Endgame (The Amnesty Games Book 3), page 10
The Finest bites his lower lip. He squints his eyes behind his shaded face shield. Those face shields are designed to protect the eyes, but they serve the double function of making those eyes slightly visible but largely unreadable.
I guess it makes sense. I doubt we’d be as afraid of dead-eyed animals like snakes, spiders, and sharks if they had soft, blinking, readable, and gently expressive eyes.
“It’s not our job to tell you what you did right or wrong,” the Finest says at last. Flicking his thumb toward the ceiling, he adds, “That’s the big guy’s job.”
“God?” Darrion asks.
“President Walsh,” the Finest snaps.
As Darrion mouths an apology and shrinks back, the Finest’s jaw pulses. His lip curls up as he points again at the jumpsuits at our feet. “No more talking. No more stalling. Put them on.”
There’s a little blip in his voice, a hint of hesitation. I can tell he’s trying hard to make it sound like an order instead of a request.
I hate hearing the humanity in him. I hate thinking of him as conflicted, as a person with orders, insecurities, and complex thoughts swishing around behind those dark, shielded, expressionless eyes.
I miss having these guys be invisible.
A knot of muscle twitches in Nico’s shoulder. His body swells with energy and glows with power. It might not be a literal glow, but I see it all the same.
While I stand there frozen, Sylvie steps forward and curls her fingers around Nico’s forearm. “I’ve done the calculus,” she says, tapping her temple with her finger. “There’ll be a good time to fight, Nico. This isn’t it.”
I swallow hard before adding, “She’s right.”
But does she really have to touch him every time she talks to him?
From his rock-solid stance next to Nico, Anton has gone from pleading to fuming. His breath is freight train loud, and I swear the fury in his cheeks and neck is giving off actual heat.
Zyrha whispers for him to stay in control.
“Fuck that,” he mutters back through the corner of his mouth.
From behind his shaded face shield, the indecipherable eyes of the tall Finest ping between me, Nico, and Darrion. “You’re the Games Academy geniuses. You’re supposed to know when it’s time to make a daring move and when it’s time to play it safe.” He tilts his head toward Anton and pauses for dramatic effect before adding, “What’s it going to be?”
I hold my breath and wait to follow Nico’s lead. He’s a proven leader and the person my mother trusted more than anyone in the world—including her own daughter. I trust his judgment a lot better than I trust my own. I’ve seen Nico restrained, and I’ve seen him cut loose. Unlike me, he has the self-control to think things through before taking action. If he wants us to fight, we’ll fight.
Of course, we’re trapped, cornered, outnumbered, and unarmed, so I’m not optimistic about our chances.
Without taking his eyes from the Finest, Nico bends down and scoops up the jumpsuit.
Next to him, Anton’s huge body deflates a little. I know he wanted a fight. Or maybe he just needed one.
Personally, I’m torn. The Hawker in me definitely wanted a fight. The game-player in me wanted to weigh the options and choose an optimal strategy. The daughter in me wanted to find my father and beg him to forgive me. The scared little girl in me wanted to make a run for it and disappear forever into the Netherwoods.
Preferably with Nico.
But those are phantom-limb thoughts—teasing, imaginary options that propel you forward with one hand while they yank you back even harder with the other.
That leaves me helpless and frozen in the motionless middle.
Nico’s right to give in, but he’s wrong, too.
Given our situation, a draw is about the best outcome we could have hoped for. Of course, that didn’t stop me from hoping for more.
The Finest offers up a smile and a sarcastic nod toward Nico before letting his eyes drift around the room. Scanning the rest of us, he swallows hard. The tendons rise in his neck before he barks out, “All of you.”
The shorter Finest holds up a green canvas bag. “Your old clothes go in here.”
“Can’t we just put these on over top?” Darrion complains.
The Finest shakes the bag. “You’re Hopefuls now. And that’s all you are.”
