by Paul Tassi
The lights reset, and coursed through the entire stadium again until …
4.
Crayton sat back down, shielded behind glass. He smiled …
3.
Mark’s heart raced and matched Cassidy’s lines on the monitor. Above them, the giant number …
2.
Mark watched the lights sweep across the balconies. He saw a thousands of camera flashes. A sky full of buzzing black drones …
1.
He tried to picture Riko. Instead he saw the crater, and the ashes. He was glad she wasn’t alive to see this. He was glad Asami would never know what her father would turn into.
Zero. The crowd erupted.
Cassidy’s blade hummed as he whipped it out of its sheath and sprinted toward Mark, not wasting a moment. Apparently he was hoping for a quick kill, to catch Mark off guard before he could find his bearings in the overwhelming surroundings.
But Mark’s nerves were steel, forged in fire that Cassidy couldn’t even begin to comprehend. He reached over his left shoulder and came back with Arthur’s perfect blade. They were starting too far apart for Cassidy to catch him unaware. Mark easily brought the blade down and swatted aside the actor’s aggressive swing. Sparks flew, and the crowd exploded with a fresh round of cheers.
By Cassidy’s third swing, the crowd had already launched into a familiar chant.
“Cass-i-dy! Cass-i-dy!”
Mark shut it out as best he could. The helmet helped, but he had more pressing concerns than the unsupportive spectators.
Cassidy was incredibly fast, and had clearly spent the requisite amount of time mastering the katana, which was nearly the same length as Mark’s bastard blade. The swords met over and over, sparks erupting with each clash, but none of them had managed to even land a glancing blow on either’s armor yet.
Mark tried to control his breathing with each strike, knowing he’d need to conserve energy if the fight lasted longer than even a few minutes. The armor, though lighter than it could have been, was still oppressive without any electronic assists whatsoever embedded in the joints. Fortunately, the adrenaline surging through Mark’s body was allowing him to move faster than he ever had in training.
Most of Cassidy’s blows were overhand, and Mark found himself turning his own sword horizontal to deflect the hammering downward thrusts. He tried to find an opening to stab toward his midsection, but Cassidy had mastered a twisting deflection that cast Mark’s blade off harmlessly to the side with each attempt.
Christ, Mark thought. Why did he have to be good at this?
Cassidy was no play actor. Not anymore. He had a real talent with his weapon, and fear was starting to infect Mark like a virus. Could he actually … die here? It had always been possible, but the threat never felt real.
Suddenly, Cassidy dove in with an unexpected straight lunge and bit into Mark’s armor just below the armpit. Mark almost twisted out of the way, but not quite. At first he felt nothing, but then in a few moments liquid fire starting burning near his upper ribs. Blood dotted the sand. The katana was so sharp he’d barely felt it, but the aftereffects were excruciating. The crowd roared as soon as one of the drones spotted the wound.
FIRST BLOOD appeared on the giant screen above, and showed Mark putting his gloved hand to his side.
No more of that, he thought, and deflected Cassidy’s next offensive lunge. Drawing blood had emboldened him further, and he would just. Not. Stop. Attacking. Mark blocked and parried but the strikes kept coming. Finally, as Cassidy went for a leaping overhead slice meant to split his head in half, Mark lunged forward and plowed into him with his shoulder. Armor met armor and Cassidy was thrown back, tumbling on the sand. Mark moved in for a downward thrust, but only managed to get his blade stuck in the ground as Cassidy rolled out of the way.
Mark gripped the handle of his sword to pull it out, but didn’t have time as Cassidy was already on his feet and swinging the katana to try and slice through his neck. Mark ducked once, twice, and then finally wrenched the blade out of the earth.
Cassidy’s next swing caused their swords to lock, and the blades ground against each other, their helmets mere inches apart. Cassidy wore a golden faceplate that mirrored his own handsome visage. Mark’s helmet was a blank sphere of nothingness, and he imagined Cassidy could see his own reflection in it.
