The Tournament Trilogy

by B. B. Griffith

  Lilia turned back to Jinbo, her matchup. He was hit but still firing, and without his glasses he was missing his mark. His diodes thunked into the crowd and screams followed. Diego registered a brief moment of pride when he saw Lilia set herself after taking down Fuse, swing her sight back on Jinbo, and fire. She hit him square in the jaw and his lower head jerked as if independent from his head. He pawed at his face and dropped his gun, then he dropped himself. Lilia was quick, far quicker than even Diego, and she turned to Obata, aimed, fired, and clicked dry. Obata heard her hammer snap cold and sighted upon her. In a stand up duel there was never time for reloading. She reared back to throw her gun at him, but he shot first and hit her in the ribs and when she doubled over, he tapped his trigger once more and hit her in the head. She fell senseless to the grass.

  Only Diego and Obata remained standing. The detached, rational part of Diego’s brain was amazed that he had stayed planted and yet remained unharmed. There was a lesson there, somewhere. The cold warrior’s half of his brain was furious. He was too slow. He’d tracked the demise of his teammates instead of fighting for himself. He’d been inefficient. Obata was already on him, and this time there were no distractions: no striker to shoot for him, no sweeper to draw fire away. Diego did all he could do when faced with the barrel of Obata’s gun: He threw himself backwards, bucking over an imaginary pole as he tried to buy another precious second to aim. Obata fired at the same time and shot the hat right off of Diego’s head and it lofted into the air. Obata’s eyes followed it for half of a heartbeat as if it were a flushed pheasant, which was all it took for Diego to get his gun arm up and his revolver aimed. He fired once and hit Obata in the leg. Obata listed to the right and held out a hand to the ground. Diego’s next shot struck Obata’s shoulder. Obata dropped his gun and fell flat on his back, his face to the baby blue spring sky.

  Diego scrambled away, as if Obata might arise and stroll over to finish him off as surely as his teammates were finished. He stumbled up to standing in a cloud of dead grass and floating dust and sighted on Obata again, daring him to move, but Obata didn’t move. His gun was next to his hand, centimeters away, but Obata made no move, nor were his eyes closed. He watched the sky and breathed hitched breaths.

  The noise of the crowd crashed upon Diego then, as if his adrenaline had formed a bubble that kept everything at bay until now when the bubble had burst. He looked around at them as if they had just appeared there, and he felt as if they had intruded upon a dream he was having. He resented them.

  Diego walked over to Obata, his gun trained upon his head. He was amazed to find that he was still unsteady. He felt like the gunfight had taken at least half of an hour, yet it had lasted less than a minute. When he passed into Obata’s frame of vision, Obata looked at him and Diego saw a proud pain in his eyes.

  “It is good,” Obata said, and Diego understood him. “It is right. Finish it.”

  Then Obata’s mouth turned downward and he let out a long exhale that tapped the base of his lungs. Obata never closed his eyes, never looked away, never flinched as Diego measured his steps backwards, breathed deeply to will stillness into his hands, then shot him once, cleanly, in the head. The tension left Obata’s body and he seemed to ooze into the grass.

  Diego holstered his gun and went to check Ortiz, who was nearest to him. He was unresponsive, but Diego could feel his light, even breath on the back of his hand. Lilia was the same way. Pockets of the crowd were thinned and some spectators lay on the ground while others cried over them. He guessed that perhaps these Gamers liked the idea of the Tournament better than the reality. Then he went slowly to where his hat lay in the torn grass. He picked it up and fingered the hole that had been shot clean through the upper crown. He dusted it with several sure swipes of his hand and put it on his head again. He ejected his spent clip and reloaded.

  He turned toward the south and the Black House.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  YVES’S HEART WAS BEATING so hard it rattled his head. He was seven floors up and leaning against a concrete wall on the outside of the stairwell. He heard a quiet pursuit below him, an alarming mix of sounds: huffing and stomping and sliding and watchful pauses. Five were on the stairway, packed in like a layer cake, Yves up top, then Andizzi, then Dominique stranded squarely in the middle, with Aldobrandi below him and Tristan rounding out the bottom. He and his brothers had the advantage in numbers and positioning, but only if they acted fast.

