The idea scared Jet more than she could think about.
One thing she did know: if she stayed here long enough, she’d end up another house pet.
Whatever Laksri or Anaze were up to, or even Richter, it didn’t matter anymore. She had to get out of here. She had to find her brother and her mom in the skag pits. She probably had to go into hiding, since that might be the only way to side-step Richter.
She couldn’t let them take whatever remained of who she was.
It even occurred to her to try and strike a deal with Laksri.
She wondered if she might be able to appeal to his practical side, find something he wanted, something she could help him with, maybe. Maybe she could at least get him to talk to her, if she reminded him of the ways she could potentially make his life difficult. She wasn’t entirely superfluous to this little venture...at least, not yet. They still needed her. Her position in the Rings could be an advantage to them or an albatross, depending on how she played it. The same was essentially true of her relationship to Laksri himself.
Even so, she wasn’t stupid enough to think she wasn’t expendable. After all, what was one more human life, when all was said and done? No matter how popular Jet got in the Rings, memories were short, Nirreth as well as human.
Jet figured she needed to show them she could handle it. She needed them to see she could meet them at their level...that she could be a realist, too.
She’d try with Laksri on the way to Astet.
They were scheduled to accompany Anaze and his guards to the Retribution the very next morning. She would have three weeks with him on the ship, sharing the same sleeping quarters; he couldn’t possibly avoid her that entire time. Richter would be there, too, if she knew him at all. He wouldn’t want to leave her alone with Laksri that long. Anyway, even Richter couldn’t be that much of a monster, that he’d let his own son go to the gallows without him.
Trazen as much as told her he’d be going to Astet, too.
Shoving both Trazen and Laksri out of her mind for what felt like the hundredth time, Jet clenched her jaw, sweeping the sword in a quick arc, then twirling it in a neat circle at her side. The gesture constituted more of a nervous tic than anything.
It was one the crowd went crazy for, apparently, each and every time Jet did it.
Anaze told her that.
Forcing his face out of her mind, too, she twirled the sword again. It might distract them from her stalling, at least...and from her head not being in the game even half as much as it should be.
As she finished that twirl and sheathed the sword, Jet began to run.
She aimed for those houses in the valley, but continued to think through options as she bolted between vines and trees. She’d counted at least six of those black-clad soldiers following her, not twenty minutes earlier. They were pretty hard to miss, with long, jointed arms, knees that bent the wrong way and shoulders that rose high from the middle of their backs. They would probably look like insects, given the shape of their bodies, except for the thick brown fur covering the parts of their skin not covered in body armor. The only hairless part Jet saw lived in their nearly featureless faces. Those round faces and blank, lidless eyes made them look oddly like teddy bears, especially next to that dark fur. Truthfully, they kind of creeped her out. Especially the black lips that made them appear always to be smiling.
She needed to finish this damned thing.
She needed to finish this.
Pushing everything else from her mind, she used the cluster of trees as cover, skirting the outside edges of the sloping field. The idea of breaking cover didn’t appeal to her at all given the rifle-like guns she knew the mutant teddy-bears wielded. At least one in their army could shoot straight. He’d already come close to tagging her...twice...each time from sniper nests more than fifty meters from where she stood. The first time, Jet was saved by dumb luck. She’d decided to switch directions in mid-crawl, and he missed her when she jerked sideways.
The second time, she’d been saved by timing, too.
That time, the explosion she’d set to blow her way out of that cave obscured her well enough for her to hide in the smoke and debris. The bomb must have detonated a second before he fired. She ducked violently in the blast and the bullet only grazed her head. It still came close enough to a kill shot to scare her once she realized what the blood on her scalp was from.
It didn’t help that Jet had no idea if the sniper packed live rounds or virtual ones. She strongly suspected he was a real guy, given how good he was, but one of the ops controllers could be running his program by hand, too.
Either way, Jet didn’t want to break cover.
They’d designed this part of the run so she’d have to break cover though, unless she’s missed something. If she had, she didn’t have time to figure out what it was.
It crossed her mind that she might really lose this one.
She could lose her ranking entirely, along with her current undefeated title, right when she needed them most. She had to pull her head together, remember what would happen if she went back to being a nobody, with nothing to offer Richter or Laksri or any of them.
At the thought, she stopped dead in the undergrowth, breathing hard as she looked around. She gave herself one more minute to think. Something nagged at her. Some detail niggled the back of her mind, fighting to signal its significance. Still standing at the edge of the ring of trees overlooking the hill down to the mud brick village, Jet frowned.
Then, out of nowhere, it came to her.
Water.
She’d heard water earlier.
She’d dismissed it at the time. Now it occurred to her that she’d been thinking about the water as if this terrain actually existed, as if its boundaries had a physical component beyond the props. She’d also been thinking in terms of real-world odds, of probable physical attributes of that river, based on her experience of rivers in the real world. She’d been thinking that river had the same likelihoods and physical constraints as it would in the physical world.
