Eventually she slid it back into the pouch, exhaling a plume of steam.
Something about the flat piece of metal would come up later in the run, assuming Jet managed to stay alive long enough.
Hopefully its purpose would be obvious then.
She went back to trudging forward through the snow, passing a few more turns in the hedge. She didn’t bother to go with Trazen’s advice any longer, even when they gave her a real fork in the maze, which wasn’t often.
Her internal clock told her she’d been in here more than an hour.
She had to assume the game pullers were just tiring her out for her match with Bukka now. They were probably deliberately trying to wear her down and frustrate her, too.
She had to wonder how the pullers were keeping the crowd entertained though, given that. This had to be the most boring run on record for anyone watching from the outside.
Nirreth liked blood, lots of it.
Killing one mountain cat couldn’t have been nearly enough to satisfy them.
Hearing the screams grow more desperate again in front of her, Jet winced.
Maybe they were being entertained by something else.
Something happening where Jet wasn’t.
Feeling a sudden catch in her throat, Jet began walking faster.
She was nearly jogging again by the time she reached the end of that segment of maze, lifting her knees to plow faster through the wet snow. Without waiting, she turned left, towards the sounds of the screams, which were now punctuated by gasps and whimpers and pleading, along with the more agonizing sounds of pain.
Jet felt her throat close more.
The thought had finally reached her––the thought she hadn’t let herself think until now.
Maybe they’d found them. The Nirreth. Isreti’s people.
Maybe they’d really found her family.
That dull pain in Jet’s chest turned into a stabbing fire.
Maybe that’s how the operators were entertaining the crowds of Nirreth. Maybe it really was her mom and brother in the center of this maze, being brutalized by Bukka. The thought brought a sick feeling of dread to Jet’s gut, intense enough that she broke into a run… or as much of one as she could manage in the wet snowdrifts that filled the maze corridor.
It was definitely getting lighter out.
She could see the snow coming down for real now.
The maze row stretched out before her; she could make out individual leaves in the hedges, the rolling pattern of white where snow rested, covering the green. The snow in the middle of the row was nearly at thigh-height now, making it harder for her to move quickly. She knew it was slowing her down a lot, and tiring her out…
She tried not to think about either thing.
Eventually it was light enough out, she could tell it was full daylight.
Heavy, gray clouds and fog still obscured the sky overhead and the tops of the maze, but Jet could see the hedges clearly now through the falling snow. She was jogging fast when she reached up to the pocket and unsnapped the top again, pulling out the thin piece of metal.
It looked like copper to her now, only run through with an oil slick of colors that tended towards green and turquoise blue. One end was sharp and the other flatter and rounded.
It looked almost like a throwing knife, but its purpose was no more apparent to her in the light than it had been in the dark. Jet slid it back into the narrow pocket and snapped the top back up without slowing her pace.
She was close enough to hear gasps now, heavy panting, like someone who couldn’t get their lungs back to suck in enough air.
The screaming had stopped.
Jet tried not to let herself think about why that was.
She could still hear them breathing, she told herself.
They were still alive.
Of course, she had no idea if the breathing she heard was her mother and Biggs or the people who had been hurting them.
Either way, she knew she was near the end of this thing.
She could feel the end approaching, could sense it in the hard shot of adrenaline that hit her bloodstream as the maze around her grew more and more quiet. Her heartbeat grew louder to fill the silence, thudding in her chest like an erratic hammer.
The lighter it got, the more she felt that end grow nearer, until now, she felt certain she would find it as soon as she turned that last corner of maze.
She knew all of that, yet somehow, she still wasn’t prepared.
19
End Of The Line
Jet flattened her back to the last piece of hedge, peering around it as though it were made of stone. She gripped Black tightly in both hands.
She could hear more breathing now.
More than that, she could feel that the maze ended, even before she confirmed that fact with her eyes. Whether she’d come out of it altogether or just found a clearing at the center, Jet could sense an open space up ahead.
The air flowed differently, so that was part of it.
Sound traveled differently, too.
Jet stuck her head out further, trying to get a better sense of what she was about to walk into, scanning the pieces of clearing hidden by the hedge maze wall.
She hadn’t been wrong.
The hedge seemingly ended altogether, leaving an open field that stretched further than the fog and snow allowed her to see. She looked around that grassy space, glimpsing trees in the distance, what might have been park benches, all of it covered in at least six inches of snow.
Bringing her focus back to the area nearer to the hedge wall, Jet looked for movement, for any sign of Bukka or the scene that awaited her.
At first the shapes seemed abstract––too abstract to comprehend. Dark forms against the white snow, splashes of color against the green-black of the outer maze wall.
Then, with a sudden, sharp violence, what she was seeing clicked into place.
She sucked in a breath.
She couldn’t let it out. She grew dizzy, her mind blank, non-functioning.
At the same time, she couldn’t tear away her gaze.
Her brother was strapped to what looked like an old-fashioned wooden chair.
