Chapter 20 – Alone on a Platform
I blinked my eyes open and found that I was in bed. The blinds were all drawn, dark rectangles outlined with a line of light from the sun outside. I shifted and winced, anticipating pain – but there was none.
I laid there for a moment, waiting for the hurt to catch up with me.
I'd been punched. I was pretty sure Grigor had broken my nose, and then he –
I drew one hand out from under the covers and touched my lip, and no blossom of pain followed. I prodded my nose, my cheekbones, the skin around my eyes.
All fine.
A long, shaky breath left me.
Somewhere in the dark of the room, I heard the sound of a body moving. "Araxis?" I ground out. Although I wasn't in pain, my whole body felt stiff, my throat dry and disused.
"No." The familiar, high voice of Silver Sea.
My heart sank as I realized in a dizzying, disorienting moment where I was. I let my head tilt away and tried to stop the tears rising behind my eyes. Stupid. Of course it wasn't him. We were still here. We were still pretending.
"How bad is it?" I asked after a long, silent moment.
"That depends on what you're referring to." On the distant wall, a faint glow pulsed to life as she called up her wristband. Her fingers made soft ticking sounds on the digital interface, humming with haptic feedback. "Shall I catalogue all angles?"
My traitorous tear ducts had won. A hot tear beaded at the corner of my eye, sliding down toward the sheets below.
Another slipped over the bridge of my nose, and landed with a soft patter.
Somehow, that soft sound and the heat of the tears tracking down my skin made me feel even worse.
I cleared my vise-tight throat as best I could. "Sure."
"How bad was your medical state when we found you? Quite bad. You were taken to the medical suite and treated for several dangerous conditions. It was physically taxing for your body, but you will be fine, so how bad are you now? You are mostly fine."
I didn't feel fine, so I didn't say anything.
The glow on the far wall changed colour, roiling to a dark purple. "How bad was the altercation with Grigor Spade? He has been disqualified. You were not at fault."
"And Araxis?" I asked, my gut churning.
"His response was proportional and assured your ability to continue to participate.
Without intervention, we are quite certain Grigor Spade would have killed you.
So, a bad interaction, but not an awful outcome.
" A thin sound whistled from her nostrils.
"I should amend: it was an awful outcome for Grigor Spade's handler, but he will recover his status after several years as an intern again. "
The light shifted again to an orange, warm.
"How bad in terms of the effect on viewership?
It has been considered a rather riveting turn of events.
It would have been better if we had a camera on the rooftop at the time of the altercation, as the footage we were able to salvage was low quality – but I believe that has added an illicit quality that has been particularly exciting for our audience.
How bad in terms of how this has impacted your current odds with the official bookkeepers?
I'm afraid to say they are not optimistic about your chances of winning the Tournament.
Nearly being beaten to death was not a net gain for your betting odds, although your viewing metrics are exceptional. "
"Great." I propped an elbow against the mattress and gingerly slid myself to a seated position, my shoulders wedged against the plush headboard.
I felt fucking weird, as if all my joints and bones had been wrapped in cotton batting.
Nothing moved quite like I expected, and everything took deliberate intention.
My body, the tool of my trade and firmly under my command, was a stranger to me, and I hated it.
I made a show of scrubbing my face as if to wipe away the bleariness of sleep, but instead I tried to hide any evidence that I'd been crying.
"There are two areas in which things are rather bad," said the shadow that was Silver Sea, lit up only by the faint glow of her wristband as she sat on one of the couches. "First, our legal and sponsorship department."
I swallowed around the lump in my throat. "Okay," I said. "How?"
"Grigor Spade had his entry fee paid by Grace Mining Initiative.
" She said the name in English, which was jarring coming from her mouth, none of the vowels quite right.
"They are a new corporate entity born from a partnership between a smaller mining affiliate on Mar and Seraphim Station.
They have filed an official complaint about Grigor Spade's disqualification.
As the marn interest is held by some of the ruling warrens, this has caused several significant sponsors to threaten to withdraw their funds. "
"They think he shouldn't have been disqualified?
