The Tournament Trilogy

by B. B. Griffith

  “You did well. We’ll check you in a few minutes.”

  Ellie nodded, still staring at her arm.

  “That inoculation, just like any inoculation, holds a bit of reactive agent in it. You’re going to feel it. It hits everyone differently,” he said, speaking to Cy and Tom now, both of whom looked like they’d just watched a struggling rat get fed to a snake. “But you’ll most likely feel sluggish and a bit numb. Some players reported moderate visual hallucinations as well, color bleed and lag, and problems with depth perception. Be prepared. After all, this is a poison you’re taking. A sleeping poison, but a poison nonetheless. Now who’s next?”

  After a moment, Tom Elrey stepped forward.

  “He is,” he said, pointing at Cy.

  For a few moments Cy stood frozen and Ellie feared that she might have been tricked into a nightmare where she was the only one who had been fooled. She imagined waking up in a bathtub of ice with one less kidney. But when Cy nodded, and stepped forward, and stripped naked right then and there, she knew that she wasn’t alone.

  Tom Elrey was a different matter. The first thing he did when he stepped up was mouth the words Did it hurt? to Ellie, who now looked groggy.

  Tom breathed hard throughout the entire process, and spoke often to Walcott in a transparent attempt to calm his own nerves.

  “Why did you do this, if you hate it so much?” he asked, through clamped teeth.

  “Jenga.”

  “Jenga?”

  “I was good at Jenga as a kid. Steady hands. Figured the next logical thing was become a heart surgeon. Here we go,” Walcott said, priming the needle.

  When Tom took the shot he let out an ahh noise like he’d found a parking ticket on his car, but there were no squeals from anyone. Ellie supposed that was a decent start. At least nobody cried. Ellie had dressed again in the midst of the shuffling and showering, but Cy and Tom still dripped into their sheets like sad ghosts. Ellie didn’t want to admit it, but she was feeling hot. Too hot for a girl that just took a dunk in a safety shower. She was about to sit on the bed Walcott had stripped for her when Max spoke for the first time since she’d stepped forward.

  “Clean yourselves up. It’s time to take a walk,” he said.

  Ellie felt heavy. She smacked her lips like a frog and smiled dumbly, but a small part of her realized what was happening. You’ve poisoned yourself. Deal with it. She dimly registered Cy and Tom dressing again, although she found herself staring at Dr. Walcott. Or perhaps he was staring at her? Either way, his eyes looked haunted. As if they weren’t even his eyes, but pockets of potting soil packed where eyes should be. She blinked to clear the vision, but it wouldn’t clear. As she left the room, Max ushering the three of them out like stunned accident victims, her last vision was of Walcott watching her leave. He shuddered like a scarecrow in the breeze, scattering them for a short while like birds upon his shoulders.

  ————

  “It will hit you in waves,” said Max, as they walked along with the holiday crowds down the Cheyenne Promenade once more. “Keep up. I need you to listen carefully. This is your first lesson.”

  It was nearing dusk and a sifting of tiny snowflakes fell. As they rounded a corner and set off down a bustling sidewalk towards the river, the Promenade Christmas lights flicked on, thousands of strings of twinkling colors draping the eaves and wrapped carefully around the trees and columns of the stores and restaurants. There was a soft swell of sound as the crowd paused to take it in or snap a few pictures. Ellie was transfixed. She blinked and the lights followed her. In the rush of the past weeks she’d forgotten that it was December. Christmas was coming, on top of all of this. She wondered if the Tournament took a week off for the holidays. She doubted it. She giggled at the thought. Max stopped to look at her and she cut herself short, but she was mesmerized. The lights streaked through the night sky, following her gaze. She thought that if she were to spin around with her eyes open, she’d be wrapped up in strings of color herself.

  “Get it together,” Max said. “All of you. You’re staring at the lights like you’re on acid.”

  “I do not feel well,” Tom said, clenching and unclenching his fist and fluttering his fingers. “My hand is numb.”

