by Ramy Vance
It still made Anabelle feel weird that the human military hierarchy was still adhered to so strongly at HQ, but she appreciated that she knew exactly where to find her friends. Friends. That was funny. Anabelle had never thought of that word concerning Roy. And she had never assumed she’d be able to call a human teenager who was a fraction of her age a friend.
Anabelle stepped into the private room. Abby and Roy were lying in their beds. Roy was hooked up to a respirator as two nurses—one elvish, the other human—fussed over him, waving their wands around his stomach and chest, which was covered in wounds from the drake’s claws and teeth. The wounds looked to be healing well enough. He was going to make it. His chest wasn’t going to be pretty unless you liked scars. Anabelle happened to.
Abby was next to Roy. She didn’t have any noticeable wounds, but she was still in nanobot mode. She hadn’t thought too much about what Abby had decided to do to her body, but now Anabelle was struck by the sheer immensity of what the girl had done. She wasn’t entirely human anymore. It was very obvious now.
There was also someone she didn’t recognize in the room with Roy and Abby. She was a drow who looked to be about the same age as Abby. Anabelle didn’t think there was anything remarkable about the young drow, other than her right arm was black, as if it had been covered in ink.
Anabelle sat at Abby’s side and took the girl’s hand. She’d never been in this kind of situation before and had no idea what to do. Talking to Abby seemed stupid since she wasn’t conscious, but there were things she needed to hear. Maybe it would be better to wait until the girl was awake? Talking while she was asleep seemed easier, though.
Anabelle stayed with Abby and Roy long into the night, waiting for either of them to wake up. She’d been told by the nurses that both were stable and would recover without any long-term ramifications within a day. That didn’t stop Anabelle from worrying. Every hour that Abby and Roy remained asleep felt like a month.
Finally, Abby opened her eyes. The nanobots receded from her skin, and she looked like a normal, healthy seventeen-year-old again. Abby sat up in the bed and yawned loudly as she stretched. “Well, this is new,” Abby muttered as she took in her surroundings.
She stiffened when she saw Anabelle. “Oh, I didn’t see you there,” she exclaimed.
The elf leaned over and gave her a hug. She held Abby as tight as she could. “I was so worried,” she said. “I didn’t think you were going to wake up.”
Anabelle released her and Abby lay back in bed, looking around the room, obviously trying to piece together the bits and pieces she didn’t remember. Her eyes lingered on the body of the strange new person before returning to Anabelle. “Did we do it?” she asked.
“Yeah, we closed down all the Gates. Not without some casualties, though. It was probably our hardest fight so far. Both you and Roy…well, you know how everything with you turned out.”
“How’s Persephone? Is she okay?”
Anabelle glanced at the girl with the ink-stained arm. “Her? They said she’s just resting,” she said. “So, I don’t want to be all business unless you’re feeling up to it. If you need to rest more, that’s totally cool.”
Abby shook her head as she stretched out her fingers. “No, I feel good. What’s going on?”
“I got jumped at my Gate. Someone had been sent specifically to take me out. Sarah got involved and helped me out, but the whole point of the Dark One’s mission was to eliminate me. Did you come across anything like that?”
Abby nodded as she pointed at Persephone. “Yep. That’s her. It was almost like my squad wasn’t even there. She was hell-bent on killing me.”
“What the hell is she doing here, then?”
“Don’t know. I didn’t pick her up. I got knocked out, but I disabled her microchip before it happened. If that’s all that makes someone serve the Dark One, she should be cool. I mean, I hope.”
Anabelle wasn’t certain about the drow, but from everything she knew, the microchips were the Dark One’s main way of mind control. If the chip was destroyed, there shouldn’t be any problems afterward. “We’ll keep her under surveillance,” she said. “But I trust you.”
Abby looked at Roy, who was still sleeping. “Is he gonna be okay?”
“Yeah, the nurses said he just needs to catch up on some sleep. But all of his wounds are healed, and there wasn’t any internal damage. I’m always surprised that he keeps going. This might not even be the worst he’s gone through.”
