“Thirty seconds remain,” said the soft female voice.
Eva ran toward the next target on the same level. She dodged moving walls that slid into and out of her way, stumbling to keep her footing on platforms that did the same.
That teeth-shaking alarm jangled and she rolled forward in time to avoid having the floor disappear under her again. The room wasn’t hot, but she was sweating, and the strong smell of ozone gave her a headache. She reached the other target, which she had to wall-jump to hit. The damn things weren’t even satisfying to destroy, insubstantial as they were.
Now she had to climb back up, snarling at Past Eva for thinking hitting the lower level targets first was a good idea. One of the moving platforms was going up and down, so she ran over to that, watched it carefully, and leaped onto it as soon as it was within reach. It carried her back up, except at the last moment it made the horrible alarm sound, and she had to jump off before it vanished.
She reached the fourth target just as the voice announced, “Fifteen seconds remain.”
The last target was on the bottom floor, near the middle. She wasn’t going to make it. Then it occurred to her: the vanishing floors. If she were trying to obstruct someone as much as possible, where would she put those floors?
The elevator floor was gone, so she grabbed the lip of the platform and swung herself to the next one down, rolling into the fall and landing near the edge of a lower platform. Sure enough, the alarm sounded and she was dropped. This time she was ready, turning on her gravboots so her fall went diagonal instead of straight down, which carried her within spitting distance of the target.
“Ten seconds. Nine . . .”
Eva gritted her teeth and ran, leaping into a flying back kick that burst the target apart.
“Seven . . .”
The green button to finish the course was a good six meters away. She grabbed the edge of the nearest platform and vaulted it, turning her gravboots on again, and shot toward the far wall.
“Five, four, three . . .”
Her boots hit the button.
Without warning, all the lights went out, leaving her in darkness that would have been total but for the faint glow coming from the now-open exit door.
She panted, waiting for some sign of what to do next. When none came, she climbed down to the floor and deactivated her gravboots, then walked out the door.
Clinical yellow light greeted Eva in a narrow hallway, along with a buasyr wearing a loose shirt emblazoned with the Crash Sisters logo.
“Congratulations, Little Sister,” he said, his excitement so artificial it made Eva’s teeth ache. “You have passed the Challenge Room and may now proceed to the visitors’ room to meet The King. Please enjoy some complimentary light refreshments while you wait.”
Eva proceeded. At the end of the hallway, a surprisingly large number of people milled around a bare room trying to conceal their excitement with a veneer of toughness or apathy. A table along one wall contained the promised light refreshments: branded energy drinks and snack foods. Not the kind of stuff she’d normally associate with anyone who took physical fitness seriously.
Eva, however, was too thirsty to care. She made a beeline for the table and grabbed a drink, making sure it was fit for human consumption, which it was. Unfortunately, it was also peach-flavored.
“Nasty,” she muttered, holding her nose and chugging it. The rejuvenating power of electrolytes and sugar gave her the energy to control her desire to barf over the peachiness.
Everyone was staring at her, so she burped and waved. As if insulted in unison, they turned their attention back to a holovid along the opposite wall.
It was Crash Sisters, of course, probably from the most recent season. Leroy had been the big bad guy for the last few seasons, but word had somehow leaked about his relationship with another one of the fighters, and the writers had decided to go with it. He was still stomping around with his bright-orange hair and yellow costume, but now he got to fawn over his princess girlfriend while they teamed up to fight one of the new people. Min had told her the name, but Eva struggled to retain it. Something like Ultimate Dream?
As she watched Leroy posture and roar in the holovid, a cloud of smoke signaled the dramatic entrance of the villain onto the stage. Eva chuckled to herself at the theatricality of it all; Min and Leroy had always insisted it was real, and certainly the fighting was athletically demanding—as the Challenge Room had proven—but this? This was extra.
The smoke cleared, and Eva’s heart would have stopped if it wasn’t mechanical.
The villain was a xana.
Bipedal, almost two and a half meters tall, with a long prehensile tail and pinkish fur. His costume was white with a purple stripe down the chest to his crotch, and loose to accommodate the gliding membranes extending between his arms and legs. If he fought the way other xana did, in Eva’s experience, he would primarily use his height to his advantage, grabbing and grappling and throwing, occasionally lashing out with the tail for surprise strikes or trips. Then again, Eva had only fought a handful of them, and hadn’t seen a xana in years.
Not since Garilia.
Eva stumbled to the nearest wall and sank to the ground, memories cycling through her mind like a bad vid. The wind singing through leaves taller than her. Arms burning with fatigue as she climbed. Barest shifting of shadows above her warning of an imminent attack. Dozens of xana closing in. Her fingers went to the scar on her cheek, the one she got that cycle, when a simple resingado gun-running mission had turned into mass murder. She squeezed her eyes shut against the tears welling up in them, because she didn’t deserve to cry, as if she were the victim and not the one who had pulled the trigger.
The Hero of Garilia. The Butcher. Savior. Arsonist. Which one of those would she be to the xana on the holovid?
Why the fuck did it matter?
Breathe, comemierda, she told herself. In and out. Your heart’s fake, but your lungs are still meat balloons. They need air.
A door opened at the far end of the room and a buasyr entered, wearing a strangely human-looking beige suit, striped, with two sets of cufflinks. Actual, old-fashioned cufflinks. And a puffy white tie—no, a cravat, that’s what it was called. It complemented her dark fur and black spidery eyes, which were only half-focused on the room’s occupants, because some people could talk and send messages at the same time. Her whole look screamed “lawyer,” so Eva assumed this was Leroy’s agent, handler, whatever they were called.
“Congratulations again to you all,” she said. “If you would, please form two lines, and we’ll begin the session. Autographed copies of your holographs with The King will be available for purchase outside.”
Eva snorted and stood, wiping her tears with the back of her hand. She hoped Leroy was getting a big cut of all the credits people were throwing around for this stuff. Good to see he was so popular, though. He deserved it, after everything he’d been through.
She deserved a machete to the back, but she was trying to deserve better.
Swallowing the big lump of emotions gagging her, Eva went to the back of a line. She did a brief dance with a lady who looked like a sumo wrestler with shocking-pink hair, and who apparently wanted to be last for some reason, so Eva let her. She didn’t get what the big deal was.
An ear-pounding blast of theme music started up, and an unseen announcer shouted, “Who’s ready to meet . . . The King?!”