The Manticore Ascension: A Short Story in the Arena Mode Universe (7 page)

Every memory in this girl’s head was purely innocent: walking along the beach in Croatia, shopping for a new toaster after her old one caught fire, selfies she took next to the spaghetti dinner she’d just ordered, posting pictures of her cocktail, more of her dessert...how many pictures does one need to take of a single meal? And who are these pictures even for?

With my palms pressed into the fire woman’s temples I squinted my eyes shut, trying to force my way into her subconscious. It was a lot tougher than usual. If I’m within a couple of meters of someone I can typically read their thoughts; nothing deep or meaningful, but usually what’s floating around on the surface. To get in
really
deep? I need to make contact. That usually allows me a backstage pass to all the filth and debauchery: details of late–night chat sessions, the dark fantasies, the selfies they took that are most definitely
not
food–related. You know, the good stuff.

I was doing everything right: physical contact, deep concentration, but this girl was giving me nothing
.
And it wasn’t by coincidence. If she’d teleported into a castle and tried to kill a bunch of people she wasn’t a saint – that much I already knew. She was focusing her mind on all the fluffy, candy–coated memories because she was trying to hide all of the secrets.

“I can’t work with any of this,” I grumbled under my breath.

“Well time is running out,” I heard Dawson say, his voice panicked. “My dad is going to want results, and if –”

“
I know,
” I snapped, keeping my eyes forced shut. “Just keep your pants on for a second. I’ve never run into this kind of resistance before.”

“She’s conditioned,” Tyler said matter-of-factly.

I opened my eyes, turning to face him. “Conditioned for
what?”

“Some of Taktarov’s followers are conditioned to endure torture,” Tyler explained, casually buffing a stain out of his blade with a damp rag. “Rumor has it the Manticore Uprising even trains their spies to withstand mind control. If I had to guess? She’s an expert at keeping people out of her head...people like
you,
not to put too fine a point on it.”

The interrogation room’s heavy metal door swung open, hitting the wall with a clang. It was Drake. Dawson’s older and grumpier brother stepped inside, sword in–hand. And he looked even grumpier than usual. “The King sent me,” he announced. “He wants an update on the fire woman.”

“Nothing yet,” Tyler said. “So, Brynja, is it? Are you ready to hop up onto the table so I can get to work?”

“No!” Dawson shouted. “This isn’t fair! Dad said we had an hour!”

“The
King,
” Drake was quick to correct him, “is growing impatient. He wants results, and His Majesty has decided to move up the timetable. There’s motion over the east Atlantic and an attack could be imminent.”

“You
owe
her,” Dawson said, stepping towards Drake.

The two young knights were chest-to-chest, eye-to-eye, veins protruding from their necks. Drake tightened the grip on his sword and Dawson reached down, curling his fingers around the hilt of his weapon.

“I owe her
nothing
,” Drake seethed. “This wench could be working for Taktarov for all we know. This could be part of some plot.”

“Boys, boys, boys,” Tyler interjected, “If the King’s only two heirs slice each other to ribbons in my interrogation room, I don’t want to be the one who stood by and did nothing.”

“What do you propose?” Drake said flatly, his eyes laser focused on his brother.

“I propose we give this Icelandic beauty one last chance at a reading.” He produced a small plastic bottle from his pocket and popped off the lid with his thumb. He reached for the fire woman’s jaw and pulled it open, tilting the vial onto her tongue. A dozen tiny red capsules spilled into her mouth. He clasped his hand over her lips, causing her eyelids to snap open.

“What the fudge did you just feed her?” I shouted.

“Just a moment,” the Tyrant said calmly, now using both hands to prevent her from spitting out whatever he’d forced down her throat. The woman’s body tensed like an iron rod, vibrating as if it were conducting electricity. A heartbeat passed and she sagged, melting onto the table. Her eyes remained open but were foggy and lifeless.

I lunged forward and gripped her shoulders, shaking her against the slab. “Did you kill her?”

“Not yet,” Tyler said, folding his arms and tucking his gloved hands into his armpits. “The dosage I gave her would finish off a regular human, but she might survive it.”

“Might?” I pressed my fingertips into her carotid artery, detecting a faint pulse.

The interrogator once again produced his pen light and shone it in both her pupils, causing them to dilate. “Our fire woman is alive...at least for the time being. And her mind has been weakened significantly. If I were you I’d take advantage of this situation and jump into her head for a quick conversation – emphasis on the ‘quick’.” Tyler stepped aside and gestured with one hand; a stately flourish, as if he were beckoning me to enter a ballroom for a formal affair.

