by Leito, Chad
The spinosaurus leaned forward and began to sprint towards the Sharks; each of its muscular thighs (each of which had the girth of a full grown male bull) launched itself forward with alternating contractions that shot up dirt behind the giant as it raced forward. Asa dropped the greasy bit of Adam Trotter that he had in his hands and began to run.
He followed the path the other Sharks had taken down the road beside the jungle. They left Gabby, one legged and screaming where she had been abandoned near the fire. Asa grimaced at the desperation in her voice, but kept running. He was relieved when he heard the prehistoric creature pass her up, apparently not interested in the one wounded human when he could potentially catch a whole herd of healthy ones.
The dinosaur was gaining on them. Asa looked around him, and could not see Jen. They made their way around a bend, and Asa was uncomfortably aware that he was at the back of the pack, closest to the deadly jaws. The dirt beneath him was shifting, and the vibrations from the dinosaur’s steps were making it difficult for Asa to retain traction.
Up ahead, Boom Boom turned around. He had somehow lit the vine coming out of one of the coconuts he had tied to his waist, and it was acting like a fuse, moving slowly up the vegetation towards the coconut shell. He spun, tossed the coconut high into the air, and then turned back to continue sprinting. The coconut detonated in the air before reaching the spinosaurus. Asa felt the heat of the blast, and bits of sharp coconut shrapnel that cut into his back.
The spinosaurus howled in sick rage, but kept moving towards its prey. Asa continued on, the back of his neck bleeding from where the fragments had hit him. They turned another corner and came to a straightaway in the dirt path. Feeling that he wouldn’t be able to outrun the spinosaurus for long, Asa made a quick decision and diverted off into the jungle, away from the group.
If it follows me, I’m dead.
Asa sprinted up an embankment thick with moist leaves and vines across the ground, threatening to trip him. He used his echolocation, as twenty yards into the trees the thick canopy above muted the light. He heard the parade of Sharks continue to sprint down the road, and heard the giant pacing after them.
God help them.
Asa continued to run. He was pumped full of adrenaline from the close encounter, and guilt at what he had just eaten. With food in him, he felt revitalized. He pushed himself into the unknown wild, his breath coming out hot in the humid jungle. Then he ran further. He didn’t know where he was going. He hurdled over trees, glided over a black pond, using his wings. He heard rustling in the dark pockets of jungle beside him, but didn’t slow. Minutes went by.
In some basic part of himself, he was shallowly aware that he was using one of his favorite coping mechanisms. Whenever his mother was dying he ran. Whenever he was scared nearly out of his mind by the continual Multiplier attacks last semester, he ran. And here he was, running through the Tropics, in a suit that had the capacity to electrocute him to death after eating a man that had told him about a Multiplier from outside of the Academy. It was too much to deal with right now. He ran to forget. He ran until the lactic acid dripped what felt like lava into his thighs, his hamstrings, his calves, his abdomen, and then he ran some more. He wanted to be numb. He wanted to hurt so bad that he couldn’t think of anything else.
At a point, Asa didn’t know how long it was, he reached this kind of meditative numbness where all that existed were the path and his pain.
After two hours of sprinting at a blistering pace, Asa began to feel okay with thinking again. Not deep thinking, he wasn’t ready for that yet. And he wasn’t ready to walk yet, either. He jogged over the grass and looked out to his left.
When he was younger, his mother used to take him on trips to Galveston beach, and once they had stayed in a cabin in the Rockies. Asa had a love for running in scenic, beautiful places. He enjoyed being exhausted, and being able to glance out where ocean met sky, or where the jagged tips of the mountains cut into the clouds.
He admired his current place.
He was on the edge of a great canyon that stretched for miles and miles. Far below, brontosauruses ate leaves from remarkably tall trees, using their long necks that made those belonging to giraffes look insignificant. The dinosaurs were metallic blue, and at a glance they looked like gigantic gems on the sea of dark green grass. There were dozens of waterfalls that rained down from caves in the sides of the rock wall that made clouds of mist as the falling water collided with the clear pools that supplied the river below. A pure white hawk circled the valley, looking for rodents in the grass and small fish in the water. Dandelions, and sunflowers and roses grew wild. The river was slow moving and reflected the perfect blue sky above. Further out, there were smooth green hills that rolled out to the edge of the arena.
