All That Lives Must Die mc-2

by Eric Nylund

  Time for question and answers later. . if they made it through today’s class. She scanned the course, trying to reorient.

  They were thirty feet off the ground. The ramp she crouched upon was aluminum, fireproof thankfully (one of the modest safety considerations Mr. Ma had allowed for his reconstructed course), but the surface reflected heat so she felt as if she were in an oven.

  Mitch was at the top of the ramp. So was Amanda.

  Twin waters cannon pelted her teammates with high-pressure streams-forcing them into a corner to keep from getting blasted off the edge.

  Mitch tried to shield Amanda from the worst of it, but they both looked as if they were drowning.

  “Are you sure this is the easiest way?” she yelled at Eliot over the noise.

  Eliot gave her that I know what I’m doing look, but nonetheless strummed his guitar, turned back and forth, and nodded his head.

  Fiona squinted through the smoke and mist. Lines of fire crisscrossed the obstacle course. She didn’t see any trace of Team Falcon. . or how far ahead of Scarab they’d gotten.

  Team Falcon was the number one team at Paxington. They’d taken an early lead on the course-and then disappeared.

  But there’d been no gunshot signaling the end of the match. . so Scarab still was in the game.

  “We’ve got to free them up!” Eliot yelled and pointed to Mitch and Amanda.

  Fiona nodded, but stayed where she was, thinking. She didn’t want to rush up there and have the cannon turn on them-get knocked off this slick-with-water ramp.

  She traced the water pipes as they snaked back around the supports.

  She leaned over the ramp and with care looped her rubber band about the two-inch water main. She eased back, focused her mind along the edge-made the cut.

  The pipe ruptured.

  Steel twisted into a jagged flower. Pressurized water sprayed high into the air and arced onto the field below.

  “Fiona!” someone called from above.

  She shielded her eyes from the sun. Jeremy and Sarah were twenty feet above her on the next level. Jeremy’s hands were pitch black.

  “We’re stuck,” Sarah cried. “Everything up here is covered with tar! You’ll have to go around.”

  For the bazillionth time today, Fiona wished Jezebel were here. Infernal schemes or not-even with all the drama between her at Eliot-it would’ve been worth it. She could’ve easily gotten up there, freed the Covingtons, and then they’d have three team members close to the top. Almost a win.

  But no use wishing. It was a fact Scarab was down its best player. Fiona’s job was to figure out how to win anyway with only seven.

  Seven: Her and Eliot. . Jeremy and Sarah. . Mitch and Amanda. .

  She turned to Eliot. At the same time they both asked, “Where’s Robert?”

  “Here!” Robert called. He extended a hand up and over the edge of the ramp; Eliot then helped Robert onto the steaming aluminum surface.

  “Are you okay?” Fiona crouched next to him.

  She wanted to touch his arm, just to reassure him, but with all the weirdness between them lately. . and all the stuff happening between her and Mitch, she decided not to.

  “I’m just peachy,” Robert muttered. He slicked back his wet hair. “Nice plan-charge straight into a trap.”

  She glared at him. “I didn’t see it. And Eliot said it was the way.”

  “It is the way,” Eliot replied, annoyed. “I keep telling you.”

  “So we keep going,” Fiona said, and then to Robert, “and try not to fall off this time, okay?”

  “I didn’t fall.” Robert frowned and his brows knit together, uncharacteristic worry lines creased his forehead. “But we’ve got to go back.” He pointed over the edge. “Team Falcon is there. They’re down.”

  Fiona stood and set her hands on her hips. “If they’re down, isn’t that a good thing?”

  Robert shook his head. “They cut a gas line to stop the fire. . and there’s no shutoff valve. They’ve passed out.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” she whispered.

  Robert narrowed his eyes. “Come on. They might be dead already. I need your help. I can’t do it myself.”

  Mitch and Amanda trotted to them. “What’s going on?” Mitch looked back and forth between her and Robert.

  “New plan,” Eliot told him.

  Fiona’s face burned-not from anger, but from shame that she had actually considered moving ahead and capturing their flag. . at least getting four of them up there, instead of going back to help people who were dying.