“You like him, don’t you?”
Anabelle blushed at the question, but she figured there was no harm in telling Abby the truth. Roy was asleep. He wouldn’t hear anything. “Yeah. I do. A lot. For a while, too, I guess.”
“I thought so.”
“Wish I didn’t,” Anabelle said with a laugh. “He’s a little too smug and way too reckless. But I do. And I know it’s reciprocated. Just…you know, it’s hard to find time for anything nowadays.”
Abby nodded, looking very grave as if she understood exactly what Anabelle was talking about. “You two would be cute together,” she finally said. “Maybe you should talk to him about it.”
“I’m not sure if I should be taking love advice from a senior in high school.”
Abby laughed and shrugged. “That’s your call. If you haven’t noticed, I’m smart for my age, but maybe you’re right. Life might be too complicated for that.”
Abby’s gaze drifted to Persephone, and Annabelle had a strong inkling of what was going on but thought it better to wait until later. “If you’re done trying to hook me up with Roy, are you feeling good enough to get back to work?” she asked.
Abby got out of bed, bent down, and touched her toes. “I think so. Little sore, but nothing too bad.”
“Good. We got new intel on the Dark Gates, and we only have a few hours to figure out how to open Terra’s and get her back home.”
Abby was already headed toward the door. “Let’s get her back,” she said.
Anabelle appreciated Abby’s willingness to get back to it. She felt like she would have wanted another couple of hours before she’d been expected to get out of bed. But she also wasn’t seventeen anymore.
Before Anabelle left, she went to Roy’s bed and kissed him on the forehead. As she left, Roy’s eyes flickered open, and he smiled.
Chapter Ten
Creon was already in the lab working when Anabelle and Abby arrived. He was unable to contain his excitement upon seeing the girl and ran to her as quickly as he could, nearly knocking her over as he hugged her. “I’m so glad to see you pulled through!” he exclaimed.
Abby pried Creon’s hands off her, laughing as she asked, “What do you mean, pulled through? Was I that far gone?”
Creon shook his head as he returned to his seat, trying to hide how embarrassed he was by his sudden outburst. “No, no, not at all. It was more…we didn’t quite know what it was that happened. All of your vital signs were normal, but you wouldn’t wake up. And then they found you with that drow. It was all very—”
“Is she going to be okay?” Abby blurted.
“Oh, yes, yes. She was badly shocked by being broken from the Dark One’s mind control, but physically, there seems to be no problem with her. There were a few anomalies that aren’t natural to a drow’s body that the medbay wanted to take a look at but nothing to be worried about.”
Abby exhaled with relief. She only half-remembered the last few moments before she was shocked out of consciousness. They felt like a dream, though. She still wasn’t sure if they had happened. Part of her was looking forward to seeing Persephone when she woke up. That part of Abby was greatly overshadowed by the part of her that was mortified.
Either way, Abby didn’t have to deal with it right now, and she was glad to have something else to focus on. Like Anabelle had said, finding time for your own life seemed impossible due to the ongoing war with the Dark One. “Uh, so, what are we working with?” Abby asked, trying to take her mind off of the softness of
Persephone’s lips.
Creon turned back to Abby as Anabelle found a place to sit. The goblin opened the holoprojector in the middle of the room. The screen displayed multiple iterations of the Dark Gate. Some of the schematics had been broken down into their components. “This is what we are working with.”
Abby studied the projection, trying to make sense of what she was looking at. She’d seen some of these schematics before. They hadn’t helped Abby and Creon figure out how to get Terra back to Earth. If anything, they had been more confused by how the Dark Gates worked. “How’s this going to help?” she asked. “Ain’t this just more of the same?”
Creon shook his head as he pointed at the detailed breakdown of the Dark Gate. “Not quite. Much of it is the same, but there are bits and pieces we haven’t seen before. Take this piece, for example. This was found on the gnomish homeworld. It allows the Dark Gates to be programmed with specific DNA, which was one of the reasons the resistance could not use the Gates if they got their hands on them. Sarah was lucky enough to come across a gnome who knew about the programming.”
