by John Dixon
Relying on the chip, he had exaggerated his own capabilities, had absorbed too much damage, and then overreacted when his body had finally broken, as of course it would . . . given the treatment to which he’d subjected it.
Already shaken by the cold, he dialed the awareness of his broken body back to normal—and growled, hit at once by the pain of his shattered toe, battered wrists and ribs, and badly broken arm. His entire body throbbed until he could barely breathe or see or think, until the pain made him a dull beast, a draft animal whose only burden was pain.
Eventually, thought returned and discomfort ebbed. Pain remained but did not wholly rule. This time, it was not the chip at work but him. For years, he had suffered bravely, endured. He hadn’t needed heart for a long time, but here it was, coming back to him.
He straightened . . . hurting, sure, but feeling. That was the thing. This wasn’t about punishing himself. He needed to feel the world, to understand. He had let the chip run off with him.
Where did you go when you reached the end?
He glanced out at the trail that they’d hiked to reach this place and knew that to retrace those steps now, without proper clothing or direction, would mean suicide.
He turned back around.
The mountain ridge plunged away to the crashing sea out of which rose the Cauldron itself, a cone of dark stone steaming like a gateway to hell.
The Cauldron was the real Devil’s Pocket, he realized then, not his neighborhood back in Philly. The devil—with his beard and smile and carnival of blood—used that pocket of steaming stone to tuck tortured souls away from the world. Temptation and torment, lies and ruin.
Have I ruined myself? Carl wondered . . . and instantly thought, No.
He’d been tempted and tormented. He had lied and transgressed and laid ruin, but he was not ruined. He remained. And it was he—not the chip—standing here, bearing up, swallowing the pain and gutting out the cold and thinking with sharper clarity than he’d summoned in weeks.
For too long he’d been apart from the world, shielded from pain—which was, to him, life. Now he had returned.
Into this renewed clarity came the voice of his old mentor. You all right, son. Control the breathing and control the mind.
Carl closed his eyes, breathed deeply, and channeled Arthur James.
You’re at where you’re at, Arthur’s voice reminded him—as it had so many times in the past, whenever things had gone south. Now what you going to do about it?
He didn’t know. He honestly did not know. He had broken everything, even himself, had lost not only his way but also his destination. He no longer knew who he was or what he wanted or where he belonged.
Man ends up in the dark, Arthur’s voice said, first thing to do is find a light switch.
What was his light switch? What was his way out of the dark, out of the abyss, his way back to himself?
He waited for more of Arthur’s wisdom, but it was Stark who returned to him then, repeating those words Winston Churchill was said to have uttered during Britain’s darkest hours of World War II: “If you’re going through hell . . . keep on going.”
Yes, sometimes Stark was right.
But I’ve already ruined everything, Carl thought. He’d destroyed Julio, stealing Octavia’s vital ticket to the champions’ dinner.
He pictured the dinner and realized that, with Alexi out of the picture, the two Zurkistani champions would have only one guest to invite: Baca, who would grin and gloat as Carl choked down his bitter meal . . . attended by whom?
Agbeko would be ashamed, Davis would be afraid, and Tex would be . . . Tex. Better to simply go alone.
Unless . . .
And that’s when Carl at last returned to himself. There is an almost supernatural sharpness of mind possessed solely by wild things that live nose to ground and to a few feral humans, who dwell fearlessly as wolves amid chaos, relying not on assurances and guarantees but on instinct and intuition and a fluidity of thought in sync with circumstance. It comes to the long-haul prisoner, strolling into the yard and reading threats where none should exist, and to the street-corner hustler, smelling opportunity where others see only danger and loss, and it came then to Carl, who had some time ago surrendered this oneness with the world when it seemed that his chip and coveted apprenticeship had lifted him above it all.
I’ll take Octavia.
An absurd idea . . . a champion taking the girlfriend of the fighter he’d beaten.
The Few wouldn’t be suspicious. They would be shocked.
