Exposed (Interplanetary Spy for Hire Book 2)

by Ell Leigh Clarke

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The Ultra-Optic Standard Company Arena, Lightball Playoffs, L50, Theron Techcropolis, Amaros

  Jayne dropped forty credits for a ticket in the nosebleed seats. She was crammed at the highest row in the farthest end of the arena among hundreds of screaming lightball fans.

  Jayne did not like sports. She also did not like needle-in-a-haystack games. There were easily ten-thousand individuals crammed into this arena, and she was looking for a woman whose face she had never seen. The only defining feature she could recognize was her wrists.

  Since Jayne arrived in the arena, she’d practically been doing gymnastics, crouching and bending over, to get sights on the wrists of every single person she walked by.

  With nosebleed seats, she figured she’d start at the top and work her way down.

  In the end, though, all this work would pay off. That is, if her woman in black was even here.

  I sure hope, Jayne pondered sardonically, that my friend is as big of a lightball fan as I am of her work.

  Then, Jayne saw the tattoo. A tall, thin woman strolled by, half a dozen rows below. At the edge of her long sleeves, Jayne saw the tail-end of the lightning bolt that had been haunting her dreams.

  At least, it would have been haunting her dreams if she had been able to sleep the past week.

  Jayne leapt over the row in front of her, nearly knocking over a young kid wearing a Photon Phantoms shirt. Before she even hit the ground on the next row, she was sprinting toward the aisle between sections. She jumped, landed on the guard rail and slid down to the walkway, cutting off the woman in black, now in plain clothes.

  Jayne grabbed the woman’s wrist and flipped it over.

  It was a skeleton wearing a party hat, with the inscription “Party Til You Die, then Party Some More”.

  “Ow! What the fuck?”

  Jayne immediately released the girl’s arm. “I’m so sorry.”

  The girl rubbed her twisted wrist. “What the fuck was that, you psycho bitch?”

  Jayne stumbled into a retreat. “I just, uh… Really cool tattoo. Been thinking about getting one myself. Maybe you can recommend the shop you got it at? Anyway, thanks!” She turned around and sprinted away.

  The girl turned to her friend. “I swear, these lightball fans are getting tackier and tackier."

  As Jayne left the scene of her major, overeager blunder, the lights in the arena dimmed.

  “LADIES… AND… GENTLEMEN!!!!”

  The crowd went bananas. The roar of cheers practically deafened Jayne. They almost drowned out the announcer.

  “TONIGHT… FOUR TEAMS WILL ENTER THE ARENA… BUT ONLY ONE—”

  The entire stadium exploded in an unintelligible cacophony of different team chants. The fans of each team, for the most part, seemed to have grouped themselves in four quadrants among each edge of the stadium.

  If only Jayne knew which team the woman in black would be rooting for.

  “BUT ONLY ONE… WILL TAKE HOME… THE LIGHT!”

  Jayne thought the crowd was loud, but nothing prepared her for the sonic, steel-shattering blast of human vocal force that shook her body.

  Suddenly, she was bathed in light as a glowing, plasmatic orb dropped into the arena, only stopping to be suspended high above the field of play below in a lock-device dispensing a magnetic wave.

  “THE LIGHTBALL HAS ARRIVED! NOW… LET’S MEET. OUR. TEAMS! In the North Corner, we have the PHOTON PHANTOMS!!!!”

  A team in glowing purple suits ran through a cloud of billowing smoke at the arena’s far end.

  “IN THE EAST CORNER, we have the DEATH RAYS!!!!”

  An admittedly impressive laser show announced the appearance of the Death Rays, their team of six players walking proudly into the arena in their red suits.

  “IN THE SOUTH CORNER, we have Theron Techcropolis’ own… THE DEFLECTORS.”

  The loudest scream so far, typical for a home team. Jayne looked down onto the field as the gate in the south corner opened up and the hometeam took the field in pristine white light suits.

  “And last, folks, but CERTAINLY NOT LEAST… At the Western Gate… THE REIGNING CHAMPIONS… UNDEFEATED… All the way from DEEP WEN…”

  Did he just say Deep Wen? Suddenly, Jayne was very interested in the sport of Lightball.

