by John Dixon
“You took a horrible beating today. You didn’t even know you’d won.”
“But I did win.”
“Yes—but this fight is different. You saw the cesti.”
“I will hit harder with them.”
“So will he.”
Agbeko gestured toward the dead television screen. “Come, my brother. We will watch his matches together, and you will teach me how to avoid his punches.”
“You know it doesn’t work like that. You can’t change your style overnight.”
Agbeko’s eyes drilled into him. “This is the most important moment of my life. Please do not take it from me. I have worked for this many years, since the rebels came.”
Not wanting to delay this anymore, Carl went straight down the middle. “I can’t let you fight him,” he said. “I won’t.”
Agbeko breathed through flared nostrils, his eyes bright with desperation. Then he dropped his head.
For a horrified second, Carl thought the hulking warrior was going to cry.
But instead, Agbeko spoke, his voice low and measured. “When I was a boy, a missionary came to my village. This was before the rebels. The missionary gave every child a Bible and a bookmark, and on the back of each bookmark, he had written a different verse, which he asked us to commit to memory. So of course I did. I was to learn the first two verses of Psalm Twenty-Three, but the man was kind, and I wanted to thank him for the Bible, so when it was my turn to go to the front of the church and recite my lines, I surprised the missionary and everyone else by reciting the entire psalm.”
Carl smiled. It was too easy to picture. Agbeko’s greatest strength—and greatest weakness—was loyalty.
“The missionary was very pleased,” Agbeko said. “He spent more time teaching me, and I did very well, even with long division. Only one girl and none of the other boys, even my brothers who were older, could do long division, and the missionary told me that I was smart, something no one had ever told me. The rhino is big but not smart. But this man, he told me I was smart, and I believed him, and he told me that I would be a soldier for God, and I believed that, too. But then the rebels came.”
Carl nodded, figuring he knew what had happened next and not really wanting to know.
Agbeko said, “My father was killed in the fighting that day, but my mother was not and neither were my brothers. The rebels tied the wrists and ankles of the missionary and made him kneel on the ground, and they asked the children, ‘Who is his best pupil?’ and the boys and girls said, ‘Rhino,’ and the rebels pointed their guns at me and gave me a pistol and told me to shoot him or they would shoot me.”
“That’s horrible,” Carl said.
“I did not want to shoot him,” Agbeko said. “I was very afraid. But the missionary looked me in the eyes and told me not to be afraid. He said to do what they told me to do. He said that no matter what they made me do, I would remain a soldier of God. He was not afraid because he was a man of God.”
Agbeko lifted his hand, his eyes staring through Carl now, into the past. “I raised the gun, and the missionary smiled at me, and I knew that I was forgiven, and then he said to me, ‘Recite it with me,’ and then he said, ‘The Lord is my shepherd . . . ,’ and so we said together . . .
“ ‘The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures,
He leadeth me beside still waters,
He restoreth my soul.
He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness
for His name’s sake.
Yea, though I walk
through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil,
for thou art with me;
Thy rod and Thy staff,
they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me
in the presence of mine enemies.
Thou anointest my head with oil;
My cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.’ ”
Agbeko looked Carl in the eyes. “And then I shot him, and he was dead. It was a clean kill, and he did not suffer.”
“I can’t imagine,” Carl said. He wished there was something else to say, but there was nothing. What could anyone say about the horror Agbeko had endured?
“Next they brought me my brothers and told me to kill them, and I killed them,” Agbeko said, and his face showed no emotion, neither sorrow nor regret nor even bitterness. “The rebels were very drunk, and they were laughing, but I was not afraid, and then they brought me my mother, and they told me to kill her, and I killed her, and then I went different places with them and killed many people until Commander Stark rescued me and brought me to his camp.”
Carl nodded. No wonder Agbeko worshipped Stark.
“To many people, I am a monster,” Agbeko said, “but they have not lived my life. My path is not their path. They would not want my path. And yet they judge me. Only God can judge me.”
These thoughts were very familiar to Carl, but he couldn’t let them blur the facts. “Fighter 47 has killed everyone he’s faced.”
“I am not afraid to die,” Agbeko said. “I would sooner die than forfeit this fight.”
“That’s not the point.”
“No disrespect, my brother, but yes—it is. My blood is my own. My life is not yours to save.”
Something wobbled inside Carl. Agbeko was making sense—his blood, his life—and yet Carl couldn’t allow it. He didn’t want his friend to die and refused to spend the rest of his own life wishing he had saved him.
Agbeko said, “I have lived my entire life in the valley of the shadow of death. It does not matter how I die. Only how I live.”
“It does matter,” Carl said.
Agbeko’s voice throbbed with emotion. “God gives us our strengths and our flaws. We are not judged on these—only on the paths we choose. God sent Commander Stark into my life and rescued me from the devils who forced me to do evil things. It was then that I chose my path. Through dedication to Commander Stark, I have once more become a soldier of God, and I believe that when I die, God will forgive the evil I have done, so long as I do not leave my path. So you see, my brother, we are talking not only of victory but redemption . . . perhaps even salvation. You must please allow me to fight this match.”
