by Paul Tassi
“First time I’ve danced all summer,” she said. “I didn’t want to with the cameras still around.”
“Can’t blame you for that,” Mark said.
Neither of them wanted to mention the previous night. Not to rave about it. Not to decry it as a mistake. They were both just content to let it be what it was. He felt something for the girl in front of him. But it wasn’t just one thing. Attraction, pity, friendship, sadness, love, and guilt. He hadn’t been with anyone else since Riko. Not until last night. All of it was a tempest inside him. It was paralyzing.
“Can you tell me about her now?” Aria asked, reading his mind. “Now that the flying cameras have gone?”
She gestured above them to a night sky free of drones.
Mark hesitated. He knew what training said. It was a risk. To him. To the mission. Even to her. He couldn’t.
But he did.
“The car just exploded,” he said, his voice low. “Bomb wired straight to the battery. They didn’t even pretend it was a malfunction. I was in a meeting. Another debrief. The endless fucking debriefs. I didn’t believe it when I got the call. It was US soil. That was a fucking act of war. It was impossible. But then I saw the mangled pile of ash and bone. I saw the crater in my driveway.”
Aria looked confused.
“Why?”
“It was supposed to be me. For something I’d done. I was going to take the car that day, but I was worried about fucking parking because I got a ticket last time since I’d lost my pass. Jesus, how stupid.”
Aria stood silent.
“It wasn’t just her,” Mark said. “It was both of them. It was my entire life.”
“A child.”
“A daughter.”
Silence.
“Did you find them? The ones that did it.”
“It was one man. He was just angry. At me. For what I’d done. They killed him trying escape by boat. Nuked him with all the brimstone a Hellbird could offer. I saw his pile of ash and bone too. It didn’t help. Nothing could.”
“Nothing but this,” Aria said. The Crucible, was the implication. His penance.
She didn’t understand. Not fully. How could she? He’d already said way too much. But if she was a Crayton plant, he was dead already. And he was practically past the point of caring.
But there was no hidden mic. No security team emerged from the shadows to take him down and torture him until his mangled cover story broke. It was just her, with tears in her eyes, feeling that same mix of pity and love, perhaps.
“Do you think you’ll see them again?” she said. “If you fall tomorrow?”
“I don’t know,” Mark said, feeling lightheaded. “I wish I could believe that.”
“Was last night …” she began, finally daring to broach the subject.
“It was what I needed.”
“And what do you need now?”
“I don’t know. This is all starting to feel like some kind of fever dream.”
“I know.”
“I’m sorry if …”
She stopped him with a hand on his chest.
“No apologies. Right now just stay with me here. It’s just us and the stars. No more eyes. No more ears.”
Aria led him by the hand to the base of the colossal tree that overlooked the lake. She peeled off his shirt, and then her own. She was even more beautiful in starlight. Mark knew he was sober this time, but everything was drifting between fantasy and nightmare. Nothing felt real. Like he could just wake up at any moment.
“Forget the pain,” Aria said. Brooke said. Riko said. Their faces blurred together as one.
“Remember the love. Remember what it was like to live.”
Mark felt like he was falling. She whispered, “Oblivion can wait.”
PART III
“What is my greatest ambition in life?
To become immortal … and then die.”
—Jean-Luc Godard
27
THANKS FOR TUNING INTO SportsWire, your only stop for the best Crucible news and commentary. I’m Jayce Harrington, joined as always by my cohost, Melanie Mitchell. And of course, our panel wouldn’t be complete without our favorite guests, Turk Smith and Johanna Viseberg.”
“Glad to be here, Jayce. You excited?”
“Of course! How could anyone not be? You’ve seen the crowd that’s inside Crayton’s Colosseum right now. Simply unprecedented!”
“That’s 252,144 in attendance. Security’s tight, but I’m willing to bet a few more snuck in.”
“Well it’s certainly not something you want to miss, though I’m told many of our international viewers are going to have to do just that, isn’t that right, Turk?”
“Correct. Countries all across the globe have banned public access to the Crucible stream, and our beautiful faces here in the commentary booth. What a crime!”
“Why is that, do you think?”
“They keep citing ‘America’s culture of violence’ and other nonsense, but please, this is an athletic competition and deserves to be treated as such. This is the USA at its best, if you ask me. Great stories. Great competition. Freedom and honor.”
“You can hear that in the roar of the crowd, and today’s match hasn’t even started yet.”
“And who is your pick in today’s first match, Jayce? We haven’t even touched on it yet.”
“Good point, Turk! It’s easy to look out our back window into the faces of a quarter million fans and get lost. As a reminder to our viewers who have managed to avoid any sort of news outlet the past few days, our first match is between the Lion of Los Angeles, A-list action star Chase Cassidy, and the Windy City Wolf, ex-Navy SEAL Mark Wei.”
“Ex-mercenary too, don’t forget.”
“Yes, Melanie, you’re always quick to remind us of that. I take it Cassidy is your pick then?”
“He is, but not just because I dislike Wei. I think as an actor who is used to screaming fans and media overload, Cassidy is probably going to have a cooler head than Wei out on the sand today. Combined with obvious physical skill, I think he’ll come out on top.”
