Into the Fire

by Cheree Alsop

  “You gave him the same wound!” Jayce looked as excited as if he had been there. “He deserved it! Too bad it didn’t kill him.”

  His tone caught my attention. “You know Blade?”

  He nodded. “Know of him. He almost killed Kale the day the Arena was shut down. He disappeared afterward; we haven’t heard anything about him since.”

  The thought of Blade amid the human population sent a shudder down my spine. “He deserves to die.”

  “Kale’s been looking for him, but we keep reaching dead ends. It worries him to have such a dangerous Galdoni on the loose.”

  “As it should.”

  We sat in amiable silence for a few minutes. I wished Alana would move. I would have given anything to see her smile again.

  “Can I see it?”

  I glanced at Jayce, uncertain what he was talking about. He pointed at my side. I nodded and reached behind me in an attempt to untie the knot at the top of my hospital gown. Jayce reached toward me. I shied back, knocking his hand away with my gauzed one. My heart thundered in my chest and my muscles tensed, ready to defend me against the perceived threat.

  Jayce raised both hands. “Whoa, man. I was just trying to help.”

  The reasoning part of my brain argued with my protective instincts. He was unarmed and obviously carried no significant amount of defensive skill by the way he held himself. He was tall and had wide shoulders, but his reassuring smile belied any attempt on my life. If he truly wanted to hurt me, he would have stood and perhaps used one of the metal arms holding Alana’s tubes as a weapon.

  “You don’t have to worry about me,” Jayce continued. “I learned my lesson with Galdoni when I tussled with Kale. That’ll never happen again.”

  I willed my heart to slow. Embarrassment flooded through me. For the first time in my life, I had been having a normal conversation with a human, and I ruined it by overreacting. The detached part of my mind noted that I was simply acting within the normal confines of my Galdoni training. I grimaced at the thought. I no longer wanted to be caged with only fight or flight as my reactions.

  I let out a breath and dropped my gaze. “Sorry. Habit.”

  “Sounds like that habit saved your life.”

  I nodded. “On more than one occasion. But that doesn’t mean your life should be at risk.”

  His eyebrows rose. “Was my life at risk?”

  I tipped my head to indicate the string that hung from the blinds on the window near the door. “I was going to wrap that cord around your neck and choke you to death. I would have just snapped your spinal cord, but my hands are a bit useless at the moment.”

  Jayce stared at my unemotional appraisal of his near-death experience. The hint of fear in his gaze let me know how very far beyond a normal reaction I had almost gone. “I am sorry,” I repeated without looking at him. I studied my gauze-covered hands. “You can go if you want.”

  “You said you’d show me your scar.”

  I looked at him. He waited as though nothing unusual had happened. He deserved credit for courage. I finally nodded. He reached carefully behind my back and pulled the knot loose. I eased the cloth carefully over my hands, then pushed it down to show him the thick scar that ran from near my belly button to my back.

  “What happened?”

  I followed Jayce’s gaze to my chest. The scars of Jake’s repeated whippings crisscrossed along my skin. The bullet wound he had sewn haphazardly was stark white at the front of my shoulder. The scars from the Arena were smaller and had healed better, the result of my careful stitching because I was forced to be ready to fight within days. Ironically, the supplies for wound care had been better at the Academy than I could get at Jake’s.

  “They whipped you at the Academy?” Jayce asked. His eyes ran from one scar to the next. “Some of these look newer than others.”

  I slipped my hands back into the gown, suddenly self-conscious. “The guy who took me in and taught me to steal after the Academy didn’t take kindly to failure.”

  “That’s just wrong,” Jayce said.

  I nodded. “I realize it now, but I didn’t have much of a choice at the time.”

  He tied the knot again, then sat back. “I don’t envy your life, Saro.”

  I shrugged. “At least I’m still alive.”

  He nodded. “I have a feeling your finest moment is yet to come.”

  I smiled and he grinned. “I’ll bring you a blanket,” he said.

