Jonathan turned back to where he had stood a moment earlier and saw a metallic skeleton, half-buried in the black sands. He’d tripped over a large femur-like bone protruding from the surface. As he looked over the beach, he saw that the skeleton wasn’t alone. This place, if anything, was a massive Feroxian graveyard.
“Did she kill all these?” he asked.
“No,” Heyer replied, nodding in the direction the woman had run. “Not alone, at least.”
The woman was crouching at the edge of the lake, searching its depths, when a man’s face came out of the water. Upon seeing her, the man rushed from where he’d been hiding beneath the surface.
“Come, Jonathan,” Heyer said, stepping toward the pair.
As they drew closer, he saw that the man’s bearded face was also painted in blood. The pair wore strange armor, though Jonathan recognized its origin. They had fashioned it using a primitive twine to strap plates of Feroxian skin across their bodies—materials they had likely scavenged from the very corpses he was stepping over. The woman carried a sharpened bone fashioned into a spear, and a smaller hand blade made in the same manner. The man carried two crude axes; the handles were both made of Feroxian bone as well, but the heads were chiseled out of large chunks of the black rock from the terrain behind them. They both dropped their weapons before reaching one another.
What followed left Jonathan feeling as though he were a voyeur intruding on long-separated lovers. The two slowly knelt in the sand, each gently holding the other’s face in their hands. They stared as though they desperately sought to be lost in each other’s eyes. A peace settled over them—heavy burdens of worry and fear dropped away to be replaced with relief and joy the longer they looked upon one another. They spoke, and though Jonathan couldn’t understand the words, he had no trouble knowing their meaning.
I feared I would never see you again.
He only watched a short time before turning away. This was not a moment they would have chosen to share with anyone if they had been given a choice. “Who were they?” he asked.
Heyer’s mouth opened to answer, but a familiar sphere of light drew their attention before he spoke. The gates, opening far off in the center of the cloud dome. The portal manifested above one of the smaller plateaus of rock, its light casting everything it touched in red. He heard the couple behind him. They had begun to scream in an agony that few would recognize by sound alone: the burn of activation, driving their body to the most primitive state of expression. No matter what passage of time separated these two from him, he felt their pain as his own. He wished he could give them mercy from it—but all he could do was shut his eyes and wait for it to end.
Eventually they stilled, and a flickering of light came to life in their chests. Jonathan opened his eyes to see the lines glowing bright beneath the man’s skin and saw they were identical to his own. The woman’s implant had come to life as well. However, though Jonathan recognized the design from Rylee’s implant, they were not the same. The power radiating off this woman was bright, the energy flowing through her as strong as the male’s, nothing like the faint blue glow he’d seen beneath Rylee’s skin inside The Never.
“These two…” Heyer said, “were the last of the bonded pairs.”
“They haven’t entered The Never, have they? All these Ferox bodies wouldn’t be here if they had,” Jonathan said. “So, what is this place?”
“This record nearly predates my lifespan, Jonathan. What you are seeing happened many millennia ago. The footage is from the Foedrata’s Arena.”
Jonathan felt a sickening inside of him as he began to understand. He turned to watch as the portal’s passenger arrived. The red light grew agitated, the currents of static building into arcs as the shadow of a Ferox took shape within. The sharp, white light still forced his eyes shut despite the distance. When he opened them, he only caught a glimpse of the massive black beast as it leapt off the plateau.
He heard the murmurs behind him—the hushed tones of frightened human whispers. He turned to watch, and saw the pair were no longer on the ground. Their eyes failed to hide their fear. They held one another again, the glow of energy bright between them, until the woman pushed away, decisive and abrupt. The man grimaced because he knew she was right. It was time.
Jonathan watched the woman force the fear out of her eyes, saw her face harden into stone. The male, slower to get control of his fear, seemed to draw strength from her—his face dropped the look of self-pity for one of shared determination. She nodded once, sharply, and raised a hand up between them, violently pulling her fingers into a fist that shook her entire forearm. Her snarl broke the silence, and the man returned it. Then she tore away from his gaze, the strength of the device giving her grace and speed as she bound in the direction of the Ferox.
