by Scott Sigler
Messal was right — that was worse. “I suppose I should skip a shower?”
“Gredok the Splithead emphasized the word immediately, Elder Barnes.”
Quentin could demand the presence of Danny Lundy. But this wasn’t a contract issue and waiting for the Dolphin would serve only to further enrage Gredok.
Quentin pulled off his armor, leaving him clothed in only a sweaty Kool Suit and football shoes. He wasn’t mad at Messal anymore. In fact, Quentin wondered if his own eyes were flooding green.
“Lead the way, Messal.”
• • •
WHEN HE WAS ELEVEN years old, Quentin had been caught stealing food. He had broken into a restaurant during the night, cracking the atmosphere seal on a window and sliding his scrawny, illfed body through the narrow opening.
If he had just taken the chicken and ran, he might have made it. But he hadn’t eaten in two days. Hunger pinched his stomach, his chest, made him feel the fabric of his pants sliding across his skin when he walked, made him feel his cheeks stretch when he talked. Hunger hurt.
When he opened the walk-in refrigerator, that hunger overwhelmed him. He grabbed a sauce-smeared chicken breast and tore into it, biting off a too-large chunk. So good, so good! He barely even chewed before he swallowed. Even through his hunger, through his base instincts, a little clock was ticking inside his head. Later in life, that little clock would serve him well on the football field, giving him an innate ability to sense how much time he had before linemen closed in on him and took off his head. As a kid, however, he didn’t know how to listen to that clock, didn’t know what it meant.
When the lights flicked on, then he knew what it meant, but it was too late.
He stood there, frozen in the light just like a baby roundbug, barbecue sauce smearing his mouth, hands holding the chicken so tight that drops of grease beaded up on his knuckles and fell to the floor.
The restaurant owner, standing there, looking at him.
Caught.
Caught stealing food, just like his brother, Quincy.
Quincy, who had been hung in the town square.
“Put it down,” the man said.
Quentin opened both sauce-coated hands. The torn chicken breast fell to the floor with a splat. He tried to swallow ... and could not. He couldn’t breathe. His stomach churned with a new sensation — even at eleven years old, he’d seen enough death to know what awaited him if this larger, older, well-fed man called the cops.
The man looked Quentin up and down, slowly, eyes lingering on skinny legs, thin arms, the gaunt face. Quentin knew that expression, the same one some of the Deacons wore when they saw him in the street. The slow look that the Deacons gave the other boys, the boys who weren’t as fast as Quentin and couldn’t get away. Or, worse, the boys who were sent to the Deacons by their parents.
So, it wasn’t just the prospect of hanging that Quentin had to fear.
As Quentin’s mind scrambled for strategy, wondering if he should punch the man in the throat, or maybe try and trip him or hit his head with the door, the man spoke again.
“Give me a reason I shouldn’t turn you in, boy.”
Quentin started to talk, then choked. He coughed. The meat stuck in his throat. Thoughts of attacking the older man vanished, replaced by the singular, blank concept that he couldn’t breathe.
Unknown moments later, Quentin felt himself grabbed and roughly turned. A big hand hit him in the middle of the back. Still, breath wouldn’t come. Quincy Barnes died by hanging — his little brother Quentin would die by chicken.
The hand hit a second time. A glob of greasy food shot out of his mouth and landed on the floor. Air rushed through his ragged throat. Water filled his eyes. He felt himself pulled by the arm. The man’s hand, so strong!
Something hit the back of his legs. He dropped, found himself sitting in a wooden chair. Quentin looked up to see the restaurant owner staring down, not quite as angry as before.
“How old are you, boy? Sixteen?”
“Eleven,” Quentin said.
The man’s eyes widened. “You lie.”
Quentin shook his head. “No, Elder. I’m just big for my age.”
“Yes, but ... eleven? You’re taller than my son and he’s seventeen.”
Quentin didn’t know what to say, so he shrugged.
“So tall,” the man said. “And yet, you’re skinnier than my daughter who makes herself throw up.”
