Ted Kosmatka - The Games

Silas pulled his jeans on, feeling for his wallet. He hit the switch on the way out.

AS THE day progressed, Silas was made aware of several wildly divergent and sensationalized accounts of what had transpired between him and Baskov the night before. The break between the program head and the chair of the Olympic Commission was huge news, and it was covered to varying degrees of accuracy by all the major networks.

In one of the accounts, Silas was described as actually throwing a drink into the old man’s face. Silas shook his head in disbelief as he watched the news programs from his hotel suite and decided that he hated the media even more than he hated cocktail parties.

As Ben had told him earlier, Baskov’s people were definitely putting a minimalist spin on things. In the accounts played during the pre-show special, Silas and Baskov were said to have simply shared a heated discussion over differences of opinion. “Anyone who says otherwise,” Baskov’s planning commissioner said during a televised interview, “is simply attempting to manufacture a story for their own ends. This was a nonevent. The fact of the matter is that these two men are friends, remain friends, and look forward to working with each other in the future.”

“Does this mean that Dr. Williams will remain head of Olympic biodevelopment for the next games?” the blond interviewer asked.

“Dr. Williams has expressed some interest in pursuing other ambitions in the future, but right now he is completely focused on seeing that the U.S. gladiator brings home a gold medal for us all tonight.”

Lying fuck .

For his own part, Silas decided it best to simply stay out of the public eye altogether. He didn’t trust what he’d say if asked a direct question. It was apparently not politically expedient for Baskov to fire him on the very eve of the competition, so for the time being, Silas still held the reins of the project, however tenuous and temporary his grip. With the situation being what it was, he reasoned his efforts could best be utilized behind the scenes.

Expressing great regret, he canceled all his interviews and instead pushed Ben to the forefront, encouraging the networks to render all their questions to him. The young cytologist took to the limelight like a duck to water, and Silas wondered why he hadn’t made the change earlier.

Silas gave no instructions to his young protégé, but when asked tough questions by interviewers, Ben gave the company line on the relationship between Baskov and Silas. There was no breach, no problem at all. And all’s well that ends in a gold.

The Olympic arena was a steep bowl of stone and iron eighteen stories tall, within which more than one hundred and thirty thousand people could be crammed, safely or otherwise. The fighting pit lay inverted at the very bottom, a deep oval depression one hundred yards long by twenty-five yards wide. Although the floor of the pit lay a full dozen yards beneath the upper lip of the oval, the arena organizers had taken the precaution of spreading an enormous net of carbon fiber across the opening at the top—a barrier between spectator and spectacle that didn’t sacrifice visibility.

The bowl-within-a-bowl construction allowed for maximum visual access while also providing the security of heavily reinforced walls. The sides of the pit were perfectly smooth except for the narrow creases that outlined the edges of the many doors. There were dozens of them equally spaced along the walls, and on each was painted a different national flag. The floor of the pit was sawdust two feet thick.

It was easy to pick out the weakness of the setup.

“And the tensile strength?” Silas asked.

The engineering supervisor smiled indulgently. He stood at the very lip of the pit, one foot resting on the carbon-fiber cable, one finger casually advancing the clip screen he held cradled in the nook of his right forearm.

“I don’t seem to have the figure here with me, but I can assure you, nothing is going to get past this web.”

“Your assurances aside, I still need to know the specs on this wire.”

The engineering supervisor sighed and looked out over the webbing. There was no doubt which TV network version of Silas this man believed in. He obviously considered Silas to be a pain in the ass, and worse, a whining diva who was sticking his nose where it didn’t belong. He gave the cable a solid kick, and it twanged harmoniously for a long second. “I suppose I can dig up the numbers from somewhere. But these things were meant to tow barges. Even if a gladiator did manage to get this high up the pit walls, there’s no way it could snap one of these lines. I don’t care what kind of muscles you gave the damned thing.”

Silas looked through the mesh and down onto the killing floor. “Get me the numbers as quick as you can. Big muscles. Huge. You wouldn’t believe it.”

IT WAS late afternoon, and Silas was in the catacombs beneath the arena. Even through all the distance of cement above him, he could hear that the crowd had begun to gather. He could feel their voices in the soles of his feet. The walls themselves reverberated with their restless energy.

The gladiator was pacing now. It moved in slow figure eights, like a panther confined too long in a cage too small. Like a predator eager to be set free.

Did it know what was coming? Did it yearn for it?

Down the long hall, lights drooped on chains from the ceiling, creating pools of brightness that swayed slightly between segments of subtle shadow. Silas could hear the grunts of the others. He could smell their animal musk. Now and then, handlers, and trainers, and scientists from other teams would pass by on their way from somewhere to somewhere, and they would glance at the black thing that paced in the cage with the American flag on the door. Sometimes they would stop and stare for a moment, these men and women, as if trying to believe what they were looking at. Other times, they would quicken their pace.

Silas felt no curiosity about their creations. He had no desire to take the lap around the catacombs and see what his fellow geneticists had made for their countries.

As time passed, the thrum of the crowd slowly built. More than a subtle vibration in concrete, it was audible now, or at the edge of it. The gladiator kept pacing.

Silas stood well back from the bars, arms folded across his chest. The creature would very likely be dead before the night was over, and he felt, standing there, as if he were witness to something. Some great thing that had gone wrong even now, and he was powerless to see it clearly. So he watched, hoping to recognize what he may have missed.

Silas recalled Baskov’s amusement at his use of the word “being” in reference to the gladiator. Silas wasn’t sure how to think of the creature anymore, but he had no delusions. “Being” or not, he knew exactly what it would do if it got loose. People would die. Maybe a lot of people. Maybe a huge number of people.

Five minutes later, when Vidonia touched the back of his neck, he didn’t jump. He’d seen her coming in the gladiator’s reaction. He’d seen her in its crouch, its predatory stare into the space behind him.

“Did you get it?” he asked.

“Yes.” She handed him the papers, and he flipped through them one by one. “You don’t have anything to worry about,” she said. “The tensile strength of those cables would probably stop a freight train going fifty miles per hour. Nothing in the competition even comes close to the kind of mass that would be required to snap one of those lines.”

He handed back the papers, wondering why he didn’t feel relieved.

“But there’s something else you should know,” she said.