The Tournament Trilogy

by B. B. Griffith

  With no team of his own, and no word from anyone, neither Lock nor Frank nor Ian Finn, whom he had sent out after those responsible, he was left with too much time on his hands. It’s not like he was expecting daily status updates. Ian Finn, in particular, didn’t seem the sort to call in for a regular chat, but to hear nothing from any of them? It was as if he’d dropped the three of them down a well.

  Greer obsessed.

  If he sat at home, a secluded bungalow in Redwood City halfway between Palo Alto and San Francisco, he focused too much on the past. He’d sift through bits and pieces of that dreadful night where he’d lost everything. Snapshots from traffic cameras nearby and blurry, overly pixilated satellite footage he’d requested of the entire timeframe. He also had CCTV footage from the security camera at the entrance to the docks. He’d pull them all out again, scrutinize them, and then toss them back like sifting through broken nuts at the bottom of the bowl. There was nothing material, and Greer knew it, just infuriating snippets and hints of what might have been happening off-screen. Nothing but shadows that he’d driven himself mad interpreting.

  Blue’s foray into Japan in the round before the disaster on the docks had led to all sorts of footage. Nearly every square inch of Tokyo was covered by cameras. When he got tired of staring at shadows, he’d pull up footage of their fight in Tokyo. He found himself replaying strange sequences, like one series of frames where Hix was walking through an alleyway, her jaw set in stone as she limped slowly off camera at the bottom of the screen, as if she were walking towards Greer, like she might show up at the door at any second. In another, a security camera for a bike storage facility caught Northern and Max walking beyond a chain link fence. The footage had a low frame rate, so they were only on screen for a second, but in that second you could see Northern wiping blood from his lips, staring forward, as Max glanced behind them, worry on his face.

  If he had but one snippet of footage like that from the docks, maybe he’d have solved the entire mystery. But there was nothing, so he was left to push around broken pieces of the past. Still, looking at them as they were—strong, talented, but ultimately human—it helped. It was easier for him to believe that they were dead. That they could be killed at all.

  For hours he did this, until his eyes hurt and the dull headache that had appeared when he’d been told the news, and lingered ever since, grew more pronounced. He occasionally received terse, clipped updates from Max Haulden in Cheyenne, saying things were going as well as could be expected from a team with a collective age of about fifty. This did nothing to dampen the dull throb that camped out in his frontal lobe. He thought of this new Blue team much like a career gambler might view a lottery ticket. He’d put the money out there, but he most likely would end up with nothing but trash.

  Things were a bit better when he drove throughout the winding streets of Redwood City. His brain turned off as much as it was able, lulled by the way the soft, sloping hills seemed to move of their own accord as he shot past. He never listened to the radio, preferring to listen to the wind as he cut through it. The winter haze of the bay area often turned into rain, but that wasn’t so bad to listen to either. So when the harsh, tin voice of his car phone service blasted from his speakers one evening as he was deep in thought, doing nearly double the speed limit on the Lakeview Loop, he almost ran off the road.

  “Greer Nichols?” it asked.

  “What!” he screamed, defensively. He righted his steering wheel in time and managed to avoid a throng of cyclists making the climb as well, their head-lamps jerked about in the night like scattered fireflies.

  “Thank God,” the voice said, and Greer slowly recognized it as belonging to his assistant Bernard. Or maybe he wasn’t his assistant anymore, technically, since he had no official job.

  “I shut off the phone service in this car a year ago!”

  “I know,” Bernard said hurriedly. “The satellite provider is not happy with me, but Blue still has a certain amount of pull, and you have a call.”

  “What kind of call?”

  “The kind that made me override your car in order to get a hold of you.”

  Greer pulled to the side of the road. He whisked his hand over his head before gripping his steering wheel in both hands.

  “It’s Allen Lockton. He’s... he’s quite insistent, says he’s been trying to reach you for an hour.”

  “Well put him through for God’s sake.”

  There was a series of mechanical shuffling sounds before Bernard’s voice came back on.

