Our group had taken eight of the thirteen available pods (including Judy’s, which never made it down) leaving five spares. Apparently they haven’t figured out a way to breach the lower levels of The Spiral without using the pneumatic tubes, or surely the Red Army would be swarming the forest by now. Valeriya was wisely conserving the pods, and was sending only the most dangerous hunters into the lower levels. Whatever Steve McGarrity had showcased as a sample of his abilities, it must have impressed her enough to grant him one of the five remaining spots.
Despite pledging his allegiance to the Army, Steve claimed he was just looking for a way to get into The Spiral; he had no interest in taking on any temp work as a bounty hunter. He was skeptical of being able to collect the twenty million dollar prize that Valeriya had promised to award for my capture anyway. Steve’s goal was the ‘ultimate freedom’ that Cameron Frost promised to whomever was able to reach the final stage of The Spiral, whatever that was. I assured him that money was no object; I’d double Valeriya’s offer, and let him claim this nebulous prize that he was so interested in (if it were even there – the Spiral was still under construction, so I was doubtful we’d find anything on the lower level besides a long, dusty construction tunnel).
“Wait,” Peyton said, “before we get too chummy with William Wallace over here, shouldn’t we address the fact that he murdered Ortega?” She pointed towards our chef, whose twisted body lay in a heap by the shoreline.
Steve spun around and narrowed his eyes at the angular yellow armor. “What is that, a Transformer or something?”
Mac nodded. “I thought he looked more like a GoBot, actually.”
Steve turned back and furrowed his brow. “A what?”
“It’s a person,” Peyton interrupted. “A flesh-and-blood person who you killed.”
Steve shrugged and buried his hands in his pockets. “That wasn’t me. It was The Beast.”
“The what?” I blurted out.
“I don’t know his name,” Steve explained. “Up top everyone just calls him The Beast. Big, nasty son-of-a-bitch. He can flip back and forth between a human and this big rock thing. Valeriya sent him down here to find you guys, along with me and a few others. I assume you haven’t seen him yet because...well, you’re all alive and stuff.”
As we continued to discuss The Beast I spotted a projectile sailing overhead. A tree, torn from its roots, spiralled past us at incredible speed, crashing into the forest at our backs. Moments later a figure burst from the darkness. It was a man – or what was vaguely shaped like a man – only much, much larger. I’d seen impossibly large superhumans before; towering walls of muscle, powerful enough to smash buildings to dust with their bare hands – but nothing like this. This behemoth was built from ash-colored boulders, stacked at least twenty feet high. Menacing blue eyes flared angrily from slits in its featureless head, and they focused intently on us as it approached.
I pulled the machine gun from my back and opened fire. Petyon and Mac immediately followed. We emptied dozens of rounds into this thing – armor piercing, explosive and incendiary slugs – enough firepower to send a tank into orbit. The Beast didn’t flinch. It continued to lumber down the shoreline, shaking the ground with each step.
As we scrambled to reload, Steve clapped his hands together, rapidly rubbing them in circles. His fingertips sparked and illuminated, then quickly fizzled out like a dying flare. “Shit,” he grumbled. “Not enough light.”
“What?” Peyton screamed over the deafening sound of machine gun fire.
“I can bend light,” he shouted back, “but it’s too dark in here. I need something bright.”
Mac pulled the flash-bang from my belt and held it out for his inspection.
Steve must have recognized what he was holding, because a wide smile spread across his narrow face. “Throw it at me.”
Without hesitation Mac stepped backward, pulled the pin and lobbed it, striking him squarely in the chest. The burst was blinding. We shielded our eyes when it made impact, but the reflected light sent harsh yellow streaks across my field of vision.
I squinted hard, feverishly trying to rub the sting from my eyes. Through a dotted haze, I saw Steve racing towards The Beast with a glowing weapon in-hand. It was a sword: a massive medieval broadsword, forged from the light he’d captured from the flash. It was nearly twice his size, but he swung it in large swooping circles, wielding it with effortless ease. It appeared completely weightless.
