Psion Delta (Psion series #3)

by Jacob Gowans

  * * * * *

  April 2058

  Leviathan was not the nightmarish monster that Katie had allowed herself to imagine, but he was still an impressive mass of muscle and skin who made even Schuller look like an average-sized man. His bald head and cauliflower ears gave the impression he was more troll than human. However, his eyes were bright with intelligence and lacked the arrogance of most of her other opponents. She detected in them shrewdness and a methodical calculation, similar to what she expected to see in her own eyes if she could somehow get hold of a mirror. It thrilled her to be tested to such a degree.

  After two years of fighting, Katie’s body had developed and toned in ways it might never have otherwise. She had grown a couple of centimeters since her first arrival. Most girls stopped growing before sixteen, but Katie believed she had willed herself to be taller. Her face, once beautiful, bore many scars, small and large. Her muscles were firm. The locks of hair she had been so proud of as a young girl had been shorn off to prevent her opponents from using them to their advantage and to prevent further scarring of her scalp. She took no joy in her appearance. It had been replaced by the ecstasy of victory.

  Leviathan stood at least half a meter taller and was about three times wider than her own body. She instantly noticed that fat composed very little of his body mass. Every last centimeter was built for causing traumatic damage. She thought she had shut out all the taunting from other inmates over the last several days, but now she remembered what some had said.

  “Leviathan was a professional cage fighter before he got sent here, girly. Killed someone in the ring on purpose.”

  “Ripped a man’s arms off and then beat him to death with them.”

  “He crushed a man’s skull with his bare hands. I saw it!”

  “I was in the yard when he did it!”

  Katie doubted the veracity of these tales. The mammoth man couldn’t be more than two or three years her senior despite his own impressive set of scars.

  There was no pretense of spectacle to the fight, even if it was for an imaginary title. No one introduced fighters or carried out other familiarities. Leviathan spoke with a couple of the guards, shifting his weight as he did so. Katie noticed his deftness, and how it defied his size. He must be quick, too. She wished she could stare at him longer and admire his form, but she was told the whistle would soon blow.

  It began like every other fight, only louder. The moment the whistle blew, the voices of men in a frenzy roared for blood.

  “Kill her! Kill her!” one of the guards screamed.

  “Get him, girl!” shouted an inmate.

  The air was saturated with similar cries, urging the fighters to war with one another. If Leviathan noticed the crowds, he gave no sign. He stalked delicately toward Katie, his step as light as she’d guessed it would be. Katie refused to give up ground, instead moving sideways, her shoes sinking slightly into the spongy earth. When he was within range, Katie tested him with a swift kick to the groin. He dropped his hand and knocked her foot away.

  Then he bull-rushed her. Seeing him move with such speed astonished her, even catching her off guard. He’s as fast as me, but three times my size! His body plummeted into hers, throwing her back with all the force of a small car. She used her legs and his momentum to roll him over her.

  The moment they hit the ground, both fighters got up and went after the other. She wanted to attack his head, but his large arm struck out, blindsiding her with the back of his fist. Bright lights exploded in her vision and she reeled sideways, staggering to regain her footing.

  Leviathan tripped her with a sweep and tried to trap her with his legs, but Katie slipped out of his grasp before he could lock her. They scrambled over the ground to obtain the better position over the other, but Katie got there first, climbing on his back and trying to put his head into an armlock. Using his massive weight, Leviathan stood up and fell onto his back, forcing Katie to abandon her idea before getting crushed underneath him.

  And the crowd roared through it all.

  Leviathan rolled over to his feet as Katie tried to kick him. He caught her leg and twisted it. Katie hit the ground hard trying to wrench her leg free from his grasp. When that didn’t work, she flailed, catching the toe of her shoe into the side of his knee. He winced and loosened his grip, allowing Katie to yank her leg out.

