by Paul Tassi
Soren seemed momentarily caught off guard by how fast Mark was in his armor, which was much lighter than it looked. She barely pirouetted out of the way of his straight thrust, and though she tried to jab him in the back, Mark flung his arm out behind him and his elbow knocked away the spear. He countered with a quick kick to Soren’s leg, which destabilized her, and as she hit the ground he tried to pin her there with an overhead stab that she was barely able to dodge.
She came back to her feet and jabbed at Mark again and again with the spear. He was able to deflect almost all the shots, but one found a gap in his side, and the spearhead came back red. She tried to go back in for the same wound, but Mark grabbed the spear and wrenched her forward. He tried to land a headbutt, but was amazed when Soren did a complete front flip, and landed with her legs wrapped around his neck. She used her momentum to swing herself around and fling Mark head over heels. As he flipped, her legs lost their grip, taking his helmet with them. He landed on his already concussed head, now exposed to the elements. Soren tumbled out of the move with ease, and gave a little bow to the roaring crowd, who had yet to see anything quite like that in the tournament to date. She kicked his detached helmet away with her boot, and dove back in with the spear, but her showboating had allowed Mark a split second to recover. Without the helmet, his field of vision was better, and it felt like his lungs were breathing twice as much air. Mark swatted the metal spear shaft away as sparks showered the sand, and tried to dive in toward her exposed stomach once again, sitting there like a tan bullseye. But again, she anticipated the move, dodging and countering with a dangerous thrust that glanced off his shoulder pauldron.
Soren lunged forward again, causing Mark to dance back a few paces, but she dug her spear into the ground and used it to vault herself up and over Mark’s back in a dazzling athletic display. Fortunately, Mark had seen Soren flipping over combatants one way or another for a while now, and so as soon as she landed, he made sure he planted an iron boot into her midsection, still bruised from Moses’s fight. The blow knocked the wind out of her and caused her to roll back, barely able to retain her grip on the spear.
After being put on his back foot the whole match, confidence was starting to flood back into Mark, while Soren seemed to be scrambling to adjust. He lunged forward with a pointed stab at her exposed breastbone, an angle that could drive the tip of his sword straight to her heart.
Soren didn’t block, she dodged. Insanely quickly. So fast that Mark and his sword sailed right past her, uselessly cutting through the air. Mark watched her spin around, spear in hand, as he stumbled a few feet past where she’d been. He ground himself to a halt and reversed his momentum to try and fly back toward her with a recovery counter.
By the time he turned around, he saw Soren gripping the spear low, and whipping it in a diagonal upward arc toward him. He was a solid eight feet away from her, but the spear was long. So goddamn long.
He felt a line of something hot and bright enter his vision as the spear passed by his face. It was a strange sensation, and he watched, confused, as the eyes of the fans in the front few rows widened beyond belief, their hands clasped over their mouth in horror.
Mark felt something wet tricking down his face. His vision was blurry and warped, like the all the angles of the world had just gone a bit wrong. Time seemed to slow to a crawl. He watched the spear continue to sail back up into the air, this time with a thin arc of red goo with it.
Then the pain hit. All at once. Like he’d dipped his face in boiling oil.
That’s when Mark understood his eye was gone.
He watched the joy spread across Soren’s face as she started sprinting toward him. He raised his gauntleted hand to his ruined left eye, and on the monitor above, saw a shot of his bloody, terrified face from one of the drone cameras.
The pain was excruciating, but he clenched his teeth and forced that part of his brain to shut off. At least for the next few seconds. If he didn’t, his eye would be the least of his concerns.
Mark’s head swam. He knew he was about to lose consciousness. His fingers fumbled with his sword’s grip as he desperately tried not to drop it in the sand and remain standing upright. Despite his best efforts, he stumbled backward and nearly fell.
Soren left her feet, her spear a silver blur in his vision. He pushed off his own back foot and ran out to meet her. He summoned all his remaining strength to also go airborne, trying to twist out of the path of the spear, while bringing his sword around toward her with a two-handed grip.
