by David Estes
Her long, lean body looks dark and athletic. Even in death Destiny appears strong and capable, as if a single touch would wake her up fighting.
There’s not a mark on her—at least none that’s visible. Whatever they did to her, it was internal, perhaps an injection of some sort.
A groan, a creak, and a door opens. The bright light paints a dark silhouette in the doorway.
Any number of vile threats burn in Harrison’s throat like bile, but he holds them back, saying nothing. Because that’s all they would be—threats. He won’t speak them until they’re promises.
“Hello, Harrison,” the silhouette says. A familiar voice, one heard across the dinner table on multiple occasions. Corrigan Mars. Once his father’s friend—now his murderer. Maybe Destiny’s murderer, too. Soon to be his murderer?
Not if he can help it.
“You killed her,” Harrison says coldly. Not a question. An accusation.
The new Head of Pop Con steps into the arc of light. He looks older than Harrison remembered. More tired. More lined. More weather-beaten.
More deadly.
He wears a thin smile, like he’s about to utter a joke’s punchline. “She was a Slip,” Mars says, as if that makes everything all right. “The people demand justice.”
“Justice?” Harrison says, his voice cracking. “Like my father? Like you want to give my brother? My mother? Will it ever be enough? Or will you have to destroy my entire family before you’re satisfied?” The rage boils over faster than Harrison can tamp it down, and although he knows it’s futile, he strains against his bindings.
Which. Don’t. Budge.
He slumps back against the table, hitting the back of his head. The sharp jab of pain in his skull is welcome, clarifying. Necessary to extinguish his anger enough to let him think. For now, words are his only weapons, his brute strength stifled.
“Harrison, Harrison, Harrison,” Mars says, remaining frustratingly calm. “This was never personal, my boy. This is strictly a legal matter. If I’d had it my way, your father would’ve made the right choice all those years ago and then we wouldn’t be in this pickle, would we? I respected your father a lot, son. At least up until the point when his brain fell out of his head and he went half-crazy. Then he became just another criminal to be punished.”
“The only criminal here is you,” Harrison says.
Corrigan Mars sighs, the way a frustrated parent might react to a particularly disobedient and patience-testing child. “It’s not too late to change your mind, Harrison,” Mars says. “If you do the right thing and tell me where your brother and mother are, I’ll ensure you get less than a ten-year sentence. You’ll survive. In less than a decade you’ll be considered rehabilitated and you’ll have your life back—whatever life you choose.”
Harrison tries to shake his head, but the restraints prevent him. “You can shove that idea right up your—”
“And,” Mars says, holding a finger in the air and cutting him off, “if you give me information on where the rest of the Lifers are, our generous mayor has given me free reign to offer you full and uncontested immunity from prosecution. You would go free, son.”
And so it starts, Harrison thinks. Stage one: an offer he can’t refuse.
Except he can. “You can eat your own crap,” he growls.
Stage two: “Very well,” Mars says. “Time to meet the Destroyer.”
“What?” he blurts out. Benson told him about the cyborg Hunter that almost killed them. He also told him how they were able to destroy him.
Mars laughs. “Isn’t modern technology fantastic? Those that should be dead live on.” He laughs again. “Kind of like your brother.”
Harrison says nothing, his eyes darting around the room, inspecting every nook and cranny for potential torture devices. He half-expects to find a cliché steel cart with various razor-sharp instruments of terror, silver and shiny and ready to be poked into his skin. Instead, he finds the same thing he found before: An empty room, save for the dead girl resting nearby. Destiny…dead…how could he have been so stupid to bring her with him? He thought he was saving her, but he was only delaying the inevitable. Tears prick at his eyes, but he holds them back with the tenacity of a cobra.
Corrigan Mars seems to realize the purpose of Harrison’s eye movements, because he says, “The Destroyer needs no tools. He is the tool.”
“That’s the first true thing you’ve spoken,” Harrison says.
Realizing his verbal slipup, Mars tightens his jaw and exits the room, tossing a darkly ironic “Have fun” over his shoulder like a grenade.
