The Champion (63 page)

Quentin glanced at Patah — glanced by moving only his eyes, rather than his whole head, although moving just the eyes still hurt plenty. Doc’s sensory pits vibrated slightly, and his cartilaginous ribs flexed a little more rapidly than was normal for his breathing. The team doctor said nothing ... probably because Gredok had ordered him first to approve Quentin to play, then to keep quiet.

Maybe Patah was a pushover, but the female Harrah was anything but.

“No, I will not approve Barnes,” she said. Her name was Ganagati, or something like that. Quentin wasn’t sure. He’d focused most of his concentration on not throwing up as opposed to remembering such details.

“Barnes is not fit to play this week,” Ganagati said. “Our tests show vascular engorgement and elevated intracranial pressure. This looks like SIS, meaning he probably had a concussion earlier in the season that Patah missed.”

“SIS,” Quentin said. “What’s that?”

“Secondary Impact Syndrome,” Ganagati said. “Meaning, you had a second concussion before the symptoms of your first healed. I assure you, Mister Barnes, this could have been
much
worse.”

Quentin forced a casual shrug. “You won’t let me play — how much worse can it get than that?”

“Try herniation of the brain through the foramen magnum, or an ischemic stroke,” she said. “Do you think
that
is worse?”

“That depends,” Quentin said.

“On what?”

“On what a
magnum foreman ischemic stroke
is. Is that like a hangnail?”

“I’ll simplify it for you,” Ganagati said. “It can lead to brain death. Do you want to be clever with that phrase, too?”

Brain death? His brain
felt
dead at that very moment, but Patah hadn’t told him things were that bad.

“No,” Quentin said. “I got it.”

“Be quiet, Barnes,” Gredok said. “Doctor Ganagati, this is completely unacceptable. If you think I can’t sue you for malpractice, for likely taking a payoff from Stedmar Osborne to keep Quentin out of this week’s game, then you are
wrong
.”

Leiba took one step closer to Gredok. Virak took one step closer to Leiba. Both Warriors were massive for their race, heavily muscled, chitin covered with enamels and etched with engravings. A fight between them would have been something to behold.

“Gredok,” Leiba said, “it would be best if you did not question the doctor’s motives. She has the full confidence of Commissioner Froese.”

Virak’s pedipalps twitched in derisive laughter.

“
Froese
,” Virak said, the single syllable heavy with disgust. “What’s the matter, Leiba? After you
quit
football, you couldn’t find a real
shamakath
? Had to go with a runt Human? Or was it that none of our kind would have you?”

Leiba’s baseball-sized eye remained clear. “Gredok, tell your servant to be quiet. His opinion is irrelevant.”

Gredok turned on Virak. “Cease talking,” the Leader said. “You speak as if I am in need of your assistance. Do not make that same mistake again.”

Virak’s cornea briefly swirled with color: dark red of surprise, some reddish-violet and dark red bordering on black. The Warrior took one step back and the cornea cleared. Quentin was shocked to feel sympathy for the Warrior — Virak had thought he’d been doing his job, protecting his Leader, and his Leader had humiliated him for it.

Gredok’s fur remained smooth, his eye clear. “Doctor Ganagati, you are certain in your decision?”

“I am,” the Harrah said. “Barnes is not allowed to participate in Week Eleven at all. No practice, no game against the Elite on Sunday.”

Quentin couldn’t believe it. He’d worked so hard to get here, to help his team go undefeated, only to be kept off the field by
this
? There had to be a way around her ruling. And yet, the words
brain death
rolled around and around in his thoughts, as if they’d been shouted into some deep canyon and kept bouncing out.

Clear eye or no, Quentin could
see
the anger radiating off the little Leader.

“Ridiculous,” Gredok said. “And what about Week Twelve, Doctor?

“We will return the day after the upcoming Week Eleven game for another review,” Ganagati said. “It is possible we will also keep Barnes out for Week Twelve. To be completely transparent, I would not rule out that he might be done for the season.”

The Harrah doctor’s floating body turned slightly, her sensory pits aimed at Patah. “Our time has been wasted here,” she said to him. “Any
competent
physician wouldn’t have cleared Barnes to play in the first place.”

Patah looked miserable. Had Gredok actually thought his team doctor could overrule the league physicians?

