The Rift Frequency

by Amy S. Foster

  From a speaker outside our cell we hear them. The crowd is cheering. It is an ocean of voices and chants. When they begin to stomp their feet in unison we don’t need the speaker. The hammering pounds above our heads are like thunderous drums. The ceiling flakes off in bigger chunks.

  We hear as the first gladiators go on. An announcer provides a gruesome play-by-play. It’s two against two, and apparently these men have swords. The crowd is whipped into a frenzy when one of the men is pinned. His partner cannot get to him in time and, according to the announcer, the trapped man’s leg is run through. Apparently there is blood on the ground, a lot of blood. I wonder if this was calculated, or if an artery was actually severed. The unharmed half of the team seems to be overwhelmed with the need for revenge, and we listen as the announcer recounts the brutal force of his attacks on his opponent. The two continue to fight, alone, which is good, as it means this is clearly for show. Otherwise, there’s no way the uninjured guy would allow his partner to be left vulnerable.

  One thing I realize as we listen to the description of the battle is that they have shields. Which, after looking briefly at the ridiculous outfits they want us to wear, we notice we don’t have. The announcer is now screaming a steady stream of action. It sounds like a fairly intense fight. And then . . . silence. Not just the announcer, but the audience. Before we can ask each other what we think has happened, the announcer excitedly yells, “A knife!” As his account grows in detail, it turns out the man whose partner had been injured had just stabbed the other one in the abdomen with a knife. From the sound of the over-the-top announcing style, the whole thing feels more like some kind of Mexican wrestling match, except now I know that they are fighting for real. Maybe not to the death, but certainly to the point of a mortal injury.

  So, even if we win, we lose.

  I pull the blanket off the bed and cover my entire body. I whisper quietly into my wrist. “Cuff,” I say, and the sensuit retracts. I am now only in my uniform. They can make me fight, but they cannot dress me like Xena. No way. I throw the blanket at Levi, who does the same. Now we are both in full Citadel gear. I’m sure the people monitoring our cells have no clue what just happened.

  I can live with that.

  After a few more minutes we hear the slap of boots on stone. A column of soldiers (Are they actual centurions? Or muscle-for-hire mercenaries? I suppose it doesn’t matter) is marching down the hall toward our cell. We could make a break for it, but I make eye contact with Levi, implicitly warning him that now is not the time. They haven’t really seen what we can do. We need them to be afraid of us if we want to get out of here without murdering dozens of people. We also need Faustus—and more importantly, our gear—and he’s definitely going to be watching the action.

  The cell door is opened by what looks like a proper Roman guard, but there’s no way of knowing in this ridiculous place, where everything is for show. We allow them to lead us through a maze of hallways. I know that Levi is memorizing our steps just as I am. We pass by dozens of cells with other gladiators. They barely glance up as we walk by. Some of these cells are much nicer than our barren one. Some have carpets and proper beds. Some of them even have TVs and wardrobes. I wonder how high you have to move up the gladiatorial ladder not to be imprisoned at all. I wonder how much Stockholm syndrome–ing that takes.

  The sound of the crowd gets louder as we move up a level. I’ve never actually been to the Colosseum in Rome, but from the pictures I’ve studied, it looks much the same as this one. Pits for people and animals in the basement and two large entryways for the participants to walk out into the arena. It’s weird how similar this is to modern-day sporting venues. Not that I actually watch any sports with regularity, other than some of my brother’s high school events, but sometimes the only way I get to hang out with him and my dad is when they’re watching football.

  I see less body paint at the moment, but otherwise, seems about the same.

  The announcer makes up some long, fake-ass story about me and Levi. We are now apparently orphaned twins (despite the fact that we look nothing alike) who washed up on the shores of the Pacific, the sole survivors of a deadly shipwreck. We have been blessed by Neptune and are imbued with his strength. We stop at the opening of the tunnel, which leads to the arena floor. It is early evening and a single star flashes in the sky. I look out at the crowd. There are thousands of people in the stands. Tens of thousands. I don’t even need to look over to Levi to know that he’s thinking the same things I am. We do this one time. We perform like the freaks we are and give them the show of their lives. Shock and awe so that we can distract our guards long enough to get the hell out of here.

