by Ana Mardoll
"I do." Aniyah sways on her feet, but her voice is clear over the hot wind. "I can lead us out of here. It's not close, I'm sorry," she adds, giving Matías a sympathetic look.
"Is it underground?" Reese asks, shielding his eyes against the sun as he scans the hilly desert horizon. Inhospitable rocks and blinding sunlight face us from every direction, with no obvious refuge in sight.
"Are there other people there? Is that where we came from?" Tony adds, eagerness creeping into his voice.
Aniyah hesitates and I can't tell if she's struggling to answer or just to stay upright. "The Master's land has borders. The arena—this ring of mountains here that forms the stadium—lies in the center of his territory. There's a mountain range in that direction marking a boundary to his land." With Miyuki's help, she turns and points into the distance. Through the shimmering heat a dark outline of jagged rock climbs into the sky.
"We have to hike over a mountain range?" Lucas asks, casting another dubious look at Justin's stretcher.
"No." She shakes her head and points to the left of the mountains. "There's a chasm with a river that marks a second border. Where those two boundaries collide, the river flows under the range and becomes an underground lake. There's no bridge over the chasm, but there is a crossing point where it meets the mountains: a shelf of rock we can use to cross over. On the other side of that is a forest, and freedom."
"It's a long way away," Matías observes in a quiet tone.
"I know," she agrees, meeting his gaze with understanding eyes. "But it's just one foot in front of the other." As if to demonstrate, she takes a tentative step ahead while leaning on Miyuki for support.
No one looks happy, but Tony nods and pulls away from my arms. "You get Justin, and I'll help Teacher?"
"Sounds like a plan." I watch him a moment longer, not wanting to move away. "Hey. Be careful, okay?"
His lips curl into a wry lopsided grin. "Should be telling you that, Newbie."
Miyuki's voice floats back to us from ahead, the girls moving as a close group while Handler tags a few steps behind. "You said the others would come after us. What about the Master? Is he likely to follow us?"
"I'd like to see him try," I mutter as I heft my side of the stretcher and nod for Reese to go first. "Bet the lot of us could kill him."
"The Master no longer leave the Arena," Handler answers, his voice faint on the air. "The bouts have made him rich, but his profits are in the form of promises and favors. He fears a rival might void their debt by sending assassins. We protect him, as well as maintaining the Arena and servicing his assets."
"Assets?" Sappho repeats, her voice hollow. "You mean us?"
"Yes. Fighters are the source of his income and Prizes are an investment. You are not cheap to acquire and maintain, but without rewards the fighters lose their flair. Audiences will not attend a boring show."
"And you help him," Miyuki adds, with less rancor in her voice than before. The words are almost a question, her voice rising at the end in a request for elaboration.
Handler is silent for so long I wonder if he heard her, but eventually his voice drifts back on the wind. "We are acquired in the same way you are. He carves our bodies into keys and twists our brains until we can hear his commands in our minds without the need for speech. He is rough and clumsy with us, and sometimes the change does not take as deeply as he intends." His voice trails away and he worries at his hands.
You still had it better than us, I think, staring at his back as we trudge over this infinity of sand and heat. All the same, I remember telling Tony how rough it would be to spend a lifetime sending kids to their doom in the arena. I'd been talking about Matías, but now I wonder how Handler felt during our battles.
"Ke... oki?" Justin's soft voice floats up from the stretcher and my attention snaps to him.
"Yeah, buddy? You doing okay? Ride isn't too rough, is it?" This can't be good for his leg; his bandages are stained with blood after the trauma of being set down and picked back up several times already.
"Where are we going?"
I keep my smile firmly affixed to my face. His eye is still swollen from where the bear clawed him, and the skin surrounding it is puffy and has a fresh shine. The wound looks unwholesome, like you could touch it and something awful would ooze out. He'd been attractive before, even pretty if it weren't for his perpetual pout; now he looks like death warmed over.
"Remember I told you, kid?" I try to sound as if this is no big deal. "My girl knows a way out, just past those mountains up ahead. You can't see them from the stretcher but they're not too far. Just you wait!"
