by Paul Tassi
“Relax,” Carlo said. “It’s only been a day and a half. You missed a hell of a match last night though. I watched it from here.”
“The tournament’s still going on?” Mark asked.
“Of course!” Carlo said, giving him a strange look. “Six more fights to go in the first round.”
What did Mark think, that Cassidy’s death was going to cause some kind of national wave of nausea and Crayton was going to cancel the tournament out of a sense of newfound moral obligation? Of course it was still moving forward.
“Who fought today?” Mark asked, uncomfortable he’d missed even a single match.
“That billionaire asshole and the SEAL chick.”
Rakesh Blackwood and Kells Bradford. The winner would face Ethan, if he got past Ja’Von Jordan.
“And?”
“Girl was armored up like a tank and the asshole only had one of those little needle swords they use in those musketeer movies.”
“A rapier? So Kells won?”
Carlo shook his head.
“Dude is quick. He danced around for a while and ended up jamming that thing straight through her eye slit. Killed her dead on the spot. He didn’t even get a scratch on that shiny silver armor of his.”
Mark was taken aback. That was not what he was expecting. He really didn’t know Kells at all, but her death saddened him all the same. He expected he would have been less broken up about Blackwood.
“Why didn’t you go?” Mark said. “They gave you tickets for the whole tournament, right?”
Carlo shrugged.
“You stayed around when I was laid up. Figured I’d return the favor. That ambulance ride was fucked though. You had this foot-long flap of skin hangin’ off your arm once they got the armor unclipped. Doc here stitched it up, but man, that was no joke.”
Hasan returned with a new syringe.
“I know you already have quite the scar collection, but that’s going to be a big one,” he said. “But you’ll get your mobility back in a week or so. The muscle damage was mostly superficial; you were lucky.”
Lucky. Christ.
“Do I even want to know what they’re saying about my fight?” Mark asked.
Carlo shifted uncomfortably.
“Well, let’s just say the press doesn’t love you. Everyone thinks you’re scary as shit, though, so that’s good!”
Mark glanced at the TV, which had been playing with no sound. It showed a live feed trained on Chase Cassidy’s Beverly Hills mansion (that he’d just foreclosed on, Brooke said) where the front gate was covered in flowers and ribbons and signs.
A TRUE LEGEND, one read in block letters. NEVER FORGOTTEN, said another in looping cursive alongside a hand-drawn image of Cassidy’s face. And then there was another written in red paint with a more ominous message, HE’LL PAY.
“You got flowers and shit like that too, but Crayton’s people are keeping ‘em in some room in one of the houses if you want to see the collection.”
“I got flowers?” Mark said, incredulous.
“Man,” Carlo said, smirking. “Seventy goddamn million people watched that fight. At least some of ‘em were rooting for you. Hell, Charles Manson had fans, right?”
“Oh, thanks,” Mark said.
Carlo laughed. He turned back to the TV where a blonde woman was speaking in mute, dabbing her eyes. Mark barely recognized her but …
Carlo turned on the volume with a gesture.
“Oh yeah, Soren Vanderhottie won’t shut up about Cassidy. This is like her tenth interview since your fight, I swear.”
“No one knew Chase like I did,” she said, nearly sobbing. “People saw his face, heard his voice, but they didn’t really know him. But I did, and I can tell you that he is … was, just as beautiful inside as out.”
Mark rolled his eyes.
“Well, I did actually feel bad,” he said, “but this is terrible acting.”
“Fake or no,” Carlo said, “public’s eatin’ that shit up. They were ‘America’s doomed sweethearts’ or some shit. Fuckin’ white people.”
“And to Mark Wei,” Soren continued, her ice-blue eyes staring daggers into the camera in a way that pierced Mark. “I only have this to say. Chase was a hero, and you? You’re nothing. Just a murderer, a cold-blooded killer. If I meet you in the bracket, I’ll have justice for Chase, I can promise you that. You better hope you die before then.”
Despite the fact that Soren Vanderhaven was half his size and was probably jumping on a trampoline somewhere while he was being cut up in China, something about her chilled Mark to his core.