Naked, his pale, white, emaciated body was bruised and cut from head to foot, his face bleeding, eyes swollen shut. His fifteen-year-old chest and arms, bound to the chair with what looked like iron cuffs at his ankles, wrists and throat, no longer moved.
He’d been gutted.
His head hung artificially over his not-breathing chest, his neck locked to the chair, his entrails steaming over the snow, which was red with his blood.
The person who’d been gasping was her mother.
Jet’s mother’s eyes stared at Jet from the chair next to Biggs’––strangely round despite their natural almond shape. Her irises and pupils punched black holes in the whites as she stared at Jet uncomprehendingly, like she was a ghost.
Heart slamming into her ribs, her breath coming in hitching pants, Jet stared at that face, that heartbreakingly familiar face, a face she would have given anything to see, even just a few short hours before…
When someone cut her mother’s throat, using a sword.
Jet screamed.
She screamed without thought, without reason.
She ran out from behind the hedge, unable to stop herself, even as the giant woman wielding the sword looked back over her shoulder, her broad face showing a pale surprise as Jet ran at her, Black clutched in one hand.
Her mother already slumped in the chair.
Unlike Biggs, her throat hadn’t been bound to the chair’s wooden back. She was naked like Biggs, covered in bruises and cuts, what looked like burns, brands, stabs. Her hair had been burned, so that part of her head looked blackened and red.
Her lips were swollen. Her face…
Jet screamed again, standing there, staring as her mother bled out onto the snow.
It’s not real, it’s not real, it’s not real…
She couldn’t make h
erself believe it.
That nausea was back, so intensely she nearly blacked out.
“It’s not real!” she screamed, staring at Bukka when the giant woman turned. “It’s not real!”
Bukka stared at her, her broad face blank.
She continued to stand there, holding the bloody sword. She hadn’t yet moved at all from her position over Jet’s mom, when she suddenly surprised Jet.
She laughed.
She threw her head back and laughed, even as she stepped back from the two wooden chairs, the two people Jet loved more than anyone left in the world.
The only real leverage any of them had over her.
Staring at her mother and Biggs, Jet felt it as a certainty, a sick horror in her gut that deepened with every passing second. She couldn’t push past it, couldn’t even make herself stop to decide if it might be manipulated or enhanced, like she had with the great cats. Nothing about this felt like anything but reality.
The images in front of her felt real.
It was real.
They’d killed her family.
Somehow, they’d gotten her family away from Richter and they’d killed them.
When Jet looked up that time, the nausea was gone.
In its place, hatred swam through her veins, a feeling so intense it seemed to come out of her very skin. It brought her mind back to Bukka, back to death, back to pain.
That hatred had no need of an excuse, or even words.
Despite that fact, or maybe because of it, suddenly, everything became incredibly clear. Crystal clear. Irrefutably clear.
No one waited for her outside that arena.
No plan to topple Isreti was about to go down.
Richter had done this. Richter had set her up. Isreti must have gotten to him. Threatened his life. Threatened his rebellion. Threatened something Richter actually gave a damn about. Whatever it had been, Jet’s family ended up being the price.
Richter gave Isreti her family.
She stared at Bukka, that hatred seething out of her with every steaming breath. She stood there as each piece fell neatly into place, completing a dark picture in Jet’s mind, all the shards of glass assembled back into a mosaic she couldn’t un-see.
She didn’t stop to ask herself if it was real.
That time, the sound that came out of Jet was closest to a roar.
The first few moments of her attack were a blur, a crystalline blur of swift, unthinking movement––like a dance, but one that happened in some higher, more distant area of Jet’s mind.
She lunged after the woman without a single thought.
All of her fear around the woman’s size, her strength––it vanished.
Empathy was the furthest thing from her mind.
She’d gone right for Bukka’s throat.
The woman ducked and Jet only slashed downward, managing to slice her open just above one eye at the first cut. Blood ran at once, covering the whole side of Bukka’s face and Jet didn’t think. She pressed the advantage, slashing up in the same motion towards the arm and hand holding Bukka’s sword.
She hit her hard enough that the woman grunted, opening her fingers.
Jet watched the sword fly up in the air in her peripheral vision, but she didn’t back up, simply shifted her weight and brought her own sword back down.
She hacked off Bukka’s hand with that blow, severing it right at the wrist.
Bukka let out a scream. It sounded like the mountain cat’s bellow.
Jet didn’t let it get very far.
Leaping towards the woman as she fell to one knee, she jammed her sword right into the woman’s throat.
The scream died.
The woman’s eyes bulged out, more than Jet’s mother’s had.
Jet closed her own eyes as the two images tried to superimpose, then gritted her teeth, tasting blood from her tongue as she yanked the sword up and then backwards, out of the woman’s thick neck. She used her whole weight to do it, stepping back and pivoting her hip to the side and back at the same time.
Bukka fell forward into the snow.
Jet didn’t bother to check to make sure she was dead.
She slammed the sword into the woman’s back, right where her heart should have been.
Then, without a single thought, she ran for the wooden chairs.
