Once we were fatted up like lambs for the slaughter, we were led across campus to our very first class at the Academy, marching past multi-story structures of glass and light—where the academic classes took place—to a short, windowless building that looked kind of like a concrete frog squatting to take a shit.
The inside wasn’t any better. We filed through the wide doorway and then down a long stairway into a large room. Three of the four walls were unadorned concrete; one with three rows of benches set against it, the other two bare but for a set of closed doors. The wall opposite the benches was all glass, angled outward as if it was overlooking something, and in front of it stood Nikolai Tsarnaev, massive arms folded across his even more massive chest. As we entered, that same sadist’s smile slowly stretched across his face.
“Officially, this class is known as Physical Education & Introduction to Combat,” he said in a deep, slightly accented voice, “but the curriculum was written by administrators and pencil pushers. I prefer the name given by my very first students, more than ten years ago.” That smile widened even further, exposing gleaming white teeth. “Welcome to Hell.”
On cue, lights flooded the room beyond the glass wall. We crowded forward to look down upon an enormous cavern. A series of fixtures ringed the room’s perimeter, glowing an electric blue, their hum audible even from where we stood. In the uneven floor of the cave were five pits, each maybe fifteen feet in diameter and at least that deep.
It didn’t look like hell. It didn’t look like much of anything.
Looks can be deceiving, I guess.
“On any other day,” Nikolai continued, “you’d be out on the field, getting your laps in.” Dark eyes glittered, taking careful note of the first-years groaning at the thought. “Then strength training, then drills, and then… if you somehow managed not to piss me off, maybe a little bit of fun. But today is different,” he told us with great satisfaction. “Today is your first lesson on what it takes to be a Cape.”
He unfolded one huge arm and motioned at the strange cave. “In the arena, the dampeners will keep your active powers suppressed. No fire, no shifting.” Those eyes turned to me. “No corruption of the natural order. Just you, your hands and your feet. Over the next semester, you will learn to survive using those things.”
He waited again for the confused murmurs to die down. “Five pairs at a time, one pair to each pit in the arena. When I call your names, you and your opponent will exit through the door in the left wall, proceed to the correct numbered door below, and enter, closing that door behind you. It will stay closed until your fight is over.”
“Our… what?!” This was the dark-haired girl who’d been sitting in the front row during Orientation. Her grey eyes were wide, her voice soft.
Nikolai raised an eyebrow. “Which one are you again…?”
“Evelyn Mandelhoff,” she told him.
“They don’t pay me enough to memorize that mouthful,” he decided, conveniently ignoring the fact that his last name was all consonants and impossible to pronounce. “What’s your Cape name?”
“Wormhole.”
“Better. So tell me, Wormhole,” he said conversationally, taking a step closer to loom over her, “which part of Introduction to Combat did you not understand? Punch, kick, claw, or scratch… hell, you can bite if you think it will do any good. Each pair will fight until there is a victor, and you will all, winners and losers, be graded on your performance.”
Tessa, our class Telekinetic, frowned and raised her hand. “I’m not a Titan or a Stalwart. Why would I ever stoop to punching someone?”
“Because someday you might care more about staying alive than your manicure,” growled the tree stump of a woman who’d been asleep on her feet less than an hour earlier, “and powers don’t solve everything.”
“No shock that you’d want to go roll in the dirt, Sofia,” shot back Tessa.
“Call me Silt, bitch.”
Nikolai brought his hands together in a clap that sounded almost like a gunshot. “Enough. Silt’s right, but if any of you children wish to skip this exercise, you may do so—” He waited for Tessa’s satisfied nod before continuing. “—and accept an F in the class.”
“For the day?” asked the Lightbringer, Olympia. “Because I’m actually okay with that—”
“For the year,” roared Nikolai, “which means you leave the Academy, right now. There is no place here for cowards.” He scanned the suddenly silent crowd, and nodded, his voice quieting to its usual rumble. “If there are no further questions?”
