The Games

“About five minutes ago,” said the security foreman. He was a short, hawk-faced man with a dark comb-over splayed across a pale gleam of scalp. His agitation showed in his stance—bent forward, awkward, arms flailing in gestures too dramatic for any self-respecting man with a decent-size pair to dangle. Baskov had known something was wrong the moment he’d shuffled his way into the skybox.

“What did you tell him?” Baskov asked.

“I told him I was going to talk to the commission.”

“And what did he say to that?”

“He said he’d deal with the commission, and I should just do as he said.”

Baskov put a hand on the man’s thin shoulder; he could feel the narrow bones beneath his jacket. “Thank you for bringing this to the commission’s attention. You did the right thing. Dr. Williams has been having some emotional problems lately, and he’s prone to overreaction.”

Baskov released the man’s shoulder and took another drink.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Go ahead and provide the extra icers. I don’t see what that could hurt.”

“And what about … the guns?”

“The icers are part of why we don’t need guns.”

“So no guns?”

Baskov considered this for a moment. “We’ll indulge Dr. Williams’s paranoia. One armed guard in full regalia. I want him dressed sharp, though, stationed somewhere conspicuous. If we try to hide him off to the side, spectators will get jumpy. I’d rather dress him up for display so they assume it’s ornamental. Which, I guess, it is. But I want him standing there for all of the contestants, not just ours. And no other weaponry. I don’t want to start a panic down there.”

The security foreman nodded and scuttled toward the door.

“Wait,” Baskov said. “One more thing. I want radio contact with the guard. I’m not sure how much I trust this situation, and I’d hate to have him do something rash. Get me a transmit into his ear, something subtle. Can you do that?”

“Yes.”

The security foreman left quietly, closing the door behind him.

Baskov turned back to the glass. It was an amazing view. After all these years, he still hadn’t grown tired of it. So far, this particular view of the arena had always meant victory. A gold medal. Tonight he wasn’t so sure.

His informants in the warren had disturbing news about the Chinese contestant. Over the last several months, the Chinese had done their best to keep their gladiator away from prying eyes, but now that it was caged below the arena, a number of the arena handlers had seen it. The description was not encouraging.

Night fell, and the lights of the arena came on one cluster at a time, pushing the shadows ever higher up the stands.

Baskov smiled as the stands collected their asses. People flowed downward into their seats in colorful trickles of bright clothing. Yellows and blues and greens and reds. Tiny rainbow ants. At the base of the pit far below, prep teams combed the sawdust with giant rakes, evening out rough spots on the killing floor as a last preparation for the competition.

Banks of speakers arranged at intervals around the arena chirped loudly in unison as the announcers powered up their system for the show.

The door swung inward as the first group of guests arrived in the skybox. Baskov had handshakes for them, and smiles and nods. Twenty minutes later, the skybox was brimming.

The competition was at hand. It was zero hour.

“Where’s Silas?” someone asked.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Evan sat and stared at the glowing screen. He sat until his legs cramped, then grew numb. He climbed to his feet only when dehydration drove him to the faucet for a long, gulping draft of cool water. He drank greedily and splashed his face and neck.

This was a test, he was sure of it.

He sat again before the screen, racked by the possibility that he might have missed something. Some flicker on the screen, some hint of a message.

Hours later, when the urge to evacuate his bladder became too much, he stood and relieved himself into the garbage can, never taking his eyes off the screen.

He stood vigil for what was to come.

He listened to the sound of the waves.

Sometimes it was just static, but other times, the waves were unmistakable. The most beautiful sound he had ever heard.

Pea was close. He could feel it. Right on the other side of the plasma screen.

He could feel other things, too, though he didn’t understand their meanings. Remnant echoes left behind in his skull during his last trip inside. Flashes in his head. The world was on the verge of some great change.

The gladiator, he knew, had something to do with it. And that bastard Baskov. He couldn’t be sure what, but the time was fast approaching. He didn’t know how all the pieces fit together.

Pea was the one. Pea was the one who knew all the secrets.

All Evan knew was that the world would soon be different.

Baskov would pay for what he’d done. Pea would have a plan.

Pea must have a plan.

Evan crouched in the darkness and waited.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The crowd.

Protesters congealed at street corners. Black asphalt, white concrete. Streetlights translated distance into discrete pools of illumination. The Olympic arena rose like a blister, glowing up at the night sky, circled by parking lots and low gray buildings. And circled beyond that by larger Phoenix itself, the city and its suburbs, and finally by the mountains.

Because it is necessary for a march to begin at a remove from its final destination, the crowd of protesters gathered here, on Seventh Avenue, some distance from the arena. Here traffic had stopped, a given-up thing. Cars were abandoned in the throng.

From above, the crowd appeared as a living organism, a single amoeboid mass, pseudopodia curling down city blocks, bunched into muscular potential.

Only at street level was the crowd’s multicellular nature manifested. Men and women in T-shirts and sandals and hats and backpacks—the new protester class. They were young, for the most part, this proletariat; they were educated and considered themselves enlightened and kind. They were turgid with righteousness. They had many solid and steadfast views about the world and their place in it—about science and religion, and about themselves—and they were going to disrupt this Games if they could.

Men in dark ties directed from the sidelines, gray bullhorns clutched in fisted hands. These men in ties also thought themselves enlightened, also thought themselves righteous, though they harbored few misapprehensions about their own kindness—and each of them, to a man, understood that the difference between a crowd and a mob was defined simply by the presence of a nervous system. And they were that nervous system.

Uniformed police watched it all from a distance, a safe some-blocks-off distance, positioned between the crowd and the arena, clutching riot shields. Phoenix was a clean city, a modern model of neatness and