  This was not a war. This was just a class. Everything at Paxington was warping her sense of right and wrong.

  “Okay,” she said. “New plan.”

  Fiona figured they’d been on the gym for about five minutes (she made a note to buy a shockproof, waterproof watch after this). So there’d be time to do the right thing and win. But there was no time for Team Falcon if they were breathing methane-so they were the priority.

  “Robert, Eliot, and Amanda get down there,” she said. “I’ll be right behind you. Go!”

  The boys nodded, Eliot slung his guitar over his back like a samurai sword, and they clambered over the side.

  To Mitch she said: “Get up to Jeremy and Sarah. They would have transformed that tar if they could have, so something’s stopping them. Get them free, and then get down to help us.”

  Fiona tried to communicate all her concern and her confidence in Mitch with a nod, and failed miserably, she was sure, but Mitch smiled anyway.

  “I’m on it,” he said.

  Amanda looked at her feet. “I can’t go down there,” she mumbled. “Not near the gas.”

  Was Amanda really so much of a coward that she’d let people die? Maybe she was more shaken from those water cannon than Fiona had realized-almost getting knocked off the course and then nearly drowning.

  “Okay,” she told her, “go help Mitch.”

  Fiona scrutinized the course, a lattice of supports, ramps, stairs, and moving clockwork parts-and the plumes of water and fire that filled the air, mixed smoke and mist. . and then she glanced down. Somewhere down there a cloud of natural gas billowed and expanded, complexly invisible. . and lethal.

  The encyclopedic part of Fiona’s mind clicked on. Natural gas was primarily methane, and lighter than air, so it would be rising. If it didn’t ignite off the open flames, it’d displace the oxygen and asphyxiate them all.

  Either way-this was not the place to mull over what to do next.

  She eased over the edge and climbed down.

  Methane was odorless, but the gas companies added mercaptans as a safety feature so it smelled like sulfur.[54]

  She hesitated, only a second, but the fear washed over and through her all over again.

  No. She had to do this.

  That’s what Mr. Ma had been teaching her in the Force of Arms class-to push past doubt and fear on the battlefield-to keep thinking and trying and moving even if it looked like you were going to die.

  She continued down. The fear was there, but she could deal with it.

  She stepped onto a bamboo platform.

  Eliot and Robert were waiting.

  So was Team Falcon. All of them passed out (or dead, it was hard to tell) on the floor ten paces away. Near them, but too deep to reach in a tangle of pipes, a ruptured gas line hissed.

  Eliot was on one knee and strummed his guitar. Robert stood by him. The notes were a simple scale, but they make the air swell and ripple about them.

  Fiona got dizzy.

  She ignored the urge to run as fast and far away as she could from the danger, and instead joined Robert and Eliot.

  The stink cleared. The air within the circle Eliot had created smelled sweet.

  “Can you make this area of clean air bigger?” she whispered. “Or move closer?”

  “Methane concentration too high closer,” Eliot said, through gritted teeth. “Trying to expand the circle from here. Still getting used to t
he steel strings. The methane in the air is. . slippery.”

  Fiona stopped asking questions. Eliot had tried to explain the intricacies of his music, and it’d been as enlightening a square trying to explain “corners” to a circle.

  Robert looked at her expectantly, and then stepped toward the fallen members of Team Falcon. “They can’t wait any longer.”

  Fiona grabbed his arm. If Robert charged in and tried to pull them out one by one, and she’d end up rescuing him, too.

  “Agreed,” she said, “but that way is too slow. She nudged Eliot. “Strings?”

  Eliot paused a beat. The odor of sulfur rushed back. He ripped off a tiny envelope taped to the back of his guitar and handed it to her. After Lady Dawn had busted a string, he always carried spares.

  Eliot went back to playing. The air cooled and the noxious odor again vanished.

  Fiona took two strings from the envelope, uncoiled them, stared along their lengths-and the steel wire stiffened straight.

