Halo (Blood and Fire Series (A Young Adult Dystopian Series))

by Rose, Frankie

  I rock back, confused. He’s never called me that before, and there’s an odd light shining in his eyes. His smile grows wider at the look on my face. I ready my next throwing knife, ignoring the fact that he clearly thinks we’re going to be fighting at close quarters now that he’s drawn his dagger. He takes a clumsy step towards me and I flick the knife. I’m surprised when it hits him. It slashes across his arm, actually renting open the material of his combat gear. That material is strong, yet it tears open impossibly easily. Blood blossoms like a scarlet flower through the clean cut in his sleeve, and Falin Asha looks down at it, laughing shakily. Something isn’t right here and I know it. He shouldn’t be reacting this way.

  He’s been cut worse than this before and barely even registered the fact. But today it seems like he’s actually feeling the pain, and he doesn’t seem to like it. I cast my last throwing knife before I can really analyse what any of this means, only knowing that he is distracted and this is good for me. The knife flies forward and sinks into his right thigh. I wasn’t aiming for his leg; I was aiming for his stomach―one of the most damaging places to be stabbed―but I take the hit, anyway. An opponent with a leg out of commission is a weak opponent, and I may have just tipped the balance in my favour.

  Falin Asha sinks to one knee as I prowl forward, drawing out my daggers. I like fighting with a knife in either hand, and it’s good to have a spare to parry and block with while the other one is striking. Falin Asha is back on his feet by the time I’m within range. I keep back, knowing his arms are long. His reach is further than mine, so I’m going to have to lunge and attack, making sure I leave myself an opening to pull back quickly. He’s beaten me like that in practice before, and I’m wary not to stray within a metre of him.

  I want to wait for him to lead out on the second round of the fight, but he seems hesitant. He keeps staring at me like he’s not even paying attention, lost in thought. I clear my throat and growl at him.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I―” He laughs. He laughs. “I have no idea.”

  “Concentrate!” It’s counterproductive to give him advice, but I still do. I know my halo is working overtime, even though I can’t hear it. The buzz of it works against my skin, and the drug I can never normally feel is actually present on my tongue. I’ve never tasted it before. It’s an incredibly rare event when anyone does―only during extreme danger, fear, panic. I’ve heard that it tastes like almonds. It really does.

  Falin Asha bites his lip and crouches low. He finally holds his dagger defensively, starting on a circling manoeuvre. This is standard fighting technique and something we’ve practiced countless times before, but there is something off about the way he moves. It’s almost like he’s intentionally moving too slow. I do what I’ve been trained to do and lunge in, slashing with my own dagger. It drags heavily across his chest, and Falin Asha drops to his knees again. The Trues around us at arena level go crazy, slapping their palms against their tables, and for a moment I’m lost. It’s only for an instant, though, and Falin Asha rolls out of the drop, springing to his feet. Where I lashed out at him, a large hole gapes in his shirt, and I can see the deep gash that I’ve scored across his skin.

  There’s tickertape in his hair now. It seems like he’s decorated in a whole heap of red, whereas I have none. This doesn’t feel right. Falin Asha’s as good as me, and logic dictates that I should have a cut for every one of his. The only conclusion I can come to is that he is doing this on purpose. I just can’t figure out why.

  He extends his arm and stretches it out a couple of times, hinting that he might be hurt there, too. The pain should be nothing, though, and he shouldn’t be showing me any tells. Right now he’s basically displaying where I should strike next. It’s a rookie mistake to make, and I snake my dagger forward, half expecting him to have been setting me up. I certainly don’t expect my dagger to plunge into his shoulder. I drop hold of the hilt and reel backwards, the sickly sweet flavour of almonds flooding my mouth.

  Falin Asha just stares at me. I toss my other dagger into my right hand, the hand I’m better at striking with. It takes a long time before he glances down at the knife buried in his shoulder and carefully pulls it out.

