Chapter 10

Chapter Ten

Vennkor

R eke has issued a challenge, and it takes everything in me not to respond. I grip the bars of my cell until my hands ache, and I am clenching my jaw so tightly a muscle in my cheek is vibrating. But how can I react when my life is not my own? How can I react when any reaction would be meaningless? I can as well break through these bars into Nina’s cell as I can escape this space station. I can as well free myself as I can free Nina.

With reluctance so strong it is almost a physical force, I make myself release my hold and turn my back on Nina and Reke and the dead scudding Parakian who thought it would be fun to scare the newest gladiator just for his own entertainment. And now he is dead, and it is the Hov who is entertained.

The stench of his blood is nearly strong enough to turn my stomach, and I scrub my face, trying to remove him from my skin. I will never get used to the smell and sight of blood, no matter how much of it I see.

“You’re injured.” Nina’s voice is quiet. She clears her throat. “You’re injured,” she says again, and this time there is a steely strength to her words. I can almost imagine the dangerous glint in her eyes and the stiff way she must be holding her spine straight. I think she is not a killer. But she is a warrior all the same.

I infer she is talking about Reke’s bloodied hands. His blood smells … wrong, as if I can smell the chemicals of the laboratory on him still. As though chemicals intermingle with his blood, and maybe they do.

I was not a slave back when Reke was made, but I remember the first time I saw him after my capture. The Hov were playing the highlights reel of his life on the screens in the houseblocks. Videos of him making his first kill, hunting his dinner through the tunnels under the Arena, training with the other gladiators and tearing them apart because he did not yet understand what the word practice meant.

It was the same highlights reel the Hov still sometimes play on the big screens in the Arena as the patrons find their seats at the beginning of a new day, the same promotional material used to ramp up excitement and to increase profits.

Will Reke win today’s fight against two Arrok? the presenter would ask. Against three Kiligar’os? Against the Karik?

“The Parakian was scheduled to fight next,” the Hov guard says with another laugh. They so rarely speak to gladiators that I am almost tempted to turn back around and watch. Instead, I curl my hands into fists, imagining myself pulverizing his face beyond recognition.

Of course, Reke is no ordinary gladiator. It must have been the Hov who taught him to speak.

“You will take his place, as well as your own fight,” the guard says.

“So?” The ease with which Reke dismisses the request is enviable.

“But his hands!” That is Nina. She sounds angry.

I cannot stop myself from looking now. She has her fists pressed to her hips and is staring at the Hov guard as though she were his superior.

In every way she is.

“He’s injured,” she scolds. “You can’t expect him to fight. Reke needs urgent medical attention.”

The guard hardly spares Nina a glance. Her audience on the viewing platform behind the guard are all watching with intense fascination. They are leaning as close as they can get, and many are recording the interaction on their tablets. I do not doubt that footage of Reke killing the Parakian will have already circulated among all the Arena patrons. I would not be surprised if the Hov are broadcasting us live.

I keep my face schooled of all expression and lock my hands behind my back so nobody can see my clenched fists.

The Hov guard deactivates his weapon and returns it to the belt around his middle. Then he continues walking the way he was originally headed.

“Hey!” Nina shouts after him. She rushes to the front of her cell, sees the dead Parakian and back tracks a few slippery steps. “Hey! Come back here! Reke can’t?— ”

“I am well, Nina.” Reke straightens and holds up his hands, displaying skin that has already knit itself back together.

“B-but … ” she splutters and reaches between the bars to take one of Reke’s hand for closer examination.

A hard lump forms in my throat at the ease with which she touches Reke and the ease with which Reke accepts the touch, clearly believing such intimacies between them are his due.

“That’s impossible.” She turns Reke’s hand over, as if expecting to see a different result on the other side. Then she glances down the passageway at the guard’s retreating form. “At least clean away the corpse!”

No response.

It makes no sense that the Parakian was being moved at this time of the day via the underground tunnels. And surely he was not really scheduled to be fighting next. If he had been, why wasn’t he already in position, ready to be sent into the Arena?