  Yves chanced a look over the banister and down the open stairway and was rewarded with a diode shot that nearly clipped his ear. He staggered back, cupping the side of his face and biting off a curse. He heard laughter. He draped his arm over the side and shot four times into empty space below. There was a loud shuffling and then his com beeped.

  “Watch it, Yves! You’ll hit one of us if you’re not careful,” hissed Tristan.

  Yves swore again and positioned himself against the wall looking down his immediate half-flight of stairs. There were slotted windows at each level that shed light on the ground below, where the crowd struggled to get closer to the action by the basement door. He focused back down the stairs, waiting for Andizzi to show, but a minute went by and there was no sign of him. He edged closer to the rail again and chanced another sliver of a peek. He saw a flash of Dominique’s jacket, halfway down. His brother was pinned between Andizzi and Aldobrandi, probably giving himself whiplash. He jerked back as another diode whizzed up the stairwell, this time slamming into a light fixture above Yves that exploded with an electric pop. Shattered glass rained upon all seven floors. He heard Andizzi laughing again.

  “Five ducks all in a row!” Andizzi yelled in English.

  Yves was about to yell back when his com beeped and Ellie’s voice came through.

  “Red is done. Diego is the only one left standing. He’s on his way to the house. What the hell is taking you so long?”

  “We’re a little busy,” Yves said, his voice as flat as the broad side of a knife.

  “Hurry!”

  Yves spat on the faded concrete. “Dominique,” he said. “You run up and I’ll run down. Let’s take this flashy asshole Andizzi out of the picture. We don’t want a standoff here. Time is short.”

  “Loud and clear,” replied Dominique, his voice harried. Instantly, he screamed and thundered up the stairs. Yves pushed himself off the wall and threw himself down the stairs, his feet barely keeping up. Yves was buzzed by another diode and he missed a step. His heart skipped a beat as his foot felt for purchase and then he was tumbling forward with his head down and his hands up to protect his face. That tumble saved him. Andizzi, never one to sit penned in, had his silver gun up and firing towards Yves and his gold gun down and firing towards Dominique, but Yves tumbled below his spread and took him out at the legs. The two of them rolled into a spitting, swearing, shooting tangle of limbs and tumbled into Dominique, who took a diode to the calf and collapsed on top of them.

  In close quarters Andizzi took to swinging his guns like maces and caught Yves a glancing blow across the face. Yves tried to blink away watery stars while keeping Andizzi at arm’s length, but the Italian fought like a wild cat, raking Yves’s face and shooting and screaming. Dominique used his dead weight to force a wedge between Andizzi and his brother and the two Frenchman managed to pull his arms apart for a split second, only to have him buck away. Yves lost his trigger hold when he was hit in the face, but Dominique still had a good grip on his. He lurched over to sight Andizzi but Andizzi crouched low and then exploded a double kick at Dominique’s lamed leg that bounced him away and nearly over the top of the railing, all while hitching his guns back in his hands. Yves dove over him towards his own gun which teetered on the stairwell but as he grasped for it, it slipped away and tumbled down the stairs. Andizzi saw his opening and aimed at Yves, but Dominique was there. He rebounded against the rail and jammed his gun into Andizzi’s kidney as he pitched over him and he fired twice. Andizzi tensed like an animal in the stocks, every muscle qui
vered, then he went limp.

  Dominique hooted in triumph even as Yves slid down the stairs after his gun, but then came another shot and his cheer turned to a grimace. Then another shot, and Dominique staggered back against the wall. Lorenzo Aldobrandi, his face calm fury, had picked him off from an angle one floor below. Yves bellowed in anger and reached for his gun, finally grasping it after slamming his back into the wall. Aldobrandi switched his attention from Dominique to Yves and aimed at him point blank, then came a rapid succession of shots, too fast to count, and Aldobrandi staggered forward as if caught by a swinging bar. He slammed head first into the very same wall where Yves had collapsed. Tristan came up behind Aldobrandi, gun trained upon him. Satisfied he wasn’t coming back, Tristan turned to Yves and grasped his brother by the arm, pulling him upright.