Never underestimate the power of audacity, Stark often told him. Carl would have preferred the wisdom of Arthur James during this moment of need, but once again, Stark supplied truth.
Seeing Octavia, the Few would reel, searching blindly in the darkness of their ignorance . . . and Carl would flip the switch for them. He’d won her.
It would certainly be easy for Octavia to play the part of the resentful date. Then, up close, she could pull her mapping trick.
And then?
He didn’t know—and didn’t want to. Not because he was afraid she would never talk to him again but because he understood now that wanting to know too much, looking for guarantees, and calculating certainties had only set him up for failure.
He needed to fight this one in the pocket, roll with the punches, and look to counter.
That being said, he thought, no reason to be stupid, and he dimmed his pain down—way down . . . but not all the way. He left a whisper of cold and a hint of pain. He needed discomfort. Pain tied him to the world, to reality, and kept hope and overconfidence at bay. Suffering kept his heart strong and his mind sharp.
Time to take the fight to the Few.
Before him yawned the mouth of the tunnel that would carry him back into the hell on earth that was the real Devil’s Pocket. He smiled, seeing something he hadn’t noticed when he’d first passed this way. Chiseled into the stone overtop the tunnel’s shadowy maw arched an ancient Latin warning—
LASCIATE OGNE SPERANZA, VOI CH’INTRATE—which he recognized instantly from his recent readings with Stark: Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.
He began his descent.
The world had already taken everything from him. He had nothing left to lose . . . and that made him the most dangerous person in Devil’s Pocket.
THIRTY-ONE
CARL JOGGED OUT OF THE TUNNEL and down the hall, passed the statue, and rounded the corner, heading for the elevators—until he heard booming music and the roaring of the canned applause.
A fight?
That made no sense. The tournament was over. The lightweights and middleweights had fought it out, and Agbeko had agreed to forfeit.
I am sorry, Agbeko’s voice echoed in his mind. Know that I am sorry.
Oh no, Carl thought, and sprinted down the hall, the music and applause swelling louder and louder as he raced forward. He stumbled onto the bleachers, where a crowd of fighters and trainers stared down, looking shocked.
“No!” he cried.
Down in the octagon, Fighter 47, a blur of rippling, blood-soaked muscle, spun and launched Agbeko through the air. For Carl, panic downshifted the moment into excruciating slow motion. An uncanny sight, his huge friend drifting through the air, and Carl’s eyes sharpened, drawing in Agbeko’s look of stunned disbelief. Then the fighter crashed into the wire mesh—perhaps six feet up—rebounded, and dropped hard to the mat.
Agbeko! He’d broken his promise to Carl, jumped in for the honor of Phoenix Island, and now—oh, now he was getting himself killed.
All because you weren’t there to stop him, Carl thought.
He pushed across the bleachers and leaned over the rail, screaming, “Stop the fight!”
That’s when he noticed Tex and Davis on the ring apron just outside the octagon, Tex shaking the mesh and shouting, Davis straining against the door, trying to get in. White towels littered that side of the ring. They had been trying to stop the fight.
Fighter 47 scoop
ed Agbeko off the ground, lifted him overhead, and dropped him onto his knee. Agbeko rolled away, flailing weakly.
No!
Carl rushed back up the bleachers and into the hall, where he slapped the call button and waited what seemed an eternity for the elevator to arrive.
A minute later he was on the ground floor, racing into the arena. He bolted across the black bridge, barely aware of the purple lightning bolts shooting from his feet as he shouted, “Stop the fight! I’m team captain! Stop the fight!”
Inside the octagon, Agbeko wobbled forward, throwing clumsy punches, looking like a drunk trying to catch a fly. Fighter 47 advanced in a crouch, his freakish muscles bunched as tightly as a coiled spring. His face, which was a mask of scar tissue upon scar tissue, leered in a predator’s grin.
As Carl topped the stairs, Davis turned with wild eyes. “Where you been? He’s getting killed!”
