Gauntlet

by Holly Jennings

  Or would he try to take me out first and go for the fight right now?

  Cole grinned, took a step toward me, and drew his blade. The fight. He was going for the fight. I drew my sword and took a stance. Silence settled between us. We didn’t move but let the scene build itself. We both knew what we were doing. Build the tension. Put on a show. But judging by the grin still tugging at Cole’s lips, the crowd weren’t the only ones enjoying this.

  I could just picture the announcers.

  “Here we go, folks. In a bold move, Cole Wilkinson is going for the fight and will try to take Kali Ling out of the matchup. This could decide who moves on to the championship and whose tournament run ends. Will Kali Ling push the matchup to a third round? Or is Team Defiance going home right now?”

  I knew my team, and we weren’t going home.

  We took off running and soared toward each other, two freight trains on a collision course. Our bodies, our swords, everything smashed together, and exploded apart in a blast wave, like we’d torn through the sound barrier. Both swords went flying. We went flying.

  I hit the ground rolling.

  I tumbled over myself again and again until I landed on my back. Hard.

  I lay there, not moving, soft breaths whispering through my mouth. Pain radiated through my entire body. Bruises formed like mini fireworks. A burst of color, a jolt to the senses, then they faded in with the numbness I already felt everywhere else. Then my higher functioning kicked back in, like someone had hit the reboot button on my brain.

  Get up.

  Where’s Cole?

  Find your weapon. Now.

  I rolled to my stomach, pushed up to my hands and knees, and groped around the pavement. My sword. Where the hell was my sword? Shadows stretched and roiled between the star-filled puddles and neon rays of light. Cole was on his side, breathing heavily. He tried to push himself up and collapsed again.

  There. The soft glow from my sword glinted in the darkness, several yards away and in the opposite direction from the flag.

  I left it.

  I pushed to my feet, gritting my teeth against the screaming protests of my body, and started running, arcing a curve around Cole. He lunged, sticking out a hand that caught my leg. I tripped and slammed into the road. The impact sent my brain somersaulting while my insides played pinball against my rib cage. I skidded across the pavement, collecting gravel and road burn until I slid to a stop. Shallow breaths whispered out of my mouth as I did a mental inventory of my injuries. Half of my face was on fire, like I’d pressed it against a furnace grate. Everything hurt. Every muscle I had, and even ones I didn’t. With a groan, I turned onto my back, and Cole appeared over me. Suddenly, the fire wasn’t just on my face, but churning in my gut and chest.

  I backpedaled.

  He clamped down on my ankle, and I snapped a kick across his jaw. He rolled to the side, unsheathing the dagger from my boot as he went.

  Goddamn it, Kali. You fucking idiot.

  I’d forgotten about my dagger, and now he had it.

  I scrambled to my feet. So did he. My weapon was in his hand, the only weapon left between us.

  I bolted.

  He dove for me.

  His hand caught my knee, and I hit the ground again. Hot pain shot up my leg as the blade sunk into my calf and twisted, shredding nerves, muscle, and bone.

  I screamed.

  With my free leg, I kicked the dagger from his grip and smashed his face with my boot.

  Repeatedly.

  His head rocked back each time, snapping harder with every kick. Blood inked his teeth and collected in the crevices. I halted my attack, retracted my leg as far as I could, and slammed down. The final, deafening crack of his bones snapping under my foot could have triggered an avalanche.

  He collapsed. Shallow breaths expanded his rib cage as his breaths whistled through his busted mouth. He was down but not out of the game.

  I turned to our base.

  I crawled, a limping crawl, dragging my leg behind me. My arms shook. Breaths screamed through my lungs. Bile burned at the back of my throat. Every nerve inside begged me to stop, roll over, and play dead. But I pulled myself along. An inch at a time.

