The Tournament Trilogy

by B. B. Griffith

  “How long were you with him the night before he was killed?”

  Sarah hitched up while digging in her purse and tried to cover it but knew that she had failed. She could almost feel the man’s smile on her back.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, finally fishing the keys from a side pocket.

  “That’s not what our sources say.”

  Sarah flicked the lock and stepped inside. Partway behind the door she felt a measure of confidence.

  “What sources?”

  “Very credible sources. Sources that said you dated him. For a night or so, anyway,” the reporter smirked.

  Memories of Jessica’s averted gaze returned. How she’d said she was sorry. How she’d left without another word and made herself scarce since. And Annie? Sarah had seen even less of her.

  Sarah pulled the front door shut until she was sure she heard the magnetic lock click. She made herself walk slowly up the stairs and only when she was at the top, at a safe angle, did she look back. The reporter’s shoes were still visible from the second landing. She turned and ran up the rest of the stairs to her floor, dashed down the hall and into her apartment, empty save for her, once again. She locked the door and crept to the outward facing window. The shades were drawn, but she ticked one open and scanned the street in front. She saw him walking slowly back to a van parked on the street, writing in a notepad. He opened the door and gave a perfunctory look back towards her building before strapping himself in, starting the car, and rolling down the street.

  Sarah let the slat fall down with a soft click. She bit her fingernail.

  Just leave that one alone. For me. Okay? That was what her father had said about Johnnie Northern, way back when.

  For once in her life, why couldn’t she have listened to her dad?

  Chapter Eight

  “SHE SAID NO, GREER, and Ian wasn’t even there. They were running away from it all.” Ellie’s voice was quick and shallow over the telephone.

  “So what are you going to do?” Greer asked, his deep steady reply forming the words as a challenge, not a question.

  “I ... guess we go on. We can’t be the only team that sees this Black House thing for the power grab it is.”

  “I’m sure you’re not.”

  “Greer,” Ellie cut in, her voice hushed, as if she was covering her mouth as she spoke. “Pyper was supposed to lead this thing from here on out.”

  “Just keep moving forward. It’s all you can do.”

  “You know why I was picked, Greer, for all of this. The whole thing,” Ellie said, letting it out. “Tell me. I need to know.” She heard a creaking over the line, a soft intake of breath.

  “Why?” Greer asked.

  “I need to know that I belong here.”

  “Even if I could tell you, even if I did know, it changes nothing. You are here. Whether you belong is up to you.”

  “Don’t bullshit me, Greer, not now.”

  “Keep moving forward Ellie. Call me if you are in need of what our Administration can provide.” Greer hung up.

  ————

  Cy managed to lose most of the tailing cars by driving nearly twice the speed limit while cutting through the northern edge of the Wicklow Mountains on their way back to the Dublin city center. As they came off the freeway towards Dublin International Airport they were picked up again by a pair of waiting cars. As they approached the airport they could see the spindly tips of the press broadcasting vans lining the departures terminal, and more arrayed outside of the fences near the private hangars where their jet was gassing up. Cy exhaled slowly from his nose.

  “These people don’t give up, do they?”

  “I always used to wonder why these celebrities snapped at the paparazzi,” Tom said. “It seemed so stupid, you know? To smack them around or blow up at them when you’re being filmed. Now I understand. They’re like flies slamming into a screen door. Makes you just want to ...” he trailed off, lips pressed.

  Ellie was in no hurry to get out of the car either. The thought of all of those eyes turning upon her at once gave her a twisted feeling in the pit of her stomach. She was sure that another crowd awaited them at Charles De Gaul International Airport in Paris. They were probably there now, jostling for space, firing up camera arrays, tapping microphones.

  “Keep driving,” Ellie said.

  Without a word, Cy passed the private hangars.

  “This isn’t helping us, running everywhere at the back of of the pack like this, all eyes on our every move. I want to get a feel for what’s happening out there. We can’t afford to lose another team by rushing into all this and hoping one of them will make everything all right.”