  “Dominique,” Yves said, gasping, pushing himself off the wall and stumbling up the stairway to where his brother still stood, barely, leaning heavily against the concrete wall. His good leg was slowly sliding out from under him. He held his gut and wheezed.

  “Where is Tessa?” Tristan yelled. “Did anyone see Tessa?”

  Yves ignored him, staggering up towards his wounded brother. “Dominique! Where are you hit!” Dominique lifted his head to look at Yves, but his eyes were unfocused and he blinked rapidly and teetered forward. Yves was there to catch him as both fell to the ground in the slice of light cast from the strip of window in the wall. Tristan watched them fall into the light and a dread cold passed over him. He knew why Tessa wasn’t there. She wasn’t on their floor or any other floor. She wasn’t even in the building.

  “The window!” Tristan yelled, scrambling forward, all time slowed. “Yves get away from the window!”

  As Dominique fell into Yves’ arms, he noticed through the window a stairway on the outside of the building across the street. There on the stairway stood Tessa Crocifissa, her dark hair whipping in the wind. Dominique watched helplessly as she positioned herself and took aim at Yves’s back, her gun like a rip of shadow against the day.

  “No,” Dominique whispered.

  “Yves get down!” Tristan screamed, and as Tessa began to fire he threw himself between Yves and the window, slamming into his brothers as the report echoed across the buildings. He felt the first diode strike his back like a hard, flat smack with the heel of the hand. Then another hit him in the small of the back and he arched and gritted his teeth as the sting radiated over him. He reached behind him as if he might find an arrow lodged between his shoulder blades, but there was nothing. Only two holes in his jacket and a bit of blood and the spreading pain, and at its locus he sensed the onset of a paralyzing numbness. Tristan jerked forward into Yves even as Yves held Dominique. Yves tried to push him down to safety but Tristan held fast and still shielded him. He gripped his jacket and said, “Shoot her” even as he took a third diode in his upper leg.

  Yves lifted his gun and aimed under Tristan’s arm and through the window. Tessa was an easy target; she fired as if she was giving an address from the balcony: smiling broadly, hands up and offering destruction, feet planted. Yves opened fire upon her and struck her down with two direct hits to her torso. She staggered and her hands fought for purchase as she collapsed on the grated floor of the stairway. She kicked for a moment and Yves thought he could hear her screaming but he wasn’t sure because everyone was screaming: the crowd, his brothers, himself. He only stopped firing at her when he saw that she was not moving. Then he collapsed under the weight of his two brothers and the three fell to the floor.

  “No!” Yves screamed, dropping to his knees and grabbing first Dominique, and then Tristan’s hand. He helped both of them back against the wall, but they could move no further. He saw pain in their faces, but also acceptance, and fondness as they watched their captain fret. Dominique even managed a smile.

  “I guess we can only deliver one man after all,” Tristan wheezed. Tears welled in Yves’s eyes as he held each man at the shoulder.

  “I’ll wait until you go under,” Yves said. “Make sure the medics get to you.”

  Dominique managed to shake his head, eyes already losing focus. “Go,” he whispered. “Help her.”

  “Time is short,” whispered Tristan.

  Still Yves tarried.

  “Go!” Dominique yelled, in English, and the pain of the effort contorted his face. Yves dropped his head and sniffed loudly and breathed through his mouth but when he looked up again his eyes were clear and hard.

  “I’ll see you soon, brothers.” Yves said, pulling himself up. He took one last look at them propped as they were against the wall. Then he was gone.

  Dominique was quiet and thought Tristan was already gone when his breathing picked up again and he twitched against Dominique. They were coming upon the worst part of a diode hit, the terrible seconds when you lose your body but your mind lingers. It was fleeting, but the seconds of paralysis felt like hours and it never got any easier to withstand.

