by John Dixon
What was it that he saw in them?
Numbness?
No. Too much soul there for numbness, and the slightly downturned mouth suggested not the absence of pain but a bearing up beneath it. A wrecking machine that, having feelings, needed to repress emotion in order to carry on.
The eyes weren’t numb. They were haunted. Haunted, yet unafraid.
“How do I do it?” Carl whispered, and his eyes went again to the blocky fists wrapped in leather and banded in metal.
In a few hours, Carl’s hands would also be locked in leather.
“How do I do it?” he repeated.
Theogenes stared back over one shoulder, locked in old pain and resignation.
Why had the ancient Greek warrior fought? Duty?
Fame? Wealth? Or some higher purpose—to please the gods,
perhaps . . . ?
And why are you fighting? Carl asked himself.
All his life, he had fought—but there had always been a good reason, even if he’d misunderstood his own motivation at times. He had fought to protect his father, fought for sport, fought for both hatred and love, fought for his very survival . . .
For what was he fighting now?
For a title that would earn a promotion that would create an opportunity to . . .
Standing here before this frozen warrior, staring at the great armored fists, his own chain of motivations—no matter how important, ultimately—felt indistinct, tenuous, almost unreal.
What seemed real were the battle-scarred boys sleeping fitfully upstairs—and the brutal cesti he would wear tomorrow.
Not tomorrow, he told himself, remembering the hour. You’re fighting later today.
The question lingered: Why?
This was no boxing match. His opponents would come at him with murder in their hearts. To them, he was a stepping-stone toward ten million dollars.
But he didn’t care about money. He cared about stopping Stark, and yet he hated what seemed the only path to that goal.
Within the cesti, his fists would tear flesh and shatter bone. And what if, smelling blood, the dark twin within him gained power? What if it seized power?
He remembered Sanderson’s pleas for mercy as he’d hit him again and again, wild with rage, insane with wrath.
Knowing these terrible risks, how could he enter the octagon and face people against whom he held no grudge?
It was a night for channeling voices, and Stark’s supplied the bitter answer: The price of progress runs high at times.
Wavering torchlight gave the vast arena an unsteady gloom. Far overhead, in the upper darkness, drifting clouds mottled a ceiling of moonlight.
Stepping on the rubberized red track that ran round the volcano walls, Carl heard shouting in a harsh language—German, he thought—and saw a flat-faced trainer leaning over the balcony railing, hollering down at the fighter wearing a parka shuffling around the opposite end of the track.
He saw someone else on the balcony, too, someone small, sitting alone at the far end of the benches. She looked up then and, seeing Carl, came halfway out of her seat, raising one hand. Even at this distance, he could see her open mouth, her staring eyes, and the long ponytail of blond hair that curled from the back of her head and across her shoulder.
Juliet.
She froze like that for a fraction of a second, then withdrew her hand slowly, sat again, and turned away.
Thought I was Romeo, he realized, and could have laughed. She must have lousy eyesight.
Whatever. Again he considered the insanity of bringing a girlfriend to the Funeral Games. Even if she knew the fight game and doctored cuts like a champ, how would she react when a fist wrapped in leather ripped off half of her boyfriend’s face?
Whatever the case, that was their problem, not his.
Romeo was a middleweight. If she weakened him, that only helped Carl.
The guy in the parka shambled past, looking wasted. Hollow eyes in a mask of exhaustion. No sweat, though; this guy had wrung himself dry. If the fighter noticed Carl, he showed no sign of it, just shuffled past, staring dully ahead. The trainer yelled again from the bleachers. The fighter grumbled and spat and then put up the parka hood.
Carl shook his head. Cutting weight last minute for a boxing match was bad enough, but doing it here, with the brutal schedule, fight-till-you-drop rules, and the best fighters in the world? Suicidal . . .
Hope I draw him as my first opponent, Carl thought, and stepped onto the bridge of black glass that stretched away to the octagon.