  “That’s normal,” Max said, as he peered at Cy, who had withdrawn into his hoodie again, hands in pockets. He said nothing, but his eyes were big pools of light in the darkness.

  “I promised you the long answer, Ellie, and all of you, and now that you’re truly in it, you’ll get it.”

  “Now?” Ellie asked, swallowing and feeling her tongue in her mouth. “You think now is really the right time?”

  “It’s better this way. Keep walking... it helps with the numbness. It’ll go away. This is just the barest prick of a diode hit. It’ll wear off by itself after a few hours.”

  They passed brightly lit storefronts and bounced off the boxes and bags of the throngs of shoppers that had come out to see the lights.

  “I can’t feel my face,” Tom said, and he veered as he walked. He was about to hit a brick wall before Cy deftly grabbed him and steered him straight again. Tom looked at Cy as if for the first time, and Cy stared back, shaking his head slightly. Max was walking ahead now, quickly, and they shuffled to keep up. He seemed to be talking to himself, figuring out how to begin. He paused and stared up at a large clock tower, the centerpiece of the Cheyenne Promenade lit brightly from below in blue spectrum. They nearly ran into him as he abruptly turned around.

  “Eddie Mazaryk—” he said.

  “What?” Tom slurred.

  “—and Alex Auldborne.”

  Tom looked behind him, thinking Max might be addressing the two captains directly, but no one there paid them any care.

  “Of all the players in your lexicon, these are the two you need to study the hardest.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they want you dead.”

  Ellie blinked as the snow caught a sideways gust and peppered her face. Cy Bell leaned heavily against the brick wall of a nearby shop.

  “...But they don’t even know us.”

  “When you took that shot back there, you just became three of the most hated Americans in the world.”

  “You mean dead like Tournament dead. Diode coma,” Ellie said.

  “No. Real dead. Floating in the water off of a dock dead. You, and everyone you love. I told you I’d give you the long answer when you were ready for it. Well there it is. Eddie Mazaryk and Alex Auldborne are the long and short answer of the Tournament.”

  “Mazaryk? Sounds like cheese spread,” Tom said. Max stared at him from under his brow.

  “He’s the captain of Team Black, the Russians. Auldborne is the captain of Team Grey, the English. Either of them would kill all three of you three times over before you could fumble your gun from your pants. And I think they’re working together now.”

  “Together? But they’re enemies,” Ellie insisted, stamping her foot back to life. She lost her train of thought for a moment and experienced a wave of vertigo that had her feeling out for purchase. Cy grabbed her by the elbow before she pitched over. He righted her and she shook her head, but the cobwebs wouldn’t leave. Instead, they redoubled.

  “Let’s keep walking,” Max said.

  “But it’s a competition. Every team for itself.”

  “It was. But something happened on that dock between the two of them,” Max said, talking into the wind in front of him, as if reasoning to himself. “Both of them were there, then both disappeared. I don’t know what their game is, but the bottom line is if you see either of them, you run.”

  “Speaking of,” Tom said, lolling his head about, “when do we get our guns?” He mimed shooting a gun at the moon and nearly bowled over a woman pushing a stroller. He mumbled an apology and staggered nearly to the ground before finding his footing again.

  “Jesus, Tom,” said Ellie, trying to massage her hand back to feeling.

  “Well excuse me. I just thought that seein
g as how everyone wants us dead and all, we might be needing some way to... you know... shoot them?”

  “You’ll get a gun when I’m convinced you won’t blow your own dick off.”

  “It’s a diode.”

  “It hits like a bullet, as far as your dick is concerned.”

  “How about we all stop talking about our dicks for a second,” Ellie said. “Why do they want us dead, Max?”

  “They have a way of thinking, about the Tournament. About the freedoms it gives you. When I started, there was only one true rule. Minimize civilian contact. But even that was too much for Mazaryk and Auldborne. Especially Mazaryk. He had this fanatical obsession with the purity of the sport. No limits, no consideration for anything or anyone. No nothing. Just purity. They destroy things to remind people that they must be allowed to destroy things.”

