by Spencer Baum
“Tell Chad we’ll have an official statement later and that he needs to commentate the race!” said Jodi. “And will someone please tell me where Jenna is? I don’t see her on the monitor.”
“Tracking’s showing the location of her body way off at the edge of the forest,” said Mitch. “Not even on the course, really.”
“What do you mean her body?” said Jodi. “Is she dead?”
“Vitals show that she’s dead,” said Mitch.
“Seriously? My star contestant dies and we didn’t get it on film?”
“We can check the recordings,” said Parna.
“Yes, check the footage,” said Jodi. “Some camera somewhere must…what the hell’s all that on 23?”
Jodi pointed to a monitor showing a section of the forest where it appeared every harpie they had was gathered in a swarm.
“Do we still have any contestants in the forest?” said Jodi.
“Tracking shows Nathan is there,” said Mitch.
“Anyone who’s alive?”
“We’re getting vitals on Nathan right now,” said Mitch. “Tracking says he’s moving.”
“After that fall? No way.”
“I’m just telling you what I see.”
“Well where is he?”
“Should be coming up on 26 now,” said Parna.
Jodi, and everyone else in the Control Room, turned their eyes to Monitor 26 at the bottom left corner of the bank, where indeed there was someone sprinting down the final stretch of the forest, someone running at full bore with a flock of harpies chasing after.
But it wasn’t Nathan. It was Jenna.
*****
The forest path ended with a steel staircase that led to the next obstacle. Jenna had no choice but to take it. The harpies were gaining on her. They had cut off all paths but one, clearly doing something they were trained to do.
I’m the last runner alive in the forest, and they intend to move me along or kill me on the way.
Did she dare look back? She did. Just a quick glance over her shoulder. In that glance she saw a blur of black feathers and sharp teeth, a roving ball of death that would shred her if she let it catch up.
She hoped the harpies would end their pursuit when she stepped off the path. No such luck. The stairs slowed the creatures down, clumsy land birds that they were—to Jenna they had always looked like demented turkeys—but even at a slower pace they maintained their pursuit.
The stairs took her up and over the charred remains of the forest. The crowd cheered at the sight of her.
And the blasted birds were still in pursuit. In a flapping leap of feathers, one of them got a talon tangled in her hair. She felt a not insignificant number of strands ripped out at the follicle when she swiped it away.
She reached a platform at the top of the stairs. The platform ended with a steep drop to a murky tank of gray water below. She had no choice but to slow, then to stop. Surely the harpies would turn back now. Surely they would follow the pattern of so many other Tetradome creatures and stay within the confines of their obstacle.
Surely she could take a minute here to gather herself and figure out what to do next.
But the harpies kept coming. A fibrous, gelatinous, avian mass leapt up at her from the stairs, coming all the way onto the platform, threatening to consume her.
She could see that there were pedestals ahead, that she was meant to jump from one pedestal to the next. But she couldn’t do it. With a swarm of furious screeching birds surrounding her, jumping up at her, scratching at her, pecking at her, she teetered to the edge of the platform, and fell to the water below.
CHAPTER 73
Many in the crowd at Polaris yelled in joy when Jenna fell, this turn of events no doubt having helped their wagers.
Many more yelled in displeasure, Gabe among them. As he watched Jenna sink into the water, he thought about a secret letter tossed to the ground. He thought about a 150-page memoir that included a lengthy confession of guilt from Jenna’s brother. He thought about old photos, old newspaper stories, an old yearbook, an America that was fascinated with Jenna, but was also still convinced, wrongly, that she was guilty.
He thought about Nathan Cavanaugh, standing before the world, a strange and surreal soliloquy of madness in the middle of the broadcast.
The harpies, wretched little things, had ganged up on her. Gabe felt a surprising animosity towards those birds. He and Jenna had been through a lot together. Their in-person encounter was brief, less than a minute in total, but having chased down her memoir for her, having read it and done his best to share it, Gabe felt a familial, almost fatherly connection to the girl.
