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Love of Olympia (Olympia Gold)

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It was the first ever Olympia Gold to end with silence. Every spectator sat on the edge of their seat, mouths agape, as every camera showed the same image. Galia, as she drifted back to slumber. Her weak fingers unfurled from around the Olympia Gold Medal. Cybil had to look away from his microphone to clear his throat before he could call it.

“The Dreamweaver wins. Galia Hattel and Deidra Benier are this year’s Olympia Gold Medalists.” The two weren’t awake to enjoy it. Koslav urged his assistants across the deck for them, while Ares imploded into blinding whiteness below.

Epilogue

It was the oddest way to awaken, for Galia. Her eyes blinked open, on a white ceiling. She was unsure about everything: where she was, if she was alive or dead, if anything that had just happened was real. Now that it was all so abruptly gone, it certainly seemed like a fantastic dream. She tested her body, one limb at a time. Arms, legs, toes - it all worked. What was more, it worked painlessly. Galia laughed; a free and smooth sound for the first time in years. Then she tried to sit up. A strap across her chest kept her down, on a wheeled table. She tried to undo the strap, but her wrists were bound too. Only her head had some limited movement. She was in a green paper robe.

“De… Deidra?” Galia tested her voice.

“I’m here,” Deidra answered almost instantly. The sound came from directly in front of her, where Galia couldn’t lift her head to see. She plopped her head back into a pillow, a long sigh escaping her smile.

“I can’t believe you carried me all the way…” Galia marveled. Truth was, now that the shock and instinct had time to course their way out of her veins, neither could Deidra.

“Yeah. Well… I expect you to pay it back in full,” she tried to play it tough, but she was tired. She had little strength left for games. Besides, the Olympia was over. “I… I thought nothing could scare me anymore… until you wouldn’t get up…” Deidra’s bottom lip quivered. A warm bead of water squeezed from Galia’s eye. It trickled down the side of her face, to her pillow.

“Shh, it’s alright now,” Galia found herself saying. Both girls quieted when a sliding door opened, somewhere in the room.

The clack of footsteps signified they had company of two. Before they knew it, their tables rolled right from the room. Galia squinted to protect herself from the bright lights, through a white ceiling. A hospital, she realized. The wheels of their gurneys were the only sound in the otherwise vacant wing. The nurses turned Galia and Deidra through another sliding door, where they undid their restraints, then left. Free to move, Galia sat up, only to find a thin man in a suit. He waited patiently at a

small table, fingers folded. In such a setting, he looked oddly like what he was, a frail old man. It was hard to see him, just then, as the intergalactic tycoon who owned rights to the Olympia Gold.

“I trust you two are feeling better,” Koslav smiled, and extended a hand to the chairs. Galia and Deidra sat across from him.

“You treated us?” Galia marveled. Now that she could move them, she couldn’t stop flexing her painless fingers.

“I got you back to standard human working condition. I’ve found combatants forget what that feels like, over the course of the Olympia,” smiled Koslav. With that slight smirk on his lips, Galia could see how he and Yuri were related. “I don’t want to mislead you. Galia, you are still very ill. The only reason you feel nothing is that you have more painkillers in you than blood right now.”

“Oh,” Galia breathed a single note of defeat. Yet still, Koslav smiled.

“Though, you’ll find the means to seek treatment is rather within your grasp now,” he said. His old hand crept across the table, sliding something. When it retreated, a gold disk shimmered between them.

“Why? When we know your secret?” Deidra posed. Even in her hospital gown, she felt twice as bold now as she ever did. Koslav only chuckled, so much so that a tiny drop of drivel escaped his lips. He dabbed it with a handkerchief from his suit pocket.

“Good cinematography,” Koslav explained, “Whether or not you meant to… you picked an excellent spot to make your hopeless last stand. Perfect lighting. Plenty of cameras. Crisp audio with no resonance, out in the void. You did win the Olympia, by all proper standards, and everyone saw. I couldn’t well have you both go missing after that. Every private eye in the system would smell foul play.” The way he laughed it out, so subdued, like their lives were really just a minor inconvenience, gave Galia violent chills. They dissipated a bit when he added, “Not to say I want to end this love story so soon after its inception. The way you two fought for one another out there… let’s just say this was the first Olympia in years that I found myself rooting for someone other than my brother.”

“So… what now?” she said.

“Well. As the lovely Deidra said, you two have a secret of mine. But not the whole thing. I can’t have you digging around to get to the bottom of it, kicking up dirt better left settled. In the interest of everyone here, I am going to tell you a very short story. You will listen, without interruption,” Koslav demanded. Galia and Deidra, gulped, then nodded.

“My brother Yuri was a pilot for the Wold Biologics Organization. He was an officer of consequential rank. At the end of his career, they sent him with a small team out past the farthest colonies in Alpha Centauri. He was meant to research some parasite the WBO had seen the effects of, but never actually seen. On the mission, he suffered the bite of some ridiculous otherworld creature. Yuri brought the WBO back their parasite as they intended, inside of himself. What they didn’t anticipate was that, when they tried to extract it from him, he and the parasite formed a symbiosis. By the time I saw this for myself, Yuri was knee deep in the blood of his entire WBO research colony. He killed them all, then, as far as his commanding officers knew, himself. Really, he came to me.”

“The parasite made him more than strong. More than durable. I couldn’t think of a word for him that didn’t sound ridiculous. But that was fifty-six years ago. Now it doesn’t sound so ridiculous to me, to call him almost invincible. Immortal. But the parasite also made him angry. Wrathful. It gave him uncontainable rage. I did my best, but I couldn’t hide him and fund the research for a cure. So I created a competition to do both.” Koslav’s tale wound down here. He spread his arms like he was presenting a large dinner, not the most horrifying fable Galia or Deidra had ever heard. “The things we do for family,” he mused.

“So he enters the competition just… to kill?” Deidra concluded.

“Under different names, only every few years. Otherwise, people might catch on. His suit is designed to keep him in check, as much as I’ve figured out how, but bedlam is really the only thing that helps with his symptoms.” said Koslav. He sucked down a breath and adjusted himself upright. Now he could put the tale of Yuri behind him for another few years of quiet research, he was a new man. “This Medal and… other compensations are my insurance that this story never leaves this table. Do we have a deal?”

“Define other compensations,” Galia prompted, cautiously. Koslav humphed, arms crossed.

“So long as Yuri goes on with developing treatments, unspoken of, Deidra’s freedom. Replacements for whatever parts you need, Galia. That, on top of this Medal,” said Koslav. Galia and Deidra’s hands slid for the disk at once.

“Deal,” they both said almost in unison.

The days following the Olympia were always the most congested of the year on Greymoor. Galia and Deidra waded through seas of cheering bodies through the once dull streets, now laced with color. String lights, streamers, and facepaint had exploded across Ganera, the Skyport, an beyond. The two attended the necessary publicity minimums, but had a different off-the-books destination in mind. One last time, Deidra was grateful for the Gold Standard collar around her neck.

“Show me the Forge,” she whispered. She and Galia followed the projected map out past city limits, across the moors. There was an abandoned, dusty old bar waiting for them. They were more than surprised to see the company of another hoverbike docked in front of the Forge. The doors opened to a body wrapped in black and green

“We are going to transfer a dump truck of credits to you as soon as we find a buyer for the Medal,” Galia spewed instantly, “To pay for your ship.” The Terra Eagle raised both hands to calm her.



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