I swept my blue hair aside and leaned in, preparing to read the fire woman, hands poised on either side of her sagging head. A single touch transported me like a hurricane, tumbling through her memories. A swirl of dreams and desires and darkened thoughts raced by, spiraling me towards a grassy knoll. I landed by a glassy, sun–drenched river where a young girl sat on a rock, kicking her tiny feet into the water. The flame–haired child couldn’t have been more than ten. It was the fire woman, taking refuge in her favorite memory.

“Where did you come from?” the little girl asked, smoothing her hands over her powder blue dress as she hopped to her feet.

I shrugged. “Another time...another place. I don’t know. I think it was a different reality.”

“Anywhere is better than here,” she smiled. “Well, not
here...
I love it here. But back where we came from.”

“So I’ve been told.”

Her emerald eyes widened, searching mine. “Why are you siding with the humans?”

“Why are you siding with Taktarov?” I asked in response.

She turned and took her seat on the large flat rock by the river bed, lifting her dress before dipping her toes back in the water. “I don’t know. I was born after the war started. I don’t even know why we hate each other, to be honest.”

I took a seat at her side, crossing my legs. “I need information.”

“I know,” she said, without averting her eyes from the sparkling water.

“I need to know if an attack is coming.”

“I’m low–level,” she shrugged. “They don’t tell me about these things. I’m a nobody. Just a scout.”

“A scout?”

“They sent me to look for holes in the castle defense. Chinks in the armor.”

I thought back to the conversations we’d had in her presence. Dawson, admitting that all of the shields were down, revealing that the castle was vulnerable. “You told them, didn’t you?”

She nodded weakly. “Of course I did.”

“He sacrificed you. Sergei Taktarov...he sent you here
knowing
you’d die.”

“Probably.” Her child–like voice was light and innocent, but her words carried a crippling weight, dragged down by someone who had endured unspeakable horrors. “I knew it might be my last mission, but this was better than the alternative.”

“How can you let him
use
you like this?”

“And what are the humans doing with you?” She said sharply, turning to face me. “They’ll never trust you, you know. None of them will. You’ll always be the outsider – always persecuted for who you are, not what you do.”

“They’re not all like that.”

“You’re being naive,” she said, laughing under her breath. It was an accusation that sounded very peculiar coming from a small girl.

“I shook my head. “Being naive is listening to someone who says the humans are all alike.”

“Good for you...you found one. A single human who doesn’t treat you like an animal. And he’s worth fighting for – this one magical person? He’s going to flip a switch and change the way an entire
nation
thinks about us?”

I reached out and took the girl’s tiny hand, intertwining our fingers. “Massive change is never a switch – it’s a dial. It’ll be gradual and frustrating, and there will be steps backwards, but it’ll happen. You’ve got to start somewhere.”

“Well, good luck with that,” she whispered, her eyes filling with tears. “Sorry I won’t be around to see it.”

“No, you probably won’t,” I replied softly, the words catching in my throat. “But you can help me start the process.”

She pulled her hand away from mine and stepped off the rock, wading several steps into the shallow water. She didn’t bother to lift the hem of her dress as the river rose past her knees. “He’s coming,” she said without turning to face me. “Right now. I can feel his presence nearing...the humans have a minute. Maybe less.”

I tumbled back to reality, eyes fluttering open. I rubbed them feverishly and stumbled around the interrogation room, disoriented from the journey. “Guys, you need to prepare –” is all I had a chance to say. A shockwave hit the castle, so powerful that the room trembled.

“What the fudge?” Drake shouted, craning his neck towards the ceiling.

“He’s here,” I shouted. “Taktarov is inside.”

By the time we arrived in the throne room it had been occupied by a small army. Soldiers in crimson armor with inky black visors stood in perfect formation, spanning the width of the expansive hall. They’d blasted their way in through the roof; five stories above us the night sky was visible though the gaping wound, still raining bricks and panes of glass from the ragged edges.

In front of the red army stood their leader. I’d seen him less than a day ago, but the man before me had aged three decades. Sergei Taktarov was still impossibly lean and muscular, the contours of his heavily–muscled frame visible through his body suit. That much hadn’t changed, and neither had his fashion sense: flowing white cape, the grey and white outfit, matching boots and gloves – he still looked as iconic as he had the moment Arena Mode began. But his wave of blond hair was now cropped and streaked with grey, his beard peppered with silver.

“This kingdom,” Taktarov declared, his thick Russian accent booming throughout the chamber, “can celebrate a new King.”

“Never,” Drake screamed, raising his sword in challenge from across the room. “He’ll never bend the knee to one of you filthy, lowborn animals.” We were in the threshold of a doorway probably two hundred feet away, and – at least for the moment – out of harm’s reach.

