Devil's Pocket

by John Dixon

  “Who cares?” he said. “Thanks to you, SI3 will ID Blondie in about five minutes.”

  “And if Crossman’s right,” she said, “the Few will attend all of the remaining fights.”

  “Exactly,” he said, and his bright smile was very handsome. “Which means you’ll be able to map the rest of them.”

  “Which also means,” she said, coming to the point she’d been wanting to share, “that you don’t have to fight tomorrow.” Plan A had always been mapping the Few, but in case she failed, Julio had to win, initiating Plan B. Each champion—and a guest—attended a victory dinner with the Few. At such close range, she couldn’t sketch but would easily map—and remember—their faces, which she would later detail to the SI3 version of a police sketch artist.

  Julio’s face twisted with confusion. “What are you talking about?”

  “I have all day tomorrow and the finals to ID the other four members of the Few, whether you win or lose,” she explained, waiting for him to get it. Guys could be so thick sometimes—especially if they set their heads on something. “This means you don’t have to fight him.”

  Him was Fighter 2, the Chinese martial artist who’d killed his opponent in the ring today. The brackets had pitted Julio against this wrecking machine, with the winner facing the winner of the bracket’s other side . . . Carl. She didn’t know what to think about her old friend—he had changed so much—but she was certain of one thing: Carl would win . . . and not just the semifinals. It was clear, witnessing the way Carl had destroyed his opponent today, that they’d implanted the sigma chip—and that was scary. She would never forget the shaky video clip, the hutch of horrors, blood and fur everywhere, the voice calling, Skiddy?

  Julio looked at her like she had suggested torching a day-care center. “Of course I am fighting tomorrow.”

  “Wait—is this some stupid macho thing?” Her anger rose—magnifying her headache in the process. “I mapped her from across the arena. We don’t need to attend the stupid dinner.”

  “Until you sketch all of them, I fight.”

  His patient-parent tone only annoyed her further. “But I know I can do it. I mean, I already did.”

  He stood. “You have your orders; I have mine.”

  She wanted to tell him where he could shove his orders, but two things interfered: her jackhammer headache and the troubling suspicion that he was actually right. She leaned forward and put her head on the table. She could feel him standing there for several seconds, then felt him moving away. She could even feel the space through which he moved: kitchen, hall, room . . . all part of this massive mountain complex that rose above her like some smothering pillow.

  Beyond him, beyond the rear wall of his room, her consciousness pushed into the vast shaft of the volcano and spun around the caldera like one of those crazy birds—a dizzying, amazing moment—and then she forced her mind back into Julio’s room.

  She could feel him moving within it—and could feel the room around him . . . its walls and floor and ceiling. Panning to the right, her mind swooped through his wall, into her room and out through another wall, this one thicker, with a shaft of emptiness at its center. Then she was through another wall and into the common room of the apartment next door, aware of its space and even objects within it—furniture and . . . yes . . . people moving. No sense of who these people were, of course. She couldn’t see the space or its contents, could only feel them—but she discovered that she could discern their number: two. Two people moving around in the room . . . and, she realized, dilating her perspective, spreading out across the rest of the neighboring apartment, feeling its rooms . . . two other people in separate spaces. One in the kitchen, near the refrigerator, another in a smaller space, off a bedroom, standing there, moving its arms . . . showering?

  Her mind dropped to the floor of this small space and slipped into the cylinder there—a drainpipe—and her perception flowed along it beneath the floor, past a union with another pipe, and into the wall, where it entered a wider pipe that ran between levels directly alongside the larger vertical shaft she’d earlier detected. Her mind slid into the vertical shaft, and she paused there, feeling the squareness of it and its dimensions—perhaps three feet by three feet—and knew what it was: an air shaft. With a dizzying dip, she plunged down several floors, the ductwork zooming along, unbroken, then whooshed back up again, past this level, up and up and up, to the top floor of the complex, where it bent and traveled along a horizontal path that branched out in many directions, delivering heat to various rooms in the way that branching veins carry blood to quadrants of the body.

  Then she was back in her own body, back in her own head, which she lifted. She called, “Julio, I’ve got it!”