“What are the rules of engagement?” Matthew wanted to know.
“You’re Paladin?”
“I will be.”
Nikolai nodded. “See to it that you don’t shame the name.”
Matthew stood even straighter, blue eyes flashing. “Yes, sir.”
“I’ve already given the rules,” continued the teacher. “Fight until the other surrenders or is unable to continue. The school Healers will be standing by to attend to you after the fight, and the dampeners should prevent any fatalities.”
“Should prevent them?” squeaked a small guy with pale skin, freckles, and carrot-colored hair.
Nikolai shrugged meaty shoulders. “Nothing in life is guaranteed.”
•—•—•
I wasn’t one of the first ten names called, so I found a good spot to watch the fights unfold. In addition to the glass window, five vid screens had lowered from the ceiling, each providing a high definition view of one of the pits.
On the first screen was Matthew, performing a handful of stretching exercises and looking calm and composed. Across from him was the class Titan, Erik Thorsson, who had told Nikolai to call him the Viking. He rolled his neck from side to side, and yawned, confident in his significant size advantage.
The pair in the second pit couldn’t have been more different from the first. On one side was Ishmae, looking even smaller and younger out of her robes, her dark face expressionless. On the other side was the ginger who’d been worried about fatalities. Shane was two years older than Ishmae, but equally small, and the whites of his terrified eyes were clearly visible on the monitor above.
Next over were Tessa and Olympia. Neither woman looked happy to be there, but where Olympia was white-faced with fear, her silver eyes enormous on the large vid screen, Tessa looked angry enough to chew rocks.
After that was the outspoken Silt, facing down a woman I’d yet to meet… but badly wanted to. Her codename was Orca, and she moved like a vid dancer, all sleek muscle and controlled motion. I was almost positive she was our other Stalwart.
The final pair were Caleb the Jitterbug, looking more than a bit sluggish without his power, and Santiago the Druid. Neither looked happy to be there, but Santiago still had the presence of mind to toss a confident smile—and a wink—to his pit’s camera.
I was kind of excited to watch those two beat each other senseless.
•—•—•
With five vid screens, it was impossible to keep up with all the action, but I did see Olympia immediately drop to her knees, throw up her hands, and surrender. For someone who hadn’t wanted to even participate, Tessa seemed oddly irritated that she didn’t get to throw a punch.
The second fight was over almost as quickly. In just under a minute, Ishmae had Shane flat on his belly and splayed out on the ground, her arm snaked under his chin. He waved his own pale arms ineffectually for about ten seconds, then dropped into unconsciousness.
Santiago didn’t do anything fancy, but it was clear this wasn’t his first fight. After a minute or two of circling, he sidestepped Caleb’s charge, grabbed an arm, and swung the Jitterbug into the wall with a thud audible even from the observation room. Caleb staggered back to his feet just in time to receive a perfectly timed punch to the face, breaking his nose with a splatter of blood, and dropping him to the ground. This time, the Jitterbug didn’t stand back up, curling in pain on the pit floor until the match was called.
S
omeone on the observation deck threw up. I wasn’t particularly grossed out—the shit show I’d come through with Her Majesty on the way to the Academy had been way worse than a broken nose—but I wasn’t thrilled either. I’d been in plenty of fights in the orphanage, but those had been for something. This was just violence for its own sake.
The other two fights were less one-sided. Silt appeared to have an edge in strength and weight over Orca, but the other woman was always two steps ahead, reacting to attacks almost like she could see them coming before they even happened. She moved a lot like the Stalwarts I’d seen in vids; the real Paladin or even The Scarlet Dynamo.
In fact, she moved just like them.
I frowned, suddenly suspicious, and looked to the other fight to see Matthew duck a wild punch from the Viking. The Titan’s fist hit the wall with a crack that echoed through the room, but it was the stone that crumbled, not the big man’s fingers. Meanwhile, Matthew landed three or four lightning-quick punches into the other man’s midsection, hard enough to break a normal man’s ribs. Neither fighter appeared winded yet, let alone injured.
