1. Olivia #2
The pod is spinning slightly as it falls — or maybe that's me, my inner ear staging a protest — and through the curved glass walls I get my first real, unobstructed look at where I'm going.
The platform is rectangular, which strikes me as oddly bureaucratic for something this terrifying.
Like someone filed a permit for it. Like there's a planning committee somewhere in the cosmos that approved the dimensions.
It's huge. Even from up here I can tell it's massive. Dark rock surface, fractured and ancient-looking, crisscrossed by rivers of lava that branch outward from the center like veins from the?—
From the volcano.
Oh, that's big.
Big? Who said poetry is dead?
It sits dead center on the platform like it owns the place, which I suppose it does — a colossal, catastrophically active volcano hemorrhaging molten rock down its flanks in slow, glowing rivers.
Even from up here I can see the ash clouds boiling off the summit, billowing outward in thick grey curtains that drift across the platform's surface.
Columns of fire and debris shoot skyward at irregular intervals, punching up through the cloud layer and scattering debris across a wide arc.
An arc that I am currently falling through.
The platform is getting bigger. Fast. Really freaking fast.
In the far distance, other platforms float in the dark.
Smaller from here. Silent. Like discarded playing cards scattered across a table the size of the universe.
I clock them for approximately one second before the realization hits that I have much more immediate concerns, because the postage stamp has become a dinner plate and is rapidly becoming a dining room table and?—
“Hello, Contestant 5235871,” a voice says.
“Huh? What?” I sputter. “Come again?”
“Welcome to the Mating Games.”
“The Mating… what?”
"Relic acquisition," the voice continues. "Three relics available. Sequential unlock. Physical claim required under threat conditions."
I spin toward the ceiling, trying to identify where it’s coming from. "What? What relics? Where?—"
"Activation window initiates upon claim. Bonding requires consent.”
“Bonding? Like… chemistry? Like welding?”
“Consent is mandatory. Consent cannot be bypassed."
"Consent to what? "
"Bonded relic persists through reset. Relic grants ability to bonded pair. Relics may be physically claimed in combat by rival competitors."
"Can you slow down? I'm lost!"
Then the pod hits the outer atmosphere. As if the situation weren’t bad enough.
It's not like turbulence on a plane, that polite shuddering that makes passengers grip their armrests and eye the drink cart.
This is the pod getting seized by invisible hands and shaken, a full-body rattling that sends me into the wall and then the other wall and I grab the only thing available to grab, which is a small chrome ridge on the ceiling panel, and hang on while the whole structure screams around me.
"Death protocol," the voice continues, completely unbothered. "Female mortality triggers immediate full arena reset. "
"My mortality? You mean my death? Why would I die?!"
Then I clocked the pod around me. And shrugged. Yeah, okay.
"Male mortality triggers immediate respawn. Respawned males do not return within current round. All competitors retain memory across resets."
A chunk of debris hits the pod.
Not small debris either. Not pebbles. Something the size of a microwave, ejected from the volcano far below, tumbling up through the atmosphere on a ballistic arc and connecting with the upper left panel of my pod with a sound like God's own car crash.
“Mummy!” I scream. “I wanna go home!”
The pod spins. I lose my grip on the ceiling ridge and hit the floor and scramble back up. At least, I think it’s up.
Outside the glass the ash cloud is everywhere now, thick and dark and churning, lit orange from below by the lava light. I can't see the platform anymore, can't see anything except grey and fire-glow and?—
Another hit. Smaller this time. Then three more in quick succession, a hailstorm of volcanic rock peppering the pod from all directions as we punch through the debris field surrounding the summit.
The glass holds. Of course it holds. But every impact leaves a new crack-shaped smear of ash across the outside of the panels and the noise is absolutely extraordinary.
"Injuries sustained by male competitors heal fractionally but accumulate across resets," the voice says. It might be giving me the recipe to a new dish. "Female competitor resets to full health."
" Great, " I shout over the cacophony, "at least the insurance coverage is good?—"
"Escape protocol. Full relic set required. Bonded pair must hold all three relics simultaneously to activate escape fissure. Incomplete relic set does not qualify for escape. Escape available to bonded pair only."
