distress.
“Well then what the hell was that? You get some bad booze or what?” Bossy shouted.
Agracia sat back down, slowly picking up her bottle. “I don’t know. That was weird. I just suddenly got the idea that we’re going about this all wrong. Everything felt really wrong.”
Bossy eyed Jetta again, shaking the remote. “If that ratchakker did anything to you—”
It was only a glimpse in the psionic aftermath, but Jetta saw it clear as day: a ripple in the persona that was Agracia Waychild.
In an uncharacteristic display, Agracia grabbed Bossy by the shoulders. “It wasn’t her! It was my gut. I suddenly got this really bad feeling.”
“What are you saying?” Bossy said, wide-eyed. “That you don’t want to fight her? We wasted all this time and money on that baech and now you want to back out?!”
“No,” Agracia said, her confidence quickly returning. “Nah. Let’s fight her. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
The Jocks talked about betting and who they’d connect with in the ring as Jetta recollected herself. As the electric shock jitters subsided, she stared at the cooling vomit on her bed. I wish I hadn’t thrown up. She would need the meal, even as nutritionally poor as it was, especially with what she was about to face. With a sigh, she scraped the mess off the cardboard with an empty food can and into the drainage grate.
Time to buck up, she thought, inspecting her injuries. The burns had resolved into discolored patches against pink skin. Though her broken arm had been reset imperfectly, it had nonetheless knit together and proved functional. Scabs crusted her legs, but the skin was no longer inflamed and angry red.
Jetta grunted as she stretched and rolled her neck around, trying to loosen the kinks. She had fought under worse conditions on SMT raids or battling child laborers for food on Fiorah, but she had never fought in a ringside battle, and she didn’t know the rules or what to expect.
I wish I could have stolen that kind of knowledge from somebody, she thought, glancing at the shock cuff. And I can’t expect to do that now, either.
It struck her then—she could convince her captors that her chances of winning would increase if they let her use her powers to glean information from her competitors. She made a mental note of it as Agracia motioned for her.
“Let’s get you going. You first, Doctor Death,” Agracia said, tossing her a disguise.
“What is it?” Jetta asked as she held the plastic child’s mask over her face. The narrow eye slits limited her vision and the small fanged opening for her mouth made it hard to breathe.
“The Boogeyman, which is exactly what you is,” Bossy scoffed.
For the first time since her capture, Jetta stepped through the front door and into a barely lit passageway. Dirt and debris covered the walkway, and abandoned spiderwebs and dead electrical wires dangled from the breaks in the rock ceiling.
“S
o, you’re expecting to just send me right into battle after only a few weeks of recuperation?” Jetta asked, testing the Jock duo.
“Keep walking, smartass,” Agracia said, poking her in the back with the nose of one of her pistols. “Despite your words, you ain’t no pansy. We got your number.”
Jetta’s legs felt rubbery as she hugged the wall, straining to see in the dim light of the tunnel. Haphazardly strung up mini bulbs, half of which didn’t work, illuminated signs and advertisements for the fight. Some were in English, some in Common, but most were a mixture of both. She saw several names on the list with her pseudonym at the bottom.
“Who are all these people?” Jetta asked, pointing to the sign.
“Your competitors. Some from here, some from other circuits, some from other planets. Good fighters. Better hope all that military sycha pays off,” Agracia said.
“Didn’t you used to fight, Bossy?” Jetta asked, dropping herself down through a break in the walkway. Carefully, Jetta avoided the stairs, most of which were fractured or missing, and slid down a railing.
“You’d better shut your face,” Bossy said, popping her lollipop out of her mouth and hopping down behind her.
“Jeez, kid” Agracia chuckled, following them down. “Look, Doc,” she said to Jetta, “Bossy’s the best there ever was and ever will be. Fighting ring dark horse extraordinaire.”
“Where’d you learn?” Jetta asked, trying to get Bossy to think about her fighting days. Come on, she thought, hoping for just a fraction of a stray memory. Give me something so I have a clue about what I going to be up against.