  “No! What―” I break off. What the hell is he doing? He knows better than that. I did him a favour by leaving that knife in him, and he’s just gone and made things a whole lot worse for himself. He’s going to be losing blood now. A whole lot of it. He lurches forward and the crowd cheers. I leap away, unprepared for him, and step to the side, tucking myself into a roll, a good way to put distance between yourself and your opponent.

  “Kit?” he whispers, stepping closer. I know my eyes are open incredibly wide when I look at him. In my peripherals, Penny paces up and down the court line with her fingertips fluttering at her mouth. Her other arm is wound tight around her body. “Kit?” Falin Asha repeats.

  I focus on him and clench my dagger in my hand. The sea of voices swells, and I’m certain I can pick out Miranda’s deranged shrieking, yelling over and over again, “End him! End him!”

  Falin Asha’s brown eyes fix on me and it looks for a second like he’s crying. That can’t be right, though. I hover just out of his reach, staring at him. “What’s going on?”

  He smiles crookedly and brushes his hair back out of his face. “It’s going to be okay, all right? Remember that.”

  I’m so thrown by his comment that I am utterly unprepared for what he does next. The knife in his hand snakes out toward me, and I skitter away from him to the left. He knows how I react, however, and he moves with me, my mirror image. He darts for me and does the unthinkable, something that spells the end to the fight and me along with it. He grabs hold of my striking arm at the wrist. A low gasp runs around the Colosseum, growing in pitch until it’s a rushing echo in my ears. I try and fumble for the Balisong on my belt, hoping I can flick it open and use it, but Falin Asha is there before me. He doesn’t knock my hand away, just holds his over it. He pulls me closer to him and sucks in a deep breath.

  “Don’t let them see,” he hisses. With that, I feel a twisting movement between our two bodies, and then his eyes go wide. He looks stunned, the way Elin children do when they fall and they’re unsure whether they’re supposed to cry or not. I look down and see his own knife submerged up to the handle in his stomach. A cracking, bubbling noise comes out of his throat, and he smiles slowly at me. The whole Colosseum has gone deadly silent.

  I gape at him, and for a split second everything is normal as the drugs from my halo force their way into my brain and take over. An angry look sweeps over Falin Asha’s face as I feel my expression turn flat, and he reaches up for me. At first I think he’s going to touch my face, but he doesn’t. His hand crawls along my shoulder with trembling fingers, and I watch the whole time, wondering what he’s planning on doing. It’s only when he has his fingers hooked underneath my halo that I realise, too late.

  He yanks at the metal as hard as he can, dragging me to the floor with him. A scuffle ensues, but Falin Asha’s grip goes slack pretty quickly, the energy seeping out of him right along with his blood. I roll out from underneath him and turn him onto his back, listening to the hordes of people in the stands clapping and calling polite victory chants. A cold, grim look sets on Falin Asha’s face as he looks up at me. Arena dirt is stuck to his skin, and blood trickles from the corner of his mouth.

  His voice is a wet rasp when he says, “Kit, let me…”

  I’m too stunned to think straight. I lean down so that our faces are closer, and his hand reaches up again. “Let me,” he whispers. “Don’t let them see…”

  His hand is on my halo again, only this time I stare at him as he seems to draw together every last scrap of energy he possesses. I hold still, and with one final deep breath he yanks on my halo. I scream a little when it rips free over my collarbone, but no one can hear. The shouts, the calls, the laughing of the Trues in the boxes are too loud for anyone to notice my small cry.

/>   I automatically touch my hand to my neck, feeling straight away where the metal has pulled away from my skin. When I look down, Falin Asha’s eyes are unfocused. His head has rocked to one side so it looks like he’s staring at the throwing knife I buried in the match floor only minutes ago. I’ve seen so many dead people before, but this―seeing him like this― suddenly makes me feel like dying.

  Feet race towards us, and then Penny’s pulling me back so she can lift Falin Asha’s head into her lap. Tears fall down her cheeks and her mouth opens, pulled down in a mask of grief. Her pain is terrible, and I topple backwards onto the arena floor, staring wildly at the thousands of people above me, all waving their hands and throwing down fistfuls of red tickertape. For a moment I really believe it is raining blood.