Gredok pointed a pedipalp hand to the exit. “Since you have made your decision, there is no need for you to be here.”

He said it as if he had any control over the situation, which, clearly, he did not. But to Gredok, control was everything.

Quentin closed his eyes: the pain finally won, overwhelmed him, blocked out everything else as if he’d been encased in a solid block of the stuff. He heard the footsteps of the Human, the Leader and the two Warriors, each step on the anti-bac tile a tiny nail driving into his brain.

The smallest whisper of fluttering wing-flaps told him one sentient had remained behind.

“The exam is over,” Doc Patah said quietly. “Now there is no reason you can’t take medication. I will leave these pills here for you. Take no more than two, then sleep. If you can.”

The tiny
click
of a plastic bottle on a metal table.

That wing-flap whisper again, fading out.

Quentin wasn’t sure how long he sat there, overwhelmed by the pain.

When he opened his eyes again, he was alone. He pushed himself off the table, picked up the bottle of pills, then shuffled to the door. When he stepped into the hallway, he found Becca, John and Ju waiting with a hover cart, the same kind used to take wounded players off the field.

Becca came to him, instantly. She looked at his face and didn’t need to ask how the league doctors had ruled. She laid a hand against his cheek — it felt like a miracle had just touched his skin.

“Let’s get you back to your room,” she said.

John reached out to slide his arm under Quentin’s shoulder, but Becca gracefully sidestepped and blocked John’s way.

“I got him,” she said, then smiled apologetically.

John looked at Becca, at Quentin, then nodded.

“Oh, right,” John said. “I might be a little rough.”

“Your muscles are too big,” Quentin said in a whisper. “You can’t help but jostle everything around you. Even the air.”

John smiled.
CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS GUY?
scrolled across his face.

“I got him,” Becca said. “I’ll holler if I need you guys, though, all right?”

John and Ju nodded.

“Chicken soup,” Ju said. “Ma will want to make chicken soup. We’ll go get some.”

They headed down the hall. Becca helped Quentin into the back of the hover cart. The cart would quickly take them through the underground tunnel from the stadium to the Krakens Building.

The cart didn’t touch the ground, and therefore had no impact, but the pounding in his head didn’t let up. It hurt so bad he couldn’t see, couldn’t even
think
, but he could smell Becca, he sensed her closeness. For once, it really was like the old Earth myth — he had fallen in battle, and here was his Valkyrie to carry him off to Valhalla.

“Quentin, I’m so sorry,” she said. “I should have been there.”

He laughed: the throbbing in his head instantly choked that laugh into a squeak of surprised pain.

“Oh, please,” he said. “Cheap shot after the whistle. You couldn’t have seen it coming.”

“I should have. Yalla has always had it out for you.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Quentin said. “What matters now is I’m out, and you’re in. I’ll talk to Hokor, Becca — you’ll get the start against Buddha City.”

She slowed the cart, brought it to a stop. She turned in the driver’s seat to face him.

“Quentin, I’m a fullback,” she said. “I made up my mind. This is what I want now.”

He closed his eyes. He was so tired, so beaten down. He no longer had the strength to deal with all the drama.

“Honestly, Becca, I’ve had enough. You go where the
team
needs you to go, understand? If you don’t, it’s time for you to move on. Either you bleed orange and black, or you go play for someone else. You’re a better quarterback than Haney.”

Her wide eyes gleamed with both excitement and fear.

“I didn’t want you to get hurt,” she said. “I didn’t want anything to happen to Yitzhak. I want to play quarterback, but I never wanted it like this.”

“Doesn’t matter how you wanted it. It is what it is.”

Becca bit her lower lip. She spoke in a whisper. “Do really you think I’m ready?”

“Not even close,” Quentin said. “But get me to my room and let me pass out for a day. When I wake up, we’ll
get
you ready.”

She couldn’t quite hide her smile as she faced forward and gently accelerated the cart down the tunnel.

QUENTIN FOUND BECCA
in Doc Patah’s training room. She sat on a table, fully armored and dressed for the game, her wrists taped tightly. Her black jersey, with its white-trimmed orange number 38 and the word KRAKENS across the chest above it, looked unsullied and flawless, like it would for a posed promotional picture or an advertisement.

