Devil's Pocket

by John Dixon

  Stewards were leading teams away. At the end of the concourse, a group including an impossibly tall fighter with an oddly shaped head rounded the corner and disappeared into an adjacent hallway.

  “Follow me, please,” Kruger said. He walked in step with Carl, matching strides, just ahead of the other Phoenix Forcers, speaking to Carl but loudly enough that the others would hear him. “Here at the Cauldron, we will make every effort to erase the discomfort of your arduous travels.”

  Directly in front of them, yet another tall fighter—this one a middleweight, Carl thought—had shaved an urban skyline into the short hair on the back of his head. New York City, Carl realized with a surge of happy recognition. Despite their famous sports rivalries, New York and Philly actually had more in common than apart. They weren’t really enemies. They were like two brothers who went at it hard when they tossed the knuckles. Carl figured he’d say something, but then the guy raised his fists overhead and shouted, “Yeah! Red carpet for the king!” and Carl recognized his voice as that of the loudmouth who had trash-talked the whole hike here.

  The red carpet led them down the center of the hall and around the corner into a wide corridor of exquisite beauty. Walls of polished white marble veined in gray rose from floors tiled in matching stone, arching high overhead in a vaulted ceiling spangled in chandeliers that winked and twinkled in the upper gloom like constellations of candles and cut glass. The fighters followed the red carpet past ornate fountains and lush flower arrangements that filled the air with summery sweetness.

  Incredible, Carl thought. Like a king’s castle.

  “As you are most likely already coming to understand,” Kruger said, no doubt noticing Carl’s amazement, “the Few spared no expense in welcoming you.”

  The procession rounded a corner into a corridor flanked in fine tapestries and slowed to take in the massive bronze statue dominating the center of the hall: a rugged guy with a fighter’s build and a battered, bearded face, sitting leaned over with his thick forearms on his muscular thighs, his head turned toward one shoulder, as if someone was hailing him from behind.

  Calling him to the ring, Carl thought, seeing the guy’s boxing gloves . . . then corrected himself. No, those weren’t gloves. Not waiting to draw closer, he sharpened his vision, drawing into view the stone hands mummified in thick wraps with weird rectangular blocks over the knuckles. Padding? No—it looked more like armor plating.

  “The Boxer of Quirinal,” Kruger said, gesturing grandly. “A replication, far larger than the original 330 BC statue, made to scale for this space. Historians believe him to be the great Greek boxer, Theogenes, who won well over a thousand matches, most to the death.”

  A thousand fights? Carl took in the thick neck and heavy shoulders, the lean, muscular torso and small waist, the powerful yet not over muscled arms and boxy puncher’s fists capped in metal. A thousand . . .

  “Old boy looks like he took a few to the face, that’s for sure,” Tex said.

  True enough. Feeling mesmerized, Carl noted the flattened nose and misshapen cauliflower ears. Surrounded by heavy scar tissue, the shadowy, indistinct eyes stared from a face displaying neither concern nor anger, only power and grim resignation, the face of a man who had traversed and transcended both fear and malice to dwell in the heart of fighting itself. This was a man, Carl realized, connecting to the statue in an unexpectedly visceral way, who neither wished nor feared to fight.

  Carl felt close to the bronze giant, felt the connection that is art’s ability to jar people from their automaton lives—and yet did not understand it as such. He knew only that he understood this ancient warrior and felt a secret, long-suffering pain radiating from those dark eyes. He wished he could stay to study the statue and explore this strange yet undeniable kinship, but Kruger was pulling them along again.

  He led them down the hall and around another corner. Teams stood at the end of this hall, which looked out over an open space, like the mouth of a cave opening onto a great canyon.

  “Gentlemen,” Kruger said, “I give you the arena.”

  Beyond the cluster of murmuring fighters, the corridor ended—no more walls, no more ceiling—but the tiled floor continued, becoming a balcony that jutted into the most breathtaking space Carl had ever seen: a vast cavern as big around as a professional sports complex, a rock-walled shaft hundreds of feet in height.