  I don’t know how to explain it, but my body is reacting. My lungs burn in a way so alien that I panic before I realise that’s even what I’m doing. I lurch forward and grab hold of Falin Asha’s hand. Penny looks like she wants to pull him away from me, but then she covers her face in her hands, which are red and sticky with blood.

  “Zip up your jacket,” she sobs through her fingers. I don’t respond at first, but when she reaches out and slaps me, I do it. The zip comes up so fast I catch the skin beneath my chin, and a lump rises in my throat. It hurts so much, it makes my eyes water. Then, exactly then, is when I realise: my halo, it isn’t working.

  Penny gives me a warning look as the adjudicator approaches, smiling with just the right amount of faux happiness on his face. He offers his hand out to me and I take it so he can pull me upright. I don’t even help him as he drags me up, and it’s only when my feet are firmly underneath me that I swallow hard and look around.

  No one is watching what’s happening on the arena floor. No one could have seen what just took place. Close by, Miranda and Lowrence stand at the edge of their box, talking with Falin Asha’s True father. The man with the same deep brown eyes as Falin Asha shakes his head ruefully while counting out money. He hands it over to Miranda and then his shoulders shake up and down and his face creases, crinkly, because he’s laughing at something my father has said.

  My head is spinning by the time the alarm sounds out overhead, signalling the victor’s announcement. The adjudicator takes hold of my hand carefully as though he expects me to still be hiding a knife up my sleeve.

  “Are you ready?” he asks.

  “Yes,” I tell him. With that, he makes a hand signal to cue up the fanfare, and then we wait a heartbeat. The fanfare kicks in, and the adjudicator lifts my hand into the air, and I lean forward and throw up.

  LEAVE

  Cooking smells waft into my bedroom like an unwelcome visitor. My birth mother’s making me vegetable soup, because she thinks I’m still sick. That kind of explains why I’ve been sweating and running a fever for the past three days, and why I have locked myself away in my room. I am suffering from the worst kind of withdrawals, and I never even knew I was drugged. The Sanctuary have rules about quarantine, and staying home and avoiding contact with the outside world is number one on the list. I am so relieved that everyone automatically assumed I am ill, because I don’t think I could have done it. I couldn’t have thought up the lie when it felt like my insides are being crushed. Nothing has ever felt like this.

  I want it to stop.

  Getting home from the Colosseum was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. It felt like I was crumbling from the inside while I worked overtime, trying to keep the emotion from my face. All those times where I’d thought I could live without my halo, without the control―I couldn’t have been more wrong. I felt everything—the crushing guilt, the sheer horror—on that journey home, and I had to hide it all. The gaping chasm in my chest just grew and grew, and I could only ever imagine it getting bigger.

  Since then I’ve lain here in my bed, checking my halo over and over again. The only place it is still securely attached is around the back of my neck. Everywhere else it lifts up, free from my skin. A jolting, bewildering sensation shoots through me every time I feel it rub against me.

  Thankfully, no one has bothered to visit except my birth mother, who brings me food. It’s easy enough to hide my broken halo from her underneath the blankets. I have no idea what I’m going to do, or how I’m going to control this seething mess of raw feeling inside me. All I know is that my friend wanted me to do this for some reason, and I feel like I owe it to him to follow it through.

  I’m still buried in my sheets when my mother brings in the vegetable soup. We have the same dark chocolate hair and hazel eyes; I’ve been told I am going to look just like her when I grow older, and that makes me panic. Will I be making vegetable soup for a child I feel nothing for by the time I am thirty-seven? She flings back my bedroom curtains and lets in the daylight, illuminating the sparseness of my room. The only things in here are me, the bed, a three-drawer tall boy, and the loop of red ribbon that Falin Asha gave me on match day. Whenever I see it, I feel like I’m going to choke.

