Survival Rout

by Ana Mardoll

  Chloe ignores them, crossing the cave with stacks of cloth piled across her arms. Imani joins us in the awkward silence, helping Chloe unload her burden onto the nearby stone beds before turning back with a long cut of cloth in her hands. Gently the two girls wind the soft material around our waists, breasts, and arms. Multiple pieces form layers over each other to cover us, and Miyuki and I spin obediently in place, watching and memorizing the folds and knots that keep our clothes from falling away. While we dress, Heather stares balefully at Hana, frustration trembling through her shoulders.

  The silence is broken by the screech of metal on stone and every spine in the room stiffens. The golden doors grind open and Handler shuffles in, pushing a silver cart along the rough ground. Bowls adorn the top of the cart, each holding warm fruits and scented meats that make my stomach growl at the smell. He wheels the cart to the table, silver glinting in the sunlight that bathes the center of the room.

  "Clothes," he orders without preamble, his voice as flat and emotionless as before. Sappho gathers up the tidy stacks of our former life, while Imani and Chloe leap forward to unload the bowls of food. Our clothes and shoes are piled on while the gray man waits with closed eyes. His head turns, his sightless gaze picking out Hana without difficulty. "The Prize?"

  "Me," she says, stepping forward. Beside her, Heather grits her teeth so hard I can almost hear the enamel grinding, but she doesn't argue.

  Handler chuckles, but there is nothing pleasant in the sound. "Greedy Diamond, always so eager. Come on, then." He leads her out, the silver cart scraping against the floor as they go. The doors shut behind them with a finality that makes my heart clench, and a strange bell clangs out with deafening loudness: four heavy tolls, like a memorial marking this moment.

  I whirl on my heel, my hands clapped to my ears. "What is that? What's happening?" I shout over the sound reverberating through the cavern, my arms shaking. Nearby I see Miyuki, eyes wide as she jams her glasses back on and stares helplessly at the doors that separate us from Hana.

  Imani takes me by the shoulders, lowering my hands gently from my ears as the ringing fades. Reaching out to touch Miyuki's elbow with her other hand, she guides us to the table and helps us sink onto the cushions lining the floor. Sappho pushes two bowls of steaming meat in our direction, her blue eyes avoiding mine.

  "You need to eat," Chloe says, taking a seat opposite. "Third meal is the last until first bell. That won't be for a long time." She reaches without enthusiasm for a bowl of plump fruits.

  "But where is he taking her?" Ignoring Sappho and Chloe, I reach out to grab Imani's hands. "Imani, where has Hana gone?"

  She squeezes my hands in an attempt at reassurance that isn't reflected in her eyes. Sitting this close to her, I can see a kaleidoscope in those depths; countless beautiful shards in a dozen hues of brown, tiny flecks catching the light whenever she moves her head.

  "She's been sent to a fighter as a reward," she says, faltering a little. "They brought in a new boy at the same time they brought in you two. He didn't die in the arena, so he gets a prize; something to entice him to fight well next time."

  "The fighters are supposed to please the crowd," Chloe adds, her voice low. "Make a good show. Earn lots of betting money for the Master. But boys need incentives: hot food, softer blankets for their beds, Prize girls."

  Imani reaches out to brush a curl away from my eyes. "That's us, Aniyah. We're Prizes. Hana volunteered to be the Prize for the new victor. We'll see her again at first bell."

  Beside me, Miyuki's breathing is audibly uneven. "Wait, but," she protests, shaking her head. "Food and blankets make sense, but what does it mean that she's the Prize? We're people, not food!" Miyuki looks around the table, her eyes wide. "What do boys do with Prizes?"

  "Whatever they want," Heather says darkly, throwing herself onto her cushions by the table. "That's the whole point. Handler takes you to a room, pushes you inside, and shuts the door behind you. Your job is to stay alive until first bell, which is particularly tricky with the newbies."

  Chloe sighs and begins to comb out her luxurious hair with her fingers. "Hana is just trying to protect us, you know," she observes in a weary tone. "Be angry with her all you want, Heather, but you know she's the logical choice: they can't hurt her."

  "They can't harm her," Sappho corrects quietly, her fingers playing anxiously over a waxy blue fruit plucked from her bowl. "It still hurts. It always hurts."

