Skin (10 page)

“
It’s a
token,” Darius bellowed over the murmurs of the crowd. “A gift I
expect to be repaid.”

“
How?” I
shouted back.

“
Take up
your place on the cross. Or are you all show and nothing real
underneath like your mother was?”

I felt
Sveta
’s hand slide gently over my hand, white knuckled
and gripping the edge of the seat so hard I felt it might
crumble.

“
I had
nothing to do with this,” she whispered into my ear. I believed
her. Somehow this had come down to me and Darius and it had nothing
and everything to do with Sveta.

“
Let me
out,” I said.

Sveta unlocked
the dais and I stood, slowly and deliberately. I stepped out of the
podium just as slowly, carefully measuring my steps, knowing all
eyes in the arena were watching me, eager to see what I would do
next. I walked slowly toward the exit and left without a word or a
glance back.

I left
Sanctuary and walked home slowly, ignoring the constant buzz of my
phone that was Sveta trying to reach me.

I fell
into bed and flicked through the photos Victoria had posted online.
I should go back to her. I should forget this whole thing with
Sveta and just suck it up and work in Prime Fit like any normal
person would have done. There were more photos of Victoria and
Brandt Delaney. She would be happier with him. She
wouldn
’t need to badger him to wear collared shirts
like she did with me. She wouldn’t need to urge him to make
something better of himself and climb a success ladder he wasn’t
interested in. They were two of a kind, Victoria and Brandt.
Brantoria. He was soft in the middle. His fingers were fat. He
would be a ridiculous lay.

I broke up
with Victoria by sending her a text message first thing in the
morning. It was short. It was harsh. She didn’t reply. I hoped she
was hungover. I am an asshole.

I had to
get up onto the cross. The choice had been stolen from me and I
loathed that it was Darius who had stolen it. Sveta too had played
her part. Though she had sworn she had nothing to do with
Darius
’ direct challenge, she had had to have told him
about the Mech and what its connection to me meant. It was a
betrayal.

The
morning I had woken up in that strange jungle of hers, she had told
me what had happened.
Her ‘associate’ she called him,
had intervened.
Darius had been the one to fight the
Mech
’s off me in Saturn’s. There was no one else big
enough to be able to take on that many mega Mechs at once and win.
Darius had likely saved my life.

There was
another rust box gym Dimie had always bitched about, down near the
Remnants. I went there just after noon and asked the fat old woman
behind the desk if I could have a job. She looked me up and down,
grinned, sly and slippery and then laughed.

“
Does it
look like this place is in any shape to hire a staff?” she spat.
“You’re welcome to come and pump on my equipment though,
sweetie.”

It was dirty
and smelled like stale sweat and a sour stink of what was probably
piss, but it felt good to be there on my terms in a place that
wanted nothing from me save a fee. And whatever else the old girl
was dreaming up in her sick mind as she watched me lift, softly
nodding her head, occasionally licking her cracked lips.

I did a
full work up on my whole body and jogged the eleven blocks back to
my apartment feeling satisfied and fatigued and looking forward to
a good meal. So what if I had to go back to whatever stale specials
I could afford from Thel
’s grocers, without Sveta’s
generous wage and the cornucopia of delights she served up at
Sanctuary. Dried bugs, canned fish and wilted greens was a diet
that had served me well before those Animus freaks came to feed on
me.

Sveta
was waiting by the front door and the only thing that surprised me
about that was that I felt a pinch of pleasure at seeing her. But I
was still mad, and I wouldn
’t let her see that
pleasure.

“
You’re
not answering your phone,” she said.

“
I know.
I thought it was a universal sign that a person wants to be left
alone. But I guess you missed that. Or probably not, right. Because
you just do what you want, just get what you want and everyone just
falls into place around you, just hoping that you’ll gift them with
a look in their direction because you’re just so freaking
special.”

“
That’s
not fair, Rev. You don’t have to be angry with me. I told you what
happened with Darius was nothing to do with me.”

I
didn
’t say anything when she stepped into the elevator
and followed me upstairs. I moved between her and my door, unlocked
it and threw down my bag. Sveta did not move to come in and he did
not invite her.

“
How do
you get them? These pests you’re cleaning up from Guessing
streets?”

“
I have
a squad,” she said.

“
How
does it work? Do they just go out and catch whatever turns up or
are you out there targeting beasties specifically?”

“
Both.”

“
And the
Mech? You sent your team after that guy?”

“
Honestly, it was Darius’ idea. He asked me about it first,
and I agreed. I thought it would please you.”

“
You
know he’s on drugs right? Your husband,” I said. “I saw them in his
bag, a little bottle of pills.”

“
That’s
between Darius and his body,” she said. I scoffed and noted she did
not contradict my calling him her husband.

“
He’s
worshipped in that place for all the wrong reasons.”

“
All
champions fall and are succeeded,” she said. “Darius knows his time
is at an end.”

She
turned and left. She didn
’t try to seduce me, she
didn’t try to convince me of any of her freak agendas with words or
her body. Maybe I was making progress with her. It was a laughable
idea.

As the
city night moved towards the muddy yellow darkness that it only
managed above the endless lights below, I grew anxious. I paced my
tiny lounge room and did a hundred push ups in the even smaller
kitchen as I boiled rice , frozen vegetables and tinned mystery
fish for dinner. I even tried to watch television but the
chattering heads and false hysterical laughter only intensified my
jittery restlessness. At six o
’clock I slid into my
old trainers, grabbed my bag and started the walk to Sanctuary,
dragged by an invisible rope and lured by a soundless Siren’s
song.