  To try and help his brother along Dominique spoke. “It’s too bad. It should have been me.”

  Tristan managed to turn his head a degree towards him and popped an eyebrow. “Why?” he croaked.

  “Because she’s in love with me. I can tell. She’s going to be disappointed when Yves shows up without me.”

  Tristan managed a single laugh.

  The awful chill crept up Dominique’s neck. He tensed and Tristan felt it and gave his hand a weak squeeze.

  “Do you think we’ll wake up?” Dominique whispered.

  Tristan barely managed a nod and Dominique saw it out of the corner of his eye and smiled, a measure of his fear forgotten.

  “Me too.” Then he rested his head against that of his brother.

  ————

  “It’s just me, but I’m coming.” Yves’s voice rumbled like distant thunder even over the com. Ellie and Cy were at the foot of the park before the Black House, jostled by the wayward crowd, which had no idea who they were. People were torn between running to see the fights to the north and south and jockeying for position on the lawn.

  Tom was off to their right, vomiting briefly in a trash can. Then he jogged back over to them. “I feel better now. Just nerves.”

  “Ready?” Ellie asked.

  “Yeah, let’s do this,” Tom said, and Cy nodded.

  Ellie pulled her black bandana off and dropped it to the ground, then unzipped her jacket and pulled out her gun, but her hand quaked like an Aspen leaf so she pressed it to her side. Tom yanked his bandana down around his neck and spit to clear his mouth. He pulled his gun out and tossed it from one hand to the other and by then people near them took notice. Cy flipped his hood off and pulled his gun around from his back.

  “I’ll start,” Cy said, and he aimed downward and shot three rounds into the trampled grass in front of them. The crowd flew from them, crouching lower with each shot, and within seconds they had a bubble of space around them and the eyes of the world upon them.

  “Out of the way!” Cy bellowed, and he and Tom sighted everyone and everything as they walked forward, snapping to sudden movements. There was a mad rush towards them from the fringes of the park, but they kept their bubble free and their path cleared as they walked down the center of the park towards the Black House, taking the same route as all of those who had joined Mazaryk. Ellie wondered how many people in the crowd thought she was conceding, and how many thought she had come to fight. She fought to keep her composure. Every fiber within her wanted to do nothing but dig a hole in the ground to hide in. The onslaught of attention was a weight upon her and she struggled to keep her shoulders from bowing inward and her arms from crossing over her chest. The park churned. They were booed and cheered at the same time. Chicken squawks erupted from somewhere off to their left. The crowd pressed, but only to a point. So far their plan looked to be working; the people wanted to see how they would be received and they made way. They were halfway across the park when Tom stopped. Then he looked over at Cy and Cy stopped. Cy followed
his gaze and there at its end stood Troya Parker.

  Cy staggered to a stop and hung like a jacket on a coat rack. The crowd immediately knew that something was between him and this woman and they fell upon her with questions and cameras and people were shouting her name, putting two and two together, and it was as if Cy had shorted out. Phone calls were hard enough to ignore, but the sight of her after months was an exquisite pain of a different sort. And she was smiling at him, a smile that stemmed from a heart worried sick, but it was a smile. In her hand she held a little blue flag, and on her arm was a blue bandana and all of these things made him feel like his heart was cracking in hundreds of separate places.

  After a moment Tom approached Cy. “If you don’t go over to her right now I will never speak to you again.”

  “I can’t drag her into this world” Cy said numbly, never taking his eyes off her.

  “She’s already in it,” Ellie said to him. “It’s up to you if you want to keep making yourself miserable over it.”

  Troya waved at him with an unsure flick of her hand but when he still did nothing her smile faltered. The hope in her eyes dimmed but the love never left them, Cy could see it, and the layers of anger within him shattered like a stack of plates dropped to the ground. Mazaryk and the rest could go straight to hell. He began to walk over to her. As he walked he stood taller, he breathed more fully, and then, finally, his smile returned, and hers with it.