He couldn’t bear to see her trapped in that lake. As the screen went to a view from the underwater cameras, a view that showed Jenna rushing for the surface, a panic welled up inside Gabe, a panic that moved with the same alacrity as the monster coming up from the deep for Jenna.
It was about to catch her.
The party at Polaris had grown rowdy. An hour of alcohol, combined with the utterly strange nature of the broadcast thus far, had loosened up this place, and as the cameras closed in on Jenna, as if showing the point of view of the sea monster below, the guests at the most exclusive Tetradome watch party in the world made their voices heard.
“Get her, Morty!”
“One last kill for the big guy.”
“There’s no way out for her now.”
“Get ready people! This is why we watch!”
Gabe added his voice to the mix.
“Come on, Jenna,” he said. “Come on, swim!”
She broke the surface.
“Come on, Jenna! Swim for the pedestal!”
There were twenty-some pedestals in the water, but only one that could rescue Jenna. Dead center in the lake, the only pedestal that came all the way down to the surface on the bottom of its descent, a descent it was making as Jenna swam.
Watching Jenna swim, it was clear that she knew what she had to do. Now at the surface, she switched from a frog kick to an Australian crawl. Head down in the water, arms churning, Jenna’s movement stirred a kind of madness in the crowd at Polaris. A thousand adults in formal wear yelling at the screen like revivalists speaking in tongues.
“Go, Jenna! Go!” Gabe yelled.
“Morty’s coming!” yelled a man next to him.
“Oh my God I can hardly watch!” was a voice from behind him.
The voices blended together in chaos. Arms in the air, everyone on their feet. “Swim, Jenna! Come on!”
And now the camera view shifted. Back underwater, a wide angle shot, a small human body splashing on the surface while enormous tentacles rose up from the deep.
“There he is!”
“Oh my God he’s coming!”
The size of the monster swimming up at her was breathtaking. Gabe felt his legs going weak with fear just watching it. An innocent girl swimming on the surface while a kraken rose up from the deep, intent on pulling her down to the shadows. It was the stuff of nightmares. A part of Gabe knew that no matter what happened after this point, what he was seeing on the screen right now would leave him scarred. A horrible, unspeakable death was coming for someone he cared about, and if it caught her, if he saw it catch her, he would never be the same.
“Come on, Jenna! Faster!”
Nothing was right. The pedestal was too high. Jenna was too far. The monster was too close.
And here he comes, on his way to make the final kill of his illustrious career! said Chad Holiday.
“This isn’t happening,” said Gabe, his voice lost in the now-deafening noise of the party. “Oh God, this isn’t happening!”
CHAPTER 74
It felt like an anvil had been tied around her waist, so strong was the downward tug of the creature, so tight was the grip of its tentacle.
Jenna’s response, all instinct at this point, was to grab at the tentacle with her hands. It was only then, when she touched her fingers to its slimy skin, that she remembere
d she’d been carrying around a key. She nearly dropped it. She was about to let the key sink into the darkness so she’d have both her hands available to fight the beast. She even let it out of her grasp for a second, and it began to drift away from her in the water.
She wasn’t thinking when she reached out and snatched back the key. Some animal part of her, some will to survive, knew that the key was important.
The key was all she had.
Angling the key to use a corner of its square head as a weapon, she dug into the skin of the tentacle now wrapped around her.
The creature’s skin was surprisingly thin. It separated with ease, like cutting through the peel of a plum. A brown-red dreck spilled out of its skin and into the water.
The creature yanked her down deeper, so deep now that her ears hurt from the pressure. Another slash at the creature’s flesh. It twitched in response. She was hurting it. She slashed again, gouging at the tentacle with her key.
When it happened, it happened quickly. The monster loosened its grip and let her go.
