Arena Mode (15 page)

Listed at six feet, ten inches tall, whoever was inside the Fudō-myōō armor could maneuver it with incredible speed and precision. Unlike its cinematic counterparts, this giant mech didn’t appear large enough to take down Godzilla in a fist fight, but was easily one of the largest competitors in the tournament (second only to Dwayne Lewis.)

My concerns were growing.

Buried beneath this metallic hulk was a superhuman – a powerful being whose abilities had not yet been revealed. If anyone was able to strip away the exoskeleton, there was no telling who, or what, was lurking beneath.

The room felt like it was closing in. I wiped the sweat from my brow and kept my eyes fixed on the monitor, not realizing that the annoying kid at the door was still yapping instructions.

The rest of the world fell away. Sound, smell, even touch had disappeared. My body had gone numb.

It was happening again.

“Forgot something, Mox?”
Gavin rattled the remaining pills inside my small prescription bottle. “You might want to pop a few of these now that you’re finally conscious.”

I jolted upright, my heart racing. “Is it over? Was ... did they find out? When do I go on stage?” As I sat up, I suddenly understood the age-old saying ‘I have a splitting headache’; a blinding pain struck me like a wrecking ball to the temple.

Peyton came into focus, crouching beside me. She reached out and gently ran her fingers along my forehead, easing me back down. “Shh, take it easy. No one knows about your condition. As far as they’re concerned, you just passed out because of the pressure.” She held a pair of pills in her open palm and raised them to my mouth, tilting a small cup of water into my lips.

My eyes shifted around the room and my surroundings became clear. I was no longer backstage at the baseball stadium in Brooklyn – I had been taken back to Excelsior, and was sprawled out on the couch at the front of the store. I glanced out the window at the darkened sky. “How long have I been out?” I asked.

“About six hours,” Peyton said softly. She smiled warmly and did her best to calm my frayed nerves, but her eyes reflected a sense of deep concern. “We ... Gavin rushed over when they called. He was the emergency contact. He got you out of there before Frost’s medics could examine you.”

“What did I miss?” I asked, propping myself up on an elbow.

“The last two competitors were announced,” Gavin explained. “The first was an Australian woman named Arirose. She’s a mind-reader or something? At least that’s what it said on her profile. She didn’t do much. I think she’s saving her powers for the big day.”

“Then things got weird
,
” Peyton said. “Your buddy Kenneth comes out of the curtains dressed in his wacky homemade costume. You could hear the laughs from the crowd over the simulcast feed. He struts across the stage and shoots this blue dust out of his hand. All of a sudden it starts coming together, and it turns into a huge freaky octopus monster with wings and a lizard body.”

“A Cthulhu.”

Peyton blinked.

“It’s Lovecraftian,” I added.

She stared back at me, quiet and puzzled.

“It’s a porn thing,” Gavin insisted, with the most stone-faced expression he had ever managed.

“Ew!” she shouted. “What?”

“It’s a big tentacle sex monster,” Gavin explained. “Japan is
way
into that stuff.”

I shook my head. “Peyton, H.P. Lovecraft was an American author who specialized in horror and dark fantasy – the Cthulhu was one of his creations. Gavin, as usual, is full of shit.” Even when throbbing in pain, my brain didn’t stop processing a mile a minute.

“Nope,” Gavin insisted, completely deadpan. “It’s porn. Mox, I think your tumor might be getting worse.”

I couldn’t help but smile. Gavin had a way of cheering me up in almost any situation.

Peyton shook her head, narrowing her eyes at her brother before re-focusing her attention on me. “How are
you
feeling? Are you all right to compete tomorrow?”

All I could offer was a weak shrug. “I’m as ready as I’m going to be, I suppose. A killer headache and some ringing in my ears, but I’ll deal. It’s not like I can get a doctor’s note and call in sick for the tournament.”

“Any hallucinations?” she asked.

“I don’t think so,” I replied without any real sense of certainly. “I did see a giant robot come out on stage before I passed out ... did that actually happen?”

“Yeah,” Gavin confirmed. “Some dude in a mech suit called Fudō-something or other. He’s one of the odds-on favorites to win the tournament.”

Odds.
I had almost forgotten that now, a day before the tournament, the official betting lines would be announced. Based on whatever information the bookies and odds-makers could get their hands on, the thirteen (or now, twelve) competitors would be listed in order of their perceived chances of winning the tournament. Whether it was betting credits through the government-sanctioned Vegas Network, or using an underground bookie in the Dark Zone, this would no doubt be a record-breaking day in terms of gambling.

“Let me see the lines,” I asked, sitting back up.

“You need
rest
,” Peyton insisted, placing her hand on my chest. “Just sit back, relax. You’re competing in twelve hours – you don’t need to stress yourself out.”

I appreciated her concern, but Cameron Frost had left out an alarming number of details until the last minute, including most of the competitors; I had to gather all the information that I could. Sleep was not an option. “
Please
, bring up the odds.”

With a click of his chunky antique television remote, Gavin fired up the old Trinitron, and logged onto the Vegas Network.

Judging from the numbers, the bookies didn’t see my absence from the weigh-ins as a positive sign.