He moans as his head sinks back and his eyes close. I keep walking, trying not to let my worries slow me. The sand beneath my feet is proper sand—soft and pale and tiny-grained—but there's no comfort in the familiarity. Maybe the fault lies in the wind; it's too arid, biting my skin and sucking greedily at every drop of moisture until my tongue swells. I hope we brought enough water.
The others aren't doing so well. Reese struggles with the weight of the stretcher causing him to sink into the sand with every step. Aniyah stumbles frequently, even with one arm draped around Miyuki for support. Hana and Imani both grit their teeth against lingering pain as they walk. Christian doesn't say a word about the paralysis he suffered, but he stays close to Chloe and she reaches out to steady him. Matías stabs his cane into the sand, his face composed but his pace gradually slowing as we approach the cliffs.
If any one person were slowing us down, we could carry them. I could hold Aniyah while Tony took the stretcher, or Chloe could sling Christian over her shoulder. But over half our group struggles with wounds or stumbles through the sand. I look over my shoulder with increasing frequency, searching the ugly lump of the arena for signs of pursuit, but I see nothing, which is deeply unsettling. Surely he won't just let us go?
We have a head start, though; maybe that's enough. Already the cliffs are closer and the oppressive heat seems to be lessening. Dark clouds spread overhead, filling the sky above us and blotting out the harsh sun. My brain instantly supplies the word, despite the fact that I've never seen a cloud in the sky here. Somehow they seemed so normal that I hadn't noticed them until now.
"It's getting darker," Imani observes softly. "Is that a good thing or a bad thing?"
"It's magic." Aniyah's tone would be awed if she wasn't panting so heavily; she leans her head back to look at the sky while Miyuki helps her forward with each step. "It's like a fight in the sky. The Master's magic is spreading out from the arena and meeting an opposing force from the other direction."
"Can you tell whose magic it is?" I call, walking a little faster. "Would they help us, do you think?"
She hesitates and shakes her head, curls dancing on the wind. "I can't tell whose it is, only that it's different from his. As different as water is from sand. But I don't think it's here for us. I think it's just... here."
"Wait! Do you hear that?" Tony pulls up short and cocks his head.
Reese doesn't stop which means I can't halt without upsetting the stretcher, but Matías leans on his cane and listens with one hand cupped to his ear. "Is that water?"
Heads nod with varying degrees of conviction. We pick up the pace and our road becomes easier as sand gives way to stone under our feet. The mountain range on our right towers above our heads until we're close enough to reach out and brush the sharp wall of stone; only then do we see what Tony heard.
The ground under our feet rises in a soft slope before giving way to a sudden drop. Below us spans a deep gorge that stretches to our left as far as the eye can see, the chasm marking a boundary between the Master's desert on our side and green forests on the other. Through the gorge flows a slow-moving sludge of a river: thick and ponderous with nothing appetizing in its oily appearance. It has a brackish smell and there's a stinging taste in the air of too much salt which burns my eyes.
On our right side, the jagged mountain range rises in an almost vertical cliff, impossible to
climb. The gorge intersects the cliff directly, its tepid river disappearing into a tunnel beneath our feet. The top of the tunnel bulges out over the gorge like a hungry mouth—and this, I realize, is our path: a narrow strip of uneven stone spanning the two sides of the chasm, only just wide enough for us to walk across.
"Is that going to hold everybody?" Chloe eyes the ledge warily. She's the biggest of us and will have to hug the cliffs while walking the narrow path; one wrong step will end in plummeting to the water below. The fall looks lethal, but even if someone survived we have no way to haul them back up. They'd disappear with the slow-moving current into the mountain.
"Is there no way around?" A stupid question when the river stretches as far as I can see in one direction and the cliffs in the other, but I have to ask; I'm certain we can't get the stretcher across this ledge.
I'm not sure Aniyah hears me through her haze of pain. She points across the chasm at a line of dark trees rendered nearly invisible under a sky of black clouds. "Look! That's where we're heading. That's freedom."
