“Yeah, and I knew it wouldn’t change a damn thing about the boat you’re in. A boat I’ve… been watching for a long time. So it’s still ma’am, and a little respect from you, understand?” Clarabelle’s eyes welled with water. “Until you finish these games and get off of this artificial hell.” Deidra composed herself with a single throat-clear.
“Thank you. Ma’am,” she smiled, “Do you think… you could tell me what happened, to Jonas?”
“I’ll tell you what I told Kayn years ago. What she still refuses to believe. She was maimed by the man who killed Jonas. She went unconscious, and when she woke up, your
dad was gone. She loved him, and she believes she put him down. Kayn hasn’t forgiven herself, since the second she suited up as the Terra Eagle.” said Clarabelle. She inhaled long and deep for the air to bring it all back up. “His name was Yuri. We thought he was down. The man took a solid energy-sledge to the skull. But… he woke up. Just as Kayn knocked out your dad, Yuri woke up. I moved to help, but…”
“What? What did he do?” Deidra couldn’t hold back, when Clarabelle trailed off, hand around the outside of her arm.
“He… grabbed Kayn by the back of the neck. He pinned her to the side of the Thruway, while we all raced down. It was so fast… Yuri held her there until her screams stopped. With all her strength and weapons, she couldn’t fight him. When he was done with her, he floated to Jonas and he just… crushed his throat,” said Clarabelle, eyes swimming with the ghosts of the scene, “Then he moved to the next combatant. I never saw another person act that way. It was like he didn’t even see the people he was killing. Like he didn’t know why. He made his way around the Thruway, while I pretended to be asleep, crushing. Snapping. I pretended to be unconscious.” Deidra was quiet a while before she found it in herself to ask,
“How… did you make it?”
“We reached the other end of the Thruway. The round ended before he got to me,” Clarabelle told her. “Now, this is the part that you three need to worry about.” The sound of three drew Galia and Rey in closer, to listen. “The thing is, you already know Yuri. I had to be sure, before I told you, and now I am.”
“What do you mean?” said Galia.
“Kayn and I have been tracking him, over the years. He enters the Olympia at distant, random intervals, under different aliases. That way, his statistics don’t build up too much. In my research… his combined fatalities are the highest in the Olympia, by double the runner-up. He changes his hair and beard, even his eye color on occasion, but he has two trademarks. You’d never catch it unless you attended most Olympias.” said Clarabelle. A chill infiltrated the blood of the Dreamweaver’s crew all at once.
“Let me guess: one of them’s a pinstripe suit?” Deidra shuddered. Clarabelle nodded.
“The other’s a bite-shaped scar on his neck, under his collar. I caught a glimpse of it the other day, when he was in here, she said.”
“Yuri… Daniel, killed my dad?” Deidra whimpered. The image of his smile from inside the brain-cooking energy helmet emerged from her nightmare fuel.
“And God knows how many others,” said Clarabelle. She reached over the table to grasp Deidra’s other hand. She shot a look to Galia, who was disarmed by her intensity. “Don’t let him take my girl.”
What could Galia do, but nod?
Chapter Sixteen: Reverie
“This is it. We make it through this, and we’re in the running for the Gold Medal,” Rey was the first to find the voice to speak. It had been a sullen, tense ride to the arena of the Reverie. Unlike the other challenges, “arena” wasn’t a word the crew would have picked to describe this battleground. Its serenity was jarring. Aisles upon aisles of mauve crystal towers reached up from a vast, shimmering lake of pink auroras. The Dreamweaver hovered over them now, to the starting line beside the Terra Eagle and Daniel. “You’ll get your freedom,” Rey said to Deidra, then “You’ll get your new… everything,” to Galia.
Deidra only half absorbed his words. She couldn’t stop reading the endless rows of writing inscribed on the crystal towers. From a distance, they were senseless runes. Through the scopes of Deidra’s cannons, however, she could read them plain. The names of those who’d given all for glory in the Olympia Gold, to date. Somewhere in the endless memoriam were names that she knew. Roran. Rex. Devin… Jonas. Deidra was still in disbelief that she believed Clarabelle’s story. Clarabelle DeLuce. Her dad was taken from her, her wrists shackled, by a man two ships over.
“What about you, Rey? What will you do with your winnings?” Deidra posed, if only to kill some of her nerves.
“Hmm… strippers,” Rey said. Galia and Deidra snapped free of their tense trances in hilarity when he went on, “I’m not talking run-of-the-mill, either. I’m talking four-boobs, maybe an extra arm or lizard eyes. The really exotic package. Maybe one with a doctorate, so she can teach me a lesson.”
“Vile,” Galia smirked, “I love it.” But then Rey did something she hadn’t seen him do in years. Not since she weaned him off shooting his own supply. He put his head down. He stared at himself in the perfect mirror of his shiny black boots.
“I’d… try to find Julia. She probably wouldn’t want a damn thing to do with me, but I’d try to find her. Just to know she’s alright,” Rey admitted. Under the drugs, the hypothetical strippers, the reform and violence, he admitted he was still a man. Galia leaned over to snap a firm hand on his shoulder.
“You’re a different man now,” she found it in herself to say. “You only lost her because you thought leaving was the best thing for her.” Rey’s eyes jumped up to her.
“I told you that?”
“You did, once. When you were going through withdrawal,” Galia explained. Rey leaned back in his chair, counting the seconds until Cybil started his announcement. Had he taken just a few seconds less, Rey might not have said another thing about it.
“Doesn’t matter what a father thinks is best, when he leaves,” he muttered, to fill the tense vacuum. Deidra reeled back from the revelation that Rey’s daughter was somewhere, out in the stars above. It was only Galia’s frantic glance that prompted her to speak up.
“She might not forgive you, but… No matter how mad you are at your dad for leaving, it would be better to see him. At least to know why,” said Deidra. She, Galia and Rey shared a long look for the few seconds left to the commencement of the round.
“Here we are, folks. I can’t believe we’ve come this far already,” Cybil’s voice echoed over the crystal lake of the Reverie from his floating podium above. His use of we made Deidra sick, like he’d done a damn thing. Like he’d suffered. “I can’t believe this competition! The renegade single combatant. The crowd favorite Terra Eagle. The dogged and determined Dreamweaver, starring our very own Deidra Benier of The Gold Standard! These three remain in contention for the Gold Medal. But this round is about those left behind as well. The defeated crews. While we tip our hats to those who are no longer with us to participate, we welcome those who are, to do everything they can to bring down the active combatants. We’ve armed them with everything they could want to do so.”
Cybil paused for the survivors of the fallen crews to cry out from the tops of their crystal towers. They were staggered throughout the Reverie crossing, to make for a consistent hell throughout. Amongst the cries for vengeance, Galia picked out one above all else.
“For captain Rex!” the ever-faithful crew of the Hammer blasted into the night sky. Corelia stood at the front, a laser long-blade in both arms.