Ted Kosmatka - The Games

The gladiator spun around, and its eye had opened slightly, looking for him. In the light, Silas could see just how much damage the acid had done. He looked at the gladiator in awe of what one liter of sulfuric acid was able to do to a living organism.

The single gray eye found him. Silas didn’t move. The creature was on the other side of his desk, and it reached down with one thick arm and, ever so casually, flipped the wooden antique across the room. It broke apart against the wall near the door. Silas felt an irrational wave of outrage. That had been a good desk.

The gladiator seemed in no hurry now. It moved slowly toward him, its goal assured. There was a crash in the corner, and the creature stopped and turned. Vidonia froze against the wall, looking down at the picture frame she’d bumped to the floor. She slid along the wall to the corner, crouching down, making herself into a small ball. The gladiator looked back at Silas, as if deciding he wouldn’t be going anywhere anytime soon, and turned back to Vidonia, baring its teeth. It took a long step in her direction.

Silas reached his good hand deep into his pocket. “Hey!” he shouted.

The gladiator turned at his voice. Silas held up the shining black egg. “You want this?”

The gladiator growled.

“Go get it.” Silas bent his arm at the elbow and threw the egg from over his shoulder like a baseball pitcher. It crashed through his office window and disappeared into the darkness.

The gladiator’s reaction was instantaneous.

It sprang across the room and plucked Silas from the floor by his throat with one huge, long-fingered hand. Silas’s feet dangled a foot from the bloody carpet. He struggled for breath, beating at the iron hand with his good arm, but the grip only tightened, cutting off his air supply as neatly as a kinked hose.

The gladiator pulled Silas close to its face. The tips of their noses almost touched. Its remaining eye burned into him, the pupil a sharp vertical lance. The mouth came open, and Silas waited for the bite. Instead, it spoke: “You die.”

The world darkened as Silas slipped toward unconsciousness. Then muscles bunched in the iron, a quick jerk, and he was flying again. He gasped for air and felt the glass rake across his skin. Then he was tumbling. The sea of thick green sod rose up to meet him.

Above him, the room went dark again.

BEN WATCHED the small black object bounce to the grass and roll into a stand of bushes. It was smaller than a baseball but rolled as though it was heavy. He glanced toward the broken window, but the angle was wrong for a good view. Dark shapes moved behind the bright spiderweb of glass. Someone had thrown the small object through the window on purpose; he was sure of it. He stepped out of the cab and shut the door.

“Wait here,” he said.

“Sure,” the cabbie said, hitting the fare button again.

Ben stepped off the pavement and onto the grass. He counted the windows along the wall of the building. Five down from the end, second floor. He had just time enough to realize which office that window belonged to when Silas exploded through the glass and fell like a stone to the turf. He bounced and came to rest on his side. And then he didn’t move. Even from this distance, Ben could see the bones and blood. Arms and legs went in several directions. A moment later, the lights went out in the building again.

The squeal of tires behind him turned his attention back to the cab. Through the windshield, the driver’s face was a mask of get-the-hell-out-of-here. He backed the car up onto the parking block.

“Hey, hold on a minute!” Ben screamed. “Wait, he’s hurt.”

The driver shifted into drive and peeled away. Ben tried to get in front, but only managed a solid kick along the side of the cab as it sped past him.

“You fucking asshole, don’t leave!”

The cab didn’t slow. Its taillights fled into the darkness.

Ben cursed under his breath and ran toward Silas.

He knelt at his friend’s side and grasped his hand. Silas seemed to feel the touch and turned his head toward him. A deep gash marred the side of his face. He whispered something. Ben couldn’t understand. He looked toward the window Silas had fallen from but could see nothing but the ceiling from this angle. Baskov’s goons would take a few minutes to get outside. Maybe there would be enough time.

“C’mon, Silas, we’ve got to get out of here. Do you have the keys to the car against the wall?”

Silas spoke again, and Ben saw his jaw working in several directions at once. It was broken.

He leaned his ear closer.

Silas mumbled something, gripping his arm tightly.

“It’s okay, buddy,” Ben said. “I’ll get you to a hospital. But we’ve got to get out of here now.” Ben tried to pull him to his feet, but Silas resisted. His bloody hand curled in Ben’s collar, pulling the side of his head almost against Silas’s mouth.

“Run.”

Ben heard that clear enough.

The ground thumped behind him. A trickle of fear ran down Ben’s spine. He suddenly understood that he’d been wrong about something. It hadn’t been Baskov’s goons who threw Silas through the window.

Ben slowly turned. The gladiator sat on its haunches, head cocked to the side. Ben looked back sadly at his friend. “Oh, Silas.”

The gladiator pounced.

Vidonia pushed herself into the corner as far as she could. The light seemed obscenely bright after so much darkness, and she felt its weight like a spotlight pointing her out. The gladiator turned away from the window it had just thrown Silas through and looked directly at her with its single gray eye. It didn’t move. She couldn’t make herself small enough.

A sound caught the beast’s attention, and its head snapped around to the window again. Had that been a car door? The lights went out, and the room was plunged into darkness again. The creature moved to the window, becoming a dim silhouette in the starlight. Its wings bobbed partly open, but the one side didn’t move right. The broken edge of an arrow still protruded from the meaty joint.

The gladiator leaned through the window. Then it dropped out of sight. She was suddenly alone in the room. She didn’t breathe for a moment. Didn’t think. Her heart drummed, and after a few moments she let herself believe it was gone.

Why had it left? What drew it outside?

She pulled her way up the wall to her feet. Her body was shaking so badly that she had trouble walking, but she forced herself forward. She navigated through the ruined mess of Silas’s office, past the shards of splintered wood and twisted metal drawers that used to be his desk. At the window, she forced herself to look down.

She wasn’t surprised to see Ben. Something about him being here seemed right, almost as if it had been preordained. This was the endgame, and all the players had their final role to play. The irony was almost biblical, and Vidonia could sense her mother smiling down at the symmetry of it all.

The gladiator became what it was, and for Ben, at least, it was quick. He deserved that much.

It didn’t bite. The attack was less predatory than that, more a thing of anger. The gladiator struck a single powerful blow.

She’d read once that police profilers could ascertain how emotionally involved a killer was with the victim by the placement and severity of the wounds. She wondered what they’d make of Ben when they found him. She wondered what they’d make of his crushed head knocked thirty feet from his body. Would that raise a flag? Would they consider it a crime of passion?

At least it was over for him. She hoped it was over for Silas, too. She realized how much more fragile humanity was than the strange creature. Humans seemed much like glass for how easily they broke.