  He moved forward, past fighters who stood with their heads leaned back and their mouths open, struck dumb. Walls of stone rose up and up, lit by rings of fluttering torches. Between torches, dark squares stared blankly out onto the great shaft. Higher up, the rings of torch fire grew smaller as the circumference tightened. Far above—three hundred feet? Four hundred?—where a far-flung ceiling might have capped the space, a crack opened onto a dimming patch of open sky.

  Amazing.

  Forgetting his team, Carl continued on to what he now realized was a wide set of stadium-style bleachers, several tiers of bench seating encircled by a red railing and suspended high up one rock wall of the vast chamber. He descended to the rail and stared with amazement.

  We’re inside a volcano, he realized.

  He remembered standing atop a high peak, away from which the mountain chain had dropped in a jagged line to the ocean. A short distance out in the water, a cone of dark rock, its craggy sides mottled in ice, jutted from the bruise-colored sea like a broken fang, wide at the base and tapering not to a point but to a shattered peak out of which wavered a column of steam.

  The Few turned that volcano into this arena.

  From these bleachers, they would watch the tournament. He looked down—and had to look again.

  Far below, the cavern floor was . . . incomplete.

  What looked like an Olympic running track hugged the wall, ringing the entire circumference of the chasm in several lanes of red. At its center, the shaft tumbled away another fifty feet to oily darkness spangled in torchlight: a great subterranean lake at the bottom of the volcanic caldera. Across the center of this vast open space, in a line parallel to Carl’s vantage point, a bridge spanned the gap, connecting one end of the track to the other, and at the center of this, on an elevated circular platform, was the octagonal fighting cage. Over this, suspended by almost invisible wires, cylindrical spotlights shone down, illuminating the octagon.

  From this height, the strange incomplete lower level—with its surrounding track, central bridge, circular ring platform, and large empty spaces—looked like a gigantic, two-spoked wheel. The rubberized red track was its oblong tire, each span of the bridge was a spoke, and the octagon and the circular platform on which it stood were the hub.

  “Marvelous, isn’t it?” Kruger said, joining him now. Beside him, Agbeko grinned. Davis leaned back, looking profoundly uncomfortable. Tex gaped, silent at last.

  The rest of the teams were coming onto the balcony now, taking seats.

  Carl sat on the lowest row. Kruger and the team sat beside him.

  The dark squares between the torches were windows, Carl realized, windows looking out from rooms built inside this mountain, and he was staggered by a sudden understanding of the facility, the place like a towering hotel built around the shaft of a volcano, circular floor stacked atop circular floor, the entire thing tucked away from the world inside a mountain in a frozen wasteland.

  Incredible.

  They would fight at the center of the “floor,” suspended high above the subterranean lake. His eyes flicked to one end of the bridge, where, just beyond the track, he saw a wide opening like the ones out of which professional football players entered a stadium. Overhead hung a red bunting. Glancing to the other side of the arena, he saw the opening there and the blue bunting hanging over it and understood.

  A long ring walk, one fighter coming out of the red side, one out of the blue, and meeting in the cage at the center.

  His heartbeat spiked a little, imagining it.

  “This place,” Agbeko said, still beaming, “is amazing.”

 
; “A staggering feat,” Kruger said, a note of pride in his voice. “Years in the making. As I’m certain you’ve already pieced together, we are in the heart of a remodeled volcano. Geothermal activity powers the entire facility. The electricity, the torchlight, the heating, all of it is powered by the volcano itself.”

  Carl nodded. Impressive—but crazy, too.

  The Few had tunneled through a remote mountain chain and under the ocean, installed a working subway, and converted a volcano into a fight venue. Disconnected improbabilities—money, materials, workers, secrecy—tumbled through his mind in a gust of dismay.

  That’s when he realized he didn’t like the Few.

  He’d been so excited to leave Phoenix Island, he hadn’t given much thought to them, but now he knew he disliked them.

  Why spend millions, perhaps billions, when for far less, they could have secured secrecy, comfort, and world-class competitors?

  But the Few—and suddenly their name made perfect sense—liked to show off.

  In Carl’s experience, anyone who needed to impress others—whether it was a fighter showboating for a crowd, some kid in lockdown bragging about stuff you knew he never did, or gangbangers flashing cash and bling—lacked heart.