Nina huffs an affronted sigh, then lowers her voice when she next speaks, “You shouldn’t have done that. I was perfectly safe.”

I strain to hear Reke’s reply.

Undoubtedly, her crowd is also straining to hear. I hate that I am no better than any of the scudding patrons. Obsessed with the many contradictions that make up Nina—her apparent physical fragility, her abhorrence of violence, her fast temper, her loud shouts, her commanding voice and the rare glimpses of her cowering uncertainty.

She wears her emotions not only on her face but in every part of her body—the tension in her shoulders, her bitten nails, the tremor in her voice.

“Why not?” Reke asks, tipping his head to one side.

“Because … Because killing people isn’t nice.”

“N-ice?”

“And because now you’ve got to fight that other guy’s stupid fight, and that’s one more chance something could happen to you.”

“I’m hungry.” Reke shrugs. “Better to eat than not.”

“What?” She glances over her shoulder at me, her brow wrinkled.

I try to ignore the tug of pleasure in my gut for the way she needs me, but I am answering her before I can stop myself. “He eats those he kills.”

There is a moment the length of several heartbeats when Nina remains perfect still. Then she looks down at the dead Parakian, his head squashed against a bar at the front of her cell, blood dripping from his split chin.

She blinks several times, watching the Parakian as if expecting Reke to consume his food now.

“Him?” she eventually asks Reke, her eyes wide.

Reke’s ears flatten against the top of his head, and Nina glares at me as if she thinks I have lied to her.

“I’d cut my teeth on his scales,” Reke clarifies. He slips his tail through a gap in the bars and wraps it around one of Nina’s thighs. If she notices, she does not react.

Rather, she laughs hesitantly, displaying one of those rare moments when uncertainty temporarily overrules her confidence. She nibbles one of her short nails, breaking it to the quick.

The ceiling over Reke’s cell opens. His floor rises. The hypogeum fills with the shouts and screens of the crowd overhead, impossibly louder than usual. The room vibrates with the intensity of the noise.

I force myself to remain completely still, to not react, even as the vibration causes the dead Parakian to slip a few inches to the side, his head lolling lifelessly on his destroyed neck. Reke must have crushed the bones.

Nina does not immediately release Reke’s hand. Reke crouches to keep as close to Nina for as long as possible but soon he is lifted beyond her reach. The floor of his cell becomes the ceiling, and another gladiator suddenly occupies the cell to Nina’s right.

She hurriedly backs away from Vlet, who’s holding a double-edged sword and whose exoskeleton makes Locranians so difficult to kill. They stalk along the back of their cell, keeping all their eyes away from Nina. Evidently, even the other gladiators now know about Reke’s claim.

I should heed the warning and stay away from her.

I sit down again. Waiting to be sent up into the Arena is the worst part, but spending energy on pacing my cell or wringing my hands will do me no good. I take a few deep breaths, listening to the distant screams overhead.

Beside me, Nina is still for a long while. I am attuned to her every move.

Her crowd of watchers at least has thinned somewhat; probably most have hurried to the stadium to watch Reke in the Arena. He has always been a fan favorite. While Nina is their newest fascination, Reke will still be here to take up the spotlight once again once all the rest of us have turned into stardust.

My insides churn with the thought of Nina dying. Had I any bargaining power, I would attempt to save her, even if I could not save myself.

I press my eyes closed, hating myself for feeling this way, but unable to fight it any longer. Since she arrived, I have been as fascinated with Nina as everyone else. Reke might have staked his claim, but I cannot simply stop thinking of her.

Even Reke cannot save her from the Arena.

“Fucking hell.” Nina lets the words out on a long sigh.

I hear rather than see the moment she turns her attention to me. There is the sound of her feet sliding over the floor and the rustle of her unfamiliar clothing.

“How long have you been here, Venn?”

The question does not surprise me. It is often the first thing everyone wishes to know.

