Chapter Fifteen Sadie
Fifteen
Sadie
We remained in place as people began streaming out of the coliseum, many stepping over our knees to reach the aisle and the stairs. I hugged the backpack with Nope close, careful not to let anyone crush her.
Once the area around us emptied, I figured I could safely speak. “Where do you think that doorway leads?” I asked Arturo, leaning over Nedd so I didn’t have to shout.
“No idea,” Arturo said. “Anyone ever heard of Elysium? Sounds familiar, but I can’t place it.”
“It’s a mythological heaven from ancient Earth,” Suki said quietly from Arturo’s bag. “It featured heavily in the philosophical writings of Jason Write, who brought humans onto the galactic stage using cytonics.”
“And created the AIs that later became delvers,” Arturo said.
“Huh,” Nedd said. “If they’re using ancient human rhetoric and training people to fight…wouldn’t the Superiority have intervened? Ivy is egging them on, not opposing them.”
“It does seem like Ivy has influence over the humans here,” Alanik said softly. “I don’t think it would be wise to approach them. They may not be friendly to our cause.”
“I don’t understand what Ivy could be doing with them,” I said. “What good are a bunch of scion fighters in an End Times war?”
“Specialized melee fighters can be useful in many situations,” Suki said. “It’s difficult to hold territory without ground fighters, and human strike teams would often assassinate the leaders of planets they conquered.”
Arturo and Alanik exchanged a glance.
“There were a few human bodyguards working for the Superiority before they fell,” Alanik said. “I assumed they had breeding programs.”
“Do you think Ivy was tasked with farming bodyguards on Blightfall?” Arturo asked. “It wasn’t in the information we stole, so it would have been classified even within the Superiority.”
That was a sobering thought. And it raised the question: “If Ivy is supplying the Superiority with human bodyguards,” I said, “then where is she sending them now that the Superiority has fallen?”
“We need more information,” Arturo said. “We don’t know if that’s what’s happening at all. It would help if we could see where that gate leads, and talk to some of the gladiators.”
Dayan and Kalia remained on the arena floor, shaking hands with fans who gathered at the edge to greet them. Even the losers seemed popular—I guessed, given their point system, that they probably had to lose a lot of matches before they won enough to ascend to Elysium.
We couldn’t talk to them now—they spent barely a second or two with each audience member before moving on to shake the next hand, and security guards stood behind them, ready to hustle the gladiators along if anyone tried to take too much of their time.
If we wanted to have a conversation, we’d have to catch them when they weren’t surrounded by adoring fans.
As the crowd thinned, crews of people—mostly our age or younger—climbed the steps and filed down the rows of seats, sweeping the floors with wide-bristled brooms, discarding leftover bits of food, and gathering forgotten belongings.
“I wonder if they’re hiring,” I said.
“The custodians?” Arturo asked.
I shrugged. “Sure. It’s the kind of job where they probably always need people, right?
No one likes to clean up other people’s messes, and this place is huge!
We wanted a way to make money. And if we work here and look like we fit in, we’ll be less suspicious when we ask questions.
We might even be able to catch the gladiators after all their fans have gone home. ”
“It might also give us access to that doorway,” Alanik said. “Let us see where it goes.”
“That’s a good idea,” Arturo said. “Sadie, why don’t you approach one of the custodians and ask if their employer is hiring.”
I blinked at him. “Me?”
“Yes, you,” Arturo said. “You can handle it. Just ask the question and don’t blow our cover.”
“Good thing you reminded her,” Nedd said. “I’m sure otherwise she intended to give us away first thing.”
Arturo shot a glance at Nedd, who returned an innocent smile. Stars, did Arturo expect me to do all the talking on this mission? I was torn between desperately wanting to ask a thousand questions and also not wanting to screw up our operation.
I stood, carefully handing the backpack containing Nope to Nedd, and then climbed down a few benches to where the nearest person was cleaning—a girl about my age wearing a blue jumpsuit, not too different from the ones we wore on Detritus, though it was less fitted and the fabric had a looser weave.
“Hey,” I said. “How’d you get a job cleaning here?”
She shrugged. “The coliseum office pays ten bits for a section. Check in to see if they need people. They provide the supplies, though if they catch you slacking, they’ll kick you right out.”
I thanked her and asked for directions to the coliseum office, where a surly man with tight curly hair shoved a clipboard at us and frowned while we signed up for cleaning duty.