Carl yanked at the locked door, shouting at the referee, “Stop the fight!”
The ref half turned, sneered at Carl, and dismissed him with a wave.
Fighter 47 clapped his hands high, then shot low—jarring a dark fragment of memory in Carl that felt more like a bad omen than a true remembrance—and scooped Agbeko’s legs out from under him.
I have to stop this, Carl thought, and scaled the cage wall, shouting, but he was too late.
Holding the stunned Agbeko in a chest-to-chest bear hug, Fighter 47 bent his thick legs, sprung into the air, and flipped backward, hauling Agbeko with him. They arched in nightmare slowness—Carl screaming, “No!”—as Fighter 47 executed the suplex that smashed Agbeko headfirst into the ground.
Fighter 47 swaggered away from his crumpled victim, raised his fists overhead, and roared an inhuman bellow.
Carl leapt into the octagon, hit the floor running, and knocked the ref aside to crouch next to his friend. Agbeko shook with convulsions, then stiffened. One eyelid lifted, and Carl watched in terror as the eyeball rolled loosely in its socket, then drifted to one side and stopped moving. Agbeko shuddered, sighed, and went still.
Davis pushed Carl away and slid his fingertips under Agbeko’s jaw. “He’s alive,” he told Carl. “Barely.” Then he shouted for a stretcher. “Stat!”
Carl stood and watched, feeling helpless, as Davis worked.
All your fault, Carl told himself. This is all your fault.
But then he thought, No—not all your fault, and he turned toward the opera box, where the Few, drunk on their blood circus, chatted excitedly among themselves, and the bearded man smiled down, the devil presiding over his pocket.
Carl didn’t bother to change, didn’t bother even to wipe the blood from his hands. He went straight to her apartment and pounded on the door until it slid open. Octavia, also bloody, glared at him. “Stay away from us!” She slapped the button, setting the door into motion, but Carl stepped forward, jamming the sliding door with a shoulder, and it shuddered to a stop.
He stepped into her apartment.
Rage burned in Octavia’s eyes. “I told you to get out of here.”
He stepped toward her. She stood her ground. Suddenly they were against each other, both of them shaking with emotion.
“Be quiet,” he said. “You need to listen.”
Then he felt a sharp point pressing into his stomach and knew she had a knife.
“Feel it?” she said. “Get out or I gut you.”
“I know how to get them,” he said. “I know how you can map him.”
“It’s too late for that,” she said. “Now get out.” The knife moved forward, biting into Carl’s skin a fraction of an inch.
He didn’t flinch. “You’re wrong.”
“We had a plan,” she said. “You promised, Carl. You were going to take it easy, let him win. Then you flipped. You let the chip take over, and you hurt him. You ruined everything.”
“I had one request—don’t hit my broken arm—but he went straight for it. Yeah, I got mad. I was giving up everything, letting him knock me out, and he couldn’t do the one thing I asked? What’s his problem? Winning wasn’t enough? What, does he get off on pain?”
She stared into his eyes for a second before saying, “I never told him.”
“What do mean, you never—”
“I didn’t tell him about your arm, okay? There was no way to tell him.”
“But you said—”
“I know what I said. I lied, all right? I told you what I had to tell you to get you to throw the fight. If I’d told you the truth, you wouldn’t have helped—just like if I told him about you, he would have flipped. So no, I didn’t tell him about your arm. I just told him to go for the headshot.”
He stared down at her blond hair and brown contact lenses and angry face and realized he didn’t know her at all. “Forget it,” he said. “We have to take care of business. Agbeko’s dead—or they’re hooking him up to one of those machines.”
She looked confused. “But you said he was forfeiting—”
“He said he was forfeiting, but he still went in there and fought.”
Her face softened. He felt the knife’s point leave his belly. “Oh, Carl. I’m so sorry.”
He shook his head. “You and I, we don’t have time for pity or the past or anything except nailing the bearded man.”
“You ruined everything,” she said. “It’s too late now.”