  I settled on my side on the couch. By the time he returned, I was already asleep.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The steady beeping of Alana’s monitors woke me late the next day. Kale was nowhere to be found. Another human brought me a tray of food. When he left, I tried to eat with the metal fork he brought with it. I kept dropping the utensil on the floor, and it hurt too much to pick it up. I eventually set it down and ate by lifting the tray to my mouth. I was glad Alana wasn’t awake to see me.

  When I was done, the sounds of her machines drove me from the room. I couldn’t listen to the beeping and watch the green and red lines any longer without going crazy. I made my way back to my room and found a pair of loose black pants and a white shirt waiting. I grinned when I picked up the shirt and found slits and Velcro along the back. Someone had indeed made clothing for Galdoni.

  It took several minutes of inventive dressing that involved the IV arm near the bed as well as the small rolling table that held the food tray, but I was finally dressed. A pair of blue socks with white rubber paw prints on the bottom sat where my clothes had been. I turned away with a wry smile. I would rather have cold feet than be caught wearing those. They alone might get me beaten to a pulp in a building filled with Galdoni.

  I followed the directions on the signs handily placed near the stairs on each level, and found myself at the door to the training rooms on the tenth floor. I watched through the wide windows as Galdoni fought against each other and practice dummies. Cloth bags swung back and forth under the force of each blow. Sweat poured off of faces locked in intense concentration. Near one corner, Galdoni fought in roped rings much like those made with chain at the Academy.

  It felt different, though. It took me a few minutes to place my finger on just what that difference was. The Galdoni were smiling and jostling each other. There was laughter when someone threw a particularly good punch, and those Galdoni who watched the fighters did so with grins on their faces, calling out good shots or taunting those that were bad. The Galdoni were enjoying themselves. It felt almost wrong, but also healing at the same time. I couldn’t explain it.

  I pushed the door open with my shoulder. The largest Galdoni I had ever seen walked over to halt my progress. I remembered him from the Academy, but barely. He was older than me by a few years, and had always kept to himself. I was smart enough to never get on his bad side because of his size. I may have been fast, but that was nothing compared to the brute force of a bear.

  “I’m Goliath, caretaker of our gym.”

  His eyes roamed to my hands, then back to my face. It was obvious by his expression that he found me sorely lacking. I hated that look. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “To train,” I replied firmly.

  He chuckled, a sound that resonated from deep within his chest. “How do you plan to do that?”

  I had never been good at being laughed at. My survival instincts fled, leaving me with only bitter rage at my frustratingly helpless situation. “With my elbows; what’d you think?” I replied.

  He chuckled again. “That I’d like to see.”

  “Then let me train.”

  Goliath’s wide brow lowered when he realized I was being serious. “I can’t let you in here. My orders are to keep anyone out who may hurt themselves by training.” He nodded at my hands, his glance also taking in my damaged wings. “I don’t know how you plan to do anything without hurting yourself.”

  I gritted my teeth. “Look, Gandalf,” I growled.

  “Goliath,” he corrected.<
br />
  I rolled my eyes. “I can’t use my hands, my wings are burned, and I may fall over at any moment, but if I have to sit in a white-walled room any longer listening to beeping monitors waiting to tell me if my only friend in the world has died, I am seriously going to hurt someone. I need a place to vent.” My chest heaved. I fought back the outrageous impulse to punch him in the face. My dispassionate voice mentioned that such an action was ill-advised as Goliath could no doubt pulverize me with a single hit given my current state.

  He watched me quietly for a moment. I thought he was going to turn me away. I was almost prepared to go. Instead, he nodded. “I have a room in the back you can use.”

  He led the way across the training room. I felt the stares of several Galdoni as we passed, but I ignored them. Goliath passed down a side hall lined with smaller individual practice rooms. Galdoni were visible through long windows as they fought stationary bags and wooden dummies. Goliath paused by the next room and opened the door. He glanced at my hands. “There’s a button on the wall if you need help getting back out.”