"We cross here," Hana says, her voice firm. "But we do it smart. Maybe we can use the sheets and tie—"
An inhuman scream cuts her off and I nearly drop the stretcher as I whip around to scan the horizon behind us. It's as empty as the last time I checked, which seems impossible given how close the scream had been. Then the blond girl cries out and her finger stabs the air as she points to the cliffs above.
The Handlers are here, though they no longer resemble what they were before. They crawl out of the cliffs above us, burrowing up through jagged holes. Their robes are gone and their carved white skin gleams against the stone to which they cling in defiance of gravity. Mouths hang grotesquely open as they cry wordless guttural instructions to each other, and for the first time their eyes are open. Orbs of swirling black stare down at us, emotionless and flat. Not one of them blinks against the hot wind, nor do their eyes reflect any light. They look hungry and empty, and descend toward us with terrifying speed.
"New plan: we're running."
"Heather! No, wait—"
The blond girl doesn't listen to Hana, running onto the ledge before anyone can stop her. Her hands sink into the stone looking for purchase and red blood instantly stains her hands where the stone cuts her. She seems not to notice these wounds. Our own Handler hurries after her, hands reaching out to help, but the sight of him seems to send her into a deeper panic and she edges along the cliffs faster than before.
"Pair off!" Matías yells, blood draining from his face. "Keoki, can you ditch the stretcher and carry Justin?"
"I got him," I yell, setting down the contraption and using one of the spears to slit the bindings.
"Tony, you're with me," Matías hollers, already starting over the ledge. Tony is there in a heartbeat, clinging to the rocks with one hand and leaning the other behind Matías to steady him if he falters. "Christian, stay with—"
"Already there, Teacher," Christian yells, sticking close to his girl.
She doesn't begin to cross, instead scooping up the bundle of spears I dropped and hurling two at the nearest Handler. Her aim isn't particularly precise, but the force behind the throw covers a multitude of sins when the second spear pins his thigh to the stone. The creature thrashes and screams in pain, then stills as his blood stains the wall below and awareness flees his eyes.
"Careful!" Hana cautions, eyes down as she helps Imani onto the ledge after Tony and Matías. "We don't want to make the path slippery with blood!"
"Or falling bodies," Miyuki adds, her voice tight with determined calm. She holds Aniyah from the front while Reese moves to hold her from the side, and I could kiss him for jumping forward to help. I don't want to lose anyone out here, but Tony and Aniyah are on a special list of their own.
The tattooed girl, Sappho, slips onto the wall next to Reese; of all of us, she seems the most sure on her feet. When I rise with Justin on my back—lashed in place with ties salvaged from the stretcher—I could swear I see her fingers elongating and slipping into the cracks in the wall, gripping with inhuman dexterity.
I hear a puff of air and Christian appears, clinging to the rocks above us. He grips the nearest Handler and flings himself backwards off the wall, taking both himself and the Handler hurtling through empty air to the water below. I gasp, horrified to see Christian falling to his death; then I hear the puff again and see him reappear higher on the cliffs, already reaching out to grab another attacker by the shoulder.
"Holy shit."
"I know." I hadn't meant to utter the words but Chloe nods with smug amusement, hefting another spear in her hands and watching the melee above; I realize she's saving the weapon as backup in case a Handler gets too close to the others. "Go on with your boy. We can hold them off and then follow."
"Gotcha." I clear my throat, my eyes wide as Christian once more flings himself and his target out from the ledge and into the water. There's a poetry to his killing that I would appreciate if I had the time. Taking a deep breath and trying to find a calm center inside me, I refocus on the cliff in front of my face and cling to stone as I step onto the ledge after Lucas.
Shiiiiiiiiiiiit. I don't like this at all, I quickly decide. Justin wasn't heavy when I was safely standing on stone. But now that he's dangling in the air behind me with a river below plotting to eat us up, it feels like I'm wearing a mountain strapped to my back rather than a wounded kid who's barely eaten in the last cycle.
"Christian! Lower down! Keoki, watch it!"