Mark hit the ground with his ears ringing, his face on fire and the rest of his body numb. The crowd was a massive, fuzzy ocean of gold and black shapes and white noise. Mark spat out coarse sand and slowly rolled over.
He found himself looking at the blank, blue-eyed visage of Soren Vanderhaven, with his blade lodged in the side of her skull. Blood matted her wavy blonde hair and stained the sand around her head. Her glass gaze was cast into oblivion.
Mark followed her into the darkness, in that moment not knowing or caring whether he’d emerge again.
MARK FOUND HIMSELF ADRIFT in a freezing ocean somewhere between unconsciousness and the real world. He was vaguely aware of being carried, but it felt like he was floating. He tried to blink, but half his face didn’t seem to work, and it took all his strength to even flex his fingers and toes. Heavy sedatives, traditional painkillers. Who knew what else. He was cold, and could see what looked like a burning ship on the horizon, but it flickered in and out of existence. He had won, hadn’t he? Yes, yes he had.
Eventually he came to rest in a dark room. Or at least it looked dark, with his vision impaired. He finally was able to lift his left arm, and found an enormous bandage plastered over half his face.
“No, no, no,” a deep voice said, and gently placed his hand back down. Something sharp pricked a vein, and he sunk into the icey ocean again. In the distance, he could hear shouting and wailing. Hundreds of thousands of voices. Millions. He felt like he was sailing down the River Styx to hell.
Eventually, his mind snapped back into focus. This time, a familiar face hovered above him. Gideon.
“What’s going on?” he said, his tongue cotton.
“We’re extracting you and moving on Crayton,” Gideon said. “You’ve been out for about six hours, and we just got the greenlight. He held up a flexscreen, which shone brightly in the darkness and made Mark’s remaining pupil shrink. As his eyes came into focus, it was an official-looking rendition warrant for Crayton full of digital signatures.
“Zhou testified,” Mark said, hardly believing things were possibly going right. Gideon nodded.
“Said he told you the same story. Hell of a tale, wasn’t it? Combined with the rest of the case you and Brooke worked up, it’s enough to move on. We’re taking him in, and shutting this shit down.”
“Where is Brooke?” Mark asked.
“Debrief. And that’s where you’ll be once they bounce you out of recovery. It … uh, looks worse than it is,” Gideon said, gesturing at the left half of Mark’s face.
Mark pawed at the bandage again but felt nothing more than a dull throbbing.
“Is it—” he began.
“You lost the eye,” Gideon said matter-of-factly. “I think we all underestimated that girl. Sorry to put you in harm’s way like that. But the good news is they’ll give you one of those new cybernetics. Permanent S-lens, plus UV, infrared, optic zoom, all sorts of shit. Few weeks, you’ll be good as new. Better, even.”
Mark sat up and realized for the first time Gideon was flanked by a half dozen armored soldiers all wearing full helmets flickering with internal displays. They wore no patches.
“Strike team?” he asked.
Gideon nodded.
“Leading the charge myself. Crayton isn’t dumb enough to put up a fight though, so I don’t expect any problems.”
Mark swung his legs over the side of the bed. The room was dark, but he could still tell they were in the Colosseum somewhere. Where exac
tly had Gideon hidden him away?
“I’m coming,” he said. “Give me a kit.”
Gideon shook his head.
“Not necessary, and not possible. Mark, you just had your goddamn eye sliced out of your skull a few hours ago. You’re in no condition to suit up.”
Mark pointed to a trio of empty drexophine vials on the table.
“You know what that is, right? That means I’m ready to do fucking anything. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to miss seeing the look on that bastard’s face when we bring him in at last.”
Gideon looked nervous at the steel in Mark’s voice. He held up a finger and backed into the darkness to chat with one of the helmeted soldiers out of earshot.
“Alright,” Gideon said, returning to his bedside. “I know how much you’ve put into this thing.”
He cocked his head and a soldier came forward and presented him with a short shotgun and a tactical helmet. Gideon handed him a tiny case.
