Ted Kosmatka - The Games

Baskov adjusted his glasses. He was relieved, at least, that the computer had been given information about the ban on the use of human DNA in all gladiators. The contestant wasn’t likely to be disqualified on those grounds. But it was the last page of the report that interested him the most. He studied the sheet in his hand, reading and rereading the short passages it contained.

That last page contained the sum total of all the directives given to Chandler’s computer for the design of the gladiator.

The extent to which the Brannin computer could have misinterpreted Helix’s intentions was terrifying.

He wondered how it could have happened. Who had overlooked it? When exactly had things begun to spin out of control?

There was only one directive typed on the page. Just a lone, solitary instruction that had been used to guide the design.

The gladiator was created to do only one thing.

That one directive was this: survive the competition.

He read the sentence over and over.

Survive the competition .

What in the hell type of directive was that? There was an awful lot of room for interpretation in that strategy.

Survive the competition .

He laid the report back down on the smooth surface of his desk. IQ test results to the contrary, he knew Evan Chandler to be a fool. But Chandler was a crazy fool, and if history had taught him anything, it was that the world was often changed through the works of crazy fools.

Stephen Baskov liked the world just the way it was. He pushed the call button on the vid-phone, then punched fourteen digits.

After a few moments, a man appeared on the screen. “Yes.”

“I want the Brannin up and running again.”

There was a pause. “And the cost?”

“I don’t care. Find room in the budget somewhere.”

“How long do you need?”

“Give us a full five minutes.”

The man stared through the screen. “The budget isn’t that flexible. Even for you,” he said.

“Okay, three minutes.”

“When?”

“Inside of two weeks,” Baskov said.

“That’s short notice.”

“Can you do it or not?”

“I’ll see what can be done.”

Silas’s breath hung in a smoky pall on the thin mountain air. He rubbed his hands together as he gazed out over the precipice at the sun boiling up between two jags in the distant range to the east. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” his nephew answered. His voice still came raw from the thousand-meter climb over rock and scrub.

The terrain was steep, and Silas had pushed hard to beat the sunrise to the top of the ridge. He had almost decided not to bring Eric today, but the boy had size beyond his years and a serious, thoughtful demeanor. For a boy Eric’s age, something like this could leave a mark.

When Eric’s breathing slowed, Silas had him stand and then tightened the straps on his pack with two firm tugs. He pulled the small curved bow from the carry strap and held it out for the boy. “Keep it in your hand now.”

Silas played his fingers along the slow arc of his own bow, feeling for splits in the raw-hewn wood. There were none. His finger hooked the sinewy string and pulled back just an inch. The deep thwump of the release was hardly melodic, but it was music to his ears nonetheless. He’d been too long away from places like this, where there were no roads or concrete, and nature didn’t have to ask permission.

Back in California, the project would be at a standstill until after the second Brannin run. Baskov had pulled a few strings, and now it looked as if they were finally going to get some answers straight from the source. Silas had never been good at sitting around and waiting, so he’d decided to take drastic measures to retain his sanity: a three-day jaunt in the mountains near his sister’s home. The bow felt damned good in his hand.

“Ready?” Silas asked.

“Yeah.”

They started down the other side of the ridge and into the broad valley below, the sun on their faces. The valley was really nothing more than a shallow depression between two mountains, a couple miles wide, a dozen or so long. But it held a cacophonous ecosystem of shrub, pine, and unspoiled wildlife. A small lake pooled in the southernmost rim. To Silas, it was a little piece of paradise.

He kept the boy behind him in the steepest parts of the descent and let him move alongside when the terrain began to level out. There was no trail. They had to pick their way carefully between the rocky outcroppings and the stands of thorny brambles. The temperature rose with the sun, and soon Silas was shocked to realize he was perspiring, despite the altitude and the season.

Eventually, here and there, tufts of buffalo grass began to accumulate in the pockets of soil that gathered in the broken scatter of limestone. Dogtooth violets and wild irises splashed color haphazardly across the slope. When finally they stepped down onto the lush green basin, Silas stopped. “Keep an eye out. This is where we’ll find them.”

Eric nodded. Silas took his pack off and removed both arrows. He handed one to Eric.

“Now, remember what I told you,” Silas said. “This is heavier. It’ll drop more quickly than a target arrow, so aim high.” He’d taken the boy shooting several times last year, and the little guy was actually a pretty good shot. But targets were an altogether different species of game than what they were hunting today.

They moved out. There was no wind in the valley, and their eyes stretched for any twitch in the vegetation as they walked. Above them, Silas noticed an eagle doing slow circles in the sky, looking for its next meal. A hunter, like them.

Silas glanced over at the boy. He certainly looked as if he was enjoying himself. Silas recognized the expression of total engagement peering out from beneath the eight-year-old’s shaggy bowl cut. His nephew’s hair was the same thick mass of curls that Silas shared with his sister, though the boy’s hair was pale instead of dark, a sandy blond like his father’s. He was a beautiful child. Looking at him now, small and earnest, it was painful to fill in the blanks and imagine him older. Childhoods were short. Blink and you miss everything.

“I think I see something,” the boy whispered.

“Where?” Silas followed the boy’s gaze but couldn’t make out anything unusual.

“To the side of the pine. The one with the brown patch.”

Silas saw it then. Movement, low down in the thicket. They advanced, but Silas knew it was no deer. When they were finally close enough for him to identify the species, he held his arm out and stopped the boy.

“That’s far enough.”

“What is it?”

“That, my boy, is what’s at the very top of the list of animals you don’t want an introduction to here in the Rockies.”

“Wolverine,” the boy said.

“Yeah.”

“Let’s get a little closer; I want to see.”

“Not a chance. Your mother would kill me.”

“C’mon, just a little closer.” Silas looked at him.

“All right,” the boy said, slinking backward through the underbrush.

When they were a safe distance away, Silas pointed toward the stand of trees near the edge of the lake. “That looks as likely a direction as any,” he said. They pushed deeper into the valley. When the sun approached what Silas took for middle high, they stopped and broke down their packs for lunch. Two thick sandwiches of beefalo apiece, and a warm beer for Silas. Eric chugged his first Coke down in less than a minute. Silas had him put the crushed can back into his pack. A while later, as they were lounging in the warm grass, Eric sat up suddenly, his posture telling Silas something was on his mind.