Fledge (40 page)

Something to be said for common sense.

After that I'm attacked from all sides. My wings thrust and twist as I evade, then flip around and change direction, using my momentum to bowl into the middle of my attackers. They scatter and I choose the closest one and drag him down to the gravity plane, not the mushrooms from last night, but a long, flat stone surface that pulls you down relentlessly once inside the field. No one wants to follow me down there, so I have him to myself. He tries to understand my grappling moves, but simply can't. I break his ankle, then crack his head on the stone and stop to catch my breath.

A large guy comes out of nowhere and knocks me down, his hands around my neck. My foot goes up and catches him in the head, he flinches, but keeps hold, preventing oxygen from reaching my brain. I see the stars of unconsciousness coming when I snap back to my senses and chop him repeatedly in the temple. He loses his grasp fractionally, but I take advantage and twist my body around, then send an elbow into his gut and the palm of my hand slams up against the underside of his jaw. I hear a sickening crack and he lets go of me. I kick him in the teeth a few times to make up for the marks he left, then lean down and twist his neck until he's limp.

Another guy is standing a few feet away, wondering if he should take his chance at me, and decides he should with a grin. His claws come out and they are the length of good-sized swords. I fly upward and leave the gravity field behind, better to engage this one up top. He follows me, much quicker and skilled in the art of flying, and grabs my foot and tugs me backwards. My body crashes against him and then his razors rake across my stomach, splitting open my armor and penetrating my skin.

I scream and squirm, but he keeps hold. Our thrashing propels us over to the transparent barrier and he smacks my head against it face-first. The blood spouts out from my nose as the people behind the barrier pound against it so hard the vibrations thump against my body. I see his reflection in the glare on the barrier, but I force myself to stay still. His hands are going for my throat, ready to snap my neck when I reach up and over my head and drive my razors into his skull with as much force as I can. He screams and the people on the other side of the barrier go wild. I push off the wall and swing his body up over mine, then flap my wings as hard as I can and crash his head into the barrier.

Paybacks are always a bitch.

I pull out the claws and turn him around so he has to watch, then force his teeth to meet my knee in a blood-spattering crunch.

Before I can even take stock of the scene another guy slams me against the wall. I recover with the help of free-G momentum and fly, flitting in and out of other pairs and trios busy fighting each other and then press my wings flat against my back and tuck and reverse thrust. My follower smacks into me hard, and we bounce apart like the perfect inelastic collision demonstration in a cadet-school physics lab.

My smaller mass has me taking the brunt of the energy transfer and I go careening off, slamming face-first into a huge guy who looks like the only thing that could possibly make him happy right now is dismembering my body. He grabs my arm and twists it behind my back. I can almost feel the tendons in my shoulder stretching. I flip my feet up in front of me, over his head, and before he even knows what's happening I've got his neck locked between my thighs and I'm squeezing the life out of him. His body goes limp and begins to float in the fight wind. I let go, then push him as hard as I can down below the red line.

I finally have a chance to take stock and spy Kush across the arena, but he's busy killing, so I leave him be.

The guy from before has a team with him and they surround me. I fly down to the G-platform and wait casually to see if they really want to try this.

They do.

All four of them circle me, crouching a little like they know what the fuck to do when I come at them with hand to hand moves. I immediately hunch my shoulder and duck my head, coming off as submissive as possible. It pumps up their rage and they stand up a little taller. I turn my hips so my right shoulder is facing the guy closest to me without taking my peripheral eyes off the other three, then talk him up. "Come on guys, let's team up. I'll make us all rich." My arms are bent, my hands talking along with my words, and they stop noticing the movement. I scoot a fraction towards the nearest guy and then slam my palm into his mouth and hammerfist him in the neck, halfway between the ear and the spinal cord. The brain stem chop will take out anyone, you don't even need that much force.

He doesn't get back up.

His buddy has me in a chicken wing before I can blink, both of my arms locked in his, thinking he's gonna hold me there so his friends can beat the shit out of me, but he's wrong. He head butts me from the back and my vision blurs from the impact. Inside I fly into a private rage and bring my right leg behind him, stretch it all the way over until it's outside of his right leg, then simply stand up. He falls back like an idiot and I hear the crowd go wild. I take a chance and finish him off with two sharp stomps to his jaw, one halfway up the side, where there's a tiny little hole that allows nerves to pass through the bone, and then a second up where the jaw meets the skull. Another hotbed of nerves. I hear the crack and smile as the pain in his eyes registers.

The sharp stab against the side of my neck knocks me down on the ground and the other two guys are on me now as the blood from the razors pools and sticks to my hair. I grab the shirt of the first guy as the second guy holds my legs down. Their razors are clawing at me, blood is running down my legs and arms inside my uniform, but the pain never even materializes. The adrenaline running through my bloodstream takes care of that.

My hands crawl up his shirt and I pull him towards me, biting off the top of his ear once it's within reach. His blood drenches me and makes him panic and forget to hold tight. I hammerfist him in the back of the neck relentlessly while his buddy tugs on my legs to pull me out from under him. I let go and allow myself to be pulled. When I'm free of the defeated bleeder on top I thrust my upper body up and grab the other guy's neck, squeezing until he has to let go of my legs and pry my little fingers off.

My legs scramble and get between us and I simply kick him off me. He goes careening across the stone slab but I'm on him before he can even decide if he wants to get back up. I slash his throat so deep his final heartbeats pulse up in the air like a fountain.

The ear bleeder isn't done with me and now it's one on one.