  “Lock, you’re now online with Mr. Nicho—”

  “Greer! Listen to me!” Lock’s voice was a forceful whisper, muffled further from the layers of connection.

  “Lock? Where the hell have you been?”

  “Shut up and listen to me, Greer. We’re walking down a highway in the middle of nowhere, the satellite uplink isn’t stable and I’m low on power.” Greer paused. Lock had never told him to shut up before. Ever.

  “He’s coming after them,” Lock said. “He may already be there.”

  Greer closed his eyes and pressed on his head.

  “Greer. Did you hear me? Mazaryk is coming. To you. To them. Brander as good as told us before they shot us.”

  “Where are you, Lock? Are you okay?” There was a whistling in the background now, punctuated by sporadic pattering. It seemed to be getting louder. He thought he heard someone, maybe Frank, murmuring urgently.

  “I have this horrible suspicion,” Lock said, ignoring him. “This awful, creeping suspicion that he knows where they are... His voice was drowned out momentarily, like the phone was muffled against his clothing. Greer dimly registered the group of cyclists passing him. A few slapped his car, flipped him off.

  “Lock! Can you hear me? That’s not possible. Three people in the world know where they are. The three of them, and then Max and me.”

  The connection cut to an electronic whine, then snapped back mid-sentence: “—We need to find out. Greer, there is more happening than we know—”

  “He’s been disconnected,” Bernard said.

  ————

  Back at home Greer moved immediately to his office. He had a much smaller, far less elaborate setup than his original at BlueHorse, but the bettors had taken his keys to that one, only reluctantly had they allowed him to keep his equipment. It made the room almost unbearably stuffy if he spent too much time online there, but he still fired up his consoles. He wanted to take a closer look at the other fights. Especially those that involved Eddie Mazaryk. It was then that he noticed his cell phone was blinking. A message. Assuming it was a frantic Bernard, he went to excuse it, but froze when he saw an unrecognized number.

  It was from Ian Finn, but he didn’t sound right. He sounded like a flooded car, coughing and spitting, and when the message started he was already talking.

  “—they are together in this, and both seek the same, in their own way, but they reach beyond victory. They want death. To sow the earth with salt so nothing but their own ever grows—”

  Then the message cut off. Greer almost threw his phone across the room in frustration, but then it picked up again mid wind-up. He shoved it back to his ear:

  “—I’ll be on your shores in eight hours. Will call you. Tell me where your team is, if you want them to live.”

  Then it ended for good. Greer listened to it twice, but there was nothing more. He tried calling the number back, but nobody picked up. He imagined a phone hanging off the hook, swinging softly inside of one of those quaint British phone booths.

  He was suddenly very aware of the darkness outside of the bay windows of his house. He shut the blinds. Bits and pieces of the puzzle were slowly coming together now, and Greer didn’t like the emerging picture.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “CAN YOU EVEN SHOOT A GUN?” Nikkie asked, eyeing the table warily. Three identical handguns sat upon it with the dull black weight of dead crows.

  “I, uh,” Max cleared his throat, as if surpr
ised at being addressed by her. He had his hands crossed in front of him and was squinting at the guns. “I mean, I’ve been to the range with my grandfather a couple of times. And my dad. They were military,” he added, haltingly.

  “Because I’m gonna be honest here, I’ve never touched a gun in my life. That’s why I keep thinking this is one big setup,” said Nikkie.

  “That’s fine,” said Johnnie Northern as he walked in from the back room of their small cabin deep in the redwood forest, a place that, for the time being, they called home. He carried two full boxes of ammunition. Live ammunition. Not diodes. He stepped between Max and Nikkie and Max reluctantly moved over. He handed each a box. “They didn’t choose us because of how we can or can’t shoot a gun. That’s not what this game is about.”

  The three walked out into the densely overgrown back yard, where trees soared skyward and thickets of bushes threatened to overtake them all. Northern had stacked three bales of hay there; they were tinged green with mildew and growth. A piece of butcher paper hung from them, stuck through with twigs acting as nails.