“Johanna, do you agree?”
“I can see that argument, and it’s something that might benefit many of the athletes in the tournament as well, from Naman Wilkinson to Dan Hagelund to Soren Vanderhaven. But I wouldn’t discount actual military training as a means of learning lethal force. And I’m sure none of us can forget that we’ve already seen Mark Wei kill in the ring before it was even mandatory.”
“Great point, Johanna. I still have that Wei versus Drescher fight seared in my mind.”
“So Wei is your pick, Turk?”
“I don’t know. Being a soldier in the modern military era doesn’t exactly train you to use something like a longsword. It really depends on how fast he’s picked up the skill. But Cassidy has used weapons in probably at least a half dozen of his films, and even if it was prop fighting, some of that has to translate. But Wei is dangerous, we know that.”
“Looking ahead, who do you think are the strongest options to take the entire tournament, and the billion-dollar first prize? Jayce, any thoughts?”
“It’s hard not to say Drago Rusakov. The man was an absolute terror in Prison Wars and I think that experience makes him far and away the most formidable of any competitor here. Not to mention his sheer size and strength.”
“True, but I wouldn’t count out Matthew Michael Easton either. He doesn’t seem like he’d really be built for this, but he’s quick as lightning and showed in Prison Wars that if you give him a blade, he will find a vein.”
“But what about the newcomers? Anyone jump out at you, Johanna?”
“Well, I know both Dan Hagelund and Asher Mendez personally, and they’re each incredibly talented fighters. Not sure how they’ll fare with weapons, but they’ve got a killer instinct all the same. I’m probably most curious to see how Soren Vanderhaven does, given her gymnastics background.”
“Ah yes, and who could forget her whirlwi
nd romance with Cassidy during Heroes and Legends? Reports say they’re closer than ever heading into the tournament, and polling says they’re the most popular of all sixteen combatants.”
“Didn’t Wei have a little thing with the dancer, Aria?”
“I know they had their breakfast club with Moses Morton and Ethan Callaghan, but I’m not sure anything ever came of that. She’s way out of his league, in any case.”
“Trying to get her number, Turk?”
“I’m just sayin’!”
“Well, Cassidy and Vanderhaven are on opposite sides of the bracket, so they’ll be spared a potential match for a while yet, if it comes to that. Melanie, we haven’t heard your pick yet.”
“Well I mean, I’m not sure how he’ll fight, but how can you not root for Ethan Callaghan? The man is a veteran, with a beautiful family and a wife who desperately needs not only the money for medical treatment, but for her husband to come home and be a father to his children. If that’s not a reason to fight, and live, I don’t know what is.”
“And you, Turk?”
“I can see the appeal of Rusakov, Cassidy, and many of the others, but I’m telling you, I can’t get Mark Wei out of my head. Something is seriously wrong with that dude, and in this situation, that might be exactly what’s needed to win.”
MARK WATCHED THE SAND swirl around the toes of his black metal boots. His sword was slung over his back and his helmet was in his hand. He supposed he should be looking at a flag during the national anthem, and lord knew there were enough of them streaming from a hundred poles planted around the top of Crayton’s monument to American exceptionalism.
He didn’t know the teenage pop singer belting out the rendition of the song, but it was well done and seemed to be moving Cassidy to tears. Twenty feet away, Mark had been sizing up his opponent’s armor since he was introduced. It was indeed samurai inspired, with long, flat plates painted crimson. But instead of traditional pauldrons, he had hulking, snarling, golden lion heads on each of his shoulders. The design of his entire ensemble was much more ornate than Mark’s matte black plating, and he definitely looked like he’d shown up to film Shogun Rising 2. But Mark knew the blade on his hip was anything but fake.
Brooke had tried to send him some last-minute motivation via S-lens. She’d done some digging and it turned out Cassidy was dangerously close to broke. Though he was the biggest action star of the last decade, in this decade he’d financed a number of awful pet projects that bombed at the box office and nearly wiped him out. Brooke’s implication was that there was a good chance very little of his winnings would go to charity, if any, and would instead go toward his debts. He wasn’t as squeaky clean as he looked, and that could explain the desperation of someone like him signing up for something like this.
Mark didn’t really care. Whether he thought Cassidy was a shining paragon of heroism or a total fraud, he still needed to die. Even if he was the former, the mission required that, if given the chance, Mark would have to bury his blade into the man without hesitation.
The crowd wouldn’t like that. He saw a sea of red and gold, and an endless parade of lion-themed gear. Though he was surprised to see a solid smattering of black in the audience with signs rooting for “Wolf Wei,” as some called him. The audience hadn’t completely forgotten his iconic bout with Drescher, which had earned him a lot of fans who wanted to see revenge for Carlo’s unwarranted mauling. But he wouldn’t have a quarter the support of Cassidy, and he had to just block all of that out.
But it was impossible. The view from the sand was like nothing he’d ever seen. He’d been to football games before, so his fight in front of sixty thousand people at Soldier Field, though overwhelming, had not been completely unprecedented.
