Moving off, Renato headed for his red Ferrari Falco, reminding me that he was a multimillionaire from Excommunicado, a top preventer clan. Apparently, Willy and Hairo had decided to stay in their flyer so that their old Exco acquaintance wouldn’t see them.
I walked across the parking lot to our flyer with my backpack on my back and in the same clothes I wore when I arrived at the Games, when the hatred of the other contestants crashed down on me, including Quetzal’s. Behind me, the security droids rumbled across the asphalt.
Our flyer stood out — it was the least presentable one there, like a chicken among swans. The doors flew open and I climbed in. Hairo and Willy shook my hand, and we took off right away.
“Come on, tell us all about it,” Willy said, staring at me.
“Give me some time first, guys,” I said. “I need to watch something. You have my comm?”
Willy pulled out my communicator. I went online and found Destiny Windsor’s profile. She had already started streaming straight from the media center in the Ruhm und Ehre hotel, judging by the background.
“…I can’t say, but the source is reliable. Also, I checked the information I received through my own channels, went through some friends to contact the clinic treating the unfortunate non-citizens… It’s all been confirmed!” Destiny’s voice shook. She wiped away a tear. “I say again! The non-citizen capsules are defective! Every non-citizen playing for the Undead faction must change their race immediately! The Destroying Plague kills people for real! In real life! It happens because of a defect in the Snowstorm capsules for non-citizens! Tissue necrosis and damage to internal organs threaten every non-citizen who…”
I switched off my comm. Destiny Windsor had done what she promised, announced to the whole world that the Destroying Plague is dangerous to non-citizens. I doubted Disgardium Daily would have the balls to publish it themselves, but Destiny’s two hundred million loyal followers would spread the information even better than the media company could.
“How are our builders doing?” I asked, remembering our people in the hospital.
“They pulled through,” Willy answered. “They’re already home.”
Another mountain off my shoulders. I sighed in relief.
“How do I contact the boys?”
Willy handed me his own comm:
“Here. Tell it to call Macho.”
“Macho?” I asked in confusion.
“That’s Edward’s name in my phone,” Willy smiled. “Just don’t talk too long. Yoshi encrypted the line well, but you never know…”
‘Macho’ answered right away:
“Willy?” The comm brought up a holoprojection of Ed’s face, and he shouted: “Alex! Hung, get over here! It’s Alex!”
“Sheppard!” Hung’s big head appeared in the frame. “You did it! Way to go!”
“You don’t know how glad I am to see your faces!” I chuckled. “Big bad Brizuela won’t let me talk for long, so give me the quick rundown on the most important news!”
Ed started:
“Big Po joined the clan!”
“Hiros the ninja joined us!” Hung interrupted him. “He’s such a nerd, Alex!”
“And a weirdo!”
“There’s more to Hiros than meets the eye,” Hairo interjected.
“Woah, the clan account just got a fifty million deposit!” Ed said, his eyes widening. “Where from?”
“From my new princess girlfriend,” I answered, chuckling.
“My kraken is about to take me to the nagas!” Hung suddenly remembered. “It’s been a damn long road, I’ll tell you when you get back!”
“Irita got rank two trading, and Patrick got together with Stephanie!”
“He knows already,” Hung said, elbowing Ed away. “Oh, yeah! Your demons came back! Flay and Nega found who they were looking for! Some dude who sold his soul to demons!”
“Behemoth covered Kharinza with a Veil of Distortion! Nobody can find us now!”
“The temple! The temple!” both shouted at once. “It’s built!”
“Venus is ready!” I smiled, remembering my friends’ coded message sent through Kerry.
“Ready is right,” Hung laughed. “But we didn’t have time to consecrate it, the shield fell!”
“And there’s bad news, Alex…” Ed said, frowning. “All the legates escaped from their traps and disappeared. I checked personally. Looks like they were waiting for the end of the Games…”
“In other words, get back here as soon as you can,” Hung said. “We need to talk about Malik…”
Stunned by the avalanche of news, I didn’t notice right away that the line cut off.
“Someone intercepted the signal,” Willy explained.
For ten minutes, I silently thought over what I’d heard. Out of the frying pan and into the fryer, as Uncle Nick used to say. Now that I’d solved one problem, I already had a queue of others, and I hadn’t even landed yet!
After racking my brains a while, I decided that this wasn’t the time. Right now, I needed to just tune out and enjoy my win at the Games, then concentrate on my studies; the citizenship tests were right around the corner! And talk to my parents, too, still at the lunar resort.
I called them to make sure they were alright. Dad had been glued to the holovisor, cheering me on.
“What’s going on with you and Destiny, son?” he asked, chuckling, but mom pushed him aside.
“Alex…” she started hesitatingly, then blurted out: “You’re going to have a brother or sister!”
The news blocked out everything else and finally finished me off. The one-child-per-family rule could be gotten around in two ways: with money, or with an age difference. After the citizenship tests, I would no longer be dependent on my parents, which would let them have a second child, born just at the right time…
Above the Atlantic Ocean, Hairo put the flyer in autopilot and climbed back to join us. We started talking and tucked in to some fast food the security officers had grabbed on the way.
“How are things with Renato Loyola?” Willy asked. “We saw you saying goodbye. Are you guys buddies now?”
“I remember that he’s from the Excos.”
“That’s not what he means,” Hairo interjected. “Renato is a good guy, he’ll work with you. All the same, be careful. Colonel considers him unruly and too independent, but values him. That’s why he listens to him. If you can make friends with Excommunicado, then our Cartel problem will be a thing of the past.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I answered. “How are things at home?”