  "Everyone but me," Heather adds in apparent agreement, picking up one of the servings of spiced meat. "Which is why I should go first."

  I stare at them, trying to make sense of all this. "What does that mean?" I look at Imani, the one I trust to make some sort of sense. "They can't harm Hana, but they can hurt her? They can't hurt Heather at all? Are these rules they have to follow?"

  Imani hesitates, choosing her words carefully. "No, this is not about rules. Do you remember how Handler spoke of rare gems and common ones when he chained you?"

  I nod, frowning at the change in topic, and she continues. "He was referring to your talent. Aniyah, you have a rare talent; something that took the Master a long time to find and which he's trying to awaken in you. Because of that, he ordered us to take good care of you. We all have talents, though not as rare as yours. Sappho, do you mind?" There's a request in her words, as though asking for a demonstration.

  The blue-eyed girl sighs and extends her arm over the table, her gaze fixed upon a bowl of fruit on the far side. Instead of stopping at the end of her reach, her hand keeps going, stretching impossibly long. As it passes in front of us her arm narrows but continues unchecked on its way. When she reaches the far end, Sappho grasps the lip of the bowl and drags it back to her as if this were nothing unusual.

  "Sappho is stretchy," Imani says, her voice soft at my elbow. "The Master says it makes her more pliable for the boys, and a better dancer when we entertain."

  "But how—" I turn to her, the question dying on my lips when I see her face.

  A stranger sits at my elbow where Imani had been before: her lips fuller, her skin glossier, her soft black curls each now as long as my hand and sticking out in every direction on her lovely head. Her ears, her eyebrows, her forehead, her nose: every feature of her face except those perfect arresting eyes is subtly altered; she is no longer herself.

  "Imani?" Miyuki breathes her name, and I'm pathetically grateful to hear my own astonishment in her voice.

  The stranger smiles. "It's me," she murmurs before letting her face shift back to what it was before, her features rearranging themselves like soft clay. "I can... well." She shrugs, her smile turning rueful. "Easier to show than to tell. It's supposed to keep me fresh for the boys; always a new face, if they want one. Comes in handy for telling stories, too."

  "Can you all...?" I turn my head to Chloe, studying the bigger girl intently. Adrenaline pounds in my ears as I wait for her to grow bigger, or stretch to the ceiling, or send her long hair tumbling down to her ankles.

  Chloe snorts, not bothering to look up. She picks up one of the wooden bowls, and dumps the fruit out onto the table before a loud crack rips through the room. Her hand clenches hard against the bowl and the thick wood crumbles into splintered chunks.

  "Whoops," she says dryly, opening her fist to let the broken pieces clatter into a heap on the table.

  Miyuki's eyes widen behind her glasses. "Amazing," she breathes, reaching out to poke at one of the chunks. "Can you do that any time you want?"

  "Wait," I put in, blinking in confusion. "What does that do for the boys?"

  Chloe chuckles, the sound deep and rich in her throat. "Any time I want, Emma," she affirms. "Aniyah, you'd be surprised how useful a pair of strong arms and legs can be."

  Heather reaches out to toy with one of the sharp pieces. "And I," the blond girl murmurs in a flat voice, "Can't. Be. Hurt." Her gaze holds steady as each word is punctuated by a sharp downward stab of the wooden shard into her outstretched arm. The first two stabs whiten her alread
y pale skin, and the third cuts into her arm with a vengeance, red blood welling up from the gash.

  "Heather!" Sappho springs from her seat, running to fill another gourd with water from the pool before darting back to kneel beside the girl. "You could have just told them, you didn't have to show. Even with the water, it'll take at least a cycle to heal!" She fusses over the other girl as she washes the wound, but Heather's face has resumed her bored expression; she hadn't even flinched when the shard pierced her.

  Miyuki swallows hard; when she speaks, her voice is unsteady. "And Hana has that? She can't be hurt by the boys?"

  Imani sighs, turning back to us. "She can't be harmed. If she'd done to herself what Heather did just now, Hana would heal up in a heartbeat, right as you watched. But it would hurt her, as much as it would hurt you or me."