The golden face lunged forward in an attempted headbutt, but Mark quickly retreated, freeing one hand from his sword and hooking it around the bottom of Cassidy’s helmet. He dropped to the ground in a quick judo move, and Cassidy tumbled over his back. Mark rose, and realized he’d managed to rip off Cassidy’s helmet entirely. He tossed it behind him, and looked into the actor’s wild eyes. The drones zoomed in on Cassidy’s face; a bruise was already starting to form on his cheekbone where the helmet must have caught it. He was panting, and Mark realized he was too.
“Is that it?” Cassidy said, raising his arms wide. He was far enough away where Mark couldn’t lunge at him. The crowd ate up the taunt, and it seemed to imbue the actor with fresh energy. He sprinted at Mark again, and whipped the katana around almost too fast to see. Mark raised his sword just in time, deflecting the strike, but as soon as he did, another was on its way. But Cassidy’s power had thrown Mark off balance. He couldn’t bring the sword up in time so he …
Raised his left arm.
A direct slice might have taken his arm clean off, but the angle was such that the blade dug into the forearm plate and slid horizontally into his flesh. Mark’s scream reverberated inside his helmet, and was broadcast to the entire arena through an embedded mic near his throat.
He twisted his arm violently and the blade dug deeper, but it became clear it was lodged in the plating so Cassidy couldn’t extract it. The actor’s smile from the damaging strike turned into a look of horror as he realized couldn’t wrestle the katana away.
The sword was heavy in just his right hand, but Mark brought it around as quickly as he could manage. Cassidy jogged left, but the blade bit into a crack in the armor near his hip, and his face contorted in agony. The shock of the wound was enough that he finally did rip the sword out of Mark’s arm, and both of them grasped their plating where blood was now flowing freely.
Mark tried a two-handed grip, but found he could barely close the fingers of his left hand. The entire appendage felt numb. But he forced them shut with the armored fingers of his other hand and swung downward toward Cassidy’s collar. The actor forgot the pain long enough to raise his sword, but Mark bounced off the parry and spun around into an almost identical blow. The power of it shook Cassidy to the bone, and he nearly dropped his weapon.
Leaping forward, Mark lashed out with a straight kick that hit Cassidy right in the solar plexus. He followed up with a lunge that was only barely deflected by the katana, but it got him in close enough to smash an armored elbow directly into Cassidy’s exposed face.
The blow stunned Cassidy, and he staggered back, clutching a newly broken nose. He raised his blade to deflect Mark’s next swing, and managed to find his senses and counter with a riposte that sent Mark off balance as he dodged it. Cassidy darted forward with a one-armed straight thrust, and though Mark curved around it, Cassidy whirled around and Mark caught a flash of something silver in the air before the middle of his back flared with pain. The crowd gasped in horror before breaking out into cheers.
Cassidy had another weapon hidden in his armor, something smaller, and sharp, and now buried up to its handle in Mark’s back. He had to look at himself in the monitor to see it, the handle in a gap in the plating between his shoulder blades. It looked like a Tanto, a Japanese knife that was often paired with longer katanas like the one Cassidy had. Mark gasped, but realized as the air filled his lungs that they hadn’t been punctured. In one motion he pulled the blade from his back and raised his sword to deflect Cassidy’s next strike. The bloody Tanto hit the ground silently. Through the pain, Mark remembered his own knife hidden in his shin plating, but his concentration was
repeatedly broken by fresh blows from Cassidy, whose face was contorted into a mask of fury. The sparks from the swords danced in his eyes. Cassidy was a man possessed. The crowd hadn’t stopped chanting his name since the fight started.
Mark was now losing a worrying amount of blood. He could feel it beneath his armor, seeping down his undersuit and saw it venting through the mesh soles of his boots, creating red footprints in the sand. Judging by how much blood he saw and how much his head was starting to swim, Mark knew this fight had a time limit, and it was just about up.
Deflecting Cassidy’s next few strikes, Mark found a window. With his most powerful blows, Cassidy’s swings sent him a little off balance because of his oversized lion pauldrons, something he obviously hadn’t trained with.
Mark thought about Carlo and their fights with Drescher. He stopped deflecting. And started dodging.