  She looked up into the lattice of the course and spotted Sarah, Jeremy, Mitch, and Amanda as they clambered to a pole and slid down to safety. Good. Four less lives to worry about.

  “We do this my way,” Fiona said. “Get the rest of them down all at the same time-fast.”

  Robert nodded. “A twenty-foot drop.” He looked over the platform that held Team Falcon. “Four supports,” he said. “I’ll take the closest. You get into position near the far two.”

  “Then we go together.”

  Robert held her gaze. Emotions flashed in his normally too-cool-to-let-anything-show eyes. There was courage and determination. . and worry.

  At that moment he had never looked like more of a hero to her, and she knew that she still cared for him.

  Fiona looked away. There was no time to feel for Robert now, though.

  She took a huge breath and ran.

  She jumped over the prone bodies of her classmates and stopped on the far side of the platform-between two telephone poles that held up the bamboo floor.

  Robert darted to the other corner. He dropped to all fours, stared at the foot-thick posts, lashing, and bamboo. . and drew back his fist.

  He struck.

  The wood shattered.

  Robert rolled back as the platform, now free from the support, dipped toward the mangled corner.

  The brass knuckles he’d worn when he’d displayed such feats of strength before weren’t there. Robert had done that bare fisted. He was stronger, and tougher, and it wasn’t just from the training they were getting in Mr. Ma’s class. Something else was going on with him.

  Robert knelt by the post on the far side and looked to her.

  Fiona, still holding her breath, nodded.

  She held one stiffened steel string in each hand. She looked along one, then the other; the metal glistened. She fixed them both in her thoughts, imagined them thinner and thinner until their leading edges were so fine and sharp that they flickered in and out of existence.

  She lashed out-both arms at once, angled to intercept the floor, ropes, and two supporting telephone poles.

  Robert punched.

  It sounded like shotgun fire-three shells simultaneously blasted as wood cracked, bamboo fractured, and ropes snapped.

  The platform hitched and dropped.

  Fiona fell along with it and lost her focus. The bamboo floor rushed up and swatted her. She crumpled-hard-and bit her tongue. The edges of her vision blurred.

  She spit and shook her head to clear her confusion.

  Dust filled the air, but it no longer stank of sulfur.

  She shakily stood and saw Robert dragging two Team Falcon boys away by their feet.

  Eliot dropped down, too, and helped by picking up and carrying off one of the unconscious girls.

  Fiona grabbed the nearest limp body, a boy, and pulled him by his armpits to the relative safety of the grass-far enough from the jungle gym so if it blew up there was a decent chance they wouldn’t all get incinerated.

  Mitch, Amanda, and Jeremy and Sarah (both covered in black splotches) appeared as well, and got the remaining members of Team Falcon away from the danger.

  Fiona checked the pulse of the boy at her feet. It was weak, but steady. Would there be brain damage?

  How could Mr. Ma do such a dangerous thing?

  Robert started mouth-to-mouth, and got one boy breathing again.

  The other Falcon team members groaned, threw up, and slowly regained consciousness.

  “That was too close,” Eliot whispered.

  Jeremy glanced at his wristwatch. “Saving these folk be all well and good,” he murmured, “but there be three minutes. We can still get the flag.”

  A gunshot cracked through the air.

  The arcs of water and fire on the obstacle course stopped and only swirls of smoke and fog remained.

  Mr. Ma strode onto the field. He clicked his stopwatch, made two marks on his clipboard, and then announced: “That is time.”

  Fiona approached him. She felt dizzy again, her feet uncertain. Maybe she’d gotten a lungful of that gas. . but something definitely felt wrong.

  “Mr. Ma, there has to be a mistake,” she said. “We have three minutes.”

  “I do not make such mistakes, Miss Post.” He narrowed his dark eyes to slits.

  “No, sir,” Fiona said. There was no way she was going to say he was wrong. She glanced back to Jeremy, who looked incredulous, shook his head, and pointed emphatically at his watch.

  Jeremy might have been sneaky enough to set back his watch, but there was no way he’d be stupid enough to try such a simple lie on Mr. Ma.

