by Lan Chan
Somewhere in the arena, Daisy called out my name. I blocked it out as Callum’s foot came crashing down close to my head. I forced myself to roll away even though I wanted to curl up into a ball and throw up. The ringing in my head wouldn’t stop, and Callum just kept coming. All I could do was evade until I got a chance to find my equilibrium again.
He did his best to stop that from happening, and it was working. The pain in my head was making my movements sluggish. Another hit jabbed me in the ribs causing my airways to lock up. I gasped for breath and went down, clutching at my head to keep from getting injured. Everything else I could live without.
Or so I thought. When the edge of his heel smacked into my thigh, the pain was so sharp I did curl. At the same time, I grabbed onto his ankle and yanked. He refused to go down. In that instant his mind opened and pity radiated between us.
The sentiment was so caustic, I let go without a plan for recovery. The only plan now was to crawl away while the crowd chanted for him to finish me off.
The Switch took a nanosecond to take hold of me. There were few things that grated on my nerves as much as pity. I wasn’t especially proud, but I hated when somebody looked at me and didn’t think I could survive. Call it years of having that look thrown at me by Mum, but I just couldn’t take it.
The next time he came at me, I flipped over onto my back and swept his legs out from underneath him. The crowd laughed at my pathetic attempt at recovery. It wasn’t strength I was going for. It was skin on skin contact. All I needed was that split second to let him see into my mind. My fear of losing flooded out with my thoughts, along with an indication of what my next move would be.
The problem with the plan I’d just conjured up was that I would need to allow him to kick my ass a bit longer. I wasn’t good at taking one for the team.
Callum swept my legs aside like they were dry sticks. As I rolled away, I got back up onto my knees. It allowed me to block the next punch he threw. When I tried to strike out again, he was ready because I’d shown him what I was going to do. Rather than feint, Callum allowed the punch. It landed like a fly swatter on the ass of a rhino. If I wasn’t under so much scrutiny, I would have reinforced the EK to give me strength. But I had a sneaking suspicion that this fight was about more than just a madman getting his jollies. The Shadowman would be watching me, and I couldn’t allow him to figure out the limits of my power. I would have to somehow win this without my esper gifts. For the first time ever, I was praying for a miracle.
Callum’s counter-punch was more than I could stand. My stomach contracted. I stumbled backward and into the ropes. The crowd held its breath as my gag reflex started to wobble. Maybe if I threw up and Callum stepped on it, he’d trip and hit his head.
He was nothing but a shoulder in my peripheral as he came straight for me again. My brain screamed at me to move. I did so just in time, allowing him to catch hold of my arm as I planted another thought.
Callum pulled me forward, thinking that he would finish me off with some jujitsu on the mat. Instead, I came at him with the full force of my remaining energy. I coiled my arm around his throat. He thought I was going to try and constrict, but I kicked out his legs so that he went down. Unfortunately, he dragged me with him. We landed side by side on our backs. Knowing I couldn’t allow him to get on top, I pushed up as we fell. He tried to do the same. He caught hold of my bleeding arm. I screamed as his calloused hand clawed at broken flesh. The blood still seeping from the wound made it difficult for him to keep contact. Shoving out from underneath with my legs, I lifted them to my chest and then jabbed my heels into the side of his shoulder.
While he was distracted, I wrapped my right leg over his chest, my left leg across his throat. He tried to elbow me with his left arm, but from the floor, there was no power in his hit. I grabbed his arm with both of mine and pulled it back over the thigh pressed against his neck.
“Forfeit!” I told him. He bucked underneath me, almost coming loose from my grasp. There was only a limited amount of time I could hold this position. “Forfeit, or I break the arm!”
He grabbed my big toe before I could register his intent. Bones snapped at the same time. I screamed as excruciating pain rippled up past my ankle and shot through to my thigh. At the angle I held him, I didn’t need much strength. He thrashed as I broke his arm in two places. The only thing I could hear over the crowd as they gasped was the gargled sound his throat made.
My body shuddered, but I clamped down on the pain. It should come as no surprise that I’ve had a lot of practice fighting through pain. My mum had zero sympathy for whining if it was my fault that I got injured. As Callum slumped and clutched at his useless limb, I dragged myself up. I pushed and turned so that I was sitting on his chest. With all my might, I slammed my fist down repeatedly into his jaw.
If I were in my right mind, I would have noticed that he wasn’t moving after the third punch. But my brain was clouded with pain and fury, and I continued to rain blows even after they became ineffectual.
Somebody grabbed me on either side of my shoulders. I struck out, trying to hit them too. It wasn’t until I was clear away from where Callum lay, and he was lifted off the stage, that I realised I’d won.
All of a sudden, Daisy was beside me. Her face was wet with tears. She swept the hair out of my eyes. The referee tried to get me to stand. All I could think of was the static that wouldn’t allow me to feel anything outside of my own mind.
“Turn it off,” I said. Thinking I was trying to address the crowd, the emcee pushed the microphone in front of me. “Turn that goddamned anti-psi tech off.”
It would have been a lot more impressive if I didn’t fall back on my ass seconds later.