The Beast bellowed when McGarrity’s weapon sliced its chest. A vertical swipe tore open a gash that spewed muddy red liquid. It was thick and smouldering, like molten lava. Careful to avoid being spattered by the creature’s blood, Steve spun and rolled, diving through its legs.
With surprising dexterity The Beast pivoted, flailing its fist in an attempt to catch his significantly smaller foe with a backhand. A step quicker, Steve parried with his glowing sword, meeting the creature’s forearm. The blade’s edge was impossibly sharp, slicing stone like a scalpel through flesh.
The Beast’s hand separated from its body and splashed into the lake. The extremity, spewing red-hot liquid, hissed as it sank into the darkened pool. The creature flailed its mutilated arm and let out a disturbing noise – a howl so thunderous it forced us to cover our ears.
As the slashes continued in rapid succession, the light pouring from McGarrity’s sword only intensified; the battle became almost painful to observe, though fragments were visible between strikes. The creature was being reduced to a steaming pile of charcoal with every stroke of the broadsword, and amidst the carnage I caught something that troubled me: McGarrity’s expression. It wasn’t anger, or determination, or any of the emotions I imagined one would need to summon in order to fight a living nightmare. He was happy. Beaming with hubris and youthful energy, the crooked smile never left his face. McGarrity’s green eyes glowed with a confidence nearly as powerful as the light from his weapon. It was a recklessness that I’d seen in Kenneth back in Arena Mode – moments before a blade penetrated his stomach and burst out of his back.
With a final leaping strike, McGarrity ended the creature, in a long, downward slash that drew a vertical line between the Beast’s eyes, opening it up from sternum to groin. It split in two even pieces, causing a small tremor as the crumbling remains crashed to the earth. It was such a powerful and calculated strike that I wondered why McGarrity hadn’t done it earlier – it’s as if he’d been enjoying the battle so much that he extended it willfully, savoring each stroke of his blade.
When Steve spun around his weapon winked out of existence. Without his glowing sword the darkness returned, leaving the artificial constellations as our only source of light. As he approached he blew on his fingertips; they had a faint red hue, and were fading like the embers of a dying fire.
Peyton, Mac and I looked on, completely dumbfounded, as the brash, young man strolled back towards us. He was as calm and collected as the moment he emerged from the forest. He pulled his feet together and extended his arms, taking a deep bow as if he’d received a standing ovation. I wasn’t sure if he was doing this for our benefit, or the simulcast viewers whom he claimed were watching our every move.
“Wow, tough crowd,” McGarrity laughed, noting our apparent lack of enthusiasm. It’s not that we weren’t relieved that The Beast had been destroyed; we just weren’t sure how to react. “Well,” he shrugged, “you can hold your applause until later. Because you ain’t seen nothing yet.”
***
It was forty-five minutes of awkward silence, interlaced with the occasional attempt at small talk. McGarrity appeared more or less sincere, and seemed like he could be a very powerful ally – if not a slightly dangerous one.
I had no superpowers of my own, as Steve was quick to point out, but my ability to determine if someone was lying wasn’t far off. During my stint at the casinos, an aptitude for making complex calculations in my head was a helpful tool – though it was my ability to read physical signs and ‘tells’ that made me
unstoppable. Ticks. Gestures. Vocal cues. Even pupil dilation. I read every single one and stored them in my internal hard drive, and if I spoke with someone for long enough, their fabrications would almost seem to appear in giant floating bubbles that hung over their heads. As Steve went over his back story – where he was from, what led him here, and his motivation for coming to The Spiral – I never detected an irregularity. If he was a liar he was one of the best I’d ever met.
Peyton was convinced of Steve’s sincerity almost immediately. She always saw the best in people. She smiled politely and laughed at his jokes, and even took the time to tend to a small burn he’d suffered on his shoulder when a drop of The Beast’s blood seared a hole through his t-shirt.
