Devil's Pocket

by John Dixon

  Carl crossed the cell and flattened his palm against the glass. “Get me out of here, man. There’s a button on the wall.”

  Agbeko placed his own hand against the glass in an almost–high five. “I am afraid I can’t do that, sir.”

  Carl slapped the glass. “Is this about the tournament, me telling you not to fight?”

  Agbeko tilted his head, clearly not understanding. “Perhaps it was a mistake, visiting, but I just wanted to thank you.”

  Then Carl had the accent. Under normal circumstances, he would have identified it straight away, but you don’t expect your African friend to start speaking with what sounded almost—but not quite—like an English accent. . . .

  “You dealt me quite a kindness when you eliminated the Zurkistani middleweight,” Agbeko said. “It feels absolutely amazing to be back in a young body again.” He offered a quivering smile, his eyes wet with tears. “Thank you, sir.”

  Carl withdrew his hand, relief at seeing his friend alive again crumbling away. “Kruger?”

  “Indeed, sir,” the thing beyond the glass said, neither in Agbeko’s voice nor Kruger’s but in some unnatural hybrid of the two. It stepped back, spread its arms, and glanced at its own body. “If my mates back in the regiment could see me like this . . .”

  In a nightmarish rush of revulsion, Carl understood. Though Agbeko’s body stood before him, his friend was gone . . . evicted to make room for the consciousness of Kruger. That’s what they were doing in that lab: not draining the life of stewards to save injured fighters, as he and Octavia had supposed, but eradicating injured fighters and giving their bodies to loyal servants.

  The Agbeko-Kruger-thing laughed. “But of course my mates are all dead now, aren’t they? Not I . . . no . . . ‘Kruger,’ as you call him, lives on. You’ve given me a second lease on life. That’s what really matters.”

  No, it’s not, Carl wanted to say, but he was used to parleying with monsters, and this creature before him was his only hope, so he disguised his disgust and horror and said, “If you really are grateful, let me out of here.”

  The thing shook its head. “It is unfortunate that you have run afoul of the Few, and I do hope you will be able to reconcile, but unfortunately, I cannot assist you. I’m terribly sorry, sir, but as much as I appreciate your contribution, it’s the Few to whom I owe my principal debt. You could even say that my debt to them is eternal.” He started drifting away, down the hall.

  Carl slapped the plexiglass. “Wait! I’m not going to hurt them. I just want to escape. You of all people must understand. I just want to keep living.”

  The thing turned back to him then, smiling. “But you can still live on, sir. Just don’t die in the octagon. They can fix nearly anything, even a broken neck”—he demonstrated, rolling his big head in a smooth circle—“but dead is dead. True death cannot be reversed. What a waste that would be. Death ruins the vessel, makes it a sieve—and any life runs out. Lose without dying, and your body will make a wonderful home for someone else . . . perhaps even one of the Few. Rumor has it that one of them already covets your body.”

  With that, the thing disappeared.

  Carl, gripped by fresh terror, remembered the blond-haired woman’s long and longing gaze. No matter what, he thought, I will not become a vessel. Like a Spartan warrior of old, he would accept only victory or death.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  WHEN THE TRAIN REACHED the end of the tracks and slowed to a stop, Octavia dropped to the ground alongside the engine. Seconds later, the train clunked, shook, and started rolling slowly back down the tracks.

  She charged forward into the lobby and saw two large buttons on the wall, one with an arrow pointing up, the other with an arrow pointing down. She slapped the up-arrow, and the front portion of the wall shuddered and started groaning upward.

  Yes!

  Then she recoiled as a frigid wind blasted in under the rising door, covering her in goose bumps and dusting her sandaled feet with snow so cold that it burned.

  Glancing over her shoulder, she saw the engine rolling away around the corner. Tex, who had undoubtedly assumed that she’d died on the tracks, stood in the illuminated cabin with his hands pressed to the window, shouting furiously. The train disappeared around the corner, and the tunnel filled with an awful squealing sound.