Odds for Arena Mode
 

(-850) Sergei Taktarov “Russia’s Son”

(even) Kenneth Livitski “The Living Eye”

(even) Dwayne Lewis “Sledge”

(+250) Fudō-myōō “The Immovable One”

(+300) Paul Glendinning “Dozer”

(+500) Serafina “The Butcher”

(+650) Ayumi Ozaki “Lioness”

(+850) Cassandra Cole “The Crusher”

(+950) Jérôme Fontaine “Vitesse”

(+1200) Winston Ramsley “The Gentleman”

(+1700) Arirose “Transcendent”

(+3000) Matthew Moxon “Mox”

*WARNING* Any attempt to gamble outside of the United States government sanctioned Vegas Network will result in a mandatory five-year prison sentence, with no chance for parole.

“What does that mean?” Peyton asked, scanning the numbers next to each name.

“It means that no one believes Mox will last more than five minutes,” Gavin replied soberly.

“It’s all right,” I explained, “these are just guesses based on who the bookies think have the best chances of winning. See the numbers to the left? That’s how much money you could win based on the competitor you place a bet on. So for example: if you bet a hundred dollars on Serafina, you’d win five-hundred if she takes first place.”

“That makes sense,” she says with a small nod, “but then why does Russia’s Son have a minus sign beside it?”

“It means you need to bet eight-hundred and fifty dollars to win one hundred,” Gavin explained. “It’s a way to discourage bettors from putting money on him. Everyone is sure he’s going to win tomorrow.”

Peyton stared listlessly at the chart, nervously twisting a length of hair with both hands as if she was wringing out a wet towel.

“His implied winning probability is eighty-nine percent … but again, it’s just a
guess
,” I reassured her. “Manhattan is a big place, and there’s a good chance I won’t even run into Taktarov.” My mouth was moving independent of my brain. I was trying to convince my friends that the odds against me weren’t as astronomical as they actually were, simply because I couldn’t bear to watch them suffer – I wasn’t sure whether I was doing more harm than good. Up until that point, I’d been trying to stay realistic, preparing them for the worst-case scenario. Now I was just spouting nonsense, ignoring the facts that were staring me in the face.

As I spoke, I continued to itch the back of my left hand. It was an involuntary reaction at first, and I didn’t become conscious of it until my skin was scratched raw.

Gavin glanced down at my hand. “About that,” he said, “I need to explain what they did to you after you passed out.”

“What they
did
to me?” I asked.

“Your epidermal implant. They grafted it to the back of your hand as part of Cameron Frost’s solution for campers.”

Oh shit.
As soon as Gavin said the word ‘campers’ I knew exactly what the implant was designed for. Frost certainly enjoyed his gaming terminology: in first-person shooter video games, occasionally a player will choose to employ a strategy that involves hiding in an elevated location on the map (usually with a sniper rifle or a rocket launcher) picking off unsuspecting opponents as they saunter by. ‘Camping’, which basically means remaining stationary for prolonged periods of time, is allowed in multiplayer games only because there is no way to prevent it – but to say the tactic is frowned upon would be a massive understatement. Calling someone in the video game community a ‘camper’ is the same as calling someone a ‘jackass’ in real life. It’s a derogatory term used for lesser-skilled and unethical players, and they inevitably draw the ire of every player they encounter.

“So what happens to campers?” Peyton asked innocently.

“They didn’t tell me,” Gavin replied. “But if I had to guess? Nothing good. The medical guy just told me that the implant was required for all competitors, and sealed it on before he would let me take Mox out of the building. I didn’t have time for follow-up questions.”

I’d spent weeks studying maps of Manhattan. I memorized every street, alley, fire escape and manhole. I pored over satellite images that indicated the location of every potential hiding place, from dumpsters to abandoned cars. All for nothing. Surviving until the final four was going to require a lot of evasiveness, and (even though it would be less than viewer-friendly) a lot of standing still. The epidermal implant would ensure – somehow – that I kept moving, which would inevitably result in more confrontations. Violent confrontations that I had very little chance of surviving.

“I know this sounds like a setback, but I have some good news,” Gavin announced. “I have a friend of a friend who knows this guy out in the Zone – he was able to snap me some satellite photos that he ganked from a weather satellite this morning. They’re crystal clear, and you can see all the weapon locations.”

I raised my eyebrows. “That
is
good news. Can we check them out?”

“Let’s get to it,” Gavin said with a smile. “Take your time. We’ll review them when you’re vertical.”

When her brother had disappeared from view, Peyton sat on the couch next to me, gently rubbing my lower back in small circles. “Can we talk?”

I nodded tentatively. I feared we were about to have the conversation I’d been dreading for weeks.
The
conversation. The follow-up to our night together, where I would inevitably have to come up with suitable answers to questions like, “where is this going?” and “why have you been avoiding me like a spineless jerk?” Questions that I either didn’t
have
a good answer for, or couldn’t explain without coming off like a bigger asshat than I already was.

“I know you don’t believe in this stuff,” she began, “but
I do
, so I want you to stop being a dick for a minute and just listen to me.”

“You sure know how to sweet talk a guy,” I replied with an awkward grin. Definitely not the start to our chat I was expecting, but she did manage to call me a ‘dick’ in the first five seconds – maybe she was working her way up to the more volatile four-letter words.

“I had something made for you.” She reached into the pocket of her jeans and removed a small ruby-colored bag, pulled together with a tiny drawstring. She tugged it open and plucked out a ring. It was a thick, ornate silver band with a cube-like design in the center. It was a tessellation, wrapping back around itself in an infinitely continuing pattern. I’d seen artwork with similar designs (M. C. Escher made a career out of them) but never anything quite like it in real life.