by Corey Tate
He took a deep breath and tried to concentrate on not swallowing any more water.
Wait . . . I’m breathing! Scott opened his eyes and gave the biggest smile that he ever had given in his life to date. I’m breathing.
As he got pulled down further and further, he eventually realized that his pores were moving. They were his medium for breathing somehow.
He saw a flash of white in the water around him and felt a wave of weightlessness overcome his body—only to be replaced quickly by a growing pressure. The pressure grew until he thought that his eyes would pop out of his head and his ribs would crack, and then it settled.
* * *
He opened his eyes and noticed that he was on his back on the ground. He was lying on hard-packed pure-black dirt. The sky was overcast and had what appeared to be purple lightning shooting out of it. There was constant lightning, and the air smelled like burnt toast, or at least Scott thought it did. It could have just been him.
He sat up slowly and blinked a few times. All around him there was nothing. Just dead wasteland, no trees and no people. There wasn’t a single sound coming from anywhere, except his own breathing and someone lying next to him.
He turned to the right and saw Sam. She had a bullet wound in her left leg that was slowly oozing blood, and another from a bullet that had grazed her right shoulder. She looked slightly worse than the way that Scott felt at the moment.
He dug into his pockets and pulled out his phone. It still had 10 percent battery left, and somehow the LifeProof case on it had worked better than advertised. He looked at the top of his phone, though, and saw that he had no service. Scott groaned.
The five Conjurers from the cruise ship appeared. They came out of thin air, faster than he had time to blink.
That’s when he noticed that everyone was dry, including himself.
One of the men bent his knees, cocked his arm back, and punched Scott dead center in the face. Someone else came out of the air behind the men in cloaks just before Scott lost consciousness, but things had already gotten too blurry to make out who it was.
Caged
Drip. Drip. Drip.
It was all a dream. He was sure of it. As long as he didn’t open his eyes, he could convince himself of that. He could just lie here forever and relax.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Yup. Just forget everything. He probably was stressed about soccer. That was it. Molly too. She was beautiful. Well, Sam was beautiful too, but she was probably way out of his league.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
He reluctantly opened his eyes, already knowing that things had changed for the worse.
He was trapped in a very small red cage that had a weird, oily smell coming from it. Rusty liquid that looked like blood dripped off the bars and collected on the floor. He also was trapped in this cage by himself, with no one to talk to in a smelly, damp cave. Plus, his forehead really hurt. A lot.
“Hey!” Scott yelled, “Can anyone hear me?!”
“Yes,” a man’s voice answered hoarsely.
He looked in the direction of the voice and saw nothing. The cave was too dark. He looked harder and saw a gangly, skinny man in a similar cage come into focus, not ten feet away from him, grinning evilly through the darkness.
His heart rate soared. The man looked dangerous: he had a cut-up, ugly face and had been branded all over his body. He had mangy brown hair and probably liked it that way.
Scott Accelerated and his sonar vision illuminated the cave for him. Sort of. It was turning off and on like cable TV with a bad signal. His body didn’t change at all like before either. His bones stayed the same, and his headache immediately got worse.
“What’s going on? Am I dreaming? Please tell me that I’m dreaming,” Scott pleaded with the man.
“Sadly, no. You are not dreaming,” the man solemnly replied. “You are really here.”
“Where’s here?”
“The Coliseum.”
“The what?!”
“The Coliseum! Terminus’s Coliseum,” the man repeated.
“What the hell is the Coliseum?”
“You don’t know?!” the man exclaimed, clearly surprised. “Are you stupid, boy?”
“No!”
“The Coliseum is where Terminus makes people battle to the death. You win, Terminus takes your curse and you’re home free, at least until one of his Conjurers kills you. They always kill you. They find you. You lose, though, and you’re food,” the man explained as he licked his lips.
“So either way, you’re dead?” Scott pressed on, ignoring the chilling feeling he was getting.
“Yup.”
Scott fell silent for a moment before asking, “What’s your ‘curse’?”
“You already know that answer,” the man replied glumly. “You really are stupid, boy.”
“What are you talking about? How long have I been here, anyway?”
“Nine hours.” The man rubbed his hands together gleefully. “I can’t wait to kill you and get outta here.”
“Kill me?!”
“Well, yeah. Terminus’s probably gonna make us fight each other,” the man went on, “or it might be a tag-team match. I know they got two other prisoners in the other holding room. I heard one of ’em’s a girl.” The man smiled at the thought of killing a girl. “Easy prey for me.”
Oh no. Sam.
“Is one of them named Sam?” Scott shouted.
“I don’t care about no names,” the man said, waving off his question. “I care about blood.”
Scott clenched his teeth. “How long until we have to fight?”
“How am I supposed to know? It could be an hour, could be a day, could be a coupla’ minutes,” the man whined. “Relax.”
“Why do we even have to do this?!”
“’Cause Terminus has all the power,” the man stated, as if it should be a known fact.
“You keep saying ‘Terminus.’ Who is he?”
“The ruler of the planet,” the man said.
“The ruler of the planet?” Scott repeated like a parrot.
