Zeroboxer

by Fonda Lee

  Blood and sparks of light clouded his vision. He shook his head to clear it, saw bright globs of his own blood break free. He didn’t feel pain anymore, just a kind of singular telescopic focus. He was going to kill this low domie cheat. He felt himself move before he knew what he was doing; he pulled Macha forward onto him as he threw his body backward. His back slammed into the wall and, as the rebound carried them both off the surface, Carr strained his torso to throw his legs around Macha’s hips. His ribs screamed in protest, but he had forward control now, finally, and they were spinning. Injured and bleeding, he’d never felt so strong or fast. Every sight, sound, and sensation felt as sharp as cut ice. He slammed his fist into the man’s cheek, then his mouth. He kept hitting, and hitting, just as he’d once told Enzo to do, even after the referee’s whistle blew for the second time and the man came shooting up, waving his arms and halting the fight.

  “Now you stop the fight!” Carr shouted in disgust. “Where were you when he was cutting me?”

  “Let me at him,” Macha gurgled, wild-eyed and drooling blood. The air in the Cube was filthy pink.

  “Get back to your corners!” The referee shoved them apart. “Now!”

  Carr climbed back to his hatch and out onto the deck. Scull’s face blanched. “Jesus.” He pulled Carr to his seat. Uncle Polly must have switched off his connection to Carr’s receiver because Carr hadn’t heard him yelling and cursing, as he was still doing now. The WCC official who was bearing the brunt of this assault said, “We’ll review it, I said! Now get back before I have you and your fighter thrown out!”

  “He’s the one who should be thrown out.” Uncle Polly’s finger shook with rage as he pointed in Macha’s direction. “He cut my fighter! You saw it, and didn’t stop the fight. What kind of warped gig are you domies running here?”

  “I said get back!” the official shouted.

  “Coach,” Carr called, and Polly broke off at last. He came over and got to work, helping Scull press towels to Carr’s face. They came away red. The doctor came over to stitch him. Carr saw himself on the screens. He looked ghastly. Even worse than he’d expected. “He weighted his gloves, coach,” Carr said.

  Bax Gant appeared on the deck. He bent down next to Carr, one hand on the railing. “You’re sure, Luka? If you’re going to make an accusation like that, you’d better be sure.”

  “I’m sure.”

  Gant went to speak to the officials. The cameras showed him and the president of the WCC gesturing and holding a low, intense conversation that couldn’t be overheard. The noise from the stands churned like storm waves crashing against rocks. Furious Terran fans were shouting and throwing things. Two fights had broken out and security guards with thrusters were dragging people off.

  Gant came back. “They’re reviewing the fight.” He didn’t hide the disgust in his voice. “Macha’s people deny it. They showed the referee his gloves, said you were lying.”

  “That’s bullshit,” Carr said. “He has another pair. Or the domies are covering for each other.” He winced as the stitches went in. “Macha’s a headcase and a cheat. He knew he was losing.”

  “We can file a formal complaint and call for an investigation,” said Gant. “But that’s not going to solve anything right now. The match will go to the judges.”

  The officials didn’t even bother to bring the fighters back out to the center of the deck. Maybe they thought the two men would go after each other again, or that the sight of them would send the crowd into a full-on riot. “By judges’ decision,” the announcer said, then hesitated, “the lowmass semifinal match between Yugo Macha and Carr Luka is declared a draw.”

  “A draw?” Uncle Polly was apoplectic.

  Everyone was shouting. There were too many people on the deck, and not all of them were tethered. A few pushes and shoves sent some of them flying free, colliding into others. The crowd was going nuts. Hundreds were out of their seats now, and every fight caused a chain reaction of people spinning into each other, unable to stop their own momentum, grabbing onto or hitting their neighbors.

  “What does that mean?” Carr asked. “How can it be a draw?” Now that he was out of the Cube and no longer fighting, his body was cooling fast and he was feeling all the places Macha had injured him. His chest, his sides, his face—everything hurt.

  “Two judges went in his favor, two in yours, and the fifth declared a tie.” Gant shook his head. “This is ugly. Really ugly.”