“This arena was where the Foedrata watched one species fight for its life against another. It was a sick entertainment, but one that their beliefs told them they had every right to,” Heyer said.
Heyer pointed Jonathan’s attention to the male. The man had watched the woman set out. Now, he paced impatiently as he kept an eye on her movements. Finally, when it appeared he could not bear waiting any longer, he took off in the same direction after her.
“Most species brought here to be pitted against one another were novelties, never capturing the attention of Foedrata for long.” Heyer paused. “Human beings were an exception.”
Heyer watched as the man became smaller in the distance. Jonathan took a step, assuming they were meant to follow, but Heyer placed a hand against his chest to halt him.
“Unlike any other species in the history of the Arena, this event, in particular, was watched universally amongst the Foedrata. They called it the Battle of the Bonded Pair—it was a spectacle in short supply,” Heyer said. “There were similar events, human males enhanced to face the younger Ferox, but the bonded pair were created to face the Alphas.”
Jonathan, thinking Heyer had finished, tried to take a step forward to follow the man once more, but again, Heyer stopped him.
“The Foedrata had no need of chains to enslave the Ferox. The Feroxian beliefs had already been manufactured to ensure the species’ servitude. Every Ferox had been raised to understand they were their gods’ chosen people, that the males of their species were their gods’ divine weapons, called to the gates to fight a battle of good and evil.
“The Ferox you fight today are still of this mind, and they take great honor in serving their gods’ will—the Borealis’ will. The Arena on the other side of the gates is a sacred battleground to them, where they prove their loyalty by slaying the abominations of existence.”
“Abominations?” Jonathan asked.
“Those that the Ferox have been told were never meant to exist within their gods’ great plan. You see, Feroxian vocabulary is not as nuanced as Mankind’s. There’s little difference in their understanding of the words abomination and challenger.
“In the creation story they have been indoctrinated with, the Ferox were once an abomination as well. In the beginning, their gods approached the early Ferox and offered to alter their nature, to turn them from abominations to a chosen people with a place in the divine plan. The gods required the Ferox serve them, by being their divine weapon against those abominations that refused to be altered to fit the divine plan. In exchange, they were told that the Ferox would one day be delivered to the promised land, where they would never need to fear extinction again. The abominations they kill inside the Arena are those the Borealis convinced them refused to be altered, abominations who challenged the will of their gods—who have refused the divine plan.
“Defeating these challengers was not a hard sale to the Ferox. They were rewarded for doing something that their gods had made it their nature to do regardless. Their victories against each abomination not only pleased their gods, but allowed them to achieve fertility and continue their lineage,” Heyer said. “If you look around this beach, you will only find Ferox remains, because the
Ferox took their human trophies back to their mates.
“A Ferox reaches full maturity through repeated sexual interactions, Jonathan. The males’ development has three puberty-like stages, the first is similar to that in humans, beginning as a child comes of age. The other stages are set in motion when hormonal levels reach a threshold. This triggers the change from the Green and tailed form of their adolescence, to the more formidable Red. The changes are physical, but they have social rewards. Males are given higher esteem within the species as they mature through the stages, their physical form identifying their rank in the hierarchy. However, leading such violent lives by necessity, few ever reach final maturity, limiting the supply of full-grown Ferox males for the Arena.”
“You mean the supply of Alphas,” Jonathan said.
Heyer nodded. “The Alpha Ferox possess a strength and prowess in battle that makes achieving their reproductive state far more difficult. It also made their battles the most entertaining of spectacles to the Foedrata. Typical human male combatants, implanted with standard devices, were seldom strong enough to put up the necessary fight to properly stimulate an Alpha to reach fertility.”
In the distance, the guttural growl of the Alpha roared and Heyer turned his gaze toward the battle.
“The Foedrata had a few solutions to this, the most popular of which was the bonded pair,” Heyer said.