The bridge was wide and yet, as he strode out onto it, Carl was very much aware of its flat design, its lack of sidewalls or railings, and the terrible emptiness to either side, an unbroken drop of perhaps fifty feet into a black lake twinkling with torchlight. His legs felt a little rubbery with the same illogical fear he’d felt back on Phoenix Island, crossing the stone ridge between mountain peaks—as if the void beyond the edge would somehow pluck him off and away in a kind of vertiginous vacuum. Ironically enough, of course, he had ended up pitching himself off that same ridge. Not something to remember now.
He went to the edge and peered down at the black-water bowels of the volcanic caldera. Torches ringed the walls, and a shore of black sand ran along one side. Nice beach for a vampire family vacation. . . .
He walked the rest of the way to the octagon. A strange moment, climbing the steps of the elevated ring. Old excitement surged through him, his body reacting to seemingly familiar circumstances. His legs had carried him into many rings.
He loved boxing in front of a crowd. One-on-one—with no one to blame if you lost and all the glory to you if you won—two guys matching fists and hearts, chins and brains, giving everything they had to see who could out-think, out-punch, and out-tough the other.
But this wasn’t boxing. This was different. Way different. Here, he would face monsters, top-notch fighters sucking down from street weights of 230, 240. They would weigh in at 200 and rehydrate overnight to 225. With ten million dollars on the line, they would use every ounce of that bone and muscle to punch and kick, knee and elbow, grapple and head butt until only one fighter still stood.
Me, he thought. It has to be me standing at the end. Even if it meant wrecking people against whom he had no quarrel, he had to win. He could hate himself for it later.
He opened the door and entered the cage. A huge space, maybe thirty feet across. Good. That would give him plenty of room to stick and move if he faced a strong grappler.
He shuffled around the ring. Not a lot of bounce to the floor. Good traction without grabbing at his feet. Not bad. Crouching, he pressed his fingertips into the padding. Thin. Any type of throw or pile driver would be devastating. He lifted into a front bridge, stretched his neck, rolled into a back bridge, arched, then kip-upped onto his feet.
His only concern was the cage itself. Stark had given him a crash course in using the cage offensively and defensively, but Carl had never actually fought in one, and he knew learning about something and doing it were two very different things.
He backpedaled into the cage wall, a chain-link fence maybe eight feet high coated in black vinyl. Not a lot of give to it. He would miss the spring he generated counterpunching off ring ropes.
He moved around the ring, throwing combinations of punches and kicks, tumbling, stretching, and shooting for takedowns against invisible opponents. He kept everything to half speed until the vast arena emptied. No more Juliet, no more shouting trainer, no more delirious fighter, shuffling toward destruction.
For the first time since getting the chip, he was finally alone in a ring. After months of holding back, not wanting Stark or Phoenix Force to know how much he’d changed, he ripped combinations at full speed—several hard punches per second—but the chip had done more than speed up his hands and increase his power. It had accelerated his processing so that he could see and adjust and think in the middle of things, and it had given his body such amazing coordination that he could fire a constan
t barrage of strikes and still attend to blocking, defensive head movement, and adjusting his angles. That would be key, he knew, against these hulking opponents with sledgehammer fists. This war would be as much about position as punching, as much about angles as kicks, as much about tending the gap as taking shots.
He ripped a lightning combination that ended in a double knee and a hip toss, gave his invisible opponent the ground-and-pound, then popped to his feet and shook out his arms, grinning. He felt great.
That’s when the clapping started. Each clap was crisp and measured—a single person, applauding slowly. The sound echoed in the vast chamber.
Carl turned a full 360 in the ring, scanning the bridge, the track, and the dark tunnels beneath the buntings but saw no one.
Then he realized the clapping was coming from above.
His eyes flashed to the bleachers. Empty.
Higher . . .
His gaze lifted to the opera box, where a man in a flowing purple robes stood, looking down and clapping.
Carl’s eyes focused instinctively, and he could make out within the shadowy recesses of the hood covering the man’s head, a wide chin covered in a trimmed beard split by a smile. Above this, a golden mask gleamed in the torchlight.
