SICK HEART

by Huss, JA

  I like it. I really like it. And I’m getting better.

  So what if my sparring partner is six?

  This makes me smile as I hold a rag over my nose with my head tipped back to stop the bleeding.

  When that’s taken care of, I go into the kitchen and start making dinner and spend the entire time fantasizing about what I might be allowed to cook tomorrow when we celebrate the end of our first test on the Rock.

  CHAPTER TWENTY - CORT

  The last night of the boring, disgusting if-I-never-eat-this-again-I-won’t-miss-it rehydrated chicken and rice dinners is spent up on the top platform, as usual, but we eat all together tonight, instead of in small groups. The kids are sitting next to each other in a loose circle. Not talking or signing, of course. They want to, and they are so close now, they can taste it. But they are as disciplined as kids their age can be, so they feign patience.

  They were told what to expect before they got here on the Rock. So there is a general excitement in the air, mixed in with their natural apprehension and nerves over the first test that will happen tomorrow.

  One day. Twenty kids, ten tests.

  Even Anya looks excited and I’m pretty sure she has no clue what’s coming.

  Oh, she’s heard of the test. Maart and Rainer have been talking about it non-stop for the past four days. But she doesn’t know what it means, how it will play out, or what happens after. So her excitement is more about anticipation than expectations.

  I watch her as I force myself to choke down dinner. I cannot wait until tomorrow night. We will have a feast. I want beef so bad, I almost moan just thinking about it. Rainer is standing next to me. We’re both leaning up against the mechanical room wall, while Maart keeps his distance and sits on the beam with Irina and Paulo, his two favorites.

  We all know Paulo is gonna make it. He’s like a mini-Maart on the mat. And Irina is great. For a girl. But the chances of her fighting another girl in real life are almost zero. She might be the only thirteen-year-old girl in the program alive at the moment.

  It’s going to be a boy. It could even be Paulo.

  We hope not, but if it is, it’s out of our hands and we just have to deal.

  Rainer elbows me. “Stop it, she’ll be fine.”

  I ignore him. I’m not really that worried about Anya. She seems to like the training. And she did well today. But Jafari is a little kid. There is no chance Maart is going to pair her up with Jafari. She knows him too well and that’s rule number one. When you test, you need to be challenged.

  Jafari is fucked too. Because he’s been training with a much bigger opponent this past month. And that means Maart will probably make him fight one of Rainer’s boys. Or maybe his girl Rasha.

  But I’m not really worried about Jafari. He’s going to do fine.

  It’s Anya. And it’s Maart.

  He hates her. He hasn’t said it out loud, but I can tell. I know him. I don’t need words to hear his thoughts.

  “Jesus Christ,” Rainer mutters. “Will you stop already? He’s going to be fair. You know he’ll be fair.”

  I shoot Rainer a dubious look, then sign, You know who it is. Tell me.

  He smiles, which means he does know, then shakes his head, which means he’s not gonna tell me.

  Is it Budi? Please tell me it’s not Budi.

  Budi is a scrappy little Indonesian boy who was born into a Muay Thai camp and started training at the age of two. We didn’t get him until he was five. Udulf isn’t usually inclined to let me in on his selection process, but he took me with him to purchase Budi. He was my pick from over eighty boys who were bred at that camp for the fights and he is worth far more than the seventy thousand dollars Udulf paid for him. He will earn out that seventy grand by the time he’s ten. He will make it to Ring of Fire. He might even earn his freedom, he is that good.

  “It’s not Budi.”

  I let out a relieved sigh. I know it will be one of Rainer’s kids. Someone better than Anya and someone older than Jafari. I doubt it will be Evard. Maart goes easy on Evard because he knows Evard is out of here when we leave the Rock. Evard doesn’t need to worry about fighting for his life. So Maart will pair Evard up with Raffie because Raffie sucks and there’s really no way that kid lives through his next real fight. He’s done.

  So that leaves Rasha—our middle girl—or Oscar.

