A/N: Sorry for the long wait. Thanks to Anla'shok, Sam Mayer, and Nim for the reviews. This chapter is quite lengthy, but I didn't feel it was appropriate to split it in two.
come up and dance with death
Khan can't shake the feeling that Dr. Peres knows far more about the world than he does, and it frustrates him. He has access to top-secret government files. He can summon almost anyone within the program and they will be required to answer his questions. Yet he can't ignore the way Nadezhda Peres looked at him when he stated that AIDS had been cured; a mixture of exasperation and pity, as though she was looking at a precocious child who'd gotten his facts wrong.
He mentioned it to Chalice on the phone, as an aside, but she'd cut him off. "That's not your problem, Khan. Focus on the fight."
He supposes she's right. But has more than twenty-four hours before the fight, and he can't spend the entire time sitting in his room staring at the ceiling. Khan wakes Midway by pounding on the wall between their rooms and suggests to Midway when he appears that they head down to the training room in the basement for some practice.
"Food first," Midway grunts. "I'm not fighting on an empty stomach."
Khan slides a note beneath Masada's closed door and then heads down to breakfast. Once they've eaten, they proceed to the training room. Khan trounces Midway in three straight fights, and they're gearing up for a fourth when Masada enters the room. Khan lets Midway out of the headlock and shoves him away, studying Masada, looking for any remnants of her condition last night. There are none. She appears to have recovered completely.
"I thought I'd join you," she says by way of explanation, picking through the room until she comes to a heavy bag. She straps on gloves and starts punching.
Midway stares at her, utterly bemused, and after a minute he scoops up a blunted training sword and tosses it in her direction. "Let's see how you fight."
Khan stops him as he reaches for another sword. "I think not, Midway."
"It's fine," Masada says, coming toward them with the sword in hand. "I could use the practice."
Khan watches her as she duels Midway. She holds up against him far better than Khan was expecting, but then again, the sword is not Midway's weapon of choice. He tries a series of attacks, forcing her to retreat, before knocking the practice sword out of her hand with a massive blow. Masada dives for her weapon, avoiding Midway's next strike, and hits him across the knees with the blunt edge of the sword. He yelps in pain and backs off.
"The fight was over the minute you lost your weapon," he tells her, hopping from foot to foot.
"No, it's over when your opponent gives up," Masada disagrees. She's holding her weapon in the wrong hand, and Khan knows why; having a weapon struck from your hand is quite painful.
"Technically, yeah," Midway says, "but that dive for your sword was stupid. Any competent fighter would have hacked off your head."
Masada considers this for a moment. Then she switches her sword to her good hand and says, "Again."
It occurs to Khan that he's never seen Masada fight before. She's not as bad as he was expecting, but the sight of her dueling Midway does not assuage his fears in the slightest. If she cannot beat Midway, a trainee who is not good enough for the arena, how can she hope to survive against true champions?
He stops the fight. "Try another weapon," he tells Masada. "The sword is not for you."
Masada goes back to the weapons racks and returns with a spear. Khan frowns. "Don't fight. Just run practice drills."
"She's holding it wrong," Midway observes.
Khan wishes he'd hit Midway harder during their fights. Not only are Masada's hands out of position, she's holding the spear parallel to the ground instead of at the ready. If someone attacked her, she'd be unable to counter the blow.
"It's like she's got a staff or something," Midway continues. "Like the little kids use."
A staff. An idea forms in Khan's mind at the words, and he goes over to Masada. He takes the spear, removes the metal spike on the end, and hands it back to her. Then he lifts a practice sword and takes up a position a few feet away from her. "Attack me," he says, and she does.
A few moments into the fight, it becomes clear that something is wrong. Masada blocks his strikes too easily, aims too accurately for his weak points. Her control is excellent; no wild strikes or unnecessary movement. A strike at his wrist nearly knocks his sword from his hand, and, hiding his shock, Khan goes on the offensive, fighting as though his life is truly at stake. She falls back under the onslaught, her technique becoming sloppier. A hard hit on her shoulder deadens one arm, and as she struggles to renew her grip, Khan brings his practice sword down on the staff and breaks it in two.
Midway whistles. "She almost had you there."
Khan stares at Masada. He's beginning to get an inkling of why she was chosen as his partner. "How did you do that?"
"I was ordered to study your fighting style," Masada says. She throws the broken staff aside and rubs her shoulder. "So I did. I could block your strikes because I knew what your favorite attacks were. I also counted on you to underestimate me, and you did, but once you got your head in the game I didn't stand a chance."
"You gave him a good scare, though," Midway says, snickering. "I haven't seen him that spooked since he was a trainee."