  “You have to be feeling better today,” my birth mother tells me. Doesn’t look like I’m getting a say in the matter. I make a grumbling noise from beneath the covers. “You had a visitor this morning.” She makes clattering noises as she sets down my soup on top of the tall boy. The spoon makes a bright dinging sound when she knocks it accidentally against the side of the bowl. I squint at her. Her hair is braided up neatly on top of her head, not a strand out of place. I ask myself the same question I’ve been asking myself the last three days―how can she not see what’s happened to me?

  I clear my throat so I can speak without my voice cracking. “Who visited?” I don’t care who visited, but I have to ask.

  She spreads some butter on the hunk of bread she’s cut for me while she says, “The Asha Elin―Penny, is that right? She wanted to speak to you. I told her you were sick, but I suppose you could always go and see her if you’re feeling any better?”

  Only someone completely devoid of any emotion wouldn’t question why Penny would come to see me. She was distraught when Falin Asha died, which is hardly normal behaviour. An Elin mourning a Falin? Usually they would hardly notice he was gone. This means Penny and her brother were close, although he never mentioned her to me once. I get the feeling there are a lot of things Falin Asha didn’t discuss with me, though, and maybe this halo thing is part of his relationship with Penny. She either wants to talk to me about what he did, or she wants to kill me for what I did. I don’t know which prospect sounds more terrible right now.

  My mother finishes preparing my lunch and makes to leave. Halfway out of the door, she pauses. “Are you going to get up?”

  “Yes,” I whisper. “I’ll go and see Penny. The fresh air might make me feel better.”

  “Excellent. Your father is keen for you to start training again. He wants you to partner up with one of the Falin Belcoras.”

  The concept that my father has already been planning on replacing Falin Asha makes my stomach twist. I want to smash something, but instead I nod my head, feeling my long hair tangling into even more knots against the pillow. She leaves and I eat my soup, sensing the despair inside me shift for the first time in days. It’s turning into something more volatile and dangerous.

  *****

  The Therin looks surprised to see me standing at the front door of the Asha Household. I don’t really know if I’ve used the right protocol because I’ve never visited an Elin before. When I’ve come here to see Falin Asha, I’ve always used the back door, but today I march straight up to the front and hammer on the wood. It feels good to flout whatever I think I’m supposed to do.

  The Therin woman is docile enough, but I can tell she’s a little shaken by my presence. I can have that effect on people sometimes. I think it’s all the killing, but it’s difficult to know for sure. Technically, she shouldn’t be afraid of me at all, but it can happen. A person can sometimes sense, regardless of the drugs, that they’re in the presence of death. She goes to fetch Penny and leaves me in the e
ntranceway, running my hand up and down the white paintwork of the doorframe. I never saw Falin Asha go in or out of here, but it still makes me feel like something is burning up in my head. My eyes are pricking when Penny appears. Her hair is drawn back in a tight bun and her face looks washed out. She waves away the Therin and pulls me by my arm into the house.

  “I was wondering how long it would take you to come,” she says. She doesn’t go up the stairs; she sets off into the lower floor of the house, and I follow closely behind her. We walk past the kitchen, where voices leak out into the corridor, and Penny rushes by. I make sure to be as silent as I can, which is very silent. The lower floor of the Asha Household is even bigger than ours, and we walk by five closed doors before Penny stops and opens one, waving me inside.

  The room is simple, with a single bed and a small bookshelf above it, where three worn books rest on their side. It smells of Falin Asha in here, a smell I didn’t realise I would know absolutely anywhere until now. A pair of his shoes are pushed neatly halfway under the bed. Penny stares at them and tears creep down her face

  “I―,” I don’t know what to tell her. That I was just doing what I was supposed to? That I am sorry? I’m not even sure what it is I’m feeling. All I know is that it hurts more than any physical pain I can put myself through, and since my halo stopped working, I really have tried. Tried to find something that hurts more. There are open scars on the backs of my hands to prove it.

  Penny scrubs her hands over her eyes and turns to sink down on Falin Asha’s neatly made bed. I picture him here making it before he came to meet for practice on the day of the fight and my heart contracts in a way that makes my breathing uneven. I sit down on the bed with her. “Why did he do it?”