“She what?”
“Makes herself throw up.”
Quentin blinked. “You mean, like ... throw up food?”
The man nodded.
The thought filled Quentin with rage. Someone eating food, then throwing it up? On purpose? “Now you lie, Elder.”
The man’s eyes narrowed, then he laughed. “This makes you angry? A girl eating my delicious food, then wasting it?”
Quentin nodded.
The man stared at Quentin for a few moments more, eyes again moving up and down. Quentin’s skin crawled, but only for a moment. The man wasn’t looking at Quentin like the Deacons did. This was different.
“You are so thin,” the man said. “Why?”
Was this some kind of a trick question? “I don’t get to eat much. I ... I was robbed last week. I lost my wages.”
“Where are your parents?”
Quentin shrugged.
The man nodded. “You work in the mines? You are an orphan?”
Quentin said nothing. If the man knew he was an orphan, he could send Quentin right to jail for stealing food.
Jail tonight, then the gallows tomorrow.
“You stay here,” the man said. “I know your face now. If you run, I will send the police after you, do you understand?” The man walked out of the room.
That clutching feeling of fear again spread through Quentin’s chest and belly. What would this man make him do? Quentin thought about running, going back out the window, but where would he go? The man was right — Quentin’s height already drew too much attention. The police would have no trouble tracking down such a tall, skinny boy.
The man returned. He carried something.
A plate and a glass.
He put the plate down in front of Quentin. Three chicken legs, slightly charred, gleaming with barbecue sauce, filling the room with a mind-numbing, spicy odor. And in the glass ... milk.
“You broke my window,” the man said. “You stole my property. I have power over you now, you understand this?”
Quentin kept staring at the chicken. He couldn’t look away. “Yes, Elder.”
“You will call me Mister Sam,” the man said. “I am not part of that church. You will not address me as elder again, understand?”
Quentin nodded, wondering if the drool in his mouth would suddenly spill out like a fire hose.
“Good,” Mister Sam said. “Tomorrow, when you finish your work in the mines, you will come to me. I am going to teach you a lesson, orphan. You are going to work two jobs for the next year. I do not care that you are only eleven. You will work for me or I will turn you in. Do you agree to this deal?”
Quentin nodded. He had no choice.
“Good,” Mister Sam said. “You begin work tonight, fixing my window. But every day, before you begin work for me, you will eat. I will not be embarrassed by having a skinny boy working in my restaurant. What would people think if they saw you? They would think that my food was no good.”
Mister Sam reached into his pocket and pulled out a fork. He placed it on the table next to the plate.
“You don’t need a knife,” he said. “It is that moist, you see. It falls off the bone because I marinate it for days and slow-cook it, unlike the excuses that call themselves chefs in this neighborhood. Now, eat.”
Quentin’s hand shot out so fast that Mister Sam took a step back. Quentin attacked the chicken legs. The milk seemed to vanish on its own, a full glass one second, empty the next. Before Quentin finished the last bite, the glass was full again and there was a second plate — thi
s time, with two burger patties and meat-crusted ribs.
“Is it good?” Mister Sam said. “You like?”
“Best food ever,” Quentin said with a full mouth. “Eh-ver.”
Quentin remembered seeing Mister Sam smile for the first time. It would not be the last.
• • •
FOR THE NEXT FIVE YEARS, Mister Sam fed Quentin every day, turning a freakishly skinny boy into a seven-foot warhorse weighing nearly four hundred pounds. But for all the good things Mister Sam did, Quentin never forgot that feeling of terror the first time he laid eyes on the man. He never forgot what it was like to look at someone who could decide if you lived or died.
As Quentin looked up at Gredok the Splithead sitting atop his white pillar, he knew that feeling once again.
“This memo,” Gredok said. “This ... piece of information that Commissioner Froese sent you. Is it true?”
The voice, so cold, so calm. Sometimes, Gredok yelled. But Quentin had learned that when the Quyth Leader was really angry, angry enough to kill, he spoke in a quiet voice that seemed to suck hope out of the air and cast it down into the sewers.
