by B. V. Larson
The pause didn’t last long. I soon saw some activity under the ship. Tiny, brilliant stabs of light flashed like intermittent lightning.
The lights flashed again and again. I looked for matching explosions on the ground, but I didn’t see any. What the hell were they doing?
After about a minute more, during which I breathed hard and stared with eyes like marbles, the ship began to move again. It turned ominously toward Lahaina.
Turning back to the ocean, I waded out into the surf. I’d seen enough. I didn’t want anything to do with that ship. If people were dying back there, in their homes, hotels and cars, I knew that I couldn’t save them.
When the water hit my chest, I dove in. The surf was rough, and I could feel the undertow snatching at me—but I didn’t care. If I drowned tonight… well, that might be a mercy.
Swimming deep, I let the tide take me out to sea. I tried my best to avoid the coral, but I got a stinging cut or two. That would be bad in the morning—if there was one.
I became aware of two strange things several minutes later.
One was the simple fact that I was still swimming underwater, still holding my breath, and still not passing out. I was in shape and an experienced diver, but I’d never lasted so long without air before.
Two, there was a light shining down from above me. Green-white and bright, it refracted heavily in the moving ocean.
I knew that light. It was more familiar when seen through seawater. It was the same glare I’d seen the night Jason had died.
Looking up from my position under the water, I could see what had to be the ship. Why had it come out here after me? I didn’t know, and I barely cared at the moment.
My lungs were beginning to starve for air. I had a choice to make. I could either swim up to the surface for a breath, facing whatever these invaders had in store for me, or I could stubbornly drown down here on the bottom of the sea.
A large part of me voted for drowning. It would be so much easier that way—but I couldn’t do it. Kicking off the sandy bottom, I headed for the surface. Powerful strokes sent me surging out of the water. I gasped and shook my head, squinting up at the ship’s broad, flat belly.
The light switched off. For a time, nothing happened.
“Well?” I screamed over the sound of the waves. “Get on with it!”
For several more long seconds, the ship and the sea were calm. The sounds of the waves were weird. They echoed off the belly of the vessel, making it sound like I was inside some kind of cavern.
Irritated and wary, I began to swim toward the shoreline.
Before I made it to the beach again, a different light began to shine. It was bluish, glimmering, and each time it pulsed it grew brighter.
This was it, then. They were going to fry me with some kind of laser. It all seemed anti-climactic.
Finally, the beam pulsed to a brilliant glare. In my last instant on Earth, I realized this must have been the lightning-strokes I’d been seeing up on the island.
I couldn’t see anything other than the light and the sea. The glare was too much. Swimming in the direction I hoped led to the beach, I felt my foot touch sand for a bare second.
Then the beach, the sea, the sound of the wind, even the ship that loomed above me—all of it was gone.
=8=
When I was conscious of my surroundings again, I was lying on an uneven floor.
My eyes swiveled blearily. I tried to get up, but I couldn’t.
The floor and every wall in the chamber around me looked like a honeycomb, built of endless, interlocking hexagons. Each hexagon was domed and about an inch across. I wasn’t sure what kind of material they were made of, but it didn’t look like metal to me.
A finger came into focus just then. Attached to that finger was a person. She was standing over me, working her nails on the walls, making them crumble.
I saw her face, and it took me a minute, but I recognized her at last. It was Gwen, the blonde girl I’d met on the beach at TJ’s. I hadn’t seen her since she’d run out of the hospital when Jason had died a few days back.
She didn’t seem to be interested in me. Instead, she casually walked around the chamber poking at the walls. After a few minutes of this, she knelt beside me and peered into my eyes.
“You awake?” she asked.
I said something unintelligible. In response, she hit me. Hard. Harder than I’d ever been hit by a girl in my life. Not even my older sister could have packed a wallop like that when I was five and she was thirteen.
Stunned, I felt another blow strike me, then another. She was methodically beating my head in. Around about the fourth or fifth blow, I blanked out.
Sometime later, I woke up again. There was no way to know how long I’d been out, but I suspected it hadn’t been long.
This time I was wiser and pissed off. I waited with my eyes barely cracked open, looking around. Gwen was picking at the walls again, coating her fingernails in white dust.
After a minute or so, she squatted down beside me. I almost winced, but I managed to control the reaction.
For reasons unknown, we both had on papery-thin sleeveless blue tunics and nothing else. No shoes, no underwear—nothing. I found this fact odd and interesting, but I was quite busy at the moment, pretending to be unconscious.
I noticed that Gwen had something in her hand, and I realized why her blows had hurt so much. It made me feel a little better to know she hadn’t been hitting me with her fists. She wielded a metal tube, and her small hand gripped it tightly.
“You awake, Leo?” she asked softly.
I kept right on faking, but it was hard. Part of me wanted to fight back. I wanted to snarl at her and demand to know what the hell she was doing.
After a few seconds, she stood and went for the wall again. My hand shot out instantly, grabbed her ankle, and pulled her off her feet.