He waved off the TV. Soren could have easily met Chase himself in the bracket, and something told Mark that true love probably wouldn’t have caused them to forfeit the tournament rather than butcher each other, given each’s ambition. He was almost sad he wouldn’t be able to see how that would have played out, but it would have required him to be dead. As it stood, Soren was still a ways off in the bracket. Her first fight was against Dan Hagelund.
“Well, my legs aren’t broken, so I’m getting out of here,” Mark said, and he flung off his covers to stand up. He was a little wobbly, but Carlo caught him by the arm.
“Yeah, yeah, asshole, I’ll have these braces off soon enough. You’re just lucky I owe you for saving my hundred bucks. Little bro is pumped you won too.”
“You let him watch that?” Mark said, eyebrows raised.
“Pshh, whatever, Diego’s seen the whole Max Rage trilogy, plenty of blood there. This is just another movie to him.”
And that’s the goddamn problem.
“Whole family’s out here for the month,” Carlo continued. “Crayton’s passes get us flights, hotels, tickets, the whole deal. And I landed a few sponsors back home. Not a lot since I was just a city semifinalist, but enough to keep the lights on for a little while when we get back. But I am sick to goddamn death of these chalky protein bars they keep sending me, like I actually want to eat the shit I’m selling.”
Mark felt a buzz in the air and Carlo checked his phone.
“Hey, uh, you mind if I take off? Shyla wants to meet up in the city before the fight. And you know, you’re alive and stuff, so …”
Mark laughed.
“It’s fine, you’ve been here for ages, seems like. I gotta get changed and talk to Brooke.”
“Can’t believe she went home,” Carlo said. “Barely said two words during the fight. You would think—”
“Brooke’s complicated,” Mark cut in. “And she’s got a job back in the city. No one’s paying for her hotel. I don’t blame her.”
In truth Mark knew Brooke had been recalled by Gideon to discuss next steps. He was hoping it was something actionable before anyone else had to die.
“Who’s up tonight anyway?” Mark asked.
“That mean D-town motherfucker Jordan and your boy Ethan. I hope he’s got more than a pretty smile in his bag of tricks,” Carlo said.
Ethan. Shit.
Mark hoped so too.
MARK’S ROOM IN THE main manor was exactly how he’d left it. Combatants were still mandated to stay on Crayton’s compound between fights, and though the camera drones were gone, security seemed like it had increased threefold. Mark quickly found himself escorted by guards everywhere, and caught glimpses of mercs even walking around with Shin Tagami as he sauntered into the gardens. When he asked one of his escorts what was going on, he was told there had been an “incident” where a competitor had attacked a rival on the grounds ahead of the competition itself, presumably to get a leg up. Security was there to ensure that didn’t happen again.
“What the hell?” Mark asked the young Glasshammer guard. “Who attacked who?”
“Sorry, sir, I can’t disclose—”
“Was it Rusakov? Easton?”
Mark’s mind to raced to Aria.
“As I said, I cannot comment on the matter,” the guard said. “But there was no permanent harm done. The victim is recovering and the culprit is secured. But
our mandate is to ensure such an event does not reoccur.”
No more snooping around Crayton’s mansion then, Mark realized as two guards stood at the exit to his room once he entered. He stripped out of his grungy clothes and put on pants, a shirt, and a sport coat. His TV told him that he was supposed to leave soon to head to the Colosseum for Ethan’s fight.
As he finished with his final button, a dark shape loomed in his doorway, and Mark whipped around.
He broke into a smile.
Moses strode forward and wrapped him up in a crushing hug. Both his guards and Mark’s guards flipped out and raised their rifles toward the pair of them, shouting at them to step back.
“Christ almighty, we’re friends, you assholes!” Mark said. “Didn’t you watch the goddamn show?”
“Sorry, sir, but we can’t take any chances,” Mark’s guard said again. “We must remain in the room if you’d like to converse.”
Mark rolled his eyes. Moses seemed unfazed by it all.
“I just went by medical after my run, but the doc told me you’d discharged yourself. Ran into Carlo on the way out too. How the hell are you feeling?”
“Fine,” Mark said, raising his bandaged arm. “Drexophine is no joke.”