  Brakes, she thought. He’s figured out how to stop the thing, and any second now, he’ll hop out and come after me.

  She slipped under the door and onto the frozen mountaintop. When a thousand needles of windblown sleet bit into her, she screamed involuntarily and twisted to a stop, applying her own brakes. Her body didn’t want to go any farther.

  Freezing wind rushed over her, tugging at her toga and making her squint. Her muscles tensed, as if rebelling against her madness. And it was madness. How could she possibly descend over miles of rocky ground slick with ice and treacherous with drifting snow, through gusting wind, sleet, and absolute darkness . . . wearing only sandals and a toga?

  You have no choice, she told herself again and struggled forward.

  A short time later, she glanced back uphill at the snow-blurred pane of light that was the mouth of the tunnel. It didn’t seem possible that she had covered only this short distance. Her teeth chattered, and her eyes streamed tears from the cold. For several seconds, she stared longingly at the tunnel, drawn like a moth to its light and warmth.

  But Tex would come for her—with the bloody knife not in his leg but in his hand.

  Better to die out here, trying, she thought, and stumbled downhill, moaning against the cold, which burned her skin and stole her breath. She shut her eyes to block the sleet—what good would they do her in the dark, anyway?—and patted her lead foot tentatively before each advance. This slow pace terrified her. How long would it take to freeze to death under these conditions?

  Her sandal hit an icy patch, and she fell hard to the rocky ground. At least most of her hit the ground. Her left arm landed on nothing at all. . . .

  It dangled in the freezing air, touching nothing, and she realized with a chill that this time had nothing to do with temperature, that she’d nearly fallen off the path. She remembered the hike up, the long views and sheer cliffs.

  She wouldn’t freeze to death. She’d fall to her death first.

  Stop, she told herself. Think.

  She shuffled ahead on all fours. Her hands and feet screamed with the cold, but it was reassuring in the darkness to feel the path beneath her.

  With that thought, she jerked to a stop and cackled wildly.

  That was it!

  Feel the path.

  How could she have been so stupid?

  Because you were running for your life, she thought. The cold stunned you, and the dark terrified you.

  She stood, and despite the long odds and bitter cold, a warm thought rose in her. You don’t have to fear the dark ever again. She walked confidently forward, her eyes still closed against the stinging sleet. She could feel the terrain unfolding before her just as clearly as she might see it during broad daylight. Ice and snow and loose stones still demanded caution, but she nonetheless built speed and soon moved downhill in a sliding shuffle nearly as fast as a jog.

  Uphill, a murderous scream ripped the night.

  She turned and opened her eyes and saw Tex’s shape silhouetted against the light of the tunnel. She could feel him up there, too, could sense his insignificance and vulnerability against the great mountains and the howling wind. She clenched her chattering teeth in a satisfied grin.

  “Come and get me,” she taunted, “unless you’re afraid.”

  The wind gobbled his response, but her taunting had obviously worked, because he tottered into the darkness after her.

  Good, she thought, and started downhill again, shuffling along the slippery path with her eyes closed, bent forward into the icy wind that assaulted her exposed flesh and flattened her flapping toga to her straining body. In all her life, she had never been so cold, but she couldn’t risk go
ing any faster, not shaking like she was and navigating with numb feet over slick rocky ground. Making matters worse, her increasingly clumsy muscles jerked with the cold, and her breathing had become rapid and shallow. Still she struggled forward. She would not surrender to the darkness or cold or wind—and certainly not to terror.

  She would not quit. From personal experience, she knew how pain could dilate one’s sense of time, turning seconds into minutes, minutes into hours, hours into not just days or weeks or months but a seeming eternity, so she dismissed her sense of time, scouted forward with her mind, and focused on the terrain ahead and the sense of herself as an object dropping steadily toward the coast.

  She persevered, struggling through darkness and Antarctic cold, filled with tough hope.

  She hoped to make it downhill past the jammers; hoped to find a cave and escape the wind; hoped a satellite would detect her and send help before she froze; and hoped with delicious bitterness that she would hear Tex scream as he fell to his death. . . .

