Ted Kosmatka - The Games

The crowd went absolutely crazy as the iguana-lion backed itself into the corner, hissing and pawing at the air. It had nowhere left to go.

The bull roared as no bull would, then charged. The impact was amazing. Silas clearly heard the snap-crackle of bone splintering as the iguana-lion was driven into the unyielding iron. Purple loops of gut spurted along the wall precisely the way a frog’s guts might squirt out from beneath the shoe of a sadistic child.

Whether there was still life left in the carcass, Silas didn’t know, but the bull spun the body on its bizarre horns and sent it tumbling into the air like an off-luck rodeo clown. It landed in a heap several yards away, and the bull charged again. It scooped the pulped animal off the sawdust and sent it tumbling toward the night sky, spraying blood and bile through the netting and into the first and second rows of the audience. The crowd orgasmed.

Silas tried not to look at Vidonia as the scene played across the screen. Not for the first time in the last couple of days, he felt self-conscious about what he did for a living. All that talk of truth and the statue of David seemed far away now. Just a story he’d been trying to convince himself of. This was science whored out for entertainment.

Eventually, when the cries of the crowd began to ebb, the automatic icers maneuvered the strutting bull back beneath its door with a fine spray of freezing particles.

Silas had to hand it to the Indonesians for their originality. They’d used territoriality for internal motivation rather than a typical predation drive. It was an unusual approach, and it had worked beautifully. Their gladiator hadn’t taken so much as a single bite out of the vanquished animal. Bulls aren’t carnivorous, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t aggressive.

Silas turned his head away from the screen and nuzzled himself into Vidonia’s breast, trying to block out the color commentary blathering through the speakers.

Across the bottom of the screen, a news bulletin broke in.

There are reports of a disturbance outside the Olympic stadium. Protesters have converged on the entry gates; police are handling the situation

.

The announcers droned on, oblivious.

The commentary continued for several more minutes. Silas shook his head. How many times did he have to listen to the same two guys saying the same tired lines about a fight he had just watched with his own eyes? He had almost drifted off to sleep when he heard the word “America” and sat bolt upright in bed. Suddenly, he was very much awake.

He felt a cool hand at the back of his neck. She didn’t say “Calm down.” She didn’t say “Relax.” Just that hand against the back of his neck. He wondered how she had come to know him so well in so little time.

Two flags were raised, similar for their use of stars but worlds apart, both geographically and culturally. The Chinese flag beat the United States to the top. Silas wondered if that was an omen.

A swirl of conflicting emotions spun through his head as he waited for the fight to begin. His heart galloped in his chest. He was surprised at his physical reaction and realized it was fear that his body was reacting to. What am I scared of? Losing? No. That wasn’t it. He realized that the emotion he’d feel if the Chinese contestant won was this: relief. He wanted the U.S gladiator to lose. To die. He was rooting against himself.

He looked over at Vidonia and wondered if she suspected. He’d kept it hidden. From her. From himself.

Her dark eyes were unreadable.

His hand slid across the bedsheet to hers, and he turned back toward the screen, concentrating, trying to put conscious thought out of his mind. He pushed himself into his senses, trying to see and hear only, while feeling nothing. It would be over soon. That was his one consolation. One way or the other, it would be over soon.

HAND IN hand, they watched in silence as the China door began its ascent. Silas knew they intentionally programmed the doors to open slowly to heighten the suspense, and he felt a surge of anger at being manipulated so easily. But he pushed that away, too, focusing on the expanding rectangle of shadow.

A striped yellow shape ducked under the rising door and lumbered into view.

It turned its head from left to right, splayed nostrils sucking at the air, eyes scanning the arena. The head was enormous, wide, and vaguely bearlike in conformation. The front of the body, too, was bearlike, broad and hulking, enormously wide at the chest. But the torso was long, and tapered into a graceful striped tail that flickered with excitement.

“Bear-tiger?” There was awe in Vidonia’s voice.

“I think so,” Silas said, then, “Has to be, but there’s something more.”

The bear-tiger sauntered casually around the arena, eating up an amazing distance between each long-legged stride.

“They’ve done something to the limbs,” Silas said.

“I don’t recognize it.”

“Yeah, me, either. They look … extended somehow. We may not be the only ones with a little independent engineering up our sleeves.”

This creature didn’t have the awkward, disjointed appearance of most of the earlier contestants. It looked more natural. Nobody would confuse it with Mother Nature’s handiwork, but it was something you could imagine her giving a kind of begrudging approval to.

By Silas’s estimation, the gladiator probably weighed more than two tons. More than twice the weight of the U.S. contestant. He silently hoped that extra mass would be enough.

Feeling a squeeze in his hand, he looked over at Vidonia, but she was lost in the screen and didn’t realize how hard her grip had become. She sucked in her breath suddenly, and when he looked back at the TV, the United States door was rising.

The bear-tiger reacted instantly, maneuvering off to the side. It settled onto its haunches fifteen yards away, coiled like a spring; Silas could see the cat in it moving to the forefront.

The door continued its ascent, revealing nothing more than a growing rectangle of shadow. The grip on his hand tightened while the tone of the crowd lowered to a rumble, like the idle of a fast car.

Something moved then, a shadow within the shadow, shiny black contrasted against flat emptiness, a color that was not merely the absence of light but something more. Something alive. The idling car of the crowd revved a notch.

And then the gladiator simply stepped into view.

There was a hesitation from the crowd before it reacted, a collective gasp of pulled-in breath.

And then the crowd exploded.

The cheer was deafening.

The bear-tiger stayed in its crouch, eyeing this new strange beast. Silas supposed the upright stature of the U.S. contestant might have confused it. The stance was too human.

The shiny black creature dropped to all fours and bounded toward the center of the arena, away from the bear-tiger, away from the security of the shadowy doorway. Its wings were folded tightly against its back like the carapace of some strange gargoyle beetle.

Silas was barely aware of the commentator’s voice bleating wildly in the background. He supposed the voice had a right to be excited. But the man behind the voice hadn’t seen the creature with the goat, hadn’t seen it take the end of Silas’s finger. The man behind the voice hadn’t seen it with the training robot, or with Tay. He hadn’t seen anything yet.

The crowd continued to cheer. The creature was like nothing they’d expected or imagined. Huge and dark and winged. Vaguely humanoid but massive.

A fallen angel.

Large gray eyes blinked against the harsh lights, looking up at the net that enclosed the fighting pit, then past it to the crowd. Now! Strike now, while it’s still adjusting to the lights . But the Chinese gladiator stayed back, watching, measuring. It had obviously been well trained and wouldn’t be pulled into the fight before it was ready.