There was another room, a better bedroom on the main floor, but it belonged to her older sister Kelly. Never mind that she was off at college, hundreds of miles away in Lawrence, Kansas. Never mind that Kelly rarely came home. That was Kelly’s room... end of story. Ellie’s parents were the type of people to freeze a room for eternity. These things were important to them.
The strange cold that seeped into the basement in the winter battled with the heat pumping from a grate in the ceiling and manifested itself in unsettling ways in her dreams. She often dreamed she was packed in snow, wrenching her head about to form a pocket of air. Sometimes her tangled blankets became the pinning weight of some faceless creature in her mind. When the panic nearly overtook her she’d jolt awake and her nightmare would flit away, leaving only the cold blue light of the moon dripping like spilled milk into her room.
Sometimes Ellie would awaken to find herself panting and already standing at the light switch by her door. Other times she’d come to when already dashing out of her door towards the stairs, fleeing a terrible nothing. Nighttime had always been something of a long war for her; the monsters that she once thought lived under her bed had moved into her head. And as strange as it may sound, she’d become used to it.
Maxwell Haulden, who also had developed an aversion to sleep—but only recently, and for true nightmares that were all his own—noticed from a distance that the light in the basement of the Willmore house often flicked on and off in the dead of night, and sometimes in the very early morning. Max noted this odd behavior in his newly assigned task of figuring out a way to train this woman, and in his self-assigned endeavor to figure out just what the hell Greer Nichols and the Blue recruiters had seen in a seventeen year old Wyoming girl that could possibly make them think she was able to step into Northern’s shoes. He took to watching. And thinking.
That week there was a string of bitterly cold late-November nights, the type of snap-freeze that solidifies the season, ensuring that the last bit of ground is frozen solid and the last spark of life in the last blade of grass is snuffed out. Dianne Willmore, Ellie’s mother, overcompensated with the heat much to the chagrin of her husband Mark, who grumbled but ultimately did nothing, as he was wont to do, so Ellie woke up in a damp terror in the middle of night. She threw off her covers and was up and at her light switch before she realized where she was, panting and sweating, her pajamas askew. She looked about herself as if for the first time. Was this her room? Was that her bed, with her clothes strewn about? Surely not. Surely this was someone else’s life and she was just visiting, stopping by on her way out west and to the ocean beyond.
As her eyes adjusted and her pulse slowed she regained a sense of self. Fears dissipated seconds after she had them, flitting even from memory and leaving only embarrassed discomfort. Of course this was her room. That was her twin bed shoved up in the corner. She was Ellie. She wasn’t buried, just sleeping. But she was still very hot. The heat was pumping from the grate above like the bellows of a train. Her hair was sticking to the nape of her neck. She had to get outside. She needed air. Wind.
Within the confines of the porch light she breathed deeply. Only now was her heart able to slow, but as her adrenaline faded it was replaced by a cold wave of depression. This was another night. She had to be at school in four hours. She would be home again in ten, asleep, for a time at least, perhaps ten hours after that. She might find herself here again on the porch in twenty-four. The thought was a weight upon her. She was chilled as a breath of snow-flecked wind spun about her cul-de-sac. Her breath quickened and she looked about warily. The dark houses at the dead-end of her neighborhood looked hostile in the flat dark. She’d just turned to go inside when she heard a distant shuffling. She snapped back around and peered out even as she grabbed the doorknob behind her. There, sharply contoured under the orange glow of the streetlight, stood a young man. He had one hand in his pocket and the other under a jacket, and he was slightly hunched. His hair was feathered back, as if blown about by a harsh wind that the quiet night had let pass by everyone else. His furrowed brow cast deep shadows over his eyes and she couldn’t see his face.
“I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said, quietly and clearly. “When I can’t sleep I take walks.”
Ellie thought about ignoring him and moving inside, but she stopped. “You shouldn’t walk in this neighborhood at night,” she harshly whispered.
