“You should drink while it’s hot!” she presses me. “Didn’t you say your mother liked this tea too?”
“She made it when I was little.” I blow on the liquid a few more times before giving the tea another go. This time it leaves behind a flowery taste instead of pure heat.
“What part of China was she from?”
“She wasn’t really from China. She was born in California.” I take a long sip because I’d rather burn my tongue again than admit that I don’t know what province or city my own family came from. I was too young to ask my mother about it, and Dad doesn’t know either. “Her ancestors were probably from Guangdong.” That’s my best guess since a lot of Chinese Americans in San Francisco have roots there.
Rushi’s eyes light up. “My nainai was from there! She would tell Lisha and me stories about the islands on the Pearl River.”
I don’t understand most of the references in that sentence. What’s a nainai? Is that a relative? I’ve never heard of the Pearl River either or the islands that dot it.
There’s something else that’s new to me too—Rushi seems excited that I’m half Chinese. Not embarrassed for me. Not pitying. But genuinely curious.
It’s a reaction that I wouldn’t mind getting used to and, with that thought in mind, I drink more of the tea, downing about a third of it.
A knock on the door startles us both, and Rushi spills a little tea on the floor. I never have any guests at the dorm, so two in one day is quite the surprise. When I check who it is, I find the dorm matron on the other side, asking me to come downstairs because a gift has arrived from Peter and Dad. I tell her that I’ll be right down.
“This should only take a minute,” I say to Rushi.
“But the tea—”
“Is great. I’ll be right back.”
I grab my badge to access the elevator and by the time I step onto the ground floor, I expect to turn the corner and see a bouquet of flowers or balloons waiting for me there. But what I actually find is so much better.
“Jo!” my brother says, hurtling himself into me.
“Peter?” I catch him in my arms, utterly shocked. It’s been barely two weeks since I last saw him, but I swear he’s sprouted an inch. I’m soon laughing and crying while I hug him. So that’s why he didn’t pick up the phone back at the store. He was already here in Washington. “You little sneak. Where’s Dad?”
“Surprise, Joey.” My father comes up behind me and claps me on the back. “We couldn’t miss the big match, now could we?”
“Mrs. Watters rounded up the whole block to chip in for our flights and hotel,” Peter explains. “Everyone is rooting for you. The whole city!”
I swipe at my tears and laugh again. Bless Mrs. Watters and our neighbors. This is the best present I could’ve asked for.
“Wait, who’s minding the shop?” I ask, a streak of alarm shooting through me.
Peter looks up at Dad, whose smile falters. “Ah, don’t you worry about it. We locked the doors tight, and everyone in the neighborhood will keep a close eye on it until we get back.”
That must’ve been a hard decision for him to make. Dad only closes the store on Thanksgiving and Christmas, arguing that we can’t make money if we don’t keep the doors open. But he’s here. He came.
Peter soon gets distracted by a mail-sorting bot that he spies in the dorm matron’s office, and while he checks that out, I scoot a little closer to my dad.
“Any updates on the landlady?” I ask quietly.
Dad’s forehead wrinkles at the question. “Let’s focus on the here and now. We’re at the finals of the Pax Games.” Those creases on his forehead deepen. “In any case, it seems like you’re dealing with a mess and a half out here.”
To put it mildly. But I don’t want to hash all that out again because it’ll only make me tense up. “Hey, anyone want a quick tour of the place?” I say loudly, knowing that’ll get Peter’s attention.
Peter comes bounding back toward us like a golden retriever. All that’s missing is the wagging tail. “Can you show us your room?”
“No, boys aren’t allowed beyond the lobby—” I stop myself because I suddenly remember that I’d left Rushi upstairs.
I ask Dad and Peter to wait for me while I haul myself back to my room, taking the stairs two by two. As soon as I get there, I already have an apology on my lips, but I find the place empty.
“Rushi?” I say, spinning around in a circle. I even poke my head into the bathroom, but she’s not there either. Her box is gone as well, although she has left my mug of tea behind since I’d only drank half of it.