She went down with a squeal. I sprang to my feet, and we wrestled for the metal tube. She managed to touch me with it, and I learned immediately that it was capable of delivering a nasty shock. A snapping sound and buzz on my left arm made it go limp for a second.
But the struggle was uneven anyway. While she was still on the floor, I managed to wrestle away the tube.
Breathing hard and blinking in fear, she scooted away from me on her butt. She hugged up against the wall and cowered. She clearly expected a beating.
I shook my head. “What’s wrong with you, Gwen? One minute you’re sweet, and the next minute you’re trying to kick my ass.”
“I’m doing it for points,” she said, in a tone that suggested I was an idiot.
“Points?”
“You don’t get as many points for nailing the same target over and over again, but it still counts. So, are you going to put me down or not?”
A flash of memory went off in my head then—I had awakened before. Earlier I’d found myself here on the floor in this room and put on my papery clothes. Then, I’d been clubbed down from behind. Maybe the beatings and the shocks had driven me to forget the recent past…
My eyes narrowed, and I looked at Gwen. I thought about whacking her one for a second, I seriously did, but seeing the fear in her eyes made me lose heart.
“No,” I said. “I’m not going to hit you.”
She looked surprised and confused. She stood up warily and fled the room. I followed her and found myself in an open passageway. The walls were made of more honeycombs, but the deck was smooth, and it lit up with a reddish glow when our feet touched it. Her footsteps left a softly lingering trail of light behind her as she ran.
She didn’t make it very far. An arm shot out from a side passage, and she was knocked flat.
Another figure stepped into view and began methodically whacking her with the same kind of metal tube she had used on me. Sparks flew as the blunt instrument made violent contact with her body.
Call me a fool, but I couldn’t take that. I ran up and shoved the man away from her. I was shocked to recognize him: it w
as none other than Dr. Chang.
Gwen lay on the floor, looking lifeless.
“What the hell are you doing, man?” I demanded, grabbing his shoulders and shaking him.
He struggled to get away from me. His eyes were wild.
“A team?” he demanded. “You two have teamed up? You tricked me! Is a team even legal? I call it cheating!”
He swung his tube at me.
What could I do? I had no time to think of a way to get out of this fight. I beat the guy down. I wasn’t proud to do it, but I didn’t think I had any other choice. I was sure he wouldn’t stop trying to nail me with his club until I was laid out on the floor like Gwen.
Pulling my blows, I let the shocking effect of the club do most of the work. He sagged down to the floor on his butt, the wall behind him smeared with blood.
He was still conscious, so I kicked his weapon away from him and checked on Gwen. She was barely breathing.
“You’ve got some explaining to do, doc,” I told him. “…and so does she, actually.”
“Why aren’t you finishing it?” he asked. “What are you waiting for?”
“As long as you behave yourself, you’ll be just fine.” I replied.
“Ah,” he said in sudden understanding. “You’re not on her side at all. You just don’t know the rules.”
“Then why don’t you explain them to me?”
“We all got here over the last hour or so. Captured from the islands,” he said, clearly agitated. “At least, I think it’s been an hour... Things started off friendly enough, with everyone finding each other and milling around, trying to figure out what’s going on. But then a big man came into the central room and began handing out these clubs. He told us they held essentials inside—and they did. Each contained a smock and some food.”
As he spoke, I knew I’d missed the relatively calm time he was describing. I’d awakened alone, put on my clothes, and was immediately attacked.
“How many people?” I asked. “How many are aboard?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was the big stranger some kind of alien?”
“No, he looked human. He was an older man who seemed comfortable being in command. He handed out the weapons and explained the situation. Then he walked away. I don’t know where he went.”
Chewing that over, I looked at Dr. Chang and asked one more question. “Why’d you start beating on each other?”
“Because of the rules,” he said. “The stranger explained the rules. Each of us has only one way out: to beat down everyone else on the ship. If we don’t win, we might make it if we get a higher score than the rest.”
He had a glassy look to his eyes as he told me this. He wasn’t all there. That could have been due to head trauma, but I wasn’t sure.
“That doesn’t make any sense at all,” I told him. “Why hit each other?”
“Don’t you get it? Whoever wins gets to go back to Earth. At least, that’s what he said.”
“And you guys all believed him?”
He shrugged. “It didn’t matter if we all believed. Some people apparently did, and they began shocking each other and smashing skulls. I ran at first. Several others did, too. There was an awful fight in the central room.”
“Where’s that?”
He pointed the opposite direction down the passage. I looked that way. There were dark stains on the floor that resembled blood.
“You all just went crazy at once?” I asked. “It seems hard to believe.”
“It’s the sym,” he said with certainty. “Symbiotic parasites. We all have them, living in our skulls. They’re part biological and part nano-tech. They make us paranoid, violent. They also seem to enhance our physical strength and help us heal.”
“Symbiotic parasites? The guys that chased me around down on Earth mentioned something about that. You’ve got one?”
“I’ve probably got millions of them in my bloodstream, actually. Feeding on me, changing my personality at times.”
“How’s that even possible?” I asked.
