Multiverse mashup omnibu.., p.10
Multiverse Mashup Omnibus, page 10
So much for not making promises I couldn’t keep.
Seven
I spent the rest of that day talking to the kids I hadn’t met yet, trying to gain some clue as to which of them might be responsible for the summonings. Of course, I didn’t know for sure it was one of them – it could be somebody up in Hedon, trying to spice up the Gauntlet. But I couldn’t get to Hedon yet, so I made do with the suspects I had.
After a few hours of hearing an awful lot about how terrible these poor kids’ lives were but not learning much of use, I took a break to have another talk with Kaylee. I told her more about the Crossroads, and she told me about her world. I was charming, she was flirty, one thing led to another and I wound up in the pool with her. I told her about the cubbyhole where Doric and I had found the air tanks, and she carried me there quick so we could have some privacy from prying teenage eyes.
I know, I know, two universes were in danger and I took a sexy-times break. Don’t judge me – she’s a beautiful mermaid, I’m supposed to just let an opportunity like that slip by? In any event, not much came of it.
“You’re so beautiful…”
“I’ve never done this with a human…”
“Mmm…”
“Oh, yes…”
“Kaylee…”
“Jed…”
“Is that…where do I…”
“Oh! Not there.”
“Sorry…”
“That’s all right…should I…?”
“Yeah, that’s…”
“Oh! What’s that?”
“What?”
“What are you doing?”
“What?”
“What’s wrapped around my tail?”
“My…legs…?”
“Could you…not…”
“What?”
“Touch me with them?”
“What?”
“You’re so handsome from the waist up, but every time your legs touch me I feel a little sick.”
We decided to keep things platonic.
Later that night I was lying on a cot in one of the Shelters, trying and failing to sleep. The door swung open and Kud walked in. The light from outside was dim, but bright enough to see his wet hair and dopey grin.
“Hey, teen heartthrob,” I said. “I barely saw you today.”
The door swung shut behind him and we were in darkness, but I heard his cot squeak. “Skreet and I were hanging out. We went down to the far wall, away from the Shelters.”
“Uh-huh. So, first kiss, huh?”
“He’s awesome, Jed! He’s, like, the smartest person I’ve ever met.”
“How do you know how smart he is if you can’t talk to each other?”
“I just know. We can’t talk but we...communicated.”
“Uh-huh. I’ll bet. He...uh...he doesn’t think your legs are gross?”
“What? No. Why?”
“No reason. I’m happy for you, Kud.”
“He gave me a present. Here, see.”
I saw the silhouette of his arm reaching out to me. I stuck my hand out and something dropped into my palm. It felt like a stone, but it was warm to the touch. I closed my hand around it and it got even warmer.
“Careful,” he said. “It can burn you if you keep it against your skin too long.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know what they call it, but they use it to cook food underwater. He showed me.”
“That’s pretty cool.” I handed the stone back to him.
He lay back down on his bunk. “I like how I can feel it in my pocket. It’ll make me think of him when we have to move on to the next challenge.”
“That was thoughtful of him.”
“Thanks for helping us out, Jed.”
“Just call me Cupid. Why’d you come back if things were going so well?”
“He’s not feeling good. His stomach hurts. All his friends are at the bottom of the pool, I guess sleeping, so he went to join them.”
I didn’t say anything about the reasons for Skreet’s stomachache. Kud was so happy, I couldn’t bear to tell him his new boyfriend couldn’t survive in this world.
It was on that happy thought that I finally drifted off to sleep, but it felt like only a minute before I was shaken awake again. I had a confusing moment where I thought my nightmare about Kaylee strangling me with her tail was coming true before I realized it was another artificial earthquake. Time for round two.
Kud was already up, pulling on his shoes. I threw off my covers and we headed out the door. I wasn’t planning on letting him out of my sight this time.
