by Cheree Alsop
Not home, I reminded myself. Home was with Brie, and with Nikko, Jayce, and Dr. Ray. This will never be home.
I sat up slowly, holding my ribs against the sharp ache that stole my breath. Blood caked the side of my face from a gash above my eyebrow. I felt it gingerly. It was about an inch below the one Dr. Ray had sewn. I remembered Brie’s soft voice upon finding me awake the first time. I took a shallow breath to keep futile tears from burning my eyes.
Then I remembered the cameras. I glanced up at the corner of the room where a tiny security camera had been recessed behind a thick plate of glass. I wondered if they could see me. The way Iggy and the others had perused the database, I knew it wouldn’t be hard to find my cell. I pictured Brie watching me the way we had the young Galdoni boy while he stared at nothing. I shook my head. She wouldn’t see me like that. Now I was living for her.
I pushed off the pallet that made a sorry excuse for a bed and rose slowly to my feet. I stretched, pretending not to feel the sharp pain of the gashes across my chest from the guards’ hungry whips, or the bruises that covered my back and wings, bringing to life the pain of my old scars and what would be many new ones. I grabbed the plate from the floor and ate the meager crusty bread and mystery meat like it was one of Brie’s sandwiches. After drinking the stale water that had been shoved in a dirty bowl after the food, I got to work. There was a lot to do, and I wasn’t in any shape to do it yet.
I began with push-ups, reminding my sore muscles what they used to be used for before I went to school. Lying back on the floor to do crunches with my wings out opened up the crusted gashes across my chest, so I did them shallowly and concentrated instead on the burn of the muscles across my stomach. I then picked up my pallet and leaned it against the wall like I had done so many thousands of times before. I wrapped my knuckles in the pitiful, dirty blankets that barely deserved the name, and proceeded to pound my frustrations out on the boards.
My body fell into its old cadence; my muscles remembered the punches, blocks, spins, kicks, and ducks that I used to practice every day until they came as naturally as breathing. In the Academy, instinct was life, and my body hadn’t forgotten.
But with each hit, the memories of school and Brie and the others felt more and more like a dream, a dream so good I wished to curl up on the same battered pallet and fall back into it, but a dream just the same. With every block, I fought to keep Brie’s face in my mind, her beautiful brown eyes and perfumed hair, the way she touched my arm when we talked quietly on the porch, and the feeling of her head against my chest when she dozed under my arm. Most of all, I remembered the brush of her lips against mine, the sweetness of her kiss, and the way her soft smile lit up any room like summer.
I didn’t let myself wonder whether I would ever see her again. This was the Academy, and here we lived to die. I didn’t know if the video would work, but maybe it would give Brie hope so she wouldn’t waste her precious days worrying about me. Whether I lived or died in the Arena would be up to me, and I had a plan.
***
“Well, well, if it isn’t KL426,” a guard scoffed as I made my way down the secure hallway to the mess hall.
“My name’s Kale,” I responded casually; I braced for the anger I knew would follow.
“Are you talking to me?” the guard bellowed. He hit me with his club across the shoulders hard enough to make me stumble forward. But I regained my balance and kept walking as though nothing had happened. “Stupid beasts, coming back thinking they have names and such,” he muttered to his fellow guard. His voice rose. “I don’t care what happened out there, but you’re less than animals in here, and it’s best if you remember it!” His voice echoed down the hall and several other guards laughed.
The other Galdoni around me avoided meeting my eyes as we turned into the mess hall and found our assigned tables. Security had increased a great deal since I had been gone. Instead of getting our own meals, we waited at the tables and the meals were brought to us. “Like being served at a restaurant,” I whispered with a chuckle.
Several Galdoni lifted their heads to stare at me, and one even gave a small smile of surprise, but they dropped their eyes when a pair of guards walked between the tables.