Son of a bitch. Nikolai had said the dampeners would be high enough to cancel our active powers… but Stalwarts and Titans had passive power sets. Unless the dampeners were turned up all the way, the three of them would have some measure of their strength, speed and durability.
I was suddenly very glad my name hadn’t been called yet.
•—•—•
Silt put on a good showing, but as the fight wore on, Orca just kept getting faster. The end came without warning, as she slipped past Silt’s punch, and dropped the other woman with a flurry of blows too quick to see. Similarly, Matthew rode out the Viking’s initial rush, returning multiple, pinpoint strikes for every one of the Titan’s missed punches. When Thorsson finally fell, more than fifteen minutes into the match, I couldn’t tell if it was from damage or simple exhaustion. Either way, the cavern shook as his massive body hit the ground.
The school’s two on-site Healers had moved in to treat injuries as soon as each match concluded, and the pits were clear again just a few minutes later. Soon after, the ten combatants made their way back up the observation room, entering through the door in the opposite wall. Many showed signs of recent healing, though the front of Caleb’s sweatshirt was wet with slowly drying blood, and Silt was leaning heavily on Orca’s arm.
Nikolai ignored the returning combatants and read the next five pairs off his list. Once again, I hadn’t been called. The four of us who had yet to fight stared each other down, paying very little attention as the next five matches kicked off.
Of my three possible opponents, Alan Jackson was by far the biggest threat. I watched his toaster-sized hands clench slowly into fists, release, and then clench again, the dull crunching sound audible despite the noise from the pits. Second on that list was my new roommate, every bit as large as Alan, but nowhere near as menacing, his bushy, black beard notwithstanding.
They each had a hundred pounds and six or more inches of reach on me, but based on the matchups we’d seen so far, I was pretty sure Nikolai would pair them against each other. That left me the fourth and final first-year; half a foot shorter than I was, pale-eyed and pudgy. He was the student who had thrown up when Santiago broke Caleb’s nose.
Finally, life was throwing me a fucking bone.
•—•—•
As expected, Alan and Jeremiah were dispatched to the first pit. But after calling on the fat kid, who went by the awe-inspiring codename of Prince, Nikolai looked to the first-years who had already fought.
“Olympia, you’re up.”
“I already fought, Professor,” she reminded him. “I shouldn’t have to go again.”
“You quit the moment the door closed,” he growled, “which does absolutely fuck-all for you or any of us. Try again or get out of my class.”
Whatever else you could say about the Lightbringer, it was clear she wanted to be a Cape. She swallowed her protests, shot the professor a silver-eyed glare, and followed Prince down into the pits, slamming the door shut behind her.
I coughed in the sudden silence. “So… do I just get an A or what?”
That cold smile flickered back across Nikolai’s face. “Can’t do that. Wouldn’t be fair to the other first-years.” Beady eyes met mine, and that smile widened as he raised his voice. “Paladin, you’re up again.”
Fucking hell.
I did my best to keep any reaction off my face as I turned and went through the designated door. A long hallway curved around and down to the next level, where five doors led to the individual pits. As I watched, the door to the last pit opened, and two stretchers exited, carrying the groaning forms of the women who’d been paired up. White hair identified one of them as Winter, but I hadn’t been paying enough attention to her fight to know who her opponent had been, or even which of them had won. From the looks of it, neither was going to be feeling much like a victor any time soon.
The first two pits were occupied, but I ignored Nikolai’s orders to enter the third, walking past its door without stopping. The fourth pit got the same treatment, but I stopped at the final pit—the one the stretchers had just left—and stepped in. The concrete floor was splattered with blood—some of it from Caleb’s broken nose, and some of it from Winter and her opponent—and the gruesome décor fit my mood perfectly.
Teacher wanted to see my ass get kicked by a Stalwart?