“It doesn’t look dangerous. But then again I’m new here.” He gave a disarming shrug but stood still and made no move towards her.
“Oh, you won’t get mugged, but you may get shot by some old lady. I have neighbors who call the cops on the mailman.” Ellie snorted briefly at her own remark. The man didn’t laugh. Ellie remembered that she was in her pajamas, thin pajamas, and that it was cold out. She crossed her arms over her chest and stepped back towards her front door, but she felt that she should watch the man leave. Make sure he was nowhere near her recessed window. Disarming or not, she knew she’d never go to sleep in the basement if she thought he was wandering about the streetlight like a lost moth. He seemed to sense that he was making her uncomfortable.
“All right. I’ll head back.”
“You do that.”
He turned to go but stopped just outside of the orange halo of light. “Thank for the heads up. My name is Max.”
“Goodbye Max.”
Max paused another moment and nodded to himself just before walking off, quickly enveloped by the night.
Chapter Seven
THE HOUSE OF DANIEL HURLEY was quiet. Even Bailey Hurley, his precocious eight year old daughter, knew not to play about. She was told to save her energy for school and her voice for the playground because at home her sister Pyper was not well, nor was her sister’s friend Kayla. Bailey saw how badly noise and light hurt them, so she’d turned their house into a dark whisper place. She tiptoed past the door to their room when it was closed, and only when it was cracked did she venture near, poking her braided little head inside. Bailey was afraid for them, especially for her sister, and she wanted to hear the sound of breathing to make sure she was still there. Pyper, in too much pain to sleep, would sometimes whisper to Bailey, urging her to come over to her bedside.
“What are you doing you silly girl,” she murmured, but Bailey still heard the fondness in her voice so she ventured closer, simultaneously guilty and enormously relieved.
Kayla, her sister’s friend, never spoke, but she occasionally groaned. Bailey knew she was in too much pain to be awake, that she was worse off than her sister. The worst of them all.
“Why aren’t you off having fun with dad?” Pyper whispered, her own roundabout way of seeing how her weathered father was faring. Daniel was only recently made aware of his eldest daughter’s true occupation: captain of Ireland’s Tournament team, code named Green. Their most recent fight hadn’t gone their way, to say the least, and Pyper knew that her peacenik father was torn between fear of what he now knew of her real life, and confusion at seeing her struck down by the diode system the Tournament used.
“Dad’s in the yard,” Bailey whispered.
“What’s he doing?”
“He’s pulling dead plants out of the ground.”
“Yeah? Is he happy or sad?” Pyper closed her eyes against the headache that poured through them into her brain, but held Bailey’s hand to let her know she was still there.
Bailey thought about this for a minute. “Maybe both.”
Pyper nodded weakly. In the single bed next to her Kayla started to breathe heavily and Bailey stepped away towards the door, unsure.
“It’s okay,” Pyper whispered. “Kayla will be okay, but she is the sickest of all of us right now.”
“Ian is fine,” Bailey whispered, a little too loudly. Pyper winced, but she smiled. Bailey had something of a crush on Ian Finn.
“Ian is better, but he’s not great,” Pyper whispered.
“Did he catch the same type of sick?” Bailey asked.
“Y
eah, but people react differently to it.”
“And Kayla acts bad,” Bailey whispered, nodding.
Pyper felt the soft push of another wave of nausea. She didn’t want her sister to see her become sick.
“Now go play,” she whispered, trying to keep the edge out of her voice as the saliva rose in her mouth. Bailey scampered out of the room as quickly as she dared. Pyper let one hand drop to the side of the bed and felt blindly for the bin there, forcing herself to breathe slowly. She swallowed several times and felt a small measure of victory when her nausea began to fade. Only recently had she mastered it. The cramps that came after it receded were another matter. She gritted her teeth and slowly flopped to her side, curling into a ball, waiting.
