Champion

by Emmy Chandler

  Then Charles suddenly sucks in a breath and taps the screen to pause the footage. My heart leaps into my throat when he zooms in with two fingers, then drags the frozen image to one side. To where Graham is frozen in the act of sliding a knife into his pants.

  “Stop!” Charles stands, and the guards instantly tense and draw their pistols. “Anderson has a knife.”

  Guns swing toward Graham, and he raises his hands, palms out. Someone pulls me away from him while the closest guard holsters his weapon and starts to pat Graham down. He finds the knife almost immediately and hands it to another guard.

  Two more of them give me a pat-down, just in case.

  “If you weren’t about to die, I’d fucking shoot you where you stand,” the first guard growls at Graham.

  Graham’s jaw clenches, but he says nothing. He’s angry. But beneath that, he’s terrified. That knife was his way out. His way of sparing us both.

  Once again, Universal Authority has taken everything from him.

  And suddenly, for the first time since I stepped into the bullpen, despair crashes over me. Until this moment, survival has felt possible, if unlikely. I’ve based my entire existence in the bullpen on the premise that there is a way out, and all I have to do is find it. That if I work hard and fit all the pieces together, I can make that happen.

  But it never occurred to me that when the moment came, survival would no longer be enough. I don’t want to make it out of zone one, if I can’t have Graham at my side.

  The truth is that nothing has really changed. My plan—the favor I asked Kaya for—has nothing to do with Graham’s knife. It’s supposed to be instead of Graham’s knife, though I couldn’t tell him that. But seeing the knife—and with it, his plan—taken from him drives home for me how very fragile my own plan is. How dependent I am upon Kaya, a woman who has everything to lose and nothing to gain from helping me.

  If she hasn’t come through for me, Graham and I are as good as dead.

  Charles is mad at us, and not just because of the knife. It’s because of this interview. We may be marketable as a couple, but we’re not actors, and we can’t just pretend to be okay with the fact that we’re about to face each other in the arena, and the whole fucking galaxy wants to know how we feel about that.

  “So, how did you feel when you saw your names on the screen this morning? When you realized you’d be pitted against each other?”

  “We found out last week,” I tell him.

  Charles’s angry gaze narrows on me, and he taps something on the screen in his lap, probably deleting what I’ve just said. “You can’t say that on camera, Wolfe.”

  “Why not? Doesn’t your audience have the right to know this whole thing is rigged?”

  “If you’re not going to play nice, we can just end this interview right here.” Charles seems to think he’s threatening us.

  I shrug and stand. “Great. I’m done with this.”

  “Sit the hell down,” he growls, and suddenly the man I’ve hardly seen look up from his screen in nine weeks is glaring at me with more menace than I’ve seen even from many of the men in the bullpen. “You’re going to do this damn interview, or I’ll see to it that the weapon they give you in the ring malfunctions, leaving the two of you to beat each other to death. Or die in the muzzle of a metal hound. You may think Kaya’s in charge, but I’m your fucking producer. Your footage gets aired the way I want it to go out. Period.”

  Graham takes my hand and tugs me back down next to him, but he’s looking at Charles when he speaks. “Ask your question again.”

  Evidently mollified, Charles taps something on his tablet, and the light on the camera blinks red again. “So, how did you feel when you saw your names on the screen this morning? When you realized you’d be pitted against each other?”

  “That was the worst moment of my life.” Graham lets go of my hand and slides his arm around me. “But I wouldn’t change a single second of what’s led up to it. Meeting Sylvie has been the best thing that ever happened to me, and if I had to get the death penalty for that to happen, so be it. If I die today, it will be with a full heart and a clear conscience.”

  Then he kisses me, and for one long moment, as I lose myself in the taste and feel of him, I forget that the rest of the planet even exists. Fuck the viewers, and Charles, and the warden, and the fucking UA.

  We may not have many moments left together, but this moment is ours.

  “They found the knife,” Graham whispers to Sebastian when we step into the dugout. The tier two fighters are already on the sand, beating the shit out of each other with their bare fists.