  “THE QUANTUM QRUSHERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

  Holy shit! Jayne was not prepared for the opposite half of the arena to destroy her eardrums with screams. Two explosions at the Western Gate blasted heat upward into the entire arena.

  The Quantum Qrushers cockily strolled out onto the field in pitch black outfits.

  The only team that wasn’t glowing, except for the lightning bolts emblazoned on their heat-protective chest plates.

  “Huh,” Jayne said aloud.

  The opposite half of the stadium drowned the fans for every other team combined.

  That is where Jayne needed to be.

  “Five… Four…”

  The arena joined in on the countdown. Jayne was only vaguely aware of Lightball. She knew the objective was to capture the plasmatic orb using special, ultra-dense rods with round “cavities” at the end that could hold the massively dense amount of energy. She knew that Lightball fans constantly rated players on two abilities: speed, and eyesight.

  Lightball was played entirely in the dark, with the lightball itself being the only source of illumination.

  The crowd coalesced into one excitable being as the game began.

  “TWO… ONE…”

  An impossibly loud buzzer sounded. Everything about this game is so loud, Jayne complained to herself.

  The lock-device shut off its magnetic wave. The lightball fell down toward the arena.

  One of the red-suited Death Rays caught the lightball in their rods and began transporting it across the field toward a goal.

  Speed was the key. The plasma was powerful, hot. The rod couldn’t hold the lightball for longer than ten or fifteen seconds at a time. If a rod was destroyed, that player was out of the game.

  The player passed the lightball, but one of the invisible-in-the-dark Quantum Qrushers intercepted.

  Jayne dashed along the railing around the highest level of the arena, working her way toward the opposite side of the arena.

  She knew, she could feel it in her gut, that the woman in black would be there.

  But on which of the three levels? Start at the top and work my way down.

  Jayne booked it, weaving, ducking, skipping and literally jumping over lightball fans and little kids walking to their seats with soda and popcorn, beer and hotdogs.

  A massive buzzer caught her off guard, followed by the unsettling movement of an entire crowd rising to their feet. Someone just scored a goal for the Deflectors, and the home team’s fans gave a rousing cheer.

  No one seemed to be in any particular hurry to get out of Jayne’s way. They were all too engrossed in the game below, lazily walking sideways in an attempt to get to their seats without missing a moment of the game.

  Everyone had handfuls of sodas, hotdogs, corndogs, fried airballs (which tasted like nothing but the pure sensation of just ‘friedness’), and hundreds of hundreds of credits worth of merchandise.

  Lightball t-shirts, hats, plushies, action figures. Commemorative glow sticks.

  Lightball had become a controversial sport over the past decade. For safety, the plasma orb, the lightball itself, had to be destroyed at the end of every game, which was only possible by disposing of it in a massive machine that was, essentially, a manmade black hole.

  A new lightball had to be created by harnessing massive amounts of electricity and the incredibly difficult-to-mine plasma.

  Lightball was an incredibly dangerous sport that used up massive amounts of energy. There had been protests against the sport, and even attempts to pass legislation in the Federation to outlaw it.

  But the money was simply too damn good.

  Jayne reached the side of the arena populated
entirely by Quantum Qrusher fans. A team from Deep Wen would have fans with ties. Surely the woman in black was not too far. Jayne scanned the rows of the nosebleed seats, rising up two dozen rows before her, section after section, but no luck. Of course, she was trying to get an eye on wrists, mainly. That was tough. But she knew the woman in black’s basic build. She was slightly taller than Jayne, wider set with muscular arms.

  She was built like a Lightball player herself, actually.

  And up here? She didn’t see anyone. The nosebleed seats were occupied almost entirely by middle-class and lower-class families. The biggest, most ardent fans of lightball could only afford the cheapest, shittiest seats for their four kids who had been looking forward to this game all year. Jayne did one last scan over the crowd, but all she saw was the hyperactively happy faces of young girls and boys sitting on their parent’s shoulders, watching the athletic light show below with rapture.

  Jayne realized that if all the attention wasn’t on the game, the crowd would be wondering, “What the hell is this woman’s problem?” She was panting heavily, sweat already forming on her brow, and she was skittering frantically back and forth to get better views of the crowd.

