Space Invaders (44 page)

Then, as my training had proceeded, all of that aggression had been tempered by Psychological Health Agents—PsychHAgs to those of us strong enough to actually make it through that facet of training with our minds still intact—who ground me down to my most primal urges and built me back up, piece by maddening piece, until they deemed I had enough control over myself to not be a security threat if I was ever captured.

It was this training that I focused on as we walked down the grated metal steps. Each footfall was another repeat of my guiding mantra. Another reminder of the ideology I fought for. Another reminder of the cause that was greater than me. Of the certainty of the piece I played in this game—a pawn at the ready for sacrifice once I’d served my purpose.

The temperature dropped the lower we progressed below the arena, but I had no problem adjusting to the frigid air seeping through the thin material of my clothes. Cold was my ally—it cleared my head until all my senses were heightened. And I knew I would need to be in top form to make it past Armise and onto the opening ceremony platform.

I was outnumbered and without my rifle, but the guards wouldn’t be dumb enough to think that meant they could control me. They wouldn’t know exactly how I’d been trained, that information had never existed in my official military record, but they would have been told enough to know I didn’t need a weapon to kill.

What they didn’t know was that I had no intention of stopping them.

The Olympics were a convenient cover for my mission. As elaborate of a setup that could be engineered, but whether Opposition or Revolution we were all opportunists.

The Olympics were being held in the Continental States, inside the city limits of the capital, my home city, in an area that had been built up over the last five years for the explicit purpose of the games. But what most people didn’t know was that there was an intricate system of tunnels running underneath the Olympic grounds. Most of the tunnels had been manufactured during construction—the well-lit set created with the tourists in mind decorated with artwork from each of the five countries, the sterile passages leading from athlete housing to the venues, and the utilitarian tunnels constructed for cleaning crews, laundry service and food service.

Then there were the sub-tunnels, roughly carved stone reinforced with sheets of steel. Tunnels that curved up and around in graceful, ancient arches that had existed as a forgotten part of the city for over a thousand years. They were low, damp, lit with industrial fixtures spaced intermittently along the meandering walls. There appeared to be no reason for the odd placement between the lights other than to create shadow pockets, areas deep below the earth where nothing would be seen nor heard.

We descended another set of stairs and I knew these were the tunnels the guards were taking me to.

I was more familiar with these tunnels than any of the planners who had built the Olympic village probably were. Before it was my job to be aware of all possible routes of escape in this city, I’d roamed these underground passages as a child. A childhood spent playing war games with my trainers. There was no way the President’s guard or Armise would be able to take me by surprise down here.

We reached the bottom of the stairs and there was the grating noise of a key entering a lock and then the tumbling of pins as the bolt slid open. We passed through a thick metal door that clanged shut behind us.

I didn’t bother to fill the increasing tension in the air with idle conversation. My passive acceptance had the effect of setting them all on edge. The guard in the lead, a sergeant by the pin affixed to his left shoulder, kept turning around to check on me and ensure I was still there. My footsteps made no noise, despite the heavy work boots I wore. My silence had to be unnerving in this cramped space. Every small noise was amplified because the sounds of normal life and the arena were conspicuously absent, and yet my movement was soundless.

We turned off the main branch into a side tunnel with pipes running the length of the coved ceiling. I had to duck to enter the tunnel and remained hunched as we moved further into the darkness. The tubes vibrated with the sound of the remnants from sonicbullets. When a sonicbullet hit a target, a residual energy continued on past whatever was struck. That double-tap feature was part of the reason they were so effective. One sonicbullet had the capacity to kill a person and then pass through to another, maiming or killing them if the shot landed in a vulnerable enough spot. So a catch device had been set up at the back of the arena to filter the residual energy from the bullets into the pipes. Where the bullets went from there, and how they were eventually dispersed, was a mystery that I didn’t want to know the answer to.

I catalogued each of the guards, noting the way they carried themselves, and which ones appeared stronger than others. The soldier behind me and to the left was the most likely to take the first shot at me. He was significantly bigger than the rest, almost taller than me, with a more senior rank than the other guards and a glower that hadn’t left his face since they’d escorted me out of the arena. He was the one I needed to keep an eye out for. I wasn’t planning on fighting back, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to try to position myself for them to do the least amount of damage.

Each of the guards wore the insignia of the States on their upper left arm, but the apparent decoration was function not form. The insignias doubled as personal shields, protecting the wearer from being struck by a sonicbullet. But the personal shields had one inherent weakness—it had been so long since real bullets were last used for protection or combat that the shields weren’t able to deflect them.

It was this fatal flaw that the Olympic Committee, led by and stocked with Opposition leaders, was counting on me to exploit to assassinate the President.

We stopped under a pool of light where the tunnel opened up into an area that was just large enough for me to stand at my full height—just over two metres. Sonicbullets whizzed through the pipes above my head. The competitors in the rifle event were probably running through their final practice before the opening ceremonies.

“I’m sorry, Colonel,” the soldier in front of me said, using my military title as if we were familiar with each other.

Which meant one thing—I’d earned the highest rank possible for a non-commissioned soldier in my time as a Peacemaker and I was about to be beaten by a soldier who knew who I was. I didn’t recognise his face or voice. He would have had to have been an exceptional soldier for me to remember him, and there were few who accomplished that.

“We have no choice. Following orders,” the sergeant said with a twinge of regret in his voice. I would have almost believed him if I couldn’t see his fists clenching and unclenching in anticipation.

Was he really trying to explain his actions to me?
Orders,
I scoffed in my thoughts and gave an audible noise to illustrate my scepticism. As Peacemakers we were taught to listen and obey without thought. But the best soldiers took in the words of their superiors, kept the end goal in mind and discerned the most logical tactical approach.