Fuck if I was going down without a fight.
CHAPTER 19
The pits were bigger than they’d looked on the monitor. Fifteen, maybe twenty feet across, with walls that rose at least that high, making the arena’s ceiling feel impossibly far away. Those walls were rough stone, empty of ornamentation, bare of anything other than the door we’d come through, the door that had shut and locked behind us.
Distant ceiling, locked door, stone walls… and blood. I could see it, dark pools on the floor and glistening geometric patterns across the closest arc of the wall. More than that, I could smell it. People say a lot of things about how blood smells; they say it’s metallic, say it’s coppery, say it’s foul and polluted.
To me, it smells like home on that last day. Smells like the pie in the oven that’s going to burn and burn and keep burning until only ash is left because she’s not there to take it out, because she’ll never be there to take it out, and because everyone else is too busy with why that’s suddenly the case.
Mom’s ghost hadn’t followed me into the arena. I’m not sure if that was the dampeners at work or if she just wasn’t in the mood. Maybe blood made her remember too. Maybe she didn’t want to remember. That was the difference between us, I guess. I didn’t ever want to forget.
I looked around one last time to make sure she was gone. Then I turned to Paladin.
Whatever he saw in my face had him taking a half-step back before he caught himself. Just that tiny flinch, and then he was stoic and unassailable again, but I took it as a victory. He had some portion of his powers; speed, strength, agility… all the shit that mixes together to make a perfect fighter. He had his skill and his training.
All I had was my memory and the thick smell of blood.
It wasn’t going to be enough, couldn’t be enough, but even a dumbass like Caleb had probably figured that much out when Paladin’s name was called.
Can’t doesn’t always mean won’t, and it sure as fuck doesn’t mean don’t.
When Nikolai’s voice came, it rumbled like thunder from the speakers, more sound than words. I heard noise from the other pits; a choked cry; the meaty thud of flesh hitting flesh. The first sounded like Prince. The second could have been any of the four.
Before either sound had faded, Matthew was in motion.
He was fast. Too fast. I stepped away at an angle to avoid his first strike, but he caught me with the second, a punch that barely clipped me and still sent me skidding. I should’ve gone with the momentum of the punch, let it carry me out of range, but instead I fou
ght to keep from going down. All that did was make me an easy target.
I didn’t see the third punch; just felt the explosion of light, the sudden weightlessness of being, and the impact when I landed.
I spat blood, watched it mingle on the floor with all the rest. Paladin was already back across the pit where he’d started, watching to make sure I stayed down.
Fuck staying down.
I climbed back to my feet, mind racing. I had a slight reach advantage, but no way to use it without his speed and strength overwhelming me. The way he moved, first against the Viking, and now against me, spoke to his training. Real training, not the stuff I’d scraped together from late-night brawls, back-alley beatings and one close encounter with a screwdriver.
I couldn’t win. I definitely couldn’t win clean. So I needed to dirty this up.
This time, when Paladin came forward, I went to meet him. Wind whistled past my face as I slid under a punch that had still been almost too quick, and then I was inside his guard, far past the second punch that he threw towards where he’d expected me to be.
I spun like a corkscrew, dropping to one knee and throwing my elbow towards his kidney.
He blocked it. I don’t fucking know how, but he did, twisting impossibly and diverting my hit to the side with his forearm. Elbow to forearm, advantage should’ve been elbow, but I felt something pop in my own arm, even before his other hand came down to exert pressure.
I exploded back to my feet, thrust my free hand at his face, thumb going for his baby blues, and he threw me into the air and over his shoulders with that single fucking hand. I renewed my acquaintance with the wall, reintroduced myself to the floor, and donated a little more blood to the pool.
This time, Paladin didn’t wait. As I struggled to my feet, he was there, fist hammering into my right side like a steel wrecking ball. When I fell a third time, I donated more than just blood; half-digested remnants of eggs and bacon joined the gory stew.
See These Bones Page 9
