“It is supposed to represent a competitor. I control it by remote from the observation loft.” Tay pointed. A metal staircase climbed the far wall twenty feet to the glassed-in balcony. The observation loft was supposed to give a comprehensive view of everything that happened in the cage. It provided this vantage by being—at least partially, anyway—in the cage itself.
“This thing fights?” Silas asked.
“With a little remote-control help. It’s not a quick lateral mover—more of a stand-and-deliver type of device—but each of those limbs is loaded with a thirty-pound payload of sand, so it packs a wallop. And the arms are fast, very fast.”
Silas glanced up the far wall. “I think I’d want more than a pane of glass between myself and what’s going to be happening out here.”
“That’s bulletproof,” Tay said, gesturing toward the observation loft. “No worries.”
Silas moved closer and pushed a finger into the Teflon padding that lined the rounded base of the robot. It dimpled softly beneath the pressure of his finger. “This thing won’t hurt the gladiator, will it? Injury is the last thing we need three months before showtime.”
“No. I’ll be careful. I just want to rile it up a bit, see if I can’t get its aggression up.”
“You remember the goat, don’t you?” Ben asked.
“Yeah. ’Twas a beautiful sight. Just what a trainer loves to see. All that blood and gore.”
“Thrown all over Silas,” Ben added.
“Icing on the cake,” Tay said.
Silas smiled despite himself. “Okay, let’s see what this thing can do.” He turned toward the gate.
“Aren’t you going to join me?” Tay gestured back toward the observation loft again.
“Nah, I want to be down close to the action. I’ll take my view from here,” Silas said. Ben followed him out of the enclosure, and Silas checked the locking mechanism on the gate twice.
The two men watched through the bars as Tay ascended the stairs. He stepped through the door into the loft and waved to them through the glass. Then he moved toward the front, and his arms played across a console hidden from view beneath the row of windows.
A moment later, the robot buzzed as it powered up, and then the arms slowly lifted in long arcs, flexing and extending. The robot twisted and jabbed for half a minute before the hatch portal clanged in the back wall.
The hatch opened.
The gladiator entered the enclosure slowly, as if sensing that something was wrong. It had grown since the goat incident, now approaching seven feet in height. Wide nostrils sniffed the air, and its eyes locked on the robot. It stared for several seconds without moving before beginning
a slow creep forward. Staying low to the straw, it moved on four bent limbs, wings folded tight and flat against its back.
The robot spun smoothly on its axis, bringing two arms into striking position. The gladiator’s slow approach slowed further as it closed the distance.
Twenty feet out, it stopped. Muscles bunched in its legs. It gathered itself, tightening to stillness, crouching like black stone—limbs cocked beneath it, eyes glaring across the lake of straw.
Silas realized he was holding his breath.
The gladiator’s ears folded back. Then, like a black sheet of lightning, it sprang.
It hit the robot hard, rocking it backward, digging in. Metallic arms spun, and the gladiator bounced away just ahead of the blow. It turned, maneuvering quickly around the other side. It struck again, rocking the robot forward. Claws dragged along the surface of the Teflon, searching for purchase. The robot spun again, and this time banged a glancing blow off the creature’s side. It howled and slid away.
The gladiator moved faster now, circling just beyond reach. It went around once, twice, then came in low, ducking below the upper ring of the robot’s arms. It struck fiercely, clamping down on the Teflon with its jaws. Silas was certain that an opponent of flesh and blood would have lost its guts to the floor at this point, but the Teflon gave up nothing, and a blow from one of the robot’s lower arms sent the creature sprawling away, screaming in rage.
It came in again, howling, and again was knocked away. And again, and again, until froth ran from its mouth. After a particularly damaging blow, it sank slowly to a crouch, hissing, and this time it paused. Its chest expanded and contracted in enormous heaving breaths while it considered the enemy.
