Torn

by Avery Hastings

  Cole smiled, feeling the return of his affection for her.

  “I don’t like the way you left with no explanation,” Mari continued.

  “Mari, I—” He’d meant to tell her he was sorry. But she held up a finger to quiet him.

  “I came here because I have a few things to say,” she informed him. “I’m not interested in hearing you ‘mansplain’ the situation to me. We’ve become friends. It took a while. I understand you now. You know that. You’re strong, brave, loyal. But sometimes you act like a real dick. I put everything I had into your training, and I deserve better if I’m going to let you be my friend.”

  She was right. “I’m an idiot,” he said. She raised an eyebrow, nodding in agreement. “Thank you for being so honest. I’ll probably still be an idiot occasionally, as that seems to be my way. But,” he continued, “I’ll have you know that I’m not a complete numbskull. There’s no way I could have gotten here without you.”

  “You bet your ass you couldn’t,” she said with a smirk, her eyes lighting up in mischief.

  “So I’ll be a better friend,” he told her. “And I can’t wait to give you half my winnings—because I fully plan to win.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Cole was poised on a swimmer’s block with a half dozen other swimmers, ready to jump into the cool water in front of him. He tried to ignore the crowd in the arena, which was packed to capacity. He’d heard the arena seated one thousand. He breathed, focusing on the task before him. The pool was manufactured by top Prior engineers to simulate open water, and the competitors had been warned in advance that it would behave as natural water might—whatever that meant. The water itself certainly wasn’t clear. It was murky and choppy, splashing him gently as he stared into its surface. Cole felt ready for release.

  “Part one in the extended triathlon is the open water swim,” the announcer intoned over the arena loudspeakers. “Each competitor who fails to reach the finish line will be eliminated from future events. Last one standing is the winner, folks! And our competitors have been warned that they’ll face certain … surprises.” The crowd roared and booed as one.

  Cole stared at the lapping water, forcing everything from his mind but the goal: the finish line. He had to stay mentally strong. Adrenaline surged through his body, and when the judge blew the whistle, he jumped in and swam with a great tide of energy, primed to destroy his opponents.

  By lap three, though, his energy started to wane, and each stroke required more effort. He pushed on, fighting through the pain of it, and pushed back his growing desperation as he watched two other swimmers—well behind when they started—push in front of him. Panic welled up in his chest—for the first time, it seemed entirely possible that he might lose. Still, even thinking that was a kind of defeat, so he forced it away and pushed forward, his lungs burning.

  When the water started teeming around him, Cole at first thought it was natural tides caused by the swimmers next to him. But as it pushed against him and gained more force, he realized: the pool had been designed to take on a life of its own, its currents resembling a river. At first he panicked further, flailing among the powerful currents as he felt himself being dragged down and pushed aside by the waves. He looked up, gasping for breath and halting his forward momentum altogether. The scene around him was chaos: the other swimmers were being tossed around like debris at the mercy of the currents. They were no better off than he was. In fact, they looked worse—completely at a loss about how to handle the simulated experience of navigating the rhythms of a natural body of water.

  It occurred to him that ninety percent of the contestants were used to man-made water, had only trained in sterile environments. He was likely the only one who had had river experience. He had the advantage.

  Channeling all of his experience swimming with Mari in the river behind her house, Cole took several deep breaths and channeled everything he knew about moving with, and not against, the current. He fell into an easy rhythm that complemented the rhythm of the water, and he swam that way, outpacing most of the others, who were still struggling to understand the water’s patterns. Cole pulled ahead of the two guys who had passed him only moments before. He was closing in on the lead, with only a few swimmers ahead of him now.

  As Cole swam, small tentacles reached from the bottom, simulating pond reeds. They rose toward him, angling toward his legs. What kind of “surprises” had they meant? Could this be something live and potentially poisonous? There wasn’t time to consider it. The tentacles rose higher and higher, as if they could grow to infinite heights. With a renewed surge of confidence, Cole easily dodged them, shaking them off deftly as they wrapped their slimy fingers around his ankles and calves. He navigated the ever-dimming water like a pro.