14
One of the guards helped me out of the ring. Daisy appeared and flitted around as I limped towards the dressing rooms. Naveen showed up too. I expected elation but received solemn concern.
“Who will tend to your foot?” he asked me, like I was in charge. In case he hadn’t noticed, these people didn’t seem to care too much about whether or not we lived or died. Still, it didn’t stop me from shouting: “Where’s the doctor?”
“I think he’s with Callum,” Daisy said.
“Oh.” Right. Now I remembered. Callum was in much worse shape than me. Even though the fight was over, the guards still wouldn’t allow Daisy and Naveen to come with me into the dressing room.
“But...” Daisy started to protest. I wasn’t really in the mood for company right now anyway. I grabbed her arm to keep her still.
“Go to the office and see if you can get your money,” I told her. “If not, go home and I’ll come see you as soon as I can.”
“You can’t walk that far,” she said.
“I know.”
“How will you get home?”
I shrugged. I’d find a way somehow. “Just go.” The last of my adrenaline was wearing off. My toe was killing me. Without assistance, I hobbled back into the dressing room. It was empty. No Callum. No doctors.
Footsteps behind me alerted me to another person. When I turned, Jacko approached. “Didn’t think you had it in you, kid,” he said. “But he knew all along.”
Before I could ask after Callum or the doctor, Jacko lunged forward and stuck a needle into the side of my neck. My mind scrambled as I tried to grapple for him. The world turned dark and I felt myself falling.
I heard the voices well before anything else registered. “Are you insane?” a female spoke through a voice moderator. “She’s an EK. Her body reacts differently to sedatives. She might very well be awake right now for all we know.”
“Then we’d better calm ourselves,” the Shadowman said. They all seemed to love this voice moderation technology. He must have a posse of paranoid people around him. It took me a while to notice why the woman’s voice felt off even though it was moderated. When the click of a landline phone depressed, I realised it was because she was coming through to us on a speaker.
“Wake her,” the Shado
wman said.
Footsteps thudded around me. My eyes fluttered open.
“No need,” the man I recognised as the doctor said. “It appears that she’s woken on her own.”
Thankfully, the space I’d woken up in was well-lit. Not by ceiling lights but by the yellow glow of street lights and the occasional flash of a hover drone overhead. A chill kissed the side of my face.
“Why are we on a roof?” I asked. The grogginess had begun to wear off. The woman on the phone had done her homework. My EK was like a self-charging battery. It was harder to sedate me and keep me under. I’d never been to the hospital, but I tried to take painkillers once and they did absolutely nothing. One day I’d have to make friends with another EK and see if we could trade notes. My stomach rumbled. One of the guards tossed me a couple of energy bars.
“Thanks. Where am I?”
I tore the wrapper off the first bar with my teeth and chowed down. It was gone in five seconds flat. A minute later, so was the other.
“Where do you think you are?” the Shadowman’s voice came from behind me. “Don’t turn around.”
Pushing myself up onto my elbows, I looked down to find that I was once again modest, with a white shirt that was still too big but enough to hide my boobs. My right foot was bare. Someone, presumably the doctor, had set the bone in my toe and bandaged it up. When my heel hit the concrete roof, the pain was just a dull ache. Thank goodness. That would prove useful in my attempt to get home from here.
I hobbled over to the railing. It came up to my waist. Before I even had to look down, I knew where we were. To my left was the bridge built before the Reset to allow the overland trains to pass without interrupting traffic. On my right, a couple of paces down, were a few stores that included an ice cream shop Dad and I went to every now and again. There was even a pet store and a cafe.
“We’re at the edge of the Row,” I said. “That still doesn’t answer the question of why I’m here. And where’s my mum. And my friends. Where’s their money?”
I might not be able to see him, but the telepathy made it simpler to understand when people were exasperated with me. I threw out my probe just for the pure feeling of being able to. It came up against wall after wall of static amidst the minds down on the sidewalk. The horizon was lighting up in the muted orange of dawn. The stores were only just opening up. There were espers down there. After what I’d experienced tonight, I stayed away.
One of the guards walked behind me. “Your friends have their money,” the Shadowman said. “Enough so that the father will be able to buy his legal status.”
“Good.”
“Is it?” he asked. “When one leaves, another arrives to fill his place. The city is crawling with them.”
“And you do so much to exploit them,” I said.
There was that soulless laugh again. I gulped. “I am the King,” he said. “I don’t bother myself with the plight of a single person versus the governing of the whole.”
“All I hear are excuses. Where’s Callum?”
“Who?”
I almost stamped my foot in frustration. Luckily, I remembered last minute that I was injured. “The man I fought against.”
“Ah. He’s being taken care of. I have a use for him.”
I breathed a little easier. Over in the distance, my eyes tracked two idiots walking on top of the train tracks.
“You don’t do yourself any favours trying to make friends with everyone you meet.”
“You sound just like my mother,” I said.
There was no laugh this time. Obviously, he didn’t think I was very funny. “Join me.”
Back to this again. “No.”
“Why?”
