Survival Rout

by Ana Mardoll

  "Hey!" I move before I have time to think whether this is a good idea, launching myself hard into the back of the thing in an attempt to throw it off balance. It stumbles under my weight and twists to try to face me—determined to meet this new threat head-on, I guess, but minus an actual head.

  I move with it, wanting to stay behind and out of reach of those heavy hands, but my feet stumble in the sand churned by its flailing footwork. I slam into the monster but this time I grab on; my skin scrapes against stone as I frantically search for handholds, footholds, any kind of purchase. The creature writhes, reaching around behind to grab at me while its body shakes under me in an attempt to knock me off. I hold on for dear life, pretty sure this was a stupid move but fully committed to it now.

  Scaling my way up its back while trying to avoid the clumsily groping hands, my fingers sink under one of the wide shale plates that armor its body. I curl my hand around the lip of the rock in an attempt to keep my hold as the creature rears in another attempt to buck me. But instead of anchoring me in place, the thick slab tears away and I feel a rush of vertigo as we lunge back. The heavy slice of stone goes flying behind us to land with a loud thump in the sand as I scramble to stay on.

  What the—? My scrabbling hands find exposed skin where the shale plate had been, smooth and brown and slimy under my fingers. The texture is spongy and I poke at it—only to feel the creature writhe under me in instant response as though I'd touched a nerve. No wonder the sand in its face bothered it so much, if the entire body is soft under these plates.

  Grimacing in concentration, I lean in closer to avoid the fumbling hands still seeking me. The kernel of an idea is forming in my mind, a plan more proactive than just hanging here. I shift position until I can hang on with one arm, using my free hand to tear away more slabs. I grab and pull and toss them in a furious frenzy of strength I didn't know I had, gritting my teeth so hard my head hurts from the pressure.

  The monster bucks harder under my assault, desperate now to throw me off. My handhold and toeholds tremble and the shale slabs become precariously loose under my weight. "Shit!" The word rips out of me in a panic, my body twisting wildly as another slice comes away in my hand and I nearly fall backwards.

  "Hold on, newbie!"

  I can see him just over the shoulder where I cling: he has one fist balled into his stomach where the creature hit him, but damned if he isn't still holding that broken sword. The creature is too occupied with me to notice his approach as he races forward and drops to his knees, his momentum sending him sliding between the monster's thrashing legs. I hear the sword connect down low, the shattering crash sweet music to my ears.

  The creature pitches forward and lands kneeling on all fours in the sand, or rather, on all threes; two giant hands and one remaining leg hold it up, the other leg ripped away in the attack. I ride out the crash like a wave, elated to realize that I don't have to worry anymore about those clawing paws. My hands scramble over its exposed back with fresh purpose, ripping out more of the huge stone slabs as my arms bulge visibly with thick cords of muscle.

  "Here!" I yell to the other guy, pointing to exposed skin. "Can you do anything with that?"

  He's watching me with wide eyes, ducking to dodge the heavy stones I'm haphazardly chucking behind me. "Yeah," he pants, his voice barely audible over the screaming crowd. "Watch out!"

  He darts forward, leaps over the creature's remaining leg, and runs on a light step over its back. His jagged sword, badly abused, dips low and drags a deep cut in the area I've opened. Dark ichor spurts from the monster where the blade tears open spongy brown skin, and viscous fluid coats my hands and his weapon. The creature thrashes once more and then stills beneath us, steaming softly in the hot sun.

  Ecstasy at finding myself alive and mostly unharmed sends a shot of pure pleasure to my throbbing brain. I leap off the corpse and whirl to face the other guy, pumping my hands in the air as the crowd screams with delight. "Did you see that?" I yell. "Did you see what we did? You're amazing, you know that? Fast as fuck!"

  He seems momentarily surprised by my joy, blinking once before sucking in a deep breath and dropping his ruined sword in the sand. A wry grin breaks over his serious face, a lopsided smile which curves over the right side of his mouth and makes him look arrogant and handsome all at once. "You ain't seen nothing yet, newbie," he brags, his gaze sweeping me from head to toe. "You're one of the strong ones, I see. The crowd likes those. Keep grinning just like that; no one likes a sore winner. They love you right now."