"Leave us," Khan orders, and Midway, still cackling to himself, exits, closing the door behind him. He turns to Masada, who is rotating her shoulder and wincing. "Are you all right?"
"Would you ask Midway the same question?" she says pointedly.
Khan's not sure what she's implying, but it unsettles him even more. "Midway's pain receptors and bone density have been altered. Yours haven't."
"I'm all right."
Khan searches for something else to say. "Has Chalice considered a staff as your weapon?"
"No, but if you recommend it, I'm sure she will," Masada says. She glances at him out of the corner of her eye. "You're acting strange."
Khan thinks for a moment, and then he realizes what's bothering him. Ordinarily, he'd share this with Chalice, but Chalice is not here, and Masada is trustworthy enough. "If Mayari has the foresight to study my fighting as well, I will lose tomorrow."
Masada laughs. "Mayari? She can't study your fighting style; you've only had one public fight. I could only do it because I have access to your training records. You're safe."
"Why did Chalice ask you to study my records?"
"I'm supposed to be your partner," Masada says with a shrug, as if that explains everything. "They want me to know your weaknesses so I can compensate for them in my own fighting style. Not that I have a style - at this point, I'm just trying to avoid getting my skull split."
The idea of Masada shaping her fighting style to his does not sit well with Khan. He has weaknesses - he knows them, of course - but if Masada is adjusting to them, shouldn't he be adjusting to hers? Perhaps she's too inexperienced to develop a true weakness yet. Ever since the fight, if one can even call it that, between Masada and Marathon, he has taken an interest in his future partner's training, but there are some things, like this, that he would prefer not to know.
Someone is shaking Khan awake from a dream of the labyrinth, someone whose face he cannot see, and he reacts accordingly. He kicks the man in the stomach and sends him flying across the room. Then he's out of the bed, stalking toward the fallen man, ready to kick or hit again if the man becomes threatening. "Who are you?"
The man fumbles at the wall and hits the light switch. It's their guide, and Khan feels a twinge of remorse. "My apologies," the man stammers, "but we must leave now for the arena."
"Why?" Khan knows that the Kinshasa arena is not within the city itself, but he wasn't aware that it was necessary to leave in the middle of the night to reach it on schedule.
The guide doesn't answer. "We must leave now," he repeats, and Khan gathers his weapons and uniform and follows the man out the door.
Masada and Midway are both in the hallway, but Khan has no time to speak to them; the guide is already hurrying them down the hall. One of the doors they pass is open, and through the curtains, Khan sees a flash of red light, but it vanishes before he can identify its source.
Down a flight of service stairs, out the door, into a waiting car. Then they're off through the darkened, winding streets of Kinshasa. Khan sees the flash again, closer this time, and turns to the others. "Did you -"
"I saw," Midway says. His face is pale. "It looked like an artillery shell to me."
An artillery shell? Khan sees another flash, and this time, he pays attention, noting its trajectory, its height, and its size. A shell that large must have come from a tank, but what on earth is a tank doing in the middle of a city?
Masada is staring out the back window. "There's a car following us," she reports.
"For protection," the guide says hurriedly. Midway turns on him.
"Protection from what?"
But before the guide can answer, there's yet another flash, and this time, the shell is close enough that they can hear the resulting explosion as it strikes the side of a building and brings the entire structure down.
"What the hell?" Midway screeches. He grabs the guide by the front of his shirt and shakes him. "What is going on?"
Masada is staring out the back window, watching the building collapse, and the light from another shell illuminates her face. Khan can see the strangest expression on her face; a mixture of fear and surprise. He has the sudden urge to pull her back from the window, but he ignores it and turns his attention to the guide. The man is already spilling out the information.
"The city is under attack. We are evacuating all foreign nationals."
"Where are we going?" Khan demands. "Another airport?"
The guide shakes his head. "No. The arena."
"What?" Masada says, turning away from the window. "The fight is still going to happen?"
"Fights aren't called off. Not unless something big happens," Midway says. He glances at Masada and rolls his eyes. "Everyone knows that."
"I'd think a hostile takeover of the capital of the host country would qualify," Masada says angrily, but Khan cuts her off.
"If we leave, we forfeit. And we cannot afford to lose the Rio Grande," Khan says. "We are staying."
"The arena is far enough away that you will be safe," the guide insists, looking from Masada to Khan anxiously. Khan knows why the man is so nervous; payment for the use of an arena depends upon the fight actually occurring, and the Congolese government desperately needs the money.
Masada looks as though she wants to say more, but Khan gives her a look and she remains silent. Midway lets go of the guide at last and slumps back in his seat. Khan, meanwhile, crosses to the back window, and he and Masada watch the shelling of Kinshasa in silence until the city vanishes into darkness behind them.
