he wasn’t being stressed at all. Which he wasn’t. He was a robot. Duh. Still, it bugged me.
“We’re all in this together,” I said. “You’d think they’d like to open up a little bit, I mean, if only to complain.”
“I cannot say for sure,” Fourteen said. “But from what I have heard, they do not wish to know their opponents. They fear it would be difficult if they entered into a friendship with someone they might have to kill.”
Oh. I guess that made sense. It was scary, but made sense.
“Where do most of them come from?” I asked. “From the city? What’s it called? Rune?”
“Some do,” Fourteen answered. “But Veego spreads her net wide in looking for worthy competitors.”
“How does she get them to come here if they know it means death?” I asked.
“They do not have a choice,” Fourteen said. “Once a candidate is found, dados are sent to retrieve them.”
“Retrieve,” I repeated. “Like cattle being rounded up for slaughter.”
“I do not know what that means,” Fourteen said.
“Doesn’t matter,” I said quickly. “So they come here and train and get chosen for events and as long as they win, they stay alive.”
“That describes it,” Fourteen said. “We try to make them as comfortable as possible during their final days.”
“And what do the challengers get in return?” I asked. “Besides death?”
“Their families are paid a handsome sum when they win,” Fourteen answered.
“And if they lose?”
Fourteen hesitated, then he said softly, “Their families are given the ashes.”
Life on Quillan was turning out to be cruel.
“So what about the party?” I asked. “If the challengers don’t hang out with one another, what about the party I saw the other night?”
“That is an exception,” the dado answered. ‘After a competition there is always a celebration. Like a reward. It is the one time that the challengers socialize with one another, though they never discuss the games. They talk about their former lives and their homes and families, but never about the games. For that very short time they allow themselves to be… how would you put it? Normal.”
Normal. Yikes. There was these challengers were treated. They were expected to perform like trained dogs, put their lives on the line and for what? A couple of bucks for their families? And a party? How wrong is that? I was beginning to get the picture that Quillan was a pretty messed-up place. There were a lot of disturbing puzzle pieces flying around. I needed to start piecing them together.
My run with Fourteen ended up at the place called the “garden.” It was on the far side of the wooded compound, surrounded by trees. We jogged into a clearing and I saw a familiar sight: the octagonal platform where the Tato match had been played. The match that killed Remudi. This was the “garden” the guy out in the street told me about.
It was a strangely forlorn place, mostly because nobody was there at the time. I stopped running and stepped onto the platform. It seemed big, but I’m sure it felt much smaller when it was towering high in the air. I tried to imagine what it would be like to be on this tilting platform, desperately trying to keep my balance. I glanced past the platform, wondering where Remudi might have fallen. I know this sounds weird, but even if I hadn’t seen the match, I would have known that something tragic had happened to a Traveler there. I don’t really know how to describe this; it felt just as weird to me as I’m sure it does to you reading it, but it was like I could sense the loss of life. I know, you’re thinking I’m getting all cosmic on you, and maybe I am, but I swear, I felt as if a cold hand had grabbed my heart.
“Why did you bring me here?” I asked Fourteen.
“Forgive me,” he said. “This is on the way to the field where a game is being played.”
“Then let’s go,” I said, jumping off the platform. I didn’t want to be there anymore and hoped I’d never have to set foot on it again.
The two of us jogged back into the woods, away from the octagon and the cold feeling of death that had settled over me. A few minutes later we came out of the woods to see a big playing field of grass. It could easily have been a football field or a soccer field. There was a game being played that involved not only challengers, but horses.
We quickly climbed up into a tower that was an observation platform. Looking down on the field, I saw two teams of four challengers on horseback. Each team had two girls and two guys. They weren’t wearing their personal challenger shirts. Instead they had team colors. A white team and a black team. They still had the familiar diagonal stripes across the front, though. The playing field was about the size of a football field. There were large nets at either end that looked like goals. I saw pretty quickly what the point of the game was. Each of the riders had a long stick with a net on the end. They fought over a soccer-size red ball, trying to scoop it up. They would then pass it to a teammate to throw into the opposing team’s net. It was like lacrosse on horseback. Sort of. There was more.
Each team had three more players, but they were on foot. They could run with the ball or kick it like a soccer ball. It was a dangerous position to play. I saw one guy get whacked with a stick. It wasn’t an accident. He was running with the ball, and got clocked so hard he dropped the ball and landed on his head. If he hadn’t rolled out of the way, he would have been trampled. That didn’t look like an accident either. The guy who nearly ran him down was trying to get him.
“This is insane,” I said to Fourteen.
“The challengers on foot are those who are less gifted,” he said in his flat, monotone voice.
“The guys who still live near the clown room?” I asked.
“Yes,” Fourteen answered. “They will never compete in the individual challenges. They are expendable.”
“So it’s okay in this game to run them down?” I asked in horror.
“It is encouraged,” he answered. “LaBerge feels it adds to the excitement.”
I glanced up above one of the goals to see a scoreboard flashing numbers. This was a game that was being broadcast throughout Quillan. It was hard to watch. Wondering who was going to score wasn’t nearly as nail biting as wondering who was going to get hit, or trampled. I couldn’t watch. The sounds of the pounding hooves often gave way to sick dull sounds of bodies being pummeled. It was absolutely barbaric… and strangely familiar. I felt as if I knew this game, but that made no sense because I definitely never saw anything like it. It was kind of like lacrosse and polo and soccer, but it felt more familiar than that.
I had no idea why, until I asked Fourteen, “What do they call this game?”
“It is called Wippen,” he said.
Wippen! I did know this game! Wippen was a game they played on the territory of Eelong. The catlike klee would ride on zenzens, which I know you remember were horses with extra leg joints that made them tall and gangly. On foot were the poor gars, the humans, who often didn’t survive a game. This was the exact same game that was played on Eelong, right down to the name! But how could that be?
“What do you know about Wippen?” I asked Fourteen. “I mean, is it a traditional game played on Quillan?”
“I do not know,” he answered. “You would have to ask LaBerge. He designs the games.”
The more I thought about it, the more it didn’t make sense that it could be a total coincidence. Maybe it’s possible that two games could be developed on two different territories that were exactly alike, but to both be called “Wippen”? That was too much. Yet another confusing twist had been thrown into the soup.
“I don’t want to watch,” I said to Fourteen, and climbed down the platform.
As we jogged back toward the castle, an idea came to me. “Hey, does this mean there will be a party tonight?” I asked.
“Yes,” Fourteen said. “Would you like to attend?”
“Absolutely,” I said.
This was going to be my first real chance to interact with the other challengers, other than trying to keep them from killing me in a game, that is. I didn’t want to miss it. I ran back to my room, took a shower, and got dressed in a clean Challenger Red uniform. Fourteen brought me a delicious dinner of grilled meat, vegetables, and a tasty, buttery pile of fluff that reminded me of mashed potatoes but, I was told, was mashed tribbun. Who knew I