  They faced each other again, circling, watching, waiting. The air between them was like an undulating ball of energy, pushing and pulling at them, willing one to move forward at the other. Leviathan threw a haymaker at Katie, but she dodged and countered, slipping under his defense and throwing an uppercut. Leviathan barely pulled his chin back in time. Katie followed with another kick to the groin, again deflected. He leapt at her as though to kick her, she reacted accordingly, but then he jerked his leg back mid-air and caught her with a brutal punch.

  The crowd loved it.

  Katie stumbled backward, stunned. Her vision blurred until she saw two Leviathans coming at her with a follow-up punch. She blocked his arm with her left hand and threw a punch with her right, aiming for the space between the doubled foe. It connected with his jaw. Then he countered and connected with her skull. Katie stumbled back once more and knew that her defeat was imminent unless she could turn the tide quickly. However, Leviathan pressed his advantage with a second punch, this one only glancing. She grabbed the arm and jerked him forward, sliding him in the soft earth. He didn’t move much, but it was enough to get her right arm over his shoulder. As she slid it around his neck, he elbowed her in the gut. Katie grunted and locked her legs around his stomach, driving her fist into his head and neck again and again and again. The punches weren’t powerful enough to do much but annoy him.

  Leviathan tried to break the grip of her right arm around his neck, but couldn’t. Then he yanked on Katie’s leg to pull her off his back, yet she remained immovable and continued to punch him. Finally, he grabbed her foot and twisted it. Her blows increased in intensity as she tried to keep her ankle stiff. His head began to bleed as she both felt and heard an awful crack.

  The pain in her broken ankle was distant and dull, nothing that could stop her from beating this giant. He clenched his fingers around her locked arm and pulled. Katie responded by twisting one of his cauliflower ears. He went to his knees and slammed his back down, rolling from side to side like a baby in a cradle. Dirt and grass and small rocks dug deeply into Katie’s cheeks. She gritted her teeth and squeezed his neck tighter with the right arm until he began to sputter. His face turned into a massive blood blister ready to pop and the bleeding in the back of his head slowed. Reaching around she began to pound on his face.

  Madness rang out around her from the guards and suits.

  Leviathan tapped the ground to signal his submission, but no one could see it because his bulky body blocked it from view of the guards. Katie wrenched her good foot out from underneath his body and pinned his arm down with her leg. She had other plans.

  She hissed into his ear. “Call me the Queen or you die.”

  Leviathan stopped struggling for a moment as though he wasn’t sure he had heard her correctly. Her arm tightened again around his neck cutting off air into his windpipe. Purple crept up his face in place of the redness. She loosened her grip and repeated the order.

  “Queen,” he croaked out, but even Katie could barely hear him.

  Her lock around him became vise-like, and she resumed the punching of his face. Leviathan could do nothing but lay there and absorb her punishment. His energy was sapped and her mercy was all he had to depend on. Meanwhile the frenzy of the audience grew in intensity.

  “Scream it!” she shrieked at him, loosening her grip once more.

  “You are the Queen!” he bellowed. “You are the Queen! The Queeeen!”

  The crowd went silent for a moment and then roared with tumultuous approval.

  “QUEEN! QUEEN! QUEEN! QUEEN!” the masses cried out again and again.

  Katie relinquished her grip on his ar
m so Leviathan could tap once more, this time in view of the guards. Katie relaxed her arms and fell back in bliss. Immediately guards rushed forward and pulled them apart. Both she and Leviathan required help to stand. Someone came out with wheelchairs for Katie and her defeated opponent.

  With the support of a guard, she finally got up and hopped unstably on her good foot. They passed the window of a truck where several guards had been standing on the bed to film the fight. She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the glass. Katie stared at herself, barely recognizing the image facing her. Her skin was badly scarred—more so than she remembered. It would be even worse after the new gouges in her face from the rocks and blows from Leviathan’s knuckles had healed. Her eyes were so badly bloodshot that the sclera of her eyes appeared to have been dyed red. Before she had time to react, the guard jerked her forward and locked her into the wheelchair. Then more guards surrounded both her and Leviathan and wheeled them off through a tunnel of chanting prisoners who still shouted her new name in worshipful adoration. She glowed all the way to the infirmary.