Asa had never seen anything so beautiful.
Painfully, he pulled his gaze from the view and looked out in front of him. Roughly one mile away, rising above the high reaching canopies that rustled in the breeze was a Home Base. The Sharks’ Home Base was now far behind him, and he was heading towards an opposing team’s initial shelter. Anxiety boiled up in his chest as he thought, What if there is a whole team, still situated there, guarding their KEE? They’ll kill me!
But, he had no choice, really. He had to attempt to attain another team’s KEE. The alternative was to wait, cross his fingers, and hope that his suit didn’t electrocute him to death, which it probably would at some point, seeing as his team left their base completely unguarded.
And I want to earn my team’s trust.
He continued to run, but began to stay in the shadows as he grew closer to the base, aware that if a team decided to use defensive tactics, they might have guards. The Home Base grew nearer, and Asa could see a pterosaur along with pterodactyls roosting on the roof. The windows surrounding the top room were still intact.
He was half a mile away, his fear continuing to build when he was brought to the ground by a dark form that leapt out of the jungle. Upon the collision, he thought the word, strong. Asa was wrapped up in foreign arms and his feet left the earth as he was tackled. His shoulder and back collided with the packed dirt, knocking the wind out of him. He felt a warm body atop him, legs restraining his legs, and strong, unyielding hands pinning his wrists down.
“Asa?”
The grip slackened and allowed Asa to sit up and cough until he had his breath was back.
“Are you okay, Asa? I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
Asa nodded as he coughed, looking at Roxanne. Her face was painted with black dirt and a mixture of twigs and dead leaves were tangled in her blond hair. The knees and elbows of her camouflaged suit were caked with dirt, as though she had been crawling. Her general filthiness made her golden-green eyes stand out even more than usual, as they reflected the light, clean and glistening.
“Yeah, I’m just glad it was you,” Asa said. “What were you doing in there?”
“Waiting for something. We need to hide. I’ll explain.”
Roxanne ducked back into the jungle and Asa followed her. “Have you seen anyone else since the team split up?”
“No.”
Roxanne looked troubled. “They must have taken another route, then. We need to go this way.”
As Asa followed Roxanne at a stealthy jog through the jungle, she briefly explained the situation. “Bruce, Boom Boom and I somehow ended up together after the Spinosaurus left. I’m not sure what kind of injuries our team sustained.”
“Is Jen okay?”
“I don’t know. This way.” She changed direction and Asa could tell by the increased concentration of light that they were moving out the other side of a thin stretch of jungle. “We decided to head for this Home Base. Bruce has an ability—he can sense animals and people without seeing them. There’s more to it, but no time to explain. We were running along the road, and he told us to hide in the jungle. We did, and three members of the Viper team jogged by—Stridor Akardiavna, Lane Black and Michael Spruce. I think that you know Str
idor. Michael and Lane are fourth semesters. We watched them go. Stridor was leading them, and he was clutching a KEE in their hand, our KEE. That’s their base, right there. If they are able to place our KEE, we’re dead.”
They stopped, and Asa took in the closeness of the Viper’s Home Base. He licked his lips, and his tongue was dry. “So where are Bruce and Mike?” Asa asked.
“They went ahead of me. The Vipers stayed on the road, mostly, which cost them time. We were able to stay ahead of them by cutting through the jungle. Mike says that he thinks he can burn their base to the ground.”
“Won’t that start a jungle-fire? Won’t that kill us all?”
Roxanne bit her lip. “We don’t know. But we do know that if we don’t do something, we’re going to be cooked anyways. While they are doing that, I’m trying to find the Vipers and stop them. You can help me.”
Asa nodded.
“You need to know something, though, Asa. C’mere.”