She almost couldn’t make herself look at her brother, at the blank stare he aimed at the trees in the distance, his irises already clouding. His body was cold. Snow had begun collecting in his dark hair and on his feet and legs. Jet saw it melting more slowly on his chest and abdomen, on what remained of his stomach where the blood had started to congeal.
She couldn’t look at him for long.
She didn’t look at the bloody mess by his feet at all.
She knelt by her mother instead, looking up at her face.
Her mother’s eyes were dead, doll-like, but her skin was less gray than that of Biggs.
“Mom?” Jet choked out the word, reaching tentatively for the side of her mother’s head that wasn’t burned. She stroked back the curtain of straight black hair that still framed that side of her face. “Mom? Mom! Are you there? Mom!”
Her mother didn’t answer. Her eyes remained open, staring.
They looked through Jet, past her, unable to see her.
Jet closed her eyes. She couldn’t look at that blank face.
When she opened them again, choking on tears, choking on nausea, she found herself looking over the chair itself, some part of her still wanting to get them free. Seeing the strange, slit-like locks at the bottom of the iron clasp by her mother’s nearest ankle, Jet let out another choked cry.
Still, some part of her needed to confirm it.
She needed to confirm just how wrong she’d been.
How wrong Trazen had been.
She pulled off her gloves, her bare fingers shaking and fumbling for the pouch that sat on top of her shoulder. It took her a few seconds but she managed to pull that flat piece of metal free. Still kneeling by the wooden chair that held her mother, Jet let out a sob as she fit the piece of metal into the lock and turned it sideways.
It made an audible click.
The iron band around her mother’s ankle fell open.
Sometime after that, Jet must have blacked out.
20
Murderer
“JET? JET? JET!”
The voice seemed to come from underwater.
It was so far away, she could barely hear it.
Pain lived there. She couldn’t feel it, but just the memory of it made her want to run away. Warm fingers caressed her skin, smoothing the hair back from her face. She felt fingers gripping one of her hands, even as that other hand stroked her face.
“Jet… wake for me, Jet. Jet… darling, I am so sorry…”
She choked, shoving away the images that wanted to come with his words.
She knew who he was now.
She knew.
“Trazen,” she managed.
Relief swam over her, so intensely it brought tears to her eyes. She knew the relief wasn’t only hers, but her own relief nearly blinded her. She could feel his relief there as well, merging with hers, and she felt him in that, so strongly she almost couldn’t breathe.
It wiped out the other thing that had been crushing her heart, for however small a time.
It wiped away everything but his presence, the fact that he’d remained with her, that he hadn’t left her.
Even so, some part of her wondered.
Wondered…
No. His thoughts whispered in the back of her mind. No, I did not know they had your family, Jet. I would have thought it virtual too. I would never have believed it real, if it wasn’t for what they told us in the audience.
Anger infused the Nirreth’s thoughts, a colder anger than any Jet had ever glimpsed on him. She felt grief there too, a horror-filled shock at what he’d just witnessed.
I have never seen that outside of Retribution before, he told her
next, still struggling with his emotions. I have never seen them do something like that… kill family like that… not unless the person was a criminal. A murderer, or a traitor. Gods, I am so sorry, Jet… I feel responsible…
His thoughts grew bitter, filled with anger and that grieving disbelief.
She felt the pain in his heart and somehow, it merged with hers.
Isreti himself narrated this thing, he thought bitterly. He got up and explained that this was how the Rings were meant to be. How our forefathers imagined them. He explained that even human “animals” have feelings towards their families, and that this is part of the drama of the Rings… the catharsis of seeing those bonds acted out. He explained that for the Rings to have meaning, the stakes must be higher for all involved.
Rage filled Trazen’s thoughts by the end.
He said the Rings are entertainment, but also ritual, a sacred rite… and a means to assert the rulership of Nirreth over all of the universe’s lesser creatures, and their benevolent mercy when it was warranted.
Jet felt that pain in her gut worsen. She didn’t try to speak, but felt her own anger return, even as she fought to shove away the nausea that tried to rise.
“Where am I?” she managed.
She lifted her head, and pain nearly blinded her.
Lights shone down on her, so bright she couldn’t see past them. She raised a hand, and was startled to see her bare hand next to the form-fitting sleeve of her sense-suit.
You are still in the arena, Jet.
The plan, she managed. The plan. What happened?
Shhh. His thoughts grew warning. They might still scan you here, Jet. They are discussing what happens now. Whether to charge you for murdering Bukka.
Murdering… Jet felt her mind tilt somewhere behind her eyes. Murdering… Bukka?
She couldn’t comprehend what he was saying.
They are saying it was a challenge match, Trazen explained softly, stroking her face. Not to the death. Death had not been stipulated.
His thoughts turned grim, even as he caressed her hair again with his fingers.
They would be having a different conversation, I suspect, had the death occurred to a different contestant. They were all shocked that you killed her so quickly, Jet. It was pretty terrifying to watch, honestly.
The Complete Alien Apocalypse Series (Parts I-IV Plus Bonus Novella): An Apocalyptic, Romantic, Science Fiction, Alien Invasion Adventure Page 86