“It’s one of the few professions on Earth, punte,” Bossy muttered. “I thought I explained that to you. Ain’t you supposed to be smart?”
Agracia interjected. “Look, for most of us chicks, you either join the rings or play in the puppet show. There ain’t much else ‘less you’re crazy enough to be a Jock.”
It didn’t explain much, but Jetta got the gist of it.
As they passed a public notice sign, Jetta spotted the faces of both her captors. Underneath was a telecam signature, but it wasn’t for the local police. Someone else is hunting them.
Two humans, one missing half of his face and the other a leg, passed them by, bumping into Agracia. Enraged, Bossy shoved them both, sending them spiraling off the catwalk and into the trash piles that lined the floor of the tunnel.
“Haha, suckers,” Agracia said, giving them the finger as they screamed profanities.
“Fighting me isn’t going to go anywhere,” Jetta said as they passed by a group of people huddled near a steam vent. The adults watched the Jocks earnestly, talking quietly amongst each other, keeping a watchful eye. “If I don’t fight, if I lose, the two of you are going down with me. It doesn’t take a telepath to see all the enemies you have around here.”
Jetta glimpsed a child no older than six at the periphery of the group, her skeletal frame topped by a dirty face with starving eyes. She thought of her siblings, and Fiorah.
There was a moment of silence, then a snicker. A warning shot buzzed up her leg and straightened out her spine.
“You are one smart Skirt,” Agracia said, bobbing her head to a beat, “but I ain’t playin’ with you. You fight or you die. Simple as that.”
Seemingly unfazed by her argument, her captors shot off expletives to passersby who didn’t get out of their way and worse expletives to the ones who recognized their faces.
“What you lookin’ at, assino?” Bossy yelled at a mother shielding her child from their group.
“Go on back to your sissy business,” Agracia said to a group of Jocks standing near a bounty board post. She didn’t seem to care about the cash prize listed next to her wanted poster or the scheming looks of the rival tribe.
Jetta remained on high alert as they entered a thoroughfare. Never in her life had she been so lucid, yet so completely stripped of her extrasensory perceptions. She felt naked and deaf, and strangely off guard.
I don’t like this feeling, Jetta thought, squeezing her hands into fists. And these dumb Jocks are going to get us killed before we even get to the fighting rings.
A big, crackling neon sign illuminated “The Dives.” Red and blue arrows pointed every which way, directing the flow of human and human-like traffic toward various destinations. Ramshackle shops clustered together, their vendors selling what looked like recycled material and scraps. Jetta wasn’t sure what anybody had to barter with other than Alliance rations and more garbage.
“Skucheka,” Jetta muttered, swatting at the pesky black flies that buzzed around her eyes and ears. They were everywhere, and for obvious reasons.
Who the hell runs this dump? she thought as she walked around and over piles of refuse and human waste, concentrating on breathing through her mouth without inhaling too many flies. Is there any kind of waste management or sanitation effort?
“Chak, this place stinks worse every time we come,” Bossy mumbled, wiping her nose with her sleeve.
“There,” Agracia said, pointing over Jetta’s shoulder. “Head towards the competitors’ entrance. Don’t say nothing or I’m frying your brain.”
Jetta complied, more than happy to get out of the main juncture of the Dives.
She entered a tunnel that looked like it had probably been part of a manmade aquifer. An electric sign that read “Razor Dome” hung over a swollen line of people waiting to get seats near a crumbling archway. Other lines formed near the betting booths where ticket stubs and empty beer cans littered the floor. She wondered how many people had taken bets out on her name.
Another sign, painted in red on broken plyboard, caught her eye. Misspelled and crooked, it read “fighters” but translated to “mongers” in Common. The smell that wafted towards her carried the salty-metallic tang of sweat and blood.
“Keep going, Doctor Death,” Agracia said, pushing her forward.
