by Carly Morgan
She wanted to slap him. “If we hear the next two go, I’m gonna have to ditch you. It’s nothing personal or anything, it’s just I’m pretty sure I can run a lot faster.”
Lux sighed dejectedly. “You undoubtedly can run faster. I hate running.”
Suddenly, they heard another engine, but instead of heading down the mountain, this one was very close. Kaelia’s heightened predator senses were on full alert as she practically dropped into a fighting stance. She sensed a threat, and it was somewhere nearby. Right behind them actually, charging away at 30 mph.
“That’s too bad about your feelings on running,” she said. “Because you’re going to have to do it now!”
She pushed him out of the way as the all-terrain vehicle tore straight across their path, meaning Kaelia had to jump straight into the air to avoid getting hit herself. She studied the driver while she was up there; Grady Lair, and his passenger, Elgren Farrow. They were sneering and laughing as they almost ran Kaelia and Lux down, though their faces changed to baffled annoyance when she leapt clear into the air.
Instead of continuing their way down the mountain, Grady drove in a circle around them, leering. “You might as well pull out your strap-on now and find a nice private place to fuck your little boy toy, because there aren’t any vehicles left.”
“It’s going to be a long walk for you,” Elgren chimed in. “Might as well have a little fun before your trips back to separate prisons, right?”
“We’re not sleeping together, actually…” Lux for some reason thought it would be helpful to clarify.
Kaelia ignored the remarks altogether. Let them think she was sleeping with Lux. Their assumptions simply took the heat off her and Callan. “What do you mean there aren’t any left?” she steered the conversation back around. “There are supposed to be five, and we only heard four.”
“Sure, there are supposed to be five,” Grady said, laughing like a giant idiot. Kaelia gave him a look like he might not be playing with a full deck.
“We disabled the last one!” Elgren revealed, guffawing. “So unless either of you know a good mechanic!”
They both whooped and hollered with more obscene laughter before the engine of their vehicle revved and took them careening down the mountainside in a gust of sulfurous exhaust.
“I hope you crash and impale yourselves with tree branches, you big, stupid, mouth breathing Neanderthals!” Kaelia screamed after them.
“Yeah!” Lux picked up beside her. “Go choke on a turtle, you big turtle choking nitwits!”
Kaelia furrowed her brow at his strange choice of insult, and then seethed. “Why would they do that? It’s not like it would have had any effect on them winning if someone else found the last vehicle!”
“They must have had a rotten childhood. Daddy ran away and Mommy drank too much,” Lux concluded. He frowned when she didn’t laugh at his joke, and then opened his arms to her. “Hey, it’s going to be okay. Let’s hug it out.”
“I’m not hugging out shit!” Kaelia turned and stalked away. She was going to have to start running. It was the only way to win now. Except, she couldn’t run too fast, it would be too conspicuous. Oh, damn it, why had she wasted so much time scrambling around in the bushes? She could have been halfway down the mountain by now, as many of the other contestants likely were.
“Kaelia, wait,” Lux called after her, already lagging several meters behind and huffing and puffing from the exertion of keeping up with her, and she was only at a brisk walk. “What about the clue though?”
“Fuck the clue! Look on the upside? What’s that supposed to mean anyway? Like, maybe a magic carpet will appear from above to transport me down to the bottom of this godforsaken mountaintop. Or better yet, an angel. A heavenly, divine entity sent to save me from the hell that is my very existence. Oh, but wait, there are no angels, Lux. Angels aren’t real!”
“Maybe that’s one right there?” Lux said, and something in his tone made her whirl back around.
It was contestant No. 35, the cat burglar, petite and dainty with her jet-black hair cut into a bob; Indigo Steele. She was halfway up a huge gnarled and ancient looking tree, the leaves practically brushing the sky, and the trunk about three times as wide as her. Kaelia’s eyes almost bulged out of her head, watching her, wondering what she was doing. She followed hurriedly as Lux swaggered lazily to the bottom of the tree.
“Hey!” he called up it, his tone as casual as a neighbor saying good morning over the fence. “How’s the weather up there?”