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIS IS IT, Carl thought, coming into the octagon. Kill or be killed.

  But that wasn’t really true, was it?

  Glancing up at the opera box, he saw the Few chatting it up. The blond-haired woman eyed him hungrily, and the bearded man smiled down from his throne.

  No, this wasn’t kill or be killed—at least not for Carl, who harbored no illusions about his fate. In the unlikely event of his emerging victorious, it would be kill and be killed.

  Or rather, killed and be killed . . . and then serve as what Kruger called a vessel. A terrifying notion . . .

  So be it, he thought, and ripped the air with a right uppercut. He would fight to the end—not in hopes of saving himself, but to destroy Decker. He would show neither mercy nor hesitation—and least of all fear, which he wouldn’t sell to the Few for every penny of their staggering wealth.

  With luck, his own death would be absolute, a true and irrevocable death, and he would burn upon the black lake. His charred bones would sink into the murky depths, where they would join the bones already cluttering the bottom of the lake, until the Few departed, triggered the explosives, and blew the Cauldron into oblivion.

  That was okay.

  Anything to avoid becoming a vessel.

  Either way, this was the end.

  The past was gone. The future would never arrive. All he had was now. This. A final moment in time. The fight.

  Bound in leather and metal, his right fist felt hard and heavy. Now they would see what the cestus could really do.

  His left hand, which had carried him to many victories, would do him no good now. The arm was badly broken. Both bones. They had removed his splint, and only the leather of the cestus kept the wrist from flopping forward. He couldn’t punch with that hand—doing so might send broken bones tearing through his arm—but he could still strike with his left elbow. Of course, if he got that close, Decker would finish him.

  With Davis kneading his shoulders, Carl scanned the bleachers. Their near emptiness suggested that half the fighters had already headed home, but of course they hadn’t left. They’d died . . . or nearly died, only to be used, like Agbeko, as vessels. He saw no sign of Octavia or Julio. Were they both strapped onto gurneys alongside stewards? No sign of Tex, either. Davis hadn’t seen their teammate since the previous night, just after Carl left for dinner. That didn’t bode well for Tex, but Carl couldn’t worry about his missing teammate now.

  The music died, and the announcer’s voice said, “Welcome to a most special occasion, a battle between champions. In the red corner, this year’s Funeral Games middleweight champion, representing Phoenix Island, Fighter 19.”

  Canned applause rose and fell.

  Rather than taking a bow or waving to the crowd, Carl showed the opera box his middle finger. The bearded man smiled down as the others laughed or feigned shock.

  The announcer said, “And in the blue corner, this year’s Funeral Games heavyweight champion, representing Zurkistan, Fighter 47.”

  Across the ring, Decker roared, thumping his chest with a fist wrapped in leather and iron. He was no longer human. The chip hadn’t vaulted him forward, hastening post-human evolution; it had pitched him backward into a brutal subhuman age.

  The lightweight bounced beside Decker like an excited puppy. Baca, on the other hand, paid no attention to his fighter. He swept his eyes back and forth, scanning the bleachers.

  The referee called them to the center.

  Here we go, Carl thought, and as they came together, he smelled Decker’s rank animal odor. They stood inches apart, Decker shorter than Carl but far larger, the unnatural muscles radiating heat and vibrating with superhuman strength. His blue eyes stared from the mask of scar tissue with the same dark interest Carl had seen back on Phoenix Island, backlit now with savage rage.

  Carl looked through him.

  Decker chuckled—a hissing, burbling sound like lava bubbling to the surface. The lightweight rattled at Carl in his ugly language. Baca said, “Any last words for Stark?”

  “Yeah,” Carl said. “Have him say hi to your mom for me.”

  Then the ref told the fighters to touch gloves.

  Carl turned without touching gloves and headed across the ring. Time to get down to it.

  Davis hung at the center for a moment, watching the other team. Then he joined Carl with a look of concern. “What I said before, about getting behind him, hitting him in his neck?”