“There are precedents in nature,” Dr. Chang said. “Toxoplasma gondii, for instance. It causes all kinds of neurological disorders in humans. But I don’t think this organism that people are calling a ‘sym’ is natural. It was designed purposefully to change our behavior and physiology.”
A muffled scream came echoing down the passage from the central room. I stood up, having heard enough from the good doctor.
“I’m going to put a stop to this,” I told him, hefting my club.
Dr. Chang grunted. “I don’t know who won the big fight in the central room, but whoever they are, they might disagree. I think they’re waiting in there, waiting for the rest of us to finish each other off.”
I glanced at him. He was scheming too, watching to see what I would do. I could see it in his eyes.
“I don’t plan to play their game,” I told him. “At least, not the way the owners of this ship want me to.”
“Don’t you want to go back home?” he asked.
I shrugged. “Everyone’s gone crazy back home. I need to figure out what’s going on and put a stop to it. Besides, I don’t trust them at all.”
Dr. Chang’s eyes narrowed. “I like the way you think. You still have your wits about you. Many of these people—they’re no better than animals.”
He had his club back in his hand. One end was splotched red. He slapped it into his hand, smearing his palm in the process.
Walking away from him, I headed for the central chamber he’d directed me toward.
It could be a trap. Part of my mind warned me not to go—but I kept walking. I was determined to keep my own ideas and plans in charge.
I felt surging emotions. Fear. Anger. A lust for blood… but I kept walking. For all I knew, all these feelings were coming from my sym. Maybe it didn’t want me to enter the central chamber.
Well, that was just too damned bad.
There were bodies on the floor. About twenty of them. They were piled over one another. Some skulls were bashed in, and their lifeless eyes stared at me. Others were unconscious but still breathing.
Off to my right, I heard a sudden popping sound. I lifted my club as I whirled.
It was the man I knew as Dalton. He was slowly, loudly, clapping his hands together. It was a mocking applause, matching the smirk on his face.
“I should have known you’d show up,” he sneered.
=9=
“I can’t believe you survived,” I said, breathing hard. My eyes swept the room looking for more enemies. “Jones shot you several times.”
“True enough, that,” he said. “Jones didn’t make it this far this time, but I did. Don’t you know that given time the syms can heal up anyone who isn’t stone dead?”
“I don’t know much about the syms.”
“Right… Still pretending to be just another simple wanker, eh, Blake? That’s not going to fly with me. Not now. You’re going down.”
“You think they’ll let you off this ship if you beat me?” I asked. “That story is bullshit. My theory is that they’re watching us fight for fun. Maybe this is a reality TV show for these aliens.”
“They’ll let us keep breathing, anyway,” Dalton said. “That’s how it works. Now how about you and I play the game?”
Then he attacked me. He was a trained fighter, I could tell that. He came at me swinging his club in wide loops. I almost stepped in under his guard after the club went by me—but I noticed something else that kept me from doing so.
He had his other hand down at his waist, gripping something. Another club? No, it wasn’t big enough.
I danced away, refusing to take the bait. He pressed forward, stepping deftly over the bodies. He wasn’t as big or strong as I was, but he was agile and confident.
“What have you got in your other hand?” I asked him.
He showed me a toothy grin then lifted the object. It took me a squinting second to recognize it. The weapon was a splintered leng
th of gray-white bone as sharp as a dagger. It was fresh, too. He must have ripped it out of one of the bodies that lay at our feet.
“You’re a sick fuck,” I said.
He chuckled. “You’re going to know just how right you are soon.”
We circled, but there wasn’t really anywhere to go. I had the option of running out of the chamber, fleeing off into the ship somewhere, but I didn’t want to take that approach.
What about Gwen and Dr. Chang? If I hid, he would hunt them down and kill them eventually. I still held out hope that I could get people to come to their senses.
I was in no mood to kill anyone today, but I had to make my play. Instead of striking for Dalton’s head or his ribs, I went for an easier target. I smashed my club at his club, purposefully driving it down onto his knuckles. Our hands were unprotected by a guard of any kind, leaving them vulnerable to that kind of strike.
Keening in pain, he dropped the club. I lifted my weapon high and brought it down on his skull, but not before he managed to dart in and stick me with his bone-dagger.
That’s when I lost it. It was the pain that released the rage my sym was trying to foment in my mind. I smashed him four or five times more than was absolutely necessary.
Thirty seconds after the fight had started, he was sprawled out on the floor.
Pulling the bone shard out of my left side with a grunt of pain, I tossed it aside with plenty of hissing and cursing. After a few minutes of this, I limped out of the room toward the passage where I’d left Dr. Chang. My idea was to offer him protection in turn for whatever medical aid he could render.
The moment I stepped out of the chamber, the color of the floor and walls changed. The glowing nimbus that surrounded my feet went from red to green.
“Time!” boomed a voice. It seemed to come from everywhere at once. The walls were broadcasting this one simple word. “Time!”
“Drop your weapon, Blake,” the voice called from the passageway. “This round is over.”