Without warning, it struck again, high and hard, rocking the robot back again. Instead of gouging with its claws, it clung to the top as it carried through, swinging its weight around and pulling down. The robot teetered at the edge of balance for a moment, then crashed to the
floor, pinning half of its arms beneath its weight. Now the gladiator moved in at the base, tearing at the pads with its teeth and talons. A pad tore loose from its wire clasps, exposing the metallic shielding beneath. The creature howled and backed off, while the robotic arms thrashed impotently.
“That’s about enough, don’t you think?” Ben asked.
“I was thinking that very thing,” Silas said. He raised his arms and waved to Tay, but Tay only grinned down from the observation loft and made exaggerated “come on” gestures to the gladiator. The creature caught the movement and looked up. Tay smiled bigger and waved. He was enjoying this.
The gladiator responded, and this time its movement was not smooth and controlled. It moved with all the grace of a thing deep in a fit of rage.
The wings unfurled as it bounded across the enclosure. With a giant leap and a single flap of the enormous wings, the gladiator swung through the air and smashed into the window of the loft. It fell in a crumpled heap to the straw, where it lay, stunned, on its back for several seconds before regaining its footing.
Gathering itself, it backed up and leaped again, slamming its talons against the glass without effect.
Tay’s expression was still one of amusement, but he took an involuntary step backward for the third attack. After falling to the straw again, the creature backed up for another assault, then stopped. Its eyes traced the staircase up the wall. Slowly, it moved across the enclosure to the bottom of the stairs, then climbed upward in long four-limbed strides. Tay leaned forward against the glass now, looking for the gladiator, but he was unable to see what it was doing.
The boom against the thick metal door snapped his head around. The door looked solid to Silas, but Tay hadn’t said a thing about
it
being bulletproof. The gladiator struck again, surging forward and slamming against the door with its powerful hind limbs.
Tay’s face changed. This was not part of the training procedure. His
hands moved across the console, and a moment later, Silas recognized the clank of the hatch. The gladiator turned its head toward the door opening in the far wall and paused. Then it continued its assault.
“This is getting a little out of control,” Silas said.
“That’s a steel-plated door. There’s no way it’s getting in,” Ben said.
“Still, this isn’t productive. I want this session stopped now.”
The gladiator’s black form thrashed frantically against the door, and the whole staircase shook. The door’s face was scarred and dented now but still held strong. Something about the door caught the gladiator’s attention, and it leaned forward.
It closed its mouth around the heavy doorknob.
It bit down.
There was a crunch, and then a squeal of tortured steel as the thick, silver knob partially dislodged from the frame. The gladiator jerked its head back again, and the knob pulled completely loose, trailing a twisted metal mechanism behind.
Behind the glass, Tay’s tanned face whitened visibly.
Silas moved forward unconsciously, wrapping his hands around the cold iron bars.
The gladiator bent down again and stuck a taloned finger to the wound in the door. It hooked something, pulled, and a shiny rod tore free from the tangled hole where the doorknob had been. Tay’s face was panicked now behind the glass, and he backed away from the door. Even across the distance of the compound, Silas knew what that little rod had been.
“Hey, over here, hey!” Silas called, sticking his face to the iron, screaming at the gladiator until his throat was sore.
Ben followed his example, bellowing through the bars, “Felix, hey, get down from there. Get over here! Felix! Felix! Felix!”
The gladiator ignored their shouts and beat on the door with its arms. This time the door shook and rattled in the frame. Tay’s back was against the wall, face drained of color.
The gladiator heaved forward and struck a massive blow with its right arm, and the door bent inward several inches at the top. The
creature stopped its attack and moved its face close to the gap, looking in. Tay’s mouth opened soundlessly beyond the glass. The creature struck the door with both arms, and the door twisted on its hinges. Without the bolt securing it in place, it was just a piece of steel. The next blow bounced it in its frame. A gap showed along the side.
Silas and Ben screamed again, louder, trying to get its attention.
The door was ajar.
The creature pushed on the door, and it closed. It howled and struck the door, and it bounced open again, a slight gap. This time the gladiator curled its taloned fingers around the door and pulled.
The door swung open with a screech of tortured hinges.
For a moment, nothing moved.
Silence.