  “Yeah,” Carl said, remembering how the medic had surprised him with terms like occipital artery and cervical vertebrae. “Hit him hard enough, I can paralyze him.”

  “Forget it,” Davis said. “Too much muscle back there. He’s got muscle where there shouldn’t be muscle.”

  “Thanks,” Carl said, and laughed. He felt oddly calm, almost excited. There was nothing now but the fight. And he knew how to fight.

  Within him, the rage-beast paced in its cage, growling like a tiger at feeding time. It would be so easy to open its cage and embrace the fury, but that, like relying solely on the chip or some carefully calculated plan, would blind him, would doom him. No shortcuts. No pat answers. He had to live in the moment and trust himself to make the necessary adjustments as the fight unfolded. Time for Stark’s self-efficacy. His wholesale commitment to and confidence in his mission—destroying Decker—would allow him to dispense with worry and focus each second solely on the task immediately at hand. Stick and move, hustle and flow.

  “Seconds out!” the ref called, meaning it was time for Davis to leave.

  “Eyes and throat,” Davis said. “Especially the throat.”

  Carl nodded.

  “Here,” Davis said, and pressed a finger into the little dip beneath Carl’s trachea and above where his collarbones met, “or here,” and touched him alongside his Adam’s apple.

  “Got you,” Carl said. He knew Davis meant well, but nailing those targets would be tough. Decker was short and kept his chin tucked.

  “Out of the ring, red corner!” the ref hollered.

  Davis opened the door but paused to give Carl’s shoulder a squeeze and look him in the eyes. “Do me a favor and kill this mo—”

  The bell rang.

  Decker charged with uncanny speed. Carl pivoted away, jabbing with his right hand, hitting only air, and backpedaled toward the center. Watching Decker whirl in full speed, he thought, They sabotaged my chip.

  The world hadn’t slowed down for him.

  Decker lunged low with speed that made no sense.

  Carl scooted to one side but felt Decker’s hand close like a pit bull’s jaws around his ankle. He tried to pull free, but Decker shoved forward, bulled him off-balance, and yanked on his ankle. Just like that, Carl was off his feet.

  Decker swung him around by the ankle and let go, and then Carl was flying across the ring. In that suspended moment, he realized that his chip was working fine. Decker was just so fast that it didn’t seem that way. Then he slammed into the cage and reb
ounded straight at Decker, who was rushing him again.

  Years of boxing experience saved Carl. Coming off the cage felt like bouncing off the ropes, and he instinctively launched a right. His metal fist caught Decker between the eyes. It wasn’t a hard punch—he was off-balance and unable to twist his body—but it landed cleanly, ripping a gash in the scarred face. Decker kept coming, completely unfazed.

  Carl ducked, heard Decker hit the cage, and had just enough time to regain his feet before the monster wheeled and shot for his legs.

  Carl stomped out with a kick that pounded Decker’s face—but did nothing to slow him. Instantly, he understood his mistake—kicking demanded too much commitment against such a fast and aggressive opponent—and then Decker had him again.

  Panic filled Carl as Decker lifted him from his feet and tossed him into the air. He flew in a high arc, turning a slow-motion cartwheel, and fell not to the mat but into Decker’s punting kick, which exploded into his stomach, knocked the air out of him, and pitched him halfway across the ring.

  He hit the mat hard and struggled into a crouch, fighting for breath, certain his ribs were broken, and Decker charged straight at him.

  Like a bull, he thought, a bull killing another tiger, and the wall of muscle slammed into him, bowling him over and pitching him into the cage.

  He struggled to his knees just as Decker loomed over him, smashing downward with his metal fist. Carl tucked his chin and lifted his guard, and the strike slammed like a sledgehammer into his broken arm, which folded back sickeningly. Decker’s cestus plowed through, grazing Carl’s face and opening a long cut on his cheekbone. Decker took half a step back and launched a flurry of savage hooks. Carl had never seen such incredible hand speed, but the redneck telegraphed every punch, drawing his fists back too far and swinging too wide, and Carl slipped these blows, slid out to the side, and got to his feet.