  The pavement scraped at my hands, knees, everything. My leg burned, and I stifled the grunts trying to pry their way out of my mouth. Despite the blood, sweat, and tears in my eyes, the flag shone clearly in my view. Less than a foot away now. I was there. It was all mine.

  Fingers latched onto my ankle, and a chill shot through my body.

  No. NO.

  I’m there.

  Cole pulled himself up both my legs with my dagger gripped in his mouth. Blood leaked from his gums and nose, snaked across the blade, and dripped from the edge. As he passed the open wound just below my knee, his fingers dug in and twisted.

  The scream that ripped from my mouth nearly shattered the streetlights.

  Unyielding, soul-splitting pain shot up from my leg and erupted through my whole body. I rocked and contorted under the unbearable agony. Tears burned in my eyes. My brain felt like it was rupturing through my skull.

  Cole pulled himself higher.

  My hand formed a fist. I turned and reeled back to deliver a blow when he slammed me down, pinning my shoulder blades with his forearm.

  Oh shit.

  I struggled beneath him but couldn’t budge his weight. My hands, arms, everything strained, as my fingers brushed against the edge of the base. So close.

  The world stopped.

  The neon lights danced against the dark background, like rainbow stars winking out before the sunrise. Cool air whispered empty promises of victory across my tongue. The pavement was damp against my cheek, like the street’s tears had replaced my own.

  The dagger squealed against Cole’s teeth as he ripped it from his mouth. His weight lessened for a split second, like he was reeling back. Then he plunged the blade straight into my spine.

  I spasmed.

  Gurgled.

  Went limp.

  And everything faded to black.

  CHAPTER 20

  Oh, God.

  No. No. No.

  What just happened?

  I slammed back into the pod though my insides still felt hollow, like my soul hadn’t come back with me. Like a piece of me had died in the arena. My hands clawed at the pod’s interior as the cords detached from my skin and retreated. No. Let me back in. I can fix this.

  I have to fix this.

  The speakers crackled around me.

  “What an amazing fight.”

  The announcers were still reeling. The excitement from their voices overflowed the audio feed until it sounded like it was straining against the speakers.

  “Kali Ling is out. That’s it, folks.”

  My clawing hands turned to my own face, tugging at my skin. Quick, panicked breaths panted from my mouth.

  Was this real?

  “What a close match. Great show by both sides, but with that, Defiance is out of the all-star tournament.”

  I curled in on myself, cradling my head in my hands. Hot tears singed my eyes. We’d risked it all, and we had lost. The sponsors would pull out. The money would dry up. What the hell were we going to do now?

  I took a breath and pushed the emotions away before I faced my teammates. As I shoved down the lump in my throat, the pod doors opened.

  My teammates sat on the edges of their pods, all with the same bewildered looks on their faces. Finally, Derek looked up at everyone else.

  “What the hell happened in there?”

  “It was Tamachi’s final effort to push us out of the tournament,” I said simply. “It’s smart, too, if you think about it. Compounding our injuries like that nearly guarantees our loss, and we can’t say anything to the public. Who’s going to believe us?”

  Lil
y’s hands gripped the edge of her pod tightly. “I can’t believe we’re out. It’s not fair. They cheated.”

  I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter. If we go public, the VGL will crush us. It’s my fault, anyway,” I admitted. “I lost it for us. I almost scored. I was right there, and I lost.”

  Hannah tsked at me. “You didn’t lose it for us. We’re a team. We win together, and we lose together.”

  “We won’t be together anymore,” I reminded them. “We can’t maintain the team now.”

  “The house is paid for, right? It’s not like we don’t have a place to live.”

  “Yes, but that doesn’t include the cost of the staff, maintaining the pods, everything else.”

  “So? We’ll figure this out together. If we have to do a bunch of ads and marketing and club appearances, we’ll do it to keep the team together. The team isn’t just your responsibility. We’re family now. We lean on each other.”

  My heart melted. And really, at the end of the day, they were what mattered to me most. Not winning. Not championships.