Mac, on the other hand, wasn’t so sure. He was as laid back as anyone I’d ever met, but I could sense his distrust when it came to McGarrity. He wandered over towards Chandler and sat next to him in the tree line. Their conversation had a conspiratorial tone; their hushed words were being kept purposefully quiet, leaning close to each other as they discussed what I could only assume was the convenient timing of our new teammate’s arrival.
Eventually, and to my considerable relief, Brynja, following the sounds and flashing lights from the battle, emerged from the dense forest across the lake. She arrived with our chef, DuPont, whose luminous red armor was fully intact.
When they arrived at our makeshift camp McGarrity was quick to introduce himself. “I can’t believe it’s really you,” he said excitedly, racing towards her with a little too much enthusiasm. “I loved you in Arena Mode! Your ghosting thing was pretty cool, even though it isn’t that helpful...at least against electricity. And the mind reading? You can do that too, right? Do you have any other powers?”
Eyes widened, she glanced at me as if asking for assistance. I just smiled and shrugged my shoulders.
“Yeah,” she said flatly, pressing her palm against McGarrity’s shoulder. She gave him a gentle nudge, forcing him back a few paces. “I’m magnetic. I attract crazy douche bags.”
He paused for a moment, furrowing his brow, and then let out a boisterous laugh. “That’s it! That’s the dry wit I remember from Arena Mode. Man, I was so bummed when you died.”
She pressed her lips into a thin line and nodded slowly. “Well, it didn’t last, so...it’s all good.” A beat passed before she calmly added, “And who the fuck are you, if you don’t mind my asking?”
He repeated the same gesture as when I’d asked him that same question, smacking his head as if to jog his memory. He introduced himself while I gave Brynja and DuPont a summary of the last several hours: Chandler’s injury, Ortega’s death, the arrival of our annoying new ally, and his battle with a twenty-foot rock monster. Just an average day in Arena Mode.
Brynja had wandered the dimly-lit forest ever since her arrival, hoping to locate anyone from the group, and she recently discovered DuPont. Our chef had somehow managed to climb a tree (no small feat considering his bulky armor) and was convinced that being in an elevated position would provide a measure of camouflage. Of course an outfit made of cherry-red plastic wasn’t doing him any favors when it came to stealth, but he finally explained that he was afraid that he’d be too vulnerable without it. Luckily she came across him before The Beast did, or he might have been the second GoBot to sail over the lake.
Brynja hadn’t recovered any weapons, though she’d arrived with some good news: she discovered a treasure chest in close proximity to her pod, and inside it was a map. A crudely-drawn diagram scrawled on a crinkled sheet of manila paper, which outlined the entire level. It was roughly to scale, and featured every major landmark that we’d encountered. An exaggerated black ‘X’ marked a spot just a half-mile from our location, with a single word written beneath it: ‘escape’.
We made our way through the jungle, using the lights from our gauntlets to illuminate a path. Mac offered to assist Chandler, lending an arm for support as he stepped gingerly onto his injured leg. It was as thoughtful as it was surprising, considering I’d never seen my pilot go out of his way to help anyone unless the possibility of a free drink or a college co-ed were the reward. They led our group, followed by DuPont (who wasn’t in the chattiest mood), and I lagged behind, flanked by Brynja and Peyton. I’d forgotten that our new arrival was just a few paces to my back until he opened his mouth.
“So,” McGarrity called out, addressing no one in particular. “This is awkward, huh?”
I continued to plod forward, brushing low-hanging branches aside and swatting at the insects that were drawn to the glow of our suits. “Being stalked by thousands of angry, brainwashed dissidents with machine guns? I guess you could file that under ‘awkward’.”
He blurted out the caustic laugh that I’d only heard twice, but already sounded like rusted nails in a blender. “Naw, I mean you three, here together. You, your ex, your current, all—”
I stopped him dead in his tracks, cutting his words off with an exaggerated wave of my hands. “Whoa, let’s take a step back, Braveheart. There is no ‘ex’. I don’t know what they showed on the simulcasts, but Peyton and I...we were apart, but we never really stopped...I mean—”
“Right,” Peyton added briskly. “We never split up, not officially. It was like a break. No big deal.”