  He emerged from his room, looking cautious. “Don’t bother,” he said. “I’m fighting.”

  “Not that,” she said, and managed a smile despite the pain crashing like cymbals in her skull. “I know how we can access the restricted levels.”

  EIGHTEEN

  AFTER THE SEVENTH BOAT BURNED, the overhead screen dimmed, the music faded, and the voice of the Few filled the gloomy lakeshore.

  “May the Valkyries lift these fallen warriors up to Valhalla, and may the gods fortify you brave survivors who battle on.”

  As the voice echoed and vanished, the fighters gathered upon the black sand shifted and shuffled and started to move away, murmuring quietly.

  Seven boats. Seven people.

  Carl felt shocked and sickened—and yet relieved as well. None of the pyre-boats had borne the Z-Force flag.

  “Well, you boys,” Tex said, “I don’t know about y’all, but winning makes me hungry. What do you say we head upstairs and order a dozen pizzas?”

  “Yes,” Agbeko said, and clapped the smaller fighter on the shoulder. They were acting like they’d just watched a pep rally bonfire. With Agbeko, who’d witnessed countless atrocities as a boy-soldier, it made a twisted kind of sense, but how could Tex be so unaffected, so callous? “This is a very good idea—and we will force Davis to eat with us.” Davis had refused to attend the funeral, saying if anybody had a problem with that, they knew where to find him. He wouldn’t even look at Carl since the vicious knockout that had left the Z-Force middleweight stretched like a corpse on the canvas. “Food brings even enemies together.”

  “Speaking of which,” Tex said, nodding to Carl, “you going to break bread with him?”

  “You guys go ahead,” Carl said, glancing toward the water’s edge and the couple standing there. “I’ll be up soon.”

  “Suit yourself, chief,” Tex said, “but don’t blame me if Agbeko picks all the pepperoni off the pizzas.”

  Carl lingered in the gloom, trying not to be too obvious as he stared at Octavia. Come this way, he thought. All day, she’d been his single distraction, the only thing that had helped him from replaying the awful thock sound his hook had made, slamming into his opponent’s head, and from worrying about the Zurkistani’s condition. Perhaps illogically, this had minimized in his mind the friction between Octavia and him, making their awkward reunion seem an almost trivial and certainly surmountable problem. But now, seeing her coming this way under Romeo’s arm, his recent optimism dimmed, and he felt something else—a twinge of jealousy. They were angling this way.

  He turned halfway around, pretending interest in the far end of the lake, making it easier for her to slip into his pocket the note he was certain she would have for him.

  As she drew nearer, he felt a tap on his shoulder and turned to see Baca grinning at him. Beside him stood the Z-Force lightweight, who had stomped today’s opponent to death and had just watched him burn to ash. Now he stood there staring at Carl, hatred burning in his eyes.

  Fighter 47, who had also killed again today, was nowhere in sight.

  To Baca, Carl said, “What do you want?”

  Baca said something in Zurkistani, and the lightweight stalked off toward the elevator.

  “He does not like you,” Baca said, stro
king his black goatee with obvious amusement.

  “I’ll try to get over it,” Carl said. He glanced sideways. Octavia and Romeo were coming up the beach, drawing nearer.

  “I wanted to congratulate you on your victory,” Baca said.

  “Noted,” Carl said, just wanting to get rid of the guy.

  Baca’s eyes glittered. “Aren’t you curious about your opponent? During the funeral proceedings, you looked . . . unsettled.”

  “I got an idea—how about you go find somebody who gives a crap what you think?” Carl said, and glanced sideways again.

  No.

  Striding past, arm in arm with Romeo, Octavia looked up at Carl, then at Baca, then back to Carl—and he hated the fear and disgust he saw in her eyes. Then she looked down, and that was that. She was past him, moving away.

  No nod, no note. Nothing.

  “She is very pretty,” Baca said, still grinning. “Far prettier than Alexi.”

  “What?” Carl said, feeling jarred. Baca had caught him looking. “Prettier than who?”

  “Alexi,” Baca repeated. “The opponent you so mercilessly dispatched today.”