  “Safety first. When one person fires, the other two are always behind them. Never point a gun at anything you don’t intend to shoot. You’ll load the clip, load the gun, and shoot. I’ll go first, watch me.”

  Northern ejected the empty clip from the gun and expertly loaded twelve bullets before popping it back in again. Keeping the gun aimed at the ground, he stepped up to a stick he’d laid on the grass a measured distance from the bales. He set himself, aimed, and unloaded the entire clip in about fifteen seconds of measured time.

  “So you know how to shoot,” Max observed, one eyebrow raised.

  Northern shrugged. “I picked up a few things.” He checked that the chamber was empty then held it out to Nikkie, grip first. She took a deep breath.

  “It’s not that hard,” said Northern. “Any idiot can do it, and many idiots do. Give it a shot.”

  Max watched carefully as Northern showed Nikkie the basics of loading and safety, his hands lightly touching hers as he directed her. He had to remind her several times to keep the gun down and away when not on the firing line. She almost laughed the first time, but caught herself as she remembered where she was and the gravity of what she was doing. She glanced up at Northern. He let out a full smile and patted her on the back, ushering her to the line.

  “Squeeze the trigger, don’t pull it.”

  She glanced at Max, too quickly for Max to look away, then she sighted. She fired in staccato bursts, tentatively at first, then, after pausing, she fired a second grouping in quick time. When the gun clicked she brought it down, checked the chamber like she’d seen Northern do, and looked sheepishly back at the two men. Northern began a slow clap. Max smiled, and Nikkie lingered on him... she rarely saw him smile. Then she went to Northern, who held out his hands like a proud uncle and said, “Well how about that?”

  Nikkie carefully set the gun down, then hopped up and hugged Northern, flush with excitement, the sulfur smell lingering and her ears still ringing. She hopped away just as quickly and her blush deepened, but Northern didn’t seem to notice. Max did.

  “All right Max,” he said.

  His smile gone, Max loaded the handgun in a quick series of snaps. He approached the firing line, spaced himself, brought up the gun, and fired all twelve rounds into the center of the bale in the span of five seconds.

  ————

  Ellie snapped awake again, rattling her unbalanced desk and bringing Mr. Zimmerman’s lecture to yet another halt. Kelsey was staring at her in disbelief and guardedly gesturing at the corner of her mouth. Ellie wiped the string of drool with her sleeve, blushing at the snippets of muffled laughter.

  “Really, Ms. Willmore? This is the second time. If I didn’t know any better I’d think I was boring you,” said Zimmerman.

  “No, it’s not that, it’s just... Just what? Just that she’d been in bed by eleven every night this week, but up and out again an hour later? That she’d been running all around the city on Max Haulden’s hellish scavenger hunts? Last night they’d spent four hours finding a particular type of rock that gathered in a certain bend of the Poudre River. In the dark. Max said it taught them improvisation skills and patience. Ellie thought otherwise. It seemed to her that the three of them would benefit most from skills more in line with survival than rock-gathering.

  “Is it calculus then, Ellie? Are you that far ahead? Here. Take the chalk then.”

  “No, I never... I can’t,” she stammered, “I think I’m just tired.” She glanced at Kelsey, who would only watch her peripherally, eyes as big as quarters. She couldn’t tell Zimmerman that when she did get home, her parents hardly spoke to her. He wouldn’t understand how draining it is when your family assumes that you’re a liar, but is too terrified to really find out. It was as if they’d caught her in the midst of a felony, too horrified to stop her then, and too afraid to confront her now. So they did what they did best: watched television and ruffled the papers while she came and went by the basement stairway.

  “Then I suggest you go to the nurse. If you’re gonna sleep, you can at least do it without disrupting my class.”

  “The nurse,” Ellie nodded, dazed. She stood up and smoothed her shirt and gathered her things, dropping a book in the process. Zimmerman let the silence linger as she shuffled out.