Chloe screams a warning and the world slows. I can't look up to locate the danger, since tilting my head back would unbalance us and send me and Justin toppling over the edge. I turn my head slowly to the side, hoping to catch something in my peripheral vision as my other senses try to parse every sound and smell.
I catch a flash of white skin reaching down to grasp at Lucas. I expect Christian to leap in and save us, but hear a struggle higher up; it sounds as if Christian is stuck dealing with another threat. Lucas looks up, and the flash of helpless frustration on his face is a reflection of my own. That thing is going to grab him or push him off, and then I'll be next. And there's not a damn thing we can do about it.
"Keoki, duck!"
Sound explodes above us as a spear hits the Handler in his shoulder and he screams. He gropes for the blade and yanks it out with a triumphant howl, but loses his grip on the blood-soaked stone. I pull back and Lucas leans forward as the creature plummets between us; we have a brief moment to share a smirk before the falling Handler grabs at Lucas' ankle and the sandy-haired boy slips over the ledge with a gasp.
"Lucas!"
I grip stone until my fingers bleed, leaning back as far as I dare while my eyes dart wildly for sight of the other boy. There's a ripple in the water where the Handler fell, but nothing for Lucas. Then I see him gripping the wall below me, hanging a full body's length lower than my feet. He'll have to climb up, and from the way his muscles are straining to hold him in place, I don't think he can.
"What's happening back there?" Matías shouts, his voice tight with anxiety.
"Lucas fell, but he hasn't hit the water. We have to haul him up!" Even as I say it, I have no idea how to go about a rescue and have no answer when Tony hollers back the obvious question.
"How?"
Reese pauses in his trek across the ledge, one hand still outstretched behind Aniyah. "We could use the sheets?" he suggests, but his voice is doubtful. We've already cut most of the sheets into small strips for the stretcher and food we dropped on the other side of the gorge. We'd have to tie the strips together while Lucas holds on for his life, then trust the cloth not to tear under his weight.
"Christian could—"
"I can't pop anyone! I could pop down there beside him, but I can't bring him up with me. I could try to throw him to you, but..." His voice trails away. One of us would have to catch Lucas and there's not enough room on the ledge to brace. The attempt would most likely send Lucas and his rescuer over the edge.
The girl in front of me on the ledge has fallen silent, her breathing slow as she waits for Reese to begin moving again. Now that Lucas isn't blocking my view, I see her fingers have stretched into the rock and her toes have elongated to grip the stone. Tattoos stretch with her limber body. She's not merely agile; she's using her talent to cling to the stone face.
"You!" I stare at her and she turns her head slowly to face me. She doesn't adjust her position in the slightest when she turns; instead, her neck moves in ways that necks shouldn't until her blue eyes are level with mine. "You can save him," I tell her, hope rising in my chest.
She stares at me, her eyes dilated and unblinking. An ugly bruise flowers around one eye, and it hits me that the one who gave her that wound is now dangling below us. Her breathing is shallow and she speaks in a faraway whisper, as though she's somewhere else rather than here in this moment. "Save him?"
I swallow hard and chance a glance down; wild eyes stare up at me and I see his fingers begin to slip. "You stretch, right? You can climb down to save him. Or, how far can you stretch? You could reach down a hand to grab him and we could pull him up, or you could swing him over for Christian and Chloe to catch—"
My frantic suggestions slam to a halt as she shakes her head with such force I'm afraid she might lose her grip. Her movements are jerky and her whisper becomes a venomous hiss. "You save him. You do it, if he's so important to you."
From above comes a puff of air, a scramble against rock and an inhuman scream as Christian throws another Handler to his doom. I've lost count how many this makes, yet their numbers don't seem fewer. "I can't," I tell her, trying to keep my voice calm. I don't want to agitate her more than she already is; the last thing we need is to lose another person over the cliffs. "I can't save him, but you can. Sappho, right? You can save his life."
She narrows her eyes at me. "Maybe. But why would I want to?" Her words are harsh, deliberately so; beneath the cutting tone I hear her sharp panicked breathing. Her eyes have dilated into black orbs ringed with a slight hint of blue.