  "Is that a good thing?" I lift my head to look at the cheering crowd surrounding us on all sides. I'd been smiling already, of course, but before his words I'd been happy with them, not for them. I pump my fists into the air once more and am rewarded with a renewed chorus of frenzied cheers.

  "Keeps us alive," he says with a shrug. "C'mon, I'll introduce you to the other boys."

  He turns to walk towards the far end of the valley and I trail in his footsteps, happy to follow. As we round one of the thicker stone spires, I'm granted an unobstructed view of an elaborately wrought metal portcullis set into the stone wall and find myself shivering in spite of the heat. There is something menacing about the giant gate; as dangerous as this place has been, I have a foreboding that the exit might take me somewhere worse.

  "The other boys?" I echo, anxious to keep my guide talking.

  "Yeah, there's a bunch of us," he says with a shrug. He glances back at me and blows a puff of air through his lips, his long bangs stirring momentarily away from his dark eyes. "Nice to meet you, newbie. Don't worry if you don't remember your name; we'll get you a new one. Mine's Tony. Welcome to Arena."

  Chapter 5

  Aniyah

  "Mmmm, thirsty."

  My tongue is swollen in my mouth, the back of my throat dry. My hand reaches out seeking water but brushes soft silk instead. I keep searching, my fingers stubbornly feeling for something I can't quite visualize in my mind, but only rough rock meets my touch where the expanse of silk ends. I jerk my hand back with a gasp and open bleary eyes to find myself sucking on wounded fingers, two of them scraped enough to draw tiny beads of blood to the surface.

  "Steady," says a calm voice to my left. I turn to see a girl with fair skin and wavy brown hair standing beside me, holding a bowl in one hand. She pulls from the bowl a white cloth soaked in water and leans over to drape the material across my neck. Coolness soothes my skin while a deeper warmth spreads through my throat, easing the painful scratching sensation.

  "You're going to be okay." Her dark eyes study me with dizzying intensity. "Do you remember anything?"

  I stare up at her, blinking as my vision clears. I'm in a cave, all brown sandstone and cool shade, save for where brilliant sunlight spills from a large shaft rising up through the high ceiling. The slab I'm lying on is hard and flat, covered with a silken pad that does nothing to lessen the dull ache in my lower back. Where the silk ends there is only bare sandstone. And while I have words for all these things—stone, silk, pain—I have no memory of ever seeing or feeling them before.

  "No. Where am I? Where is this?" I struggle to sit up, but bending at the waist is hard for me and I have to roll to one side.

  "I've got you," she says, moving to help me. "Sit steady. We're trying to wake the other one too, and it'll be easier to explain to you both at the same time. Chloe, how's she doing?"

  "She's coming round," answers a voice to my right. I hear a low moan, but if there are words in the sound they are too soft to distinguish. "What's that? Imani, did you catch what she said?"

  Another voice answers, warm and kind. "She said she's thirsty. Hana, they need water."

  "Heather, bring us some water?" The girl who steadies me makes the request, her voice as firm as her grip on my arms.

  "I'm comfortable. Get it yourself." Indolent words drift from a blond girl lounging on the floor in the center of the cavern, her back set against a slab hewn from the same stone as the walls and beds. Sun pours fro
m the ceiling, setting the table behind her alight with tiny sparkling minerals and embedded crystals, while the sun-drenched girl glimmers a delicate yellow under the spotlight.

  The dark-haired girl beside me sighs. Her face is in shadow here in the shade, but I hear the annoyance in her voice and can just discern her delicate arched eyebrow. "Sappho, can you get us some water?"

  "Sure thing, Hana." A chirrupy voice answers, high and soft all at the same time. A girl with cool olive skin and thick brown hair caught up in a messy ponytail runs fleet-footed to the far end of the cavern, snatching up two slender gourds sitting on the lip of a pool fed by a quiet waterfall.

  I press a hand to my throbbing temple, wishing the pain in my head would subside. Hana, Chloe, Imani, Heather, Sappho? I repeat the words in a soft litany, wishing they sounded familiar. The thought strikes me that if they all have names surely I must have one of my own. Why can't I remember it? The emptiness in my mind confuses me, making me feel dizzy even when the room is perfectly still.