He rushes and connects with my stomach, sending me careening backwards, sliding across the smooth stone surface. I decide to make an example of this last asshole because I'm getting tired. I kick him off, girl-style, a few quickies to the balls, one to the jaw, and then scoot backwards and stand up, crouching a little to egg him on.

He bounces back up, still sure of himself even though he's about to lose consciousness from blood loss. He looks down on my diminutive size and takes his last step. I slide in, grab him around the knee with one hand, then pinch his Achilles heel with the other. After that it's a simple little pull. He goes down and I keep hold of his heel, squeezing, but I don't finish him. I let go and wait as he sends me backwards with his flapping wings. I hunch over, pretending to be out of breath and tired, ready for it to end.

He takes the bait and gets back up like a dumbass.

I walk towards him and grab him with both hands, one behind the neck, the other on his bicep, and swing into a flying arm bar, taking him down and slapping him on the stone. It's the exact same move I pulled on Ashur when we trained for Fight Six, except this guy has never seen it before. Most of the time the flying arm bar is a bullshit flash move that almost never works. But here, his head crashes into the stone so hard the skull hemorrhages blood and bits of bone fly up and sting my face.

The crowd goes wild as I push all their bodies off the slab and watch as their names go dark on the scoreboard.

And then I look around to see where we are.

Kush is standing at the other end of the slab, just watching me. I smile and he walks over and gives me a hug. There are still half a dozen fighters but three of them go dark in the next few seconds and the other three nod to us and dive down.

They're done.

And only we are left.

I stare up at Kush, breathing hard. "Well, you wanna win, or should I?"

He pulls me to him again and leans down into my ear. "It's all you, Junco. You are the only reason I'm here."

He flies off and dives down below the red line, then flies back up and stands on the slab, bowing to me, gesturing towards the prisoners that await my Deliverance on the other end of the arena. His name goes dark and then there is just me.

And twenty-one prisoners that I am supposed to kill.

I turn to face them for the first time since entering the arena and I feel sick to my stomach. Every one of them is barely hanging on. I don't know for sure how long they've been strung up like that, hours at least, but it has taken its toll and their heads slump like they are already dead, a sharp contrast to their erect bodies, and each rigid limb, wings included, being pulled taut in all directions by the wires that connect them to the pillars off-stage.

The stage has been reformed from last night and is not deep at all. It only allows enough room for the prisoner to stand plus a foot or so of extra space for the executioner.

Which is now me.

I reach under my shirt and hear the crowd gasp as the SEAR comes out. I take a deep breath and power it up, wincing at the hissing loop of genetically enhanced plasma as it comes to life in my hand.

I look over at Kush who has seen me kill with this before and he nods. Then I dial it up a little to a medium length dagger and fly over to the first prisoner. The guy is a mess, his hair matted with sweat, his bowels vacated and his body smelling like shit. His eyes are alert now that the time has come, they dart back and forth as he desperately tries to move away from the inevitable final justice of my weapon.

The crowd is almost silent for a second, almost a hush, but then I raise the knife and begin the smooth cut through his neck and they stand up and cheer wildly.

If I was alone, I'd puke.

Not just from the smell of the SEAR cutting through flesh, although that is enough to make anyone hurl. But because these people make me sick inside, in my heart. The thirst for killing the avians have displayed since I came to live with them is the farthest thing from human I can think of. Only the most disturbed individuals on Earth would participate in an event like this.

At least I tell myself that.

Because I don't want to think of what reality I might have to face if this was the true nature of all sentient species. To kill, to punish, to make people pay. And then have to extrapolate that same inhuman, barbaric characteristic to myself. I've killed more people than I can count, and today I will kill twenty-one more.

I move onto the next guy and it's the same shit all over again. The stench from him, combined with the smell of flesh on fire, sticks to my olfactory receptors, imprinting that molecular signature into my memory forever.

I repeat this eight more times to the undulating cheers of the masses in the arena that ebb and flow, rise and fall, as I cut and withdraw.

I complete the tenth guy and pause briefly to look at Tier.

The crowd calls for his death as he struggles to lift his head, and then lets it drop back to his chest as he realizes he hasn't got the strength. I don't worry about his judgment of me, of what he might think of who I really am at this moment. Because in a few minutes it won't matter.

I pass him by and move on to number eleven. From there the killing, the smells, the screams, the cheers – they all merge together. I'm lost. Just utterly lost in the buildup of death that surrounds me.

When I finish the twentieth guy I fly back over to Kush who looks at me with a pained expression. Something I don't really need at this particular moment is his righteous judgment, but if anyone has a claim to righteousness, it's probably Kush.

He drops the look and walks towards me, then takes me in his arms and squeezes. The people, impatient to see if they will win money, to see if I will kill Tier, or cut him loose and stand and fight against my own team of Aves warriors, begin jeering at me, calling out names, and stomping their feet.

I look down to the far side of the arena and find Lucan. He's standing, his palms pressed up against the transparent barrier. Then my gaze sweeps around the arena and I find each of my 039 teammates, minus Braun of course. One by one, as my gaze passes over them, my brothers shake their heads at me, telling me no. Even Ashur shakes his head and when he realizes I'm paying attention, he says it out loud, then begins to scream it.

I look back at Lucan and I hold up my hand to make people shut up so I can speak. It takes the better part of a minute, but they finally calm down.

"Please," I beg the Archers on the far side of the arena. "Don't make me go through with it, please pardon him. Please don't make me go through with it."

Chapter Forty-Five

Lucan sits down without answering. The crowd resumes their jeering and screaming as I turn to Kush and swallow hard, refusing to let the tears flow for such a selfish emotion as fear.