Silence falls like a thick blanket. The door remains open, like an unassuming portal to hell. Harrison blinks, holding his breath.
He gasps when there’s a silence-shattering scream and the blank walls turn white with blinding light. Through narrow slits he watches the doorway, which remains a black hole of emptiness.
Although there is only audio, Harrison can immediately picture the scene being replayed by the speakers. After all, he was there. He lived it. There are shots and shouts and frantic commands uttered by his father. In his mind, he can see Michael Kelly to his right. He’s wielding dual black guns, firing shot after shot down a long corridor. Black-garbed Hunters, also shooting, die under the onslaught, piling up like discarded clothes until his father is hit, blood bursting from his skin like the splash from a puddle. One of his guns clatters to the floor.
Harrison wishes he could close his ears as easily as his eyes, which is perhaps why they chose to torment him with only the sounds of his father’s last stand, rather than the full video, which he’s sure Corrigan Mars watches every night before bed. Hearing his father defending his family seems to open a door inside him. For just a moment, he can almost see Michael Kelly the way Benson does, as the loving father and doting husband that he once was.
The moment fades as he hears his father’s gun click with expired ammo.
Footsteps ring out and he can picture Corrigan Mars stepping into view, striding slowly but purposefully toward his father. Pointing a gun at his head. A shot rings out and Harrison hears a scuffle and a grunt of pain. Did his father dive away from the shot? Was he hit again? There’s more scuffling and frantic gasping breaths and then another gunshot. His father screams and Harrison’s muscles tense in protest, as if he can stop the past by sheer strength of will. There’s a thump and a groan, the sound of his father growling through his teeth. His eyes are dry and burning, but he doesn’t close them for fear that the sounds will intensify behind the shadow of his eyelids.
He doesn’t know if his imagination is worse than reality, but he can see Mars standing over his father, grinning from ear to ear, gloating, pointing the gun at his head. Silence falls, desperate and heavy, and Harrison thinks the audio has been cut off at the penultimate point, almost like a taunt.
But no. The sound of the final gunshot makes him flinch, so real it’s as if someone just pulled the trigger next to his head. The gunshot that ended his father’s life. Although it’s a shot from the past, he knows it’s also a promise of violence. A threat of bodily harm if he doesn’t cooperate.
Silence returns and Harrison closes his eyes, seeing images of his own creation replay endlessly in his mind, like a waking nightmare.
Then he hears breathing in the dark.
His eyes flash open and he scans his surroundings from edge of vision to edge of vision, seeing nothing, nothing, nothing…
There! A glint of metal in the dark; a silver spark like a summer firefly. While Harrison was trying to block out the images, the cyborg somehow managed to steal into the room, as silent as a ghostly wraith.
“The only thing I regret about my sister’s death,” the Destroyer says with a voice like grinding sand, “is that I wasn’t the one that pulled the trigger.”
The cyborg steps into the light. For some reason Harrison expected to find a creature more gruesome, with flesh torn apart by metal parts jutting out at odd angles, like a new age demon.
And he thought he’d be older, not some teenager around his own age. Instead, the cyborg is the best that money and technology has to offer, a fluid combination of man and machine. Half of his face is forged from titanium, the metal plate curving around the edge of his lips, past his nose, and missing his eyes, which are dark with menace, like a pair of storm clouds blotting out the sun. The rest of his body appears to be mostly machine, although it’s difficult to tell beneath the Hunter’s garb adorning his tall, athletic form. Some might even refer to the cyborg as perfection, technological and human beauty at its best.
Some might say that he’s flawless, like a diamond.
But not Harrison. “You are one ugly-looking son of a bot-licker,” he says.
His unexpected insult seems to disarm the cyborg, who raises his human eyebrows. As a result of the expression, his remaining human skin seems abnormally tight, like an animal skin stretched into leather.
Harrison follows his jab with a verbal uppercut: “And screwed up in the head, too, if you wanted to kill your sister.”
