Arena Mode

by Blake Northcott

  And as my mind rolled over every conceivable detail, I projected it right into its location: the casket across the rooftop.

  Just minutes ago, I flipped open the lid with the silver emblem, and saw a replica of that very same sword. Then I panicked, slamming it shut the moment I heard a pair of footsteps clanging up the fire escape.

  “That was a bad move, mate,” Arirose said with an unsettling smile. “Why did you ditch the sword? It was your only chance for survival. Thought you’d trick us, did you?”

  “Don’t open it,” I said, with as much urgency as I could manage. “It’ll explode.”

  Arirose shook her head again, staring at me with pity; as if my pathetic attempt to bargain my way out of the situation had failed miserably, and she was sympathetic – even embarrassed for me.

  Serafina strolled over, looking down at my body. “I was going to suggest dropping him from the roof, but that might just break his legs. Stabbing him will be easier. And then I’ll have my first elimination.”

  “What do you mean you’ll have your first elimination?” Arirose asked, turning her back to me. As her concentration shifted, I could feel a number of the invisible needles loosening. The sensation returned to my toes and fingertips.

  “It’s mine,” Serafina argued, waving a finger in Arirose’s face. “I’ve been handling blades since I was five. I should be in charge of it.” She marched towards the casket with her partner in tow.

  I had just enough feeling in my arms to roll over and take cover while she flung open the lid.

  Standing inches from the explosion, The Butcher didn’t just blow apart – she liquefied. When she threw open the casket, the blast radius was relatively small, but Serafina’s black, acidic blood spattered the rooftop like a torrential downpour. I was already facedown with my head buried beneath my gauntlets. Some of the drops spattered the back of my forearms and began to eat their way through the metal, searing my skin below. I screamed and tore off my gloves, tossing them aside as they continued to sizzle.

  I still had no clue which competitors remained in the tournament, but I knew what the score was on the rooftop.

  Darwin: two.

  Arirose and Serafina: zero.

  The rooftop had been reduced to a blackened mess, sizzling as it faltered and sagged. Serafina’s corrosive blood had showered the entire area, causing the gravel to bubble and pop – and in some places, completely cave in.

  My head spun. The overwhelming stench of burning flesh, combined with melting tar, overwhelmed my senses. Eyes watering, I cupped a hand over my nose and stumbled awkwardly towards the fire escape. And that’s when I heard her.

  It was an innocent cry for help from a young girl; judging by her voice no more than five-years-old. I turned and scanned the smoking rooftop. No one was there.

  This was insane. I had to be experiencing a hallucination – a side effect triggered by my lack of medication ... but the voice was so convincing. I could hear it with perfect clarity, ringing out from behind a twisted pile of seared metal (likely the remains of the casket that had exploded just moments ago.)

  I tiptoed across the melting roof and booted the fragments aside, revealing Arirose – or what was left of her. Her face, torso, and right arm were still somewhat intact, twitching involuntarily, but the charred remains of her lower half were burnt beyond recognition. Her legs were blistered and peeling, exposing the bone beneath. I could hear the acid continuing to eat through her muscle tissue, like steaks searing on a barbecue.

  Shaken, I took a clumsy step backwards.

  She was luring me in. She had to be. This was a last-ditch attempt by Arirose to exact her revenge, and kill me before she drew her final breath. The smart move would be to turn, run, and put as much distance between myself and this collapsing rooftop as possible. Yet I stared down at her, unable to look away.

  Then her jaw moved, ever so slightly, and a raspy breath escaped her throat. Arirose wanted to say something – desperately trying to force out a word – only her vocal chords failed to respond.

  And then I was blinded.

  A blur of pink light flashed from her eyes, and my mind flooded with images. Swirling, disjointed visions that reflected from a shattered mirror, overlapping and colliding with each other. I could hear voices as well, but they stuttered, like an ancient video file that was trying to buffer. Whatever message that Arirose was trying to deliver, it wasn’t working – at least not completely.