It wouldn’t stay clean long.

For the first time in his career, Quentin wasn’t wearing his own jersey on game day. He wore black pants, a black button-up shirt with the Krakens logo on the left breast, and a Krakens logo ball cap — the Human version of what Hokor wore. He might wear those clothes any day of the week and feel fine, but on Sunday, they felt foreign against his skin.

The rest of the team had packed into the tunnel. John and Ju were leading them out onto the field. Becca should have been with them.

“Hey there,” Quentin said. “You know, it’s kind of hard to complete a pass if you’re throwing it from in here.”

She slid off the table, grabbed her helmet.

“Don’t worry about me,” she said. “I’m going.”

She started to walk past him, but he put a hand on her shoulder pad.

“Wait a second,” he said. “Let me say something.”

She stopped walking. The look in her eyes worried him. This was not the confident go-getter he’d seen during the week of practice. She hadn’t set foot on the game-day field and was already second-guessing herself.

Whatever had gone down between them, whatever fights they’d had, whatever her motivations, none of that mattered right now. Quentin was the team leader; his teammate needed him to step up and do just that,
lead
.

“We’ve already clinched the playoffs,” he said. “And we’ve got the head-to-head tiebreaker with OS1. Tell me what that means.”

“It means right now we have home-field advantage in the playoffs.” Becca looked off to the side. “But there are two games after this, and if we lose tonight...”

“Then we lose,” Quentin finished for her. “We lose, and we’re
still
in the playoffs. That’s all you have to worry about, Becca. Our team needs this win, but this win is not life and death to the organization. Tell me you understand that.”

She took in a big breath, held it, let it out in a puffed-cheek blow.

“I get it,” she said. She nodded. “Okay, I get it.”

He could see some of her stress bleeding away.

“Good,” he said. “Still nervous?”

She laughed. “Of course. Weren’t you the first time you started an Upper Tier game?”

“I threw up,” Quentin said. “And I had to pee the whole time.”

Becca gave him a sideways glance. “You’re kidding me, right?”

“I swear it on Ma’s life. Almost whizzed myself the first time I got hit.”

She smiled — knowing the Great Quentin Barnes had been a nervous wreck seemed to give her strength.

“Becca, this is why you had Danny go to war with Gredok. This is what you’ve been training for. This is what you
wanted
. You won a Super Bowl in Tier Three, and no one gives you enough respect for that. Not even me.”

That comment hit home. No smile now, no sneer, just her need to know the truth.

“Do you mean that, Quentin?”

She had always been better than he’d given her credit for, better than he wanted to accept. Maybe that was his competitive nature, his need to be head and shoulders above other quarterbacks. Becca would never beat him out for the starting spot, true, but she was still damn good, and in the part of his brain Quentin didn’t want to accept, that had bothered him. The time for selfishness was gone, though — if he asked Becca to do what the team needed, he had to do the same.

“I mean it,” he said. “Becca, this league respects one thing and one thing only.
Winning
. Nothing else matters. If you want people to see you as a quarterback, you need to go out there and find a way to beat Buddha City. This is your shot.”

She nodded. They weren’t boyfriend and girlfriend at that moment, or ex-boyfriend and ex-girlfriend, or
whatever
it was they were. Right then, he was a Galaxy Bowl MVP quarterback, and she was the backup who had never started a Tier One game.

“Remember what we talked about in practice,” he said. “Who is their right defensive tackle?”

“Don-Wen-Sul,” Becca said instantly. “Twelve feet, six inches long, great reach, known for knocking down passes and bull-rushing off the snap.”

“And how to you keep him at bay?”

“Vary my snap-count cadence,” Becca said. “Never make it the same, prevent him from getting my timing down.”

Quentin nodded. “And stay mobile, ready to run, right?”

“Right.”

“Over the middle, who is weaker, their free safety or their safety?”

“Bolgusa, the safety,” Becca said. “Vertical leap has fallen off an estimated three inches since last year. I should go high to Halawa, use Halawa’s superior reach and size.”

It felt so strange to be on this side of the conversation. Pine had done the same to him years ago, as had Hokor, as had even Yitzhak. Quentin had been stubborn about learning this level of detail, but Becca didn’t seem to have an issue with it.