  Opening his eyes to peer under the water’s surface, he noticed that the pool was completing its transformation to pond even as he moved. Very little light filtered down to its depths, and some of the other swimmers—who were likely unable to comfortably open their eyes underwater, never having done it before—were no longer swimming in a straight line. Cole watched as bodies collided and people struggled through waves and in and out of weeds—but he stayed his course. He was nearly in the lead and just a half mile or so from the finish line when he noticed the frantic flailing of the swimmer next to him.

  Cole looked back as he swam, waiting for the swimmer to shake off whatever he was fighting and regain control of the situation. But his movements grew more panicked, and he drew in long, hacking gulps of water. Cole halted, then turned back. The guy looked like he was in serious trouble. Cole could go on and finish the race … but no one else seemed capable of helping the other swimmer. As the guy sputtered and coughed and swallowed another long gulp of water, Cole made up his mind.

  With a heavy heart, he swam over to the drowning swimmer, giving up his lead. He locked his arms under the swimmer’s arms and pulled him onto his back.

  “Stop struggling,” he shouted at the guy. “Just relax, I’m going to drag you in.” In his panic, the guy’s eyes were glassy, and he seemed not to register Cole’s instructions. He fought against Cole, threatening to bring them both down. Desperate, Cole lifted a palm and slapped the guy across the face, stunning him into silence. Then he swam him over to the end of the massive tank, hauling them both out of the water and handing him off to one of the waiting coaches. In the stands, the crowd went wild. Cole couldn’t tell whether they cheering for him or heckling him … but he didn’t care. It was over. Cole watched as a rogue wave tumbled through the tank, plowing over several swimmers in its path. He stood at the side, unaffected.

  Cole vaulted off the side and pushed back into the race. There was no way he’d win it now, but he would at least finish with his head held high. Cole fought through the waves, adrenaline infusing each of his movements with intensity. When another wave, stretching nearly six feet above him, threatened the course, he dove underneath, cursing inwardly. They’d designed the pool to resemble some sort of hybrid between lake and ocean, he realized. Which meant all bets were off—literally anything could be up next. When he resurfaced, he saw that several of his opponents had taken the same strategy, only to find themselves entangled in the long, twisting weeds. Cole looked at the course spreading out before him and realized that he was back in it. He glimpsed the edge of the pool—the finish line—which wasn’t too far off, if only he could swim with the water and not against it. He dove forward, easily dodging the weeds and reeds that ensnared the others. He moved his body with the current, allowing it to fuel his progress. He stopped fighting against the tides and worked with them in the same way he would if he were back in the river with Mari, training behind her wilderness house.

  When Cole hit the tape that designated the finish line, he was caught in his own world. He lifted his head to a stunning onslaught of noise. He felt a coach hoisting him up out of the water, but barely registered it when the same coach slung a gold medal over his neck and lifted his arm high in the air, signifying his victory
.

  Cole had done it. He had won. He looked around him at the audience’s stunned expressions and caught Mari in the front row of the crowd nearest the finish line. Somehow she’d slipped in among the observers. He shook his head at her, laughing to himself; the girl was so small and swift that she could sneak around just about anywhere. She pumped her fist in the air and flashed him a broad smile.

  Cole was past the first round. The first round, as Mari had told him, was especially designed to weed out the weakest competitors—but he had done it. Cole let himself be ushered from the arena, the cacophony behind him fading only slightly as he moved into the men’s locker room.

  “Congratulations,” the coach who’d led him out there said. “Not bad, for an Imp.”

  “Not bad for anybody, I’d say,” Cole told him. He wouldn’t let anyone detract from this victory.

  “We’ll see how you do in the triathlon. You’ve got ten minutes to prep.”

  “What? I thought there was a requisite hour break between events.”

  “The schedule’s been altered,” the judge told him with a smug grin. “We’ll see how tough you are with no rest at all.”