Drake stepped forward as if he were about to break into a sprint and Dawson reached out, clutching his shoulder. We were outnumbered at least thirty to one, and that wasn’t counting Taktarov, who, most likely, was more powerful than the entire Manticore Uprising put together.

“Won’t bend the knee?” Taktarov sneered, turning towards his army with hands spread wide. A chorus of laughs roared throughout his followers. “I think we can convince him.”

The throne room’s main entrance slid open to reveal King Lehmann, battered and bloodied, being dragged by two red soldiers. They dropped him at Taktarov’s boots.

“On your feet,” Taktarov shouted, yanking the King by his bathrobe. “I want you kneeling to signify your surrender, not because you are too weak to stand.”

“Never,” the King coughed, barking a spatter of blood into his palm.

“We are not here for a slaughter,” Taktarov announced. “We are here because you’ve taken something from us. Return it and no one needs to die.”

“This kingdom was never yours,” the King replied wearily.

The Russian clutched Lehmann by the jaw, lifting him until he stood on his toes. “Don’t be coy, ‘King’. You know I am not talking about your precious kingdom. You know
exactly
what I’m searching for.”

“The vial,” I whispered. “He wants the blood.”

Taktarov’s head snapped to the side, eyes locked on mine from across the room. His may have aged, but his hearing, apparently, was just as super as ever. “What do
you
know of it?” he thundered. 

I couldn’t let this continue. “I think they have it.”

“Shut your mouth, wench!” the King shouted, still being elevated by Taktarov.

I grabbed two fistfuls of my hair and bent at the waist, screaming out in frustration. “Argh! What
is
it
with all this ‘wench’ crap? I’m trying to save your life here – again!”

“He’ll kill us all anyway,” Drake snarled as his brother continued to restrain him. “These filthy superhumans are all the same.”

I turned and swatted at Drake with the back of my hand, clanging my knuckles across his breastplate. “
I’m
one of these ‘filthy superhumans’, you douchebag!” My hand ached, but I was relieved to finally be able to curse. Either ‘douchebag’ was a word that their profanity modulators didn’t recognize, or it was no longer offensive thirty years in the future.

Taktarov’s expression lightened when I admitted what I was. “I know you. It was thirty years ago when I first...but it
can’t
be. You’re the same age.”

“It’s me,” I nodded. “Long story, but it’s me.”

“And you’re
here
,” he said, not even attempting to mask his disgust. “Serving these humans? You’ve pledged yourself to them?” He was staring at my chest. Taktarov shoved the King into the arms of his soldiers and approached me, striding across the expansive throne room, waving for me to meet him halfway.

“Brynja,” Dawson shouted, reaching out to grasp my arm. I phased through him and kept walking, leaving him and Drake in the threshold.

As I continued towards Taktarov I reached down and pulled the pendant from my shirt, letting it fall over top. It was enhanced vision – it must have been: he could see the Lehmann family crest dangling from a chain around my neck even though it had been concealed.

“Why?” he asked. “Tell me how you came to be their servant. Came to wear their crest.”

“I don’t serve
anyone
,” I fired back. “I just don’t want to see anyone else get murdered.” Just a few hours in Arena Mode and I’d seen enough bloodshed to last a lifetime.

“The bloodbath is just about to begin,” the King shouted from across the room. “Drake, Dawson, dispose of this trash!”

“Enough!” I screamed, so loud I could feel the heat rising in my cheeks. “You don’t know how powerful this man is. He’ll kill us all if we don’t give him what he wants.”

I stepped within arm’s reach of Taktarov and stared into his crackling red eyes. “I’ll read the King. I’ll jump inside his mind and get him to reveal the location of the blood. Then we all surrender and no one dies.”

I almost gasped when Taktarov’s lips pulled into a smile, creasing the lines around his eyes. He was actually
emoting
. I guess he’d softened in his old age. “King Lehmann,” he called from halfway across the room. “You allow superhumans to negotiate for you, now? And a woman, no less?”

“She will
never
speak for this house!” The King declared, still struggling to break free from his captors’ clutches. Two of his soldiers were still gripping his arms, twisting them behind his back. “She’s a liar, and a traitor, and –”

“Okay you can kill him,” I shrugged.

“What?” Dawson cried out, the color draining from his face.

“I knew it all along!” Drake shouted. He shrugged free of his brother’s grip and rushed towards me with his sword overhead. “I’ll kill you both!”

As Drake sped forward, Taktarov held up two fingers. A pair of his soldiers broke formation, racing to intercept. One launched chunks of ice from his hands as he sprinted; pulling moisture from the frigid air, he rounded the spheres between his hands and pitched them like fastballs, sending them hundreds of feet across the room.