  “And here we are with no guns? Why don’t we just walk up to them and get it over with then. Right?” Tom rubbed his face vigorously and slapped his hands on his thighs.

  “They’ll kill people we love?” Cy asked thickly.

  “If they think it’ll serve them. That’s why no Tournament player is married.” He lingered on Cy. “Love is a weakness. People use it against you. Auldborne in particular is good at it.”

  Cy looked down at the pavement, but Max was already moving on, turning along the edge of the causeway at the far end of the Promenade. It was much colder here, the wind doubly chilled as it whipped unchecked along the frozen concrete.

  “You won’t be getting guns, yet. And not just because I think they’d be totally lost on you, either. It’s crucial that you tell nobody what you are. The only way you will stay alive, at this point, is if nobody knows you are Blue.”

  “After all this? You expect us to just go back to doing whatever we were doing? The shower, and the shot, and now I can’t see straight? With what we know now?” asked Ellie.

  “Exactly. Cy has already moved into the house across the flood plain there.” Max pointed at a large, columnar house at the base of a hill in the distance. It was shuttered and dark, and still had a for sale sign outside of it that swung in the wind.

  “He’s been living out of his bags there for a week. I figured it prudent to put it under his name for the time being, while we still have access to our accounts. And you two will continue to go to school.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” said Tom.

  “And living with your families, and hanging out with your friends. If you have them.” Max eyed Ellie briefly.

  “I didn’t cut ties with everything in my life to go slinking back and pretend like nothing ever happened,” she said.

  “But you will, until I say so. Or you’ll be dead. I must not have really gotten through to you. There are entire teams of people all over the globe doing nothing but trying to figure out who you are. That is their entire life. And trust me when I say that you do not want to be found. Not yet.”

  “I walked out on my parents, Max. They’ve disowned me.”

  “I don’t care how you do it, just do it. This is America. Families that despise each other live in the same house for their entire lives.”

  “This is crazy.”

  “This is me trying to keep you alive. We’ll meet at Cy’s house. I will contact you. Now. It’s time for you to go home and reconcile, or do whatever you need to do to give everyone the impression that you’re the same Tom Elrey everyone abided by, and the same Ellie Willmore that nobody cared about. Are we clear?”

  Tom seemed to have exhausted himself and was weaving where he stood. Ellie held Max’s gaze until she realized he wouldn’t be looking away and that he meant what he said, but she didn’t protest.

  Cy Bell, for his part, stared blankly across the flood plain at his house, but his mind was on Troya. He wondered if she would be pleased when she showed up and he told her he essentially owned the place, or if they were meeting up here only to separate forever, like waves cresting together only to slam apart.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  IAN WAITED FOR THE diode, but the diode didn’t come. After a moment, Ian refocused and he saw Eddie Mazaryk measuring him by simply staring, unblinking, into his eyes.

  “I need to speak with you,” Mazaryk said. His lips hardly moved.

  Ian blinked.

  “Mrs. Auldborne, please, sit down,” Mazaryk said, never taking his eyes, or his gun, off Ian. Madelaine sat on a padded leather stool and placed her hands palm down on the tabletop in front of her.

  “Now she sits,” Ian muttered. “Look, Eddie, I don’t know what you’re on about here, but I don’t owe you anything. You already killed me once this cycle, okay. And Kayla. She’s badly hurt.” His voice seemed unnaturally loud in his ears.

  “Dying, actually,” corrected Mazaryk.

  Ian’s left hand twitched and he tapped his hip with his thumb for want of his gun, still on the ground across the kitchen. Ian brought his left arm up and around his stomach in a limp half-hug.

  “No,” Ian said. He shook his head and tried to sweep Mazaryk’s words from his mind, but they lingered, like a crumpled letter in the wastebasket. Mazaryk didn’t waste words.

  “Yes. She is dying. Or, she might already be dead.”