  Cole tried to contain his fury. He strongly suspected the schedule had been altered for the purpose of putting him at a disadvantage. His race had wrapped up later than the other morning events, he saw from the status boards. He and one other guy were the only Gens entering the triathlon.

  When Cole was ready, he followed the signage to the roof of the auditorium and took his place among a good twenty competitors.

  “Why are we up here?” he wondered aloud to the girl next to him, who only shrugged. There wasn’t any space up there to do any major events, so when the judge blew the whistle and announced the long jump, Cole furrowed his brow.

  “We’re jumping across that gap,” the girl told him, indicating a wide expanse of air between two buildings.

  “You’re kidding. We’re at least twenty stories up.”

  “That’s right. Piece of cake. Oh wait, Imps don’t go roofing, do you?” the girl said, her face alight with a cruel smile. “Too bad.” Her words cut deep. Cole watched as the first two contestants readied themselves on the roof’s edge, preparing to leap.

  Roofing. Cole had forgotten. He had experience with exactly this. It hadn’t been easy, but he could do it—he’d done it once before, with Davis. He closed his eyes, imagining Davis there next to him, urging him on. With her there, he could do anything. He breathed in, channeling her presence.

  Cole ran for the roof edge, imagining Davis right next to him, laughing with him, telling him to pick up the pace. When he leapt, he cleared the gap by a good distance. He bent to his knees, the fear of having sailed over a death trap finally hitting him. As it turned out, lots of Priors had fallen—there was a net strung up two stories below—but lots had cleared the gap easily. Cole was the only Gen left in the competition … but he hadn’t even made it to the top ten competitors. He only had two more events in which to scramble back into the winners’ bracket.

  Cole moved over the deck of the next building toward a low-lying, enclosed space, as per the judges’ instructions. He raced into the space—which seemed not permanent, from the look of it, but constructed for this event—and tried not to worry about what might await him inside. When he burst through the door, he found himself in a hall of mirrors. They stretched out all around him, and on all sides he saw the other contenders climbing through mazes of charged wiring, contorting their bodies to bend through and around the live electric ropes. Because of the mirrors, at first it was impossible to tell where the ropes were suspended. From where Cole stood, people were reflected climbing above him and at his feet. When one slipped and was subjected to the wires’ resulting shock, a scream echoed for minutes around the room, and his body looked like it hurtled for miles. Cole closed his eyes, warding off panic. Then he forced himself to block out all manufactured stimuli—strobe lights, pulsing music—and feel his way to the course.

  As he pulled himself through the ropes, focusing on the coarse, uneven strands of the nonelectrified holds and avoiding the sleeker electrified supports, Priors dropped out all around him. The course seemed easy to Cole; he was surprised that so many of the others were dropping like flies. Then he realized.

  Just as flies are drawn to light, the Priors were drawn to the mirrors, moving toward their images—and the small, mirrored panels that decorated the electrified cords—to the point of distraction. They were too distracted by their own reflections to pay attention to the ropes.

  Cole finished easily, only a little dizzy and disoriented from the top-is-down, funhouse quality of the race. He and only three others—all Priors—made it through. Cole noted that Landon, the crowd favorite and his stiffest competition, was still in it. The last race would determine everything. Cole squared his shoulders. He’d come this far, and it seemed like every portion of the contest involved a code he could crack. He’d do it again for the finals.

  “Five-minute break!”

  Cole watched as the moderator approached with water. When he arrived at Cole, he also placed a small yellow supplement in his palm.

  “What is this?” Cole asked, taking the water but ignoring the supplement.

  “Performance enhancer,” the moderator said. “We’re giving them to all the standing athletes.” Cole looked at the others; sure enough, Landon was downing his own enhancer with a huge swig of water.

  “Do I have to take it?”

  “You won’t be eliminated if you don’t,” the guy said, raising an eyebrow. “But you’d be foolish.”

  Cole hesitated, considering the options. He’d never taken an enhancer. But Priors already had the physical edge. Without one of these pills, he’d almost definitely be screwed.

  “Two minutes!” the moderator called out. Cole took the pill from his hand and, without further thought, washed it down with the water.