“Your S-lens,” he said, as Mark popped it into his right eye. “But as soon as this is done, you’re on a hexocopter to a military hospital. And, uh, watch your damn depth perception,” Gideon said with a smirk. But there was something in his eyes that looked sad. Mark thought he must look particularly gruesome. He’d worry about the eye, or lack thereof, later. This was a moment he’d been looking forward to for months now. Crayton was finished. CMI would be broken apart. The Crucible would crumble.
Mark wore the helmet with a few light pieces of tac armor over his bloodstained arena undersuit, and stalked down the halls of the ghostly quiet Colosseum. Confused-looking Glasshammer guards approached them left and right, but Gideon held up his warrant and pressed on with impunity. Mark gripped the shotgun tightly and wondered if he’d get a chance to shoot Wyatt Axton in the face at last. Mark wished Brooke was there so they could celebrate the moment together. For what had essentially been a two-man operation, what they’d achieved was nothing short of a miracle. He’d take her out for drinks afterward, he supposed, and he hoped his face wasn’t as badly mangled as it appeared to be.
“Target is in his arena office,” Gideon said, consulting a map on his flexscreen. “Up the stairs on the left. Short hallway. Prepare to breach.”
Mark was positively shivering with excitement. He felt fresh blood tricking out from under his bandaged face, but he ignored it. He could push forward a little longer, just to see this end at last.
The team hustled up the stairs and stalked down a hallway that ended in a pair of double doors. Right away, two soldiers knelt and planted a micro-explosive in the center, large enough to blow the heavy duty e-lock clean through.
Something flickered in Mark’s vision. A call pushed straight through his S-lens with no warning. The floating screen was fuzzy, like the signal was being masked by interference. He could only see bits of a face.
“Charges set,” soldier said. “Echoscan says only one body inside. It’s him.”
The image in Mark’s eye shifted to become nearly clear for a moment. Mark’s heart stopped. Zhou.
“They’re [static] going to kill me, Mark. They did not want to hear what I had to [static] say.”
“What? What are you talking about?” Mark said.
Gideon frowned at him, confused about who he was talking to.
“The Agency lies, Mark. I [static] told you. You are a pawn, once again. They gave me to Glasshammer. I’ve hacked their comms.”
“Counting down in ten, nine—” a soldier began.
“Execution seems imminent [static], but it no longer matters. Things are in motion that cannot be stopped. Find me when you want revenge for what they’ve done to you, if [static] either of us are still alive. I will have the last laugh either way.”
The feed went black.
Mark’s head was spinning. Zhou was saying … he was in Glasshammer custody? And they were going to kill him? That was impossible, and absurd.
“Gideon,” Mark said, turning to try and explain what he’d just seen to him, “I—”
His thoughts were cut off by an explosion, and two soldiers kicked the office door open. The team poured in behind them, and Mark was forced to follow.
What the hell is—
Cameron Crayton sat peacefully at his sprawling desk, looking over a flexscreen, undisturbed by the smoke from the bomb, the wooden splinters dotting his carpet or the heavily armored tactical team in his office. Wyatt Axton was nowhere to be found. Something cold creeped down Mark’s spine. He frantically tried to redial Zhou’s blocked number from his S-lens.
Crayton rolled his eyes.
“Really, Gideon, was that necessary?”
Mark turned to his former handler.
“How does he know your—”
He saw a thin wet coat of tears in Gideon’s brown eyes. And that was when he knew.
Mark turned and tried to fire his shotgun at Crayton, but the weapon clicked uselessly, and the man didn’t even flinch. Instantly, Mark’s body twisted and turned as three tasers were jammed into his back and sides by the soldiers. Something hard and metal cracked across the back of his skull. A million thoughts flooded through his mind in the last millisecond before unconsciousness, and absolutely none of them made sense.
43
MARK WAS BACK ON the hill. The walls of the compound had crumbled. Out in the desert, enormous dust tornadoes drifted lazily around, feeding into the rolling red clouds above them.
In front of Mark, the giant willow tree was dead, blackened, burned to a crisp. In the grass around it were slaughtered corpses, splayed open and rotting. Whatever creatures they once were, they were no longer recognizable. The ground was just heaps of bone and flesh and gore.