Grunting his resignation, Darrion starts to peel off his clothes. The rest of us do the same until the six of us are standing there in our underwear.
As the Finest look on, we slip into the white jumpsuits. As the shortest of us, Zyrha has to cuff her sleeves and pant legs. My jumpsuit is loose but not baggy. Tugged tight over his huge frame, Anton’s jumpsuit strains at its seams and threatens to pop its stitches. Nico’s and Sylvie’s jumpsuits fit like they were tailor-made for them.
Naturally.
“That’s better,” the Finest nods as his partner scoops up our old clothes and scrunches them down into his green sack. “President Walsh will be glad to see that you got dressed up for him.”
Nico’s lip curls up in a fuming snarl. Sylvie cups her fingers over his shoulder. She doesn’t try to talk him down this time or offer any soothing words of consolation.
Her presence seems to be enough. She has a calming effect on him. It’s practically magical. I’m about to get jealous of that fact, but then I remember all those training sessions with my fellow Hawkers and how Nico would keep me after for extra practice. He was strict, driven, relentless, and sometimes even mean in his efforts to get the best out of me. One thing he wasn’t was calm.
Sylvie may have a calming effect, but the end result is a Nico who isn’t really Nico.
Who knows? Maybe there’s something I can give him that she can’t.
Without taking his eyes from the Finest, Nico assures us that everything will be okay.
“We’ll be back for you,” the Finest promises. He starts to turn toward the door but stops and catches Nico’s eye over his shoulder. “Oh, and you’re right. Everything will be okay. But only after everything goes terribly, terribly wrong.”
The squad of the Finest leaves, shutting the door and taking our clothes and the last bits of our hope with them. The sound of the lock clicking in the door might as well be the sound of our coffin closing.
Darrion startles me when he surges past, nearly knocking me to the side in the process.
He hits the door with the side of his fist and lets out a string of profanity, most of it involving the Finest and the unsavory nocturnal activities of their mothers.
Exhausted after his curse-filled tirade, Darrion whips around toward us and slams his back to the door. “I’m sick of being locked up. It’s not even incarceration. It’s torture. Why don’t they just kill us already?” He forces a strained, teary-eyed smile before adding, “And get all this over with.”
I cross the room and take Darrion’s hand in mine. “We’re going to get out of this.”
His eyes are wet and red. He smirks and taps the middle of my forehead with his finger. “You’ve got a lot of illusions up there.”
I press my thumb to my chest. “And a bit of hope in here.”
“Hope,” he huffs. “is just another word for ‘illusion.’”
Grinning, I remind him about what Zyrha said about hope being the thing with feathers.
“Yeah. The thing with feathers is also the thing that chirps you awake way too early in the morning, eats worms, and shits all over the sidewalk.”
Anton tugs at the waist of his jumpsuit and stares down at the black block letters on his chest. “Speaking of hope…”
Instead of a long list of crimes on the outfits worn by the Hopefuls, our jumpsuits have the same single word, printed in black block letters across the chest.
*HOPEFUL*
As Hawkers, it was literally our job to crush hope. Hope was our adversary. Its destruction was our goal.
And now, here we are, wearing it on our chests.
Surrendering to a new depth of defeat, the six of us resume our places in pairs on the floating silver benches.
“Remember when being hopeful used to be a good thing?” Darrion quips.
“It’s us who turned it bad,” Nico reminds him. “We screwed things up by hoping we could change them for the better.”
“Bullshit!” Zyrha snaps. “You did the right thing. You did the only thing. Hope is never bad. It comes from wanting what you don’t have.”
“That’s selfishness,” I counter from my seat next to Darrion. “Selfishness and greed.”
“No. Hope is wanting what you need but can’t have and what you don’t have the power to get.”
Darrion scowls at her. “You’re saying hope is hopeless?”
“I’m saying that Alora’s father’s version of hope is different from ours.”
“She’s right,” Anton tells me. “Your father hopes for the world as it is—or at least as he pretends it was in some made-up, ‘perfect past.’ We hope for a world as it has the potential to be.”
