Contender: The Chosen: Book 1

by Taran Matharu

  He stared at the drone now as it hovered silently in the centre of the room. It had saved him plenty of times, yet he hated it. Even if it was just a tool. Was it his tool … or theirs?

  ‘Codex,’ Cade croaked. ‘Come here.’

  The drone zoomed over, hovering just beside his head. He scooted back, sitting up with his back against the wall. For a moment he felt a twinge of guilt for asking it questions while the others weren’t there. They had just as much right to hear this as he did. But he couldn’t wait.

  Now that they had won, it would answer his questions. It had said so.

  ‘I want to know why we’re here,’ he said.

  Silence.

  The Codex seemed to observe him.

  ‘Answer prohibited.’

  Cade stared at it in disbelief.

  ‘Are you kidding me?’ he said, stabbing his finger at the bloodied floor. ‘After everything we’ve done?’

  The Codex turned away from him, pointing towards the darkness of the corner.

  Cade growled under his breath.

  ‘How dare you?’ he yelled, ignoring the pain in his hoarse throat. ‘You two-faced—’

  ‘My my,’ came a voice. ‘You do have a temper. Forgive my little joke.’

  Cade stared. There was a figure there, standing in the gloom. Even as he watched, he could see the faintest blue glow surrounding it. A projection from the Codex.

  ‘Show yourself,’ Cade growled.

  The figure stepped out from the shadows, and Cade’s eyes widened in disbelief.

  A little girl. Complete in a pinafore dress, with chocolate ringlets surrounding cherubic, blushing cheeks. She skipped towards him, and Cade scrambled back in horror. Somewhere behind her innocent blue eyes lay something else.

  Something … wrong.

  She curtsied primly, her eyes never leaving his face.

  ‘Don’t worry, Cade,’ she said, smiling sweetly. ‘I wouldn’t hurt you. After all, we’re going to have such fun together.’

  She frowned at Cade’s expression, then pouted, sticking out her bottom lip in a parody of sulking.

  ‘You don’t like it?’ she asked, patting her hair and curtsying. As she did so, her brown tresses changed to Goldilocks blonde.

  ‘I made her just for you. She’s supposed to put you at ease.’

  ‘Who are you?’ Cade managed. Whatever this apparition was, it was doing just the opposite. His heart was pounding, mouth so dry he could hardly speak.

  The girl sat on the edge of the bed, kicking her heels. She wore dainty little slippers, with buckles on the tops.

  ‘The first men I brought here called me Abaddon,’ she sighed, almost nostalgically. ‘They called this place Abaddon too. But I’ve had many names.’

  Abaddon turned her head and smiled at him. Or he supposed, their head. It helped to remember that it was not a little girl speaking to him at all.

  ‘But I suppose that’s not what you really mean,’ Abaddon said.

  Cade found his voice.

  ‘You’re damned right it’s not,’ he whispered.

  Abaddon clapped the girl’s hands and gave a tinkling laugh. They crawled on to the bed, but the mattress didn’t move beneath the girl’s weight. It gave Cade some courage, knowing the being wasn’t really there.

  ‘It’s been a while since I could talk in such terms,’ Abaddon giggled. ‘The Roman contenders were getting so boring. Gods this and gods that. Worship is a tedious thing. This is better.’

  Cade lifted his chin and met Abaddon’s gaze.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said.

  The girl’s smile widened. Abaddon laid the girl’s hand upon his, and Cade’s hairs stood on end as a static fuzz settled on his skin.

  ‘We were the first,’ Abaddon said. ‘The first life, seven billion years ago, formed in the primordial soup of the universe. Before your little planet was even dreamed of, my species transcended mortality. Transcended sustenance, transcended need. I am older than your sun. Can you imagine such a thing?’

  Cade shook his head even as understanding cascaded over him. It was an ancient, alien thing. He could almost see it, behind those wide eyes. As if those billions of years had chipped away at its soul to leave a withered husk in its place. There was no kindness there.

  ‘Of course, immortality has its price,’ Abaddon said. ‘Without death, we and others like us might have spread like a virus across the universe. Eaten it away, left it barren. There was only one solution. Will you guess what it was, Cade?’

  He had no answer.

  ‘We made ourselves, and the universe, barren. No children for us, nor rival life to infect or supplant us. A terrible price to pay, foisted on us by our foolish leaders. And then we lived on. Drifting through time.’

  ‘What then?’ Cade demanded. ‘What does that have to do with any of this?’

  The facade of innocence disappeared in an instant.

  ‘Patience, child,’ Abaddon snapped, the angelic face twisting in a rictus of anger. ‘You asked who I am, and so I answer. Remember your place, or I shall erase your very atoms from existence.’