“We aren’t going to follow them?” Jonathan asked. “The bonded pair fighting the Alpha—it isn’t what we’re here to see?”
Heyer turned back to Jonathan, his serious expression highlighting the importance of what would follow. “No,” he said. “I have no desire to refresh my memory of it. I understand why you may think it educational to see, but I would spare you.”
Jonathan hesitated only a moment before his curiosity heeded the warning in Heyer’s eyes. The alien had been alive for thousands of years, fought in wars, and seen atrocities Jonathan could only imagine. Jonathan knew what it meant to witness terrible things, and how they changed a person, for better or worse, in ways they could not always control. It wasn’t often one received a warning before exposing themselves to such things, and he didn’t doubt the mercy Heyer was offering him now.
“Can you tell me…” Jonathan asked, “how they died?”
Heyer sighed, but nodded. “The bonded pair know from experience that the woman is faster than the man. So, she takes the lead, exposes herself, and pulls the Alpha into a long chase to drain its strength. Meanwhile, the man stalks them from behind. She lures the Alpha to a quarry where the contours of the land and narrow stone passages give their smaller size the greatest advantage.
“The plan has been effective for this pair in the past, and seems to work initially. The Alpha is caught off-guard and wounded, forced on the defensive. Unfortunately, the man sees victory early, misjudges their advantage, and attempts a killing blow.
“The Alpha is patient and cunning, not incapable of bluffing—as such he is not nearly as drained or injured as he appears. He foresees the male’s actions. The battle turns rapidly when the Alpha’s counterattack breaks bones, badly crippling one of the man’s legs. The woman, desperate to save him, intervenes. She puts herself between them to draw the Ferox’s focus on to her.” Heyer sighed. “Come, Jonathan. I will tell you the rest below.”
“Below?”
“Yes. Unforgivable as this all may seem, this is only the surface of what took place here.”
Rylee didn’t care for the emotions feeding into her thoughts. They were jealous and possessive, and she had never been either. She wasn’t proud of it, but the moment Leah stepped into the garage, she felt that she wouldn’t mind seeing her fall down the stairs.
What Hayden had told her about the next-door neighbor had painted an absurdly inaccurate picture in her mind. In the picture, Leah had been a short girl—or at least noticeably shorter than Rylee herself. She’d had curly red hair and freckles. Her outfit had consisted of an oil stained jumpsuit, half-opened to reveal a Led Zeppelin T-shirt. In hindsight, Rylee realized she’d unconsciously pictured an adult orphan Annie with an unusual arc-welding hobby and a classic rock T-shirt collection.
For a moment, she wondered if Hayden’s description had been intentionally misleading, but realized pretty quickly that he’d really only neglected the superficial details. Rylee had done all the misleading on her own. She’d filled in the blanks with what she hadn’t realized were hopeful assumptions.
The real Leah—well, if Hayden had claimed she was Cindy Crawford’s daughter, Rylee might have believed him. The girl’s perfection rubbed her the wrong way. If this woman wore the oil stained jumpsuit from Rylee’s imagination, she look like a runway model who wasn’t afraid to get her hands dirty. If she listened to classic rock while melting steel into art, then—dammit—it just made her annoyingly interesting. It was like everything about her was an alluring contradiction to expectation.
Rylee’s smile left her, and she looked away as Leah stepped down the stairs. She suddenly hated that she was wearing a man’s tank top and that her hair had been in a helmet all day. More than all that, she hated that she was thinking about such things.
“I was just telling Rylee about how we live next door to a real-life metal artist,” Hayden said, smiling. “You’ll have to let us drop by your garage so she can see the sculptures some time.”
Hayden’s unexpected request to invite themselves over startled her. She had wanted to see the art a moment ago, had told Hayden the same, but that had been before she’d seen the artist. “Only if it isn’t any trouble,” Rylee said shyly.
Leah smiled and her face was warm and friendly. “Oh, I love your accent, Rylee,” she said, holding out her hand. “You two can come by anytime. Just promise you’ll talk my ear off when you do.”