  “I think Pyper was pretty set on running away no matter what. She was half-packed before we even got there,” Tom said.

  “Well I’m not getting on that plane anyway. Not yet. I don’t even know what we’ll say to the French if we find them.”

  “Well what do you want to do, then?” asked Tom. “Should we go for a walk in the park? This mess will still be here when we come back. With more cameras.”

  Ellie chewed on the tip of her collar and watched the traffic. The two tailing cars assumed they would pull up at the airport and were thrown for a loop when they continued on. For the moment they were alone, just another car on the M1.

  “The port,” Ellie said, after a minute.

  “What?”

  “We’ll ditch the car, change up our look, wear hats or whatever, and then take the ferry over.” Ellie sat up, energized. “And then we can take trains. Nobody will be looking for us on the trains. What better way to see what it’s like out there? What people really think about the Black House? And it’ll give us some time to get our heads together.”

  “Trains?” Cy asked, drawing out the word.

  “Yeah, it’s only a few stops to Paris. We can get there in a day.”

  “Only a few stops,” Tom said. “One of them being London.”

  Ellie shrugged.

  “You’re not seriously contemplating going through London, are you?” Tom sat up in the back seat, one hand on either headrest. Cy flicked a glance her way out of the corner of his eye.

  “Ellie, this is London, England, just so you know.”

  “I am aware of that, Tom.”

  “I mean, just so we’re all clear here, Cy, tell her.”

  “Tell her what?”

  “That going through the heartland of Grey is probably not a good idea,” Tom said, speaking very slowly. “Greer gave us the jet because he thought it would make things easier. Tell her.”

  “I go where she tells me, not the other way around,” Cy said.

  Tom paused, staring at him. “You know, you’ve been a real piece of work lately. I get that you’re in a bad place with Troya and all, man. But can I at least get some life from you? Remember when you wanted to punch me that one time? In the forest? You wanted to tattoo my face with your fist. What happened to that guy?”

  Cy stared forward, the muscles of his jaw working. Ellie gave Tom a warning look.

  Tom went on, undeterred. “I want that guy back. Not the killer robot that almost blew the back of some meathead’s neck open in a supermarket parking lot—”

  “Tom! We get it!” Ellie snapped. Tom flopped back against his seat. Cy still watched the road ahead, but didn’t seem to really be seeing it.

  “Have you talked to her?” Tom asked quietly from the back.

  “No,” Cy said. Ellie watched him carefully, forehead ridged.

  “You ever think that might not be such a great idea? Just going cold turkey? She was your fiancé, man,” Tom ventured.

  “I know that. I made my choice,” Cy said, and his face fell a fraction and his eyes lost focus, reflecting like pockets of white sand on the ocean floor. “I can’t have her hurt because of me. I chose this. The Tournament. And I aim to make it worth it.” In an instant his gaze was again hard and hollow, like the oiled muzzle of a gun. This line of qu
estioning was over.

  Tom let out a deep breath. “Fine. The ferry it is.” He unbuckled and reached behind him to unzip his small duffel. “We’ll have to change clothes, and keep something up over our faces. Cy can just pull up his hoodie, so no big change there since ... well, ever since I’ve known him. I’ve got another jacket and a scarf here. Ellie, your hair is dead giveaway. Do you have a hat?”

  Ellie shook her head.

  “I got a hat, take my hat,” said Cy.

  “And these,” Tom said, facing forward again with three black bandannas, square cut. He wrapped one around his face and tied it behind his neck. “Eh?”

  “We’re travelling on the train, not robbing it,” Ellie said.

  Tom pulled the bandanna down. “Your scar. It’s not exactly inconspicuous. And more and more people are wearing these things all the time, sporting their teams.”

  “Black?”

  Tom shrugged. “A lot of people support Black, too. Especially throughout England.”