But Jet wasn’t in the physical world. She was in the Rings.
She needed to assess the terrain from that perspective.
So far, she hadn’t been faced with any out-and-out suicide options. Undefeated or not, she wasn’t high enough yet in the rankings or lifetime points that they could start throwing unwinnables at her. Her gambling-addicted fans would revolt, if not riot outright.
Besides, it remained in the Rings operators’ best interest to get her high enough in the rankings that they could pit her against real-world challengers. That was where the real bang for buck lived with popular contestants, according to Richter. Once they could pair her against other champions, a human female...the first human female to run in the Rings...their viewership would skyrocket.
According to Richter, a lot of Nirreth (and humans, for that matter) only watched her now to get an idea of how she would do when she reached that level. They watched her like a horse being groomed for a big race, so they could decide whether or not they wanted to bet on her when the time came. Mostly, she was still riding the fumes of their surprise that she might make a viable candidate at all. The novelty factor wouldn’t help her if she crashed and burned before she got to the upper levels of the game.
The real appeal of the Rings remained, at heart, in blood sport.
So yeah, Jet thought, there had to be a way to win this.
She’d pushed her luck, letting the clock run down too far, spending too much time screwing around with that bridge and the cave and trying to second-guess her favorite sniper. Really, she’d been trying too hard to outsmart Trazen.
All of that went through her mind surprisingly quickly.
Turning around, she began vaulting up the hill, back in the direction of the thickest part of the jungle and the sound of running water. Now that she’d shifted her focus and perspective back to align with the goals of the Rings, Jet was reasonably sure the river would be her ticket inside.
The Nirreth loved seeing humans swim. The Rings operators, or “pullers,” usually included at least one stint in the water for Jet’s runs.
Yet another reason the river felt like her best bet.
The stream might go underground. Or, more likely, it might wind around to the other side of the wood, surfacing somewhere below the town. Jet couldn’t see the terrain on the other end of the slope, but she could tell the town edged closer to the forest on that side. Maybe close enough that she wouldn’t have to break cover for more than a quick sprint uphill to the nearest buildings.
Either way, the river might allow her to lose the sniper for long enough to get clear.
Well, unless Trazen really did want her out of the running; in which case, Jet was basically screwed no matter what she did.
Using the trees, still conscious that the sniper might be out there, Jet made her way back to the sound of running water. The sound got louder the longer she walked, until pretty soon the roar of foam and crashing water grew so loud she felt certain it couldn’t just be a river. Even if it sloped steeply downhill, filled with white-water rapids, the sound echoed too much, and made too much noise. It had to be a waterfall of some kind.
She still couldn’t see anything, which confused her at first.
Finally, when the sound of crashing water echoed so loudly that Jet felt like she must be standing right on top of it, she glimpsed the broad flow of white and green foam through the trees. The rocks under her feet vibrated slightly by the time she got a second look through the dense array of boulders, leaves and branches that obscured her path.
The flow of water looked strange to her, though. It seemed to spring out of a wide line of water-smoothed stones and what looked like volcanic rock, heading straight for her. Larger boulders pock-marked the foam, but not enough to explain the sound. She’d been right about the waterfall, but where was it?
Confused, Jet stared at that broad flow through the trees, then looked behind her, as if expecting it to reappear.
Something was off.
The river was too big to divert that much in only a few hundred yards.
Jet still couldn’t see the waterfall either, even though she’d walked a few more yards in the pause, albeit cautiously now. That could just mean the waterfall lived somewhere further back, higher up on the slope...maybe even around a bend in the water flow, or behind the rock formation she could see on either side of the small gully where she now stood. It was just strange, how much the gully looked like a riverbed itself, as if the stream had been diverted purposefully.
The sound had grown deafening in even those few extra steps. Jet could barely think past the noise, and it almost sounded like...
She stumbled, nearly fell.
She caught herself on a tree trunk.
Looking down, focusing past the dense clumps of ferns and long grasses by her feet, Jet suddenly experienced vertigo so dramatically she nearly lost her hold on the tree.
Below her, she saw nothing but open space.
White spray drifted up through the ferns that she now realized completely covered the edge of a steep, volcanic cliff. The feeling of space below her grew dizzying as she glimpsed the edge of the river where it fell off the lip of a massive crater, the opposite side of which Jet now stood.
The fact that she’d nearly walked right over that edge herself...and likely would have, if something hadn’t told her to look down when she did...paralyzed her for a second.
Her heart thudded in her chest as she took in the new environment.
Finally, the ticking clock forced her legs to move.
Lowering herself carefully to her knees, Jet crawled to the edge, holding her breath and part of the tree’s roots. Gripping the volcanic stone tightly in her hand, she got as close as she dared, then forced her way through the dense growth of ferns that blocked her view.
Once she had, she sucked in a breath, in spite of herself.
The sheet of volcanic rock just...ended.
A sheer drop met her eyes, one that looked close to seventy or eighty meters.