" Bonded pair — what does bonded even mean? Hey! I'm asking you a question!" And a second later than what would have been cool: “Asshole!”
The pod punches through the base of the ash cloud and suddenly the platform is right there — close enough that I can see individual rock formations, can see the texture of the lava channels, can see the grey ash settling across dark stone — and the pod is still screaming downward and I have both feet braced and both hands on whatever I can reach and?—
"Competing males," the voice continues. "Five male competitors have been introduced to the arena. All males are bonding-eligible. Female competitor is central to all bonding events. Female competitor is key."
" Key to what?! "
"Male competitors may attempt to force bond conditions regardless. Arena enforcement is not guaranteed in all circumstances. But if punishment is dealt, it shall be immediate and severe."
I stare at nothing for a full half-second, the ground rushing up, the pod shrieking.
In my professional experience, when you feel the need to specify that consent is mandatory, it's because someone in the room was considering the alternative.
The fact that this voice — this cold, mechanical, utterly indifferent voice — felt it necessary to say so out loud, and then follow it immediately with arena enforcement is not guaranteed — tells me something about the five alien males currently hurtling toward this platform, and what they've been brought here to do, and what I apparently have to do with all of it .
"Volcano progression," the voice says. "Eruption cycle is active. Eruption cycle will complete. Failure to achieve full relic bond prior to eruption completion will result in arena reset. Final arena eruption does not reset."
"What's a final arena? How many arenas are there? Hello? Are you even?—"
"Brace for impact."
"For what?! "
The pod hits.
The impact is a full-body event. Every bone I have scream all at once, loudly, in triplicate.
The glass holds — of course it holds, it survived five aliens throwing themselves at it, it's not going to crack for something as minor as a high-velocity planetary impact — but everything inside it, meaning me, goes violently in the wrong direction.
I hit the floor. I bite my tongue. The lights flicker dark for one long ringing second and then stutter back on.
Then, deafening silence.
Or near-silence. There’s the distant, low, continuous rumble of the volcano. And I suspect that’s always there. Like that voice in the back of your head, always trying to sabotage your diet.
Then other sounds fade it: The tick of the pod cooling around me. My own breathing, ragged and too fast.
I lie on the floor, staring up at the chrome ceiling, tasting blood, and the voice says, with perfect calm:
"Consent is mandatory. Consent cannot be bypassed."
"I heard you the first time," I tell the ceiling.
“Thank you for taking part in the Mating Games,” the voice says finally. “We hope you have a very stimulating experience.”
I can almost hear the sarcasm dripping from its voice.
I hate you .
A soft mechanical sound. A gentle whir, almost polite, almost apologetic. The pod door disengages from its seal with a faint hiss of pressure equalizing, and then swings slowly, smoothly open.
Warm air rolls in. It smells like ash and heat and something ancient and mineral that I have no reference point for.
No, wait. I do. Freaking volcano.
I lie there a moment longer, tasting blood, staring at the rectangle of orange-grey sky now visible through the open door, and try to remember what the word bonded had to do with any of this.
I have a terrible feeling I'm about to find out.
I don't so much step out of the pod as fall out of it. Don’t judge me. How about you try stepping out of a pod after screaming through the atmosphere while screaming your tripe out at the top of your lungs?!
My legs work in the technical sense — they hold my (considerable) weight, they move in the correct sequence — but the ground is uneven and covered in a thin layer of ash and my body is still operating on the assumption that the last thirty seconds didn't happen, so the net result is that I stumble out of the open door, catch myself on the pod's lip, and stand there for a moment gripping hot metal and trying to convince my nervous system that we're fine. We're fine. Everything is totally fine.
Everything is absolutely not fine.
The heat hits me like a smothering blanket.
Not warmth. Not the pleasant radiant glow of a sunny afternoon or even the aggressive heat of a Chicago summer.
This is a wall — dense, immediate, pressing against every inch of exposed skin like it's trying to get in, heavy with falling ash and the mineral bite of whatever the volcano is putting into the air. I breathe it in and my lungs immediately hack a cough I’ve only ever heard from lifelong smokes.
I love the smell of sulphur in the morning.
The sky is bruised and orange-grey, the color of a fire seen through smoke, lit from below by the lava rivers branching across the platform's surface.