It had been almost a month since Green’s defeat at the hands of Black. They’d been scraped off the I9 expressway and choppered to St. Michael’s Hospital, where they languished for a full week until the Tournament allowed Daniel Hurley to sign them out. Pyper only hazily remembered what happened after that, up until about a week ago when time finally congealed again. She thanked God for that shutdown mechanism, the tiny switch that her brain flicked when it knew it was time to lock the doors and shut off the lights. Without it, she would snap. All of them would.
Her father, for his part, had spent much of the last month in his yard. Although he constantly checked on her, his visits were clipped. The rest of the time he spent gardening. In the winter. Bedridden, Pyper was forced to dwell on the consequences of lying to him for all these years. When she wasn’t feeling guilty, she was worrying herself sick over Kayla.
Kayla was badly hurt. Much worse than she had at first believed. Allowing Kayla to compete in the second round of the Tournament after being taken down in the first had been a foolish mistake. Unlike Ian Finn and herself, Kayla had been hit on two separate occasions in both rounds and she didn’t seem to be getting better.
A swell of cramping hit Pyper like waves smashing against a bluff. She moaned as loudly as she dared, forcing ragged breaths through her nose and out of her mouth as she cried silently until it passed. It seemed to pass more quickly this time, another small comfort. She’d take whatever she could get these days.
For reasons that Pyper suspected were at least part grit and part substance abuse, Ian Finn always recovered the fastest of the three of them. Pyper also knew that she would recover well enough. She knew the drill. In the next week she would spend most of her time up on her feet, shuffling at first, but then straightening and walking. Not Kayla. Kayla had always been the slowest to recover, even under the best of circumstances. That she still hadn’t regained full lucidity even after three full weeks terrified Pyper, who spent most of her time listening for Kayla’s breathing even as Bailey listened for her own.
She heard the door creak open a sliver once more and the telltale silence of straining ears.
“Bailey,” Pyper whispered, “I thought I told you to go play.”
But it was Ian Finn’s drawn face that appeared in the doorframe. He was slumped and he wrapped his deadly left hand around himself like he’d used to when she first met him, before he’d truly learned how to draw his gun in a blink. Although he was walking, his injuries had taken their own toll. He’d shed nearly a stone from a frame that could ill afford it. Everything on him seemed a shade too large, from his plain white undershirt to his frayed jeans, to his flop of curled hair. His breathing moved his whole core about, as if his skin was stretched too thin over his inner clockwork.
“Ian,” she said, and he moved quickly over to her. His green eyes were drained and he clasped his left hand delicately within his right.
“Now that the children have left the room, just how sick do you really feel?” Ian asked.
“I get better every day.”
“And Kayla?” He glanced over into the darkened corner of the room where she made a tiny shape under the covers, not much more than a pillow would.
“She’s getting worse,” Pyper said.
“Worse? You’re sure?”
“The Tournament doctor from Mercy Hospital came and looked at her but he was at a loss, he only said he didn’t want to risk a stimulant. You don’t need to be a doctor to see it. She’s not recovering like she should, not truly sleeping, but she won’t wake up either. She’s neither here nor there. I think she’s in a great deal of pain, just floating.”
“Can’t they do anything?” Ian whispered, softly stepping over to Kayla’s bedside.
“They’re sending a specialist in from the States. Baxter Walcott. One of the men that developed the diode.”
Ian placed the back of his hand over Kayla’s lips and paused for a moment. “It’s very light. Almost nothing.”
Ian licked the back of his hand and nearly grazed her lips with it. There, the barest whisper of breath, a tiny prick of cold, but it was steady enough. He tried to brush her cheek with his left hand but it trembled and he thought better of it, stuffing it in his pocket.
“Jesus,” he said. “She looks terrible.”
“You don’t look so good yourself. You shouldn’t be up as much as you are, doing whatever it is you’re doing.”
“I’m not so bad as I look,” Ian said, glancing at her over his shoulder.
“I don’t believe you. Don’t think just because you’re not sick that the diode hit isn’t hurting you.”