The shortened form of my name does surprise me, but I do not correct Nina. It is a gift, this short form. A gift she has given me that nobody else ever has.

“Almost two Common years.”

“Two years?! What the fuck, Venn! You’ve been here two years?”

“Reke has been here longer. So too has Vlet.” I nod toward the Locranian, but Nina does not look round. There are few who have survived two Common years, but it happens. Some gladiators even have statues of themselves in the Hall of Fame for the patrons to have their likenesses taken with. It is much safer to pose beside the statue of a gladiator than beside a real-life gladiator who wants nothing more than to rip the heads off the shoulders of all those who have benefited from their sufferings .

“I’m so sorry.” Nina reaches through a gap but cannot quite reach me.

I do not move closer.

“There was another Ves’os Male here before me,” I say to distract her. “He is the only gladiator to have ever escaped. I was captured to replace him.” For a while, Torksten’s notoriety had significantly enhanced public interest in me, but two Common years is long enough for the memory of Torksten to have faded from the minds of the patrons, and now I am just another of the gladiators.

Granted, I have a place among the upper tier gladiators, but so too does everyone in this particular hypogeum, and not all of us are here because we have made survival in the face of overwhelming odds our grandstand. Interest in Nina thrives, but when the time comes, I think the patrons will not bet any significant money on her winning. Where the winnings are to be had will be in the details of her death—how, when, who, speed, method.

I crack my knuckles.

“How did he escape?”

That too is a question I have been expecting. Every gladiator who has not already heard the tale asks it of me eventually.

“He enraged a Karik until it knocked down a section of the Arena wall. The patrons fled, and he escaped into the chaos.”

“So what I’m hearing is we need to find ourselves a Karik.”

“What? No.”

Vlet laughs, snapping his jaw. It is difficult to know exactly where he is looking for his decorative eyes, the ones that are not actually eyes but designed to look like eyes, are so similar in appearance to his real eyes that I cannot tell them apart in this low light.

“Hey.” Nina crosses her arms, glaring at him. “What’s so funny?”

“Karik are … large,” I say, before she can pick a fight with another gladiator who will not react so kindly. “We do not want to find ourselves one. Gladiators are only ever sent into the Arena to fight a Karik when the Hov have grown tired of them. It is a death sentence.”

She glares once more at Vlet before turning her attention back to me. “If Reke never loses, surely being forced to fight against him is also a death sentence?”

“It is.”

“Right.” Sitting down, she sticks one of her legs through a gap in the bars. Her leg is small enough that she can fit almost the entire length through, and she pokes one of my legs with her bare toes.

Her skin appears particularly pink against the dark blue of my own. Her foot is impossibly small compared to my own cumbersome body. I should shift beyond her reach, but there is a mysterious glint in her eyes, however dim, and I do not want to be the one to distinguish it.

I shift a fraction closer. She pokes my leg again, digging the ball of her foot into my bare calf, massaging the muscle.

“What was your life like before the Arena?”

I close my eyes, relishing the feel of her foot. This is the first contact I have had with another person since I was abducted that has nothing to do with fighting and killing.

“Happy,” I answer simply .

“So was mine. Most of the time, at least.” She lets out a long sigh.

I shift closer still, gathering her foot onto my lap and stealing an illicit moment to rub circles on her ankle with my thumb. I had not realized how much I missed this easy contact before Nina. Now she has given me this gift, I cannot imagine another two Common years without it.

“There was this rosebush growing in my grandma’s front garden. It’s got these massive flowers. Umm, like this … ” She lifts the corner of her shirt and tugs down the band of her breeches, displaying an expanse of smooth skin across one curvy hip and a flower tattoo in black ink about half the size of my hand. Lines of shading give the flower depth, as though I could reach forward and pluck it from her skin. “They’re this really dark red. It’s honestly the most beautiful rose I’ve ever seen. Anyway, Grandma and I planted it after my parents died so we’d have something to remember them by, but when Grandma had to sell her house and move into nursing care, we dug up the rose, and I took it with me to my new apartment.”