  Anya and Jafari are in the same situation, I guess. It’s going to be Oscar for Anya. He’s better than Rasha. So he needs the challenge of Anya’s much bigger size to take him to the next level. Rasha will wash out with Raffie.

  I let out another long breath and start feeling better about tomorrow.

  Anya will do fine. It’s doubtful she will win, but who cares if Anya wins? She’s not a fighter. Udulf is going to take her home with him the minute Rock camp is over. He’ll probably be waiting at the village when we get there. And then… that will be that.

  Easy come, easy go.

  Hmm. I consider that for a moment. Because Anya didn’t actually come easy. I earned her—hell, I earned all of them, but she was the only one I was allowed to take with me when the fight was over. And that part was easy, so—

  “For fuck’s sake,” Rainer growls. “Stop thinking so fucking loud. Maart is gonna do the right thing. He always does the right thing for the kids.”

  That’s true. Maart take his responsibilities as ajarn seriously.

  But Anya isn’t one of the kids. Anya, as far as he’s concerned, is a total distraction. And possibly even some kind of trap.

  He’s suspicious like that. And he thinks that Udulf isn’t gonna let us go. He thinks Udulf will fuck us all over at the last minute.

  I’m not inclined to agree.

  I’ve known Udulf my whole life. He might, in fact, be my actual biological father. And even though he’s been tough on me, he’s mostly been fair, if you take out the fact that he’s been trying to get me killed in fights since I was five.

  Wow. That’s a really fucked-up thought that requires some serious self-reflection, but not now. Some day—some far, far day in the future—I will sort out all these feelings. But not now. I’ve been surviving on instinct my whole life, and even though we’re close, we’re not out yet. All the ways in which this life of mine is pathological can be thought about later.

  I would not say I trust Udulf, but the few times he’s given me his word on something, he’s always followed through.

  And anyway, letting us go isn’t some favor. It was a transaction. I paid nearly twenty million dollars in collective purse money to buy our freedom.

  This cost us dearly over the years. We might be the number one camp in all of Ring of Fire, but we’re also the poorest. Because eighty percent of the winnings I was allowed to keep went to buying our freedom.

  We scrape by. Barely. And there is a part of me that suspects that Udulf respects us for this.

  We earned our freedom and he knows it.

  Rainer bumps my shoulder. “Come have a drink with me.” Then he pushes off the wall and heads downstairs.

  I take one last look at Anya, then follow him.

  We throw our dishes into the sink and Rainer grabs the bottle of Lectra we’ve been nursing since they arrived a month ago. It’s the same bottle I opened for Anya.

  Back out on the training platform Rainer points. “Up or down?”

  I point down, not wanting to think about the damn kids anymore tonight. Or Anya either.

  Rainer nods. “Sounds good to me.”

  I follow him down the stairs and we settle on the steps near the lowest platform. The ocean is a little testy tonight, the waves splashing against the rusted steel grate that separates us from the dark depths below. The air is thick with salt that settles on our skin and marks us as wild.

  This is a wild place and I’m going to miss it.

  Rainer and I pass the bottle back and forth, taking small sips. Not just because there’s only a little bit left and we can’t crack open the new bottle until after the first
test if we want it to last, but because we can’t afford to get drunk. Not on this shit. Not tonight.

  But small sips are usually enough for me.

  We don’t typically have Lectra with us on the Rock, but this is not just any other training retreat. It’s our last training retreat. We have been saving these bottles for years. Ever since I started paying for our freedom. And each bottle will be consumed before we leave here and then, we wil never drink this shit again. You can’t even get it out in the normal world. And even though we’re happy about leaving, and the Lectra is a way to celebrate our achievements—and the mere fact that we’re alive—I’m torn about the whole thing.

  Once we leave here, we’ll never come back. What about my birds? Will they look for me? I have this horrible recurring nightmare that they will look for me the way they look for their missing mates if they don’t show up at the predesignated breeding spots every two years.