“No, it’s not,” he said. “You’re coming with me. You’re my date.”
Her laughter was terrible, full of disdain. “You can’t be serious. They would never believe—”
“They will believe,” he said. “Never underestimate the power of audacity.”
“They know I would never go anywhere with you. I can’t stand you.”
“Right—which is why they’ll be so shocked when they see you walk in with me,” he said. “They’ll see your hatred and my cocky grin, and they’ll think, What are they doing together? And right then, when they’re primed for an explanation, I’ll tell them the answer.”
“Which is?”
“To the victor go the spoils,” he said, aware that he was quoting Stark yet again. So be it. “Julio and I had a bet, I’ll tell them. He lost, and I got you for the night. What an insult, huh? How does it feel to be loaned out to the guy who busted up your boyfriend?”
“You think it could work?”
“It will work . . . as long as you glow with hatred for me.”
“No problem there,” she said, but didn’t put much into it. Her eyes shifted as she thought.
“This is our only shot,” he said. “These guys have to pay.”
“What are you doing here?” a weak voice said, and Julio limped into view, with one hand wrapped across his ribs. His face was a bloody mess, the cheeks flayed from eye to jaw.
It turned Carl’s stomach to see what he’d done—but then he remembered his broken arm and his sense of guilt waned. They were even, as far as he was concerned. Turning to Octavia, he said, “I’m not dealing with him.”
“Just wait there,” she told Julio, who staggered forward, growling in Spanish now.
“Have fun explaining everything,” Carl told her, and stepped into the hall, “but don’t let it make you late for dinner.”
THIRTY-TWO
THEY SAT AT A LONG TABLE at the center of the surreal slice-of-summer meadow he and Octavia had spied from the ductwork, everything warm and green, the air redolent of fresh-cut grass and flowers. Standing between classical marble statues, a woman in a red toga strummed an enormous golden harp. The music was soft and subtle, barely audible against the gurgling of nearby fountains. Servers in red togas—all of them with the scarred knuckles and whipcord muscles of former fighters—came and went, replenishing water and filling slender glasses with champagne that the bearded man asked them not yet to drink.
Stark would love this, Carl thought. Straight out of ancient Greece.
Though it wasn’t really like ancient Greece, he thought, spotting the electronic speakers meant to look like rocks
. The place felt like some weird theme park, where everything looked old and classical but was actually constructed with cutting-edge science and technology. Whatever. He just wanted to get this over with. He hated the toga, which made him feel like he was wearing a dress, and loathed nearly everyone at the table, Z-Force and the Few. That left only Octavia, and she hated him now. Oh well, he thought, sprawled back in his chair like the world’s cockiest jerk, at least they’re buying our act.
Her toga was longer, reaching almost to the floor. A circlet of flowers rested atop her blond hair—almost comical, given her convincing scowl—and twists of ornamental silver encircled her bare arms.
Playing his part, he put a hand on her leg. She cursed in Spanish and batted it away—but not before Carl felt the knife she’d strapped to her inner thigh.
Why had she brought a knife? He hoped she wasn’t planning some insane attack on the bearded man. That would get them both killed.
Seated at the other end of the table, the Few wore golden half masks. By their exposed arms and shoulders, mouths and necks, he saw that they were younger than he had expected. Far younger. Not much older than him, actually.
The bearded man was the oldest, but still not old—late twenties?—and, like the other members of the Few, incredibly fit. He had the square jaw and trim black beard of an ancient hero. Unlike the others, he wore not a toga but a loose-fitting purple robe open at the chest, displaying the chest and neck muscles of a bodybuilder. He raised his champagne glass and spoke—not in the deep, modified voice he’d used in the arena—but in his real voice, which struck Carl with its warm, almost musical sound, the lyricism of which was only magnified by his English accent. “I would like to propose a toast.”
Everyone raised their glasses—except Octavia, whose eyes bored into the table. Was she mapping the bearded man?