  “Are you looking for your friend?”

  Jayne looked down to find the source of the small voice. A young girl, hair up in a high ponytail sticking out the back of a Quantum Qrushers hat looked up at Jayne while sucking down a slushy. “What?” That was all Jayne managed to muster.

  The little girl finished a slurp. “You look lost, like you’re looking for someone.”

  Jayne nodded. “Yeah. I am.”

  The little girl took another long slurp of cherry slush. “When you were running over here, the girl sitting next to me saw you and got up to leave.”

  Jayne could barely hear the little girl over the roar of the crowd as another goal was made. She didn’t know by who. She didn’t care. “Did this woman next to you have tattoos on her wrists?”

  The little girl remembered really hard as she nursed her slushy. “No. She had on bandages.”

  “GOOOAAAALL!!!” The announcer screamed.

  Jayne leaned down to the girl’s height. Bandages, of course. From the fight. A dead giveaway. “Thank you!”

  The little girl offered her slushy. “Want some?”

  Jayne nodded. When in Rome… She tasted the ultra-sugary ice in her throat. It was good. “Thank you.” She stood up and ran to the nearest exit out into the concession area.

  Out of the concrete hallway, Jayne was hit with the beautiful smell of fried food and cheap, overcooked meat.

  There were lines thirty people long and ten people wide at every concession stand.

  Jayne ran her hands through her hair. She mumbled a small narration to herself. “Why can’t lightball be a lowkey, specialty sport? You know, with small crowds. Like optic-tennis or virtual shuffleboard. Anything but this.”

  She remembered she was still a wanted criminal, so she slowed herself down and did the most normal thing she could think of.

  She got in line to buy a hot dog.

  Bandages, Jayne. Keep your eyes out for bandages.

  Jayne started to worry, but she found comfort in logic. The woman in black couldn’t possibly be gone. Not yet. The crowds were too dense. No one could have made it out by now, they’d be fighting the current.

  Besides, if the woman in black was as big a lightball fan as Artimus made it sound, she wouldn’t risk missing the championship playoffs.

  The line moved forward. Jayne was not in the mood for a hot dog. Having that on her stomach wouldn’t exactly help her in a foot chase or, increasingly likely, hand-to-hand combat.

  She closed her eyes and focused on the woman in black. She hadn’t seen her face yet. So don’t look for a face. Look for the wrists, and the bandages.

  Jayne focused. She remembered her teacher, O. She took a deep breath and tuned out the throngs of people around her. If she were on the run, if she wanted to blend in, what would she do?

  How could Jayne blend in? It’d be easy in this crowd, she realized. All you’d need to do is get a Photon Phantoms or a Death Ray t-shirt and hat and boom, you’re just like everyone else. That, plus a soda and a hot dog, and you’re one of—

  The giftshop. The realization hit Jayne like a brick. She squeezed past the line, pissing everyone off in the process.

  “Hey! Watch it!”

  “Back of the line!”

  “No cutting, asshole!”

  But Jayne squeezed out of the crowd. The giftshop wasn’t too far down the wide concrete hallway of merchandise.

  Maybe, Jayne humored herself, she could get a cap while she was there. As a little keepsake.

  Jayne fast-walked to the giftshop. She passed the display of mannequins decked out in every lightball related merchandise one could imagine, from Death Ray socks to Quantum Qrusher pajamas to a Photon Phantom sweater for dogs.

  Jayne turned hard into the gift shop, and slammed right into a woman wearing a Quantum Qrusher scarf and sunglasses in the shape of two “Q’s.”

  Jayne placed her arm out. “Oh, I’m so sorry!” She leaned down to pick up the woman’s bag of merch. “I need to pay better attention, I’m sorry.”

  She handed the bag over. As the woman reached out to take the bag, Jayne saw it.

  The lightning bolt tattoo.

  The woman formerly in black, now in lightball paraphernalia, realized Jayne saw that tattoo.

  They both pointed at each other and screamed simultaneously. “YOU!”