“That fight, my god,” Moses said, looking concerned. “I thought we were going to lose you. When you tried to block with your forearm. What were you thinking? I taught you better than that!”
“I know, I know,” Mark said. “But once you’re down there, it’s different. Trust me, you have to improvise.”
Moses stepped closer to him, and cast a wary eye at the guards, who stood still as stone near the front of the room.
“How … how was it?” Moses asked. “Are you okay? I mean really.”
Mark looked into Moses’s earnest, worried eyes. He saw Cassidy’s ruined face in his mind. Saw the sword sticking out of his back like a flagpole.
“You should forfeit, Moses,” Mark said in a hushed tone, putting his hand on the man’s hulking shoulder. “Your fight is in what, three days? Just go. Tear up the contract, give up the money. Go home and be with Nolan. Have a life.”
“It was that bad?” Moses said, looking puzzled, and the tiniest bit afraid. “Actually killing him?”
“I’ve killed a lot of people, Moses,” Mark sighed. “But none like that. I don’t wish that on you. I know you think this is your destiny. That you were born in the wrong century and meant to do something like this. But trust me, you don’t have to. You can just leave. You’re not trying to save your dying wife or escape a tidal wave of debt. You can just go.”
Moses looked confused.
“But … I can’t. I’ve fought, I’ve trained. All this time. I’m strong. I know the weapons inside and out. My armor is … this is what I’m supposed to be doing!” he sputtered.
“It’s a fantasy!” Mark said, raising his voice and gripping Moses by the shoulders. It caught the guard’s attention, but they didn’t make a move after Mark released him. “That’s all it is.”
“How can you say that?” Moses said, furrowing bushy eyebrows. “After all I’ve taught you this summer. I thought maybe some gratitude, support, advice. But now you’re trying to play mind games? Trying to clear the field?”
“No!” Mark said. “Not at all. Moses, I just want you to live. Or I want you not to become a murderer by the end of the week.”
The guards were muttering to themselves now. Mark realized he was probably taking this too far.
“If you don’t think I’m good enough, fine, but there’s no need for this,” Moses said, anger flashing in his eyes. “I thought you were better than this.”
He turned and stomped out of the room so forcefully the TV shook in its casing.
“Wait,” Mark said. “What do you know about what happened here? Who got attacked? Have you seen Aria?”
Moses stopped, but didn’t turn around.
“I don’t know anything,” he said. “And I haven’t seen her since your fight.”
Mark searched the compound as best he could before his guard escort shoved him in a limo to head into the desert for the evening’s fight. He couldn’t find Aria, but if she was hurt, apparently she was recovering, though not in medical. Mark knew it could have been any pair of combatants in an altercation; almost all of them were unstable. He thought of Manny’s assault on the guards. He remembered Ja’Von Jordan and Rusakov’s altercation during visitation weekend. Maybe they’d crippled each other. Wouldn’t that be nice?
After trying Brooke for the fifth time, he gave up. Chances were she was probably deep underground somewhere with her phone in a Faraday cage. He popped in his S-lens and checked the messages there. He found what he was looking for.
GLAD YOU’RE ALIVE. NEXT STEPS. TALK SOON -B
Always a way with words, that one.
Mark didn’t like the way he left things with Moses. The man seemed seriously hurt that Mark suggested he turn tail and flee the bracket. But couldn’t he see it was for his own good? Probably not, given his borderline fanatical love for everything about Crayton’s tournament, from the manor to the man himself. From the beginning, Moses had loved every aspect of the Crucible, and Mark told him to throw it all away. Still, Mark knew he wasn’t wrong. Moses, Aria, and all the rest should get as far away from this thing as possible. Mark had killed before, but Cassidy’s execution was … something else. Something not just unnecessary, but unholy. Something that would change him.
He hadn’t stopped the Crucible. Not yet. Now it would change everyone.
29
THE CROWD WAS ALREADY weeping by the time Ethan Callaghan strode out onto the sand. His emotional introduction video from the city finals had been refilmed and updated with his wife’s most recent prognosis, and featured the heart-breaking good-bye he’d shared as they parted for the last time at the end of visitation weekend. Ethan stared up at the giant screen and the enormous, looming faces of his three children. By that point there were tears in his eyes as well.