  “Fuck,” Sebastian breathes. Then he turns to me. “You’re going to have to kill him.”

  As if I don’t know what’s expected of me.

  “Okay, I can’t—” I turn and walk away from them both, away from everyone in the room, and I wind up in front of the viewing window, looking directly out at the arena. But I don’t see the combatants. I don’t see the sand, or the curved screens lining the lower part of the arena wall. I don’t see anything.

  “Sylvie…” Sebastian says, but Graham interrupts.

  “Leave her alone. She already knows everything you want to tell her.”

  With that, I turn around and pull them both into a hug, tears overflowing my eyes. “I love you guys. I’m sorry, but I just… I need to think.”

  “There’s nothing to think about, sis,” Sebastian says.

  “Okay. Seriously.” I let them go and wipe my face. “I love you. And I’m grateful that you’re here. But your part in this is over, Seb. I don’t need your protection anymore. You need to go focus on your own fight.”

  For a second, he looks like he’ll argue. Then he nods and pulls me into one last hug, just as one of the tier two fighters stomps his opponent’s skull into the sand, out in the arena.

  “You’re up, Wolfe.” One of the guards motions Sebastian toward the door with his pistol.

  “Love you, sis.” Sebastian presses a kiss on my forehead. “See you next season.”

  I give him a teary nod, because I don’t know how else to respond. Then he turns and walks out the door and onto the sand.

  I don’t watch his fight. I need to think, and I’m not worried about him. Other than Graham, my brother is the most dangerous man in the bullpen, and his opponent was chosen to make him look extra good, to set him up for next season’s victory.

  Sebastian will be fine.

  I spend his entire fight wrapped in Graham’s embrace. Breathing him in. Treasuring the feel of his body pressed against mine, not in a sexual way, but in a human way. A comforting way. No matter where I am, if he’s with me, I’ll be home. And if everything goes according to plan, that might just be possible. But if anything goes wrong…

  “Wolfe. Anderson,” that same guard calls. “You’re up.”

  Instead of letting me go, for a second, Graham rests his forehead against mine. “Do what you have to do, Sylvie. And know that it will be a mercy.” He kisses me. Then he walks out onto the sand, to roaring applause from the prisoners forming the live audience. Lining the chain-link barrier with an almost palpable frenzy. I can’t help thinking that at least some of that is because no matter how this fight ends, they will be rid of us in the bullpen.

  And some of them, of course, just want to see me dead.

  The announcer calls my name, and I follow Graham onto the sand, ignoring the clips playing on the screens all around us. I tune out the noise from the crowd and the announcer’s spiel about the finale, including the expected announcement that whoever wins this fight will walk out of the arena into the open population with a sentence commuted to life in prison.

  We know all of that.

  As the announcer talks, the blimp floats overhead, momentarily casting a huge, cool shadow over us. I can’t help wondering if Warden Shaw is watching from overhead, through the transparent floor.

  One of the gates into the arena opens, and a line of huge metal hounds trots onto th
e sand. Three of them go left, and three go right, then they stop facing us, with their antenna tails nearly brushing the arena walls, so that our deaths—should we refuse to fight—could come from any angle.

  Now I’m sure the warden is watching.

  The roar from the crowd fades into confusion as the inmates puzzle out the hounds’ purpose, but the announcer does nothing to enlighten them. No doubt Shaw doesn’t want the world to know he’s had to threaten us into participating.

  The announcer goes silent. The crowd goes still, staring out at us with a bloodlust I can almost feel. Then the buzzer echoes across the arena.

  Graham and I stare at each other. “Sylvie…” he begins, and tears form in my eyes. I can’t help it. “Babe, you’re going to have to hit me,” he whispers.

  He’s right. There’s going to be a weapon, but they won’t give that to me until I’ve earned it. But I can’t do it. Not like this. I can’t hit him, knowing he’ll just stand there and take it.

  “I love you,” he whispers. “Now fucking hit me.”