I don’t know why she skedaddled out of here so fast, but she was probably worried about Envoy Yu chewing her out. Will I ever see her again? But I’ll have to save that wondering for later. In less than forty minutes, I have to report to the stadium.
Until then, however, I give Dad and Peter a whirlwind tour of the Pavilion, pointing out all the buildings and telling them we ought to check out the views at Hains Point whenever we get a minute. Peter can’t get enough of the service bots all over the place, especially the window-washing ones that cling to the glass with their suction-cup feet, while Dad seems most impressed by the dining hall. I show them all the fixings at the make-your-own waffle bar even though it’s well past breakfast time, but they both could use a bite to eat after their long flight.
“Do you have tickets to the game?” I ask.
“Senator Appleby got us box seats,” Peter says with a grin. Then both of them get quiet when I say I need to head out. They won’t be able to come with me to the stadium right now since it isn’t open yet to the public, but they assure me they’ll come as soon as they can.
“You’ll have the home-field advantage by far,” Dad tells me. “Never underestimate that.”
As far as pep talks go, I’d have to give it a three, but he is right. A crowd at your back can certainly help, although I’m facing Lidiya Federova, who seems to thrive off the negative energy directed at her.
“Any parting words of advice, squirt?” I ask Peter, who has a massive waffle in front of him stacked with strawberries and whipped cream. “I’m all ears if you’ve got a tip on Lidiya’s weaknesses.”
I say that as a joke more than anything, but my brother takes the request seriously. “She doesn’t really have any weak points.”
Ouch. I’m not surprised by his observation, but that doesn’t help lift my spirits much.
Peter isn’t finished yet though. “But her mecha might.”
“What do you mean?” I say, blinking.
“A fighter is only as good as their equipment, right? When you faced the Federovas in Purgatory, did you notice anything about their Vostoks? A glitch you could use to your advantage?”
Purgatory feels like it happened months ago by now, so that game is mostly a blur, but you know what? I’ve got Sam’s binder and that might jog my memory.
“You’re a genius,” I tell him. “I better go, but I’ll see you both soon, okay?” I’m already running back up to my room, where I grab the binder, and then I’m off again to catch a ride to the stadium, flipping through the pages the entire way.
I scour Sam’s notes to see if he mentions anything about Lidiya’s Vostok, but I don’t find much outside the particular make number. I curse under my breath but keep up the search, reading through the list of her injuries again but this time paying more attention to the causes. A fractured pointer finger due to a fall at home. A badly bruised right shoulder from a training session. A strained posterior cruciate on her left leg from a match against Sam at the Euro Cup last summer. I only know what a posterior cruciate is because I injured my own a few years back—it’s a ligament in the knee—and that’s what my doctor kept calling it.
No details about the Vostok though.
I curse again, louder this time. I need more time along with a library bot or two, but all I’ve got is Sam’s binder.
A thought hits me. Lidiya isn’t the only fighter using a Vost
ok. There are plenty of others on the Soviets’ roster, starting with her little sister. With that in mind, I flip to Zoya’s binder section and give that a read, but nothing jumps out at me. I keep turning the pages though because the driver has run into some traffic, and I see that Sam has included his notes on Oleg Lebedev, another Soviet he faced two years ago. I’m not expecting much at this point, but as I reach the end of Oleg’s file one of Sam’s scribblings catches my eye.
Injured anterior and posterior cruciates on the left knee. Mechanical error in pit.
Mechanical error?
Could Oleg’s injury and Lidiya’s be related?
My mind starts spinning, but I can’t get my hopes up yet because this isn’t much to go on. Still, I’ll take what I can get.
I need to find Sam.
When I get to the stadium, I open the car door cautiously, remembering what happened before my match against Rushi when I got told to go back to China. But there are no fans here today. The whole sidewalk has been blocked off, probably due to the rotten rice incident, and I’m grateful that’s one thing I won’t have to worry about.