“Hot as fuck, actually!” No. 35 called back without missing a beat, pausing in her climb to peer down at them. “You guys think you can make the climb?”
“Sure, but why would we want to?” Lux yelled.
Kaelia was confused herself, staring up the monstrous trunk, until her cat-eye vision zoomed in on a platform built towards the top of it, like a tree house. But how would that help them with winning? She focused her vision, squinting against the sun streaming in through the leaves, and then she saw it. Zip lines. Strung from tree to tree, they seemed to go down to the very bottom of the mountain, and by the severe angle of them probably traveled at up to 60 mph. A lot faster than all-terrain vehicles.
It was the answer to the clue, though the climb looked treacherous, and Kaelia guessed there were no safety harnesses for the zip lines. Kaelia pointed them out to Lux, who was still clueless. “You feel like maybe killing yourself today?” she asked.
It took Lux several moments to spot the contraptions strung between trees like Christmas lights. “Damn!” he breathed, his eyes widening. “They’re not going to make this easy on us, are they?”
“Ah, it’s not that bad,” No. 35 called down to them. Kaelia noticed she had an accent, too strange to place, probably a mix of two different languages. “I’m kind of excited to try out those zip lines actually.”
“You’re crazy!” Lux accused her. “I’m Lux Beacon by the way, and this is my friend, Kaelia Elowyn Nemesis.”
“Nice to meet you, I’m Indigo!” She was putting her whole body into the climb, taking her time, making sure her footing was right before attempting to go higher. “You can call me Indie!”
“What if you fall?” Lux asked.
“Probably snap my neck,” she said decisively, and her accent made the words sound charming. “Nice, quick death.”
Lux turned to Kaelia uneasily. “What do you think? I might be able to make it up that tree, but I’ve taken rock climbing lessons since I was five. It was sort of my hobby. See? Those are the only things I’m good at, things my parents paid other people to teach me.”
Suddenly, Kaelia recalled when she first saw Lux at the elimination ceremony. The only reason he had passed was because he impressed the judges on the rock-climbing wall, waving at them and performing quite a few tricky maneuvers. She breathed an internal sigh of relief. And here she thought she was going to have to leave him at the top of this mountain by himself.
“Great,” she said, getting a strong hold of the tree and hoisting herself up. “Meet you at the bottom then.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Lux seemed surprised, as well as concerned for her. “What are you doing? Is that a good idea?”
Kaelia lifted an eyebrow, insulted. “If she can do it, I can do it, don’t you think?”
“She’s a professional cat burglar,” Lux rushed to explain. “She probably spent half her life scaling the walls of museums and stuff!”
“Yeah, and I spent half of mine killing people who didn’t want to be killed. You think I didn’t learn a few tricks from that line of trade?”
“All right then,” Lux took a step back, relenting. “Ladies first then, I guess.”
Kaelia smiled politely. “Thank you.”
She began lifting herself higher and higher into the branches, being careful not to catch up too quickly to Indie, though she could have if she wanted. Easily. She was about half-way up when Indie made it to the platform, and Kaelia watched as she checked it all out.
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“What’s it like up there?” Lux called up, Kaelia had to relay the message to Indie because he was too far away for her to hear, like they were playing a game of telephone.
“Like a death trap!” Indie shouted back down to Kaelia, who shouted down the message to Lux. “But I’m doing it anyway. All you have to do is hold on really.”
Kaelia paused in her climb to watch Indie, installing a pulley system to the cable and testing her weight against it. A moment later, she yelled something, maybe goodbye, the words getting swept away by the wind as she went sailing down the side of the mountain. Kaelia swallowed hard, and kept climbing.
“All right,” Lux called from below. “I’m coming, too. Wish me luck.”
Kaelia grinned down at him, but just as he got his footing around the base of the tree, another contestant came barreling out of the brush. It was No. 7, Emmanuel Kant, panting and out of breath and some of his clothing torn, clearly not having a very good time.
“Whoa!” He paused curiously to see the pair of them, Kaelia halfway up the tree, and Lux at the base. “What the fuck you two think you’re doing?”