Jetta ducked underneath the fighters’ entrance, glad that the Jocks had stripped her of any telling military insignia when she saw the Alliance helmets, uniforms and other paraphernalia decorating the walls. Other trophies made of bones and skin hung from the ceiling next to pictures of the victors and their stats, giving her a gruesome picture of the losers’ fate.
Other humans, bigger and stockier than her, gawked as she passed by.
“Holy hell—are they letting kids fight?” a painted and scarred man said as he polished his battle axe.
Another man, covered in tattoos, guffawed. “Look at that shrimp—I take dumps bigger than that.”
“Nice mask,” a man with one eye said. “You look like a chakking freak.”
Agracia and Bossy kept them at bay, shouting obscenities right back or making obscenely high bets.
“Go suck it,” Bossy said, waving her behind at the man with one eye.
“My fighter’s gonna lick each one of you sorry assinos,” Agracia said. “I’ll lay down triple on that.”
The entire lot of fighters erupted in laughter, but waved them off and went back to preparing for battle.
“You do look stupid,” Agracia commented, nodding to Bossy.
The pint-sized dark horse slipped into the men’s locker room. She emerged coolly, tossing Jetta some kind of black helmet with a visor and a pilot’s jacket full of holes. “Wear this, Skirt. Don’t want you looking that stupid.”
Eager to get rid of the plastic mask over her face, Jetta accepted the trade. Despite the stink of booze and sweat, the helmet proved a better option. She could see much better and didn’t feel as claustrophobic.
Jetta slid her arms into the pilot’s jacket, glad that it offered more protection than her torn undershirt. As she adjusted the straps, she listened to Agracia and Bossy harass another fighter.
“Yeah right,” Agracia goaded, “you think you could beat Doctor Death? Why don’t you nut up and put some money on it?”
“You little pissant. I outta—” the man said, raising the back of his hand to strike. He stopped when Bossy got
in his face.
“You outta what?” Bossy said, slurping on her lollipop.
It quickly turned into a scene, and as the Jocks exchanged vulgarities with the fighter, it crossed her mind that these were her only impressions of real Earth humans. The first humans she had encountered were on Fiorah, but they were all hopeless fourth-class Deadskins used for trade or farming. The humans in the Dominion Core were from distinguished lineages that never spoke of Earth as their home. Even the humans in the Alliance Fleet failed to recognize their terrestrial roots.
Now that she was here and watching Bossy once again flash her bare backside, she knew why. Given her own appearance, there was a strong possibility that part of her was human, but she didn’t want even a remote association with this place or its people. Earth and its inhabitants are disgusting and wretched; I can’t imagine having any kind of genetic link to these rats.
“We’ll see who’s laughing when the smoke clears,” Agracia said, pulling Jetta into another hallway as she spouted off her last insults to the other fighters. “Then I’ll go console your mamas when we smoke your sorry assinos.”
Under direction of the Jocks, Jetta rounded several corners until she reached a long hallway lined with metal doors bearing painted numbers and tiny eye slits. A borrowed memory gave her the notion that they were old airlock doors from twentieth century submarines.
“You’re lucky number seven. Better hope you do good, Skirt, or you’ll be wishing you died in that crash,” Agracia said, pressing the control panel to the right of the door. The door slid up, and Bossy shoved her inside the holding box.
“You know this is ridiculous,” Jetta said, banging her fist against the concrete wall. “Let me go.”
“Look, if you make it to the finals, we’ll discuss your release,” Agracia said.
Bossy rolled her eyes and sucked loudly on her lollipop.
Even without her telepathy Jetta knew Agracia was lying, but the buzzing shock cuff kept her anger from building into anything more than a hot feeling in her chest.
The holding box door slid down and locked, immersing her in near pitch blackness, save the slivers of light that poked through the cracks. Jetta squatted down and put her hands together, calming herself as best she could. Fear and anger boiled in her stomach as she concentrated on slowing her breathing and increasingly rapid heart rate.
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