The Games

by Ted Kosmatka

When the change came, it was not what he’d expected. The morning was just beginning to assemble itself in the windows when he heard it. It was faint, at that razor’s edge between imagination and perception. Again, he chose to believe. The screen was still dark and gray, but now, through the speakers, the muffled crash of waves could be heard.

  Chandler smiled. He’d done his part. Pea would have to do the rest.

  THE FIRING team took up their positions. After what had happened to Tay, Silas was taking no chances. They wouldn’t make the mistake of underestimating the gladiator again.

  The creature moved around the pen in a storm of agitation, kicking up tufts of straw as it strode the enclosure. Its wings were folded back out of the way, like the ears of a hissing cat. It didn’t like all the new faces on the other side of the bars.

  When Silas gave the signal, the first shot was fired. The gladiator was fast, but it wasn’t that fast. The dart struck it in the lower torso just beneath the line of the rib cage. The problem, however, with tranquilizing an animal with opposable thumbs is that a dart can then very quickly be plucked free before the medication has a chance to insinuate itself into the tissue. The gladiator howled in rage as it flung the half-empty dart back at them.

  The second dart struck the creature low on the side of the hip. It howled again and spun away, tearing at the projectile. As its back became exposed, a third dart struck it high between its shoulders, just inside the curve of a wing. This dart the gladiator couldn’t reach. There were a few moments of tension when Silas actually thought the gladiator might hurt itself in its rage.

  It flung itself against the bars again and again, reaching through toward them and raking the air with its blood-red talons. Spittle flew from its mouth. It screeched. Slowly, then, the drugs took effect, and the creature began to calm. It sat.

  Among the crowd of staring faces, the creature’s eyes somehow found Silas. They bore into him, looking for an answer. Silas met the gaze head-on and did not falter. You killed a man, Silas thought. It was an accusation.

  I am what you made me, Silas imagined the reply.

  The creature slumped to the floor.

  “Not yet,” Silas said. “Let’s make sure.”

  Another dart was pumped into the gladiator’s side. Vidonia had told him it could metabolize three darts without a problem. Four would be pushing it. And five—well, five darts and the gladiator might not be waking up, ever.

  They waited a full three minutes before entering the cage, and even then, the shooters were cocked and loaded again, four shots or no. The lift rolled in, and the straps were attached. The creature was raised slowly off the floor, and its head lolled back, dragging through the straw as it was wheeled toward the waiting truck.

  Here and there, thick globs of blood stuck to the straw. Probably more than could be accounted for from the darts, Silas thought. He stopped the lift with a raised hand. The gladiator’s black skin had hidden the blood well. Dark on dark, its legs showed dried flakes of crimson that flicked away with the stroke of his hand. It wasn’t much, but it was there. He inspected the creature closely, looking for a wound that could explain the presence of dried blood. The creature stirred groggily, and the guns came up again, but Silas held his hand up. He didn’t want to risk another injection unless a life was in danger.

  He continued his inspection, going over every inch of the unconscious body. Nothing.

  A black hand flexed. That was enough. The shooters eyed Silas, and this time he motioned for the lift to continue. The wail of the lift’s backup indicator eased the tension on the firing team’s trigger fingers, if not their faces.

  The transport truck was sleek, white, and enormous. As the lift approached with its load, the men standing behind it stepped away.

  The panel walls had been reinforced with interlocking steel beams, and the interior cage door had a triple-locking system. No doorknob. Silas had made sure of that.

  The lift eased its payload inside and lowered the truss to the floor of the cage. Men with grim faces and fast hands removed the straps. They jumped to the cement, and the door slid shut with a loud clang.

  There was a collective sigh of relief from the men. Job well done.

  Silas checked the lock, and when he found it secure, he stepped back inside the gladiator enclosure for a better look at the blood-spattered straw. It didn’t make a trail of a kind he could follow but instead seemed to be scattered randomly around the enclosure, as if the creature had been bleeding sporadically for some time. He sifted through the straw with his legs, scanning with his eyes. It didn’t help that he wasn’t sure at all what he was looking for. He gave special attention to the area against the far wall, where the creature tended to sleep, but he found no evidence of blood. He searched until his eyes were tired and his fingers chafed from scooping through the coarse piles. He stopped. He may not have known what he was looking for, but he knew it wasn’t here. When he turned, the loaders were staring at him.

  “Is everything buttoned down?” he asked.

  “Nice and tight,” James Mitchell answered in a voice so low and gravelly that it hurt Silas’s throat just to hear it.

  Silas looked over at the man standing near the cab of the truck. James was tall and broad and square, seemingly built of repurposed cinder blocks; and blown vocal cords aside, he was the man running the show. It was upon his capable shoulders that the responsibility of transport fell. He was serious and technical, ex-military, and he looked at every contract assignment as special ops. Which was exactly the way Silas liked it.

  “It looks like we’ve got our hands full with this one, Dr. Williams,” James said, as Silas approached.

  “Can’t disagree with you. A little heavier than last time.”

  “We can handle it. We’ll be taking all the necessary precautions. Your baby will be arriving safe and sound sometime tomorrow evening.”