  Cade fell silent, and the girl’s expression switched back to its friendly mask. Cade sensed it then. Abaddon was unhinged.

  ‘Death is a sweet release. Or at least many of us thought so. We killed ourselves, to end the endlessness. It was an epidemic, culling our species over the millennia. Boredom is a terrible thing. It destroys the mind.’

  It was macabre, to hear a child speaking in such a way. Cade felt sick.

  ‘Five billion years ago, the last of us met. Twenty-one. All that remained of our great species, once numbering in the billions. All that remained of life. Something had to change.’

  Now they were getting somewhere. Despite himself, Cade leaned forward.

  ‘It was decided we would have children. Of a sort. Each of us was given permission to seed a single planet with life. To watch it grow, nurture it. Something to give us purpose. To entertain.’

  Abaddon sat back and tossed the girl’s ringlets.

  ‘Don’t you see?’ they laughed. ‘I made you. The Romans were right, in a way. I am your god.’

  Cade’s head spun with the horror of it.

  ‘But that wasn’t enough. Does a man not bore of watching the ants? And does he not desire the spirit of competition among his peers?’

  Abaddon smiled sweetly, and now Cade could see the insanity in the ancient being’s eyes.

  ‘So we made this world. Took specimens from our respective planets and gave them each a piece of it. The Romans called this world Acies, and named the other members of my species the Pantheon. Quite apt, don’t you think?’

  ‘And how did the Romans get here?’ Cade demanded. ‘How is Quintus here? Can you control time itself?’

  Abaddon giggled.

  ‘No, silly goose. I have gathered countless specimens from your planet since life first formed upon it. Some of them are brought here immediately, as I did with you and your friends. Others we keep … how might you understand it? On ice?’

  Cade didn’t understand. Abaddon gave him a sympathetic smile, and spoke slowly, as if to a child.

  ‘Those girls you found, I have kept them frozen for decades, only to release them a few days ago. I had expected to watch them get eaten, so it was such fun to see you run into them.’

  The girl paused and Abaddon clapped her little hands.

  ‘Bravo, by the way. A fine trick, convincing them to join you. I’m not sure you would have won otherwise.’

  ‘So you don’t move people back and forth in time,’ Cade said, trying to understand. ‘You just … store them and wait … until you want to put them in the game?’

  ‘I forget how clever you humans have become,’ Abaddon said, letting out a soft sigh. ‘Indeed. I like to leave little surprises from my collection in the caldera for my contenders. People. Tools. Artefacts. Whatever I want, be it useful to them or not. Think of this place as my garden, for me to populate and decorate as I wish. It adds
an interesting component to the game, don’t you think?’

  Cade thought back to the Olmec head and the Mayan city. Interesting … well, that was one word for it.

  The animals you encountered in the jungle are just a few of the menagerie I keep at my disposal – the Earth has given me many children to play with over the mega-annums. And of course, more recently, I have had plenty of humans to call upon too.’

  Abaddon peered out the window, as if to make the girl watch Quintus standing guard on the wall.

  ‘Your friend Quintus, he’d been on ice for almost a thousand years before the Romans summoned his legion from where I had stored them. The Romans have been my contenders for the longest of times.’

  Abaddon paused, a bemused smile on their face.

  ‘Of course, they’re almost all dead now. That’s why I brought you to replace them.’

  But Cade was still trying to understand the last thing Abaddon had said.

  ‘Wait, these Romans … summoned Quintus and the Ninth Legion?’ Cade asked. ‘You mean they asked you to … unfreeze them? Why?’

  ‘For the game, of course. The game. Life is conflict, you see, and this place is a celebration of it. But you’ve made me get ahead of myself. Naughty boy.’

  Abaddon made the girl wag a dainty finger at him.

  ‘It’s a simple game, really. We have a leaderboard, and each planet’s representatives, or contenders as I call them, must fight each other to move their planet up and down it. Fall low enough on the leaderboard and your world is destroyed – we developed weapons capable of doing so before your planet even existed.’

  Cade closed his eyes, letting the truth of it sink in. This was madness. Madness.

  ‘And if we top it?’ Cade breathed.

  ‘Move to the top, and we might send the contenders back home. Of course, you’re far off from that – you’re almost at the bottom!’

  Abaddon giggled.

  ‘But let’s save the rules of the game for our next little chat.’

  Cade felt sick. The horror of the situation was suffocating.

  ‘And the vipers?’ Cade asked, choking back the nausea. ‘Are they from a rival planet?’