Lux was polite enough to point out the zip lines to him. Or stupid enough, depending on the way a person looked at it. “The upside,” he said, referencing the clue.
Leery, Kaelia watched Emmanuel’s eyes grow large as he spotted the zip lines, silently cursing Lux. She immediately sensed trouble, and she was right. Not even a moment later, Emmanuel tore Lux from the tree trunk, and attempted to climb it himself.
“Well, all right then, suit yourself,” Lux said facetiously, irritatingly dusting himself off. “I mean, technically, you kind of cut me in line, but that’s quite all right.”
“Shut up, pretty boy!” Emmanuel shouted, sliding down the base of the tree. No matter which way he positioned himself or tried to gain leverage, he just couldn’t get his massive body more than a few feet off the ground. “Give me a leg up,” he eventually demanded.
Kaelia waited somewhere around the middle of the tree, annoyed, while Lux clumsily attempted to hoist a man twice his size up a tree. Eventually, though, she had enough. “Why don’t you go and find another way down the mountain?” she shouted to him. “Because this doesn’t really seem to be your area of expertise.”
“Fuck you!” Emmanuel was panting and sweating hard. “I’ll climb this tree if it takes me all day.”
“Yeah, it will take you all day!” Kaelia insulted him. “So why don’t you let other people have a chance?”
“You mean pretty boy here?” Emmanuel scoffed. “Why? Because he’s your boyfriend? Listen, you stupid little whore, no one else is climbing up this tree until I do! You got that?”
“You know, I was already having a pretty bad day, and now you’re making it worse!” Kaelia yelled angrily. “So why don’t you just fuck off before something happens you’re not going to like!”
Emmanuel flared, stomping around on the ground like a child. “Is that supposed to be some kind of joke?” he guffawed. “How about I make your pretty boy boyfriend not so pretty anymore?”
“Kaelia,” Lux started nervously. “Maybe don’t threaten the man I’m stuck here on the ground with, who’s much bigger than me, and very, very angry.”
“I’ll threaten whoever I want!” Kaelia was losing her patience now.
“Hey, threaten this!” Emmanuel called, and then punched Lux in the face. He went sprawling on the ground, flat on his back, and Emmanuel loomed over him, apparently ready to administer more.
“Jesus,” Kaelia muttered under her breath, and then did the first thing that came to mind. She dropped out of the tree and, just as Emmanuel was about to pull Lux off the ground, probably to punch him again, Kaelia rammed her elbow into the back of his skull. He dropped like a sack of rocks before he even saw what hit him.
Lux stared at her, stunned, and then stood gaping for several seconds at Emmanuel’s unconscious form. “Is he all right?” he asked at last, tentatively.
“He’s been better,” Kaelia said straightforwardly, restarting her climb all over again.
“How did you…”
“Professional killer, remember?” Kaelia said shortly, cutting him off. “Hurry up, before any of these other bozos see what we’re doing and I have to knock them out too.”
Chapter 13
Callan
Zip lines. The contestants had only been up on the mountain for about an hour or so when the first one found her way back down, so fast Callan wasn’t even sure what it was at first. A bird? A paraglider? It was contestant No. 35, the cat burglar, named after a color. Violet, maybe. Or Purple. She went colliding into the branches of a tree while Callan and all the other trainers seemed to hold their breath. A moment later, she emerged, climbing hand over hand down the branches, victorious.
Cheers erupted, and her trainer ran to her, grabbing her hand and throwing it up in a triumphant gesture. “First!” he hollered, as overjoyed as a new father running out of the delivery room. “My contestant came in first! She’s the smallest one, and she still managed to beat out everybody else! Suck on that motherfuckers!”
Callan frowned at his choice of language, though still managed to clap politely as the showrunners began sticking microphones in No. 35’s face. “How did you manage to spot the zip lines?”
“I was looking up,” No. 35 explained modestly in a beguiling foreign accent. “You see, my eye is trained to spot things other people might miss.”