  I blink tears from my eyes. Then I spin into a kick that lands square on his sternum. Graham stumbles back, but he’s smiling. Encouraging me. Come on, baby, his gaze seems to say. Make me proud.

  I kick him again, and again he stumbles back. But he won’t fight me. So, I start punching, and with every blow, I’m blackening my own soul, as well as his eyes. By the time I’ve split his lip and bruised his chin, tears are rolling down my cheeks.

  “Hit me back!” I shout, and in that moment, I mean it. I hate myself for what I’m doing to him. For the fact that I have no choice. For the fact that he would rather let me beat him to death—or take his own life—than lay a single unkind hand on me. “Graham! Come on!”

  I kick him again, and this time he catches my foot. The momentum drives him backward, but he digs his heels into the sand and shoves me forward by my leg.

  I fall and roll over. Sand sprays my face. I blink it from my eyes and grind it between my teeth, then I’m up again, throwing jab after jab at his torso, trying to give a good show without really hurting him. He shoves me back over and over, but he won’t hit me.

  And still the weapon doesn’t come.

  “You’re going to have to do better than that, Sylvie,” Graham whispers when I finally get him on the ground, straddling him with my arm at his throat. “They won’t let you end this until you’ve given them a show.”

  “Well then you’ll have to fight back,” I tell him.

  “I know. I’m so sorry.”

  “So am I.” And finally, I let loose. I throw a real punch at his face, and it lands with a loud thwack, and a bolt of pain radiating up my arm. He throws me over his head, and I land on the sand, but I’m up in an instant, and now we’re circling each other. The crowd is into it, some of them chanting for me, some for him.

  I take another jab at him, and he grabs my arm and pulls me into an embrace, my back pressed against his chest. I can’t break his hold, so I throw my head back into his nose and my heel into his shin.

  Blood sprays the back of my head, and he gurgles through it, then lets me go. I try to kick him again, and he sweeps my feet out from under me.

  I land on my ass, and finally, I hear the soft, telltale grinding of a motor beneath me. The sand to my left shifts, and I turn to look just as a small platform rises out of the ground, sand pouring off of it to reveal my weapon.

  A pistol.

  I know without being told that the trigger will only respond to my fingerprint.

  What if Kaya wasn’t able to do what I asked? She started to tell me something earlier, before she was cut off.

  What if Charles messed with the gun, to create drama for his production.

  This could work out just like I planned. Or it could go horribly, disastrously, tragically wrong. And I’m going to have to pull the trigger, either way.

  I stand and grab the gun. The platform sinks into the sand again as I aim my weapon at Graham. I’m breathing too hard. My pulse is roaring in my ears.

  Graham wipes blood from his upper lip with his bare arm, watching me through two black eyes. Breathing through his mouth to spare his broken nose. “Sylvie. Do it.”

  “No.” I back away from him, tears filling my eyes so that he seems to be floating. “I can’t.” I can’t risk it. If something goes wrong…

  The hounds step forward as one, a silent, terrifying threat tightening their circle around us.

  “Sylvie!” Graham hisses. “Just do it. I’m not going to let you die here! Not like this!”

  I throw my head back and a scream scrapes my throat raw with the strength of my rage. Of my pain.

  I scream at the crowd. I scream up at the blimp, and all the executives in suits and dresses sipping champagne. I scream at the cameras, at people all over the galaxy watching via live feed, waiting to watch me kill a man who means more to me than my own life does. “Fuck every last one of you!” I shout. “I hope you all burn in hell!”

  I aim the gun. Then I pull the trigger.

  Graham falls backward onto the sand.

  The crowd loses its mind.

  24

  SYLVIE

  “Good luck!” Kaya hugs me tightly, but I hardly feel the pressure of her arms. “I snuck a few special things into your bag,” she whispers through my poof of freshly shampooed hair, into my ear. “Some food. Soap. And something a bit more…practical.”

  “Thanks,” I murmur. But I’m not even sure what I’m thanking her for. I can’t remember what she just said. I haven’t had a coherent thought in the past three hours.