I race through registration and make a beeline for Team USA’s prep area, where I find Malcolm and the Jays running a diagnostic on my Goliath. My face feels flushed as I walk up to them, and I wonder if the air-conditioning is acting up because it sure is warm in here.
Malcolm greets me with a frown. “Where’s your match-day uniform?”
“Has Sam arrived yet?” I ask at the same time. “I have to talk to him.”
“About what? And what’s that?”
I’m still clutching on to Sam’s binder. “Research,” I say, lifting my chin an inch and using the same line that Sam said to me yesterday. Malcolm and I have only exchanged a few words since our dustup following Rushi’s poisoning, and I haven’t forgotten how he thinks that I’m guilty as a jailbird.
“When’s Sam coming?” I ask again.
“He should be on his way,” Malcolm replies, crossing his arms.
“I have to talk to him about the match.”
“If this is about the match, then you can tell me instead. I’m your coach.”
Some coach you’ve been. “You sure about that? I didn’t think you wanted anything to do with a cheat and a murderer.”
His face darkens, and in reply, he snatches the binder right out of my hands and starts to thumb through it. Soon his frustration shifts into confusion. “What is this exactly?”
“Sam put it together.” I make a grab for the thing, but Malcolm pivots away too quickly, his reflexes razor sharp. Frustration simmers in me. “I need that back.”
“There’s some decent stuff in here,” Malcolm murmurs as he skims the pages.
“Yeah, and it might help me beat Lidiya, so give it here.”
His head snaps up. “Beat her how?”
“That’s what I need Sam for. I have some questions for him.”
“Out with it,” Malcolm says, nostrils flaring. “We don’t have time to wait around on Sam when he might not show up until twenty minutes before the whistle blows.” He must notice how I’m eyeing him skeptically, so he sighs and adds, “I’m offering you a hand here, Linden. We’ve got to beat Lidiya. Everything else comes second to that.”
That isn’t the apology I’m looking for, but we do have a common goal right now and ultimately my desperation wins out. I explain Peter’s theory that I should try to find a weakness in the Vostok itself and how I came across Lidiya’s and Oleg’s similar injury in Sam’s notes.
“They both strained the same ligament in their left knees,” I say, summing it all up. “And Oleg hurt his due to a mechanical error.”
Malcolm goes quiet as he thinks back in time. He even closes his eyes, squeezing them tight, like he’s watching old match reels in his head. “That’s right. I remember that game. Sam managed to trip up Oleg, and Oleg landed funny on his knee. His Vostok’s leg kept dragging behind him after that.”
“Do you know if the same thing happened to Lidiya?” I press him.
This time he recalls the match more quickly since it was only last summer. “Similar scenario. Sam managed to trip up Lidiya, and she landed hard on her knee. Come to think of it, she did seem to have trouble controlling that leg when she’d gotten up, but there wasn’t much time to observe it. She KO’d Sam about a minute later.”
I suck in a sharp breath. “So she could’ve had a mechanical error too?”
“Emphasis on could’ve, but yes. It’s a possibility.” His lips start moving silently like he’s working out a long equation in his head. “But there are two roadblocks. First, this could all be a coincidence. And second, even if you’re onto something, the Soviets might have patched up that error months ago.”
He’s right. But my heart is thudding faster and faster.
What if he’s wrong?
“I have to go after her and trip her like Sam did. I don’t have anything to lose.” I wait for him to contradict me and tell me that he’s the one who calls the shots.
But he tilts his head toward the pit. “Then you better practice that before we head upstairs.”
“You’re actually on board with this?” Not that I was waiting for his permission; I was going to do this with or without his approval. I’m just surprised he didn’t bat away my idea.
“I’m on board with beating the Soviets, and the more tricks up your sleeve, the better,” he says before pushing me toward a Goliath. “Go get ready.”
We speed through a warm-up before we conduct one last training session, albeit brief. I show Malcolm my leg sweep and he provides a few pointers to sharpen my movements, but in between drills, I have to mop the sweat beading on my forehead.
“Is it me or is it hot in here?” I ask.