  I scraped at my temples, trying to will her out of my mind. Amidst the whirlwind of sights and sounds, one image snapped into focus. It brightened and clarified while the others faded into the void. The memory was of an elderly woman with a rose tied into her hair, dying in a hospital bed. At her bedside was Arirose, clutching her frail hand with tears streaming down her face. As she offered the doctor a final nod of affirmation, he pulled the plug, cutting the woman’s life support. Arirose looked on as her loved one peacefully drifted away.

  The visions dissipated, and I knew exactly what the psychic was asking of me. With injuries this extensive, she was going to die. She knew it as well as I did. Her fate was to lie in a puddle of her own burning flesh, slowly cooking until she expired in a matter of seconds, or minutes – or if she was especially unfortunate, hours. There was no way to tell. But if I didn’t intervene, this young woman would perish in the most excruciating way that I could possibly imagine.

  I crouched next to her, wiping the blood-soaked curls from her face.

  This could be a trap, I repeated to myself. The smart move is to run. After all, I had no obligation to help her, moral or otherwise. And it was doubtful that Arirose would have been so compassionate had I been stuck in her position. But this wasn’t about how she would have reacted had our situations been reversed; this was about who I was, and the compassion I’d extend to someone who didn’t deserve it.

  I stroked her hair and offered a small, reassuring nod. I reached out for her with my other hand, but it trembled. I drew back.

  Damn it ... of every scenario that I anticipated before Arena Mode, I never expected this to be one of them. My plan was to lay low, avoid conflict, and escape while my hands were relatively clean. Tricking Serafina and Arirose into opening the casket was one thing. It was completely justified. Self defense. But leaving her like this ...

  If I followed through and did what Arirose was asking of me, there was no turning back. I’d have this experience carved into my memory forever. I just wasn’t sure if I could live with the alternative.

  I slowly reached out and cupped my hand over her nose and mouth, blocking her airway. An unbearable minute ticked by that felt like an hour. Her deep hazel eyes exploded with pink energy, a burst that lasted only a heartbeat. The light quickly extinguished, and it was over. Arirose mercifully slipped away.

  I stood and inhaled deeply, attempting to clear my head. The sickening combination of smells jolted me back to the present moment, and I made my way towards the fire escape.

  I had taken only a few steps when my foot fell through the roof, lodging my right leg into the sagging mess of melting tar and gravel. It was like being knee-deep in quicksand: the more I struggled, the further I sank. I was stuck, and wasn’t going anywhere soon.

  While I struggled to free my thick armored boot, I noticed the implant on the back of my hand illuminating: I was camping. Being pinned down for so long by Arirose, I must not have noticed the blinking light or the itching sensation. The device had passed the point of offering a friendly warning. The solid red light was beaming from beneath my skin, growing brighter with each passing second. Suddenly a three-dimensional map projected from the back of my hand, with the name ‘Matthew Moxon’ clearly marked above it. A crimson dot pulsed inside the detailed diagram, pinpointing my location. This was Frost’s incentive to keep the competitors moving: get caught camping and he’d tell everyone in The Arena exactly where you were.

  I was no longer thinking straight as I pounded my fists into t
he rooftop around me. I flailed furiously, screaming and cursing my circumstances. Not surprisingly, it did nothing to improve my situation. My outburst only served to further exhaust me as I baked under the midday sun.

  After a few moments of exertion, I drew in a labored breath and buried my face into my palms. I’d given up. Not just on escaping the rooftop, or on winning the competition ... since I heard the news about my tumor, it was the first time I’d completely given up on my life.

  I think I was in a state of shock, because the weight of Arena Mode hadn’t fully sunk in; watching the medical staff sliced to pieces, wading through their remains, seeing a friend stabbed to death, and just moments ago, helping to end someone’s life.

  It was all so crisp and fresh in my mind, and at the same time it was like an out-of-body experience. I felt as if someone else had witnessed these atrocities and was relaying the information as vaguely as possible, carefully protecting me from the most lurid details.