She grabbed his shoulders and pulled him so that her lips were a centimeter away from his ear. She whispered and he felt her breath. “I know that Academy officials are listening in on our conversations. I have an ability, okay? Just trust me.”
She pulled back and Asa asked, “What can you do?”
She shook her head and looked at the road through the trees of the jungle. Asa watched her lion eyes grow big and she put a finger over her mouth, telling him to hush. They moved slowly over to the edge of the jungle and looked out at the path. They were now only two hundred yards away from the Viper’s Home Base. There was a beaten path directly outside of the tree-line, and then a vast river.
Stridor, Lane Black, and Michael Spruce stood on the bank of the river, looking out over the water. Stridor was in the middle, tallest of them. The arena ceiling was changing from blue to a burnt orange as the artificial dusk came over the land. The wine-colored scars on back of his hairless head and his neck seemed more prominent than usual. The metal Shark KEE was dangling from the long fingers of his right hand. In his left hand he held a rifle. Stridor had tied a thick vine that ran across his chest from his shoulder to right hip. Dangling from the vine on his hip was a sack covered in black and white fur, with dark red-brown blood stains on it, as though Stridor had hurriedly skinned an animal before using it and hadn’t taken the time to clean it properly.
Lane and Michael flanked him. They both had black hair and Asa didn’t know who was who. Though they were both shorter than Stridor, but they were wide shouldered and bulky—each bigger than Roxanne or Asa.
And we don’t know what kinds of mutations they might have.
The swift river, reflecting the burnt orange ceiling, was fifty yards wide and between the Vipers and their Home Base. The Viper standing on Stridor’s right side expanded his wings; which were mutated red, like a cardinal’s, and said, “Let’s go.”
“Not so fast,” Stridor said, squeezing his teammates arm. “Those green fish worry me.”
“What are they?”
“I don’t know,” said Stridor, and he picked up a small fallen tree limb nearby.
From their hiding spot behind a series of bushes, Asa glanced at Roxanne. She was crouched low, breathing shallowly through her nose. Her left hand was clenched around a dark tree root and in her right she held a dense river-stone, smooth and roughly the shape of an egg.
“What’re you doing?” One of the Vipers asked Stridor from the riverbank.
He didn’t answer, but said, “back up,” before throwing the tree branch over the water at a whistling pace. Half way across the river, an enormous, scale-covered green fish broke the surface and snapped its sharp teeth down on the flying chunk of wood, breaking it in half, before splashing down into the river again.
“How are we going to get across?” the Viper on Stridor’s left side asked.
“We’ll have to fly higher than those fish can reach, is all,” the other Viper responded before looking to Stridor, his younger teammate, for approval.
“If we fly any higher than just above the surface, Lane, the pterodactyls will get us,” Volkner said, an edge in his voice. “They’re watching us.” He looked up at the edge of the roof of his Home Base where the creatures were staring at him over protruding noses and jaws.
“So how do we get across?” the other teammate said. He must be Michael. Michael had long wavy black hair that was tied up in a ponytail with brown and green thorny vines. His skin was the color of milk chocolate, and his nose was covered in rough scars. His nose was unusually small, almost non-existent, as though it had been cut off in the past and he could only find small fragments of it to suture back on.
Stridor searched the bank, and then turned, glaring into the jungle. He studied the bush that Roxanne and Asa hid behind and Asa’s breathing stopped entirely. He stared at Stridor as his blue eyes fixated on the spot where the two Sharks lay crouched. His eyes were the blue of deep, icy waters. He studied the bush for what felt like minutes and Asa felt sweat gather on his brow. Please let the foliage cover us, he thought. Lane and Michael stared at Stridor. Finally, Stridor’s eyes moved further along the jungle, away from the bush.
Asa let out a breath of relief and became aware of his heart hammering against his ribs. He continued to watch his opponent as Stridor looked for something to help him safely cross the river.
As sudden as the lightening-bolt had come that had struck Adam Trotter dead, Stridor turned, aimed his rifle towards the bush, and fired, all in one swift movement. Asa saw a huge spark and a cloud of smoke erupt from the base of the rifle’s barrel. He heard a bullet race through the bush beside him, knocking leaves to the ground and whistling between him and Roxanne, who were unharmed.