  The girl with the water hurries back to us, the white gauze draped around her body doing little to hide the tattoos that cover her from neck to ankle; I find myself staring at a naked mermaid inked with bold red fish scales on her left shoulder. "Hi," she says shyly when she reaches me, handing me one of the water-filled gourds. "I'm Sappho." Bright blue eyes watch me with curious interest from beneath thick lashes.

  "Uh, hi," I answer, sipping carefully at the liquid. The water soothes my swollen tongue, the throb in my throat subsiding almost immediately. "Oh! Thank you, I needed this," I tell her with a grateful sigh.

  "Go tend to the other one," Hana prompts, and Sappho offers me one last shy smile before darting away.

  I turn my head to follow her and see another bed with another girl, who is likewise struggling to sit up. Two more girls wrapped in the same flimsy gauze are helping her: one with richly dark skin and teeny-tiny black curls covering her head, the other an immensely curvy girl with a riot of red hair that tumbles to the small of her back. Yet it is the girl on the bed who grabs my attention, the one they called 'the other one'.

  Who is she? I don't know the reclining girl, as I'm quite certain I've never seen her before. Yet she seems out of place here, different from all the others. She's not wearing the white gauze the others are draped with, instead dressed in a skirt patterned with soft pink flowers and a thin gray sweater that would be uncomfortably warm if the knit on the sleeves weren't wide enough to leave her skin open to the air. Unlike the other girls, she wears shoes on her feet: blocky sandals that raise the heel and lace up her calves.

  I frown, confused by the way my mind supplies all these words without a single memory to support the knowledge. I just know, without understanding how I know. This puzzle deepens when I look down and register that I am just as wrongly dressed as she. I'm wearing a bright orange shirt, black jeans, and black closed-toe flats; articles of clothing I don't recognize and can't remember donning.

  "Why am I dressed in these things? What is going on?"

  "Can you stand?" Hana asks, her voice gentler than before. "C'mon. We'll get you two caught up. Chloe, Imani, can you bring her over to the table?"

  Hana helps me off the bed-slab, her arms wrapping around me when I wobble. She's smaller than me but undeniably strong; together we walk to the table, my muscles remembering what my mind does not. Yet the effort is tiring and I collapse onto a thick cushion once we reach our destination, grateful to be allowed to stop. The other girl, the one in the skirt, is guided next to me. She sits down tentatively, watching me with wary eyes from under a mop of short dark bangs.

  The others arrange themselves around the table, each claiming a cushion. Hana sits cross-legged across from us, her expression grave. Sappho leans forward with her elbows on the table, watching with bright eyes. The two who helped my counterpart to the table, Chloe and Imani, sit on either side of us, the slender one smiling kindly as though to soften some imminent blow. The blond girl, Heather, doesn't move from where she's been lounging against the table, still detached from the rest of us.

  "Okay, introductions first." Hana speaks in a steady voice, with an air of having done this before. "Hello. My name is Hana. You've already met Sappho." She gestures to the blue-eyed girl with olive skin and colorful tattoos. "She brought you water just now. This is Imani." The girl with the warm brown skin and kind smile nods at us from my right, her dark curls bobbing slightly with the motion of her head.

  "Nice to meet you again," she says. Her voice is gentle but I blink at her words. Again?

  Hana pauses only long enough for Imani to speak. "Over there is Chloe." The big girl with glorious red hair nods at us, her dark brown eyes steady and arresting. "And this one here is Heather." The blond girl allows her bored gaze to drift over to us, but doesn't nod or smile.

  I realize that no name has been forthcoming for myself or the girl beside me. The question sounds foolish to me even as it reaches my lips, but I have to ask anyway. "Do we have names?"

  Hana looks me straight in the eye and doesn't laugh. "You do. Your name is Aniyah. And your names are Emma Miyuki," she adds, turning to the girl who sits beside me.

  "Emma... Miyuki?" She repeats the words, looking a little thrown by this revelation.

  I sympathize, turning my own name over in my head. It doesn't sound wrong, but shouldn't it sound familiar? No illumination sparks to confirm this knowledge; she might as well have told me my name was 'Orange Shirt' for all the recognition I feel.

