Chapter 3 Sirens
SIRENS
Steelhawk Center in SoDo has the worst lighting of any rink I’ve ever played in.
It’s not even the usual institutional blue-white that makes the ice look clean and all the faces ghostly.
This shit is green, sickly, and every time you look up it’s like someone flashed a dentist’s lamp straight into your corneas.
Maybe that’s why we always play like we’re hungover, even on the nights when half the team’s actually clean.
Today, though, I don’t care. I’m dialed in.
The last two shifts of practice are slapshot drills, edge to edge, no break, just skate hard and wind up and let it rip.
My lungs are clawing at my ribs and my thighs burn every time I cut a turn, but it’s better than standing still. If you stand still, you have to think.
If you have to think, you might remember there are only fourteen games left before your contract gets quietly euthanized and you slink back to Tacoma like the cautionary tale everyone expects.
The drill leader blows the whistle and I jump the blue line, collect the pass from O’Doul, and snap it back to the point.
The defenseman cycles, fakes a wrister, and slides it across for me to one-time. Every muscle in my right side coils, uncoils, slamming the stick into the puck so hard the vibration travels up to my elbow.
It’s a good shot. Not perfect.
There’s a little flutter, probably the heel of the blade wasn’t flush but it’s got heat. It hums past the D, rising, and for a split second I’m sure it’s going bar-down.
Except Darius is in net. He’s always in net.
The guy never calls in sick, never even fakes a cramp.
I watch him in the crease, balanced as a fucking yoga guru, eyes level with the puck, and just before I let it go I know, I know he knows where I’m putting it.
He drops, kicks out the pad, and the puck slams into his toe and ricochets to the corner with a noise like a bone breaking.
Darius doesn’t even flinch. He resets his stance and gives me a micro-nod.
I skate past the crease, try to keep my chin up like I meant to shoot it low. “Good save,” I mutter, just loud enough to count.
“Good shot,” Darius says, and it doesn’t sound like an insult, which somehow stings worse. The guy’s so fucking polite you could die.
Next cycle, next shot.
The same, over and over, sweat collecting under my pads, stinging my eyebrows, salt in the cut from last game.
I can feel it weeping, just a little, every time my helmet shifts. By the end of the drill, I’m so gassed I can barely catch the puck clean, and my hands are slick inside the gloves, like they’re melting.
Coach Vasquez paces the boards, arms folded, mouth set in a straight line.
She’s in full psycho mode today, probably because the GM was at yesterday’s game and we coughed up a three-goal lead in the last period.
That’s what you get when your entire D-line is an open invitation and your goalie is one blown suture away from the IR.
“Last round!” she barks, and we all line up for suicides.
The energy is pure middle-school gym class, everyone low-level dreading it but too scared to be the one who bails first.
I focus on my breathing, in for two, out for four, just like the therapist said. I picture each lap as a cigarette, a little burn, a little death.
By the end, I’m wheezing but upright, which is more than I can say for Cap, who finishes with a spectacular full-body sprawl and lays there face-down until the trainer rolls him onto his side like a beached seal.
“Hit the room,” Coach calls, and a couple of the guys immediately drop their sticks and make for the tunnel. Not me.
I linger, turn, and look at Darius, who’s still in the net, taking pucks from a kid they pulled up from the minors for extra reps.
His form is beautiful. Not like, “wow, what an athlete” beautiful, more like the beauty you only notice after you’ve been hit by it a hundred times.
He tracks the puck with his whole body, always a fraction ahead of the play, never guessing, always knowing.
There’s a rumor he used to be a figure skater before switching to hockey because his dad thought it was “less gay.”
I don’t know if that’s true, but it explains the feet. And maybe the shoulders.
I tap the boards with my stick and Darius glances over, the faintest smile breaking through.
Then the kid whips a shot and it rings off his mask, so loud the echo bounces off the glass and hits me in the chest.
For a second, I wonder if it’s possible to be jealous of a guy who’s built his whole life around standing in front of high-speed violence and just absorbing it, but then I remember what it feels like to score on him in practice. The rare times it happens, it’s electric.
Like you cheated the universe. Like you matter.
I coast to the tunnel, trail behind the others, and unstrap my helmet as the sweat freezes to my scalp.
The cold air feels good. I breathe deep, taste the metallic tinge of blood, and for a moment I’m almost relaxed.
Then, from the hallway, there’s a weird noise.