  “Could you please check again?” Fiona asked.

  Mr. Ma stared at her. It felt just like when he stared at her that first day in the Force of Arms class-when he’d fought her.

  “No,” he said.

  “That’s not fair!” one of the boys from Team Falcon said. “We had a perfect record.”

  “Had.”

  Fiona understood then what felt so wrong. The rules of gym class were brutal, but in their own way fair (even if Mr. Ma was apparently cheating). The rules stated that if neither team reached their flags before time ran out, then both teams tallied a loss.

  A loss for Falcon was no big deal. A little wounded pride. They were still at the top of the rankings.

  But for Team Scarab, a loss bumped them below the passing/failing cut off.

  She turned to the teammates. Robert glared after Mr. Ma. Eliot shook his head and wandered back to the locker room. Amanda slumped to the ground. Mitch ignored them, and kept helping some of his still-groggy classmates. Jeremy and Sarah crossed their arms and looked at Fiona as if this were her fault.

  It was. She was their team captain, after all. It had been her decision to save lives instead of going for some stupid flag.

  And what if she had gone for the flag? She’d bet Team Falcon would have died. . and that gas would have ignited and blown them all to smithereens.

  There had to have been a way to win, though.

  Or did there? What if Mr. Ma was just trying to kill them?

  There was only one thing she knew for sure: They had to win the next match, or they would flunk out of Paxington.

  SECTION VI. DITCHING

  58 PERFORMANCE

  Eliot stood on the sidelines. He was scared. There was no shame to admit that. . not under these circumstances.

  He’d faced Lords from Hell, stood up to a gigantic crocodile, the Hordes of Darkness, and a mother who was Death incarnate, and put up with a sister whose abrasive personality was probably what she used to cut through high-carbon steel.

  This was different.

  This was a live audience.

  Eliot had watched the other students go first. It had all been arranged by Ms. DuPreé. One by one, they were supposed to go onstage between sets at the Monterey Jazz Festival. . in front of people who knew music and had just listened to professional signers, jazz quartets, and the most inspirational folk singers tha
t Eliot had ever heard.

  Eliot reread the program clutched in his sweaty hands: “Hear California’s finest young musicians sing and play their souls out for you!”

  Eliot hoped that was a metaphor. Although given the way things worked at Paxington, he wasn’t taking anything for granted.

  “Practicing alone is one thing, playing for your classmates another,” Ms. DuPreé had told them on the bus ride out. “But when you stand in front of a real audience-you’re going to sink or fly, baby.”

  So here Eliot was: On a sunny day in the wings of the open-air theater, waiting to go on next-just him, about a billion stage lights. . and three thousand people in the audience.

  Ms. DuPreé stood next to him and listened, as entranced as he, to Sarah Covington onstage, singing what she’d described as a “torch song.”

  Sarah wore a dress as red as her hair. The fabric was tight and sparkled. A bass and piano accompanied her as she lamented about a man who had treated her so badly, but he could make her shiver with pleasure, and how she still loved him.

  It was sad. It felt real to Eliot, as if Sarah had been through it all and still wanted to love this guy-even if it was a doomed relationship.

  She held one last long note, reached out to the audience, and hung her head.

  The crowd gave her a thunderous round of applause. Many stood.

  When she looked up, though, all traces of her agony had vanished and she smiled and waved to her admirers.

  There were hoots and yells for an encore.

  Ms. DuPreé leaned close to Eliot so he could hear her over the noise, and said, “That is how it is done. She gave them everything, lost nothing, and got something more precious than gold.”

  Eliot shot her a quizzical look back.

  “Her moment in the spotlight, completely loved by them all,” Ms. DuPreé said as if this answered everything.

  Eliot examined the audience and saw they did love Sarah at that moment.

  He was also certain that clapping and love could easily turn to disgust and boos if they didn’t like someone’s performance.

  Sarah bowed once more, and then exited the stage. The curtain fell behind her. She sauntered to him and Ms. DuPreé, all sparkles and grinning. She smelled of perspiration and Brandywine perfume.