The only sound was the wind. Mark could smell a thousand odors, all of them horrible. He turned behind him, but the lake was bare. The mansions lay in ruins like the ringed wall. Ahead, the tree looked like a dark, black crack in the sky.
Above it in the clouds was a shape. Just a shadow, swimming endlessly. A shark, as large as a warship, drifting a thousand feet above the earth. A black shape full of menace and dread. Mark couldn’t breathe. He was drowning in the open air. He was—
Awake.
The room was dimly lit, but as it came into focus, Mark realized where he was. Crayton’s private box in the Colosseum. The windows were tinted to pitch black, and there wasn’t anything visible outside. Mark could hear absolutely nothing, and the weight of the silence told him the room was at least temporarily soundproofed. Mark rolled his head around. What had happened? Had he—? Had Gideon just—?
He was restrained. Metal cuffs clipped into a plush armchair and his feet were bound. He felt scratchy growth on his face, which had been clean-shaven moments earlier. Or had it been hours? Days? He saw a pale reflection in the glass ahead and saw that he no longer had a bandage on his ruined eye, but a large black patch instead.
A shadow glided across the black windows in front of him. The shark. The man. In the silence, his voice was cold and clear.
“Wyatt, turn the lights up. It’s the owner’s box, not a dungeon.”
The lights brightened a bit and Mark’s pupils shrank. It was indeed Cameron Crayton standing in front of him. He wore a black suit, his hands stuck in his pockets.
“Welcome back, Mark. I’m sorry for keeping you under for so long, but we are on a timetable, and I just couldn’t have you causing any more problems. Sadly, our time together is drawing to a close.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Mark spat out. His mouth was dry. He looked down and saw that he was in his armor undersuit for some reason. A fresh one. Panic started to constrict his throat.
What the fuck is going on?
“I’m sure you have many questions,” Crayton said, his voice silk. “And there are some answers you’ll need to move forward. So I’m more than happy to oblige.”
Mark choked out a laugh.
“So what, you blackmailed Gideon into giving me up? You fucking moron. He’s just a cog. The Agency wi
ll send another team. Five teams, after what we’ve got on you now.”
“Ah,” Crayton said, raising his finger. “I suppose you’re referring to Major Zhou. He was annoyingly helpful for a Ministry operative. Usually they’re quite quiet, as I’m sure you know. I guess you hold a special place in his heart.”
Crayton wagged his finger, and the black glass of the tinted outer window became a screen. In it, Zhou was in an empty room, sitting across from a table with a mic. He was rehashing a version of the same story he’d told Mark. His recorded testimony. Had Gideon seriously handed it over to Crayton? Mark would kill him.
“… spent a year beating other children to death for his masters. He was their prize dog, and they kept selling him for huge amounts of money as his record grew. He destroyed every other child put in his path …”
Suddenly, Mark remembered. Zhou had called him. Warned him what was about to happen. Said that it was Glasshammer that had him. What the hell was—
“You’re still not understanding,” Crayton said, flipping off the video. “No one is coming. Because the CIA doesn’t know about any of this. They never did.”
Mark couldn’t process what he was saying. It made no sense at all.
“There was never a mission, Mark,” Crayton said flatly.
Something sick and cold took root in Mark’s stomach and began to spread through his entire body. He felt like he was falling, drowning, all at once.
“What are you—” he began.
“I’ve been developing the Crucible for ages now. Prison Wars was just a trial run, to prove to myself, and the world, that America was ready for something that was forever thought too ‘brutal’ for the airwaves. My assessment was correct.
“But it couldn’t just be a bunch of random citizens flung into the ring. I needed to tell a story. I needed the Crucible to matter. Some characters were easy to come by. I’d cultivated a few in Prison Wars who were perfectly suitable monsters who only needed to be released from prison, a simple feat. The rest came out of the woodwork, and there were a few shining stars, Chase, Soren, and your Aria, of course. But I needed someone else. I needed you.