  No, he didn’t like the Few.

  Directly across the chasm, slightly higher up than these bleachers, an ornate semicircular parapet overlooked the cage. Carved vines inlaid with gold twisted up its marble balusters, interrupted in places by heavy bunches of grapes that twinkled in the torchlight. Gems, Carl realized. Golden vines and gemstone grapes.

  Beyond the rail rose three semicircular tiers. Three marble chairs cushioned in crimson sat empty atop the lowest level, two waited on the second, and what could only be called a throne, given its great height and gem-encrusted surface, dominated the final tier. Behind all of this, crimson curtains separated the balcony from whatever lay beyond.

  That’s where the Few would sit to watch the fights. He was sure of it. Their opera box . . .

  High up one sidewall hung a massive black panel . . . an enormous television screen.

  “Look at the bird,” Tex said. He pointed, his arm sweeping sideways.

  “Where?” Carl said, and then spotted it. The dark bird, almost invisible against the stone wall, climbed in a looping ascent. Round and round the great shaft the bird circled, spinning faster and faster as it rose, until it reached the top and fired like a bullet into the sky.

  “The Krebs hawk,” Kruger said. “Birds of prey that fish the sea and nest here, within the Cauldron.” He spun a finger, then poked the air. “Centrifugal force.”

  Then another group was coming onto the bench beside them, led by a steward speaking a guttural language Carl could not understand.

  Their lightweight, a short cocky-looking guy Carl disliked instantly, strutted in front, side by side with the trainer.

  “Phoenix Island, correct?” said the trainer, a familiar-looking man with black hair, a goatee, and dark, intense eyes.

  Seeing him, Carl felt a pang of unease. Who was this guy?

  Agbeko rose, smiling. “Lieutenant Commander Ba—”

  “Stop,” the man said, and made a cutting motion with his hand. “No names. I am the Z-Force trainer, and these are my champions.”

  Then Carl had it. Z-Force. Zurkistan. And his mind finished Agbeko’s slip: Ba-ca. Lieutenant Commander Baca, the high-speed psychopath he’d seen slaughtering innocents in green nightmare footage from Zurkistan.

  “I am Fighter 20,” Agbeko said, as they shook. Gesturing to Carl, Agbeko said, “This is our team captain—”

  “I know who he is,” Baca said, turning to Carl with glittering eyes. “The commander’s beloved apprentice, the legendary Carl Freeman.”

  “Thought you said no names,” Carl said.

  “Ah, yes, no names, no names. How foolish of me,” Baca said, feigning remorse and doing a poor job of it. “Perhaps I was awestruck.”

  “Perhaps,” Carl said.

  Baca did not offer his hand. Carl didn’t either . . . and didn’t bother to stand.

  “Enough small talk between camps,” Baca said. “After all, we may be brothers in war, but we’re enemies in peace, hooah?”

  Agbeko hooah-ed, but Carl and the others just sat there, Carl studying the man, noting the quickness of his eyes, the alertness there. Stark had once called Baca the personification of the OODA loop. Observe. Orient. Decide. Act. Rapid, decisive execution . . .

  “What’s up with your boy?” Tex asked, nodding past Baca to the Zurkistani lightweight, a fireplug of a guy, who scowled at them with the menacing contempt of a fighter accustomed to inspiring fear. “He looks constipated.”

  Baca said something in Zurkistani, and the lightweight snarled. Behind him, the middleweight laughed, but Carl barely noticed—as he’d spotted the Zurkistani heavyweight. The guy was shorter than Carl—maybe six foot, maybe not—but thick as a gorilla . . . and still wearing the white parka and ski mask. He stood staring out into the chasm, seemingly oblivious to the entire conversation.

  “Big boy must be a couple cans short of a six-pack, huh?” Tex said. “Nobody tell him they got the heat on in here?”

  “Fighter 47 does not care about heat or cold,” Baca said. “He is impervious to both pain and comfort. Suffering is nothing to him. He lives only to fight.”

  “Well, la dee da,” Tex said, standing now. “I don’t live to fight; I live to win.”