“I know, right?” Hayden said. “I’m considering moving to Brazil.”
“Thank you,” Rylee said as she took Leah’s hand.
Leah smiled and held Rylee’s eyes as she smiled back politely and shook Leah’s hand. The exchange felt a bit long, though Rylee figured she was the only one noticing such things.
“Hayden,” Leah said. “Any chance you heard from Jonathan? I had hoped he would be home by now, but he seems later than usual.” Leah’s eyes didn’t actually leave Rylee as she asked the question. She wondered if the awkward feeling it gave her was real or imagined.
“I texted him a few times, but he hasn’t gotten back to me,” Hayden said. “You try calling him?”
“No, we had a… strange… evening last night,” Leah said. “I thought it would be better if I caught him in person.”
Rylee blinked. She felt the urge to narrow her eyes, curious to know what the woman meant by “strange,” though she kept it from her face. “Well, join the club. I’ve been waiting to talk to him as well,” Rylee said. “It was a strange evening.”
Leah studied her again, and Rylee was beginning to lose any doubt that it was in her imagination.
“Right,” Hayden said, drawing the word out and looking between them like he had missed something. “Um, I’ll try him again. He’s probably just working late and can’t check his phone.”
Finally, Leah seemed to drop the stare. If Rylee knew her better, she’d have thought the woman looked—relieved? She smiled at Hayden. “Yeah, probably.”
Then the side door opened, and everyone turned to see Collin’s head pop inside. “Operation Mission of Mercy is a go.”
“Isn’t saying operation and mission redundant?” Hayden asked.
“Operation of Mercy doesn’t sound right.”
“No, it would just be Operation Mercy or the Mission of….” Hayden shook his head. “Never mind.”
“Well, anyway, has anyone heard from Tibbs? He isn’t replying to my texts.”
“Yeah,” Hayden said. “Apparently, that’s a thing today.”
Leah looked to each of them, finally raising a curious eyebrow. “So what is Operation Mission of….” She grinned teasingly at Hayden
. “I mean … what is the Mission of Mercy?”
“Rylee felt Jonathan needed an early birthday present,” Collin said.
“Oh?”
Rylee shrugged. “More like a thank-you for loaning me a bed to sleep in.”
She watched Leah fight the urge to flinch. She did almost manage it, only having given up a poorly timed blink at the mention of Jonathan’s bed. Leah’s mouth opened to say something then, but her phone vibrated before she spoke. She checked the message and sighed. “Well, it was good to meet you, Rylee,” she said. “I’ve got to run, but I’ll catch you all a little later.”
Hayden found himself scratching his head. It felt more like he’d just been the spectator of a staring contest than a conversation, though the confusion he felt had a certain familiarity.
He had two older sisters, and they had both lived at home until each had left for college. At times, he’d find himself in the middle of a conversation, suspecting that the words being exchanged had nothing to do with what was actually being discussed. Perhaps it was a tension in the air, maybe it was the body language, or maybe the faint detection of a passive-aggressive kindness. He could never put his finger on it.
On Heyer’s command, Mr. Clean returned them to the void. Jonathan experienced a moment of the previous disorientation before a corridor began to take shape around them. Lines recessed in the ceiling’s corners illuminated the space around them. The walls reminded Jonathan of polished hematite. They were sterile, smooth, seamless—seemed too perfect, as though brought into existence without a living hand taking part in their construction.
“We’re underneath the Arena?” Jonathan asked.
Heyer nodded. “The Arena itself is a massive environment projection. The bones of the Ferox were real, but the rest was artificial terrain for the combatants. What you saw above was a popular staging ground, for the Ferox and Human battles in particular, as it was designed to encompass a mix of atmosphere and geology from both species’ habitats. When Malkier and I first found the Arena, it was dormant—a massive dome projecting nothing. We knew its capabilities, but not its purpose. It was in these tunnels that we recovered the Foedrata’s records from the mainframe.”
The Never Paradox (Chronicles Of Jonathan Tibbs Book 2) Page 27