  The woman in black drove a mean uppercut into Jayne’s jaw with the back of her forearm, coupled with a kick around the back of Jayne’s leg. Jayne briefly lost her balance, only to catch herself on a rack of postcards, which she spun around with, wielding it like a battering ram, and slammed into the woman in black’s stomach.

  The balding shopkeeper ran around from behind the counter waving his hands in the air. “HEY, cut it the fuck out! I don’t care if you wackos are rooting for rival teams, take it outside!”

  Jayne and the woman in black meekly stood up. “Sorry, sir.” Jayne picked up the postcard display, irreparably bent out of shape, and placed it back in the corner. “We’ll, uh… Just get going.”

  Jayne and the woman in black strolled out of the giftshop. They each stood in the middle of the thoroughfare for a moment. It was an odd couple seconds of peace, then they each remembered they were supposed to be fighting.

  The woman in black flung her left arm up at Jayne’s neck. Jayne popped her right arm up in time to block it. She twisted it around pulling the woman in black sideways with a light swipe of her foot and placed her in a headlock.

  The woman in black caught momentum with the push of her boot off the glass of the giftshop’s front display, flipping herself up into the air, and over Jayne.

  The positions had been switched. Now the woman in black held Jayne in a firm headlock.

  She dragged Jayne back to the condiments table, and slammed Jayne’s head down under the ketchup dispenser.

  The woman in black began to furiously pump ketchup into Jayne’s mouth. Jayne struggled, kicking back and forth, but the woman in black held her down.

  Jayne hated ketchup. She had always hated it. She hated the disgusting texture, consistency, and its sickening combination of sweet and savory.

  Jayne had always considered her pursuit of the woman in black as a workplace responsibility. Sure, the woman in black was trading personal information regarding Jayne, but Jayne knew that she was only doing her job.

  But now, the woman in black was pumping vast quantities of the worst substance in the galaxy directly into Jayne’s mouth.

  Now, it was personal.

  Jayne rolled her head out of the stream of ketchup just enough to free her mouth and look up at the face of her foe, who still wore the Q-shaped glasses. Jayne spat out the vile hotdog topping all over the woman in black’s face. She loosened her grasp on Jayne. Jayne hopped up, grabbed the woman in black who was now
blinded by ketchup, and dragged her into the bathroom.

  With nothing but pure adrenaline, Jayne kicked off the handicapped railing by the nearest stall and slid it between the door handle and behind the air dryer.

  Jayne sputtered more ketchup out of her mouth.

  Jayne watched the woman in black wipe the ketchup away from her sunglasses. “Just take your sunglasses off!” Jayne waved her arms wide. She was at the height of frustration with the absurdity of everything happening around her. “I have followed you all over this damn city and Deep Wen and back. Show me your face!”

  The woman in black faced Jayne calmly. She reached up, removed the sunglasses, and folded them.

  She was beautiful. Weathered and wise, with pocked skin under her eyes, which transformed from green at their center to blue at the edges.

  Jayne wiped the rest of the ketchup away from her mouth. “You’re Nova?”

  Nova nodded.

  Jayne nodded back. They were both catching their breath. “Why’d you… I don’t know. What is your deal?”

  “Whatever pays the most.”

  Her voice struck Jayne hard. She had the elegant, precise enunciation of a member of the wealthy elite. “And the deal that… was handing off my information, that…”

  Nova held up a finger at Jayne. “I had no idea what was in that briefcase. I was making a delivery. I didn’t even find out until later that I hadn’t even met up with the right contact. It was some guy who intercepted it. My old boss sent him.”

  “Artimus. I know.”

  Nova shut her mouth. She started doing math in her head. “Okay, then, you tell me what you already know.”

  Jayne walked over to the sink. She realized that a lot of what she thought was still ketchup was blood. She turned on the faucet and filled her cupped hands with water. “I know plenty. I know a lot. I know you work for hire. You didn’t know the information was about me. Even if you did, why should you care, right? I don’t hold that against you.” She splashed water on her face. “The ketchup? Okay, that I hold against you. But I only want to ask you one question.”

  Nova rubbed her chin. Her sore chin. Her entire body was sore. “If it’s why I didn’t kill you, it’s because I was ordered not to.”