As soon as the shot was off, Stridor was reloading his gun with a bullet from the fur sack tied at his hip, and running towards the jungle at the same time. Michael and Lane stood flatfooted, looking dumbfounded next to the water. They watched Stridor’s charge of the jungle with concerned expressions, as though they believed their teammate had gone insane.
Roxanne took two steps to the side, so that the bushes no longer concealed her. She reared back, stretching the river-stone behind her in preparation to throw it. Michael and Lane still hadn’t moved. She propelled the stone with a velocity that would be the envy of any non-mutated professional baseball player directly at Lane’s face. Moving quickly, Lane had his hands up to guard himself before the stone made contact. He was able to deflect the speeding rock, but not before it made sufficient damage. The middle finger of his right hand broke into a fractured, deformed appendage as the rock ricocheted out into the river behind him. Howling with rage and pain, Lane stepped backwards, slipped on a wet stone, and fell into the moving water where he made a great splash.
Though Lane was an enemy, Asa gasped in horror as he saw the tops of the green fish rushing towards him. Lane wildly screamed once, and then was dragged into the rushing water. Blood and bubbles of muffled cries came to the surface and he was dead.
Stridor had now reloaded, but so had Roxanne; her right hand gripped another stone. She was rearing back when Stridor pointed his gun at her.
Asa initially thought the next occurrence was a trick of the light; he assumed that his eyes had deceived him. Just as Roxanne had in their first Winggame match when she punched her opponent in the face, she moved faster than any human—mutated or otherwise—should have been able to. Asa had grown accustomed to seeing Multipliers and graduates demonstrating incredible speed and strength, but this was something else entirely. One moment, she was on the ground, and the next, had leapt ten feet in the air. Stridor’s bullet went harmlessly below her, ripping through the jungle.
Michael Spruce was in the process of running when Roxanne leapt with unbelievable speed. He froze immediately and Asa could read on his face that he was as shocked by what just happened as Asa was.
Then, also too fast to be possible, Roxanne flung the next rock over the earth at Michael. This time, there was no deflection and her throw met its target.
Michael’s nose smashed into his face and blood splattered before him. His eyes stopped moving, and he fell backwards, into the river where the hungry fish awaited him, and dragged him under.
Stridor did not seem fazed. His icy blue eyes looked like he was playing chess, thinking of his next move; there was nothing in them that suggested he might be caught in a death match that has just turned from three on two to one on two. He sprinted forward, and this time he did not bother reloading his gun. He reached the bush just as Roxanne landed, and in the last moment her eyes widened in realization of what was happening. He swung the rifle, slamming her skull with the wooden butt of the gun. She whimpered and crumpled, instantly unconscious. Three lines of blood ran from her skull down her dirty face.
Stridor stood over her limp frame, and selected a bullet from his sack.
For a moment, time slowed down. Asa heard the chirruping of birds around him. He watched as Stridor’s slender finger’s moved the bullet. Asa could see the tendons move in Stridor’s arm, and a thin layer of sweat upon the surface of his skin. Stridor was staring down at Roxanne, about to kill her. He did not look around for another attacker, and Asa thought, He hasn’t seen me! I think that he doesn’t know I’m here!
Wondering if Stridor was aware of his presence, Asa picked up a rock and stared at the back of Stridor’s head. I will only have one chance to knock him out, or kill him. If I miss, he will kill me and those icy blue eyes will be the last things that I’ll ever see. Asa held his breath and took another step forward. He was preparing to charge from behind when an explosion of light and heat nearly knocked him backwards.
He was temporarily blinded with a flash that seemed as bright as the sun and when his vision returned, he saw that the Viper’s Home Base was completely aflame. The pterodactyls and pterosaur that had been resting on the roof were falling to the ground, charred and still burning. There had been a huge explosion, and Asa remembered what Roxanne had said about Bruce and Boom Boom trying to collapse the base.