  The injured foot and ankle took more time to heal than any of her previous injuries. The doctor said it was a bad fracture, and she wasn’t allowed to walk on it for several weeks. She returned to her cell in a cast and reveled in the knowledge that she was the best fighter in the prison. The effects of her victory were apparent immediately. “Katie Carpenter” had been erased from the tongues and minds of every person within the prison walls, guards and inmates alike. The only person who still referred to her by her old title was Schuller, whose dislike for her had grown with every win.

  Eight weeks later, after being given a clean statement of health, the Queen eagerly anticipated her next fight. Who would they think to pit her against next? Two weeks went by without any word, so she decided to ask. The guard, Kosco, grunted something in an impatient voice and moved on to the next bean slot. She broached the subject a second time during her walk in the yard, but those guards responded that they weren’t told about the fight schedules.

  This behavior continued for another month. The Queen was on the verge of doing something bold to get the guards’ attention when they gave her a fight. She hoped it would be a rematch against Leviathan, but instead she faced a lesser man. She easily won. The crowd again roared its approval. They hadn’t forgotten her new title. She was on top of the world once more.

  The fights continued, but the time between them grew longer and longer, until finally she realized her error: she had convinced everyone that she would win every time—that she could not be beaten. And as much as the guards and suits liked to watch the Queen fight, they had a much greater interest in gambling on fights where the outcome was unknown.

  Around the same time this realization dawned on her, the Queen noticed other changes that were happening at Ultramax—things she both saw and heard. Rumors reached her of fighters who scratched and cut their faces before matches to appear more intimidating. Fight winners were turning down conjugal visits and asking instead to have their eyes permanently reddened. Apparently, these fads were growing in popularity. She also heard talk of more “anomalies” being sent to the prison—people with the same condition the doctors had testified about in her trial so long ago. Anomaly Thirteen, they’d called it. This excited her. If more of these anomalies came, she’d face better challengers and fight more often.

  She spent her days at the bean slot listening and talking to other inmates about who was matched up against whom, who had won and lost recent fights, always trying to piece together information about the hierarchy she was now deeply a part of. People gave her answers because of the respect she’d earned by the shedding of her own blood. Yes, there were new arrivals, and from the sound of it, some seemed as unbeatable as she.

  More anomalies like me. Worthy opponents. This intrigued her. The desire to fight grew stronger. Finally the slip of paper for her next fight came. The Queen held it tightly and kissed it before reading. Her opponent’s name was only Diego. The whispers throughout the halls said that he, too, possessed her anomaly.

  He was, by far, the ugliest person she’d ever seen. An enormous scar ran up his face from his chin, twisting apart his upper and lower lip into segments. It then traveled through his nose, where his nostril was missing, and stopped above the empty socket of his right eye. The hideous disfigurement forcefully reminded the Queen of her own lost beauty. The other half of his face was unscathed, the other eye as perfectly good and normal as anyone else’s. In fact, the Queen could tell that Diego had once been very handsome.

  She had, for a brief amount of time, considered throwing this fight. She hoped that by losing she might increase interest in her stock as a fighter. Yet when she stood in the yard that night surrounded by people chanting for the Queen—people expecting her to win—she wondered how she had ever entertained such an idea. Losing was not in her blood. It would never be. Whatever transformation she had gone through on that fateful day when she’d killed her parents had made it impossible for her to accept anything but victory. The only way to get back in the fights was by reminding the crowd why they loved her.

  She won the fight. Diego fought well, almost as well as Leviathan. The crowd loved her, cheered her, screamed when she won. And the Queen knew she had made the right choice.

  For her reward, she chose the shave. She had to wait a week before getting it. It was a long week in her cell. Her doubts returned. Had she made a mistake? Should she have lost? When would her next fight come? Had she fought for the last time? Not knowing these answers ate at her like an aggressive cancer and made her ill every time she ate.

