He turned around.
Around the edge of the monolith, the figure in the arena moved too, aping his movements.
“You’re controlling that thing?” I asked.
“I guess so,” said Carson. He lifted his hands, and clapped—and in the arena, the figure clapped too, in a perfect rendition of his movements.
“How are you doing that?” Heidi asked. “It’s just a headset.”
“It’s a headset made of stone,” said Borrick.
“Quickly,” said Tyran to his men. “To the other stations—”
But no sooner had Tyran and his men leaned forward to break into a sprint than a voice boomed, “PLAYER TWO HAS ENTERED THE ARENA.”
A figure on the opposite side of the arena stood. The lights crossing its body were a mirror image of those on the figure Carson controlled, but red instead of Carson’s blue.
Like Carson, it eyed its limbs—
“Borrick,” I growled.
“What?” said Alain, frowning.
“Not you,” said Heidi. “Daddy.”
Borrick's eyes flashed. “Oh. Yes.”
Wisconsin and Chet arrived at the next monolith in line first. They darted around the back to enter—
FOOM!
—and were blown backward with a flash of light. Limbs pinwheeled—they yelled—then landed hard on their backs, legs and arms akimbo.
“NO FURTHER COMPETITORS PERMITTED.”
“No further competitors?” Tyran echoed, looking skyward. “I demand you permit me access! Don’t you know who I am? I am Tyran Burnton—GOLDEN KING OF THE SKIES!”
“NO FURTHER COMPETITORS PERMITTED.”
“What’s happening?” asked Bub.
“I have no idea,” I said—
The other figures, those not currently occupied, vanished, leaving only Carson’s and Preston Borrick’s in an empty arena—an arena that now shuddered with vibrations. A circular platform rose from the base, Carson’s blue-lit figure to one side, and Preston’s red one at opposition. Up it went, the stone grinding—rails grew from the stone too, expanding upward like seeds sprouting at high-speed—
The new arena clunked into position.
A hologram lit in between Carson’s and Preston’s figures, a green circle comprised of lines, like something from TRON.
“YOUR PRIZE,” announced the voice.
“A tennis ball?” said Heidi, lip curling.
“THE LAST COMPETITOR STANDING WINS.”
“Last competitor standing?” I echoed.
Carson gasped. “We have to—”
The hologram vanished—and in its place grew two long bars, one blueish-white and the other a pale reddish color, pulsing to either side of the arena.
I gaped. “What the …?”
“Health bars,” said Carson. “We have to fight.”
I cursed. Grabbing for the headset, I started, “Carson, get out—”
He ducked away from me. In the arena, the blue figure mimicked him, swatting at an invisible assailant.
“Get out?” he said. “This is just like Street Fighter! I’ve been training for this my whole life!”
“Carson,” I began warningly—
No time for more. Three holographic lights, in the middle of the arena, began a countdown. A horn blared with each lit that illuminated, low—and then the fourth glowed a brilliant green, the horn lit brightly—the disembodied voice of an Antecessor announced, “FIGHT!”—and the blue and red figures flew.
18
Preston’s fighter leapt for Carson’s, fist raised—
My chest tightened—he was too slow—
But then Carson ducked, at the last possible moment. He thrust up a fist, cracking Preston’s fighter hard in the midriff—
Preston’s fighter buckled like the real Preston had felt it. And maybe he had—the weird, stone VR headset clearly tapped into each of their brains to have mimicked their actions without additional kit, like wrist or leg braces. He rolled, landing heavily on his side—
A fragment of stone broke off the fighter’s head. Overhead, the reddish-orange health bar shrunk—not far, maybe five percent or so.
Carson didn’t pause. His fighter surged forward, body crouched low—
He swung out a kick—
Preston caught his foot. He thrust up, pushing Carson backward—Carson jerked, tilted—then he twisted free, spinning his body in the air like a character from an action movie, though the real Carson was stationary—
“Dude!” Heidi breathed in admiration. “How are you doing that?”