A siren, not the usual buzzer, but something higher and insistent. For a second I think someone tripped the fire alarm, but the lights don’t flash and nobody seems to panic.
Instead, everyone just… stops.
The alarm slices through the air, a long, piercing wail that makes the hair on my arms stand up.
Coach Vasquez’s voice comes over the loudspeakers, sharp, all the vowels flattened by the shitty intercom. “LOCKDOWN. EVERYONE TO THE BENCHES. NOW. LEAVE YOUR GEAR.”
There’s a beat of pure confusion, the whole team frozen, mouths open, helmets half-off.
Then the guys start moving, fast, all the bravado gone, just shuffling toward the boards in silence.
Darius appears at my shoulder, mask up, eyes wide. “Is this a drill?” he says, but there’s no one to answer.
We all crowd onto the bench, pads creaking, gloves sticky on the rails. The siren keeps going, warbling up and down, never stopping.
No one talks. Not even O’Doul.
I sit, my heart pounding, and watch the door at the end of the rink, waiting for something to make sense.
———
We're still on the bench, packed tight, nobody breathing right, when the lockdown alarm cuts out.
For a second there's nothing, just the hum of the rink lights and the creak of the boards under twenty sets of skates.
Then the first shot hits.
Not the alarm. Not a puck.
A sound I've never heard inside an arena but recognize instantly, the way you recognize a scream, not because you've heard it before, but because your body already knows what it means.
Another pop, then another, then the sound doubles and triples like someone's turned the world up to max gain.
This is not arena noise. This is not a game.
A streak of shattering glass at the top of the boards, and something black and lethal punches through the plexi three feet from O’Doul’s head.
He ducks just as the boards explode in a fan of plastic shrapnel. The sound that comes after is a wet, sick thud, and then a player goes down hard, face-planting into the ice.
There’s a scream. Then more gunshots.
Then everyone is moving at once, bodies slipping and scrambling for any kind of cover. Helmets, gloves, sticks scatter in every direction, an instant chaos, evolutionary and total.
Coach Vasquez’s voice cuts through: “BACK ROOMS! MOVE, MOVE, MOVE!” Pure command. It’s the only thing I can hear over the ringing in my ears.
I try to process. Are we under attack? No, too slow, too rational. Just move.
The nearest exit is a skate-sharpening tunnel behind the home bench, a blind run past where at least two guys are already flat on the ice. I slip once, recover, dig hard, dig harder.
The rink is longer than I remember it ever being.
My legs are not listening, my brain is just a slow stutter, and every breath is knife-cold and hot at the same time.
Another pop, closer, this time it’s definitely a gun. There is no other sound in the world like that.
I see Darius before I even realize I’m looking for him.
He’s halfway down the slot, hunched, all six-three of him tucked in like a turtle. We lock eyes for a half-second, pure animal fear in both faces, and then he’s running too, matching me stride for stride.
Neither of us says a word.
We reach the end boards just as two more shots rip through the air, and a body, someone in our colors, no idea who, careens into the wall, leaving a trail of red that’s too thin and too bright to be anything but blood.
I dry-heave mid-stride but keep going.
We make the tunnel.
The air is instantly warmer, but the cold has followed us inside, lodged in our bones, marrow-deep.
The other guys are already ahead, a stampede down the corridor toward the locker hall. I hear Coach’s voice again, less a word than a bellow, “Keep moving! Don’t stop!”
I want to obey. I really do. But my feet are slipping, every muscle turned to shit, my heart somewhere in my throat.
It’s only when Darius shoulder-checks me into the wall, hard, like he’s sending a message that I remember how to function.
We round the first corner, nearly collide with a trash can, and keep running.
The overhead lights are humming, bright and weirdly sterile, the world reduced to concrete and rubber mats.
Behind us, the noise is lessening, but it’s replaced by something worse, the muffled sound of crying, of bodies hitting the ground, of confusion so total it feels like drowning.
Up ahead is the main crosshall, the intersection that leads to the locker rooms, coaches’ offices, and the main exit.
There’s a skid mark on the tile, black and sticky. We turn right and almost trip over him.
Cap is there.
Ryan Holt, our captain, our goddamn golden retriever of a leader. Face down, arms spread in the classic crucifix, but there’s nothing Christ-like about it.
His jersey is torn open, shot to ribbons, and the back of his helmet is gone, like someone cored an apple through his skull. Blood pools out from under him, pooling so fast it’s like the floor is tilting.
I freeze. I can’t not freeze. I have never seen a dead body before, not up close, not like this.