  I don’t want them to look for me. I just want them to move on.

  “God, Cort. What are you doing? You’re being weird today.”

  It’s funny that he can hear my thoughts. Even when I’m silent, around Rainer and Maart, I am never silent.

  I sign, Will you miss it?

  “This place?” He blows out a breath. “I dunno. Maybe some of it. But you can come back here if you want. We have the ship. I’m sure we’ll be cruising by here all the time.”

  The supply ship, he means. That’s where a lot of our purse money went. We’re gonna run the platform ship and do supply runs for some of Udulf’s other rigs. None of them are camps, like this one. They are huge drilling operations. And we had to do some serious upgrades to the one ship I could afford to buy to get those contracts.

  I’m not gonna lie. This part bothers me a little. Because are we really free if Udulf is still giving us a paycheck? Are we just trading in the devil we don’t know for the one we do?

  But I can’t picture it. I don’t understand what a life out from under Udulf looks like. And I’m not trying to fool myself into thinking I love the man, because I don’t. I’ve had a lot of feelings about him over the decades, but none of them were love.

  Mostly, I hate him. This hate is coupled with self-loathing when I take the time to explore it. Because according to the most ruthless underground fighting ring on the planet, I’m the world champion. I’m someone to be feared. And yet I have lived under Udulf’s thumb like a possession for twenty-two years.

  I have never attacked him. And I guess that’s part of the brainwashing, right? He gives me more than anyone else around me, but it’s only ever just enough.

  I get those pretty girls at the end of the fight. Like Anya. But then he takes them away. Like he will Anya.

  I get the purse money too. But then again, he takes it away.

  Weeks later, he’ll give some back. And I can spend that any way I want. But it’s only ever just enough. Just enough to make that payment on our future freedom, or the supply ship upgrades, or enough food and supplies to keep the training center going until the next fight.

  I have never had extra.

  And I get it. I’m fucking lucky. Because at the same time, it has been so long since I felt the hunger pangs of needing something that wasn’t within reach that I’ve almost forgotten what it was like to be five years old in the world of men like Udulf.

  It’s another tactic, that’s all. These provisions. It’s a way to keep me in line. Keep me satisfied. Keep me docile.

  And it has worked. It has one hundred percent worked. Because I just made the final payment on our freedom, giving credence to the idea that freedom is something you can pay for.

  And it’s not supposed to be that way. It’s just not.

  I sigh.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Rainer says, pulling me out of my thoughts.

  I turn to him, suddenly aware that we’ve been sitting here in silence for a pretty long time.

  “I’ve been thinkin’ about…” He looks at me, blows out a breath. “Ya know what? Never mind.”

  Say it, I sign.

  He doesn’t look at me. But he does spit it out. “I’ve been thinkin’… I might stay behind.”

  What?

  “Yeah. With the kids. We won’t take on any more, but maybe Udulf will let me train the ones we have and—”

  No. I make this sign so clear. No.

  Rainer winces, then whispers, “I don’t think I can walk away from them, Cort. I really don’t think I can do it.” He lets out a long, tired breath. “I don’t think I can live with myself.”

  We saved the ones we could.

  But he’s shaking his head no. “We can—” He pauses. “I think I can do better than that.”

  And what will you do? I throw my hands up. You can’t take them all the way, not like Maart can. They’ll all die in the end. Do you really want to hang out and watch that happen?

  “Do I want to watch it happen?” He signs his words as he talks. He’s always done this for some reason. “No. I don’t want to watch it happen. But at least they will have someone they trust at the end. And I think…” He pauses and lets the seconds tick off. “How do I put this?” He studies me for a moment. “You, right? You get in that ring and you beat the shit out of people and let people beat the shit out of you, all to save us. This is the literal meaning of going down fighting. But what do I do?”

  Don’t be stupid.