I pretended to study my food, but stole glances around the room. I estimated one hundred and fifty Galdoni from my age group, about twenty-five short from before we left the Academy. I recognized most of them, having practiced against them for when we would fight to the death; I wouldn’t consider any of them a friend. After a few harrowing experiences in friendship during childhood that usually ended in life-threatening beatings and sometimes death, we had learned to avoid each other.
So when I tapped on the arm of the Galdoni next to me after the guard had passed, I wasn’t surprised at the look of shock on his face. The Galdoni was huge, hulking, brown-winged, and a few years older than I. I had fought him a few times in practice, and knew he hit like a battering ram. A scar traced down the left side of his face, causing his lip to twist down in a frightening scowl. He glared at me, then turned back to eating the gray gruel that tasted more like paste than food.
I waited for the guards’ next round, then tapped his arm again.
“What?” he growled quietly in a tone laced with menace.
“How long were you out?” I asked, pretending not to hear the threat.
He stared at me for a second, then shook his head. “You’re crazy.” He turned back to his meal.
I pursed my lips and slid my plate closer to his. He glanced over at me again suspiciously. “You’re a big guy, bigger than me, and this food doesn't even touch my hunger. I can’t imagine how you must feel. Don’t you hate going hungry every day?” His gaze darkened, but I took it as a good sign that he continued to listen. “Tell you what. You can have my food if you just talk to me.”
The guards came by again and he turned away. I was about to pull my plate back, but he put a finger on it after the guards had passed. “We talk, I eat?” he asked quietly, his eyes still full of suspicion.
“That’s it,” I answered with a nod.
He considered for a moment, then slid his empty plate to me and pulled mine in front of him. He took a bite of the cold gruel. “Six months.”
“What?”
He glanced at me, exasperated. “I was out six months before they caught me.”
I wondered how a Galdoni so huge could have hidden for so long. He caught my stare and shrugged. “I found a job as a bouncer. It was dark. I liked it.”
I fought back a smile at his simple words. There was weight behind them, longing. “I came back last week. I went to school.”
He let out a surprised chuckle, deep like the growl of a lion. Several others glanced at me, too. “School? Didn’t you get enough schooling here?” He ducked as the guards passed again.
I waited for them to get out of earshot. “I learned about real stuff, not the filtered crap the Academy teaches us. I learned about anatomy, and about language and history and economics.”
“Not our history,” a Galdoni across from us shot back. He glowered at his plate as though daring the gruel to get away.
“Some of our history,” I replied. “We are part human.”
The Galdoni next to him scoffed. “Yeah, right. We saw how the humans welcomed us.”
A whip cracked above our heads. “No talking!” the guard shouted.
We fell silent for the next several passes, then I took a steeling breath. “We found our places, and I have a plan for a better reception next time if we can survive in here.”
Despite their fear of the guards, several more Galdoni down the table looked at me expectantly. “A plan?” the huge Galdoni next to me grunted. He finished my meal and put an enormous elbow on the table. Plates rattled.
“I have friends on the outside, human friends.” At their annoyed looks, I smiled. “It is possible. I know I’m not the only one to have made friends out there.”
I saw a few nods of agreement around the table. A
skinny Galdoni with light brown wings and red hair who sat on the other side of the giant met my eyes. “Do you really think we could go back?” His eyes held hope and fear.
I nodded. “Definitely. If we play our cards right.”
“What do we have to do?” the Galdoni across from me asked, his dark eyes guarded.
I shrugged and smiled at the thought of my conversation with Zach. “It’s simple. Not fight.”
Several of them laughed, and they all turned away from me. Whispers rose that I was insane. I was losing them, and didn’t know how to get them back.
“Listen to him,” the big Galdoni next to me growled quietly. The others fell silent. “At least he has a plan,” he muttered. A few glanced at me.
I took the opportunity. “Look, we all know we’re here because our fights bring money to the gamblers. So what do we do? We wait until the Blood Match and then refuse to fight in the Arena. What can they do to us?”