" I couldn't believe that, not after everything Silver Sea had told me about how the conglomerate ran its show.
The threat of disqualification was part of the appeal, and a big reason why contestants were able to make it to the actual Tournament instead of being poisoned or, you know, bludgeoned to death in the filming leading up to the official commencement.
"Grace Mining Initiative alleges that you used cultural knowledge to deliberately provoke Grigor Spade.
They have also claimed that human physiology made it impossible for him to resist his violent urges, and that as you are a human and were aware of his weaknesses, this should be perceived as an attempt at sabotage. "
I wheezed, winding up to interject, but before I could force any words out, Silver Sea stood and came closer.
Her weight settled on the edge of the bed.
"The conglomerate has rejected this claim and there will be a later investigation into the basis of this physiological assertion.
As we have not had human participants before, the truth of that matter is unknown and will guide future acceptance decisions. "
"I can tell you that it's bullshit, but sure – whatever you have to do." I folded my arms tight across my body, holding myself as I blinked through the murky darkness at her shadow. "You said two things were bad. What was the other?"
"Where you stand with me," she said thinly. "That is also currently bad."
Well, shit. A wash of panic, frigid as ice water, slid down my back. "Hang on," I said, "You're not in trouble, are you?"
"You sent me certain messages that would suggest your altercation with Grigor may have been intentional and deliberate. This would lend merit to the idea that your efforts were a type of sabotage."
"Fuck, I'm sorry, Silver Sea," I said, sudden. I reached out for her in the dark, but she was too far away. "I'm – I didn't mean –"
She huffed out a thin, whistling breath again, and I heard the soft jingling of her trinkets. "How fortunate that there is no record of those messages." Her tone was casual, quiet in the dark between us.
"I –"
"It is also fortunate, I think, that none of the video or audio feeds in your quarters are currently active and that your wristband has been deactivated for the time being."
My tongue wet my lower lip, my mouth suddenly very dry. My body must have thought I was in danger, because my pulse picked up. "Is this… when you kill me for making you be an intern again?"
There was silence between us for a moment, palpable, and then Silver Sea laughed.
It was a bark, bright and sharp and a little dangerous, and it didn't make me feel any better at all.
"You are fortunate that I am very good at three things: the first is scheduling; the second is making allies, which is why certain conversations are able to happen off-the-record; the third is getting what I want.
And what I want, Sashen Solar, is a win.
So tell me, and do not try to lie to me: what is it exactly that you are doing here? "
So I told her.
I mean, I also lied to her, but I told her some of the truth.
I was here because I owed a massive debt to Seraphim, which they'd finally decided to claim. I had no other options – it was this or go back there, and frankly, being beaten to death on the rooftop would have been better.
I told her that Grigor had said Seraphim wanted me back, and that I thought they were worried I was going to talk shit about them and make them look bad. Given Grace Mining's reaction to what had gone down, I assumed they were still worried about that.
I admitted that I had hoped coming in that I might use my wiles to convince some rich, lonely alien watching the broadcast to pay off my debts so that I could yield and be whisked away to some galactic palace or sex dungeon or whatever.
That I had figured Grigor was going to maybe try to kill me or get me in some sort of trouble, and therefore my chances of winning or, more likely, winning someone's heart were at risk – so I had wanted to get him out of contention.
I'd slipped him a suggestive note and waited for him to chase me down, because he was disgusted by me and would be revolted at the idea that I'd make a pass at him or, worse, that I thought he'd be interested, and I'd had Araxis along just in case things got too violent and I needed help.
She listened, and only asked a few questions. And when I finished, admitting that my plan had been incredibly stupid even if it had sort of worked, I added, "I'm not sure I'm the person to work with, though, if you want to win. I'm not going to win this."
She snorted. "There are many ways to win and few of them require winning the Tournament. You've said yourself: a victory for you involves being free of Seraphim's debt claim, one way or another. A secondary prize would be to survive."
"Yeah. Although, I mean, the palace on the moon would be pretty nice too." I risked a smile. Her eyes were better than mine, so I bet she could see it.