Abby still felt groggy. Her mind wasn’t quite ready to jump through all these intellectual hoops, but she did want to work. It was impossible to know how much longer Terra was going to be able to survive in the arena. “Martin, is this something we can work with?”
Martin popped up on the holoprojector. “Oh, you remembered I was here?” he sarcastically retorted. “Here I was thinking that I was going to be a plot hole or something. Hold on, let me take a look at this. Hm, looks like there are a couple of things we could work with. There’s a specific frequency a Dark Gate uses. Looks like it’s what hooks each one up to the other. We catch that frequency, mimic it… We could probably send something through the Gate, but it might be a one-way trip.”
Abby looked closer at the information. “If it was a one-way trip, we could work our way back, though. We have the basic layout of the Gates. Could just jerry-rig it to the collider’s signature.”
Martin considered that. “Only problem is that they’d have HQ coordinates after we did that. We’d have to destroy the Gate as soon as we passed through it, which sounds pretty impossible. But on top of that, just if you want to make things more complicated, we have no idea if they have the means to store that kind of information. For all we know, we could be walking into another trap. This could have all been orchestrated so that the Dark One can finally have a way to transport troops into HQ, and I will not take the blame for that happening. You can try to blame me, but I’m not taking it.”
Abby pursed her lips. “What if we took the gnomish frequency being used and passed it off as our own? That way, if they tried to follow us, they’d just end up on the gnomish world. Bring a satellite along for our trip, toss it up in the atmosphere to broadcast while we grab Terra, and there you go. Home free.”
Creon, Abby, and Martin looked at one another, their minds running, trying to see if they could find a problem with the plan. Abby had her fingers crossed that if there was an issue, Martin or Creon would have noticed it by now.
Creon was the first to speak. “Theoretically, that would work. The only problem would be the satellite. Constructing one for such a specific use in time might be—”
Martin interrupted Creon. “We could use one of the drones. Retrofit it with some new tech and launch it into the atmosphere.”
Abby could part with a drone. She could always build a new one. “Not Gertrude. But yeah, I think that might work.”
The trio talked for some time about the details of the execution of their plan. Anabelle started slinking out of the room as the conversation turned to theoretical physics, and Abby frowned. “Hold on, guys,” she said as she ran to catch up with the elf. “Hey!”
Anabelle stopped and turned to face Abby. “Yeah, what’s up?”
“Uh, I just wanted to thank you…for being there when I woke up. And for trusting me… You know, to do all this.”
“Trust you? Why wouldn’t I? You’re doing great, kid. Just make sure you remember what I always tell you.”
“You always tell me something?”
Anabelle laughed. “You can just fill that in with a piece of good advice. Surprisingly, I don’t have a whole lot of that. Now get back in there and figure out how to bring Terra home. I’m going to go sort out our welcoming party.”
Abby didn’t know why, but she threw her arms around Anabelle and squeezed as hard as she could. Then she ran back to the lab, hoping the elf wouldn’t mention that later.
Terra lay in bed in her cell, staring at the ceiling while Nib-nib chittered at her side. The mantiboid had been sitting with her for most of the day. They hadn’t spoken much. There were still moments when Terra didn’t understand what Nib-nib was saying, but her proximity was comforting.
None of the other fighters had come to see Terra. She didn’t blame them. The glory of her victories was becoming hollow. It had become apparent that she wasn’t meant to live. Even if she kept fighting as hard as she was, the Game Master was going to throw something at her that she couldn’t beat. It was just a matter of time.
It was disappointing. Terra had never thought she was going to be anyone great. The thought hadn’t crossed her mind when she was younger. She’d always thought you just kept on living and trying as best as you could. Now, on her figurative deathbed, she thought about all the things in life she’d never managed to do.
