Slingers

by Wallace, Matt

  In the end we decided it belonged to the world.

  Which is another way of saying it proved useless to the powers that be.

  The slingers, their teams, and the rest of the people who populate the games live directly above it and the arena. They are there for one reason and that is to compete and to win. Twenty-six teams reside on the station at the beginning of every year. By summer only two are still laying their heads in Sling City at night.

  Most who compete in the games do not suffer a mortal fate.

  The fall is the slingers’ burden alone.

  THE GHOST RING

  Dangler has to crouch down low to enter Cuatro’s hide, which is really just an unused industrial air filter the size of a piano crate.

  It has barely a four-foot clearance, and Dangler’s employer likes it that way. More than one unskilled assassin has come for him in his hide, crawling or crouching, and found their size and strength advantage fatally neutralized.

  “Boss?” Dangler says in the dark.

  He finds a lamp on the floor and ignites it. Cuatro is a vague shape in the corner, standing upright. He quickly but not hurriedly loads a small knapsack with as many dehydrated food packets and tuff sacks of purified water as it will carry.

  “You better swap clothes before you bolt, boss,” Dangler says with all the concern of a favorite not-particularly-bright uncle.

  Cuatro spares a glance down at himself. He’s covered in thick arterial juice.

  “Yeah,” he replies briskly.

  Dangler watches him seal the knapsack and then strip off his worn, now terminally soiled clothing. His body is like a small girder made of battered steel. There’s a large, distinctly boot-shaped scar in his side.

  It isn’t the only one on Cuatro’s body, just the largest.

  One night, very drunk, Cuatro confided in Dangler that the headmaster of the orphanage had stoved his ribs in because Cuatro asked one too many questions; not invasive, just the persistent questioning of a child.

  Cuatro told him, his eyes becoming tear-stung, he never did understand why people seemed so compelled to kick him like that.

  Not even like a dog, he’d said, but like a child’s ball.

  Dangler never mentioned any of it to him after Cuatro sobered up.

  Men died for a lot less.

  Cuatro tosses the bloody rags at Dangler’s feet and fishes a new set of clothes from a small pile in another corner of his hide.

  Dangler skins a homemade knife from its home in his boot and idly picks through the soaked cloth with the tip of the blade. “I guess they didn’t give you a choice, huh?”

  “Nope.”

  “Weren’t thinking too good, were they? Comin’ at you hard like that?”

  “They weren’t thinking. They were acting on orders from downtown.”

  Even for a man slow on the uptake this is a difficult statement for Dangler to process.

  “What...wait...you mean they was sent to take you out? Them two shockers? They weren’t just lookin’ to roll you or whatever? They meant to zero you?”

  “Yep.”

  “Well, shit. That’d be a first, huh?”

  “Yep.”

  “I mean, shock cops is some nex-level assholes, but I ain’t never known ‘em to do no hits.”

  “Things are changing.”

  “I guess. But you showed ‘em. They’re laid low, not you.”

  “It doesn’t matter. They wanted me out of the way. They accomplished their mission. The heat coming down like it’s going to, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to come back.”

  “So...you’re leaving Gee for good?”

  “As far as anyone who matters is concerned I just murdered two shock cops in cold blood. They can’t let that ride. They’ll tear this place apart until they find me.”

  Dangler’s brow hangs so low he looks more like a confused canine than usual.

  “Boss...with you outta Gee-Ring, most of the boys won’t stick. Half of ‘em will sign on with Natali.”

  “I know. That’s why I need you to do something for me.”

  “Sure. You call the play, boss.”

  “Take out Natali.”

  Dangler doesn’t answer right away, which is unusual for him when given a command.

  Instead he stares into the murky blade of his knife.

  “Won’t be easy.”

  “No, it won’t.”

  Cuatro, now dressed, snaps a belt around his waist. It has two identical scabbards attached horizontally to its back.

  For the first time he looks directly at Dangler. “Look, if it doesn’t get done I’ll understand, all right? You have to do for you and yours.”

  Cuatro holds a pair of small, matched kerambits in his hands. The blades are curved sharply like talons. There are rings where the pommel of each should be. You wouldn’t think it to look at Cuatro’s undeniably stubby fingers, but he can spin those instruments like a magician.

  Dangler moves his gaze sluggishly from Cuatro’s wicked-looking blades to his own and back again.

  “Boss...if I don’t vent Natali...supposing you do come back...”

  “Will I kill you, too?” Cuatro asks evenly.

  “Yeah.”

  “Yep.”

  Dangler nods.

  Cuatro sheathes the kerambits behind him, sliding them into each scabbard until they snap into place. He’s built his knife rig well.

  “You gonna head for the ducts?” Dangler asks.

  “No. Even I’m not dancing in the dark with those psychos.”

  “Then how you gonna get out of Gee?”

  “I’ll dig into one of the bots and rewire it to take me to the hold. They never have figured that one out.”

  “We ain’t had contact with the Vic in, like, a year. We don’t even know who’s going to be running things up there now.”

  “Sure we do.”

  “Oh. Who’s running it, then?”