  “Not my baby,” Silas said.

  “I tried that once, too,” James intoned. “Didn’t work for me, either.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  So tell me why we’re driving again?” Vidonia was busy blow-drying in the bathroom, bent at the waist, lush hair alternately dripping to the floor and flying away as the hot air blasted over her scalp.

  “Precaution,” Silas said. “And security. We’re expected to fly, and there have been problems in the past. This year we’re trucking the gladiator to the location. We can bring along a bigger support team that way, and the whole thing is much less conspicuous.”

  “Is that what we are, support?”

  Silas sat up on the bed, looking for his pants. The alarm clock said five-thirty, and the shades were still dark.

  “No, we’re the talent; hasn’t Ben told you?”

  “He said they believed in keeping the talent happy around here.”

  “They do.”

  “A three-hundred-mile road trip in a sports car isn’t my idea of happiness.”

  “Not even with me at the wheel?”

  “And you aren’t the talent, anyway,” she said. “Well, at least not in that way.” She gave him a mischievous look. “I thought you were the boss.”

  “Do you usually find yourself waking before the crack of dawn in your boss’s bed?”

  She flung her hair behind her, showering him with a mist of tiny droplets. “Well, not typically. Only about every third boss or so.” She smiled as she stepped back into the bedroom.

  He pulled a fresh white shirt from its plastic sleeve in the closet and pulled the triple-extra-large over his head, buttoning the sleeves but leaving the collar loose. He wrapped his wrist in a gold Rolex, a conflicted concession to his status.

  For Silas, anything that cost more than an average man earns in six months didn’t just smack of pretension, it rang of it. It veritably gonged. But the watch rivaled the engineering tolerances of biological systems; it ran perfectly and would continue to do so, without a battery, long after time ceased to be a matter of his concern. He was genuinely interested by such eff
iciency, and this provided the thin veneer of justification that he required.

  “Nice watch,” she said.

  He cringed. That’s it, I’m selling it.

  “What are you going to do in the years the contest isn’t held in the continental United States?” she asked. She had the dress around the curve of her hips now, pulling it up.

  His confusion showed.

  “You can’t very well truck the contestant to Europe,” she said. “You’ll have to fly then.”

  “Oh, the event is always held in the U.S.”

  “Really,” she said, as if she’d never thought about it before. “I suppose they have been. How did you get the other countries to agree to that?”

  “Last time’s winner gets home-court advantage. It was how the rules were written up at the beginning, and since we’ve never lost, we’re home court.”

  “I bet the other countries are sorry they signed up for that.”

  “I’m very certain they are. It pumps a lot of money into the local economy, not to mention American bioengineering companies.”

  When they finished dressing, they carried the luggage to the car. Two small suitcases apiece.

  “I think you’re the only woman I’ve ever met who knows how to pack light,” he said, as he wedged the final bag under the hatch.

  “Look at this thing,” she said, gesturing to the dark blue vehicle. “I didn’t want to spend three hundred miles with luggage banging against my kidneys. There’s only so much room in this car, and I decided I’d use my share for breathing, not extra underwear.”

  “So you’re leaving your underwear behind, eh? Talk like that might get you a promotion.”

  “Works every time.”

  Four minutes later, they were merging onto empty highway and the sun was bleeding up from the east, coloring the traffic in reds and shadows. The road felt good beneath him, as it always seemed to at the start of a road trip. But they had to make one quick stop before they were free.

  When they arrived at the compound, Silas saw James Mitchell standing in the back lot, trying to assemble the convoy. Silas pulled slowly alongside the man. In Silas’s opinion, “inconspicuous” was hardly the word that jumped to mind when he looked toward the line of trucks and vans.

  “Having problems?”

  “No more than usual,” James answered, appearing not at all surprised to see them. “Most of these egghead types wouldn’t have lasted two days in the service. Nobody around here seems to know how to keep a schedule.”

  “That’s what you’re for, James.”

  Silas looked around at the chaos. The big white rig sat idling at the front of the loose collection of vehicles. It was pathetic.

  “You seem to be taking this rather well,” Silas said. He would have expected James to be throwing a fit by now with the way things were shaping up.

  “I was counting on it.”

  Silas raised an eyebrow.

  “Oh, our special traveler is already well down the road. Left last night, in fact. This big cluster-fuck is a decoy.” James gave him a wink. “Just in case.”

  “Do they know that?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Well, your secret is safe with me, but you won’t mind if I don’t stick around here to watch the proceedings.”

  James smiled and waved him on, but as Silas began to pull forward, James seemed to change his mind and motioned for them to stop. Jogging up to the car, he tossed a video cube into Silas’s lap.

  “Just so we can get ahold of you,” he said.

  Silas picked up the small, square video communication device. “Do you think you’ll need to?”

  “You’d better hope not.”

  THE OPEN road called. Silas answered with a stomp of his right foot that sat Vidonia back in her seat. He knew it was juvenile, but he couldn’t stop himself. Anyway, he didn’t actually break the speed limit; he just liked seeing how quickly he could get there. He let up on the gas pedal when Vidonia’s grip on his knee became painful. He found that her grip eased in direct proportion to the angle of his tachometer needle.