  "The problem with new fighters," Chloe cuts in, chewing grimly on a pink fruit, "is whether to send Hana, knowing they can't damage her permanently, or to send Heather since she can't feel pain. We can't guess in advance if a newbie is going to be decent-but-clumsy or actively sadistic after an arena kill. Ideally, we'd send Heather to the clumsy guys since they can't hurt her by accident, and we'd send Hana to the kill-happy fighters since they'd have their work cut out for them trying to injure her. But we can't tell in advance."

  My hands grip the silk cushion under me and stuffing slides beneath the surface under my fingers. If I gripped the material any tighter, would I tear it? If I were as strong as Chloe, I could. "We have to worry," I sound the words aloud slowly, my voice hoarse in my dry throat, "whether the boys are going to deliberately wound us or just accidentally hurt us very badly?"

  Imani touches my arm again, calming me. "Only the new ones. Once they've been here awhile, they get to know us. We work out a system to keep everyone safe, like Hana going first. And you'll be taken good care of," she adds.

  "We'll be taken—"

  I start to echo her only to stop when my brain catches up with my tongue. She doesn't mean we'll be taken care of, Miyuki and I; she means I'll be taken care of, because of some rare talent, something only I can do. I close my eyes, swallowing my words as I try to wrap my mind around this fact.

  Whatever rare talent I have, I don't care; I don't want it. I know I ought to care. If I were smart, I would nurture it and do whatever I could to help awaken it so I'll remain unharmed. But it seems profoundly unfair that I should be protected more than the others. Can my talent help Hana if she's being hurt right now? Can it do anything to stop Heather's bleeding as Sappho wraps gauze over the wound? Is it only a stroke of luck that I am safe here while Miyuki is in danger?

  Handler had called Miyuki 'common'. Will the fighters look on her with similar contempt? How much danger will she face when she's chosen to go? Heather had said the boys could do whatever they wanted, but what do they want? Vague sensations flash through the darkness of my mind, an idea of what I might do with a boy whom I liked, or liked to look at. But a violent stranger, angry after a kill, is a different matter. A shiver traces down my spine, the sensation trailing pain. Is this my life now? Our lives, together?

  Miyuki's soft voice cuts into my thoughts, quiet and determined. She's scooted her cushion closer to the table, her fingers tracing over the rough surface. "What are we to do until she returns?" she asks, carefully avoiding any suggestion that the calm, steadying girl who woke us might not return at all.

  "We wait," Chloe says simply, lying back on the floor and gazing up unblinkingly at the bright sun that bathes her in light. "That's all we can do."

  Chapter 8

  Keoki

  The room on the other side of my door is a cave: a tiny enclosed space of low lighting and cool air, as well as the first moment of privacy I've had since I woke. Though I'd wanted to stay with Tony and the others, I have to admit it's nice to have a moment alone to breathe without being watched. I haven't forgotten this room belonged to another boy before me and I'm not sure how I feel about the death of a total stranger, but I'm too tired to feel anything more than gratitude for what I've been given.

  There are no torches, but I can see my way around. The walls and ceiling are covered in the glowing blue-green moss that seems to grow everywhere in these caverns. The room is no wider than ten strides from the heavy wooden door to a cloth curtain that hangs on the opposite side. Pushing the sheet aside, I find an alcove carved into the far wall; this is set above a wide stone bench that I would assume is for sitting except that the curtain baffles me. Then I see the large hole cut in the center of the bench and a neat stack of cloth strips sitting beside it. Bathroom, my mind suggests, but the label is tentative; after all, the curtained alcove is hardly a room and there's nothing here I could call a bath.

  Water is here, for which I'm grateful. To the left of the door, equidistant from the entrance and the alcove, a brass bowl has been set into the wall. A stream of water trickles from the ceiling to collect in the wide basin. The overflow disappears into a damp patch of sandy earth below. The quiet burble of water is calming music to my ears, and I drink deeply from the bowl before dipping my hands into the water and splashing some on my face. The little stream continues uninterrupted, slowly replenishing what I take away.

  A flat slab of silvered metal has been set in the wall above the bowl. As my eyes adjust to the darkness I catch my reflection in the mirror, blurred by the constant trickle of water. My fingers reach out to touch the strange face and brush only cool wetness; not a single memory accompanies the sight. Well, at least I know I'm handsome. Set in a niche below the reflective metal is a soft, sudsy stone and an odd little blade set on the end of a flimsy stick. These do bring back flecks of memories, but when I rub at my chin there isn't enough fluff there to necessitate a shave. Maybe later?