“Not perfect, but nothing you need to know urgently,” Willy answered. “I met Malik and took him to Cali Bottom…”
“Why?”
“Because he has clan secrets!” Hairo barked. “We’ve cut him off from Dis for now. He’s in isolation. Alongside Trixie.”
“Best place for him!” I said, scowling.
“Don’t jump to conclusions…” Willy said, shaking his head and jabbing at his comm. “Listen…”
The cabin suddenly filled with sound from the speakers. Rustling, footsteps, the ring of crockery, voices. It sounded like a recording made in a restaurant.
“What’s this?”
“The night before the day I took Malik to the Games. He met with Melissa Schafer. Listen.”
Tissa spoke clearly:
“What do the boys think? About your plans, I mean. What are Alex’s plans? I mean, apart from all the ‘citizenship’ stuff he has going on…”
“The hell with Alex and his secrets. Let’s discuss our strategy for the Games!”
A rustle, then a barely audible whisper from Melissa:
“If Alex isn’t there, then let’s just stick together. Like in the good old days.”
“And if he shows up?”
“Then… Listen carefully, this is very important. Something happened after our meeting in the morning.”
“When I took you to big Dis?” Malik answered. “To the Blencatra Foothills?�
��
“Yeah. Exhaustion killed me, but I didn’t resurrect in the Tristad graveyard…” Tissa’s voice got even quieter, and Willy turned the volume up to maximum. “…in the Mire!”
“In the Mire?” Malik echoed her. “Some kind of bug?”
“I thought so too, at first. But then I saw him…”
“The Sleeper…” Malik whispered.
“Yeah, it was Behemoth. He said that he’d chosen me out of the other priests, because only I could change… uh… long story short, the Sleeper saw all the possible timelines of the future, and in every one of them, Scyth loses the Demonic Games.”
“What about us?”
“We lose along with him…” the girl sighed.
“Bullshit. Are you sure you weren’t just imagining it?”
I was in agreement with Malik about that. Why would Behemoth meet with Tissa? As soon as I thought that, the girl answered:
“Behemoth told me you wouldn’t believe me. So he asked me to say this to you: Rapier of the Agile Duellist, Stealth Shank of Vitsichopotli…”
“Stealth Shank of Huitzilopochtli,” Malik answered her, his eyes widening.
“You know these names? The Sleeper said that in your heart of hearts, you still think of yourself as a thief, so you collect epic and legendary daggers, stealing them from the clan.” Tissa’s voice sounded harsh. Disdainful. “Here’s how it is, Malik. If you don’t do what Behemoth wants, then I’ll hand you over to the boys personally.”
After a long silence, my former friend asked in a shaky voice:
“What do I have to do?”
“There’s only one option that lets Alex win. The only way he has a chance is if we betray him…”
“What?!” Malik interrupted.
“We have to betray him. Believe me, I don’t like it one bit either!”
“What do you mean betray him?”
“From the very first minute at the Games, we have to show that we’re out for ourselves. That we fell out with him, stopped talking to him, that we hate him — whatever it takes, they can think whatever they want as long as they believe us. There’ll be journalists there. We’ll tell them that Sheppard is a fame-blind piece of shit. That he abandoned us. That we dream about ways to get back at him at night.”
“I don’t know…” Malik said doubtfully. “It’s going to be a big shock for Alex to hear all that. He’s always helped us. Risked his status. Remember when he gave up his only legendary for that bet with Big Po? In the sandbox!”
“I do remember, but do you? Listen, whatever happens, we need to make it so that Alex believes. That’s why…” Tissa sighed heavily. “The whole way here, I thought about how to convince him… We’re going to announce that you and I are together! A couple!”
“Listen, that sounds great to me, of course…” the boy babbled. “But… Can you imagine what that’ll do to him? After all he’s done for us…”
“Without Alex, the Dementors would be nothing!” Melissa hissed. “You don’t have to tell me that! We would have hung around our district our whole lives, happy for any epic. By age twenty we might have hit level one hundred, and kept our low citizenship status by the skin of our teeth. That would be our whole lives.”
“We have to warn him. Or he’ll hate us forever… He’ll throw us out of the clan, out of the followers of the Sleeping Gods…”
“We can’t! Alex can’t know anything! It’ll change the future!”
“Why? How the hell does the Sleeper know all this?”
“The betrayal has to be real. I don’t know what this means, but Behemoth said that only then would someone called Quetzal feel sympathy and use something called an aegis.”
“No waaay… The Sleeper’s AI has gone mad. Well, whatever. I just hope Alex doesn’t kill us right away, hope he gets why we did it when we tell him…”
Tissa said nothing. I heard her take a sip, then she said sadly:
“Honestly, I didn’t really believe Behemoth myself. But you just repeated everything the Sleeper said you’d say. Word for word. That means the rest is true too.”
“What?”
“Alex will never forgive us…”
Willy stopped the recording.
“That’s all the interesting parts,” he said, sitting back and studying my reaction carefully.
I sat with a stony face. If Tissa and Malik had started making excuses after the Demonic Games, I would have only laughed at them, but this…
“This recording was definitely made before the Games, not after?”
“That’s right. You know, Alex, I wanted to show it to you before the Games, but it was like something stopped me. I didn’t even show it to Hairo… But when I saw Quetzal cast that Aegis on you with my own eyes…” Willy’s voice shook. “Alex… What in the hell is that Behemoth of yours?”
End of Book 7
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