We continued to march through the trees, though Brynja was now intentionally leading a few steps ahead.
Steve rushed to keep pace with me and shook his head, wedging his mouth to one side. “Mmm.”
“Mmm?” I repeated the nondescript sound he’d made, which technically meant nothing, yet clearly implied something. “What is that noise supposed to mean?”
“Well,” he said after a short pause, “I was just thinking about last summer, when my girlfriend Tess caught me having coffee with a chick from the comic store. This really, really hot piece of...” he wisely paused and re-phrased when he caught a glimpse of Peyton’s narrowed eyes. “Well, she was attractive – let’s just leave it at that. Anyway, Tess stomps up to me, grabs my latte and dumps it over my head. ‘It’s over, asshole!’ That’s what she shouts in front of everyone at Starbucks. Can you believe it?”
“You, being called an asshole?” Brynja replied without turning around. “Shocking.”
“I know,” Steve shouted, throwing his hands up. “So I’m thinking, my ex goes ballistic over coffee – a freaking coffee – one time, in broad daylight, with some girl that I hadn’t even slept with yet. And I’m watching the simulcast, thinking that Mox is shacking up with Brynja, and having picnics with her every day in this romantic dome while a servant brings them food...I can only imagine what Peyton must be thinking.”
I was quick to correct him. “The dome is not romantic. It’s a terraformed, climate-controlled habitat.”
“And you were up there doing science experiments?” he asked innocently.
“Well not really,” I mumbled. “Right, well I can see where that could be confusing when you see it out of context...but I don’t have a servant. Chandler helps run the fortress. And yes, sometimes he’ll bring me food or the occasional drink.”
I just realized that I’d accurately described a servant.
“Look,” McGarrity continued, sounding somewhat apologetic, “I’m not the only one discussing this. It’s already a huge topic on the holo-forums: the whole ‘Team Brynja versus Team Peyton’ thing. People are voting on who you’ll end up with.”
“Who the hell would start a poll like that?” I asked.
“I was bored,” McGarrity admitted. “And it was a long flight from Texas.”
I was going to reply but all I could muster was a groan.
“Look,” he continued, “I’m just saying Peyton must be the coolest girlfriend in the world, because if she’s gonna let her guy hang out with some chick dressed up like Catwoman, with the whips and the sexy leather, and—”
“Anyone not heard of cosplay?” Brynja shouted. “It’s a thing! Millions of people do it.”
“Matt and Brynja
can play dress-up all they want,” Peyton sighed, rushing several steps ahead of us. “Like I said, we were taking a break.”
We remained silent for the rest of the trek, and by some divine act of god McGarrity was able to keep his mouth shut for the duration. I spent the next twenty minutes hoping that he turned out to be evil – that way I could kill him without feeling guilty about it.
After a short hike over uneven terrain we arrived at a wide clearing, which seemed to be significantly more illuminated than the rest of the level; it was as if the stars were casting a spotlight on the field, signifying the importance of the location. The area was unnaturally symmetrical, as if it had been landscaped into a circle. In the center of the clearing was a flat grey obelisk, surrounded by knee-high grass, jutting from the earth like an oversized tombstone. It had no inscription, but as we approached a faint outline became clear on its surface – it was the vague outline of a handprint.
After a moment of inspection I removed my gauntlet and pressed my palm into the stone, extending my fingers and thumb until they fit inside the shallow grooves. My action triggered a hologram projector; Cameron Frost’s head appeared, hovering overhead like a massive, pompous blimp.
“Eight pods remain,” Frost declared. “And I commend you for claiming the first one. You’re either very smart, or very fortunate. Either way, congratulations are in order – you’ll be making your descent into the next phase of The Spiral.” Frost’s disembodied head flashed a knowing grin. “You might have arrived here alone, or you may have arrived with allies you’ve acquired throughout your journey. This strategy may have helped until this point, though at the end of this journey, the prize cannot be divided – only one can claim the ultimate reward.”
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