The knight parried with his sword as he advanced, shattering the frozen orbs with smooth, practices strokes.

A final icy blast came in more of a burst than a sphere, aimed lower and more precisely. It caught Drake’s metallic boots, icing them to the marble floor. He grunted and twisted, struggling to lift his feet, but he was completely immobilized. And the soldiers were fast approaching.

The second soldier was markedly faster than the one launching ice, sprinting several paces ahead. He ripped off his gauntlets, revealing a pair of glittering talons; fingernails hardened to steel, curving wickedly as they elongated. He leaped, impossibly high, and sailed down towards Drake.

The frozen knight spun his sword overhead, clashing with all ten blades.

The soldier scraped and clawed at a furious pace. Drake guided his weapon effortlessly through the air, blocking every attack. Coming in a rapid-fire pace, each clang was matched with a burst of light, sparking like firecrackers in the moonlight.

With a labored scream, Drake broke his legs free and threw a well-placed boot into the soldier’s midsection, his foot still encased in a jagged block of ice. He followed with a swift forward thrust. The tip of his blade burst from the back of the soldier’s helmet, dropping him to the floor.

The other soldier lunged with an icy dagger overhead, but was met with another stoke of the knight’s sword, so sudden that I wasn’t even sure it had connected...until the soldier’s torso toppled to the ground while his legs – and half of his midsection – remained upright.

A second wave of soldiers rushed to attack. Ten, maybe twelve. Taktarov extended his palm and they froze, stopping in mid-stride as if they’d been caught by Medusa’s gaze. Russia’s Son has
that
much influence over them; it was both fascinating and disturbing to witness. They backpedaled without instruction, falling swiftly and silently back into formation.

“Enough of this,” Taktarov ordered, turning his furious red gaze towards Drake.

The knight screamed once again, a hoarse battle cry, his breath visible in the night air. He’d lunged just a few steps when a pair of pencil-thin beams flashed through the chamber, slicing his sword in two.

The glowing lasers that had burst from Taktarov’s eyes were meant to stop Drake from approaching, not kill. It was a warning shot; a courtesy I was surprised to see the Russian extend. At that range he certainly didn’t have to miss. And it stopped the knight in his tracks.

Drake dropped the remains of his sword, letting it clang to the stone below. Brow tightly knitted, teeth grinding, I was surprised he had the composure to remain still. He must have known he was outmatched.

Taktarov refocused on me, ignoring the plumes of smoke that seeped from his eyelids. “As you were saying?”

“No one is ever going to let me be part of House Lehmann. But you –” I extended my hand. “You’ll accept me for what I am.”

He took my hand and shook it, nearly shattering my bones without even applying pressure. It was like having my palm trapped in a vice.

The swirling red glow faded from his eyes, replaced with a steely grey. “You will be rewarded,” he nodded.

“Don’t do this, Brynja!” The panicked words echoed from behind me, and I turned to see Dawson scrambling across the corridor, completely unarmed.

Taktarov’s eyes glowed once again in preparation to fire.

I ripped the ring from my thumb, screaming as the flesh tore from my bone. I lobbed it towards Taktarov’s face before ghosting, narrowly avoiding the concussive blast that exploded around us. The disruptor ring blew apart with the force of a thermal grenade, knocking Drake, Dawson and most of the soldiers to their backs. Even the floor beneath us had been blown to pieces, leaving us ankle-deep in a pile of shattered marble.

But when the smoke settled, Taktarov hadn’t moved – even his cape was perfectly intact.

The Russian’s eyes intensified, filled with contempt. “You
liar
. You’re no better than these disgusting humans. Worth no more than –” he stopped mid–sentence and squinted sharply, bringing a finger to his temple.

“I wasn’t lying about being able to read minds,” I said flatly. “In fact, I know what you’re thinking right now. You’re wondering why you have a killer migraine ...”

“A...what –?” He stumbled backwards, wincing in pain.

“And
now
you’re thinking, ‘Wait, wasn’t this lying, blue–haired wench wearing a necklace, like, ten seconds ago?”

The chain dangled lifeless from my neck.

The House Lehmann pendant was gone.

“You,” he groaned, “put it ...”

“Inside your head.” As I said the words Taktarov toppled, cracking a chunk of marble when his skull hit the floor.

It was the old ‘phase an object into an indestructible superhuman’s head and pull your hand out before it gets lopped off’ trick. Works every time.

The room fell silent. No one even breathed. His soldiers gazed at their fallen leader with amazement and then, in unison, dropped to a knee.

And they all stared directly at me.

Holy fudge.