Cassidy missing his swings completely caused him to stagger even further. Hitting only nothing but air began to frustrate him, and his swings became more and more aggressive, desperate. If he understood Mark’s wounds, he would have realized he should be playing defense and let him expire on his own, but he was trying to be the hero. Trying to go for the money shot with a single strike to end it all in bloody glorious Hollywood fashion.
Cassidy had seen too many movies.
Finally, Mark seized the window he was searching for. After one particularly ambitious missed swing, Cassidy stumbled forward a few steps, carried by his over-heavy top half. Mark grabbed him by the edge of his left pauldron and wrenched him downward as he raised up his plated knee and smashed it into Cassidy’s forehead.
The punishing blow righted Cassidy instantly, and his katana slipped from his fingers, his brain momentarily detached from the world around him.
Before Cassidy’s eyes refocused, Mark’s plunged the longsword straight through his abdomen, and out his lower back. The pain hadn’t registered yet. It was all shock. They stood there for a moment, joined together by Mark’s blade. Mark stared through his helmet into Cassidy’s wide, terrified eyes.
“Is this …” Cassidy whispered, too low for the mics to hear. “I …”
Blood startled bubbling out of his mouth, choking out any other words. A hush had fallen over the crowd as soon as the blade went in.
Mark pulled back, taking the sword with him, which was red up to its hilt.
Cassidy collapsed to one knee, clutching his stomach, which was spilling blood and bile onto the sand. He lurched forward, and was now on his hands and knees, the ground quickly growing red all around him. He raised his head as the camera drones orbited above them. The handsome face was a mess of black, blue, and crimson.
It should have been over, but it wasn’t. Not yet. Not while that heart rate monitor up above them still had peaks and valleys.
Mark looked over to Crayton, who had risen to his feet, along with the rest of the crowd. Mark asked an unspoken question, and Crayton nodded. Of course he had to. That was the point, wasn’t it?
Cassidy started to shake in his ornate armor. His breaths were halted, his eyes starting to glaze.
It’s a mercy, now, Mark told himself. This is ugly. I knew it would be.
Cassidy began to crawl toward his katana, a few feet away half-covered in sand. But he collapsed with each new motion before jerking himself back to his hands and knees.
Mark walked slowly over to him, bloody footprints trailing behind him. He raised the sword over his head and aimed at a slit in Cassidy’s layered back plating.
The blade went clean through once more, but this time with better aim. Mark split Cassidy’s heart, and the man fell one final time. Mark let go of the sword, which now pinned Cassidy’s body to the ground, and dropped to his knees, his vision blackening. As the back of his head hit the sand, he heard tens of thousands of horrified screams echo around the stadium. Weeping. Sobbing. Wailing.
They weren’t ready, Mark thought, before darkness took him.
28
THE INK-BLACK WAVES SWELLED, pouring salt water down his throat. When they parted, Mark could still see the burning deck of the aircraft carrier, the Hóngsè Fēng, cooking the corpse of Admiral Huang.
Zhou’s promotion was the key, it had turned out. Now a major, because of his peerless intelligence work with Mark, he had access to everything. Door codes. Personnel locations. Transport logs. Mark had siphoned off his login and fashioned his own ID chip with Zhou’s credentials and his own face and DNA. Before he left the base, he took a tour of the armory, gearing up for the mission at hand. He took a truck to the port and snuck onto the carrier via a stealth-plated minisub in the dead of night, cleared to launch through Zhou’s ID. Admiral Huang had fled to the edge of Chinese waters when the country started to catch fire, its most powerful leaders killing each other off. Or so it seemed.
Spearfish, the CIA’s Mona Lisa, would cripple an entire superpower with only a handful of men. Huang, like the others, couldn’t live. If there was a leadership vacuum, he could assume power and unite China, when China needed to stay broken. After the first team’s success in the mountains, and the assassination of the rebellious Commander Wu by another embedded Spear shortly thereafter, it was Mark’s turn. He couldn’t fail. And he didn’t.
How many had he killed? Six, no, seven soldiers on the way to the bridge, hiding their bodies after their lives were ended by whispered gunshots. He planted C4 below deck next to torpedoes as long as schoolbuses, then worked his way up the stairs near the rear of the ship and … ah, he’d forgotten one. The sailor. The young one. He slit his throat before he screamed.