  As they lined up for the final portion of the contest—a balance and dexterity competition involving rotating, vaulted beams—he felt the drug kicking in. His sense of smell was heightened, as was his hearing. He heard the wind—which he felt against his skin as a soft breeze—like a freight train in his ears. Small blobs moved in his periphery, obscuring his vision. Cole panicked. He shouldn’t have taken the enhancer—his genetic makeup was different from the others’, and he wasn’t used to it, on top of that. He felt loopy, high. He opened and closed his eyes several times; each time he opened them, the world rose toward him in a frightening configuration of unfamiliar, leering shapes.

  Stepping before his beam, he closed his eyes again. He knew what he had to do.

  Keeping his eyes closed, he felt the beam rotating beneath his feet. He recalled the night with Mari, in the abandoned stone house, where he’d had to shut out all the obstacles that threatened his mental endurance. That night when they raced he’d had to look deeper inside himself, filtering through the chaos to focus on the simple things: the acoustics of the house, the way his senses interacted. Now he focused on the movement of the beam beneath his feet. He took his time, allowing the beam to set his pace as he moved forward, faltering more than once.

  Everything else faded away: the crowds roaring below him, the others competing next to him, the surreal quality of the course as seen through his new “enhanced” perspective. He blocked all of it out until it was just the beam and his feet gripping it deftly, propelling him forward. The voices of his competitors, trying to distract him with catcalls from where they already stood safely on the other side, faded into nothing.

  When he reached the other side, Cole collapsed. He felt stronger than ever before, but the world spun in heady circles around him.

  Landon leaned over him, his face so close that Cole could smell mint on his breath.

  “You’d better watch yourself in the finals,” he told him. “I’ll die before I let an Imp win the Olympiads.”

  Cole pulled himself to his feet. Landon backed away, but the very real threat hun
g between them. Cole could tell Landon had meant every word.

  It was up to Cole, then, to see Landon to his death.

  19

  DAVIS

  As the sun came up on Durham, Davis wended her way through the streets of the city, uncertain where to go. The shock of her mother’s betrayal was still fresh. It frightened her that her mom had been as emotionless as she was. It horrified her to have such coldness in her blood. What had her mother been like when she and her father first met? Had she changed over time, become so consumed by physical perfection that the most important thing—human connection—died out altogether?

  Davis’s thoughts turned to Cole, and how close they’d been. She wondered if her mother and father had ever experienced that level of closeness, and the thought that they hadn’t made her sad. For all his faults, her father loved her—everything he’d done in his life had been for her and Terri and Fia. How much of that was a result of not feeling loved himself? Everything she thought she’d known started to fall apart as she examined it more closely. Her father had never revealed her mother’s true nature—if he had, would she have been better off? Davis gazed up at the buildings looming above her. The city suddenly seemed sinister and threatening, and as she looked upward the buildings seemed to tilt as if about to cave in. Her palms sweated and her heart began its frantic race, making her queasy. All she wanted was to be in Columbus already, with her family.

  Davis was so lost in her panicky, splintered thoughts that she didn’t see the tall, uniformed men approaching from behind her. When a set of strong hands wrapped themselves around her wrists and clamped over her mouth, she was too startled to try to wriggle away. Her body was seized by terror, and all the times she’d narrowly avoided capture rushed through her head. She’d come so far, only to find herself again in the hands of the enemy.

  “Ms. Morrow? Ms. Morrow. Relax,” one of the guards said, bending close to her ear. Davis bit down on his hand and he grunted, swearing and pushing her away. She stumbled along the sidewalk, ignoring the curious looks of passersby. She scanned the rows of buildings for an out, but she knew even as she did that it would be impossible. There were two guards that she could see, maybe more lurking somewhere. They were almost certainly from TOR-N. She had no recourse. Still, her flight instinct had kicked in. She darted through the crowds, knocking into pedestrians as she went. An elderly lady cried out, stumbling, and Davis was overcome by a flash of shame. When the guards seized her again, she didn’t resist.