“Sounds like there’s a nice, big fat line in between,” I offer.
Nico smacks a fist into his open palm. “Yep. And it’s one I’m personally about to rip to shreds.”
Darrion exhales a scoffing snort. “And what do you plan to do, Nico?”
“For starters, not get boiled.”
“I think it might be too late for that,” Darrion sulks.
Nico’s muscles swell, and I swear he actually gets a few inches taller, bigger, and broader. “I can’t speak for anyone else in this room, but I’m going to fight until I’m dead.”
The others nod their agreement, but I don’t.
I wish that sounded more like a promise than a prophecy.
14
HAULED
We sit in sulky silence, draped in our white jumpsuits, for about an hour.
It hasn’t been a long time, but it feels like forever.
Opening the door, the same tall man from before summons me forward. Pointing at Nico, one of the guards in the doorway behind him says, “You, too.”
Darrion leaps between us and the Finest. “Forget it! You’re not taking them without taking all of us.”
“We can do that,” the Finest in the doorway promises. He’s tall but not especially large—not Anton-big anyway—but he remains an intimidating presence all the same. It’s the contrast: his polished, black field armor versus our white canvas prison uniforms. It makes me feel smaller and weaker than I am.
Until recently, I was still dressed in my Hawker gear of boots, brown leather with silver trim, and an array of belts, sheaths, straps, and holsters—all empty. We learned in the Games Academy that uniforms like ours help to create unity, a sense of belonging, and the feeling of a common purpose. But they do more than that. They’re not just outfits designed to create separation from the enemy and camaraderie with each other.
They’re also a way of saying to that enemy: We’re together. We have a team of people taking our measurements and making this armor to optimize our ability to kick your ass in battle. You, on the other hand, have a bunch of cobbled together bits of scraps.
And then you have the Hopefuls. They get forced to dress the same, but it’s not about camaraderie for them. It’s about saying to them: To lessen your senses of individuality and identity, you’ll wear the matching gear we give you.
The same matching gear we’re wearing now.
Decked out like the rest of us in his white Hopeful jumpsuit, Darrion beams at the tall Finest and gives him a double thumbs-up. “Great. We’d love to stay together.” He dares to fire off a wink at the man. “If it’s okay with you, that is.”
The Finest levels his Jammie at Darrion.
Darrion raises his chin in defiance. The tendons on either side of his neck jut out as he swallows hard. He’s a jokester and a goofball, but as we’re discovering all too painfully, being giddily optimistic isn’t exactly a bulletproof vest.
The Finest shifts sideways and aims his weapon at the wall. “We’ll keep the six of you together if you insist.” He takes a second to shift his attention from Darrion to me and Nico before returning his predatory gaze to Darrion. “Only, we’ll be hauling their two living bodies and your four dead ones.”
To prove his point, the man fires the Jammie. Instead of a few simple impact pellets, the weapon unleashes a flurry of actual explosive projectiles. We all jump as the shot leaves a cluster of jagged craters and a spattering of chalky, star-shaped flashburns in the wall of the Detention Room.
The Finest runs his fingers over the thick barrel of the weapon. “The weapons you use hurt. The ones we use kill.”
The weapons of the New States are supposed to be non-lethal. In fact, that applies to all the New States technology. That was the promise after the Secession Wars:
No guns. No military hardware in the hands of civilians or of those responsible for the welfare of civilians. No more lies about needing to protect oneself from the government. No more preemptive killing out of hate, fear, or patriotism.
Your fear, insecurity, and ignorance don’t justify your need to possess deadly weapons.
In fact, they disqualify you.
Despite guns being an entrenched part of the Old States, after the Secession Wars, they were among the first things to go.
No. Not “despite.” Because guns had been so entrenched, they were one of the first things that had to go.
It was one of the slogans we grew up with: “You don’t put up a new building on an old foundation.”