She pauses as she resettles her clothing, and I do not quite dare break the silence. Instead, I rub her foot, gently reminding her that I am listening and that I want to know everything she has to say.

I think I find the sensitive spot because she wriggles against my hold with a little gasp of laughter, but she does not pull her foot from my hands.

“It’s so quiet here at night when all the other cells are empty and the lights are off. Sometimes I just lie in the dark thinking about how the rose is going to die now there’s nobody at my apartment. ”

She returns to picking at one of her blunt nails.

“The rose has no effect on your parents.” I do not know if it is the right thing to say, and the words feels almost heavy in my mouth.

She looks up, surveying me closely, and I stare back at her, for the first time wondering if it is such a terrible thing to show your emotions. I want to tell her everything will be alright, that I will keep her safe, but those are impossible realities. Nothing is ever alright, and I would be fooling myself to think I can protect her.

“I know that. I do. It’s just hard to think clearly when I’m half asleep. My brain seems determined to plague me with nightmares about … Never mind.” She glances at the dead Parakian, his head still pressed to one of the bars at the front of her cell, as if he may be listening to our conversation. I think she is really concerned about the patrons on the viewing platform listening, but for the first time since her arrival, the few who have not left to watch Reke are talking among themselves, finally distracted.

“Tell me.” Keeping my voice low so as not to attract attention, I attempt to make the request sound like an order so she cannot refuse. Instead, I hear a hint of desperation in my voice. “Tell me,” I repeat, gentler this time.

“I’m having nightmares about … ” She clears her throat. “About us dying. About Reke being killed, and y-you being killed, and the two of you leaving me here all alone and then I die too, and … Well, it sucks.”

“It sucks what?”

She laughs. Such a beautiful, sad sound.

I wish I could remember how to laugh.

“It’s just an expression. It means something’s horrible or terrible. It sucks.” Another sigh. “But you already know that. You don’t need me telling you that.” She flicks a strand of hair out of her face and seems to resettle inside of herself, as if now she has spoken her fears aloud, she is determined not to let them worry her anymore. “You’re right: it is just a rose. A rose isn’t my parents.”

She pokes my leg with her outstretched foot. “I’m going to escape this place.” The confession is spoken in a whisper, as if she believes she’s speaking the truth.

“Everybody says that.”

“And one person even managed it.”

“One person out of all these and many more.” I wave my hand to indicate the cells. I do not know how many gladiators there are now or how many gladiators there were before me. I do not think even the Hov have kept that close of a count.

“If that one guy could escape, then it means escape isn’t impossible. It’s just improbable.”

I open my mouth to tell her improbable is as good as impossible , but the ceiling overhead opens at the same time the floor of my cell rises. Instinctively, I push against the base of Nina’s foot, and she slides across the smooth floor of her cell with the momentum, away from immediate danger.

“Vennkor—” There is a new pain in her voice, and it is for me. I hold the sound close to myself, wishing I did not cherish her pain as much as I do. She is the first person in nearly two years who cares whether I live or die.

I should not have let it happen. I should have kept my distance. But now I can as well abandon my feelings for Nina as I can escape. And so I hold the sound of her pain close to me, relishing the knowledge that I am not alone in my suffering.

It is the most selfish thing I have ever done.

Kneeling at the edge of my rising cell, I reach for Nina. She scurries to me, and I bow my head, pressing my forehead to hers, closing my eyes, breathing in the sour scent of her desperation and panic. Underneath it all, there is still a touch of determination, and I am so proud of her for it.

“Don’t fucking die.” She growls her warning, and as I am almost dragged beyond her reach, Nina stands on the tips of her toes to press her lips to my cheek. “I need you to come with me when I escape.”

I watch her as long as possible, and then the floor slots into place, and I am standing in the Arena, surrounded by hundreds of thousands of people all cheering for my death.

“Nina.” I speak her name, relishing the sound. “You are going to be the death of me.”