“Gredok, listen. It’s not what you think, I—”
“I did not ask for explanations,” Gredok said. “I asked — Is. It. True? Did you meet with that Creterakian piece of garbage called Maygon?”
Quentin could barely breathe. He felt the cool air on his face, felt the room lights playing off his skin.
“Yes, sir,” he said. “Maygon approached me.”
“And you did not bother to tell me. I’m going to ask you why you did not bother to tell me, Barnes. I suggest you strongly consider giving me the truth. At this point in our relationship, I feel you should truly understand the depth of my disappointment. Any further ... lack ... of communication will not go well for you.”
Gredok stared down from his perch, his single eye six feet above Quentin’s face. Quentin wanted to look away, but he forced himself to maintain eye contact. Gredok had all the power, true, but even now Quentin Barnes would not show weakness.
“I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to cause problems,” Quentin said. “Maygon approached me. I didn’t seek him out. I didn’t contact the To Pirates.”
“You didn’t contact them, but you wish to play for them.”
Quentin shook his head. “No, Shama ... I mean, Gredok. Well, yes, I wanted to play for them before, when I was a kid, but I’m a Kraken now.”
“You don’t want to play for the To Pirates?”
Quentin shook his head again.
Gredok leaned forward, stared down. “So, when you did want to play for the Pirates, you didn’t contact them. And now that you do not want to play for them, you have contacted them. I’m sure you can understand my confusion, Barnes.”
Danny Lundy. Quentin felt his fear ratchet up another notch. Danny had already made contact with the Pirates. The agent couldn’t officially take an offer from another Tier One team, but he could begin a dialogue, show that Quentin was as interested in the Pirates as the Pirates were in him.
“That’s different,” Quentin said. “I know how it must look, Gredok, but—”
“You have no idea how it looks, Human. You see a football field, a football team and your own selfish desires. You do not see the honor game, the game of reputation. Of positioning. Of power. Kirani Kollok wants my quarterback. Kirani Kollok has been courting you before you even went to the Combine. You talked to his representative behind my back and did not tell me. Now your agent is talking to Kollok? I will tell you how this looks, Barnes. It makes me look like a fool. You are making me look like a fool.”
Quentin could maintain eye contact no more. Gredok was right. From an owner’s perspective, Gredok looked like an idiot.
“I apologize,” Quentin said. “Maygon told me that if anyone found out I was talking to him, I could have been suspended. I thought if I kept quiet about it, it would go away.”
“In my line of work, things do not go away on their own, Barnes. If you want something to go away, you have to make it go away.”
Quentin looked up, then nodded.
Gredok sat back. “And what did Maygon tell you?”
The cat was out of the bag. There was no point in skirting around the edges anymore. “It was my rookie season. Maygon said Kirani Kollok wanted to give me a three-year contract. He said that if I made sure the Krakens stayed in Tier Two, he would make me a To Pirate.”
Gredok stared. His eyelid closed. Quentin waited, still not knowing what to say.
The eye opened. “He wanted you to throw games?”
Quentin nodded.
“But you did not,” Gredok said. “You were a fool to keep this from me, Barnes, but I am not so blinded by anger I can’t see the truth. Although you played horribly at times in your rookie season, we won games. We did advance to Tier One. What is the Human phrase? Oh yes ... you played your ass off. But, if you ever intentionally played poorly to make my franchise lose, now is your chance to tell me. If you do not tell me now and I find out the truth later, the last thing you see will be radioactive dirt raining down to bury you in your shallow grave.”
Gredok leaned forward, leaned down. “Did you throw games, Barnes? Did you ever not give me your all?”
Quentin let out a breath he’d unknowingly held in. He was on familiar ground once again. “You already know the answer. I play to win. Every snap, every pass, every run.”
Gredok blinked, then leaned back. “I believe that you did not throw games. However, that does not change the fact that you have put me in a humiliating situation. I have been summoned by that red-toothed, officious bastard Froese. Me — summoned. You and I will travel to his ship tomorrow and watch him pass judgment like he is the Shamakath and I am the vassal. I must suffer this because of what you did. Therefore, this is your fault.”