  “I beat him,” Carr shouted. “I had the second round for sure, and he cheated in the third! How is that a draw?”

  “Get those fighters back to the locker room!” a security guard yelled at them.

  “Go,” Gant said. “I’m going to sort this mess out.”

  Carr was ushered toward the hall. The entrance was jammed with reporters and cameramen, everyone talking and shouting questions at once. Scull and Uncle Polly went ahead of him, trying to clear the way and keep people back. Carr pulled himself along the guide-rails in a daze. How was it possible to feel so slow and heavy in weightlessness?

  Out of the corner of his eye: a pale Terran face, calm and watchful in the midst of all the excitement. A blond specter. Rhystok.

  Carr swiveled his head to try and catch another glimpse of the man as he was tugged along into the bowels of the stadium. Rhystok was standing still, magnetized shoes firmly planted, hands on the rails. His gaze followed Carr before his receding figure was lost behind the media and security people that pressed ahead of him.

  Shit. What was he supposed to do now? He certainly couldn’t do what Detective Van had asked of him. He couldn’t escape this crowd of people, he couldn’t get close to Rhystok. Carr looked down at his bare left forearm. He couldn’t send the police alert either; Scull still had his cuff. The detective had been right—Rhystok had come all the way to Surya to see him fight, and having done so, perhaps he would now escape. What would happen if he did? Would Van rescind his promise?

  I tried, he imagined himself saying to the detective.

  I tried, to millions of disappointed Terran fans.

  They would reply, Trying isn’t good enough for us.

  In the locker room, there was relative quiet at least. Several of his fellow zeroboxers who’d seen what happened gathered around, grim-faced and muttering. Scull grabbed more towels and wiped him down. Uncle Polly kept ice on his face, then helped him into a thermal top. Carr winced as he lifted his arms to pull it on, but the garment’s heating cells were a relief from the cool air goose-pimpling his skin. Polly was silent as he checked Carr’s stitches. His thin lips were set in a deep downward curve that carved his face like a canyon. He was seething, with anger and something else, like guilt or pain. Like his heart was breaking on his face.

  “Goddamn domies,” Adri said, scowling, her arms crossed. “They hate us. As much as we hate them.”

  “I don’t hate domies,” Carr said quietly, replacing the ice pack on his face with a new one that Scull offered him. He could almost hate Risha for not being there, but he didn’t. “I wish I’d had another minute with Macha, though.”

  “Macha can rot,” Adri agreed. “But that ref looked the other way. The officials, did they really check his gloves? What about the judges, calling it a draw? What a joke.” She smacked the side of a locker with the flat of her hand. The sound rang through the room. “The domies think they’re better than all of us from the old planet. They’re all engineered, full of ‘new world leading humanity into the future’ crap. They agreed to this tournament just to show us up, and they can’t stand to see a Terran win in the Cube. Half the crowd was on Macha’s side, yelling ‘cut him!’ and ‘bleed, worm.’”

  The locker room riffled with angry agreement. Carr was surprised to hear Scull speak up. “Wait until the broadcast reaches Earth,” he said. “When people see what happened, a whole planet is going to come down on your side.”

  That was
the last thing Carr wanted, but he left the thought unsaid.

  The room shushed as Gant came back in. “Okay,” he said. “There’s going to be an investigation into whether Macha did anything illegal, but in the meantime, the draw stands.” Gant held up his hands to silence the outburst. “Normally, that would mean a rematch.”

  “Carr isn’t going back into the Cube with that domie psycho,” Uncle Polly said.

  “There’s no time for that anyways,” Gant said, “and it would turn this place into a war zone. Security is having a hard enough time getting all the spectators out without more fights or property damage. But someone has to go up against Soard tomorrow, and that’s been determined by record. Including this fight, Macha’s pro record is 11-6-1, and Carr’s is 13-1-1.” Gant brought a hand down on Carr’s shoulder. “Congratulations, Luka. You’re in the finals.”