My intuition was right – although most of the teens were moving forward, towards steady ground, Kud was running back to the pool. I saw mermen and merwomen popping up one by one, Skreet among them.
I grabbed Kud and picked him up, throwing him over my shoulder. “Nope.”
“Let me go, Jed,” he said, kicking at my stomach.
“Skreet’s fine, Kud. We’re the ones in trouble.”
I turned and ran back to safety just as the noise of the colossal gears started up. When I felt the ground stop shaking beneath my feet I put Kud down, keeping my hands firmly on his shoulders.
The earth in front of the pool was being eaten away, but the wall keeping the water in place remained. The merpeople were shaken, but fine. Kud waved to Skreet to show the merboy that he had made it to safety.
In a few minutes it was done. The trees and Shelters were destroyed, swallowed into the pit and crushed to rubble. When the sound of the gears faded, I heard a sob from nearby.
Trinna was looking in the direction of the now-destroyed copse of trees where Garb’s body had been left. He would have been pulverized along with everything else. Ryoh tried to comfort her, but she shook him off, wiped her face roughly with her sleeve, and turned.
The rest of us followed suit. The Gauntlet lay before us, green and still. We weren’t even halfway across. Still so much distance between us and Hedon.
We stood in silence for several minutes. I finally whispered to Astrith, “Is something going to happen?”
“Wait.”
A moment later the giant shining head of Wantcha Gomez, the Assemblyperson Prime, once again filled the sky, still bearing its ridiculous crimson unicorn hairstyle. She blinked a few times behind her enormous glasses and smiled her artificial smile.
“Welcome, one and all,” her voice boomed. “Welcome to the second day of competition at the seventy-second Utopia Gauntlet! Yesterday saw an unusually large number of Contestants successfully complete the first Challenge, thanks in no small part to the surprise assistance from the pitifully mutated refugees from what we now know is the horribly irradiated wasteland Over the Sea.”
“More spin?” I asked Astrith.
She nodded. “Explaining the merpeople. The Broadcasters probably spent all yesterday making fake news reports about them.” She smiled. “I know having them here is bad, Jed, but I like how much of a panic it must have thrown the Hedon Assembly into.”
Noted, I thought to myself. Yeah, she still wasn’t off my suspects list. I liked her, and I trusted her, but I’m not a sucker.
“Of course, we’re all rooting for as many Contestants to win the prize as possible,” Gomez continued, “but I’m sure all of you watching at home are hoping for a bit more excitement on this next Challenge. Never fear, loyal County denizens, never fear. We’re just getting started.”
She winked, and the earth erupted.
Stone burst from the ground just a few feet ahead of us. A massive granite wall, identical to those surrounding the Gauntlet, grew and grew, thrusting itself into the sky. We threw our arms up to shield ourselves from the dirt and debris that showered down onto us.
A girl named Casta stumbled backwards in surprise. She was South Asian and curvy, with dark brown eyes. I had met her the day before, when I was trying to track down any leads. She had told me a dirty joke that was pretty funny.
She had been at the edge of the pit, and teetered, her arms waving. I leaped for her and managed to grab one hand. Her feet slipped from underneath her and as she fell I was pulled to the ground, landing flat on my chest. The wind was knocked out of me but I managed to keep my grip on her. I grabbed her upper arm with my other hand.
“Hang on,” I said.
Her mouth was hanging open, though she wasn’t screaming. She grabbed the edge of our narrow ledge of earth with her free hand. Doric ran to my side and together the two of us pulled Casta up to safety.
I got to my feet. She put her hands on her knees and took deep breaths. I thought she was sobbing, but she was actually laughing.
“Thank you,” she said, looking up at us. “After all this, what a stupid way to die that would have–”
There was a loud crack, and most of her head was just gone. The contents of her skull burst out of the right side of her face.
“Down!” I shouted. I yanked Doric to the ground next to me as I dived for cover.