  “Look,” Carl said, and he felt like screaming. Baca had messed up everything, and now Octavia was stepping onto the elevator, and he most definitely did not want to know the name of the Z-Forcer. “I told you, I have nothing to say.”

  Baca patted Carl’s arm. “You and I got off on the wrong foot, but that was all part of the game. I told Commander Stark that all you needed was proper motivation—and you proved me correct.”

  Carl batted away the mercenary’s hand.

  Anger flashed across Baca’s features, faint and fleeting as lightning along a distant horizon. “You might even say my actions were ordained,” he said. “From on high.”

  Ordained from on high? Carl thought—but he wasn’t going to play twenty questions. “I’m out of here.” And he started to walk away.

  “Any parting words for Alexi?” Baca called. “He’s in a coma, and I doubt he’ll survive the night. You hit him so hard.”

  Carl lurched to a stop. “What do you . . .” And he trailed off, realizing he didn’t know what to ask. There was nothing to ask.

  Baca laughed. “You’ll have your precious promotion.”

  Carl turned from the Z-Forcer’s leering grin and marched onto the elevator.

  “Stark will be pleased,” Baca called as the elevator doors began to slide shut. “Every Spartan needs his Helot.”

  As the elevator rose, Carl breathed through his nose and stared at the backs of the other passengers, trying to quell the panic and nausea rising in him. I doubt he’ll survive the night. Alexi . . .

  Other passengers mumbled in an unfamiliar language, making him feel dislocated with them, this place, reality.

  What are you doing here? he asked himself.

  The elevator stopped on level one, and the fighters who’d been standing in front of him stepped out into the arena.

  The doors slid shut. Carl poked the button labeled 4. . . then stared at the strange panel of buttons. He could spend the rest of his life riding elevators and never see another button panel like this one. An L on the bottom, then buttons numbered one through four, and finally four black buttons marked with red X’s.

  Nine floors, he realized. One for each circle of Dante’s hell.

  Had Stark known about the Cauldron’s nine floors? Was that why he’d been emphasizing The Inferno? Stark had used Dante to discuss loyalty and betrayal, but the man rarely did anything for a single purpose, and this “coincidence” definitely smacked of his sense of humor.

  Stark was everywhere, always, and had been for years, even before Carl had heard of Phoenix Island.

  My actions were ordained, Baca had said. From on high.

  Was it true? Had Stark really engineered everything? Ordered Baca to goad Carl and train the Zurkistani to counter in the way most likely to result in Carl snapping on him?

  Yes, Carl believed it.

  Because every Spartan needs his Helot. For half a year, Stark had been pushing Carl to kill someone—anyone—and thereby accept a baptism of blood into full Phoenix Force membership, just like a young Spartan killing a random Helot peasant and earning military rank.

  You’ll have your precious promotion.

  They had known he would never do it on his own. . . .

  Fear and rage, doubt and confusion.

  The doors opened and Carl trudged to his room like a dazed fighter stumbling back to his corner after the bell. Had Stark and Baca turned him into a killer?

  “Join us, brother,” Agbeko called from the dining room, where he and Tex sat with a bag of cheese curls between them, apparently waiting for their pizzas to arrive. Davis leaned against the wall, chewing mechanically and staring dully in Carl’s direction.

  Carl shook his head. “Not hungry.”

  Agbeko frowned with concern. “You must eat. You will need strength for tomorrow. The Brazilian is strong.”

  Don’t remind me, Carl thought. He did not want to fight the Brazilian. The guy was good—great, even—a submission expert Carl never could have beaten without the chip. With the chip, though, he knew he could beat him—but he hated the thought of what he would have to do to the Brazilian in the process.

  Thock!

  “Pizzas’ll be here in five,” Tex said through a mouthful of orange mush.

  “I’ll eat later,” Carl said, heading for his room. “I’m going to watch the fights.”

  Agbeko rose, dropping a handful of cheese curls onto the table, and lumbered toward Carl. His swollen eye looked better, but tape still held much of his face together. “Please join us, my brother, and we will watch the fights together.” Reaching Carl, he wrapped him in an embrace. “Today is a great day. Phoenix Force is tied for first place in the team rankings.”