  Schuller was the guard on duty in her block the day of her shave. He said nothing to her as they walked to the infirmary. The Queen wondered if she’d become just another prisoner to him that he didn’t like. If so, she almost pitied him. She had never forgotten the names burned into her memory: Schuller, Kosco, Meacham, and Crowther. Crowther no longer worked at the prison. That didn’t matter. She wouldn’t be in these walls forever, either.

  Over the years, the Queen had visited the infirmary dozens of times. She knew most of the nurses and doctors by name. Not once had she given them any problems—not during shaves and manicures, nor while having her wounds mended. Schuller brought her into the room and prepared to lock her onto the operating table. As always, she complied perfectly and calmly while the Elite got his keys.

  Behind her, the nurse prepared the supplies, placing everything neatly on a tray next to the table. Usually they waited until the Queen was secured on the table before bringing out the sharp objects. The Queen missed nothing, especially not the straight razor already on the tray next to the cream and oil. Sloppy idiots. Thank you! She thought of her life up to this point: the fights, the days of sitting in her cell not knowing when or if she’d be called on again to entertain the crowds. Most of all, she thought of the oath she’d sworn to herself to be free. That razor was the chance she’d been waiting for.

  After Schuller removed the cuff from her first wrist, the Queen acted with premeditated efficiency. With her free hand, she grabbed his keys and collar activator. Next, she kicked him hard in the stomach. Then, in one smooth motion, she snatched the razor from the tray and had it at the neck of the nearest nurse before Schuller could recover.

  “Your gun and radio now!” the Queen ordered as she stomped on the collar activator. The nurse squealed and quivered under the Queen’s tight grip.

  Schuller slid into a sitting position on the floor and rested his long body against the wall.

  “Now, Schuller!”

  “No.” Schuller calmly took his weapon from his holster and trained his sights. “No, Carpenter, I’m not going to do that.”

  The blade pressed deeper into the nurse’s throat and drew a red line of blood.

  “Please, Schuller,” the nurse pleaded. The Queen couldn’t remember anyone crying so much, and wondered if the tears tasted as good as the woman’s terror.

  “She’ll kill us if I
give her my gun,” Schuller said. The Queen saw no pity in his face. None for himself. None for the nurse.

  “Please let me go,” the nurse begged as the blade cut her more. “Katie, pleeeeease!”

  Schuller stood, his gun still trained on the Queen. Every muscle in her body tensed, ready for any sign that he might pull the trigger. She shielded everything but her head behind the nurse. Keeping his eyes on the Queen, Schuller brought his radio to his lips to alert security.

  “I said you were sick little freak the day you arrived here, didn’t I?”

  The Queen shoved the nurse at Schuller. The gun went off, barely missing both women. As the nurse and the Elite collided, the Queen yanked at the gun in Schuller’s hand, but his grip was tight and the gun fired a second time, again narrowly missing her. Pushing his arm up and away from her with the hand still in a dangling cuff, she slashed at him with the razor blade.

  The nurse rolled out of the way, gripping her bleeding neck. Schuller used his arm to stop the Queen’s blade from hitting his stomach. They tussled on the floor, and the blade slipped from her hand, skittering under a small refrigerator. Schuller tried to aim his gun at her, but the Queen forced his wrist around until the gun pointed back at his chest. With both her hands on the gun, she pulled the trigger.

  Schuller’s body trembled at the invasion. Then something closed around the Queen’s ankle. She looked back and saw a cuff connecting her to the leg of the operating table. The nurse scrambled away and hid behind a rolling cabinet out of sight, still clutching her wounded neck.

  “No!” the Queen shouted, pulling at her leg. “Take this thing off of me now! Right now! Let me go!”

  Schuller, bleeding profusely from his chest, ignored the screams and brought his radio to his lips a second time. “Infirmary . . . code—” The radio fell from his dead hand. The Queen screamed at the nurse. Then she screamed at Schuller’s body, but neither responded no matter whatever hellish names and curses she cast at them. The guards arrived, but she complied with their orders to give up her gun only when her neck began to burn from the shock of the collar.