There was another crack, and I heard a scream from farther down. Then another, and another. Somebody was shooting at us, firing from the sides of the arena, down the long narrow strip of greenery between the pit and the newly-formed wall.
“No!” I heard Astrith shouting. “Not down! In!”
In the center of the wall was a large, dark opening. She was standing next to it, shepherding panicked teenagers inside.
I saw another Contestant, past Astrith, lying flat on the ground. A bullet erupted from his head in a spray of blood and whizzed past my cheek. Astrith was right – lying flat wasn’t safe, the projectiles were coming at every height.
I gave Doric a shove. “Up! Go!”
He jumped to his feet, futilely covering the back of his head with his hands, and ran.
Kud had followed my lead and sought cover on the ground. I stood and scooped him up in my arms, shielding his body with mine. With a command to my spanner I made my clothes a little thicker and tougher. It wouldn’t do me a lot of good against a bullet, but maybe that and my own body together would shield Kud if it came to it.
Luck was with us and we made it to the opening unscathed. We were the last inside, except for Astrith, who darted in behind us. The cracking sounds stopped as soon as she entered.
I put Kud down. He was shaking but stayed on his feet.
Astrith, Doric, Ryoh and I stood by the opening. There were six bodies on the ground. In a few seconds our number had gone from forty to thirty-four.
“That was just to get us inside,” Astrith said. “Six dead, just as a warm-up.”
Six teenagers dead and I had been completely useless. Some multiversal protector I was.
“We’re going to stop them,” I said. “This is the last Gauntlet. Ever.”
She didn’t respond. I don’t think she believed me. I’m not sure I believed me.
We turned back to take stock of our situation. We were in the entranceway of a tunnel, in a large vestibule, walls looming a hundred feet overhead, the same height as the walls of the arena itself. The chamber narrowed into a passageway, just a few feet wide. Twenty feet or so down there was another opening on the left, and another twenty feet beyond that the passageway ended in a T-junction. There was no roof, so shadowed light from the morning sun illuminated the cobblestone floor that had taken the place of the artificial grass.
“A maze,” Ryoh said. “It’s a maze.”
“Yeah, no kidding,” Doric said. “Any other flashes of insight?”
“Shut up, Doric. What great words of wisdom do you have to offer?”
Astrith shoved her way past them. “Both of you shut up. I can’t deal with your fighting right now.”
They both blushed, but she gave no sign of noticing. She pushed to the front of the pack and I followed, Kud close at my heels.
“All right, everyone,” she said. “Stay together. Walk two abreast. Jed and I will take the lead. Doric and Ryoh, bring up the rear. I know they do mazes almost every Gauntlet, but don’t assume that what we’ve seen on the Broadcast in other years is what they’ve got in store for us this year. Be smart. Watch each other’s backs. Stay alive. Any questions?”
“Which way are we going?” Kud asked.
“Fastest way out would be to pick a wall and follow it until we find the exit,” Ryoh suggested.
“We don’t want to go down every dead end, though,” Doric said. “We’ll trigger every trap between here and the way out.”
“Screw this.” Trinna headed for the first opening.
Astrith put a hand on her shoulder. “Trinna, wait. We should...”
Trinna pulled away. “Sorry, Astrith. It’d be nice, everybody getting out of this alive.” She pointed back past the entrance, where the bodies lay. Her hand was shaking. “But that’s not going to happen! They’re not going to let it happen! Groups never make it through a maze intact. Solo runners make it through. That’s true every year. You know that. It’s a beautiful dream you’ve got, but I’m not dying for it.”
She ran off into the opening. As her footsteps faded into the distance, several other Contestants stepped forward.
“Sorry, Astrith,” a boy said. A few others mumbled apologies, then took off, some after Trinna, others down one of the two paths at the end of the corridor.
Astrith just stood there, watching them go.
“They’re afraid,” I said. “They still believe in what you’re doing. Even Trinna.”
“Yeah,” she replied. “How much does that matter, though? Maybe they’re right. It’s not like I can promise them anything.”