Callan was sweating. This island was too damn hot. He peered up at the zip line, so inconspicuous even he had missed it, standing out here for an hour with the other trainers and the showrunners, Mick Dirkhead included. He wondered – would she see it? Or had she found one of the vehicles, which she would have undoubtedly shared with Lux if she had. Lux Beacon. Callan felt his heart rate accelerate when he thought of that man, and he couldn’t help but glance at his trainer, Maddie Drew, who was standing with some of the other trainers, laughing and flirting. Callan hoped, whatever they were doing up there, Lux wasn’t slowing Kaelia down.
When he saw her, he was almost confused at first, wondering if she was a mirage in his mind or actually there, in real life. But it wasn’t his imagination playing tricks on him. Kaelia was coming down the zip line, only minutes behind No. 35. Second place. He felt something swell inside him; a pride he had never experienced before, and could barely control his mouth from stretching into a huge, stupid grin. Second. She was second. He let loose an uncharacteristic cheer of glee.
As the other bystanders began spotting her, his face darkened. Instead of allowing herself to crash unbecomingly into the top of a tree, Kaelia pumped her legs and then jumped, a good twenty feet from the ground. Show off, he thought, but was really too happy to get very upset about it. At least she had the sense to make a clumsy landing, staggering and tumbling and doing several somersaults down a hill.
“It’s Contestant No. 72, Kaelia Nemesis!” Mick Dirkhead was announcing. “And did you see that landing? Why, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like that! Do we need to get the medical staff to check her out?”
Callan tried to keep his strides steady and unworried as he went to her, but seeing her down on the ground, it’s like his legs developed a mind of their own. He broke out into a run, but by the time he reached her, she was already dusting herself off.
“Man, I got to do that again sometime,” she was saying, reaching for the hand he offered to pull her the rest of the way to her feet. “But next time, you’re doing it with me. On a vacation in San Ignacio.”
“Deal,” Callan said, and before allowing himself to think too much about it, he pulled her into a tight embrace, cameras and TV show be damned.
The night after the first round of the competition, there was another gala, and show host Mick Dirkhead announced the clue to the second challenge would be left in the training arena the next morning. Then he left them to their dinners and dancing. Somehow, all four women had passed the first round of the competition,
meaning they were a bit more proportioned to the males, though still outnumbered. Regardless, not many of them danced; only Lux and Maddie, who had shocked his trainer by coming in third, minutes after Kaelia and Indigo. They had been three out of four to find the zip lines, though the fourth to do so, Emmanuel Kant, came in much later, barely scraping by in 14th place.
Callan yawned. He was tired. He’d barely slept the night before, and was ready for an early bedtime. He glanced at Kaelia, positioned in the same place as last time at the large table across from him, and noticed her watching Lux and Maddie on the dance floor. Her expression perturbed him, it was almost wistful. He imagined crossing the table and bending low over her, taking her light, delicate fingers in his own large paw and asking her to dance. Except Callan wasn’t much of a dancer. So when he did walk around the large table and took her hand, he didn’t ask her to dance, he told her it was time for bed.
Her expression nearly fell. Had it been expectant before? Callan couldn’t be sure. “We have training tomorrow,” he went on, as if he needed to explain himself. “The sooner we get up, the sooner we can find out the next clue.”
She sighed dramatically and rolled her eyes, before flouncing from the table and stalking towards the exit. Callan grimaced, irritated somehow, though he wasn’t sure exactly why. Maybe it was because of Maddie and Lux. After all, if they hadn’t been showing off on the dance floor, Kaelia likely wouldn’t have wanted to join in on the fun. She hadn’t spoken much since the challenge, and Callan hadn’t pressed her. After all, he would find out soon enough exactly what had gone down when the event aired on TV the next night.
When they entered the outdoor training arena the next morning at the break of dawn, they were met by thirty gleaming surfboards lined up in the grass like soldiers. There were pink ones and blue ones and yellow ones, and, thanks to him, Callan and Kaelia were two of the first ones out. Not that he could see now what good it would do them.
“You know how to surf?” Kaelia asked him, in a hopeful voice laced with doubt.