Lucky for me, these soldiers were not the best.

I tried to leave my body loose, but prepared, and my legs anchored wide to stabilise me, as I waited for the first punch. No matter how much I was ready to get this over with, I wouldn’t beg for them to begin. The tension that had been building inside me since the President chose Armise was cresting, and my patience was beginning to fray.

The punch to my left kidney came with a forced exhale of breath as the sole warning. As I’d anticipated it was the giant behind me whose meaty fist pounded into my side until I had to fight to stay standing. I coughed, sputtered, tried to draw in enough breath to keep from blacking out. Somehow I was able to find the presence of mind not to curl into the guard’s fists and expose my other side. The left side of my body was stronger because of the attack in the DCR—if the guards had been properly briefed they would know that. I feinted weakness, and dropped my right shoulder. The jab to the left side of my ribs was immediate and I couldn’t find my breath.

They fell on me all at once. I kept my fists up attempting to protect my torso from the worst of the blows, but my grunts of pain were feeding them and before long I was curled on the stone floor desperately trying to remember my mantra. They were words that anchored me and gave me strength.

One breath.

Inhale.

Hesitation is my enemy.

Solitude my ally.

Death the only real victory.

Exhale.

Twice I repeated it until I realised I’d made it back to my feet and was fighting back. This was a beating I was supposed to take, but my mind wouldn’t accept that outcome. I was drawing more of their blood than they were of mine when the sergeant yelled, “Enough!”

The group staggered back. My left eye was nearly swollen shut and each breath caused my chest to constrict. I flexed my hands, feeling the ripped skin pull apart and the warmth of my blood and theirs coating my knuckles. I drew in a deep, painful breath and squared my shoulders. My muscles fought the movement. But I’d endured worse, survived when even my superiors believed I’d been broken beyond repair.

“Armise is coming for you next, traitor,” the sergeant spat out at me. He cocked his arm back and took one last cheap shot across my jaw that sent me to my knees. Then they were gone, their heavy footfalls thudding against the stone floor until the sound disappeared with the decisive clang of the metal door.

I struggled to hold onto consciousness. My vision flickered from black to grey and back again, the tunnel floor appearing to tilt in front of me. I put my hands to the floor and closed my eyes, savouring the damp coldness of the stone as it travelled up my arms in shivers.

I’d planned for the beating, but I hadn’t planned for Armise. Armise was the crosswind to a sniper nest shot—unpredictable, and potentially fatal to the mission. But years of training and experience had taught me that, with calculation and preparation, you could negate the effects of a crosswind. I just had to pull together enough of my jumbled brain cells to figure out how to do that.

Armise wouldn’t keep me from my mission, but he was going to make it difficult. Perhaps nearly impossible. But it was my duty to withstand this beating, keep my body whole and then dispose of the attacker the President had sicced on me. That it was Armise I was preparing to kill should have given me pause. I didn’t know. Maybe even having the thought counted as fleeting consideration of his role in my life. It didn’t matter either way.

I’d always known this moment, this choice—his life over mine—was inevitable.

I hadn’t failed a mission since Armise took out that general, and I wasn’t going to fail this one. I would kill Armise when the time came. There wasn’t any other choice. I would be the one taking the shot on the opening ceremony platform.

Time suspended as I waited.

I tried to strategise. To wipe the disjointed haze from my brain. I flexed my muscles, rolled my head on my neck, and attempted to open my left eye. I cringed with the dagger of pain that sliced from the damaged socket, around my jaw and into my spine.

But I was alive.

I tried not to think of what would happen once my mission was completed.

I lived my life careening around the edges of a gathering storm. But it was at pivotal moments such as these that I couldn’t fight the pull of the eye and I was drawn into the centre, into the violent beating heart of the storm, dragging me in and holding me. Hostage.

Today would be no different. Only the outcome would be.

There would be escape from the storm this time.

I couldn’t mourn for the end. For my end.

I had been born into this fight. A struggle centuries old and not of my making, one in which my complicity was assumed, perhaps taken for granted, and yet I would have chosen if given the option.

I could have said that I’d sacrificed a normal life for this existence, for my cause, but I’d never known another way of life.

And now, it was much too late to wonder how or if my life could have been different.

I didn’t know if it had been minutes or hours when I finally heard the bolt on the metal door grinding open.

I counted his boot steps as they drew closer. Light steps, unhurried. He was always preternaturally quiet for as solid as he was. I could picture the way he carried his body when going into battle. The unassailable confidence with which he approached every task he was ordered to complete. I knew this man and his tactics.

But that brought me no measure of peace.

When Armise stepped into the pool of light at the tunnel entrance, my body was bloodied, my awareness still scattered. There was something feral in his eyes and in the way he moved towards me. It frightened me before I could filter out the fear in my physical response. I knew I’d drawn back, if only by a fraction, but it was enough.

Armise rolled his shoulders. He was unarmed. Ready to strike. And I couldn’t be sure that he didn’t intend to kill me, rather than maim me. I couldn’t think of anything other than survival—the fingertip ledge I clung to with singular focus, willing myself to live.

This was my nemesis. And I understood him better than any friend. But the way he moved towards me—stalking, furious, wild—was too unrestrained. Armise was never unrestrained.

I didn’t recognise the man barrelling down on me.

The crack of his knuckles resonated in the stone and steel chamber.

I couldn’t reconcile the emotion clambering through my veins, heightening my senses. It was one of betrayal. Anger of a degree that I’d never felt before. I hadn’t realised until this moment that some part of me had started to trust him. To hope there was something more between us.

But that recognition of hope, lost before I even had the chance to explore it, was there now, crippling me, and I couldn’t find the focus to bury it again.

Chapter Seven

Twelve years ago—Year 2546