He was resplendent in his armor, which shined silver, red, and blue. A fearsome metal eagle stretched across the center of his kite shield, and his shortsword was polished to a mirror shine. His helmet in his hand, his blond hair whipped in the wind, and he looked like a cross between Captain America and a Crusades-era paladin.
“Now that’s a heroic-looking motherfucker,” Carlo said. Mark was sharing his booth with the Riveras, and was glad not to be alone. He’d hoped to find Moses or Aria at the Colosseum, but couldn’t locate either once he’d arrived.
Ja’von Jordan’s intro was … less heartwarming. It was mostly highlights of his brutal Prison Wars kills, and footage of him talking shit to the camera as his entourage spurred him on. His armor was black and royal blue, the colors of his old gang. Mark didn’t recognize his weapon. It looked like some sort of oversized cleaver, and Mark saw a few other oddly shaped blades slung across his back.
It was a strange experience to watch all of it from the stands. The crowd was still massive, and from the low-tier box, they were only a story or two above ground level, so most of the fans were still towering above them. As Crayton gave another speech and the countdown started, Mark desperately wanted to be somewhere, anywhere else.
Ethan’s wavy blond hair disappeared under his helmet. Jordan beat the scorpion on his breastplate and yelled some kind of war cry.
A second after zero hit, metal slammed into metal, and the crowd roared as one.
Ten minutes later, Jordan lay face up in the sand, hands wrapped around a slit throat. Ethan put a hand to his shoulder, which had been badly bitten by the monstrous cleaver, but he held his free arm aloft in victory, and crowd swelled to embrace him. Mark finally felt like he could breathe again. The kid had been brilliant, a born knight. Mark had sparred with him for ages, but he’d never seen Ethan fight quite like that before. But he understood. Everything changed when you were down there in the pit. You had to become something else, something better, or worse, than you’d ever been befo
re.
TIME SPED UP. THE week started to fly by and Mark could barely process it all, bouncing between the compound and the stadium every few hours, it felt like. Brooke was still out of contact, and Aria was still missing, which had put a permanent pit in Mark’s stomach. The sick feeling only left him during the fights, as there was simply no way to tear his attention away.
After Ethan’s fight, it was Soren Vanderhaven who took on Dan Hagelund. Mark had no love for either, but a dark part of him wanted Vanderhaven to die.
Her outfit was every bit as preposterous as imagined. She’d fully embraced her “hornet” symbol, and the armor was all yellow and black. But to call it “armor” was something of a misnomer.
There was plating, yes, but on top it covered only her shoulders and part of her generous chest, leaving her collar, arms, and all eight of her abs fully exposed. On bottom, it appeared Arthur had figured out how to make something resembled armored undergarments, which left long, tan thighs exposed before they disappeared into spiked knee boots. She didn’t wear a helmet at all, only an Amazonian circlet, and her curled blonde hair was billowing out of it. Her spear was much taller than she was, with a razor tip and ivy embroidery wrapped around all seven feet of the shaft.
It was a worrying amount of skin being exposed. When she was fighting in the city qualifiers? Sure, a pole-dancer’s outfit could work. But this Red Sonja bikini armor? It was insane. Carlo and the rest of the audience was drooling over her, sure, and maybe the plan was that Hagelund was supposed to be too. But the risk was senseless.
Hagelund was a fortress by comparison. Not an inch of skin exposed from head to toe, an enormous tower shield on one arm and a chained mace dangling from the other. Like Cassidy, his pauldrons were also his designated animal, though his were rhinos, meaning a long spiked horn protruded from each of his shoulders. In the rust colored plating, he looked terrifying.
Mark braced himself for a swift resolution as soon as the chime sounded.
Instead, Soren destroyed him.
She was blindingly fast, and used the nearly nonexistent plating to her full advantage, flipping out of harm’s way, cartwheeling over Hagelund’s armor to plant her spear in his calf. Mark lost count of how many time she’d gored him through the cracks of his armor by the end. His flail had proven borderline useless, and was as unwieldy as Moses had said. He’d struck himself by accident a few times whirling it around, and Soren had countered with more jabs into his plating.