“She was a Slip,” the cyborg growls.
Harrison ignores the excuse and says, “So that makes you ugly and psychotic. No wonder you hide in the shadows like some freak show.”
The cyborg’s metal fingers tighten into fists that look like miniature wrecking balls. He’s not sure what he’s trying to accomplish with his verbal sparring, but Harrison’s enjoying getting under the Destroyer’s skin—or metal plates, he should say.
Then, unexpectedly, the cyborg’s fingers uncurl and the tension seems to leave his stance. The cyborg’s next words are free of anger. “Let me ask you this, Harrison Kelly, what part of your body do you value the very most?”
The Destroyer steps closer and Harrison struggles to maintain his composure. He’s defenseless, in a room with a known killer. He says nothing.
“Is it your pretty-boy smile? I bet the girls go crazy when you flash those pearly whites. Or is it your eyes, the baby blues that melt hearts like heated butter?” The cyborg coos out the words, like he’s speaking to a baby. He takes another step forward, metal shrieking as a blade slides from a compartment in his palm. Harrison’s eyes follow the blade as he moves it from side to side, casually. “No? Ahh, I see. Your hands then? Without such good, strong hands you’d never have become a hoverball star at your school. But then again, you won’t be playing much hoverball in the future, will you?” A second blade slides out, this one from the other hand.
Harrison says nothing, trying to focus on a spot on the wall past the Destroyer. Past the twin blades that are now sliding against each other, being sharpened.
Kish-kish. Kish-kish. Kish-kish.
Don’t look, Harrison thinks. Don’t cry out. Don’t give this bastard the satisfaction. Die like a man.
“Or is your favorite part something else?” A knowing grin paints itself across the human portion of the cyborg’s face. The Destroyer steps closer still, so near now that Harrison can’t look past him. He slides one of the knives under the towel and Harrison flinches, feeling the cold steel between his legs. “What? No snip snip?”
His head throbbing with fear, Harrison musters his courage and says, “You can do whatever you want, but I won’t tell you anything.” But please don’t, he prays.
“Do you want to die?” the cyborg asks, thankfully sliding the knife out from between Harrison’s legs.
“If it means I don’t have to look at your ugly face? Hell yeah,” he says. He tries to inconspicuously swallow the lump in his throat but fails miserably, the resulting gulp like a hammer blow in the quiet room.
“You can try to hide your fear, but I can smell it,” the Destroyer says. “It smells like a pathetic little boy.”
“You like to smell little boys?” Harrison says. “Why does that not surprise me?”
“Funny,” the Destroyer says. “A quick wit. You’re much more confident than your brother, aren’t you? Confident bordering on arrogant. We’ll see how confident you are when you’re squealing like a little girl.” Harrison vows in that moment to not squeal, no matter what happens to him.
“You are impressive,” Harrison says. “So scary when someone’s tied to a bed. Truth is, if my hands and legs were free I’d beat the living bot out of you.”
For a split-second, the cyborg’s calm demeanor morphs into a spasm of rage, his hand coming up with lightning quickness, arcing downward even faster.
The pain is immediate and intense, racing up from Harrison’s hand to his arm to his skull, seeming to bore into every last nerve ending and squeeze the very marrow out of his bones. “Ahhhhhhh!” he screams, his eyes locked in horror on the knife handle sticking out of his palm. The blade itself went straight through his hand and clanked off the metal table. He grits his teeth, his next scream coming out as a gurgle, spit squirting through his teeth and down his chin. His entire body is shaking with shock and pain as an unusually small amount of blood trickles from the wound, dripping off his fingertips. The blade is holding back a torrent of blood, Harrison realizes somewhere deep inside his brain, where part of his mind still somehow manages to function.
“Hand first—your manhood next,” the Destroyer threatens.
Harrison moans, his mind foggy with pain, which seems to darken his vision. “Screw you,” he groans, and then passes out.