The countdown clicks to the end and Khan explodes into the arena, ready to run full-tilt until he finds an appropriate hiding spot - and then he stops dead, skidding on the packed dirt and barely avoiding falling down an embankment. The Kinshasa arena is vast; twenty miles long and ten across at its widest point. For this fight, it has been groomed into an African savanna. All Khan can see is an endless field of waving grass, punctuated here and there by tall, umbrella-like acacia trees, and for a moment he just stares in dismay. How on earth is he going to find Mayari in all of this?
His two minutes - the time has been changed to accommodate the size of the arena - are ticking away, and for lack of any other option, Khan begins to run again, sliding down the embankment and into the grasslands. He has no idea where they will release Mayari from, but he knows that it will be from the edge of the arena, and so the most logical choice is to head straight for the center of the arena and hope that he is the faster of the two.
Khan is in the middle of fording a wide but shallow river when a flare is shot off from somewhere above him, signaling that his two minutes are up and that Mayari has entered the arena. The accompanying flash of red light reminds him of the attack on Kinshasa, but Khan stops the line of thought before it can progress to its conclusion and forces himself to focus on the river. It is too shallow for crocodiles, but he is unfamiliar with this terrain and he has no idea of what other dangers might lurk.
Once he's crossed the river and stands on its other side, he becomes acutely aware of the sun beating down. His uniform will protect him somewhat, but his head is uncovered and his pale skin will not hold up well against the brightness. It is noon and the hottest hours of the day are still before him. Khan glances at the river, then at the swaying grass, then down at his own pale hands. He was trained to fight. But in this arena, survival skills are more important than he would have thought.
Khan decides that the risks of drinking unpurified river water outweigh the risks of dehydration at the moment and moves on, in search of any outcropping that might offer shade. No sign of Mayari anywhere. An hour passes. Khan is drenched in sweat; he can see dark patches on his white uniform, and his hands are so slick that he can barely grip the handle of his sword. Finally, after determining that Mayari is nowhere in sight, Khan sheathes the sword and keeps moving. He began his trek at a jog, but it's deteriorated into a careful walk. Khan does not want to tire himself out by running in the heat.
The fight with Baikal was over in half an hour, and in ten years of watching the fights, Khan has never seen a fight continue longer than two hours. This fight is pushing three. While Mayari has yet to make an appearance, Khan has seen a small herd of zebra, a trio of hopping animals with oddly curved horns, and various birds and smaller animals, including one ugly creature that hissed at him before vanishing into the undergrowth. He was so startled by this last that he drew his sword and lashed out, only to fumble the weapon. Embarrassed, Khan rubs some dirt on his hands for better grip and picks the sword up again. He estimates he's traveled ten miles or so, putting himself in the center of the arena. He might as well stop here.
Khan takes a leaf out of Baikal's book and scales the nearest acacia tree, scanning the grass for movement, but it occurs to him as he does this that Mayari will have to be quite close to him for him to spot her. Perhaps she has not made good time through the arena, or perhaps she did not move from her place at all, and at this very moment she is waiting for him to seek her out. For a moment Khan considers it - traveling by night through the arena, hunting Mayari down and forcing her to surrender both the fight and her country's claim to the Rio Grande - and then he rejects it. Mayari is not a patient fighter. She will be looking for him. All he must do is wait.
He settles down in the tree, keeping his head on a constant swivel to survey the arena, and as he does, his mind wanders back to the hours before the fight began. No one seemed to know what happened in Kinshasa; not the guide, not the UN officials refereeing the fight, not the dignitaries from the United States and the Contra states who came to watch. Midway and Masada, for once cooperating with each other, were reviewing the footage from the spycams at the United States embassy, searching for clues. When he departed for the launch room, they had uncovered next to nothing, but he remembers Masada mentioning that while the U.S. embassy had been untouched, the EU consulate had been demolished by a rain of artillery shells. The United States has many more enemies than the Europeans; why would any attacker hit the EU and leave the U.S.?
Khan has studied war. While Dr. Singh may not envision the trainees as a future military force, the idea of a genetically enhanced army has certainly crossed someone's mind; from an early age, Khan and his fellows studied tactics and weaponry. In addition to their weapons training, many of them were trained to operate massive weapons systems, hack computers, and fly warplanes. At Dr. Singh's request, Khan was also tutored in international politics, studying old alliances and older hatreds. And yet with all of this, he cannot imagine why someone would attack such a small target as Kinshasa and, in the process, offend the EU and nearly derail an arena fight.