  My brain was trying to compartmentalize what I’d seen – it was the only explanation.

  I was subconsciously burying the events in some dark corner of my mind to avoid dealing with their gravity, but eventually I’d have to confront what I’d seen and done. The thought of that was overwhelming. Lodged into the rooftop, unable to move, I became more afraid of surviving the tournament and dealing with the aftermath than of dying at the hands of a superhuman.

  America had been perpetually at war for the last four decades. There was no shortage of casualties. Each year, thousands of soldiers returned home in agony, burnt and disfigured, often missing limbs. As gruesome as their wounds were, the physical damage wasn’t what I found most disturbing – it was the permanent scars left on their psyches.

  A veteran named Reed who lived on my floor would wander the halls at night, wearing nothing more than boxer shorts and a pair of tattered slippers. He’d amble around like a zombie: unshaven, dead-eyed, and mumbling to himself in a near-catatonic state. At only twenty-seven, he’d already served two tours in North Korea and three in Sudan. His roommate – a cousin who’d volunteered to take care of him – told me that Reed slept less than an hour a night, and he’d wake up rambling about unspeakable horrors. He ranted about firing squads, burning villages, and the sounds of screaming children. That continued on for nearly a year until Reed was moved to a permanent care facility, but who knows what good that would have done. They could prescribe medication or offer counselling, but nothing would erase the sights and sounds that were seared into his mind.

  If I was to free myself, make it out of the competition, and survive the surgery, I could live out the rest of my life in relative peace. I just didn’t know what kind of life I’d be living.

  It seemed easier to surrender. To let the next superhuman who found me finish the job that my tumor had started.

  I heard the fire escape creaking once again. Winston Ramsley pulled himself to the top rung of the ladder, brandishing a long metal pole that was roughly the size and thickness of a baseball bat. A length of steel would have been no match for a competitor who was armed with a sword or a gun, but it was more than enough to bludgeon an unarmed man to death who was stuck in a roof.

  He seemed to be struggling with the top portion of the damaged ladder, which was now falling away from the building; he was barely able to keep his head above the ledge. The spattering acid must have further damaged the rusted metal, and it was collapsing under The Gentleman’s weight. He attempted to steady himself while pointing the pipe in my direction. It hummed, like power spooling up inside of a massive generator. Then it started to glow. With a flick of his wrist, Ramsley fired a bolt of electricity from the end, reaching out like a crackling tendril of lightning. Fortunately he was off-balance as the ladder bent away from the rooftop, so the blast missed my head – but not by much. I could feel the heat as it blistered past, stinging my eyes.

  I wasn’t overly motivated to free my leg from the sinking roof before the British swordfighter had arrived, but nearly having my face burnt off proved to be just the right amount of incentive.

  A second bolt sailed in my direction, striking the area near my trapped leg. It burnt away some of the sagging gravel and tar, affording me just enough space for an escape. I heaved myself from the opening and stumbled to the opposite side of the roof, as far from the collapsing fire escape as possible.

  As I teetered on the ledge, peering four stories down, I scanned the narrow alley where a cardboard-filled dumpster seemed like the only suitable landing spot. Every action movie in my collection raced through my mind. It was insane. There had to be another, more logical way down.

  I took a nanosecond too long to decide.

  A bolt of electricity struck the center of my back. My armor conducted the energy like a Faraday cage, absorbing most of the blast (and saving me from certain death) but the momentum knocked me forward.

  I fell off the roof, twisting, screaming. I wasn’t sure where I was going to land, because in mid-air my senses shut down.

  Darkness set in, and time disappeared.

  I pulled myself from the dumpster, crashing to the pavement with a painful thud.