The bridge was a bloodbath. Mark didn’t know if his training would return to him, it had been so long since he’d seen action, but when he reached for it, there it was. He shot two soldiers in the backs of their heads before anyone even knew what was happening. Immediately after, he was forced to hook his arm around the neck of the nearest officer, and use him to absorb a hail of bullets as he snapped off shots from over the man’s shoulder and the rest of the soldiers fell. He released the officer’s bloodied corpse and found only Admiral Huang left standing, a short, paunchy man whose combat glory days had long passed him by. He was armed with a revolver, a big cowboy gun he could barely control, and his single booming blast went wide. Mark answered with a line of shots that ripped through him from his heart to his throat to his head. The admiral died three times over before he even hit the ground.
It was only once the room went quiet that Mark realized he’d also been hit. One bullet had passed clean through his arm, and another was still buried in the meat of his thigh somewhere, scraping against the bone. Both burned, especially the leg, but he had Zhou to thank for training him to manage far, far worse pain.
Using Zhou’s clearance one last time, paired with the admiral’s keychain, he overheated the massive engines so the ship stopped dead. He was three floors below deck by the time the alarms finally started blaring, and he killed four more to get to the escape sub.
The timing was off. Not by much, but enough. He couldn’t remote detonate from the sub, so the bombs were on old fashioned timers. He wasn’t far away enough. Shrapnel from the blasts raced through the water and tore through the rear of the mini-sub, which floated to the surface like a dead fish. Since then, he’d been swimming. For hours, it felt like. He had to make it to international waters, or there’d be no evac. They were right on the edge, so it was only a few more miles, wasn’t it? It had to be.
Behind him, the fire burned, the ship slowly sinking into the Pacific. Whoever he’d shot now didn’t matter. The Hóngsè Fēng was a flagship, one of the biggest in the Chinese Navy, with a crew of seven thousand. When the sub surfaced, Mark watched sailors engulfed in flame plunge from the deck of the ship, their cries echoing across the water. Who knew how many more had been incinerated, or were burning, or were drowning. Most of them, probably.
Mark knew the mission. Understood it from the start. Back in Zhou’s chair, he swore he’d kill the entire country if it me
ant getting home to Riko and Asami. He would have flown a nuke over Beijing if they asked him.
But no, that wasn’t the way. It had to be internal. Zhou would be blamed one way or the other. Would they execute him before or after they realized Mark had used his credentials? Either way, it was a reassuring thought. Mark was only sad he didn’t get to pull the trigger himself, but Zhou living to face suspicion in the aftermath was part of the plan.
It can’t be much farther now. A dozen intelligence satellites were scanning the waves for his heat signature. Gideon would find him. He had promised.
The waves were crushing. The salt ate at his bullet wounds. The night sky glowed hellishly and black smoke blotted out a line of stars. Mark’s entire body felt strangely warm in the freezing ocean as he swam toward the vast nothingness ahead of him.
Not much farther now.
“THERE HE IS,” SAID a familiar voice as Mark blinked his eyes open. Carlo was staring at him, but the rest of his surroundings were blurred. As they slowly came into focus, he realized he was in the medical wing back at Crayton’s compound. The well-groomed Dr. Hasan crept into his vision.
“How are you feeling, Mark?” Hasan said.
Mark blinked again. Was he in pain? He didn’t think so, but that seemed unlikely. He looked down and saw bandages wrapped around his chest and his forearm.
“I think … I’m alright,” Mark said. “Though once the drexophine wears off, probably not.”
Hasan shook his finger at him.
“Smart boy, very smart.”
Drexophine was the only answer. His head was clear and he couldn’t feel even a pinprick of pain.
“You made me burn through a fair portion of our reserve,” Hasan said. “We’ll have to switch you to regular meds so we don’t run out for the other competitors. You wouldn’t believe what it costs for a fluid ounce. But you know Mr. Crayton. Only the best for his athletes.”
His athletes. Mark looked at Carlo, panicked.
“What day is it? How long was I …”