  I nodded and stepped into the room. There were three white walls, and the fourth next to the door was made up of a long glass window like the rest of the rooms we had passed. Two stationary bags, a swinging bag chained to the roof, and two wooden dummies made up the training facility. A bin containing various wooden weapons sat near the door. Goliath pulled the door shut before I could thank him. I didn’t think he expected it; the urge to do so surprised me as well. I turned to face the room. A small smile crossed my face.

  ***

  I slammed an elbow into a stationary bag, then spun and used my other elbow against the second bag. I kicked low, then high, and impacted the hanging bag in the corner with another spinning kick. I dropped an elbow into the marked abdomen of one of the wooden dummies lying on the floor, rolled heedless of the pain in my bound wings, and came up with another spinning kick.

  As soon as I connected with the swinging bag, I elbowed the stationary bag behind me, turned and connected with a kick to a wooden dummy’s groin, then threw myself into a spinning kick that connected with both my right and left foot across the face of another dummy. I dropped to the ground and drove my elbow once more into the stomach of the wooden dummy on the ground.

  I lay there gasping for air. It had been almost an hour of intense training. My shirt was soaked with sweat and my hands burned at the constant friction against the bandages even though I hadn’t used them. My elbows ached. I had never used them that way before. I grinned at the thought of my technique. It may have been scrappy, but if my hands were truly disabled, I wouldn’t be left defenseless.

  A slight tapping on the window sounded behind me. I pushed up gingerly to one elbow. My racing heart skipped a beat at the sight of at least a dozen Galdoni crowded around the window. The thought that they had been watching me fight twisted my stomach. Someone moved and my eyes shifted to Kale. He stood near the back with his arms crossed in front of his chest. He gave a short nod, approval in his eyes.

  I rose and set the room back in order the best I could. The Galdoni slowly dispersed until only Kale and Goliath remained. They spoke together too quietly for me to hear through the glass. Goliath smiled as if they were old friends. He would definitely be a handy friend to have.

  When I walked to the door, Goliath pulled it open. “I thought you were kidding when you said you’d use your elbows,” he said with a deep chuckle.

  Kale patted my shoulder. The gesture was oddly warming, as though I had exceeded some expectation he had of me. “You never fought like that at the Academy,” he said.

  I shrugged, feeling self-conscious. “I never had a face for my anger.”

  Goliath grunted. “Remind me not to get on your bad side.”

  The thought of the big Galdoni being afraid of me made me laugh. “I think you’re safe,” I said.

  He grinned. “I sure hope so.”

  They walked with me toward the training room exit. “You should probably go back to Alana’s room,” Kale suggested. “Dr. Ray mentioned checking your wings.”

  The trepidation I felt must have shown on my face because Kale smiled. “Don’t worry. I wouldn’t have my wings if it wasn’t for him. He’ll take good care of you.”

  “Come back soon,” Goliath said. “The boys enjoyed the entertainment.”

  I smiled at his comment. Goliath held the door open. Kale and I walked up the hall. It felt strange to have someone I trusted at my side.

  “It’s not my wings I’m worried about,” I admitted when we were out of earshot from the training room. “They feel a lot better.”

  Kale glanced at my hands. “I really don’t know much about burns.”

  I didn’t either. It never fell under standard wound care training at the Academy. “That’s all I was good for.” I looked up when Kale glanced at me, and realized I had spoken the words aloud.

  “What?” he asked.

  I debated whether to keep silent, but it was too late to pretend I hadn’t said anything. I looked down at the gauze. “The sensitivity of my fingers let me open safes in half the time Jake said it took anyone else. What if I’ve lost that?”

  Kale’s expression was unreadable. The back of my neck itched. I wanted to rub it, but it would only hurt. I gave a humorless smile. “What is the word the humans use? When you do something bad and it comes back to make you pay?”