“I told you,” said Carson, his fighter ducking and diving as Preston righted himself and swung a flurry of well-aimed, but evaded, punches. “This is just like Street Fighter. I’ve been playing it my whole life pretty much. This is like second nature to me!”
Preston’s fighter feinted left. Carson dodged it; but then Preston pistoned out a kick, aiming low for Carson’s fighter’s shin—
Carson lifted his leg. Preston’s kick sailed straight under—and then Carson cracked his fighter hard and square in the face, right where the fighter’s nose would be. It reeled back—that pain definitely had to be transmitted to Preston—and another notch was deleted from his health bar.
“Go on, lad,” Tyran cheered. Fists clenched, he was watching the fight with beady, penetrating eyes, like a football fan watching their team in the World Cup finals, looking for all the world as though his life depended on it. “Cheer for him, men!” Burnton's team let out a shout in unison, only adding to my suspicion that they may be clones.
Preston rose. He danced backward from Carson, putting a few meters of space between them.
They circled.
Carson’s elbows were tucked in toward his body. His knees were bent, just slightly, torso bowed low and primed to move. It was kind of unbelievable, actually, looking at him—a true fighter’s stance, practised to perfection. How was this the same Carson who I’d fought alongside since April? No flailing, no wild swiping punches or kicks, and nor had his fighter swung an invisible manbag, as was one of Carson’s signature moves.
Heidi watched with shining eyes, as Carson and Borrick circled—
Carson moved first this time.
He swept inward, feinting left and right, then left again—he thrust himself suddenly to the side, coming to within striking distance, as Preston lifted his arms to block—
Carson twisted. Pushing off one foot, his fighter leapt skyward, pirouetting like a ballet dancer—his leg sailed—
Preston ducked—
And Carson swung his leg down mid-kick, changing direction, and slammed it down on Preston’s head.
“CARSON!” Heidi squealed, her cheeks blazing red, eyes gleaming. She looked like she had barely caught herself from grabbing him round the shoulders and squeezing him.
Carson grinned under the headset. His own face was red too.
“This boy is incredible,” said Wisconsin.
“You’re destroying him, Carson,” said Bub.
“That is my father you’re talking about,” said Borrick, tone slightly flat. A pause. “But keep it up, won’t you?”
“I told you I could do this,” said Carson. “My high school held a Street Fighter tournament, once, as part of a game club. I got a trophy.” Preston leapt at him again, and Carson evaded with an easy sidestep. A fist sailed, but Carson did a kind of Matrix move and dodged that too.
“I’d love to be a fly on the wall over there,” muttered Borrick. “I bet he’s so pissed off.”
“That’s your dad,” I echoed, smiling at him.
“And he’s being taken down a peg,” said Borrick.
“Overdue, is it?”
“Long overdue,” he said, “yes.”
Preston’s health bar had dropped down to a little over half now. Carson’s hadn’t been dented.
Fragments of Preston’s fighter lay littered around the circular arena. The fighter’s head had been chipped all around, its blocky shape disrupted and crum
bled on the edges, like a building given over to nature’s reclamation. The same crumbling had broken down its arms and legs. A chunk was missing from its midriff, where Carson’s fist strike had landed.
Much more of a beating and he would shatter entirely.
I wondered just how Preston fared. He must be smarting right now—if, that was, these hits really were going through to him. And after the relative ease with which he’d scaled the Apex and won the first key, he must be mentally smarting pretty hard too.
Preston’s fighter stepped backward, putting Carson’s clear of his. Again, he began to circle—with a limp, by the looks, his fighter struggling to raise one foot as high as the other. Carson followed suit, circling in the opposite direction, moving with any easy gait. If the fighter were flesh rather than stone, I doubted it would have even broken a sweat.
Preston’s fighter suddenly jolted forward.
Carson crouched low to block—
Preston sidestepped. He swung out, low—
Carson rose an arm to meet the fist—
And then Borrick's stone avatar jerked to the right, swung a fist in, hard—and slammed Carson's hard in the face.