Night falls on the savanna, and to his horror, Khan finds himself beginning to nod off. He shakes himself awake, tightens his grip on his sword, and resumes his scan of the arena. It would be just like Mayari to attempt a night attack, playing on some ridiculous idea that Khan, relatively new to the arena, would be frightened of the dark. His eyes catch on something moving in the grass perhaps forty feet away from the tree. It is moving in a straight line and is unlikely to come into contact with the tree. Khan grins. There is Mayari at last, and it seems she is so bent on whatever she is doing that she's missed his position entirely. He slides silently out of the tree and lands lightly on the ground, creeping along through the grass, planning to catch up with her from behind and end the fight fast. To think, he was so concerned about her, and here she is, making a mistake that even Midway would avoid.
Something rustles in the grass behind him, and he startles. There is no way that Mayari has circled around behind him; he can still see the crouching figure moving through the grass ahead. He turns slowly, sword in hand, and finds himself caught in the stare of a pair of reflective eyes, peering up at him from waist-height in the grass.
That's not Mayari.
The lion pounces, bowling Khan over. His sword arm flies out to one side, pinned underneath the animal's paw, and its jaws snap at his throat before he grabs its head with one hand and throws it aside. It prowls around him, snarling, and through the adrenaline, he feels a stinging pain along his ribs, but he cannot think about that, because the lion is lunging again, and just like Chalice taught him, he pivots to one side and hacks it in two with his sword.
Suddenly, Khan realizes what the moving shapes in the grass are; a pride of lions, hunting at night, searching for prey, and here he is, bleeding and clearly caught by surprise. An icy knot of fear clenches in his stomach, reminding him that for all his skill, he is no predator. Knowing that he must get out of the grass, he makes for his tree, running, making only the smallest attempt to be quiet. He hears a soft snarl in the grass behind him and increases his pace, but it is not enough. Khan has just enough time to turn before the second lion leaps at him.
Its claws dig deep into his side and he stabs it repeatedly, driving his sword into its underbelly even as it claws and bites at him. When it falls away, another lion materializes from the grass, but this one is wary; it circles him, staying low in a crouch. Khan makes a wild slash at it with his sword, but it barely flinches, and the movement throws him off-balance even more. Now he, too, can smell the copper tang of blood in the air. He expects the lion to attack him, but instead, the creatures growls low in its throat and ducks back into the brush, leaving him alone.
For a moment Khan can do nothing but stand there, his chest heaving, his mind racing, blood dripping from the claw marks on his abdomen to the ground; then some part of his training kicks in and he makes for the tree in a stumbling run, scrambling into the upper branches. Somehow he manages to hang onto his sword, and once he has settled himself into the crux of two branches, he takes stock of the situation.
This is a disaster; there is no other way to phrase it. He is injured, losing blood, and he has yet to even encounter his opponent. Khan cautiously probes at the gouges along his ribs, clenching his jaw to avoid any noise that might result, and his fingers come away dark and slick. The wounds are not terribly deep, but there are many of them, and in even the small amount of time it will take them to heal he will lose at least a pint of blood. And without adequate food or water, it will be impossible for him to replace the lost volume with new cells quickly enough to avoid the negative effects of blood loss.
A plan forms quickly in Khan's mind. He will wait, yes, until the wounds have closed, and then he will set out across the arena in search of Mayari. More than likely, Mayari will be searching for him, too; they have been in the arena for at least seven hours, and she will be getting impatient. Khan harbors a faint hope that she, too, encountered the same animal trouble that he did, but he doubts it. From this point on, he must operate under the assumption that Mayari is fully functional and hunting for him, and he must react accordingly.
It is almost dawn when Khan slides unsteadily out of the tree, the wounds on his abdomen covered by weak scabs. Sword in hand, he sets off through the grasslands at a fast walk, ignoring the pounding in his head. His mouth is dry, but his hands are steady and his vision is mostly level, and that is enough.
Khan runs through everything he knows about Mayari, trying to determine where she would hide, and he eventually decides to strike out for the river. Water is the most precious resource in the Contra countries - it is what this fight is about, after all - and perhaps Mayari will assume that he places the same importance on it as she does. She will guard the river. And he will find her there and force her to surrender the fight.
Khan repeats this objective over and over again, refusing to consider what will happen if he is wrong, if he expends his energy reaching the river and finds nothing. In the back of his mind, too, he is weighing the risk of drinking unpurified river water against the risk of continuing on in the face of blood loss and dehydration. His immune system has been strengthened against all manner of diseases, but he doesn't know if waterborne illnesses were included, and if he becomes ill, he will place himself at a greater disadvantage.