  “No, really. What do I do, Cort? I keep them happy, mostly. And that has always felt wrong to me. Because I’m a part of their dark, evil world. And I haven’t gone down fighting since we were twelve years old. You have been fighting my battles for me ever since. I’m too big. I’m too slow. I don’t have that killer instinct the way you and Maart do. So you’re right. They are all going to die in the end. And it will probably be over in three years. But I’ll take those three years of fighting hard to the three empty ones I’ll be living on that supply ship wondering… wondering if I could’ve made a difference. And that’s not a dig on you, Cort. Or Maart. You’ve put yourself on the line for me so many times now, I lost count. And Maart too. You guys deserve this happy ending. But I haven’t earned it yet. So I’m staying behind and there’s nothing you can say to talk me out of it. I’ve already explained this to Maart. He’s worried about you, by the way. He thinks Anya was a bad idea.” Rainer sucks in a breath and holds it, then lets it out very slowly. “And Ainsey too.”

  I look away at the mention of Ainsey’s name.

  “I’ll take care of her. I promise. I think maybe I can even talk Udulf into leaving her alone until she’s older and out of danger.”

  I feel sick.

  Rainer clamps a hand on my shoulder and gives it a squeeze. “I just want you to be prepared for this. I mentioned it to Udulf after you left the fight ship. It’s been bothering me for a long time.”

  What’d he say?

  “He said we’d work something out when we got back from the Rock.” His green eyes stare into mine for a moment. Then he gives my shoulder another squeeze. “I’m not ungrateful. I hope you don’t think that’s what this is. I just can’t walk away from it, Cort. That world.” He looks over his shoulder, like it’s coming up behind him. “I’m never going to get over what I am. What I’ve done.”

  I push him, making him look at me so I can sign, What are you talking about? Because, OK, maybe none of us are innocent, but if you’re going to rank us according to guilt, Rainer would be down there somewhere with Evard. Present, accounted for, but a side note in the grand scheme of things.

  “Look, I get it. You don’t understand. You’re never going to understand. And I’m OK with that. I’m just letting you know that I’m staying behind. That’s all. And there’s nothing you can say or do to change my mind about that.” He gets up and points to the bottle of Lectra in my hand. “You can finish it. I’m done.”

  Then he turns his back on me and climbs back up the stairs.

  I stay down there for hours just passing his words back and forth inside my he
ad. They feel meaningful and deep. They make me sad, and angry, and, if I’m being honest, they scare me a little. Because who am I? What kind of man am I if I walk away from these kids?

  And this, I think, is the issue. I’m not angry that Rainer is staying. I’m angry that I’m not. And I feel guilty for wanting out even though I’ve earned it.

  I have often wondered about destiny. Like… was I only put on this earth to do Udulf’s bidding? To rail against his world, but never be able to escape it? And let’s face it, just because I will be allowed to walk away from the fights doesn’t mean I’m actually free.

  So I allow myself to picture a life of staying behind with Rainer and the camp. I allow myself to consider it. If I stop fighting, who will support the camp?

  It’s a trap. I know it’s a trap. And Rainer will figure this out very quickly if he does stay behind. Who will pay for everything?

  The kids. That’s who.

  We have three boys and one girl just about ready to enter the top-level fights. And Rainer will have to send them into the ring hoping they live—not just because he loves and cares about them, but because they will be supporting the camp from now on. And all the other winners coming up behind them.

  And this isn’t freedom. It’s not even close.

  He’s gonna figure this out, but he needs to do it on his own.

  I can’t just tell him. He needs to see it, and live it, and then… he needs to regret it.

  I get up and join my kids on the platform and sleep off Rainer’s moonlight confession.

  But it takes me hours to finally fall asleep. And my dreams are filled with little boys in bathhouses. Running. Screaming.

  And the empty face of that girl.

  That one girl and what they did to her.

  No.

  What he did to her.

  The next day starts like all the rest until the first fight is called. My kids go first since they are the youngest. Ainsey sits next to me, her nose dripping and her breath rumbling inside her chest. She’s sick. And that just feels like a very bad omen.