Carson grunted in pain. The real Carson’s head was thrown backward, as though he had taken a real, no-fooling punch.
The fighter reeled backward. Fragments exploded off of its edges, showering down on the arena.
Heidi gasped—
Preston didn’t lose even a second. He rained down another blow on the top of Carson’s head—the real Carson wailed, and he crumpled, throwing his arms up over his head to protect against the blow—then Preston’s fighter kicked, landing a foot hard against Carson’s fighter’s stomach—
Carson grunted, breath expelled.
Blood plumed in the air.
“Carson!” Heidi cried. She dove into the monolith’s core, and gripped his shoulders. “Take it off, please—”
Preston punched him again, across the face. Carson’s head whipped around. He spluttered. His lip was split, somehow—and in the circular fight arena, the fighter with the blue lights had a gouge torn out of its face to match.
Carson’s health bar shrunk to half—and then another kick sailed down on Carson’s fighter’s shin.
Carson howled. His leg jerked, and he clutched it, fingers twisted into claws, holding it tight as if he’d broken it.
“Carson, please,” Heidi begged. She pulled at the headset—
“No,” Carson wheezed, pushing her aside.
“But—”
“I have to fight him,” he wheezed—and the fighter rolled, almost drunkenly, out of the way of another kick Preston swung at him. The stone heel of Preston’s fighter hit the arena floor. It cracked, a divot running up it.
Preston swung a backhanded punch at Carson’s head—
Carson ducked it.
He didn’t duck the second fist, which drove into his midriff. The real Carson cried out—“STOP IT,” Heidi roared across the arena, from inside the monolith’s cavity—and he buckled sideways, grimacing, face twisted in pain—
The fighter fell down. Its health diminished to little over a third. Cracks covered its body, all the sharp, hard edges crumbled and falling apart, like old cement falling out of a dilapidated wall.
Silence filled the arena. The two fighters stood, their damage plain, Carson's on one knee. None of us seemed to know what to say.
“DECK HIM,” Heidi roared, and everything sprang back into motion.
Carson’s fighter slammed his knee, full force, up into Daddy Borrick’s groin—
Preston’s fighter exploded. The holographic health bar shattered with it, the remaining short length coming apart in fragments like glass raining down from the heavens.
Broken stone was flung outward in all directions. I threw my hands up overhead, to block the worst of it. It pelted me in a brief blast, a hail that lasted no more than half a second.
And then it was over.
“WINNER,” announced the disembodied voice of an Antecessor.
Carson’s fighter staggered. With perhaps a quarter of its health left, I had little doubt that one fierce blow was all that remained between defeat and victory. Much of its bulky frame had been vanquished, littering the arena floor in gravelly chunks. Not one hard edge remained. Crumbled and fractured, it really did look more like a statue than ever, one that had been erected centuries ago and had been whittled away to the verge of collapse.
He rose, though, standing tall—tallish, because one arm clutched his midriff, and he bent double. The real Carson lay slumped in the cavity inside the monolith, stone headset blocking the pain no doubt in his eyes. His lip was split, blood trickling down it. His leg bent at a funny angle, like it really had been broken by Preston’s downward kick, delivered to the very centerpoint of Carson’s shin. He shone with a sheen of sweat, gluing his sweater to his torso.
But he was grinning, damn it.
And he had every right to be. He’d won—and not just won, but won against Preston bloody Borrick.
“CONGRATULATIONS, COMPETITOR,” announced the booming voice.
Holographic fireworks fired above the arena, exploding in a rainbow of colors. Muted bangs sounded with them, somewhat tinny, like audio recordings downsampled to tight bitrates video game cartridges twice as old as I was.
“YOU ARE REPLENISHED.”
A green light enveloped Carson’s fighter.
Under the VR headset, white lights glowed.
They brightened in tandem with each other.
Carson gasped. He clutched for the headset—it was blinding him!—and then, before he or Heidi could wrench it from his head, the lights vanished.