It was not that Terra was filled with regret. Far from it. She was fairly happy with how she’d chosen to spend her life so far. Instead, she was awash with intense anger. There was so much more she had been planning on doing, and now she was stuck in a bizarre death match for reasons outside of her control and understanding. It wasn’t fair, pure and simple. She was violently angry at those who had caused this to happen to her.
Nib-nib seemed to pick up on Terra’s frustration. The creature rested its claw on Terra’s bed near Terra’s hand and chittered, “Life don’t come right, not for most us. We fight. We die. Others fight. Others die. Not come right.”
Terra couldn’t disagree, and because of that, she said nothing. The two sat in silence, other than the constant quiet scratching of Nib-nib’s mandibles until there came a knock on the open door. “Come in,” she shouted.
Cire stepped in. He held a plate of food and three jugs of wine. He passed a jug to Nib-nib and Terra and then sat at the foot of the bed. “Thought you could do with a pick-me-up,” he offered.
Terra hadn’t felt hungry until she smelled the food. She was glad that whenever Cire came into her room, he was smart enough to bring food and wine.
The wine was smoother than anything Terra had been served so far, almost as if the orcs were aware that the shenanigans were coming to an end. At least they had the decency to provide her and the other fighters with good booze.
Cire drank silently as Terra dug into her food, watching Terra relish the meal and wash it down with the wine. When she was done eating, he said, “We’ve heard about your next match.”
That was the last thing Terra wanted to talk about, but she couldn’t think of any other topic. “What’d you hear?”
“They aim for it to be your last one. Guards said it was going to be the biggest fight in the history of any of the arenas. They believe you should be offered the chance to end your run with glory.”
Terra laughed at the idea. Being given the chance? Even though she no longer held the vision of rising to glory within the arena like when she had first stepped out of the shadows, she still felt a twinge of indignation. As if anyone but her had the right to end her run. “Doesn’t seem like that’s what they want.” She scoffed. “Otherwise, they would have given me a decent fight.”
Cire laughed bitterly. “Honestly, I don’t know if they could even if they wanted to. You’ve beaten everything they’ve thrown at you. Done things I’ve never seen an orc do, things I haven’t seen armies do, to be frank. If they continued cheating a little, you’d never lose.”
“I
sn’t that the point of being a champion?”
Cire laughed again, and when he stopped, his face became solemn and serious. “May I speak to you in private?”
Terra shrugged and asked Nib-nib to leave the room. When they were finally alone, Cire took the seat at the side of the bed. “I’ve never met a human like you, nor an orc. You have the strongest warrior’s spirit that I have seen. If you had been born an orc, a true orc, you would have been given an army. Maybe even a tribe to rule.”
“Thanks. That’s a nice sentiment to think about before I get forced to fight to the death.”
“It is not a sentiment. It is the truth. I tell you this because…because there are still orcs who cling to the old ways. Orcs who will do everything in their power to never serve under the Dark One. I tell you this because there is a resistance. There are still those of us who fight every day to stand against the tyranny of the Dark One.”
Terra didn’t really want to listen to Cire’s rant, but she could see he was sincere. She sat up straighter to indicate that she was interested. Cire continued, “If you were to survive all of this, what would you do?”
The thought hadn’t crossed Terra’s mind. Even if she had thought she’d be able to be a champion in the arena, she hadn’t entertained the idea that she would ever be leaving it. “Don’t know,” she finally admitted. “Wasn’t up to the most interesting shit before I came here. And now that I know that shit like this is going on, I don’t know. I’d like to try to keep it from continuing.”
“The first fight you won. I do not know if many noticed it, but I did. You were assisted by something like a bug, and it has stayed close to you at all times.”
Cire pointed at the window sill where Abby’s tracker rested. “Who is helping you?” he asked.
For the first time since Cire spoke to Terra, she doubted his intentions. Not that he had given her any reason to, but simply because no one else had noticed she was being helped. No one had been looking that closely. Realizing Cire had been watching was reason enough for suspicion. “Why do you want to know?”