  ‘Oh, you are a curious one,’ Abaddon said, clapping their hands gleefully. ‘I chose my new contenders well. But then, I know I have. I’ve been watching you for a long time.’

  Cade stared at the little girl. How much did Abaddon know about him? About the others?

  Abaddon’s expression changed, and then they sighed wistfully.

  ‘No, the vipers are what’s left of the creatures from my first planet, before they fell too low on the leaderboard and I was forced to wipe the life from it. My first experiment was a failure, but I kept some of the specimens to play with.’

  ‘You seeded another planet? Before Earth?’ Cade asked.

  ‘You know it as Mars. Earth is my second attempt.’

  Cade could hardly believe what he was hearing. It was like some sick joke.

  ‘I thought I’d design a qualifying round, just for fun. Test your mettle. You haven’t played the real game yet. My fellow members and I are keen to put my new contenders to the test.’

  ‘Fun?’ Cade spat. ‘Nothing about this game is fun. My friends died in front of my eyes.’

  Abaddon blinked innocently at him.

  ‘But you do want to go home, don’t you?’

  Cade had never felt so angry. Abaddon had chosen their avatar well. To them, Cade was nothing but a spoiled child’s plaything. A toy to be tossed aside when something better came along.

  ‘You’re a monster,’ he said.

  Abaddon laughed. ‘Does a farmer care if his cattle see him so?’

  ‘We’re not cattle,’ Cade said, pressing his palm against his chest. ‘We’re thinking, feeling beings.’

  ‘Your intellect is to mine as yours is to a plant,’ Abaddon replied, the sweet smile on the girl’s face belying the cruelty behind it. ‘Conversing with you is like playing chess with an amoeba. You are less than cattle to me. Less than bacteria. Thinking beings? You don’t know what a thinking being is.’

  ‘So it’s all relative, right?’ Cade asked bitterly.

  ‘Good,’ Abaddon said, smiling prettily at him. ‘You understand.’

  Cade glared at Abaddon, speechless with rage. He had never known such anger. There was nothing he could do about this. Abaddon held all the cards. Could kill him with a click of their fingers. He was at Abaddon’s mercy, and it seemed the alien had none to spare.

  The girl jumped off the bed.

  ‘It’s time,’ Abaddon said in a sing-song voice, pirouetting like a ballerina.

  ‘Time for what?’ Cade asked.

  ‘To play, of course,’ Abaddon said.

  A timer appeared above the girl’s head, slowly counting down. Then, just like that, Abaddon was no longer there. Cade was alone in the room, staring into the gloom. The Codex floated up to Cade’s face.

  ‘Rest well, Cade,’ came Abaddon’s voice. ‘The game is just beginning.’

  Acknowledgements

  There have been a great many people who I owe a debt of gratitude for their contribution to the creation and publication of The Chosen.

  I would like to thank my UK agent, Juliet Mushens, for all her hard work, teaming up with many amazing publishers around the world. She has been my guiding light throughout the entire process and my life would not be the same without her.

  Thank you to the publishing teams at Feiwel and Friends and Hodder Children’s, for helping bring a beautiful book to as many readers as possible. They have done fantastic work and have stuck with me from start to finish. In particular, I would like to thank:

  Jean Feiwel, Emily Settle, Liz Szabla, Patrick Collins, Kim Waymer, Melinda Ackell, Alexei Esikoff, Julia Gardiner, Mariel Dawson, Kathleen Breitenfeld, Katie Quinn, Morgan Dubin, Katie Halata, Emma Goldhawk, Naomi Greenwood, Samantha Swinnerton, Sarah Lambert, Tig Wallace, Michelle Brackenborough, Naomi Berwin, Sarah Jeffcoate, Ruth Girmatsion and Nic Goode.

  I would like to thank my friends and family for their on-going support, guidance and patience. Vic James, Sasha Alsberg, Dominic Wong, Michael Miller, Brook Aspden, as well as Liege, Jay, Sindri and Raj Matharu, you guys rock.

  Finally, thank you, the readers, for all you have done. Your comments, reviews messages and encouragement have meant the world to me. It is ultimately you that made me a success, and you that keep me writing. I will be forever astonished, honoured and grateful for your support.

  Thank you.

  Taran Matharu

  To my readers, for all your support.

  This book could not have been written without you.

  HODDER CHILDREN’S BOOKS

  First published in Great Britain in 2019 by Hodder and Stoughton

  This eBook edition published in 2019

  Text copyright © Taran Matharu Ltd. 2019

  The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  eBook conversion by PDQ Digital Media Solutions Ltd.

  ISBN: 978 1 444 93893 7 (hardback)

  ISBN: 978 1 444 93895 1 (epub)

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