  "Why do I have two names? Everyone else only has one." The girl beside me looks faintly skeptical, her head tilted to one side as she looks in Hana's direction.

  Hana nods, acknowledging the point. "Well, we're not sure. When you were brought in together, she—", to my surprise, she nods at me, "—told us your name was Emma Miyuki. She said Emma was your first name, but that she calls you Miyuki. Your father is rich, she told us, so we talked about it while you were asleep and we think maybe you were able to buy a second name."

  The other girls nod at this, looking varying degrees of convinced. Is that how second names work? I'm not sure; everything seems muddled up in my brain.

  The hazel-eyed girl looks at me then, frowning in confusion. "You... call me Miyuki?"

  I shrug, feeling helpless. "I-I don't know! I don't remember you. I don't remember saying what she says I said. I don't even remember my name is Aniyah!" My voice rises, scratching my sore throat.

  "That's normal," Imani breaks in, stroking my arm soothingly. "We know you don't remember anything. We were the same way, just as confused as you are now. Each of us has been right where you're sitting, asking the same questions. We'll tell you everything we know and you can take it in as slow as you need."

  "It's okay to be a little scared," adds Sappho, her blue eyes sympathetic. "I mean, if you feel that way. No one will think any less of you. We understand."

  "But you don't need to be." Chloe's rich voice is as solid as the ground beneath me, supportive and firm. "We're going to take care of you. You're one of us now."

  I look around the table at each of them, trying to organize the chaos in my mind. "One of you? You've all lost your memories?"

  "We've all had our memories taken," Hana corrects, the hint of a growl in her voice. "We were stolen away by the Master of Masques. He brings girls here and strips their memories away. You don't remember, but we met when he hauled you in; we woke you up and asked you questions. Tried to save whatever memories we could. That's how we got your names."

  "We're not supposed to do that," Chloe adds, looking grimly triumphant.

  "If he knew, he'd probably kill us," Heather observes, breaking her silence. Her voice is cool, despite the threat implied by her words. "So try not to mention it."

  Hana gives her a thin-lipped look and turns back to us. "Don't tell anyone your real names. You can use them only in this room and then only with us. Do you understand?"

  None of this makes any sense, and I don't know where to start. The girl
with hazel eyes—Miyuki?—speaks before I can. "If we were stolen away, where did we come from?"

  "We're not sure," Hana admits, her brow creasing with frustration. "He drugs the girls before they're brought in. Everyone we've questioned has been too afraid or too incoherent to give clear answers. But we know it's somewhere else."

  "It's called the University," Imani adds, her warm voice turning firm. "People study there and learn things."

  Sappho nods eagerly. "And you live at the Campus. That's where you eat and sleep with your family."

  I turn this over in my head, nodding slowly; that sounds vaguely right, but it's as if there's a haze around the words in my mind, an outline without details. "What kinds of things do you learn at the University?" I ask, trying to fill in the edges of the word, to sharpen the mental picture. Yet when I look around at them, none of the girls meets my eyes. "You don't know," I realize, my heart sinking a little.

  Heather turns flashing green eyes on me, roused from her torpor. "More than what you can learn here, which is nothing at all," she says sourly.

  "Heather!" Sappho takes a deep breath, poised to argue, but Chloe breaks in before anything more can be said and leans closer to Miyuki.

  "Hey, Emma?" she says, her rich voice carrying over the table, shutting down the brewing disagreement. "Or do you prefer Miyuki? Either way, there's time to decide. You were wearing these when you came in. We kept them safe for you while he changed you; they look fragile."

  From the gauzy material wrapped around her chest Chloe pulls a thin, glinting metal frame with two opaque rounded rectangles: 'glasses', my mind helpfully pops up to name. Miyuki stares at the offering while hardly seeming to breathe, then she delicately opens the hinges and guides the glasses to her face as though she'd performed the action a thousand times before.

  "Oh!" she breathes, her voice suffused with relief. "I can see you all so much better now, thank you."

  I blink, transfixed by the way her hazel eyes look the tiniest bit larger behind the frames. "You couldn't see me before?"