It’s what makes the Amnesty Games a game instead of an execution. We get that fact drilled into our heads all the time, and we were reminded practically every day at the Academy.
Our teachers insisted we memorize it: “The Jammies fire disabling impact pellets that cause limpness in a target by interfering with signals between the brain and the muscles. The wrist-mounted Ballista crossbows fire paralytic darts that cause the muscles to seize up. Daze-blades are electrified and designed to administer a convulsive shock. Camdrones record. Monitors broadcast.” Our teachers always offered up wide, comforting smiles at this point. “Painful, not deadly. Justice hurts, but it should never kill.”
A week ago, that was all true. Now, nearly none of it is.
Stunned, Darrion stands down. Even Zyrha, Anton, and Sylvie look too terrified to speak up on our behalf.
It’s hard to blame them. Nico and I aren’t being taken to freedom. We’re being taken one step closer to our execution.
As the Finest lead me and Nico out of the room, I resist the temptation to look back.
I know if my eyes meet Darrion’s, I’ll instantly remember all the fun we had together as kids and all the pain we’ve gone through as exiled and hunted Hawkers. If I see Zyrha and Anton, I’ll remember how I’ve let down the two people who had faith that I could somehow push their revolution into high gear.
If I catch Sylvie’s eyes, I’ll probably get a death stare in return.
Either way, I keep my eyes locked to the armored back of the Finest in front of me.
The team of Finest escorts me and Nico along a sterile corridor, past a glass-walled security station, up a flight of stairs, and out into the open air of Nova Heights.
Nico and I both shield our eyes with our hands before pausing to take a long breath.
We’ve been on the run for a while now. We’ve spent most of that time in the ruins of the Ward and under its ash-covered sky. We’ve skulked around at night to avoid detection, and we’ve hiked through countless miles of dry sewers, abandoned underground tunnels, and the dense, scraggly maze of the Netherwoods.
Our various cells have had lights. The dark tunnels we weaved our way through were dotted with active monitors, showing a wide array of old games in dazzling color. We’ve even been up high in the upper floors of the Ward’s decaying and weed-infested office buildings.
But this is different.
It feels like forever since we’ve breathed the mountain air and even longer since we saw the sun.
It’s refreshing and invigorating. It’s also a tease, a temporary reminder of all we’ve lost and of all we’ll never have again.
Like that phantom limb.
The Finest lead us on a forced march from the Detention Room up toward the top of the town’s main, winding road.
As much as I’d love the chance to keep breathing in this fresh air and enjoying what feels like freedom for another hour or two, unfortunately, we don’t have far to go.
Spread out below us, the bottom levels of Nova Heights are mostly markets and the large, open-air atrium where we used to train. The Games Academy is down there, too, along with the dorms, other smaller training camps, games preparation and education centers, health and wellness centers, and specialized vocational schools for the craftspeople who build the actual games and set them up in Amnesty Arena.
Above those levels are the markets, shops, cafés, food stands, kiosks, and specialty restaurants. Above those, the residential levels take over. There are officially eleven residential levels, each boasting dozens of long houses of stone and glass tucked into the woods and running mostly along the south and east-facing sides of the mountain.
Above the residential levels, Nova Heights has its administration buildings. Those contain offices, repair centers, maintenance facilities, a financial control and oversight department, and weather monitoring stations. It also includes the Detention Rooms.
It’s from there that Nico and I are led outside and onto one of the largest of the many well-worn and faded cobblestone paths crisscrossing and snaking its way up and down the mountain.
From here, there are only two more levels of Nova Heights between us and the mountaintop: the governance level where my house is and the Command Center.
Which means that my house is sandwiched between the Detention Level I’ve just left and the Command Center where I’m supposed to be. One way or another, all roads to Heaven or Hell lead through the place I called home.
With that firmly in mind, I give Nico’s arm a little nudge with my elbow. “Is it just me, or does this climb to the top feel more like a plunge into Hell?”