Ian looked down upon Kayla. The peppering of freckles that spanned the bridge of her nose seemed swallowed by the swollen skin around her eyes.
“Ian, what’s going on in your head?” Pyper probed.
“I have to tell you something. You’re not going to like it.”
He turned squarely to Pyper, his left hand still jammed conspicuously in his jeans pocket.
“You’re doing something stupid, aren’t you?”
“I got a call the other day from Greer Nichols. Do you know him?”
“I know of him,” Pyper said, resting back upon her pillow and closing her eyes.
“He needs help.”
“Does he.”
Silence. Kayla took one heavy breath that drew Ian’s gaze, but she settled quiet once more.
“Ian—”
“He’s running around out there, Pyper. Auldborne is running around and he’s a killer.”
“No. There’s got to be someone else.”
“There is no one else.”
“Then wait. Wait until we’re healed. We’ll all find him.”
Ian looked squarely at Pyper and then over at Kayla and shook his head. “That’s not gonna work.” Then he heard Pyper Hurley cuss for the first time in his life.
“God dammit.”
“I can find Auldborne.” Ian said. “I can find him and beat him and bring him back for Greer.”
“For Greer? Don’t kid yourself, or me.”
Ian looked away.
“Is this your fight, or your father’s fight and his father before him?”
“Mine.”
“And are you going to bring down Auldborne or something you think Auldborne represents?”
“Does it matter?” Ian asked.
“I guess you intend on finding out,” Pyper hissed, then winced and settled herself slowly once more. Ian had no answer for her.
“Ian, that man is very dangerous. Everything about him is poison. He kills down to the roots.”
“I know. I know.”
“It’s a fine line you walk. Razor thin. Promise me that no matter what, you keep hold of yourself. You’re already fraying at the edges, and you know it.”
“I’ll be fine,” Ian said. “Promise. And I’ll be back soon, and the three of us can wander down Sythian Street together and Kayla can pick the pub. Okay?”
Pyper closed her eyes. Ian pondered saying goodbye to Kayla, but he knew she wouldn’t hear him anyway.
Chapter Eight
THERE WERE NO CLUES this time, no scraps of paper with wayward addresses on them, no open windows subtly calling Frank and Lock. The interior of the shack had been w
ashed clean. Nothing remained of the maps, files and equipment Lock had last seen there. The table was gone, the chairs were gone, even the stove that had stood in the middle of the room was now dismantled scrap metal, shoved into the far corner. A dusting of snow sifted to the ground from a jagged hole in the ceiling. Lock and Frank were enveloped in a disquieting silence. Only the wind could be heard, throwing occasional gusts of snow and ice against the outer walls like handfuls of sand.
Frank went over to the metal pile and kicked it perfunctorily. He rapped on a wooden wall. “I take it we’ve hit a dead end.”
“They took everything,” Lock said. “They’re not just gone. They’re never coming back here.”
“So what’s that mean?”
“My guess is that the bar in St. Petersburg, the one I told you about with the upstairs and the chess players and all, it’ll be the same way.”
“A pile of metal?”
“Something like that. Dismantled anyway.”
“So maybe he’s dead!” Frank quipped suddenly, mustering a half-smile.
Lock let Frank’s words drop to the floor between them. “He’s not dead, you idiot.”
“Well I don’t know. You don’t know either, for sure. Maybe he’s gone forever.”
“Eddie Mazaryk doesn’t die. He doesn’t just die.”
Frank clomped about, thinking aloud. “That night, the night Northern and Hix died, he was on and off that pier in the span of what, five minutes?”
“Give or take.”
“So something bad must have happened.”
“Yeah, Frank. Something bad did happen. Northern and Hix were killed.”
“No, to him. Maybe he got hurt or something. Maybe even killed.”
“He did the hurting that night. He did the killing.”
“So you do think it was him and not Alex Auldborne,” Frank whispered loudly. Lock spun around and made towards the door, pointedly ignoring the statement.
The Tournament Trilogy Page 41