“Kill us,” someone at the table behind me piped in.
I shook my head. “We’re too valuable. That’s why they brought us back instead of killing us before. They need us.”
Everyone fell silent for the next few guard passes.
Finally, the big Galdoni next to me grunted again. “We don’t fight. People can’t gamble. Then what?”
I smiled. “Then my guys on the outside work their magic.”
At the end of lunch, the big Galdoni told me I could call him Goliath, the name he had given himself when he left the Academy. I stifled a laugh when the skinny red-head told me his name was David.
“Like the Bible?”
They both nodded. “We were roommates out there,” David explained. He elbowed the big Galdoni. “And he needed a protector.”
A rare smile appeared on Goliath’s face; he didn’t disagree.
Later, I found myself practicing next to the big Galdoni in the weapons combat room.
“What happens if Galdoni fight anyway?” Goliath asked between swings; he proceeded to bash apart a large wooden dummy with a mace.
“It’ll undermine what I’m trying to do. We need everyone to be on the same page.” I weaved the broadsword I was holding in a figure eight to warm up my shoulders.
“No talking,” a guard yelled. He cracked his whip and the sting of the lash caught me just behind my left ear. I gritted my teeth and tried to ignore the trickle of blood that made its way down my neck. I threw my anger into the sword and swung it as hard as I could at the dummy suspended in front of me. The blade cut cleanly through the canvas middle. I spun back around with the momentum and sliced through the dummy’s neck as well.
A guard came out grumbling about wasting perfectly good dummies as he replaced the one I had mutilated with one less damaged. He glanced at me; surprise showed on his face when he met my angry gaze. He glared back in an effort to hide the glint of fear that showed in his eyes. “You know broad swords are for the wooden dummies. See that you follow the rules or I’ll report you.” He stomped off in loud bravado, towing the mangled dummy behind him.
Goliath gave a soft chuckle. “Remind me not to get on your bad side.”
I fought back a smile. “I thought the same thing about you in the lunchroom.”
He turned away before we were noticed, then he grinned and tore through my fresh dummy with his mace.
The guard that had just replaced it gave a strangled yell and I wove through rows of fighters toward the wooden dummies before he could accuse me of starting anything.
“Hey, you!” he yelled behind me.
I ducked my head and took a few more steps only to find my way blocked by another guard. “He’s talking to you, Galdoni,” he said, spitting the last word like it left a bad taste in his mouth.
I glanced back over my shoulder as though I hadn’t noticed the shouting, red faced guard. I made my way back to him, the broadsword resting casually across one shoulder. The room fell silent. “Yes, sir?”
He pointed at the destroyed dummy. “Did you do this?”
I shook my head with an exaggeratedly baffled expression. “No, sir. I only have a sword. It wouldn’t do that kind of damage.” I hefted the sword to prove my point, and he ducked as though afraid I was going to cut off his head. Several chuckles sounded around us, but when the guard cracked his whip, they returned to their activities.
“I think you had something to do with this,” he said, his eyebrows low over menacing black eyes.
I shrugged. “Why would I? I was on my way to the wooden dummies like you suggested.”
“Suggested?” he sputtered. “Ordered, more like it.” He glanced at one of the other guards, unsure what to do. The other guard gave a small shrug, clearly just as interested as the Galdoni at what his next move would be.
The guard’s face grew even redder. “Get in the holding box.”
“On what charge?” Normally, I wouldn’t question such an order, but I was feeling overly unruly.
The guard looked as though he was going to explode. He sputtered again, searching for the right words, then shouted, “I don’t have to explain myself to you!”
I shrugged as though I couldn't care less and turned to go.
“Give me that!” he demanded.
I glanced back to see him hold out his hand for my sword. With a small smile, I brought it down from my shoulder and switched my grip so that he could grasp the hilt. I let go and turned away just before he could get a good grip. I didn’t look back at the sound of the blade hitting the ground followed by a series of very detailed expletives. A few Galdoni stared at me as I made my way to the door, and a couple of the older ones even smiled. I pushed open the door and casually pulled the fire alarm on my way down the hall.