Quentin nodded. Gredok was right.
“It could be worse,” Gredok said. “The rest of the league could know about it. As long as we keep this information between us, the Commissioner and the To Pirates, I can live with this loss of face. But if it were to become public ...”
Gredok’s voice trailed off, inviting Quentin to fill the silence.
“I sure as hell won’t tell anyone,” Quentin said. “I’ve learned my lesson, boss.”
“You won’t tell that Human reporter, Yolanda Davenport?”
“Why would I tell her?”
“The rumor is that she’s working on a cover story featuring you. I suggest you be very careful when you speak with her. Davenport has proven to be resourceful in her ways of gathering information.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning don’t let your adolescent hormones drive your decisions, Barnes. I have seen what an attractive female face can do to you hatchling Humans.”
Quentin waited. He didn’t want to say anything at all.
“Commissioner Froese sent me another memo,” Gredok said. “He wants to talk to Ju as well. It seems the murder of Grace McDermot has caught up with us.”
How easy it was to forget that deadly day, when Quentin, John, Rebecca, Choto, Mum-O-Killowe and Sho-Do-Thikit had risked their lives during a trip to Orbital Station One to save Ju. Having Ju around now seemed so normal, like he’d always been part of the Krakens.
“But Ju didn’t kill her. Gredok, you heard Anna Villani.”
“I know that. Truth does not matter here, Barnes. Proof does and we have none of it. I am not ready to let Froese talk to Ju. I will arrange something so that Ju can not attend. Ju is facing criminal charges as opposed to breaking a GFL regulation. Froese doesn’t have the same leeway he has with you, for breaking the rules pertaining to contract talks with another team. If he schedules a meeting and you miss it, he can suspend you for that. I can shelter Ju a while longer, but you and I must talk to Froese.”
Gredok did not sound like his usual, confident self.
“And what can happen at this meeting?”
“Froese is the empe
ror of the little empire known as the GFL, Barnes. He can suspend you for a game. Possibly even for the season.”
Gredok’s tone, his body language — both so subtle they were barely recognizable, but those tells showed Quentin that Gredok had no power in this situation and that he hated that fact. Quentin was getting better at reading his boss.
“I have more bad news,” Gredok said. “We did not get all of the rookies. I was able to sign Cheboygan, Rich Palmer and Tim Crawford.” Black wisped over Gredok’s cornea. “Regat the Unobtrusive will play for the Yall Criminals. Gladwin and Cooperstown signed with Wabash. Gloria Ogawa out-bid me, damn her eye. But I will get us defensive backs in free agency, I assure you.”
Quentin nodded. Gredok had been beaten out for three players. That would not sit well with the control-obsessed Quyth Leader, especially when he’d lost two of those players to Ogawa, his nemesis.
“And Tara the Freak?” Quentin said.
Gredok waved a pedipalp as if the question didn’t even merit his time. “Of course. No one else wanted your misshapen mutant.”
“Thank you for trusting me on this one, Gredok. Tara will pay dividends, I promise.”
“Trust is not a word I think you should discuss with me for a long time, Barnes. Now leave. I grow weary of dealing with your impossible level of wasted intellect.”
Another sigh escaped Quentin’s chest. That was a tell of his, but he didn’t care. He’d live to play another day. Quentin turned and walked out of the office.
8
PRESEASON WEEK TWO:
JANUARY 8 – 14, 2684
FOR THE SECOND WEEK OF PRESEASON, the entire team moved up to the Touchback. Quentin had insisted. Two practices a day, plus an evening conditioning session. Some of the Humans and HeavyG complained, defensive end Alexsandar Michnik the loudest, but Quentin didn’t give anyone an option.
Winning a title had been a worthy goal, but had seemed somehow theoretical. Not anymore. Everyone knew the Krakens could take it all — if they worked hard enough, and they got a little lucky.