  Ellie nodded and took the bandanna from Tom. She looked at it for a moment and then wrapped it on. Tom plopped a flat brimmed baseball cap, black with red stitching, upon her head.

  “There we go,” he said.

  Ellie looked at herself in the pull down mirror. She looked harder than she felt. “Fine. Now let’s ditch this car before they start tailing us again, and catch ourselves a boat.”

  ————

  Their boat left the Dublin Ferryport for Holyhead in the UK late that afternoon. Cy bought all three tickets while Tom and Ellie hung back, and they boarded without a hitch. They sat apart but within sight of each other on the long, slick benches of the second deck. The trip was a little under four hours, in which all three were left to their own thoughts. Ellie imagined countless scenarios in which the three of them met the French, how they might approach them, what they might do, how she might ask for help. All that she knew of the Noel triplets was what she’d read about them and, more recently, seen on television. They seemed like cocksure spoiled party-boys who basked like grinning salamanders in the limelight. She tried to drum up what their two teams might have in common, and she came up short. Neither of them had any love for Black, though, so that was a start.

  Once away from land and out in the flat, rolling expanse of the Irish Sea, and with the engines a constant lulling hum in the background, it was easy for Ellie to think that she’d left the Tournament behind her for a time. When two scraggly travelers sat down across from her and pulled out a beaten leather scrapbook, she was surprised to find her face plastered between the pages. On one half was her graduation photo, a favorite of the media in which she looked spottier and spottier every time she saw herself. On the other was a recent photograph of her approaching Pyper Hurley’s house. One of the men pinned his matted hair back behind his neck and took out a hunk of cheese and a half-eaten summer sausage. He cut slices for his friend as they spoke. Ellie zipped her collar up and dug herself deeper into her chair.

  “Must have just missed her, all three of them disappeared. I have a guy who says he watched every entrance to the airport and swears they never came in, but the plane took off. They must have slipped by everyone.”

  Ellie found herself grinning. She’d told the pilot, co-pilot, and the stewardess to disguise themselves and shuffle on to the airplane looking as harried as possible, then take off for Paris. Her little trick had worked.

  “Doesn’t matter,” the other said, rubbing at his head under a tattered wool beanie and popping the food in his mouth with the edge of the knife. “We know where they’re going.”

  Tom and Cy both sought her eye. She reassured them with a clipped shake of her head. These Gamers had no idea who they were sitting by. She’d heard about Gamers on television. They were the ragtag travelling historians of the Tournament, like roadies for a global rock band. They went where the most action was, eschewing jobs, relationships, and family, often meeting up together to share their books like children collecting stamps. They flipped the page and Ellie couldn’t help but see Ian Finn’s haggard face staring blankly out at them.

  “Can you believe this guy? He slips by everyone again?” marveled one.

  “He’s either gonna end up in a gutter, or right where he wants to be. One of the two,” said the other.

  “Maybe he wants to be in a gutter.” Both of them laughed with mouths full of cheese and sausage.

  Their laughter—the cavalier way they bandied her about on the pages of a scrapbook—felt mocking. And yet this was her life now. Her life was their life. She felt enormous pressure to do something remarkable, and along with it an equal sense of resentment that these scruffy travelers could make her feel this way. A pressure built up just below the crown of her head and she closed her eyes. And then she saw Ian’s eyes, looking at her, his cheek resting on the thin sheets of the gurney, the helicopter thumping them both away from Shawnee High School. They’d been through a bloody hell. He’d been cut to the bone and shot and humiliated, but on that chopper flight his eyes betrayed none of it. They sought her, and her only, as if she was bigger than the pain. And then it was gone, and she’d drifted away. When she came around again in the hospital, he’d drifted away as well.