“Yeah, idiot. The ruler of Armadron,” the man chuckled.
Scott felt chills go through his body. He wasn’t on the cruise ship anymore. No, he wasn’t on Earth anymore. His last hope of this whole thing being a hoax was diminished.
“You still haven’t told me what a ‘curse’ is. You said it like it was a thing,” Scott said.
“I ain’t tellin’ you what mine is, you little funny-talkin’, lyin’, silver-tongued demon!”
“Who are you?” Scott was thoroughly confused. “Whatever, well, screw you.”
“Go cry to your mommy, kid.” The man laughed, showing his yellow, broken teeth.
Scott yelled and tried kicking the bars for a while, but they didn’t even vibrate. There was also no lock in sight, so obviously no key either. He also felt something coming from the bars. An emotion of sorts. A malice, like the cage itself wanted to kill him. But that was impossible. They were just bars.
Scott whimpered and wrapped his arms around his legs, rocking back and forth. He lay curled up like that for another several hours, listening to the man taunt him and make crying and boo-boo sounds at him. He fell asleep some time later when exhaustion finally overtook him.
* * *
Gray waves of light came into the cave as part of the rock wall slid aside. It revealed a huge earth-made Coliseum with thousands of people sitting in the stands. The roar of the crowd was overwhelming, and there were things being thrown in the stands everywhere.
Two men stepped toward them. Both were wearing black robes like the men on the cruise ship. They simultaneously raised their hands, and Scott’s sonar vision went ballistic, giving him a fresh new headache.
He noticed that one moment there were doors on the cages, and the next there weren’t.
“Get into the arena. You two are next,” the men both said at the same time in a low dialect.
Oh, hell no. Scott ground his teeth together
.
He slowly rose out of his cage and walked toward the men. The man in the other cage did the same.
“What’s your name?” Scott quietly asked the man. “We need to work together.”
“Bernard,” he replied in a weak voice. “And I’m gonna eat you.”
When they had almost reached the two cloaked men, Scott turned around and tried to run back into the cave. At that moment, both of the men chanted something unintelligible. Scott’s left foot hadn’t even touched back down when he was frozen in place, suspended above the ground like time itself had stopped.
One of the men dressed in black walked behind Scott and touched his back. Scott “unfroze,” landed on his feet, and began to be pushed along by the man. The other black-dressed man walked behind Bernard.
Scott couldn’t even process what just happened.
As soon as they stepped out of the cave, he noticed purple moonlight was coming from the clouds overhead. It lit up the Coliseum with a pale glow and reflected off the shiny black soil that was the floor of the battlefield.
Battlefield.
That word sent shivers down Scott’s spine.
Another captive was walking toward them out of a cave on the opposite end of the field, goaded along by a Conjurer dressed in black. Seconds later, someone else emerged, also pushed along by a cloaked goon.
She was hopping on her right leg, trying not to put any pressure on her left one.
“Sam!” Scott yelled.
The man in a black robe behind Scott jabbed him with his elbow between the shoulder blades. Scott stumbled and barely caught himself. He lost his breath and waited a couple seconds to get it back.
“I’m going to kill you like you killed all of those people!” Scott yelled at the ground, too afraid to turn around.
“Hey! Just relax! I’ll get us outta this!” Sam yelled back, trying to force a smile from the other side of the Coliseum floor.
Sam was dealt with in a similar way by the man forcing her along.
Scott shouted when he saw this and was hit in the back of the head. Once he stopped seeing stars, he noticed that they were nearing the center of the arena.
A minute later Scott, Sam, the two other prisoners, and the men dressed in black arrived in the center of the field. Scott hadn’t failed to notice that there were a lot of blood marks on the field. That wasn’t the worst of it, though. Animal bones littered the field everywhere as well.
Except that they weren’t animal bones. Scott was just telling himself that.
A man’s voice was heard over the roar of the crowd, and everyone instantly fell silent.
“Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to Terminus’s Coliseum. My name is Kane. I hope that all bets have been placed and that all food has been eaten. I must remind any plant growers here this evening that this is strictly a no-grow area. Whatever food you have must have been grown outside the Coliseum. I like to keep the Coliseum area free of roots, and if I see anyone henceforth growing plants, my master’s guards or I will kill you on sight. We will make it slow and painful. Thank you for your consideration,” Kane said.
The man known as Kane cleared his throat and spoke again.
“Today we will be having a classic-style fight to the death. There are four opponents, each with unknown curses. Any and all alliances may be made, but ultimately there will only be one winner. I will let you all take your seats while my guards explain the rules to the challengers. We will begin in five minutes.”
The crowd grew loud again.
While the speech was being given by Terminus’s herald, Scott had been looking for him in the stands. He hadn’t seen anyone stand up or otherwise look out of place, though. He just saw thousands of ragged-clothed people yelling and pumping their arms. It looked like something out of a Mad Max movie.
Sam gave Scott a knowing glance, leaning on her good leg.
“He’s probably invisible,” she rasped to Scott. “Terminus gives those close to him more curses.”