The creature ducked its head and moved inside. Silas screamed again, wordlessly.
Tay didn’t run. There was no place to go.
Silas watched it all. The creature moved forward deliberately, flinging a chair out of its way as it crossed the loft. Tay stood with his arms at his sides, motionless, back against the yellow wall. The gladiator gathered into a crouch.
There was a flash of silvery blackness, then red, in streaks on the window.
Silas’s screaming stopped. Silence.
Blood splashed the walls, ran in thick rivulets down the glass. A lump of raw flesh hit the ceiling, leaving a red smear on the white tile. The black shape shifted and bobbed in the window.
Silas stepped toward the gate.
“What are you doing?” Ben’s voice was hoarse.
Silas didn’t answer. He spun the locking mechanism, clicked the first tie open.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
He spun the second lock wide, lining up the ties. Ben rushed him, slamming the lock back home.
“You can’t do anything,” Ben said. “It’s too late.”
Silas shoved him away. “We have to do something.” He lined the ties up and opened the final lock. The door swung wide, and he stepped into the enclosure.
Ben surged in behind him, and the first punch landed against Silas’s cheekbone, spinning his head around. The second caught Silas under the chin before he could react, laying him out neatly in the straw. He saw the ceiling high above sliding away and felt himself being pulled by his feet. There was a click, and then people were yelling. Ben was sitting next to him on the floor.
“You never would have got me if I’d seen it coming,” Silas said.
“No one saw this coming,” Ben said.
L
ATER THAT
night, Silas found Vidonia’s report on his desk. The blood work she’d promised the day before, in another age. She’d left it there while he went to the training exercise. It was the reason she hadn’t been there. The reason she’d missed what happened.
Silas sank into his chair. His hands were still shaking. He tried to read the words, but he couldn’t concentrate. He skimmed the abstract, flipped through graphs.
Vidonia was thorough, he’d give her that. She was what he’d hoped she’d be when he’d decided to bring her in: a fresh set of eyes. An unbiased observer.
She’d broken down the blood into its constituent parts.
The results were highlighted: percent
Homo sapiens
DNA, zero.
Nothing about the creature was human.
His eyes snagged on the conclusion, the final page, the last sentences.
The proband lacks normal mammalian hemoglobin. The oxygen-transport system utilized by its circulatory system is currently unknown to science
.
Like everything else about it.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
R
ain came loose from the sky in billowing sheets. It drummed static on the hood of Silas’s darkened rain slicker, soaking his face, his feet, and drowning the voice of the priest who stood across the open grave. The rain allowed him a kind of solitude among the throng of mourners. It gave him separation. But it could do nothing about the children’s accusing eyes.
Tay had two sons. Neither had his features, but the older was formed like his father made over again: short, thick-limbed—a ten-year-old already hinting at a compact athleticism in his build. Their faces were red, their eyes swollen from crying. They stood against their mother’s side, each clutching a hand, looking with a desperate kind of horror into the pit they would lose their father into.
A black veil obscured Laura’s face. She’d stood tall and erect throughout much of the ceremony at the church, while the church choir sang, and the priest spoke his sad, pretty speeches, and her family had held her hands and hugged her—but now, here at the grave site, she was inconsolable.
Standing in the cemetery, watching your husband about to be lowered into the ground—every wife does that alone, no matter how many people are around her. Just as every son is alone in that moment.
A crowd of friends and family bore Laura up, physically clutching her by the shoulders to keep her from falling. Old women wept with
her. Young women. Men. The crowd was large, and it huddled together in the rain—brothers and cousins and friends.
The priest began speaking again, and Laura’s legs straightened, a show of strength for the ceremony.
“Oh, Almighty God, we commend to Thee our brother, Tate.” The priest held his hands up in the rain. “That he may rise again in the beauty and love of Your eternal light. Receive him into the folds of Thy bountiful mercy.”
The priest lowered his hands and addressed the congregation. “The Lord’s ways are mysterious, and we must remember that each day of our lives is a gift.” The priest spoke for another minute while the rain fell.