This? This was something else entirely. 250,000 fans were shouting, chanting, cheering for the biggest “athletic” event in world history. It was a 360-degree tidal wave of human beings arching up toward the sky in the oval arena. Mark had no idea how many millions were watching on TV, but he was guessing that was breaking some records as well. And somewhere out there in the VIP boxes were Brooke, Carlo, Moses, Ethan, and Aria, watching to see if he would be the victor or the vanquished.
It was easy to forget that just a short while ago, Mark had been in a pit of despair and isolation. After Spearfish, he was left with no one, and nothing. But now? There were at least a handful who cared about him, and weirdly, millions of strangers cheering him on as well.
It consumed him. He couldn’t help it. He forgot the mission. He was living history at this moment. Despite Crayton’s insanity and the horror of what was to come, in that moment he was proud he was standing on that sand. The rush of it all could trick him into thinking it might possibly be the greatest moment of his life.
But for the mission, or for some twisted sense of glory, he had to win. He had to live. That was all that mattered now.
Crayton stepped forward to the edge of his box. It wasn’t high up like the luxury penthouse suites; it was only thirty or so feet from ground level, the best seat in the house by a mile, and naturally, about where emperors and dignitaries used to sit when they attended arena bouts in ancient Rome.
The crowd went wild for the man, and after about five straight minutes of cheering, he had to start signaling for them to quiet down. He wore a light gray suit with a blood red shirt underneath. Mark was half surprised he didn’t have a wreath of laurels placed on his golden head, but he supposed even Crayton drew the line somewhere.
“Gentlemen, if you’d take your positions,” he said, motioning toward two faint circles in the sand about thirty paces apart. Mark and Cassidy walked over to them, their footprints evaporating with a fresh gust of wind. They turned to face him.
We who are about to die salute you, Mark thought. But despite all Crayton’s delusions of grandeur, it really wasn’t him they were dying for. It was the swarm of camera drones flying over their heads, capturing every angle of the carnage and broadcasting it to every inch of the country. The Crucible existed because they demanded it.
They’re not ready for this, Mark thought, looking at the blur of faces in the crowd. They think they are, but this will be like nothing they’ve ever seen.
“We honor you, Chase and Mark, as two of the bravest men in this country. To risk life and limb for honor, for glory, for victory. Not only will everyone here remember you forever, but so will history itself.”
Mark’s heart swelled involuntarily, and he swallowed a large lump in this throat.
Get ahold of yourself.
He couldn’t get caught up in the moment, however larger-than-life it may be. He had one job. One mission.
“Please, address the crowd and your audience at home, for what may be the final time.”
He gestured toward them. Cassidy didn’t hesitate to start speaking, and a camera drone flew in to hover about three feet from his face.
“Above and beyond anything else, I want to thank my fans. Without you, I’d be nothing, and I’m so glad you’ve been on this journey with me. I want to thank you, Mr. Crayton, for giving me this chance, and also introducing me to the love of my life.”
Soren. Gag.
“With all of your support,” he said, “I know I will be victorious today. But I’d like Mark here to know I only have the utmost respect for him and his service, and it’s an honor to face him on the sands today.”
The crowd went wild as Cassidy ended his remarks, and Crayton turned to Mark. The camera drone drifted over to him. How many millions were behind this lens? Mark had a sudden urge to blurt out everything. The mission. Crayton’s shady past. His government ties. He wanted to rant about the decline of America, that the country had crumbled into … this. Watching two men murder each other for money, their pending deaths celebrated. The Crucible was an abomination, and after today, everyone watching, cheering, would lose a piece of their soul.
He turned to face Cassidy.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly, but the drone mic boomed it ar
ound the entire arena like he was shouting. The crowd took it as trash talk and started booing immediately, but Mark hadn’t meant it like that. He didn’t want to kill this man. No one deserved to die just for being a pompous asshole.
“Alright then!” Crayton said upon realizing Mark didn’t have his own big last words speech planned. “Gentlemen, the countdown will begin shortly, and after that, your fight will commence. You cannot leave the ring, and the fight is not over until one of you has expired. The vital monitors embedded in your armor will be displayed onscreen at all times for reference.”
On the giant, football-field sized screen above them, two pulsing lines showed each of their heart rates. Both were elevated, but Cassidy’s was higher than Mark’s.
It’s not his fault, he’s never stared into this abyss before.
Mark thought back to the Hóngsè Fēng, the massive ship looming ahead in the black water, full of probable death. But if he could survive it, his ticket to life, a future. A way home. He felt that way now. Maybe if he could live through all this, he could start over. Maybe.
Mark donned his helmet, which clicked into his neck plating seamlessly. He’d worn many combat helms before, but they always were alive with electronic readouts. This was just a blank sphere, a kind of fishbowl that dimmed the Vegas sun and muted the crowd a bit. No digital HUD allowed. It was oddly calming.
Mark cast another glance back to the crowd. This wasn’t Prison Wars, which didn’t have a live audience. This was a quarter of a million people about to witness an open-air execution.
They’re not ready.
Suddenly, the countdown started. The arena became alive with bright LED lights that started on the north side balconies that separated the tiers of the building, and raced around the entire stadium in a circle to the south. When the lights hit the giant viewscreen, a number appeared.
5.