  “Karma?” Kale asked.

  I nodded. “Maybe it’s karma that my hands got burned. I did bad things, and so now I’m paying for it.”

  “You did good things with those hands, too,” Kale pointed out.

  I shook my head. My tongue felt thick in my mouth. I couldn’t tell him what I felt, that everything I had ever done was wrong.

  He answered my thoughts without me speaking them. “What we did in the Arena was forced upon us. We were fed lies and had no reason to doubt them, no chance to second-guess what we had been raised our whole lives to know as if it was fact. I know you regret it, and I do too.”

  He held open the door to the third floor. I hesitated on the landing. “I saw your video.”

  His mouth twitched slightly. “I have no technical expertise. My friends did that.”

  I nodded. “They did a good job. You almost had me convinced.”

  “Almost?” he asked.

  I wanted to walk through the door and forget about it, but I couldn’t. There was no walking away from what I had seen and experienced. He had to know. “I was the little boy with the katana.”

  Kale watched me, but I could see his mind working, flashing back through the video to the scene of the boy dying on the floor, the victor standing above him. Regret gripped my throat so tight I felt like I was choking. I never wanted to relive that moment; seeing it had shredded my tattered heart.

  “Accidents happened,” Kale said quietly.

  “They gave me a real blade,” I shouted. The words were too painful. I had to get them out and be free of their agony. “Why would they give a six year old a real blade, and then applaud when he killed his best friend?”

  I remembered the sharp thwack of the katana on the sand when it fell out of my hand. They had beat me then; not for killing another boy, not for taking a life, but for dropping my sword.

  “There are so many things I regret about the Academy,” Kale said. He released the door and it closed with a quiet snick beside him. His expression was stark, his eyes bare as if he saw it all over again. He stood on the Arena floor once more, the sand at his feet and the dome overhead. How many times had I experienced that same sight?

  “I knew then that it was wrong.” I had been forced to hide my tears of remorse, to cry them at night with my face turned away from the all-seeing gaze of the cameras in each cell. “I knew we weren’t supposed to kill, but there was no way out.”

  I had paced my cell so many times the bottom of my feet became as tough as leather. I was a tiger unable to fulfill its destiny to run in the savanna. I wanted to explode
, to change something, to make it stop, yet I was unable to do anything but train. They beat me until I trained, then beat me again when they didn’t like my technique.

  “I pulled the fire alarms.”

  I glanced at Kale, surprised. A slight smile touched his face, but it didn’t quite chase away the pain in his gaze.

  “Whenever I couldn’t take it anymore, I pulled a fire alarm to get us out to the Arena for a chance to breathe.” His smile widened. “It got to the point that whenever a fire alarm went off, they headed straight to wherever I was training.”

  “I remember the fire alarms,” I said, thinking back. “I wish I’d thought of that.”

  He chuckled. “No, you don’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I would have been thrown in solitary twice as often.”

  I laughed. It felt good to laugh after talking about what we had been through. I couldn’t explain how much easier I could breathe hearing about the Academy from someone else’s point of view, and realizing I wasn’t the only one who had felt the way I did.

  “We have counseling.”

  I gave him a bland look. “For what?”

  He smiled, correctly interpreting the look. “For talking about what we went through. Every Galdoni within these walls and without is dealing with some form of PTSD.”

  “What’s that?” I asked warily.

  “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. It helps to talk about it. Trust me.”

  I gestured toward the door.

  “Catch you later,” Kale said, pulling it open.

  I stepped inside and he let it shut again without following me. There had been something in his gaze, loss and pain as if talking to me reminded him how bad it had been. I wondered if he was going to talk to a counselor. Part of me felt like I should follow; the other part railed against the idea as if a counselor was someone with a thousand daggers. I let out a slow breath and walked up the hall.

  I paused by the doorway. A man with brown hair and glasses was checking the numbers on the monitor closest to Alana. He spoke without looking at me. “I was hoping to catch you here.”