  “I am.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  Cuatro shoulders his knapsack and steps directly in front of the crouching giant of a man who has served as his lieutenant for more years than either of them ever planned to spend in Sling City.

  “Dangler, you are gloriously unburdened, and I’ve always admired that about you.”

  “I don’t really know what that means, but I figure it’s half an insult and half a compliment.”

  Something that has evolved fiercely from a smile appears in the corner of Cuatro’s mouth.

  “Not that unburdened, I guess.”

  He slaps Dangler’s cheek, hard.

  Dangler doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t even blink.

  “This is a shitty place to die,” Cuatro says. “So don’t do it, all right?”

  Dangler nods.

  Cuatro sidesteps him gracefully and darts out of his hide.

  He’ll stick to the walls, to the shadows.

  A tiny king fleeing the kingdom he built on blood.

  THE REAPERS

  I. Wedge

  Jackie Barber reclines naked against Toro’s massive, equally bare torso, her own chest rising impossibly high and falling impossibly low with each breath.

  “Again?” Toro asks in his deep, monotone voice.

  Jackie laughs, a sound that always begins as gentle music then quickly explodes into a brass orchestra peopled by drunks.

  They’re sprawled out on the mat that covers the expanse of their empty bedroom floor, a pool of sweat spreading twenty-feet wide around them. Whenever a guest tours their quarters they wonder why they keep a practice mat there, when the finest training facilities in the universe are at their disposal twenty-four hours a day.

  In truth no practice takes place on that mat. Cumulatively Jackie and Toro weigh well over one thousand pounds. No one bed that might support their sex would be comfortable enough to sleep them.

  Despite their expected enormity, they weigh even more than one might imagine. The reason is the dense muscle concealed beneath the smooth, fleshy domes of their curv
es. They are two of the most finely conditioned athletes in the world, both former yokozuna on Earth.

  Toro is the first male sumo Jackie ever met who didn’t make her feel like a second-class citizen, who didn’t radiate contempt for her daring to practice their craft. It was an even more rare attitude to find in a Japanese-born sumo from such a prestigious line. They sparked immediately when Jackie joined The Reapers. Toro was a sensitive stoic, the ultimate go-with-the-flow guy when he wasn’t screaming baritone murder and blotting out an opponent’s sun. Jackie’s entire career had been such a constant battle she needed ultimate calm in her private life.

  They had chemistry from the first moment, but while it may sound perverse to some they never have better sex than after a slinger falls.

  In camp you are taught that death is your unseen teammate. You accept it. While being a wedge isn’t a mortal occupation, they facilitate death in every match, forcing slingers out onto the deadway to meet their fate. They live and work within inches of fatality, grateful to be out of its range and respectful of its closeness.

  After the fall of a slinger they celebrate life in its raw form, as vigorously and as many times as they are physically able.

  They’d penetrate each other’s very molecules if they could.

  “Do you think Xen’s okay?” Jackie asks, her Northern British upbringing twisting the words in a way Toro still finds amusing.

  “No,” he says simply, as he always does.

  “Right.”

  There’s nothing else to be said about that. They let their sweat cool and become thousands upon thousands of icy kisses against their skin. They share more feelings than words.

  They’re grateful to be alive.

  Wade Rainville is six-foot-five, three hundred and sixty-five pounds.

  Any part of his body is solid enough to stop a bullet and dense enough to trap light.

  He is one of the most popular wedges in the games.

  He is the only NFL player to ever successfully transition from football to the games.

  He is one of the highest paid athletes in the history of human civilization.

  And his mother doesn’t give a tinker’s damn about any of that. Wade still has to call her after every match to let her know he’s really okay.

  Teresa Rainville is not a woman to be trifled with.

  They stare at each other on separate screens, Wade in his apartment in Sling City and his mother in the home she refused to let him buy her back in Michigan. The definition is so sharp and clear and vivid they may as well be in the same room. They hardly look like mother and son. Teresa is impossibly slight and aging with immense grace. Her complexion is almost buttery yellow to Wade’s deep brown. It was his father who gave him his skin tone.

  But they share their eyes. There’s always been an intense recognition when they looked at each other with the exact same eyes.

  “It’s not your fault, baby.”

  “I know, Mom.”

  “I am sorry about Nico.”

  “Me too.”

  “Tell me you’re okay, Wade.”

  “I’m okay, Mom.”

  “Now say it to yourself, and mean it.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “That’s my boy.”

  At almost thirty years of age there are still things Wade will only tell his mother.

  This is one of them: “I almost...I was going to cross the line. When Kem was hanging like that. I was going to run out on the deadway to get him before they declared the fault. I was going to check Vinson right off if he got in my way.”

  Teresa smiles and nods sympathetically.

  “That’s because my son is a good man.”

  “But if the refs hadn’t declared the fault—“

  “Then I would be very sorry for Kem’s mother, and it still wouldn’t be your fault, Wade. You don’t make the rules. You play by them. You do it better than anyone else. That’s what I taught you, and that’s what I expect of you.”

  “I know, Mom.”

  “You have a glass of milk with a shot of brandy in it and you go to bed now.”