  “Boys and their cars,” she said, shaking her head.

  He rolled the window all the way down and laid his arm along the spine of the door. It was one hell of a morning. The sun rose high and hot into cloudless sky, and by noon they’d traded the cloying humidity of California for the dry heat of the high desert. Silas turned the air-conditioning off. The wind was enough, and besides, Silas liked the way it made Vidonia’s hair dance like a living thing, like she was some ironic, beautiful Medusa.

  “This heat reminds me of home,” she said. “Except without palm trees.”

  “Is that good or bad?”

  “Both. But home had beaches going for it.”

  “Now I’m picturing you in a bathing suit.”

  “You’re assuming I wear one.”

  “Now, there’s a new image in my head.”

  “That was my intent.”

  “I could get used to this.”

  “To what?”

  “To you. Being here.”

  “You haven’t even eaten my cooking yet.”

  “You cook, too?”

  “Seafood is my specialty.”

  “So you’re that rare woman I’ve heard legend of. A woman who can both perform a Southern blot analysis and grill up a grouper?”

  “Oh, you have no idea,” she said.

  “How did I get so lucky?”

  She was quiet for a long while, and Silas suspected that when she spoke, it would be something significant. Ten more minutes passed in silence, and he knew it would be something bad.

  Finally, in a soft voice that almost drowned in the wind, she said, “There’s someone back home. His name is John.”

  “That’s odd,” he said, keeping his voice even. “That’s just what I’d figured his name would be. Or something like it. Jim, maybe, or Jake. Some old name, something common. I’m usually wrong on hunches, though. Funny, this is a time I’d be right.” He’d known since the beach, when he’d asked her if she was married. The answer had been no, but he’d sensed there was something more she’d almost said.

  She looked out into the desert. He almost spoke but stopped himself with the question on the tip of his tongue. He wouldn’t let her off the hook. What she’d say without him asking would be more important than the response to any question. Questions—no matter how carefully worded—always carry their own baggage of expectation, an unspoken optimal response that the asked person is aware of. The answer then becomes about proximity to that response. How close are you willing to come?

  “He’s different from you.”

  That was something, at least. “How are we different?” He kept his eyes on the road.

  “The important ways.”

  He looked at her then, and her hair was dancing, reaching into the wind.

  “I should tell you we live together … or that we … lived together before I came here.”

  “You’re close?”

  “Close, sure. He slept right on the other side of the bed most nights. Other nights, the couch. Or wherever.”

  “The couch. I guess he is different from me.”

  “I told you.” She was still looking out into the desert and didn’t offer more, didn’t make any promises. John, he thought. Just an old, common name. Old, common-issue. Let it be. Let it be. He forced himself not to ask more.

  PHOENIX. A place of cactus and rock and mountains and heat.

  Phoenix is a place without history. It is new and air-conditioned. It defies the desert. On the side of the highway, as decoration, colored pebbles lie arranged in intricate Indian designs, pastels and browns and pinks, alternately anthropomorphic or zooplastic—strange totems and zigzags—all of it sloping upward and away from the road, an artistic canvas that five thousand pairs of eyes might see every day. And it goes on for miles, glass buildings and blue skies and mountains looming in the background.

  The city isn’t so much surrounded by
mountains as interwoven with them. But it is not a mountain city, not really.

  Phoenix itself is flat. Phoenix is desert. The houses and roads and buildings have accreted between the rocky outcrops of higher ground. Human habitation sits everywhere in the lee of stone, as if the city were a liquid poured onto this jagged landscape and had found level.

  Silas and Vidonia arrived in the downtown area at about three. The hotel, the Grand Marq, wasn’t hard to find. Vidonia dug their reservations from the clutter of the glove compartment. Two reservations, two rooms. She put one back and let him check in. The desk clerk was more than happy to cancel the second reservation. This week, the hotel could probably book the room almost immediately at triple the normal rate.

  Walking back outside to the car, Silas saw where the first of the protesters had assembled their tents along the stony median between the parking lot and the road.

  There is hot, and there is hot. And there is Arizona in the summer. In Phoenix, the heat is a ten-pound hammer.

  A dozen men and women stood sweating in the sun with their signs, but he knew their numbers would grow as the competition date approached.

  The protesters came in all types. There were your animal-rights people, anti-genetics people, anti-technology people, and, of course, your everyday basic religious fanatics. There were also game puritans protesting the corporate sponsorship of the Olympics. And then there were your run-of-the-mill crazies. All united by their desire to see the gladiator event shut down.

  That they stood in the Phoenix sun was testament to their commitment.

  He knew for certain those tents had been erected illegally on city property, but the Olympic Commission had learned from experience that it was best to ignore them rather than to have them removed. The protest groups craved conflict, and the last thing the program needed was a crowd of riled malcontents screaming police brutality into a hundred rolling news cameras. The commission wanted the media circus to focus on what went on inside the dome, not in the parking lots.

  Silas climbed behind the wheel and circled the parking lot, making a point to swing near the street. As he slowed past the group of protesters, the words on the back of one woman’s shirt caught his attention.