  He gave Carr’s shoulder a squeeze, though to Carr it felt more like sympathy than celebration. There was a round of muted applause from his teammates, but he sensed and shared their uncertainty. The Martians weren’t doing him any favors with this verdict. Fight tomorrow? He wasn’t sure he could walk tomorrow. After today’s fiasco, he might be a wronged hero; after getting pummeled by Soard tomorrow, he would be a disappointment and a loser. Was that the plan all along? For Macha to tenderize him so Soard could take an easy victory?

  Uncle Polly peeled Carr’s sweat-drenched gloves from his hands. “Carr,” he said, “There’s not a person on any planet that could fault you if we decide not—”

  “There’s a clinic not far from the hotel,” Carr said. He pushed off the bench and grabbed his clothes off the magnetic pegs.

  He took in a little food and a lot of liquids on the way there. The vehicle’s AI kept taking them in strange directions to avoid the disorder streaming from the gravity zone terminal. Several streets were blocked by drunk and infuriated fans. Carr saw a pack of Terrans vandalizing a zeroboxing fan shop, smashing the fixtures, tearing apart the WCC-badged clothes and merchandise and dumping it in the street. They were set upon by a mob of angry Martians. Security droids appeared and both sides recklessly attacked them, too, until a dozen people lay on the ground, stunned into paralysis.

  Disbelief layered onto Carr’s injuries. “Is this really because of my fight?”

  Uncle Polly turned away from the window with a swift jerk of his head. “Not a chance. But you’re the excuse they’ve been waiting for.”

  His coach was right, of course, but Carr didn’t feel reassured. He of all people had reasons to feel enraged, to want to scream and destroy things. Part of him did. But it was one thing to own that feeling, selfishly, and quite another to watch others lay claim to it, ostensibly on his behalf. It was grotesque, obscene, he thought, like watching someone else impersonate you naked with your girlfriend.

  There his traitorous mind went again. Risha was somewhere safely away from this mess, he hoped.

  At the clinic, the medics sealed up his gashes and brought the swelling and bruising down. Carr agreed to have nano quick-repair patches placed over his ribs after being assured that the topical stuff didn’t stay in his bloodstream and was legal before competition. He couldn’t believe he was worried about something like that. “Wouldn’t want any rules to get broken now, would we?” He laughed. It hurt. Uncle Polly didn’t laugh with him.

  He’d retrieved his cuff from Scull before sending the kid back to the hotel, and as he waited at the clinic, the display lit up with a deluge of activity. Thousands of people were pouring onto his feed and other zeroboxing feeds. His name was popping up all over the Systemnet. He’d been messaged so many times by so many fans that he pictured his cuff overloading, bursting into flames on his arm. The only ones he bothered to pick up were from Enzo. There were three of them.

  “Holy shit, Carr, I just saw the whole thing,” the boy’s breathless voice said in his receiver. “I can’t believe it. Everyone here is pissed pissed pissed. God, I hope you’re okay?”

  Enzo’s next call had been sixteen Terran minutes later. “I just posted this on my feed and it’s already been reposted twenty-five thousand times.” Carr’s cuff pulled up the embedded image: a profile shot of him right after the fight with Macha. He barely recognized himself. His head was slightly bowed. Blood clung to his skin like rainwater on leaves. Perhaps he’d just heard the judges’ decision, because his lips were slightly parted, his eyes lifted and burning with intensity. In thick white letters underneath, Enzo had added the word UNBROKEN.

  Enzo’s third and final message, thirty-eight minutes afterward, was two short sentences. “Just heard you’re going to the final. Check this out.” He’d sent Carr a short clip from his optic feed. Enzo was standing on a street in Toronto. The corner of Queen and Jarvis, Carr guessed. The light was muted; it was either early morning or early evening. There was a lot of city noise in the background along with people shouting. On the sides of buildings, holovid banners were blinking out, then coming back to life all with the same image. UNBROKEN. Enzo turned in a circle. It was all around him, from small storefront banners to the enormous ones gracing the tallest towers. UNBROKEN. UNBROKEN. UNBROKEN.

  Carr swiped the video off his cuff and leaned his head into his hands, his stomach clenching with humility, gratitude, dismay, and dread.