Carl struggled to keep his face as emotionless as possible, remembering Stark’s advice about dealing with impassioned subordinates. He felt awful, but if Agbeko refused to protect himself, Carl had to do it for him. “You can’t.”
“I must,” Agbeko said. “Commander Stark told me to fight, to win.”
“I’m mission commander,” Carl said. He had to put an end to this. “It’s my call, and I’m telling you: you’re not fighting tomorrow.”
“You forbid it?”
“I do.”
“Is this an order?”
“It is.”
For a moment, Agbeko just stared at him, and Carl could see the end of something in his friend’s eyes. A painful uncoupling and moving apart.
Then Agbeko himself was moving away, heading for his room. “I am sorry,” he said as he drifted into the darkness. “Know that I am sorry.”
“That’s okay,” Carl said, watching him go.
It wasn’t until much later that it occurred to him to wonder why Agbeko was apologizing . . . and by then, of course, it was too late.
TWENTY-SEVEN
AFTER THE LIGHTWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP, Octavia hurried upstairs, then paused outside the apartment door, shaking with the pain, sick with it.
She had failed.
She had tried her hardest to map the bearded man, pushing through the pain, into it. Now she felt like someone had split her skull with an ax. Leaning against the apartment door, she squeezed her eyes shut and breathed deeply, battling nausea.
Almost as bad as the pain was the frustration.
Mapping
the others had been easy. Sure, she’d earned a whip-cracker of a headache, but she’d mapped them. Until the bearded man. Scanning his face was like trying to see her own reflection in a river of rushing black water . . . no features there whatsoever, just a sense of formless motion.
Her failure gutted her. To come all this way, to get this close, only to fail. Crossman had been clear about her mission. Map the Few—but most important, map the bearded man. Julio knew this—and probably more, given his obsession with her success. To him, mapping the bearded man was second in importance only to deactivating the explosives . . . which he still hadn’t located.
Some dynamic duo we turned out to be, she thought.
When the pain in her head dulled to mere migraine level, she opened her eyes. Her vision was still blurry at the edges. Had she gone too far? Blown something out?
Oh well, she thought. Nothing you can do about it now.
She needed to convince Julio to leave . . . before his fight with Carl.
Otherwise, Julio would stick with his plan. Win the finals and take her to the champions’ dinner. At that range, mapping would be a cinch.
Only there was a serious problem with Julio’s plan.
Carl.
Julio could never beat Carl. Never, ever, ever. Even if he wasn’t hurt so badly, even if he wasn’t exhausted from staying up night after night searching for the explosives and from fighting devastating matches back-to-back, even if he was fresh and well rested, he couldn’t beat Carl. He probably couldn’t win even if Carl hadn’t gotten the chip.
And Carl did have the chip. That not only ensured victory. It also meant risks. She had downplayed these to Carl, not wanting to repel him, but they terrified her.
To his credit, Bleaker had shown her the video only after making certain that her chip was functioning properly.
“Skiddy before implantation,” he had said, narrating the video of several white rabbits hopping around a tidy hutch.
“Which one?”
He pointed to a pair of nose-to-nose rabbits that looked like they were sharing an Eskimo kiss. “Skiddy’s on the right.”
“But how can you tell them apart—oh . . . I see it.” The rabbit on the right wasn’t all white. A short black stripe ran between his ears.
“That’s why we named him Skiddy,” Bleaker said with a sad smile. “Short for Skid Mark.”
She laughed. The little black stripe did look like a miniature tire burn.
“Other than his marking, Skiddy was perfectly average,” he said, stopping the video. “Just a ten-pound rabbit with a warmer-than-average social adjustment that made him seem like a stuffed animal come to life. Later, we implanted a chip in each of the six rabbits.”
As he spoke, he avoided eye contact and moved things around, stacking papers and relocating pens, as if cleaning his desk, which was so heaped and messy he’d need a flamethrower to really clean it.
“Unfortunately,” he said, “most of the rabbits were functionally lobotomized when we activated the chips.” He drew up a clip time-stamped three days later than the previous video. “Not Skiddy, though. Fair warning: this isn’t pretty.”
Octavia winced at the sight of the hutch: blood and fur and body parts everywhere—a severed rabbit’s paw lying in the pink depths of the water dish, looking like anything but a good-luck charm. “Ugh,” she said.
“The chip changed Skiddy dramatically.”
The camera dipped into the hutch, peering into the covered half, where—
“Oh,” Octavia said, and put a hand to her mouth. “That’s Skiddy?” He was huge. He filled the space, white fur stretched over rippling muscle.
“An error in the code caused rapid mutation. His muscles swelled overnight.”
As Skiddy registered the intruding camera, the muscles beneath his white fur rippled like those of a prize steer.
“And he became extremely aggressive,” Bleaker said.
When the head came around—and yes, she saw the black stripe between the ears—Octavia leaned away from the screen. The head wasn’t big enough for the body. Its face was misshapen and masked in blood. The eyes flared, utterly insane, the mouth opened and launched at the camera, snapping.