Jet took in the semi-circle of waterfall that crashed downwards at least two hundred meters from where she crouched. Between her and it, a dark, cavelike chasm shaped like a cauldron had been formed out of volcanic stone. Under and past the waterfall, the cave receded well past the crater’s edge on the opposite side, leaving much of the lake below the waterfall and deep in shadow.
Jet tried to get a sense of the size of it anyway, glimpsing areas where light struck the green-blue water, indicating more holes in the lava flow that exposed the underground lake to sunlight. It looked almost like a volcano had erupted here once, creating the natural formation. The crater’s mouth appeared to have pushed its way up through the earth and stone, creating a hole for the river to flow into after an eruption that must have taken place hundreds, if not thousands of years ago.
Jet had to remind herself that none of this was real, that there was no true geologic history to map for any of what she saw. Even so, the cauldron fascinated her, especially when she stared down at the green-blue water directly below where she crouched.
She’d been right. The stream did go underground.
It also flowed roughly in the direction of the town. Of course, with the darkness around the lake on the opposite side, Jet had to assume she would be going in blind, but still, the logic made sense. The river should take her close to the village. In the real world, that would be crazy-thinking, of course, but here, in the Rings...yeah, it made sense.
There was only one lake in the actual, physical arena of the Rings.
She knew where she was again...more or less. She didn’t know exactly which side of the man-made Rings lake she now crouched beside, but she could guess. Only five or six platforms stood above the real lake, meaning the one inside the game arena. One of those was accessible by a ramp that could be angled up and down at different heights, and that didn’t have a moving platform she would have noticed while walking. It was the tallest of the platforms, too, so could account for the immense drop from the rim of volcanic rock.
It tracked. She likely crouched on that very platform now.
Of course, the Rings pullers could simulate such drops without needing the arena’s layout to facilitate the sensations of falling. They could do it by merely using the sim-suit Jet wore.
She didn’t think that was the case here, though.
No, she was on the high platform. They wanted to see her jump this thing for real. Half the fun of the physical arena lay in the chances it afforded her for real injury, even death. The Rings Operators would definitely want to milk that for the audience if they could.
Knowing where she was in the real world reassured her somewhat, though.
Truthfully, it was worth the jump, just for that. She knew the landmarks around the lake like the back of her hand. Having access to the map again would make everything easier.
She’d already made up her mind, even before she straightened slowly to her feet. There could be a few decent point runs down there, even if she didn’t make it to the final objective before the clock wound down. She should be able to maintain a respectable spread, enough to avoid killing her overall average. Maybe even enough to keep her undefeated status with the Rings Board, if she hurried.
Anyway, it couldn’t hurt to put on a good show. The pullers liked throwing a few dramatic things in at the end of every run. To the Nirreth, water almost always constituted something dramatic. It made sense that they’d make something like this her only way into town, and therefore, the only way to nail the final objective.
Jet gripped the tree’s trunk tighter, leaning over the rim of volcanic stone. Moving her body out of the way of the tree and checking her feet to make sure her boots didn’t catch on any roots or stones, she took a deep breath.
...and threw herself off the edge of the cliff.
She didn’t try for anything fancy.
She jumped out to clear the cliffs (well, really, the arena platform), bu
t otherwise, let gravity handle the rest. Feet first, arms outstretched, maybe in some instinctive effort to create at least a minimum of wind resistance, she fell.
For a long moment, she fell in near-silence.
The crystal blue water rushed up to meet her. Jet took a breath...
...and hit the water’s surface like a bullet from a gun.
The impact itself didn’t hurt exactly, but it shocked her.
Pressure swam up around her, in the form of freezing cold water. The act of connecting with the water jarred her very bones, seemingly from her teeth down to her toes.
It also nearly tore the sword and its scabbard off her body.
Instead, it just jerked the bottom end of the sword away from her body, knocking the hilt into her head and forcing her body into an awkward somersault.
Luckily, there wasn’t much play in the leather harness around her shoulder, and the scabbard itself rose high enough to protect most of her skull. She managed to keep both the sword and scabbard strapped tightly to her body, but they still jerked her backwards when the drag hit, forcing water between her body and the weapon.
The feeling of being pulled under briefly panicked her, causing her to thrash around even before she’d stopped falling, but her swim strokes corrected that, if with more effort than usual. Jet felt the added weight as soon as she hit the bottom part of the arc, but by then, she’d also relaxed enough to appreciate being alive.
It only occurred to her in mid-fall that she might not be by the arena lake at all.
She might be falling onto some other part of the arena, something that would manifest in the virtual as rock, but that could be anything, in reality. They could have simulated water as a means of ending the match prematurely. The fall probably wouldn’t have killed her outside of the run, but it likely would have earned her a nice long visit to the Royals’ medical sanctuary under the water gardens.
All of that ran through her head in those moments of silence as she fell.
Alien Apocalypse: The Complete Series (Parts I-IV) Page 51