One of the Few, Carl realized.
The man stopped clapping and his voice, inhumanly deep, filled the arena. “Very impressive, Number 19. Truly first-rate.”
“Thank you,” Carl said, feeling very small at the center of the ring, at the heart of this hollow mountain.
“I am pleased to have taken this suddenly fortuitous midnight stroll, which you have transformed into a bettor’s reconnaissance.” The man’s voice, both modified and magnified, came from many directions at once, dark and humorous . . . the voice of the volcano itself, a subterranean god that, Carl understood instantly and intuitively, would demand blood sacrifices. “I will wager heavily in your favor on the morrow. But of course attacking is merely half the battle. How would you rate your defense?”
“Offense is the best defense,” Carl said.
“Bold words,” his interrogator said, “but the gods favor the bold. At least . . . for a time.”
Bright light flashed behind Carl, and he turned to see the giant television screen announcing the matchups for Round One. Two stacks of numbers, designated by corner—red or blue. The lightweights scrolled past first. Carl’s eyes found Tex’s number, 18, at the very bottom of the division, opposite not a number but the word bye. Someone had missed weight or missed a flight, and Tex had pulled the longest of long straws . . . a free pass into the second round.
Next came the middleweights, eight matchups, with Carl’s coming last. He would fight out of the red corner versus . . .
He smiled grimly.
Maybe you’re gooder than I think, Fighter 13’s voice echoed in Carl’s mind like the ghost of some grammatically impaired parrot. Maybe you’re gooder than I think.
Count on it, Carl thought, and felt a wave of relief. If there was one guy who would help him to set aside his reservations long enough to do whatever he had to do to win, it was the big talker from the weigh-ins. Carl couldn’t have arranged for a better opponent.
“Bet as much as you want,” he said, but when he turned back around, the opera box was empty.
ELEVEN
CARL ROCKED, slick with sweat, waiting for it. . . .
“Low-four-double knee,” Agbeko called, and extended the Thai pads that covered his hands and forearms.
Carl blasted the pads with a lead leg round kick, snapped out the “four” combo—jab, right cross, left hook, right hand—exhaling sharply with each blow, grabbed the back of the pads like he would grab the back of an opponent’s neck, and pulled them down as he drove his knees up, one-two, into the targets.
The combination’s bap . . . smack-smack-smack-smack . . . thump-thump echoed in the red-corner locker room.
After the combo, he sidestepped. Never hang around, waiting for the guy to fire back. Better to swivel out, see what he gives you, then pull the trigger again or keep moving.
“You’re going to kill this guy,” Tex said.
I hope not, Carl thought.
So far, the Funeral Games had been shockingly brutal. Broken bones, teeth in the ring, blood everywhere. Faces cut to the bone, heads misshapen with broken jaws and cheekbones. Guys limping on battered legs, hugging broken ribs, puking from concussions. Teams carrying unconscious fighters out of the ring.
You have to win, Carl told himself. But then his mind asked, Even if it means killing somebody?
Strips of leather wound around his wrist and crisscrossed his fists, where three bands of leather covered his knuckles, making his hands hard as stones. Made of thicker leather, the cesti would “grip” on impact. Solid punches would cut an opponent’s face as the knuckles twisted. These things were straight out of the gladiatorial days. Carl hated them.
You won’t kill anybody, he thought, but his mind instantly counterpunched, What are you going to do, hold back? The people in this tournament were serious, talented, and hungry. If he hesitated, they would eat him alive.
“Low-low-eight,” Agbeko called, and Carl fired like a machine.
“Hooah!” Agbeko thundered.
“You’re going to kill him!” Tex repeated.
Davis watched from a nearby chair, frowning.
Carl thanked Agbeko and shook out his arms. He was ready. Physically, anyway.
That’s when he noticed the other teams in the locker room. They’d all stopped to watch.
Only Romeo, who was on deck, didn’t seem to notice. He stood in a far corner, his back to the room, warming up alone.