Almost half of the Contestants had struck out to try their luck on their own. Nineteen of us remained in the main group.
“We should get moving,” I said. “Which way, boss?”
Astrith took a deep breath. “Ryoh has the right idea. We’ll follow a wall until we start to get the lay of the land.”
I didn’t like the idea of playing by the rules, but I didn’t see any alternative. The walls were sheer and unclimbable, and staying in one place wasn’t an option. Forward it would be.
Astrith and I took the lead, while Doric and Ryoh, their bickering momentarily paused, brought up the rear. Kud and the other younger kids stayed in the middle of the pack. We decided to follow the right-hand wall, so we bypassed the opening on the left that Trinna had taken and continued down to the T-junction.
Astrith moved slowly, tapping each cobblestone with a foot before trusting it with her full weight. I did the same, and between the two of us we covered the width of the corridor, ensuring a safe passage for those behind us. A safe, painfully slow passage. I was worried that the creators of this maze would fire up some motivation to get us moving faster. More gunfire, maybe.
We reached the end of the corridor. To our left the hallway continued almost all the way to the far wall of the Gauntlet, with other entrances branching off here and there on both sides. To our right there was a sharp turn to the left just a few feet down. Before we reached it I stopped short and held up my hand.
“Wait,” I said. “You hear that?”
Everyone grew quiet, listening. There was a buzzing sound coming from around the bend. It sounded distant but it was getting closer.
“Help!” The cry came from around the corner. “Help!”
I took off after it. I heard Astrith shout for everyone to stay put before she followed me.
As we took the turn, the cry for help turned into a scream of pain. The buzzing sound became a sickening, chewing, grinding sound.
A boy – I couldn’t remember his name – was pinned, face first, against the wall. Hovering against him was something that looked a lot like a drone from my world – not the sophisticated military kind, the simpler versions for commercial or recreational use. There was a metal box with small blinking lights in the center of it, and six spinning propellers, oriented downward to keep it airborne. They were making the buzzing sound.
Protruding from the top of the box were six slender telescoping metal arms, jointed in several places. They ended in circular jagged metal blades, spinning just as fast as the drone’s propellers. The blades were making the chewing, grinding sound, as they cut into the boy’s back.
I ran for him, but couldn’t get close. Two of the buzz saws were tearing the boy apart, but the other four were whipping around wildly in every other direction on their extended arms, forming a bladed barrier keeping me from helping him. Blood sprayed over me as the boy convulsed. His screams stopped, but the blades kept cutting until they hit stone. Sparks flew as the blades retracted, and the boy’s body fell sideways, partially severed just below the shoulders. His left arm fell completely free.
All six blades grew still, and the telescoping arms retracted slightly. The drone hovered for a moment over the body.
“Back,” I said. “Get back.”
The drone tilted a little in our direction. A light on top flashed.
“Run,” I said. “Lead everyone back towards the entrance.”
She didn’t question me. I kept my eyes on the drone but heard her take off around the corner.
An instant later, the drone moved towards me. Slowly, at first, but quickly gaining speed. I turned on my heels and ran. As I took the corner I saw the group of Contestants running, Astrith at the rear, hurrying them. The first few turned to the left, back the way we had started.
I slowed, to avoid catching up to the group, and the drone’s buzzing grew louder behind me. I risked a look back – it had turned the corner, and all six arms were extended in my direction, the blades spinning. The drone tilted forward from the imbalance, and was hovering at about the height of my head.
I turned back and picked up my pace. Astrith was practically dragging Kud around the corner. I caught up to them and kept going straight, down the other end of the T-junction. I got a few feet down, stopped, and turned.
“Here I am, Rusty,” I shouted, waving my arms. “Come and get me!”
The drone reached the turn and stopped. It hovered in place for a moment. The arms retracted a bit.
“No, here! Here!” I jumped up and down.