  “All right,” Carl said, wanting to avoid trouble. “Take it easy.” He laid a hand on Tex’s forearm, but the smaller boy shook free.

  Baca didn’t even seem to notice Tex, looking instead at Agbeko and saying, “I have some advice for you, Fighter 20: forfeit.”

  Agbeko, obviously uncomfortable, trapped between respect for a superior officer and his duty to Phoenix Island, shook his head. “I will fight till the end, sir.”

  “Please reconsider,” Baca said. “You’re a good soldier. I’d hate to lose you to this . . . game.” Then, turning to Tex, he said, “I will, however, enjoy watching my lightweight still your tongue.”

  “Talk’s cheap, boss,” Tex said, and cracked his knuckles. “Your boy wants to rumble, we don’t have to wait for the bright lights. We can settle this right now.”

  The Zurkistani fighter stepped forward, understanding the moment if not the language, but Baca raised a hand, and the scowling boy backed off immediately. “And you,” Baca said, turning to Carl. “We will see if you are everything Stark claims.”

  Carl stared at him with no expression on his face.

  “I suspect,” Baca said, stroking his goatee, “that you lack the necessary killer instinct.”

  “We’ll see,” Carl said, understanding Baca’s meaning. As Z-Force’s head honcho, Baca likely knew that Stark had tried and failed to recruit Carl for missions.

  “Yes,” Baca said, “We will. And then—”

  That’s when everything went dark, and explosive booms filled the arena.

  SEVEN

  BOOM . . . BOOM . . . BOOM . . .

  Heavy thumps pulsed in the darkness, as rhythmic and foreboding as a monster’s heartbeat.

  BOOM . . . BOOM . . . BOOM . . .

  With every beat, crackles of purple light flashed across the gigantic television screen.

  BOOM . . . BOOM . . . BOOM . . .

  A woman’s face filled the screens.

  No more booms, no more crackling light, just the woman, her image very large and bright and crisp in the darkness of the volcano. She was coldly beautiful. Her bright blue eyes stared from a pale face crowned in red hair pulled tightly back.

  She smiled down at them without warmth.

  “On behalf of the Few,” she said, her voice coming from all directions at once, “I welcome you to this year’s Funeral Games.”

  Fighters applauded in the darkness.

  In his peripheral vision, Carl could see stewards leaning close to their groups, interpreting.

  “We are honored by your presence,”
the woman said, her voice as precise and austere as her features. “You have traveled great distances to join us. Welcome to the world’s greatest sporting event.”

  More applause.

  She waited on-screen for them to finish, then said, “Forty-eight of the finest fighters on the planet, representing countless disciplines and arranged into three weight divisions of sixteen competitors, with ten million dollars going to each champion.”

  All along the walls, fire huffed from the torches, there and gone, punctuation of flame, and the fighters erupted once more into applause.

  Carl just waited.

  Ten million dollars was an inconceivable sum—but he wasn’t here for money.

  “To win your weight division,” the woman said, “you will need to defeat four opponents in as many days.”

  Murmurs went through the teams.

  Four fights in four days? Carl thought. A brutal schedule, but so be it. At least he had the chip and Vispera’s blood virus, which had changed Carl’s blood, raising his endurance, enhancing his performance, and greatly accelerating his rates of recovery and healing.

  “You will fight in the cage,” she said, and lights over the cage snapped to life, illuminating the octagon. “Three-minute rounds with one minute of rest in between, until one competitor surrenders or can no longer continue.”

  Wait, Carl thought. There wasn’t a set number of rounds? No wins by decision? Only knockouts and submissions? An absurd idea. He’d fought guys who could take a baseball bat to the head and keep coming. No decisions meant . . .

  “Anything goes,” the woman said, the phrase odd in her precise voice, “other than eye gouging, biting, or strikes to the groin.”

  Strikes to the back and the back of the head and neck were legal? Kicks to the knee? That was crazy.

  “Like the fighters of the ancient Greek Funeral Games,” she said, “you will wear the cestus.” Then she was gone from the screen, replaced by a gigantic fist. Leather straps encased the wrist, crisscrossed the hand, and stretched in three bands across the knuckles.