On the faces of the others, Carl saw concern, fear, awe.
Good. Eventually, he’d end up fighting some of them. Best to plant the seed of doubt in their heads right now.
Arthur James had always told him to hold back when the other guy was watching, save something to surprise him with, and despite the blistering speed and crashing power Carl had displayed, he was holding back. He would show them more in the ring, feeding that seed of doubt, so it would drink their confidence as it spread within them, growing into a tree of fear.
“I’m good,” he said.
Agbeko took off the pads, laughed, and held them up for Carl to see. “Look, my brother.”
Carl’s strikes had split the leather pads. Stuffing pushed from the tears like herniated intestine.
“I’ll tell you what, boss,” Tex said. “That gold-toothed dummy is one dead cat.” He was grinning like a madman. Earlier, he’d accepted his win by forfeit. The ref had raised his hand, canned applause had poured from the speakers—odd, that—and Tex had taken a theatrical bow. Since then, he’d been all wound up, boiling over with energy, like he was fighting instead of Carl. To his credit, though, he’d stopped messing with his teammates. He was excited for Carl, his loudest fan.
The doors banged open, letting in a blast of loud music, and a voice called, “Fighter 7.”
Romeo crossed himself and headed for the door. His eyes met Carl’s as he passed.
Carl nodded.
Romeo nodded back.
No words, but they had exchanged what passed for respect between fighters.
Carl hoped the kid won.
The doors opened, and the Gypsy bareknuckle fighters from Ireland came in, cursing loudly. Their middleweight sagged between them like a bloody rag. The tournament was over for him, just like that. Long way to travel for a beating.
Z-Force’s middleweight advances, then, Carl thought, remembering the matchups. Makes them 2–0 on the day.
Knockouts and submissions had ended most of the fights within three rounds, but one contest had gone ten rounds, another fourteen, and one pair of lightweights had battled for three hours. The winner and the loser both left the ring on stretchers.
“Fighter 19 on deck,” the voice in the hall announced, and the doors swung shut again.
Here we go, Carl thought, and his gut tighte
ned. On deck.
In boxing, on deck meant you’d be fighting within minutes. Here at the Funeral Games, though, where fights could end early or last hours, on deck just meant you were fighting next.
“That’s us,” Tex said. “Yeah, buddy!”
Carl peeled off his wet T-shirt and tossed it into a nearby laundry bin. They would fight shirtless and shoeless. Carl would wear only his shiny black trunks with a red phoenix on one thigh and a red 19 on the other.
Davis came out of his chair then, telling Carl to close his eyes, and Carl felt the medic’s long, slender fingers reapplying Vaseline over his face.
“Not too much,” Carl told him, “or they’ll make us wipe it off in the ring.” Insufficient grease would be disastrous. Any cut sustained during the first fight would be a terrible liability for the remainder of the tournament.
“I got you,” Davis said, smoothing the grease over Carl’s brow and the bridge of his nose and across his cheekbones.
Agbeko was behind him then, massaging his shoulders. “How do you feel, my brother?”
“Ready,” Carl said. Which was half true. Physically, he was good to go.
“You are a tiger, Carl,” Agbeko said.
Carl nodded, his eyes still closed, and pictured the tiger he’d once seen at the Philadelphia Zoo. He’d shown up at feeding time, and the tiger had swiveled back and forth in its cage, awaiting meat, ten feet of growling predator with bright liquid eyes and fluid muscle and a pink tongue lolling out between white fangs.
“You are as strong as a tiger,” Agbeko’s deep, lyrical voice said.
Carl breathed deeply through his nostrils, feeling the strength in his body and linking it with the memory of the pacing tiger.
“You are as fast as a tiger,” Agbeko said, his big hands kneading Carl’s shoulders.
Yes, Carl thought. I am fast and strong, like a tiger, but—
Then, as if reading Carl’s mind, Agbeko said, “You are as merciless as a tiger.”
Carl nodded. Be a tiger. Be a tiger now and do this thing and have it done.