Chapter Sixteen
I was careful not to be the first one in the Arena as guards herded the Galdoni in and then left to investigate the source of the alarm. I stretched my wings, but only glanced at the false sky of the Arena dome. I wasn’t the only one who refused to enjoy the brief seconds of flight the Arena offered. It wasn’t freedom, not now that we had tasted what it meant to truly fly. Several other Galdoni glared at the dome, while most of us ignored it entirely.
“What are we waiting for?” someone in the back grumbled.
“Better hurry; you don’t have much time.” I turned to find Goliath at my side, David next to him. The big Galdoni grinned. “Allow me.” He cleared his throat and then roared, “Brothers, Kale has a message he needs to share and we've got to hurry, so quiet down and listen. It might mean your freedom.”
“Freedom?”
“False hope.”
“What’s he talking about?”
I ignored the mutters and gestured toward the dome. “You know we're captives here. If our taste of freedom did anything, it gave us a thirst for life beyond these walls.” Several half-hearted agreements met my words, but they died away quickly at the skepticism on the faces of their comrades.
“We don’t have much time,” I continued, “But I have a plan to get us out of here.”
“They aren’t going to let us go,” a small Galdoni who was missing several fingers argued.
“They’ll have to if we don’t bring them a profit,” I pointed out.
“They profit when we die,” someone stated helpfully.
I gave him a small smile. “Exactly, so we don’t die.”
Mutters rose, but quieted down when Goliath glared at them.
“And how do you propose we do that?” the small Galdoni asked.
I shrugged. “It’s simple. We don’t fight.”
This time, the laughter that followed was harder to silence. I knew we were running out of time, so I didn’t wait. “Brothers, if we don’t fight, they have nothing to gamble on and no one makes money. Without money, the Academy falls.”
There was more grumbling, but looks of comprehension also dawned on many faces. “He’s right,” I heard one Galdoni say to his neighbors.
“What’s our motto here?” I asked.
“Figh
t with honor, fight-”
I shook my head. “Not the Academy’s motto for us, but our own motto?”
A Galdoni with gray hair and many scars stepped forward and turned beside me so that he faced the others. ““This is the Academy, and here we live to die.” The words had been scratched into the floor of holding cell two, one of the most used cells for isolation. I didn’t know who originally put them there, but over the years the words had been traced by the rotation of occupants until they were etched so deep the stones would have to be removed to erase them.
I nodded. “I used to believe that we were dying for honor, for glory, for a greater cause, because that’s what they would have us believe.” I gestured toward the sound of feet marching down the hall toward the Arena. “But the truth, which you already know, is that we are dying to fill the pockets of men eager for our blood to be spilled. We are dying for mere entertainment. Is that a worthy cause?”
I didn’t expect an answer, but shouts of ‘No’ echoed through the Arena. A feral grin stretched across my face. “Are we going to let them win?”
“No!” they yelled louder.
“Then stand with me. Don’t slay your brethren for their monetary gain. Together, we can beat this!”
A roar of approval echoed off the Arena walls. My heart sang with it until a black-haired, gray-winged Galdoni stepped forward. The gathered Galdoni hushed at the sight of him and the other four Galdoni that stepped forward.
“Yes, Blade?” He was one of the few who had won so many battles he had been allowed to pick a name that was recognized by the Academy.
Blade gave me a cruel smile. “And what if we want to fight, little one?” he asked, mocking my lack of fights in the Arena.
I glared at him. “Then you destroy our chance to leave here.”
His grin grew wider and more pointed. “And you think they’d just let you leave?” he asked, his tone incredulous. “You think that if you refused to fight and cost them millions, they’d just hand you the keys to the gate and let you walk away?” He laughed and his followers echoed it.