The section nearest the gate was already taken, and the job came with strict instructions not to venture beyond the assigned seating areas.
We followed Arturo back to the arena, where we took the available sections closest to the gate.
A guard waited in front of the archway, scowling at us, clearly ready to tell us off if we tried to look beyond the gate.
The last crowd of fans dispersed as the gladiators were escorted away.
The arena floor was now empty except for the corpses of fallen scions.
We set our packs down on a bench and got to work. Gilaf and Alanik used wide brooms to sweep the dirty floor while I used a hand broom and a metal dustpan to clean up their piles. Nedd and Arturo wiped down benches with rags. As I passed the row they were cleaning, Arturo waved me over.
“We’re blending in,” he said, “so this would be a good opportunity to ask more questions.” He nodded toward the girl I’d talked to before, who was cleaning the floor between the bottom row of benches in our section and the short wall that surrounded the arena.
My heart thudded. “You want me to do it?”
“Yes,” Arturo said. “You spoke to her before, so she’ll recognize you, and you’re good at chatting with people. Make it seem natural, and find out what you can about Elysium.”
“I don’t know if I’m good at it,” I said. “Volume isn’t the same thing as quality.”
“Who would you rather I send?” Arturo asked.
I looked around at the team. Gilaf and Alanik would need a translator pin to communicate, so they were out. That left Arturo, Nedd, and me. Of the three of us, Nedd was the best at putting people at ease, though I didn’t hear him volunteering, and if Arturo wanted to try, he wouldn’t have asked me.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll do it.” I wanted to do it. I just didn’t want to let Arturo down. Hesitating as long as I had was probably already giving him more reason to doubt me. So I took a deep breath and walked down the stairs to the bottom of our section.
“Thanks for the tip,” I said as I approached the girl, waving my dustpan and then bending to sweep up the pile she’d collected. If I was going to try to get information out of her, helping her out wouldn’t hurt.
“No problem,” she said, passing me to continue sweeping the wide strip of floor.
“I’m Sadie,” I said. “Do you live around here?”
“Liba,” the girl said. “Over in the tank district.”
I guessed that was near the giant water tank on the city wall. “Do you work here a lot?”
“After most fights. My mum works at a fiber mill, and I pick up shifts there changing the bobbins, but this pays better. Unless someone’s out sick, then I can run a machine of my own. When that happens, I’ll sometimes miss a fight.”
That made sense, taking work where she could get it. “Do you like the work?” I asked.
Liba shrugged. “It’s work. Keeps food on the table.”
I hadn’t seen signs of great wealth in the city, but not a lot of poverty either.
Most of the people looked like they’d had a meal recently, and I hadn’t spotted anyone sleeping on the street.
But it was possible we hadn’t passed through the poor parts yet, or that one had to have a certain level of wealth to live here at all.
I looked out at the corpse of the scion. “Do we need to clean out there?”
“No,” Liba said. “They just leave the bodies as obstacles for the next battle. When there get to be too many, the lumberyard workers chop them up and thin them out.”
A gruesome way to treat bodies, even if they were the bodies of trees. But expressing horror about it might break my cover.
“Did you get to see the fight?” I asked.
She nodded. “It was a good one. I’ve never seen Dayan hold on so long. Was this your first tournament?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Seems like it was a good one, what with the End Times and all.”
“I know!” Liba said. “Can you believe it? It feels like the war has been going on forever. Hard to believe we might actually be preparing for the final battle.”
I wanted to ask who the enemy was, but I couldn’t sound like I arrived on the planet mere hours ago. “It’s kind of sad to think the games might be over when I only just saw my first one,” I said. “Does someone always ascend at the end of the fight?”
“Not always,” Liba said. “A lot of times, though. Timon had been working on it forever. It takes a long time to accrue enough points from severed branches.”
“Will he ever be back to fight here again?”
She shook her head. “No, he’s gone to Elysium now. That’s the whole point, isn’t it?”
I was pretty sure that was a rhetorical question. I was already treading the line of what was too obvious to ask, so I needed to come at it from a different angle. I bent to pick up another of Liba’s dust piles, trying to sound casual. “What do you think it’s like? Elysium?”
“Dangerous,” she said.
Huh. It didn’t seem like a huge honor to ascend to a dangerous place. Then again, it was an honor to be a pilot in the DDF, even though our life expectancies were not high, and this mission was serving as yet another reminder of why. “Do you think Timon will be okay there?”