The
place was filling, ready for the night
’s show. All
eyes were on me as I skirted the gym floor and made my way to
Sveta’s office door. I knocked and waited like a good little boy
waiting outside the principal’s office. Simone, the red headed
maid, opened the door. Behind her, I saw Sveta writing at her desk.
She did not look up until I spoke her name from the
doorway.

“
I’m
ready,” I said. “I’m going on the cross tonight.”

I expected her
to be happy, to hug me, kiss me and tell me how pleased she was
that I had finally come around to see the light.

“
Then it
will be so,” she said going back to her paperwork. Her words were
flat and tinged with sadness. “Simone,” she addressed the maid.
“Take Rev backstage and tell him what he needs to know.”

“
Yes,
Ma'am.” Simone said. She stepped out of the office and closed the
door behind her. Sveta kept on doing her paperwork.

I waited
in the dark. I stood in a small chamber with wooden walls and a
mechanical floor that would raise me onto the cross and before the
crowd. Simone had said nothing of what to expect, where to move,
what to do or anything that might be helpful at this point.
She
’d just handed me a set of the standard fight
shorts, told me to take off my shirt and wished me luck. We had
been the only people walking through the dimly lit tunnels that
were the backstage passages behind the arena. I had expected to
have seen at least some kind of crew, someone who kept the show
moving behind the scenes. I had even expected to have met my
opponent backstage, shared a handshake or something sportsmanlike.
At least I could have sized them up, gained a little inkling of
what to expect. Instead I was alone and less certain of anything,
or anyone, even myself, than he had ever been.

The gathering
crowd in the stands was a muffled mass of sound. It was difficult
to realise it was people making that dull roar; people that were
all going to be watching me fight. Was this what my mother had
heard when she was about to go on stage? People waiting,
spectators, voyeurs. At least she had known what she would be
facing under those lights. At least she never had to question if
what she was doing was right.

I
started to miss her before she died. The mother I knew, the strong,
fierce, wildly funny woman was gone as soon as the diagnosis came.
When the disease had finally taken the rest of her, it was easier
than I had expected to accept that she
’d gone.
Standing in the dark about to take my place on a stage and fight, I
missed her more than I had in twenty years. What would she have
said to me?

“
Fight
the hard fight.” It was one of her many slogan catch phrases. I
think I knew what it meant now.

The marching
beat began and the cheers told me the Guardians were making their
ritual path across the stage. The crowd erupted again into wild
cheers. My opponent had moved onto the stage. Who would that be?
Would I have to beat up on someone I knew. Or be beaten?

I shrugged my
shoulders, trying to loosen my neck. I felt OK, supple, flexible
despite my nervous tension. I focused feeling light, feeling my
breath flow in and out, cricking my neck and flexing my fingers,
bouncing lightly on the balls of my feet. The platform shunted
beneath me and I instinctively grabbed the wall to steady my
balance. Grinding metal gears vibrated beneath my feet and I was
raised onto the cross and into the blinding spotlight.

The Guardians
were dressed as Roman centurions. Combed helmets of bronze topped
their heads, they were shirtless and glistening, short skirts and
sandals. Their short swords at the ready. It was for the first
time, standing on their level, that I wondered what the men were
for. Were they only for show? Why were they really armed or just
wielding stage props?

What looked
like a giant three dimensional spider web woven of thick ropes had
been erected at the centre of the stage. My opponent was an outline
behind it on the opposite point of the cross. I had not realised
the stage was so long. I reminded myself to breathe. This was what
I had to do. It was the hard fight. It was honour, meeting a
challenge, and it meant nothing more.

The crowd was
a dark mass, faces only barely discernible behind the glare of the
lights. The sound of their cheers sent a high pitch buzzing through
my ears. Priest. Priest. Priest. They chanted. So many eyes were on
me. There was only one set of eyes I was thinking about, and they
were those of a snake.

Priest.
Priest. Priest.

The
rhythm of the crowd was intoxicating and my blood pumped in time
with their cheers. I forgot to think about the strangeness of the
moniker they
’d christened me with.

The
Guardian
’s barked their order for the game to commence
and I moved into the centre of the cross where I saw my opponent
clearly for the first time. It was a man, and that was good. The
arena didn’t separate by gender and I had worried that I’d be
unable to do what I would need to do if I had been faced with a
girl to fight, even an Animus.

The man
crouched in a low squat as he ambled to the centre of the stage,
dragging two enormous orangutan arms beside him. The entire top
half of his body bristled in orange ape fur and a hairy human face,
no more than a boy of eighteen, grinned at me. He was
repulsive.

“
I’m
honoured,” he said when they were close enough to hear one another.
“I was meant to be up with Cato tonight and they even asked if I’d
rather sit it out. Hell no, I told ‘em. You might be green on the
cross, but no way was I gonna miss being the man opposite the
Priest on his first time up.”

“
You can
stop calling me that,” I said. “What’s your name?”

“
John,
I’m trying to get a nickname going though, so can you call me
Ape?”

John. It
was such a common name. Beneath all of that hopeless fur, those
over-sized leathery paws that couldn
’t be good for
much, he was probably just a common kid. He might have had a job, a
girlfriend, maybe one day been a Dad and done the whole thing like
a guy was meant to. But now look at him, turned his body into a
sideshow. And for what? For attention here in the arena? It was a
waste of a man.

“
Good
luck, John,” I said, and I wasn’t only talking about the fight we
were about to have.

A series of
small trapdoors sprang suddenly open all around them and I jumped
sideways as one almost opened right underneath my foot. We both
stood at the ready as my head swarmed with the possibilities of
what horrors were about to be revealed from beneath the stage.