PART 3: THE DEATH MATCH
Chapter Twenty-Eight
They remain utterly silent long after they hear the pylons being removed and the Hawk drone whirring away. For all they know, it could be a trap, several of the Hunters remaining behind to ambush them the moment they slink from their igloo.
Janice is playing with her shoelaces, which are hard and frozen with snow.
Simon is constructing a pile of ice balls, which grows larger and larger each minute, filling a full corner of their snow bunker.
Minda’s eyes are closed and she’s motionless, as if asleep.
And Benson’s mind is racing, as it does. Analyzing. Filtering. Trying to make sense of things.
They were caught. A Hunter—or at least someone posing as a Hunter—rescued them. Who was that guy? And why would he risk his life to save them? And to top it all off: They were located because of a tiny tracker in his own mother’s shoe, much the same way Refuge was located by the tracker in Destiny’s back. A shoe that the Lifer leader had helped his mother tie.
“Jarrod screwed us over,” Benson says aloud, finally coming to the only conclusion that makes any sense.
Minda’s eyes flash open, as clear as priceless gemstones. As Benson suspected, she wasn’t sleeping at all. Just waiting. She looks thoughtfully at Benson, but doesn’t speak.
Instead it’s Simon who weighs in. “You’re wrong,” he says. “I know what this looks like, but he would never do that. Why would he?”
“He was working for Pop Con the whole time,” Benson suggests. “A double-agent. Waiting for Refuge to fill up with Slips and then taking it down. It might not have even been Destiny who led them to us in the first place. It might have been Jarrod.”
“No, he wouldn’t do that,” Simon insists. When Benson gives him a skeptical look, he says, “Look, I’m not just blindly following some dictator. But you don’t fully appreciate what Jarrod has gone through to get to this point. He isn’t just the leader of the Lifers—he’s the creator. He built it from nothing, made it important, made it a threat to the government. He doesn’t work for them. I swear to you that he doesn’t.”
“I tend to agree with that,” Minda says.
“Jarrod is a nice, nice man,” Janice says, breaking off a piece of her frozen shoestring. She sniffs at it and then pops it in her mouth, holding it on her tongue, which she sticks out for all of them to see. “Thee came thoo Benthen’s burthday,” she adds, trying to talk around her tongue.
“None of that means he didn’t tip them off,” Benson notes. “Just that he’s not working for Pop Con.” He chews the inside of his mouth, thinking. Janice spits the shoelace out between them.
“What?” Benson says.
“Sorry,” she says. “Sorrito, sorricious, sorrutations.”
Benson ignores the nonsense and focuses on that single word. An apology. For what? “Clearly he put the tracker in,” Benson says. “Agreed?”
Minda nods.
Simon grudgingly does the same. He says, “But that doesn’t mean he passed the info on to Pop Con.”
“Then how did they get it?” Minda asks.
“After taking control of Refuge they might’ve gotten into the system.”
“Maybe,” Benson says, “but it’s pretty unlikely Jarrod would’ve included information on some random tracker within his communications network or databases. And even if he did, the chances of them finding it so quickly…”
“One in a million,” Minda says, agreeing. “I think he did it.”
“Why?” Simon says, his eyes narrowing.
Minda looks at Benson and their eyes lock, something passing between them as they come to the exact same conclusion at the exact same time. Benson says, “Because he’s devoted to the Lifer cause. The cause he created. He’s not interested in saving one Slip. He’s interested in changing the law, and to do that he needs popular opinion to swing in his direction. I think he knows a hell of a lot more than we give him credit for. Maybe everything. He knows why Harrison left. He knows why I left. He wants Harrison to kill my Death Match, to create the technicality that would make me an authorized citizen. But he also wants me to be caught and killed. Because then I’ll no longer be just another Slip killed by Pop Con. I’ll be an authorized citizen killed by Pop Con. Because of all the press coverage I’ve received, that might be enough to incite the people to rebellion. And then he can get up on his soapbox and preach to the country about change.”
Simon shakes his head, but not as vehemently as before. He doesn’t say anything.