  Two long Martian hours later they were back at the hotel. There were security droids outside. The rest of the team was sitting or standing in the lobby, watching one of the wallscreens. The footage was cutting between scenes of arrests being made as Martian and Terran fans clashed on Surya, and snippets of news from Earth, where angry crowds had taken to the streets, attacking Martian businesses. A commentator was saying “political ramifications” a lot, while images played of unconscious figures being dragged away from the three blackened, smoking security droids that had been lit on fire outside Toronto’s Martian consulate.

  Adri whispered, “Things are going to hell.”

  “Turn this shit off,” Danyo said, though he made no move to do so.

  Carr felt the shift as he came up to them, faces and bodies moving fractionally so that the weight of many gazes pooled around him as he looked at the screen. A spokesperson for the Martian Council was making a televised statement from Ares City: For the safety of their staffs, all Martian embassies were officially on lockdown. All Martian citizens were advised to stay inside the secured expat sectors or leave the planet.

  Carr turned away from the talking head. “Nice fight today, Adri. Good luck tomorrow,” he said. “You too, Danyo.” He walked away, silent stares following him. He heard, after a moment, the rest of them begin to disperse back to their rooms.

  Uncle Polly walked with him, but he paused at the hallway junction where one corridor led to his room, the other to Carr’s. “Tell me the truth.” His grizzled face was long and solemn, his eyes scanning Carr’s with interrogative ferocity. “Forget what anyone else wants or thinks of you. Screw the fans, the press, Gant, the team, screw me most of all. Do you really want to fight tomorrow? Tell me the truth. Because if the answer is no, I will go to bat with whoever I have to for you on this. What you want matters. You’re not a martyr. You don’t have to be.”

  Carr didn’t know what to say. Did his coach know what an impossible question he’d asked? Maybe there had once been a time when he would have been able to do what Uncle Polly suggested—separate himself from all the expectations that surrounded him. But they had long since fused together, grown into each other; it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began. He’d had aspirations attached to him since the moment his genes had been so fatefully spliced. What defined him, if not that? He didn’t want this weight he carried, but he couldn’t bear to lose it either. He didn’t want to go into the fight with Soard feeling the way he did now—wounded, anxious, and hurt—but pulling out was unthinkable.

  “I want to do it, coach.”

  Uncle Polly’s face slackened. Carr read
acceptance, resignation, even pride. His coach let out a soft breath. “Get some sleep.”

  Carr watched Polly walk down the hall and into his room. He went to his own room, setting his cuff against the entry reader and pushing the door open. Before he stepped through, he felt a second of ridiculous optimism that Risha would be there, sitting on the bed, working on her thinscreen and waiting for him.

  She wasn’t. Instead, sitting in the armchair next to the bed, was Mr. R.

  “Hello, Carr,” he said. “It’s nice to see you.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The door shut behind Carr. He stared without speaking. Finally, he said, “How did you get in here?”

  Rhystok made a dismissive, no matter motion with his fingers. His other hand held a scotch on the rocks that he’d helped himself to from the mini-bar. The small bottle was sitting on the table along with another glass of ice. Rhystok poured liquor into the glass and set it down on the edge of the table nearest to Carr. “Sit down. Have a drink with me.”

  Carr sat down slowly. Rhystok seemed a little different. His voice and movements were quicker, harsher, stripped of their practiced languidness. Despite the cool air, a thin sheen of sweat glistened on his taut brow. He was a hunted man now. Carr fingered the edge of his cuff under the table, thinking of the alert code Van had given him. Rhystok raised his glass and held it in place expectantly. Warily, Carr picked up the one he’d been offered. “What are we drinking to?”

  “To victory.”

  Carr’s lip curled. “Yours or mine?”

  Rhystok drank and set his glass down. “They’re the same thing. They always have been.”

  Carr’s grip tightened around his glass. He set it back down. “I don’t drink before fights.”

  “Just as well. Martian whiskey is made from corn-barley hybrids. Tastes all wrong.” Rhystok leaned back in the chair. His face looked stark and weirdly ageless, deeply shadowed under the room’s orange-hued light. “I take it you’ve seen the latest news-feeds from Earth. Quite something, isn’t it?”