  The first row of spectators ring the entire coliseum and are close enough to actually touch. They look wealthy and mostly bored. I notice there are quite a few children in this VIP section as well. What assholes these people are. Music begins, a thumping bass drum and electric guitars. This really is a show. I bet there will be fireworks at some point.

  I see Faustus sitting in the front row, in a seat that is closest to the large archway. He opens a small metal gate so that he can meet us in the alcove without actually having to go out to the arena.

  “What’s this?” he screeches with alarm, his hands flapping around like he’s conducting an invisible orchestra. “Where are the costumes I provided for you?” He says it so petulantly I half expect him to stomp his feet.

  “This is what we wear when we fight,” I tell him in a tone dripping with aggression. He takes a step back and casually raises an eyebrow as he looks us up and down. I suddenly feel like the girl who has to wear her mom’s old dress (and not in a cool, retro way) to prom.

  “On him, I suppose it will do. But on you,” Faustus tuts in my direction, “it’s tight enough, but your tits, they aren’t even showing in the slightest. Can’t you at least undo the zipper so I can tell that you’re a woman?”

  It takes every single ounce of self-control I have not to grab him by the dick and yank his balls off. Levi is actually growling. As much as I would like to kill this man, I know that we need him to get our stuff and get out of here. To that end, it’s crucial that he believes that he’s in control of us and this situation.

  I slowly pull the zipper down till it’s just past my sports bra. I smile as I lift each boob up so that now, I have (as much as a sports bra will allow) some cleavage. “Those are adequate, not spectacular. Perhaps we should think about implants,” Faustus says as he examines my chest without enthusiasm.

  “Having bigger boobs has always been a dream of mine, so that would be great,” I tell him with a broad smile, though my molars are clenched and my fists are balled so tightly that I’m afraid the skin on my knuckles will crack open.

  “Excellent. Now, if you don’t die, we’ll have a lovely, big celebration to honor your first victory.” And with that he gives Levi a little punch on the shoulder and walks back to his seat. If ever there was a King of the Douches, I’m pretty sure that title would go to Faustus. Even his gaze was slimy and it’s a real struggle to stop myself from gagging. Luckily—or not, I suppose—the announcer calls us forward.

  We enter the arena. The crowd is screaming. The music is blaring. Levi and I walk slowly toward the middle of the space, which is much larger than I thought it would be. I guess it’s the size of a football field. We keep our eyes locked on the black hole of the opposite archway, waiting for our opponents.

  “And now . . . ,” the announcer says with building anticipation, “from the bowels of Hades, plucked from the pages of history itself, two of the most vile and evil creatures ever to walk the Earth. First: You know him from the Labyrinth of Crete . . . Here. Is. The. Minotaur!”

  The arena goes wild.

  Uhhh. Wait a minute . . .

  “Second—but second to none—here she comes: the most fearsome Gorgon, a woman so ugly that a mere glimpse turned her foes to stone—a power we have neutralized by ripping out her eyes. But she doesn’t need to see you to kill
you . . . The wretched, the terrible . . . Medussssaaaaa!”

  Levi and I look at each other with a frown. What the hell is going on? Can these morons turn people into monsters? Like, is it a Frankenstein thing? Shit. Or maybe these two were born deformed. I wouldn’t put it past the New Romans to stick them in a place like this. However big the arena, it’s still a circus sideshow.

  We hear them before we see them. Whir. Pound. Stop. Whir. Pound. Stop. The two emerge from the exit across from us. They are at least fifteen feet high. The Minotaur, half bull half man, is made entirely of copper. I can’t help it. I almost want to laugh.

  “What is it with us and fucking robots?” Levi says, more annoyed than afraid.

  “Let’s just be grateful that we don’t have to kill anyone,” I say as I stand my ground. Behind the metal beast comes the chrome Medusa. Her sound is different, quieter, but buzzing with electricity nonetheless. Her body is clothed in a silver dress of chain mail and her head is covered in dozens of mechanical snakes, each one made of what looks like thousands of soldered nickel scales that oscillate and whir in every direction.