The film cut.
“We were forced to euthanize him,” Bleaker said. “His autopsy weight was eighteen pounds.” Bleaker had gone on to explain that Skiddy hadn’t just grown. The architecture of his muscles had changed, making them much denser and stronger.
Carl had shot up in height and packed on an enormous amount of muscle since she had last seen him. His muscles were well formed and proportional, unlike Skiddy’s deformed monster-mass, but he had nonetheless gained an awful lot of size in so short a time. There was something different in his bearing, too. A guarded darkness in his eyes.
Watching his first two fights, she’d been terrified. His speed, his power, his viciousness.
The third fight, when he’d obviously put himself in danger to avoid hurting his opponent, had given her hope, but Carl was no rabbit. An error code in his chip might manifest differently. What rage simmered at his core, awaiting its trigger?
She had to stop Carl and Julio from fighting, had to get them both out of the Cauldron before it was too late. Drawing up her strength, she opened the door and went inside.
Julio sprawled on the couch like a murder victim, one arm thrown over his forehead, its broken hand twice its normal size and badly discolored. His mouth hung open, a gaping hole in a swollen face crisscrossed in bandages that looked too bright against the dark bruising. His chest rose and fell, rose and fell.
He deserved better, she thought. He deserved a real trainer, someone who could have offered real help in the corner, someone who could have provided better medical attention.
She went to wake him, then caught herself. How could you be so stupid?
But she knew the answer, didn’t she? Brain-splitting headaches had a way of messing up a girl’s thought processes. Luckily, she’d stopped herself. She needed to draw before waking him.
She started for her room . . . but then Julio called to her, sounding groggy. “Rita?”
She turned. Time to improvise. “You’re awake.” She tried to feign enthusiasm, but the pain foiled her.
He sat up. “Did you get it?”
“I did,” she lied. “Grab your things. I’ll get the other sketches. We have to get out of here.” She attempted a smile.
He didn’t smile back, just beckoned with his good hand. “Let’s see it.”
“No time,” she said, and drifted toward her bedroom. “Come on, sleepyhead, we need to get out of here, before—”
“Show me the picture,” he said. She could hear the suspicion in his voice, but he was polite enough to lie, too. “I want to see what he looks like.”
A red-hot bullet of pain ricocheted inside her skull. She didn’t have the strength to play this game. “You can’t fight him.”
He stood. “You didn’t get the sketch, did you?”
“You look like an old man trying to stand up,” she said. “Look at your hand. Look at your face.”
He lifted his broken hand, but his eyes never left hers. “One more fight, then the champions’ dinner. You need to map him. I refuse to go back empty-handed.”
“You can’t beat him,” she said.
He glared at her, suddenly angry. “I will win. He’s only here for money.”
You have no idea why Carl is here, she thought—and knew that telling him now would be disastrous. Early on, she had considered explaining but decided against it. Snooping at night, Julio might be caught. No matter how macho he was, they would make him talk. If that happened, and he knew about Carl . . .
So she hadn’t.
Well, he would know soon enough. She would have some explaining to do when Carl joined them on their escape flight.
“Money won’t be enough when we’re wearing the metal cesti,” Julio said. “I am not here for money. I am here for justice.”
“Don’t be an idi
ot,” she said. The bullet in her head burned hotter, bounced faster. She grabbed him by the shoulders and tried to shake him. It was like trying to shake a building. A stone mausoleum, she thought. But she had to get through to him. “What, you feel ashamed that you can’t find explosives, so you have to get yourself killed? We had a job here, and we did as well as we could. Don’t turn this into some stupid honor thing.”
“What would you know about honor?” he said, and shoved her away. Hard.
She almost fell—would have fallen, she realized, if it weren’t for her new balance and body awareness.
He pointed, jabbing the air between them. “You know nothing about why I’m here.”
“Whatever it is, it’s not worth getting yourself killed.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” he said. “But I’m not going to die. I’m going to win. And you’re going to come with me to the dinner and do your little magic trick. We’re going to unmask El Jefe.”
She just stared, her vision still blurry around the edges. It was pointless. He wouldn’t listen. And he was right—she had no clue why he was really here. She didn’t even know his real name.
There was only one person here who she really knew . . . and it was time to go meet him at the lake.
Oh, Carl, she thought, and wished there was some other way to fix this—but watching Julio turn his back, she knew there wasn’t.
She would hate herself forever for what she had to do to Carl now.
TWENTY-EIGHT
AS SOON AS OCTAVIA stepped off the elevator onto the black sand, Carl knew there was trouble. She showed up fifteen minutes late, wearing a forced smile and walking stiffly.
“How did it go?” he asked.
She frowned and shook her head.
“Oh no,” he said, and drew her into a hug. “Bad headache?”
He felt her nod against his chest.
“What happened?” he asked.
“Distance happened,” she said, stepping back. “The closer I am, the easier it is to map.”
“But the others . . .”
“I know,” she said. “He’s different, though. I need to get closer.”
“Forget it,” he said. “You got four out of five, Octavia. That’s great. SI3 will be— What?”