  Carl nodded. Only one other team had advanced all three members to the semifinals: the friendly Brazilian jujitsu guys.

  “I understand what you are feeling,” Agbeko said, lowering his voice. He put his big hands on Carl’s shoulders, squared with him, and looked down with a knowing smile, like a father talking his son through a tough time. “I will never forget the day that I first killed.” His smile faded. “It is not something that we should forget.”

  Carl felt suddenly, inexplicably annoyed. “He’s not dead.”

  Agbeko’s smile returned. “This is good,” he said. “And no matter what happens, you did this for the honor of Phoenix Island.”

  Great, Carl thought, and in that hopeless moment, feeling like nothing could ever be right in the world again, he just wanted to tell Agbeko the truth—all of it—not only that he felt no duty toward Stark or Phoenix Island but also that he would like nothing better than to burn the place to ash, that the only reason he was in here, in fact, was to do just that. And as he paused there, impulsively compelled to blurt these truths, but restrained by the knowledge of just how catastrophic the consequences of any such confession would be, a strange thought blindsided him: Agbeko had at some point become his best friend in the entire world. . . .

  “Fighting out of the red corner,” the announcer’s voice said on television, “representing Phoenix Island, Fighter 18.”

  “Here we go, you boys,” Tex called. “Come watch me do the Texarkana two-step all over this loser.”

  Agbeko nodded in that direction. “Come, my brother. It will be good for you. And after his fight, we can watch the others together, and you can coach us. We need your help.”

  “Maybe later,” Carl said, and he turned his back on them.

  Alone in his room, he paced like a death-row inmate.

  Alexi, he told himself. His name is Alexi.

  But then, reflexively as he might dip a punch, he thought, No, don’t think of his name. In fact, don’t think of him at all.

  He thought instead of his next opponent, the cool Brazilian, who honestly deserved to win the tournament. He was tough and talented, experienced and well-conditioned, a
nd he’d already shown amazing defensive skills, blocking and evading punches and kicks as he took down opponents, tied them up, found their weakness, and forced them to tap. Carl would have to stick and move, avoiding the Brazilian’s attacks and picking him apart with shots. Many, many shots. Unlike the others Carl had faced, the Brazilian wouldn’t give him a clean opening. He would have to pound the guy to sirloin.

  And if the fight dragged on, Carl would have to battle two opponents: not just the Brazilian but also his dark twin, rage. He might even . . .

  No. He couldn’t live with that. Wouldn’t.

  He’d taken this risk to stop Stark and save people, not serve him and kill others. What was he doing here?

  How had he ever convinced himself that he could beat Stark?

  His anger and frustration swung around to Octavia then. Why was she being so stupid? Why couldn’t they just run away?

  Because of her big secret—and Romeo, of course. And in his mind, he saw them walking arm in arm past him, saw the look of fear and disgust in her wrong-colored eyes. . . .

  Then: Why not just run without her?

  He’d been concerned with her preservation for so long, the idea had never even presented itself. But now . . .

  He didn’t know what she was up to, but one thing was for sure: she was no longer languishing in some Mexican hospital with one of Stark’s assassins lurking nearby. Whatever she was doing, she was out in the world and had someone else looking out for her now. She certainly hadn’t wanted Carl’s help. Hadn’t even slipped him another note.

  Why not bolt on his own, then? Stuff an equipment bag full of protein bars and water, put on his winter gear, and hike on out the train tracks. Run all the way home to Philly, all the way back to his old neighborhood, Devil’s Pocket. He pictured the narrow streets and the playgrounds, the people there, people he knew, his old friend Tommy and Mr. Herrera, who used to walk his little dogs every morning and night, and of course Arthur James. Arthur didn’t live in the Pocket, but he did live in South Philly. Lived in a little apartment he’d made in the gym’s hot boiler room, where he used to make Carl jump rope when it was time to cut those last few pounds. Just go home, back to the real world, back to a good life, maybe even a normal life. Go underground for a while. Arthur would let him live at the gym. He could get work. At the gym or someplace. Lots of cash in Philly, people paying in cash, living on cash.