  My team.

  My friends.

  Hannah smiled. “But tonight, let’s just relax. Let’s go get the press conference over with. Then I vote for seventy-two hours of classic video games, junk food, and sleeping in.”

  “I second that,” Lily chimed in.

  “Third,” Derek added.

  “Junk food,” Rooke began. “Does that include pizza?”

  Hannah shrugged. “Sure.”

  “I’m in.”

  Everyone turned to me. Despite the loss and getting kicked out of the tournament, they were smiling now. Because Hannah was right. We were family.

  I smiled with them. “One condition: Whatever we play, Hannah has to be the princess.”

  • • •

  At the media pavilion, a crowd had gathered, larger than I expected. Reporters sat in the chairs while fans gathered around the edges. Most looked disappointed, even those in the media. Despite our damaged reputation, at least we still had some admirers in the audience.

  I leaned forward and pressed my lips to the mic. “Thanks for coming. We’ll begin the questioning now.”

  I pointed at the reporter in the front row. She stood.

  “How did it feel to lose against a former teammate?”

  “Cole deserved to win,” Derek said. “The whole team deserved it. They were right on top of their game. We wish them luck in the championship.”

  I nodded to another reporter. He shouted his question from his seat.

  “How does it feel to be kicked out right before the championship?”

  I spoke, straining against the tightness in my throat. “We had a lot of fun, and we’re grateful for the opportunity to compete in this kind of tournament. It was an honor.”

  I scanned the crowd again for another reporter to call on when I noticed a fan at the edge of the audience. His foot was tapping a thousand miles a second, and he was chewing on his bottom lip like it was gum. I pointed at him.

  “You look like you have something you want to say.”

  He glanced around, like he was making sure that I was pointing at him. “Uhh, I’m not a reporter.”

  “So? The floor is yours.”

  He looked around him again and found all eyes on him. Arms folded, he turned back to me and fired off his question.

  “How come you didn’t kick ass?”

  The crowd laughed. Great question. Probably the one everyone wanted to hear. I took a breath and spoke into the microphone.

  “Some days, that’s how it goes. When you’re pursuing greatness, you’re going to lose. A lot. But losing doesn’t represent weakness. Quitting does. Losing just means you have an opportunity to get better. To push harder. And we’ll never quit pushing.”

  The crowd erupted. Heavy applause and a few cheers resounded back at us, until they felt like they were reverberating on my insides. Rooke leaned toward me and whispered against my ear.

  “For someone who’s not afraid to speak her mind, that might have been the best thing you’ve ever said.”

  I whispered back against his ear. “Like you said, I was just speaking my mind.”

  He grinned a grin that told me he was impressed, and a little turned on. He glanced down at my lips, and for a second, I thought he’d kiss me right there in front of everyone.

  Another reporter stood and addressed the entire panel.

  “So, does that mean we’ll see you in the RAGE tournaments this fall?”

  Everyone looked at me.

  After our loss tonight, our sponsors would probably bow out. Even if the VGL made a permanent switch to these new pods and I didn’t have to pay for programmers, I didn’t have enough money for the trainers, security, and other personnel. But my teammates had agreed to do whatever it took to keep us together. Now we just had to figure out exactly what that was and where we were going next.

  “We love the game,” I said simply. “And we’ll always keep playing.”

  • • •

  After the press conference, we planned to do exactly what Hannah suggested. Seventy-two hours of sleeping in, junk food, and video games. Hannah was right. Sometimes analyzing our weaknesses and what went wrong right after a matchup wasn’t the best strategy. Giving ourselves a few days to veg out, relax, and be normal people would clear our minds and give us better insight into fixing our problems and figuring out this hole we’d dug ourselves into.

  And really, we needed the break. After the insanity of the tournament, where every moment of our lives, awake or asleep, revolved around the game, we needed to unwind. Laughter and good times with friends was the best way to do that.