  On the right side of the room and directly across from my water bowl, a large niche has been cut into the cave wall, wider across than I am tall. Stone rises from the floor to about knee-height and the wall curves down from the ceiling to stop a head above my own, but the space between my knees and my head has been completely carved away. The cut is clean, and extends so deeply into the wall that I can't see where it ends; the light from the ceiling is too dim to reach all the way to the back.

  It's a bed, I realize. The stone has been lined with a thin pad big enough for two or even three people to lie next to each other in the darkness. A blanket, thick and fuzzy, lies folded at the end of the pad along with a bolster pillow that extends from the lip of the opening to the back wall. As with everything else here, there is a lingering sense of mismatch between the word and the reality. I'm not sure what's wrong, just that 'bed' doesn't quite describe a hole in a cave wall lined with a flat pallet and a single solitary blanket.

  I'm touching the blanket experimentally, feeling the soft fur and wondering if I can place the animal it must have come from, when I hear a noise behind me. I whirl to see a slender girl slip through the door. At the sight of her, my breath is stolen away.

  She's smaller than me—shorter than all the guys, if I had to guess—with smooth skin and soft curves outlined in the faint light. Brown hair spills down her back in gentle waves, and dark eyes glint up at me. She's wrapped in some kind of see-through cloth that just barely covers anything important. Then she shrugs her shoulders and even that falls away, and she's standing there in naked glorious beauty.

  "Wow." It's a stupid thing to say, but my tongue is tied just looking at her. Lower down, beneath my sarong, I feel an instant stirring reaction, and I hope the thicker material of my own clothes won't give anything away. Or should it? Should I even be dressed right now? She's naked, after all; perhaps I'm supposed to be as well.

  "I am called Diamond," she murmurs, crossing the distance between us and sliding her hands up my arms with easy intimacy. Chains glint on her wrists, the tiny white gemstones catching the dim light as she moves; the word 'diamond' drifts through my mind as a word separate from her name. "I am yours until first bell."

  I swallow hard at her words, try
ing to clear my head and finding it difficult to do so. "Mine to do, uh, what with?" I ask. I force out a little laugh, hoping to turn my ignorance into a joke.

  She smiles up at me, her hands caressing my shoulders and causing a fluttery knot to gather at my stomach. "Why, anything you want," she answers, her voice low and easy. "Is there anything you would like to do with me?"

  I don't have words for it, nor an image in my mind, but the tug at my groin makes me think I could figure something out. I clear my throat, wishing she weren't standing so close to me, that she didn't smell so sweet. "So you're a... prize for doing well out there?" I can't help myself; I reach out to touch her shoulder, feeling silken skin under my fingers. More than anything else since I awoke, this feels perfectly right.

  "I am," she says warmly, her dark eyes flashing. "There are many Prizes and I am the Diamond Prize. Do I have the honor of being your first?"

  The way she asks makes my cheeks burn, making it sound as though I'm more amazing than I am. "Yeah," I manage, hoping she can't feel the heat from my face, "but that makes me the lucky one, right?"

  Her answering smile makes my stomach flip over. "Let me?" she asks, reaching around behind me. Her fingers deftly pull apart my cloth wrap, dropping it to the floor. Before I can react her hands are on my stomach, pushing me with surprising strength for her size. My legs meet stone and I fall backwards onto the bed in a sitting position, where roughly all of my mind is immediately taken up with the question of whether I need to protect the exposed part of my body that feels very vulnerable in the open air.

  "I know what to do with that," she murmurs in a coy voice before dropping to her knees onto my discarded skirt and taking me deeply into her mouth.

  A wordless sound rips out of me that had started life as a "what?" but comes out as a helpless "wuuuh" noise. My hands bury themselves into the bed-pad, because the alternative would be to grip her hair for support and I'm not sure if that would hurt her. She bobs her head slowly, her tongue swirling around the length of it, and the pleasure that tears through me is like hot steel piercing my mind. This is familiar; I've experienced it before and I can't imagine how I ever could have forgotten.