This time, I forgot and did turn around. He was too steeped in shadow for me to even catch a glimpse of his face. “Because as you might have noticed, I’m not good at playing the role of lackey.” I cast my gaze towards the six guards on the roof.
“There is more to the Kings than mindless obedience.”
“Not in my experience.” Now I was just talking out of my ass. Gabe wasn’t a follower by any stretch. But lots of his colleagues were.
“Do not compare me to Edward Blake.”
Right. So he knew of my connection to Gabe and the City Square King. It wouldn’t surprise me if he knew where I lived too.
“I didn’t say a word,” I said. One of the guards approached me with a tablet in his hands. “What’s this?”
“You said you wanted to see your mum.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Turn it on.”
I did so, my hands trembling. The screen lit up to reveal a pre-loaded video. My finger hovered over the play button. I didn’t know if I really wanted to do this. But what else had I survived this night for?
The screen panned out to a grainy picture of Mum. Her cropped black hair and dark eyes were like a punch in the gut.
“You think you can intimidate me?” she said. “Think again.” The words that he’d played in the arena stole the fight from me. I slumped back down on the bench I’d woken up on. My back bent forward. I rested my kneed on my elbows, engrossed in the video.
Mum stood in the exact same position I’d been in tonight. In that glass boardroom surrounded by guards. Though I couldn’t see the Shadowman in the video because the camera was pointed in the direction of his line of sight, his voice remained the same.
“I wouldn’t presume to make any assumptions about you,” he said. “But I would appreciate it if you would do the same for me.”
“I want the flash drive,” Mum said.
“I’m not in a position to give away sensitive information.”
She struck as quickly as she’d always done in our sparring sessions. Her code name was Raven. The harbinger of death. Two men went down before the rest even realised what was happening. She might not be an esper, but she was a crack shot with a gun. My focus rested on the grim lines of her expression as she dispatched guards. Not for a second did she allow a sliver of emotion to overtake her.
During a mission, there was nothing more important than focus. Whatever was on the flash drive, she was so intent on retrieving it that she didn’t see the figure approaching from off-screen but something must have alerted her. Faster than any other human could anticipate, Mum spun around. The black-clad woman stayed in the shadows but her hand swept out in a grand gesture. The gun in Mum’s hand went flying.
In its place, a knife whistled through the air at the esper. It caught her across the side of the face. When she arched her head up, the esper’s irises were a startling green, though the rest of her face was covered in a black mask.
The momentary distraction gave Mum enough time to arm herself with the gun of a fallen guard. I could only imagine her in the ring. What happened next tore a scream from my throat. While Mum was focused on shooting the esper, another came up behind her. If she hadn’t been ambushed, her ability to resist could have stopped it. I saw the very second when her back straightened.
Her body turned rigid. She shuddered. Even in the midst of being pushed by an Enforcer, she was still fighting it. Never before had I seen an Enforcer have to work so hard to implant a thought into the mind of a Basic. But even a Basic with Mum’s control was still a Basic. She raised the gun to her temple.
“No!” I exhaled. The pop was barely a sound in the speakers. It reverberated in my mind all the same. The tablet slipped from my fingers and smashed onto the roof.
“No.” It was the only word I could say. It wasn’t possible. My mother was indestructible. Two espers weren’t enough to bring her down.
“No.” I was on my feet.
15
“Be careful how you choose to proceed,” Shadowman said.
I didn’t choose to do anything. Without realising I’d even made the command, every anti-psi bracelet they wore popped and sizzled. They dropped to the ground, useless.
The guard closest to me stepped forward. When he touched me, the EK flared to life. His
whole body spasmed. All I had to do was nudge him and he sprang five feet into the air and landed with a hard thud. He didn’t move. Alive or dead? I didn’t care. My feet inched me closer to the Shadowman.
“Why?” I croaked.
“She pushed too hard,” he said. “I pushed back.” The click of new bracelets snapped into place. They really didn’t know what they were up against. “With me or against me. Those are your two choices.”
“When I’m done with you, they’ll have to make two choices as well,” I said. “Coffin or incinerator.”
It was definitely the wrong thing to say. All around me, triggers cocked. I tried to reach for them with my telepathy and couldn’t grab hold.
“Plastic,” the Shadowman said. I ground my teeth. “You didn’t think we’d come unprepared.”
“Then shoot me,” I said. “Because I’m not going to stop coming until I’m dead.”
“So impulsive,” he said. “Just like your mother.”
“Shut up!”
“Wasn’t she, though? But before you go and throw your life away, don’t you want to know what flash drive she was after?”
“I don’t care.”
“Of course you do. You entered a bare-knuckle fighting competition on the off chance that you could find her. Now isn’t the time to pretend you don’t care.”
The edge of my anger was starting to blend into hysteria. My mind raced with all the contingencies I could think of. If I lunged for him, they’d shoot me. If I went for them, they’d shoot me. Every scenario ended up with me getting shot. What frightened me was how little that thought scared me. Aunt Jenny’s face floated up in my vision.
“Breathe through it, love,” she always said. “You get angry, and your mind triggers. I know that’s how she’s taught you, but it’s not who you have to be. Breathe.”