The fighter’s body was renewed. Whole again, without a single crack to mar it, it stood strong and stately, alight with blue … and then its body slowly folded down to the crouched state it had been in when we entered the arena, the lights dimming.
The headset dissolved.
Carson squinted. Mouth agape, he touched where the headset had been, fingers finding nothing.
“The split on your lip is gone,” said Heidi, reaching for it.
Her fingertips touched it, stilled Carson.
She took them away, frowned. No blood upon her, not a drip.
“You’re healed.”
Carson flexed his leg carefully. It moved.
“It doesn’t hurt anymore,” he said.
“YOUR PRIZE, COMPETITOR.”
In the arena’s center, above the central fighting area—which now was shrinking earthward once more, the rails lowering too to meld with the floor—a vast, green-edged hologram lit, a rotating sphere—unquestionably a tennis ball.
As Carson stepped out, aided unnecessarily by Heidi, who held him around the midriff, he with an arm over her shoulders, the hologram shrunk. It came closer, sailing lazily toward the arena’s edge.
Carson stepped forward to meet it.
He held out a hand.
The hologram settled upon it—and then it solidified, a real tennis ball upon his palm, green and fuzzy, with white lines curving, like two interlinked saddles straddled the ball.
“CONGRATULATIONS.”
Something in the air changed, like something heavy had been lifted.
“What was that?” Borrick asked.
“The Antecessors have left,” I muttered. “The fight is over; they’re done watching.”
“They’re moving on to the next one,” Heidi finished quietly.
Carson appraised the second key—the tennis ball—for a moment. Then he turned on his heel, and extended it to Tyran. “Here,” he said.
Tyran took it, nodding. “Thank you, Mr. Yates. And very well done. Men—show him how impressed we are.” Cheering once again broke out among the crew, very loud, very unsubtle, perhaps a bit forced. Carson's cheeks bloomed red, though whether that was because of the crew response or his sudden realization Heidi had her arm draped around his waist, I couldn't tell.
On the opposite side of the arena
, Preston Borrick stalked out of the monolith in which he’d donned his own VR headset. He’d been healed too, I presumed, because he didn’t walk with a limp, or cradle an arm, and nor could I see the claret of blood across the divide. Part of me wished he'd been shattered like his fighter, but a glance at Alain, who looked somewhat relieved at his appearance, squelched that.
Preston's rage, though, that was easily apparent. His eyebrows were cast down, a furious scowl upon his lips.
“LOSER,” Heidi shouted at him. “SUCK ON THAT, YOU ROTTEN OLD VAMPIRE.”
Preston glared, then cut a gateway, which came apart like the fly on a pair of jeans opening. He stepped through it sideways, while it was still opening to its widest, and vanished into a murky lake of greenish-blue, rolling lethargically, like the waters of a swamp.
“He’ll be moving to the final objective,” said Tyran, pocketing the tennis ball within his golden garb. “We ought to go.”
“Ah, another family reunion,” said Heidi. “Looking forward to it, Alain?”
“Like none other,” Borrick muttered, teeth gritted.
I clapped him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry. I won’t let him chew you out this time.”
“That’s not what I’m worried about,” said Borrick—and I saw it, a rare flash of concern across his face. “You just beat my father, again. He won’t be happy about that.”
“Well,” Heidi began, “your father can—”
“Heidi,” I warned. To Borrick: “We can manage him, together.”
“Can we?” Lowering his voice, and glancing toward Tyran’s receding back as he led the way toward our return gateway, he said, “My father stabbed Burnton. He blew a dam.”
“You’re afraid he’ll stoop further,” I muttered.
“Not afraid of it. I know he will. My only question is how far he’s willing to go.”
“Alain,” I said, turning to him, “what is it your dad wants?”
He pursed his lips. Glancing across the arena, to make sure his father really had gone—it was just us now, returning to the Velocity’s portal—he said, “Not here. I’ll tell you—although it’s only conjecture—but let’s get back to the ship first.”
The Gang of Legend Page 13