  As the rest of the team set up in front of the living-room television, debating classic video games and pizza toppings, Derek and I ducked into my office to take calls.

  One by one, our sponsors bowed out.

  Can’t have a team that goes too big too fast. Can’t have a team who fails their drug tests. Really, it didn’t matter what they said. They’d only signed on for one season, and our season was finished. Some demanded their money back. I barely listened to them. Maybe I should have been worried, but I’d since become numb to the demands of the sponsors. If they tried to get their money back, they’d have to take us to court. The process could last for years. I could always mortgage the house. Do more appearances at the clubs. Whatever it took. I’d told that fan at the conference that Defiance didn’t quit, and while I had my doubts and weaker moments sometimes, I meant it.

  When the last call ended, I pressed myself into my chair and stared up at the ceiling. We had no sponsors, no money, possibly no future, and yet I couldn’t get over how lucky I was. Honestly. I got the chance to pursue my dreams. I had a roof over my head. I had my health.

  I had my friends.

  Really, that made me more fortunate than most.

  “You okay?”

  Speaking of friends.

  Derek sat in the guest chair across from my desk. His arms were crossed, and his eyebrows were raised, like he was waiting for me to respond.

  “I’m fine.”

  He shook his head. “Kali—”

  “Really, I’m okay. We did what we could, but with those odds stacked against us, we were never going to make it through the tournament.”

  Derek stared at me. “You’re just accepting defeat? That doesn’t sound like Kali Ling.”

  I had to smile. “There’s standing up for yourself, then there’s knowing when to move on. And we will. We’ll move on from this.” I pressed my hands against my desk and breathed deep. “I just need a minute.”

  He looked me over a few times, and even though he didn’t look sure, said to me, “All right, but if you need me . . .”

  “I’ll find you.”

  After he left, my cell buzzed on my desk. I
sighed. Probably another sponsor calling to chew me out one last time, or the VGL with their follow-up call about our exit from the tournament.

  We appreciate your efforts and we’re sorry to see you go . . .

  Yeah, right.

  I grabbed the phone off my desk and didn’t even glance at the caller ID as I pressed it to my ear.

  “Kali Ling speaking.”

  “Kali? It’s Jessica.”

  I sat up straight in my chair. Jessica Salt was calling me. Say something, stupid.

  “Uh . . .”

  Smooth, Kali. Smooth.

  “Sorry to see you’re out of the tournament,” Jessica said.

  My eyes fell shut. Not only had I failed the team, but in that moment, I realized I’d failed my idol as well.

  “We’re out, too,” she added.

  Somehow, I sat up even straighter. “What?”

  “Epoch won.”

  I blinked several times, unable to process her words. I had completely forgotten about their matchup. With our loss, the press conference, and dealing with the sponsors, I hadn’t even thought about the results of the other matchup of the night.

  “Are you still retiring?” I asked.

  There was a pause. “Maybe. I don’t know. I was hoping to retire on the championship, not out in the losers’ bracket.” She paused again. “No matter what I do, I hope you’ll carry on and keep playing.”

  Of course she did. She thought I was supposed to take her spot. Have this great career and be an inspiration for the people coming up behind me. I wasn’t sure how we’d even compete now, but I wasn’t ready to admit that to Jessica.

  I rubbed a hand across my forehead. “Yeah.” I cleared my throat. “I really should get back to my team.”

  “Can we talk again sometime?”

  I wasn’t sure what she’d want to talk to me about, probably the future of my nonexistent career, but I answered her anyway.

  “Sure.”

  I tapped the END CALL button, placed the phone down on my desk, and pinched the bridge of my nose. I was fortunate to have gotten this far, to have competed in the biggest tournament in the world. But I’d shot for my dreams and missed. Some people thought remaining positive in dire situations was optimistic. Others, naïve. Either way, I had to accept that I’d failed, and the only thing I could do now was pick up the pieces and try to keep going.