She scrambled for the surface. Her head burst through and she took a deep, life-saving breath. She was still filling her lungs when another tentacle seized her ankle and yanked her down again. This time the pull wasn’t as gentle. Not as playful. She could sense the creature’s anger as it pulled her with disorienting speed. She couldn’t see anything, had no idea how deep she was going, was helpless as she went down.
She came to a sudden stop, so deep underwater the light was beginning to fade. Her eyes open, she tried to get her bearings. She was about to make for her ankle, try to pull the tentacle loose, when the beast appeared in front of her. A single eye, as large as her entire body—the monster had brought her down deep and now held her up to its eye, as if wanting to inspect its catch before it made the kill.
Using the key as a dagger, Jenna thrust her arm forward and stabbed the eyeball in front of her.
The monster pulled back in response, sending her tumbling through the water in its wake. Tumbling, spinning, moving—my leg is free. Her nose and ears filled with water as she turned, the discomfort of it all could have added to the confusion of the moment but it didn’t. It reminded her which way was up.
She broke the surface a second time, finding herself far removed from the spot where the monster had first pulled her down. She was mere feet away from the lowest pedestal. She was close enough to reach its base with a few strokes.
Coughing, heaving, dizzy, and weak, Jenna climbed out of the water and onto the pedestal. It began to rise. A slow elevator into the sky—the hydraulic lift of the pedestal gave her time. She lay on her side, hacking up water, wheezing as she tried to catch her breath. The monster writhing around in the water below, the pedestal lifting her ten, twenty feet above the surface, her eyes and ears began to open to the larger world.
The crowd in the Tetradome was on its feet and going crazy.
A deep breath. Her brain, her toes, her fingertips—she hadn’t realized how starved they were for oxygen until now. The pedestal rising higher still, her mind coming back online after a near-shutdown, she took stock of her situation.
She was on the central platform amidst a collection of rising and falling pedestals. She was meant to jump from one pedestal to another without falling into the water.
Another deep breath. Her blood cells sang a joyful noise as she brought more oxygen into her body.
She looked across the lake to the platform that brought her here. It was still teeming with angry harpies, a flock of them, jumping and flapping their wings and screaming and…moving? Now that she was out, the harpies were making a move across the pedestals. Like fleas jumping from one dog to another, the damnable birds flapped their pathetic wings and hopped, bouncing across the platforms in Jenna’s direction.
Her escape from this course was in the forest, but if she tried to go back that way and face the harpies she’d be sure to end up in the water again.
The key that saved her life was still in her hand. Scared to leave it behind, she stuffed it in the waistband of her spandex.
Nathan Cavanaugh’s cuff still on her wrist, the signal from her pulse still delaying Sunny’s bomb, Jenna hopped to the next pedestal, and then the one after that, moving away from the harpies, and deeper into the course.
*****
Gordon Bogel pulled his van to the side of the road. He turned the hazard lights on and the radio down. He called Sparrow.
She didn’t answer.
He considered turning the van around and driving back to check on the bomb, but decided that was too risky. Maybe the bomb was still active. Maybe Nathan was still alive somewhere on the course and it was just a matter of time. They hadn’t announced his death yet, had they?
No, they hadn’t. The radio announcers, confused as they were about the strange turn of events in the middle of the race, were being cagey about Nathan. They were trying to pretend Nathan’s speech from atop the Jumbotron never happened.
But how could he possibly be alive after that fall? If he was dead, and they were so sure he’d die from that fall they built a five-year plan around it, then something else was wrong. Maybe Sparrow’s detonator was faulty. If that was the case, there was nothing Gordon could do to fix it anyway. That kind of circuitry shit was her thing, not his.
There really was nothing for him to do now but wait.
He pulled a second phone, a phone he’d hoped never to use again, Blake’s phone, from his pocket. He brought up the Devlin company directory. He considered which person he should call.
Bill? No, Bill was a crafty one who might already be suspicious.