“The humidity getting to you?” He barks at the Jays to get me some water. “With ice! Plenty of it.”
In record time, I’m presented with a glass of ice water, which does help cool me down a notch, before Malcolm goes back to talking business.
“Remember the strategy,” he says, standing atop a ladder so that we can talk face-to-face since I’m in my Goliath. “When that buzzer goes off—”
“Charge at her fast, aim for the knee,” I say, a little distracted. My armpits are feeling damp now too. I’m always anxious before a match, but this is a new level that I haven’t experienced.
He nods. “Don’t stop until you take that knee out and remember to keep calm in there. Keep cool.”
Soon it’s time for us to enter the elevator that’ll bring us up to the stadium. Keep calm. Keep cool. It’s simple enough advice, but it’s hard to do—literally. Sweat clings to the top of my lip and I wish I had some more of that ice water, not to drink but to dunk my face in. Someone really needs to get that air-conditioning checked.
Malcolm punches the button, and the elevator platform begins its chug upward. The air in the stadium vibrates like a living thing, and it’s loud. Cheering. Chanting. Clapping. A sea of red, white, and blue. I let it all soak in for a few seconds before I point my eyes straight ahead. I can’t get swept up in the fervor; I have to concentrate.
Lidiya emerges from the elevator on the opposing side. We don’t acknowledge each other at all. No tilt of the head. No nod. But I do roam my gaze over her Vostok’s left knee, my bull’s-eye.
We take our places at our team benches. Sam is waiting there already, dressed in a spiffy suit. He winks at me, but I notice the strain around his smile. He’s nervous too. I kneel down to shake his hand.
“Looks like Lidiya didn’t pay you a late-night visit,” he says. “I guess you didn’t need my camera, after all.”
“Thanks for loaning it to me anyway, and it’s about time you showed up. I wanted to talk to you about something I found in your binder notes.”
His brows shoot right up. “Like what?”
The announcer starts speaking overhead to welcome everyone to the final match of the Games, and I have to cut our conversation short.
“Malcolm and I talked it through and came up with a plan. We’ll see if this works,” I say before getting back to my feet.
The usual fanfare rolls out from there. A welcome speech from the IC and the Association. The playing of the anthems. My gaze seeks out Team USA’s box, where I find Dad and Peter seated next to Senator Appleby. I hardly recognize them since Dad is wearing a tie and Peter has slicked back his hair, like they’re going to church. Well, in the Linden family, I suppose the fighting pit is our religion, so it does make sense. Peter starts waving at me, and I immediately wave back. God, I’m so glad that they’re here.
And I’m not about to let them watch me lose.
It’s finally time to get to the pit. Lidiya and I walk into the cage, and we shake hands, as is customary, although she clutches my Goliath’s hand longer than necessary, drawing me in toward her.
Her gaze locks onto mine. “I will destroy you. For Lukas and Zoya.”
I roll my eyes because her words are ridiculously dramatic, like something out of a bad B movie, but from the look on her face, I know that she’s dead serious.
“I’d like to see you try, Bolshie,” I reply, just to get under her skin.
The head ref is shouting for us to take our places, so I turn on my heel and go to my mark before she can respond. Once in place, I roll my shoulders a couple times, but they stay tight enough to string a bow. The whole world will be watching this game, and I think Lidiya might try to murder me on live TV. No pressure or anything.
The countdown begins. I wipe the sweat off my forehead again, wishing that I had a built-in fan inside this piece of metal. I start to wonder if I might be coming down with something, which would be just about the worst timing to get sick. But I’ve fought in a match before while recovering from the flu, so I can grit my teeth through this one too.
My eyes lock on Lidiya. Her gaze is intense, like a hungry animal’s.
Here we go.
At the sound of the buzzer, I bolt forward, carrying out the strategy that Malcolm and I planned, but Lidiya is already onto me. She soars up to avoid my trajectory and uses the momentum from her landing to launch right back in my direction, turning a defensive move into an offensive one.
The Great Destroyers Page 24