  Wade nods dutifully. “You doing okay? You need anything?”

  “I just need you to be okay.”

  “I am.”

  Her smile is brilliant and her eyes, his eyes, shine.

  “Then I’m perfect.”

  II. Snare

  Alasdair Stuart sits cross-legged on the floor of The Reapers’ locker room, leaning against the ergonomic, form-fitted plush chair bolted in front of his dressing cubicle. He’s stripped down to the rash guard shorts many of them wear for training, and every poor choice of a misspent youth inked in his thick torso is visible, more than one of them the name of a woman he’d otherwise prefer to forget.

  His shepherd’s pole is laid across his lap. He’s unscrewed the teardrop mallet from one end and detached the question mark hook from the other. Both are placed reverently to the side as he runs a fine shammy over the primary shaft of the instrument.

  Snares, not surprisingly, don’t care for dick jokes.

  He can hear a single stainless steel head hissing in the shower room adjacent to the lockers.

  He waits.

  The hissing eventually ceases and is replaced a few seconds later by wet footfalls. Marguerite walks out of the shower room, drying her hair vigorously with a logo-embossed towel.

  She hasn’t bothered to wrap a towel around the rest of her.

  Al never fails to appreciate her for that.

  Maggie is a Valkyrie. Yet no matter how hard she works she never seems to lose that last bit of belly (a problem Al himself shares) and he hopes she never will.

  “Better?” he asks her.

  “Always,” she answers with a smile she probably doesn’t realize is very sad.

  She walks over to where he sits, holding her towel in one hand and stroking his bald scalp with the other.

  “I know it’s ignorant to say, but I’m sorry it had to be you out there with Nico.”

  Al shrugs. “Nothing to be done.”

  In truth, as he sits there dutifully maintaining the instrument of a snare, those few seconds in which Tondo Vasile, the Gravity’s star slinger, flung Nico from the deadway keep replaying on a torturous loop in his head.

  “If Nico could’ve pushed him back just another little bit I would’ve had him. You know?”

  “I know, love.”

  He looks up at her, at the damp red curls framing a face he insists requires no paint of any kind ever. They were married before they became snares for The Reapers. Together they’d owned and operated a school in London that taught medieval weapons to stage actors and enthusiasts. Alasdair was a champion with the quarterstaff five years running. He was unbeatable. He was Little John on steroids.

  He lost his sixth consecutive championship to Maggie.

  Their wedding took place a month later.

  “He smiled at me. You know? Vasile. The bastard turned and smiled at me after he pitched Nico into oblivion.”

  “He’ll have his day,” Maggie assures him. “It’s coming soon.”

  Al nods.

  She nips his ear with her strong fingertips.

  “Come on,” Maggie says, dropping her towel on him and walking away.

  “Where you going?”

  “To take a shower.”

  “You just took one.”

  She stops, looks back over her shoulder through a thin curtain of curls.

  It’s a sight to behold.

  “Now I want to take one with you.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  Alasdair tosses the pole with abandon and practically kicks its sacred attachments across the room as he bolts to join her.

  III. Slinger

  Xenia lies on her back on the mat, wearing the same rash guard she’s trained in since she was a Judo roku-kyū. She’s alone in The Reapers’ gym. Only a few lights directly beyond the mat are lit. She encircles her arms around an invisible opponent and crawls backwards across the mat, u
sing her shoulders and hips to move her along. She repeats the process back and forth across the mat as if she’s seeding rows in it.

  She should be with Kem. She should be in her apartment crying her eyes out over Nico.

  Instead she’s come home.

  She grew up longing only to live in a world in which she had a measure of control. It was taken away at an early age. She was taken away at an early age.

  Then she found the mat.

  The mat was her only true ally. It existed for her, with no judgment, no jealousy, no expectation, no agenda of its own. She thrived there. Not only could she control everything that happened on the mat, she was the decider. She became the strongest, the best, the master and general of this battleground.

  The mat is her world, she its benevolent god.

  Anyone who enters her world belongs to her.

  And there are no tears on the mat.

  Not ever.

  It’s where she always returns when things outside the mat turn ugly, as they often do. She lies on the mat and runs the drills she learned as a girl, in the beginning, long before gold medals and The Reapers and the stars.

  Before Nico.

  They’d been together for a year, and it had been that long since Kem could look directly at either of them.

  Xen knew why. All of them did.

  But that’s just how things work out sometimes.

  Once they’d been an invincible triple threat. They were the Blades of the Scythe, The Reapers’ unstoppable starting slingers.

  There were posters and a theme song and everything.

  She doesn’t want to believe her and Nico fucking each other ruined that, or that it’s the real reason he’s dead now.

  She knows Kem believes the former, hopes he doesn’t believe the latter.

  Kem can hear Pondy reaming holy bejesus out of the med techs and it’s the only thing in the universe that could make him smile in that moment.

  Kem reclines on the med bed, naked from the waist up, pain still ruling his left shoulder and right arm unmercifully because he refused any form of painkiller.

  Tomorrow every press outlet will talk about what a gladiator he is, how hard he is, how tough and how old school he must be to turn down the meds.