Gary? No, not Gary either. Gary was a lazy bum who screwed up anything you asked him to do.
Chris? Lenny? Arnold?
Yes, Arnold. A sad, middle-aged sellout of a man who wanted nothing more than to do what he was told, collect a paycheck, and be home in time for dinner.
He pressed the call button.
“Blake?” Arnold answered.
“Hi Arnold.”
“Where are you? People have been looking for you.”
“Don’t worry about it. I need a favor, Arnold.”
“Okay?”
“I need you to go into the generator room and check the TAC status grid that’s down there.”
“What am I checking on the grid?”
“I need to know the status of Contestant #1.”
“You mean Nathan?”
“Yes, Nathan. I need to know if his status is red, yellow, or green.”
“Well it’ll be red, won’t it?”
“Why do you say that? Has his death been confirmed?”
“Where are you, Blake?”
“I can’t talk about that right now. Just tell me, has Nathan’s death been confirmed?”
“Well, now that you ask, I guess I don’t know for sure. There’s a lot of confusion around here.”
“I need you to go check the status grid right now, Arnold.”
“Okay, hang on...”
Still holding the phone to his ear, Gordon turned up the radio. He listened as the announcers described Jenna’s escape from Mortimer’s grasp. Not a word of commentary about Nathan’s speech other than a quick mention of the “weirdness” after the broadcast came back online. He was shocked at how easily the announcers had put the whole thing behind them.
He feared the moment of impact they were going for, with Nathan’s speech being the final words before the Tetradome blew sky high, had already passed.
“Okay, I’m in the generator room,” Arnold said.
“Did you find the status grid?”
“I’m looking at it now.”
“What do you see?”
“Darndest thing. I swear someone’s been messing with this grid. There are all sorts of wires here in the back that don’t seem like they belong.”
“You didn’t touch anything, did you?”
“No.”
“Good. The status grid is fine, Arnold. I need you to tell m
e about Nathan Cavanaugh’s lights. He is contestant number one.”
“Yeah, I know, and that’s…well, that’s weird too. Far as I know, the guy’s dead, right? But his light’s still green.”
Gordon closed his eyes and nodded his head. Disappointing as the news was, it was also comforting. Somewhere on the floor of the Tetradome, a badly wounded Nathan was waiting to die. Hopefully it would happen soon. Maybe they were in the realm of any minute now.
“Okay, Arnold. That’s what I needed to know. Thanks for checking.”
“One more thing, Boss, while I’ve got you on the line. Nathan’s light—it isn’t the only one off-kilter. Jenna’s light isn’t right either.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I’m looking up at the TV on the deck above, and Jenna’s still alive, right?”
“What’s your point, Arnold?”
“The grid shows her dead.”
Gordon thought about this.
“Do you think the signals got mixed up?” said Arnold. “Is it possible someone mixed up their cuffs before the race?”
No, it wasn’t possible. Gordon had tested Nathan’s cuff himself, put it on Nathan’s wrist himself.
He leaned forward and rubbed his eyes.
“Arnold, I need another favor from you.”
“Okay.”
“I need you to check the exact locations being broadcast from Jenna and Nathan’s cuffs.”
“I can do that, but I’ve gotta get that info from a guard station. I’ll need to call you back.”
“Please do. Tell me what you find.”
CHAPTER 75
Gabe’s heart was still racing, but it seemed the worst was over. For now.
With the harpies pushing her along, Jenna had reached the platform on the other side of the lake. She was nearing the Ruins, an obstacle that was giving fits to the other living contestants, all of whom were still working through it.
In the pregame, the Ruins got the lengthiest treatment of any obstacle on the course. Designed to look like stone and marble ruins of a lost civilization, the obstacle filled a football field worth of space, and was a series of puzzles for the contestants to solve. Walls that moved, loose tiles that activated booby traps when stepped on, riddles written into the stone, secret passages, and terrapiters.