  Eventually they flipped the page again, but Ellie’s thoughts lingered. She watched them discretely until the ferry docked at Holyhead in Wales and made sure that they exited well before any of her team. They took the same approach there to the trains as they had the ferry. Cy bought the tickets, glowering from within his hoodie. The man behind the booth made no eye contact. They boarded the train at Holyhead station bound for Chester and spaced themselves out within one car. All around them people read the papers, replete with Tournament headlines, or streamed media, plugged in to their devices. No one bothered to look about. They exited at Chester without incident. From there they had nearly an hour before the next train to London. Rather than linger around the station, Ellie suggested that they take a walk outside.

  The Chester city center had the polished look of a period piece movie set. They were met by the regal façade of the Queen’s Hotel just outside the station, and the quaint, welcoming lights of the Yeoman Pub nearby. A young woman stood outside of the pub next to a standing blackboard marked with ticks of chalk. As they approached they saw that the marks were tallying scores in two columns under drink specials. One said Grey, the other said Green.

  The woman called out to Tom as he passed. “Fancy a drink?”

  Tom shook his head and kept walking.

  “Grey, Green, choose your side, choose your drink!” She smiled, tossing a nub of chalk in the air then catching it. Tom slowed a safe distance from her and turned back.

  “What’s the Grey drink?”

  “The Auldborne, of course. Anything with gin in it, half off.”

  Tom nodded. “And the Green?”

  “The Finn. Whisky soda, hold the soda.” The girl paused as the bartender called out to her. She nodded and ticked another mark on the Grey side. “Either way, you win.”

  “What about Blue?” he called, and Ellie gritted her teeth and slowly walked back towards the station. She heard the woman laugh.

  “Gotta have a real team first. Then you get a drink,” she smirked. Ellie glanced across the street expecting to see Cy barreling towards the bar. Instead he was staring at the ground, his hands in his pockets, his mind back in New York City. She checked her watch and turned back to the station. Cy took her cue and followed from across the street. Eventually Tom caught up to her.

  “You had to ask?” she muttered as he passed.

  He slowed. “You wanted to know what people think. Well there you go.” He stared straight forward.

  The trip from Chester to London’s St. Pancras station was a little over two hours, which put them in the heart of England at the tail end of the evening rush. Their car was crowded with passengers returning home from work or travelling to the big city for an evening out. To Tom’s credit, many of them did sport colored bandanas and sc
arves, almost all of them Grey, a handful of Black, and a few Green. None were Blue. Ellie was flabbergasted that anyone could root for Alex Auldborne’s team. She wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt and chalk it up to national pride, but she wondered if people simply enjoyed his flippant cruelty, perhaps the allure of rooting for someone that confident, or the fact that he generally won. She was sure nobody who actually met the man would want anything to do with him.

  As the track flew by and the stations flicked past the windows with an audible thump in the air, Ellie felt more and more uneasy, as if her face were reddening by degrees. She popped her collar down for as long as she dared to cool her neck and cheeks. She wondered if they might have been better off in the jet after all. Near the back of the car she saw Tom hunkered against the window, his head moving in short ticks as he watched the terrain fly by. Up front Cy sat along the bench. He kept his hands inside his jacket and Ellie knew he was gripping his gun.

  The train slowed and a robotic woman’s voice announced that the next stop was St. Pancras International Station. Around them the passengers shuffled to gather their things and just as Ellie congratulated herself on completing another leg of the journey incognito, a man near the center of the train car leaped up and eyed her fully, then looked about frantically, settling upon Cy and Tom in turn. He jumped out of the train doors, bellowing: “They’re here! It’s them!”

  In a flash Cy and Tom were by her side, but the rest of the car held back, murmurs growing louder by the moment. Sure enough, a crowd of several hundred had already gathered at the platform. Cy swore under his breath as the camera flashes poured upon the three of them and the shouts jumped up a collective pitch.

  “How do they know?” Tom asked, keeping his mouth flat. “How do they always know?”

  “No secrets anymore,” Ellie said. “Just because they’re English doesn’t mean that they want to hurt us, but we need to get to the Chunnel platform before this really gets out of hand.”

  “Are we running?” Tom asked.