  Kaya finally lets me go and steps back, folding her hands beneath her chin, and her heels sink into the rust colored grass. I’m in a fresh prison uniform, clutching a brand new supply pack, seconds away from being released into a planet full of criminals where I’ll spend the rest of my life fighting to survive. To protect my meager possessions. And she’s still dressed as if she’s on her way to a fucking yacht party.

  Actually, she’s on her way to a party on the blimp.

  “Pull back and give me a wide shot,” Charles says to his cameraman. He’s only a few feet away, but he’s watching me on the screen in his hands, rather than looking up to actually see me. And suddenly I understand that that’s his defense mechanism.

  If he only ever sees us as characters in some fucked up story he’s telling, he won’t have to think of us as people. He won’t have to think about the things he’s helping UA do to us. That’s why he got so mad when I messed up his interview. I inserted reality into the fictional universe where he lives, and for just a moment, that fucked up not only his production, but his assessment of himself as a human being.

  If I’m a real person—the hero of my own story—than he’s the villain. And that is not something he’s ready to see.

  “Focus on the shuttle,” Charles orders, as it begins to land right in front of me. There are no gates in the walls around zone one, so I have to be lifted over them.

  The door folds down, and I recognize one of the guards waiting for me to walk up the ramp. His name is Cottrell. He’s one of the guards who dropped me off here, nine long weeks ago. It seems fitting that he’s now going to be one of the guards releasing me.

  In as much as any of this can seem fitting at all.

  I climb onto the shuttle without looking back. When it takes off, I keep my back to the windows. I don’t ever want to see zone one again.

  “I was rooting for you, Wolfe,” Cottrell tells me.

  “Fuck off.” I cross the shuttle to stare out the windows on the other side, hoping to get a lay of the land in zone three before they drop me off. I’m looking for one landmark in particular…

  Cottrell laughs. “Cold as granite, and twice as hard,” he says. “No wonder you made it out.”

  25

  GRAHAM

  Sun shines through my closed eyelids. I blink, and daylight spears my brain like a set of knives shoved right through my optical nerves. I roll over and feel
stiff, rough grass beneath my hands. Beneath my bare chest. I blink, and the ground comes into focus.

  Then I smell it.

  Rot. Decay. The godawful stench of meat left out in the sun.

  I push myself upright when I register a soft buzzing sound, and that’s when I see the bodies. Dozens of them. Maybe hundreds. They lie on the ground around me, some alone, others in small piles.

  The buzzing is flies. They crawl all over the corpses. On my left, a small canine-like creature—hyena?—rips a chunk of flesh from one of the less ripe bodies.

  I know this place, though I’ve only ever seen it from overhead, through the transparent floor of the blimp. This is the body dump in zone three, where they throw out the corpses of all the men who die in the bullpen. Or in the arena.

  I stand and look down at myself, and it all comes back to me when I see the bruises. When I feel the blood crusted on my face. The ache in my nose, and in my chin.

  Sylvie. The arena.

  She shot me. Good girl.

  So why the hell am I still alive?

  One of the bruises on my chest isn’t just a bruise. It’s a burn, like a bad sunburn, only more concentrated. It looks just like the one I woke up with the morning after the guards took her from our cell.

  Holy shit. She stunned me. An electrical short-circuit so strong it shut down all motor function. For hours, clearly. How the hell did she—

  “Graham!”

  I spin toward her voice and see a silhouette I’d recognize anywhere cresting the hill, backlit by the morning sun.

  “Graham! Where are you?”

  “Here!” My voice is hoarse. My tongue is so dry I can hardly move it. “I’m here! Sylvie!” I step over bodies, making my way toward her.

  “Graham! Oh my god!” She runs at me, and I catch her in spite of the ache my entire body has become. That was one hell of a stun. “Oh, god, I wasn’t sure it worked. I wasn’t sure they wouldn’t figure it out, and just kill you after they pulled you from the ring. I thought—” Then her mouth finds mine, and suddenly we’re kissing like we haven’t seen each other in weeks. Though surely it can’t have been more than a few hours. The sun has just come up.