  A hush descends on the crowd. The music stops and we both freeze, holding still and tense to size up our opponents. We have no weapons, no guns or knives to take down these machines. We have only our bare hands. We will have to rip them apart. Of all the things I thought I would do in my life, I can safely say that kicking the crap out of clockwork mythological creatures is one that never occurred to me.

  “I’ll take her,” I tell Levi, pointing at Medusa. “Just make sure Faustus follows us out of the arena when we are done. If he doesn’t, then one of us is going to have to grab him.” Levi gives me the briefest of nods and we begin.

  I take a step back, putting the majority of my weight on my left foot, and then push forward, running at full speed. There’s not that much distance between us and the metal monsters, but there’s enough for me to get sufficient leverage to jump. I jump so high the crowd gasps, then cheers. I have to admit—it is a bit of a thrill to hear thousands of people roaring in approval of something I’ve done. I land on Medusa’s shoulder and scramble up the back of her neck, reaching up and yanking out one of her snakes with relative ease. Instead of dying, as I assumed it would without being attached to a power source, the snake wraps around my arm and nips at my neck with its needlelike fangs. I can feel blood trickle down the side of my suit. It’s not a good sign at all that each piece of whatever the hell these things are doesn’t seem to need to be connected to the whole in order to inflict damage.

  I manage a quick glimpse at Levi as I pull the serpent from my arm and begin to break it into parts. It looks as though he ran at the Minotaur as well, but instead of clambering up it as I did, he must have given it a good kick, as the thing is down. It’s not out, though; I can see it maneuvering its way back to its feet with an ease that I wouldn’t normally credit with something as lumbering as a giant machine.

  I am still on top of Medusa’s head, but she is beginning to rattle and shake now. I hear the gears inside her spin as her neck whips from one side to the other in an attempt to get me off. Worse, the snakes have turned in my direction, each one striking at me with precision and speed. They try to bite through my uniform, which thankfully, they can’t. As long as I can avert my face and my stupid cleavage, I’ll be okay.

  The thrill is wearing off rapidly.

  And then I feel a cold metal hand grip my arm, and it’s gone completely. Without the protection of my suit and the resilience of my muscles, I’m sure my arm would have broken. Still, it hurts, and I wince as the fingers clamp down even harder. She has me now and she throws me off her with brutal force, flinging me into the air. I land in the dirt, skidding at least five feet into the side of the ring. Enough of this. I quickly zip up my uniform all the way. One of those snakes could actually slither down inside my bra and do some serious damage. I’ll just have to make every move from here on out sexier than ever, which is gross. I do a back handspring in the air and am upright in an instant.

  The first row of spectators is close enough for me to reach out and grab one of them if I wanted to. They are screaming, cheering me on. Or jeering at me. Either way, I’m done with deriving excitement from their reactions. Now I’m just in survival mode.

  And then, even through the incredible din of the crowd, I hear that same screeching whistle I heard in the cave. Unlike the cave, though, this is much, much louder. It’s so loud it almost hurts. I whip my head around and see that it’s one of the audience members in the front row. It’s a man, covered completely in the mantle of a toga. He’s brought the neck of the material up and around so that his face is shrouded. I’m sure the sound is coming from him because there is something about him that doesn’t feel right. His body seems wrong somehow, and I think he has a beard, which the men here most certainly do not.

  The scene distracts me so much that I don’t hear Medusa coming. She bats me with incredible force, and once again I am lifted up in the air, but this time, instead of landing on the ground, I spin and somersault so that I land right-side up in a crouch, ready to pounce. This move brings the crowd to its feet. I look to Levi again. He has managed to wrestle one of the horns from the Minotaur’s head and is using it as a weapon. He’s stabbing at the metal so fast and so hard, sparks are flying. It won’t be long now till he punches a hole straight through and rips out its metallic guts, so now I really have to end this thing.