  “You don’t know—”

  “You know that I know.”

  Ian leaned back on the stone island, slackening against it. He looked over at where Madeleine Auldborne still sat. She seemed to harden herself; pursing her mouth as if to say to Ian that his troubles did nothing to change her opinion of him.

  “What did you do to her,” Ian growled.

  “I shot her. On the highway, as you said. Then, I pulled her away from a pool of runoff, so she wouldn’t drown.”

  “She’s recovering. I saw her. She’s always slow to recoup, but she does eventually get better. She does come back.”

  “Not this time,” Mazaryk said, in the flat tone of a man observing the obvious. “She’s dying. And you need to go back to her.”

  Ian braced himself with both hands and turned his face away like a belabored animal.

  “What do you want from me, Eddie? Even if she is dying, what do you care if I’m there or not?”

  “It should be obvious,” Mazaryk said. “You cannot go west after Alex. You will turn back. I thought to give you ample reason.” It struck Ian how much like a boy Mazaryk sounded. He was a man with a stolen voice.

  West? Ian wondered, but he didn’t blink. “So she’s fine, and you just want me to give up. Is that why you’re here? Are you two in this together? Thick as thieves?”

  “I thought Greer might have someone follow Christina and Draden. Christina assured me she would handle things, but I had my doubts, so after I sent Draden Tate on his way I tarried... and here you are. It is providence. You know Kayla is not fine, Ian. You know it in your heart. A sane man would return to his fallen comrade. There is still a chance for you to say goodbye.”

  Ian wondered if she would even want him there. Would she resent him for falling back, for returning on her account? She had a bit of old dog in her. If she was dying, perhaps she wanted to do it alone. Wander off in the woods. Make her own graveyard. He thought of a future without her, and it seemed so divergent from his current situation it might as well be a dream, or a friend’s dream. Nothing a good shake of the head couldn’t bring you back from.

  He shook his head and looked back up at Mazaryk, who still had his gun trained on him, and it was as if, in seeing him, his peripheral vision was frozen as surely as a pond in winter. He could almost hear the stuttered cracking of everything else in his life falling away, and all he could see was the captain of Black.

  “You were there that night.”

  “Which.”

  “The night they died.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you kill them?”

  “If I told you yes, would you go home to Kayla?”

  “No.” Ian said, after a moment.

  “I thought as much.”

  “It was hi
m, then. Why are you protecting Auldborne?”

  “I’m protecting you. I’m protecting all of us. There are things happening here that you cannot fathom. They concern everyone, even the new team the Americans are hiding away like gold under a mattress... perhaps them especially.” Mazaryk pulled back the hammer of his gun and punctuated his words with its soft click.

  “You never had any intention of letting me walk out of here.”

  “No. Because you never had any intention of turning back. Instead I have to send you to Ireland on a gurney. You’ve made your choice.”

  “I’ll find him, even if I have to go through you. He has to answer for what he did. You, of all people, should see that.”

  Eddie Mazaryk laughed. A soft sound, like the scattering of shattered glass.

  “Ian, you never thought that I might have killed them, because if you did, you’d have to admit that you’re chasing Alex for another reason. A reason of your own that has nothing to do with who died that night, and how. Your words... they are as hollow as your eyes, as I can see through them both.”

  Mazaryk took one measured step back and shot Ian in the chest.

  ————

  He saw her from above. He saw all of them, like looking down on a doll house. He could see every room at once, but when he focused on one, details overwhelmed him. Dirt on the floor-mats, the electric buzz of dimmed lights, the damp, musty smell of coming snow blown through the small window above the sink.

  He heard a wailing from the small dining room table, and as he focused there it was as if he was brought down into the room himself. The watery, ephemeral quality of the vision tightened, and Ian could see clearly. Daniel Hurley was there too, looking twice as old as when Ian had left him, and pleading with the table... no, not with the table, but with who was hidden under it: Bailey, Pyper’s sister, was the one sobbing. She refused to come out.