  The school nurse’s office was drab, an expanded bank of cubicles with two small beds in the middle, but it was blissfully quiet and offered a calming sense of separation. She closed the door behind her and took several deep breaths before turning around to face a puzzled looking woman in jeans and a scrub top patterned with garish, neon giraffes. On the wall behind her a poster of a cartoon ape diligently washing his hands under a waterfall read Let’s ALL Help Stay Healthy This Flu Season! Ellie wondered if she hadn’t stepped back in time ten years.

  “Can I help you?”

  “Mr. Zimmerman sent me this way. I’m Ellie Willmore.”

  “Well Ellie, what was the problem?”

  “I’m... Falling apart? Hanging by a thread? “I think I’m just exhausted. I fell asleep in calculus. Twice.”

  The nurse chuckled. “You wouldn’t be the first. How about you just take a seat here for a bit.” She patted one of the laughably tiny beds in the center of the room. Ellie plopped down, dropping her bag on the floor with a heavy thunk, then dropped back onto the pillow. She lay down like a drunk, one knee up and one foot planted on the floor. She closed her eyes and almost immediately found herself in that strange, floating clam between sleeping and waking.

  “When was the last time you slept a full eight hours, Ellie?” she heard the nurse ask.

  Ellie figured she should probably lie, but the proof was in the pudding, and the pudding was plopped on the bed.

  “Dunno, two weeks maybe. Probably three. Three weeks.”

  “Must have a lot on your plate.”

  “My plate... a trough would be overflowing with what I’m dealing with.”

  “Hmm,” the nurse said. “Open your mouth, stick out your tongue,”

  “I’m not sick. I’m just wiped out.”

  “Just a test for some things that are going around.”

  “I don’t have mono.”

  “Have you shared utensils with anyone? Cups?”

  Ellie thought back to when Cy Bell had dumped his water bottle on her face, just last week, to wash the dirt from her eyes after she’d taken a face plant when he’d thrown her during their first attempt at sparring. As if she could spar! As if she could box toe to toe with a guy who, while not exactly large, was a foot taller than her and half again as wide. Did Cy have mono? She doubted it. Both he and Tom were annoyingly proficient at the nonsense Max ordered them to do. They had twice the energy that she did.

  “No, no sharing of anything.”

  “Have you kissed anyone?”

  “What? No! At worst I caught a little cold.”

  She thought of how she hid half buried in a sh
eet of ice-glazed snow, deep in the runoff system of Laramie County, forced to be still while Max prowled after them like a hunting dog. Hiding can often serve you better than fighting! If you think this is bad, try it after you’ve been shot! This numb is nothing compared to that numb! This is cold! That’s a coma!

  He eventually caught her. The moonlight turned the landscape flat, elongating shadows and hiding rocks, and she tripped. Max stood over her, put his finger to her forehead, and pulled his thumb like a trigger.

  “What about your face?”

  Ellie opened her eyes and blinked into the fluorescent light. Outside she heard the muted ring of the bell signaling the end of one period. Five minutes crossing until the next. “My face?” she asked.

  “You don’t normally wear makeup. You covered it a bit, but not well.”

  Ellie slid herself to a sitting position.

  “If you’re going to cover up that forehead, you need to pack it with ice as soon as you’re hit to bring down the swelling, then brush it with cover-up, not bronzer. You’re as pale as a ghost. People with your coloring can’t wear bronzer.”

  Ellie moved to touch her forehead before she stopped herself.

  “Who are you?” Ellie asked.

  “Open up,” the nurse said.

  Ellie almost gagged before the nurse finished the swab and stood again. She turned away in silence and placed the swab into a sealed bag which she then tucked into a satchel at the side of her own desk.

  “I’m the school nurse,” she said pointedly. “Although I am also responsible for making sure that your health, in particular, remains up to snuff.”

  Ellie looked at her askance and shook her head softly. “How long have you worked here?”

  “Since you were a freshman,” she said, moving to a cabinet and grabbing a bottle of heavy duty aspirin. She shook out two pills when the door opened again and in shuffled Tom Elrey. He and Ellie looked at each other in bedraggled silence. He had a black eye so severe it looked like stage makeup, purpling out across the left side of his face to the bridge of his nose, where a single sharp slash still wept.