The Games

Chapter SIXTEEN



Silas pulled back on the bowstring and closed one eye, bringing the target into focus. The concentric red circles became his world for a moment; the territory beyond the target ceased to exist. He’d always considered archery to be an exercise in pure concentration. There was little muscle memory involved; you didn’t habituate your body to shoot straight. It was your mind that you had to hone. It was your will.

He held his breath and released. The string twanged against his arm guard, and the arrow lanced across the forty yards to bury itself neatly in the target a foot high of the bull’s-eye.

“Don’t think that’ll qualify you as an Olympic archer,” Ben said from behind him.

Silas hadn’t realized he was being watched. “I guess I’ll have to fall back on my genetics doctorate.”

“They let you shoot behind the research building? Isn’t there a rule against deadly weapons on the complex grounds?”

“I’m the boss. I let me. Besides, it’s only a deadly weapon if you can hit what you’re aiming at.”

“Good point.”

“And the best part of a bow? It’s kind of hard to shoot yourself by accident.”

Silas started walking toward the target.

“Have you seen the news yet?” Ben asked, walking alongside.

“Which outlet?”

“Any of them.”

Silas saw the streamer in Ben’s hand and knew he should be feeling some level of curiosity at this point. But he was unable to rouse any. He gave in to the inevitable. “What do you have?”

Opening the news portal and flicking to the business page, Ben handed him the device. “This,” he said. And then he added, “At least we’re not the only ones.”

Silas read the heading of the article aloud: “Brannin Found Faulty Again, Future of Program in Doubt.” He raised his eyebrows.

“It cost a fortune to run,” Ben said. “And the economists apparently weren’t all that impressed with the return on their investment.”

“That makes two of us now.”

“Seems that the Brannin wasn’t much help in predicting stock-market trends. It showed ammunition and gun manufacturing companies as good buys. Bulletproof vests, tanks, all that sort of stuff. The stock prices of survivalist-outfitting companies were predicted to go through the roof. It’s all in the article. Very idiosyncratic.”

“There’s no basis for it?”

“None that the economists can see.”

Silas handed Ben back the streamer. “The article say anything about Chandler?”

“Yeah.” Ben scanned down through the article with his finger. “The head of the program, Evan Chandler, believes the problem is V-ware related and is aggressively pursuing corrective measures.” Ben looked up from the piece. “It’s kind of hard to pursue anything without funding.”

“Does it say that?”

“No, but I don’t think they’ll give Chandler’s little creation a third multimillion-dollar strike. Do you?”

Silas started walking toward the target again, leaving Ben standing. “Ammunition and survivalist stocks, huh?” he called over his shoulder. “Sounds like the computer thinks a war is coming.”

“That’s one way of looking at it.”

Silas curled his fingers around the arrow and pulled. It came free with a rasp. “You know, you never did tell me how your little race went?”

“What ra— Oh, that.” Ben’s clownish grins were usually a thing of creases, an upward tug at the corners of his lips, but now he smiled openly, showing small, even teeth—more teeth than Silas could remember seeing in the young man’s face. It was a cat’s grin, the sly predator, a side of Ben that Silas wasn’t familiar with.

“I may lose the war, but that’s one battle went my way,” Ben said.


SILAS STOOD at the bars, wallowing in the darkness and the silence of the domed enclosure. He gazed through the gaps in the iron and into the interior shadows where the beast lurked. Yes, it was a beast now, as huge and fearsome as any dreamed up in a fairy tale. Its dark shape lay in a clutter of straw in the corner, black skin shining silvery in the moonlight that filtered through the electrified steel mesh above. He wondered if it dreamed.

The members of the research team had stopped calling it Felix two months ago. That name died with Tay. Now it was just called “the gladiator.”

The night was old, and Silas was tired, but he couldn’t make himself go home yet. In days long past, it had been tradition for the captains of war vessels to tour their ships on the final evening before a great battle. Silas supposed, in his own way, he was doing just that. Tomorrow they would ship out to Phoenix, and shortly thereafter the preliminary competitions would start. The Olympics were nearly upon them.

Silas curled his fingers around the bars, feeling their slick coolness. From the shining shadow, he heard a soft rustle of straw.

“Go back to sleep,” he whispered softly. “Tomorrow it starts.”

It seemed that the creature heard him and understood, because the rustling stopped. Silas smiled. In the coming week, the world would finally see what Helix had been working so hard on. Win or lose, the gladiator’s appearance alone would be enough to secure a worldwide reaction.

The twist in his gut belied the confidence he had been portraying for the past weeks. The old dread was still with him, strong and sour at the back of his throat, and as the time of competition neared, it had matured into a flaring premonition that something terrible was going to happen. He had tried to convince himself that it was just normal pre-contest jitters and had resigned himself to checking and rechecking the details of transport and security in a useless attempt to ease his mind. Nothing had worked. In fact, the anxiety had gotten worse. Something wasn’t right.

He uncurled his hands from the bars and cast a long last look into the shadows of the enclosure. Even coming here and seeing the gladiator sleeping so peacefully hadn’t settled his mind. He turned away and took a few steps toward the exit, then stopped. He wasn’t sure why. He turned, and his heart banged in his chest.

The gladiator stood towering at the bars, its wings an enormous midnight backdrop spreading away a dozen feet on either side. The gray eyes glared fiercely from the blackness of its face. It hadn’t made a sound. It had waited until his back was turned, then crossed the cage in two seconds in complete silence. Silas realized he was barely, just barely, beyond arm’s reach of the creature.

He turned and fled the dome quickly, eager to climb out from under the weight of its alien stare.