  I had no concept of how long I’d been unconscious since falling from the rooftop; minutes, hours – there was no way to be certain. But however long it had been, I had to be camping. I studied the back of my left hand and noticed that my epidermal implant was no longer blinking. I couldn’t even feel it beneath my skin. The electrical charge that ran through my body must have fried it, rendering the tracer useless. Finally some good news. I never thought there would be an upshot to being struck by lightning.

  Gazing up at the sky through the narrow space between the buildings, I hoped to get a reading from the daylight, and possibly a sense of what time it was. My best guess was mid-afternoon. A few clouds had gathered overhead, granting Manhattan a measure of relief from the punishing July sunshine, but the humidity persisted.

  From the corner of my eye I noticed an object, tucked against the wall at the dead-end of the alley: a casket, bearing a gold emblem. I didn’t know if my memory was starting to fail, but I was certain that on the satellite map Gavin had acquired, there was nothing in this location. Frost must have dropped some additional chests around The Arena this morning, or possibly had the existing ones relocated to throw off the cheaters (like myself).

  Badly in need of a weapon, I approached the casket, kneeled, and ran my fingers along the underside of the latch. I was nearly positive that, based on the emblem, it wouldn’t explode in my face – but at this point I wasn’t about to start taking chances. When I finished my inspection, I prepared to flip the lid, but froze when I heard footsteps falling behind me.

  I spun to see who was approaching, and suddenly wondered if my lack of medication was taking its toll – possibly triggering the onset of a full-blown hallucination. Either my condition was worsening or I was going crazy ... or both. There was no way to be sure. Because what approached was unlike anything I’d ever seen before.

  And it couldn’t have been real.

  When your eye is processing information, light passes through your cornea, striking the rods and cones. This data produces electrical activity, which communicates with the visual cortex of your brain. Then, when your brain processes these impulses, it rationalizes what you’re looking at. Voila: you’re seeing something. Pretty simple, right?

  At least that’s how it’s supposed to happen.

  I’m not sure how I knew it at the time, but in that moment, I was doing it in reverse. I felt as if my brain was firing information outward, and I was creating the person walking towards me. I was imagining them into reality, and altering their physical appearance. A slender, pale-skinned girl approached with a wave of flowing blue hair, dressed like the lead singer of a punk band. But it – she – wasn’t always this person. Just moments before, she had existed only as a cluster of atoms, waiting to be completed by an external observer. Before I saw her, she was the genesis of
a thought about to be birthed into existence.

  “I have been sent here by the almighty celestial creator,” she said in a chilling monotone, raising her hands above her head. “Kneel before me, Earth-dweller, for I am the harbinger of your destiny.”

  I stopped breathing.

  She lowered her hands and burst out laughing. “I’m just fuckin’ with you. Sorry, Mox – that was really mean of me, but when I saw the look on your face I just couldn’t resist.”

  “What? How ... you know my name?” I narrowed my eyes, still trying to process what I’d seen.

  “I’m Brynja, a last minute replacement into the competition. When that scientist dude lit himself on fire, I was the first one on Frost’s reserve list.”

  Darko Simić’s dangerous light show had gone awry, injuring several people during yesterday’s weigh-ins – himself included. After his withdrawal was announced, I just assumed that there would be twelve competitors in The Arena, not the previously announced thirteen. As always, Frost was thinking one step ahead.

  Brynja and I stared at each other in the gulf of silence. I parted my lips and planned to say something, but couldn’t produce a sentence.

  It was getting weird.

  “So,” she said, rapping her fingers against her hips. “Here I am ... I hope you don’t think I’m rude. I’d shake your hand, but ...” She opened her right palm and extended it towards me.

  I tentatively reached out to take it, and my outstretched fingers passed directly through hers. Her hand was a flesh-colored cloud that was disrupted by my presence, swirling like a cold mist. After a heartbeat, it solidified and reassembled.

  I was still unsure if this encounter was actually happening, or if I was on the brink of a complete mental collapse.

  “You’re gonna have questions,” she said matter-of-factly. “So go ahead and fire away. I won’t be offended, I promise. Nothing is off limits.”