“Are you all ri—”
“Shut up and listen,” one of the guards said in a mechanical voice. “The rules are as follows: One, if you possess the curse of healing, no healing anyone other than yourself. Two, any direct contact with anyone in the audience will result in immediate termination. Three, guards will be placed around the arena. All attempts to escape will also result in immediate termination. Four, you must kill your opponent to survive.”
As he was talking, Scott noticed his hands. Then he looked at the hands of all of the cloaked guards. They all had chipped, broken nails, and it looked like they’d had their hands in the dirt their whole lives, which almost covered up the fact that they were transparent.
They were Conjurers. Just like Artam.
The crowd was chanting the rules at the same time. Some people in the stands were cutting themselves and dripping blood in front of them.
Scott felt nauseous. He could barely stand.
The guards suddenly vanished into thin air. Scott noticed that the arena walls were somewhat black now, when before they were a coppery color. He looked a little closer and realized that it wasn’t the arena walls that were black; it was about a hundred or so guards spread out in front of the wall, blocking any means of escape.
All the guards had different heights and different looks, but they all had the same emotionless expression on their faces and the same dirty, animalistic-looking hands. Their eyes were grayed out too—like the Conjurers on the cruise ship.
The two other men on the field and Sam stood stock-still, looking at the ground. Sam lifted her head up and tried to hobble over to Scott. He met her a little more than halfway.
“Sam, I don’t understand any of this,” he cried helplessly. “This is Armadron, right? Why did I have to come? Am I gonna die? I don’t see how we’re going to live through this, and I don’t even know—”
Sam took her pointer finger and put it to Scott’s lips.
Scott blushed despite the dire situation at hand.
She beckoned to Scott, and he leaned forward. Then she softly whispered to him.
“Listen. We only have a minute until battle time, so I’ll make it brief. You’re only half-Armadronian, so some curses may or may not work on you. I’m like a power cell. I can control light and dark and neutralize powers that are near me. Don’t tell any of them that. From what I’ve seen, you can control water. Hopefully you’re powerful enough to generate it too. That’s at least two powers. If we can last just a couple minutes, we have a way outta here,” she explained. “And don’t tell anyone your name. The only reason that you’re not in his lab right now getting split in half is because he expected that hunting party to come back with one boy. He probably found out that they came back with two Armadronians, so Terminus might be still waiting for the ‘right’ group of Conjurers to get back. They’re not great on executing specific orders. Just generic ones.”
“That’s your plan?!” he whispered fiercely. “We might have a way outta here?”
“It’s better than what you came up with,” she retorted.
“What did I come up with?”
“Nothing.”
He glared at Sam.
“Fine. You got me into this, so I guess I have to trust you to get me out,” Scott said.
“Or you have no other options,” Sam argued hotly.
“Whatever. Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it.” He put a determined face on.
“All right! The time to battle is at hand!” Kane’s voice shouted over the roar of the crowd.
Once again, everyone in the Coliseum grew silent.
“Opponents, take your positions in the center!”
Scott, Sam, and the two other men faced each other in the center of the field. The two men weren’t anywhere close to each other, so they hopefully weren’t acting as a team.
He let Sam lean on him for support. She looked like she was about to pass out. Her leg had barely stopped bleeding, and there was a trail of dried blood from the bullet hole to her
shoes.
How did my life get to this? Scott thought. How?
Sam slowly closed her eyes and . . . evolved.
She instantly grew larger hands and feet, her stomach bulged outward and then moved back into place, her bone structure changed to become more aerodynamic, and her eyes changed to a dark, burning red color.
The transformation was extremely odd for Scott to watch. Even though he had already Accelerated a couple times himself, seeing someone else do it made him uneasy.
“I thought you couldn’t Accelerate,” Scott asked her.
“Not on Earth.” She winked.
“And your eyes—”
“Good point. Don’t Accelerate until you need to. They’ll see your eyes and it’ll be all over.”
Scott nodded.
“Opponents, take your positions in the center!”
The two men also Accelerated and stepped closer to Sam and Scott. Scott stepped back instinctively.
The man who wasn’t Bernard chuckled, eyed Scott, and made a slicing gesture with his thumb across his neck. He continued to glare at Scott, licking his dry, cracked lips like a deranged lunatic.
Scott felt like he was going to pass out again.
Breathtaking
“Go!” the announcer bellowed.
The crowd instantaneously became a screaming frenzy.
Both men started to make a move toward Scott and Sam.
Before Scott had time to breathe, his vision went completely black. It stayed that way for about two seconds, and then light filtered in.
He could see again. He noticed that Sam was still next to him—and that they were all the way at the other end of the Coliseum!
Sam started to fall, but Scott caught her before she hit the ground.
“My leg,” she hissed through clenched teeth.
“Hold on a sec, Sam,” he said, trying to reassure her.
Scott pulled off his gray T-shirt and wrapped it around the bullet hole in her leg. She cried out as he tied it tighter.
“Better?” he asked.
“Much. Thanks, Scott,” Sam said. “And nice move, slick.”
She smiled weakly and Scott’s heart skipped a beat. He was suddenly self-conscious, realizing that his shirt was off and Sam was staring at him.