  I size up my opponent once more. The snakes are a problem, and I realize it would be easiest for me to disable Medusa herself first. So I run at her at full speed again, but this time when I get close enough—instead of jumping—I slide my entire body down and knock her off balance. She sails backward and lands with a clink, dust flying around her. The crowd is stomping now and screaming in a frenzy. I grab hold of one of her silver feet. I can see where she’s been pinned and fastened together—as if her body is living flesh, she has joints that bend and move as ours do. I manage to get both hands around her giant ankle even as she is bending up toward me. She’s a boss bitch, no doubt, but I’m faster. I use all the strength I have and pull. I finally manage to separate her foot from her calf.

  Medusa is sitting up now and she plunges forward, reaching for my neck. I take the foot I have in my hand and start to hit her arm. I really wail on it, making dents, hitting so hard that I hear a crack, followed by a satisfying dull hiss as her elbow separates from her forearm. She can still hit me, hard, but she can’t strangle me. And that’s not nothing.

  I quickly shift back down and grab for her other foot. She is not going to make it so easy for me this time, though. Medusa starts to flail, so I have to basically sit on her shin, which is about as uncomfortable as you might think it would be. She cuffs me in the ribs with her good hand, which makes me pant but doesn’t stop me from my task. I start to wrench the foot from the leg. I pull and pull, the thinner pieces of metal from the giant ankle cutting into my fingers. Finally, I hear a crack and the foot is off.

  The snakes continue to nip at my uniform, a couple even get at my scalp. I reach back and yank as hard as they do, prying them off Medusa’s head and then bending them up in a pretzel shape when I get them. I pitch forward now and run, putting some distance between me and the Gorgon. The audience is like thunder. Their fevered roars bounce between the massive space of the coliseum. They love this. They can’t get enough of it, and it disgusts me. What if I had been an orphan? Some poor girl brought in by the tide? Would they still love it so much? To see a young woman ripped limb from limb by a machine? Probably.

  Fuck them. I hate this Earth.

  And who is the humming man? What is he? There’s only one thing I can think of that might make sense, though it really makes no sense at all. He’s not from this Earth, either. I feel it in my gut. He doesn’t belong here, and somehow, I can actually hear it. How in the hell is that happening?

  Medusa rolls to one side and attempts to make her way toward me. Without any feet, she stumbles and
trips, unaware that she can no longer walk. Regardless, she keeps getting up, tries to continue her macabre march, then falls down again. It’s almost funny for a moment, but then something changes in her programming, or some other protocol takes over, and instead of trying to walk, she starts crawling in the dirt. It’s like a Roman Terminator, and it’s starting to piss me off.

  I look over to see that Levi has managed to break through the copper breastplate of the Minotaur and has his hand inside the machine. He starts to pull wires and parts from the torso. While I can see it’s effective in stopping the Minotaur, it’s not good enough for what we need to be doing. The crowd wants more. They want the show they paid for, not some dude disassembling a robot. And while I could give zero fucks about this crowd, we need them on our side because we need Faustus on our side. We need to get him to believe we are the greatest thing that’s ever happened to him so he will do as he promised and meet us personally when this is over—and with his guard down.

  So I wait for Medusa to get to me. I put my arms at my hips like Superman and give the metal monstrosity the best death glare I’ve got. She finally reaches me and the snakes start nipping at my boots. I ignore them, and somersault myself past them so that I land standing over her. I lift up my foot and stomp it down hard on her giant neck. It not only makes a dent, but I can see that the dozens of individual plates that let her swing her head back and forth are damaged beyond what she is capable of overcoming. I keep my black boot where it is and reach down, allowing the snakes to slither up my arms. They are making this next part more difficult certainly, but not impossible. In fact, it’s only adding to the drama as they take pieces of my cheek and neck in tiny chunks.

  I grit my teeth at the razor-sharp nips while I slip both my hands down Medusa’s smooth silver jaw. When I get to her chin I start to pull. My foot is going one direction and my arms are going another. Medusa’s head is huge, at least three feet wide. It doesn’t matter. I know how strong I am. I heave with all my might and then the metal rips and the head is off. I don’t start celebrating, though, because like the Gorgon she was named after, decapitation doesn’t mean she’s harmless. The serpents continue to coil and strike. I swing the head around and around and throw it hard.