Khan tries to think what Chalice would do in this situation, what Azrael would do, even what Masada or Midway would do, but he draws a blank. In sixteen years of fighting, Chalice never faced an arena like this. One thing is for certain, the UN officials have outdone themselves on this fight; here, at last, is an arena that favors no one, plays to no one's strengths. The sun climbs high in the sky, beating down on him, and he can feel sweat dripping slowly down his back, water he can ill afford to lose at this stage. He increases his pace.
His sword falls from his hand and he scrambles to pick it back up. His hands are crusty with blood, and slick with sweat, and he can barely grip the weapon. He tears a strip of fabric from his uniform and wraps his palm, then grabs the sword again and sets off. Through the swaying grass, he can see the glint of the river ahead. He stumbles once, then settles himself again and keeps walking, fighting the urge to bolt for the water.
Khan gives the riverbank a rudimentary scan, checking the opposite side even though Mayari has no long-range weapon, and then comes to the water's edge, setting his sword aside. At first he intends only to rinse his hands and splash some water on his face, but before he can stop himself, he is scooping up handfuls of the water and guzzling it down. Then he stops, hands dripping, and looks down at his reflection in the rippling water. It is calm here, calm enough that he can see his own face; pale, sweaty, disheveled. And then he sees the figure looming large over his shoulder.
Khan doesn't think twice before diving headfirst into the water, sucking in a breath before he submerges himself. A hand plunges into the river after him, gripping his hair, and, remembering the severed head of the Far Eastern champion in Mayari's bloody hands, he reaches up and breaks three of the Contra fighter's fingers before she releases him. Still underwater, Khan lashes out and knocks Mayari's legs out from beneath her, and as she struggles back to her feet he bursts from the water and comes face to face with his enemy for the first time.
Mayari is dressed in green, her long black hair braided in a halo around her head. The face paint she customarily wears for a fight is nearly gone, smeared away or sweated away or wiped out by the water, but her eyes are cold and calculating, and Khan knows instantly that she is not intimidated by him in the slightest.
She sniffs the air. "I smell blood," she says in barely-accented English, her eyes skimming over him, taking in the torn-away portions of his uniform, the dried blood staining the white fabric. "Did this arena get the better of you so easily, fierce one?"
At the end of the sentence she strikes at him, uncoiling the whip from her side and hitting him across the face. She follows up with a swing of her war hammer, which Khan evades only to walk right into the whip. One side of his face feels like it's on fire, and his vision goes dark for a moment. He forces himself to focus on Mayari. He stops the second swing of the hammer, snapping Mayari's wrist in the process, and shoves her back, only to have her lunge for him again as though the injury hasn't occurred. By his catalogue of her injuries, both of her hands are incapacitated, and yet she keeps moving, keeps fighting.
Khan kicks her hard in the stomach, driving her back into deeper water, and then leaps forward. The water closes over Mayari's head and he attempts to hold her down, only to have her punch him twice in the stomach and once in the groin, and at that point, he lets go and stumbles back, on the defensive once again. He makes for the bank, attempting to retrieve his sword, but Mayari's whip catches him across the back when he's halfway there and he goes facedown into the water. Khan flips over just in time to plant both feet on Mayari's chest as she bends over him and shove her back, sending her flying into the middle of the river.
Breathing hard, pain lancing through his body from so many sources that he cannot identify which one is worse, he struggles up to his feet again. No time to go for the sword; he will merely expose his back to the whip again. His only option is to clinch with her, end it quickly, but in his current state, he doesn't know if he can subdue her. As Mayari rises, up to her neck in the water, Khan's eyes pick out something in the river behind her. For a moment he thinks he's hallucinating, but there's no mistaking that shape, pedaling through the water, barely visible but closing the distance fast.
Time. He needs time. He addresses Mayari. "Where is your honor, when you attack a fleeing opponent?"
Mayari laughs. "How strange that you should speak to me of honor when the country you represent has none. You are liars and thieves, every last one of you."
"How dare you call me dishonorable? Would you dishonor Chalice, too?" Khan challenges. He knows that Chalice is legendary among the champions, and invoking her name should stop Mayari, at least for a moment.
"She had more honor than most," Mayari admits, "but you are nothing like her."
Three. Two. One. Khan counts down as the crocodile's jaws open and close on the Contra champion. Her scream is horrible. Khan climbs onto the bank as Mayari grapples with the enormous reptile, observing dispassionately. "You're right," he says as the water churns. "I'm nothing like her."
Mayari's whip is useless against the monster. He sees her break its grip once, twice, but then it locks its jaws around her and rolls, hoping to drown her. Khan realizes perhaps too late what he has done. She cannot break free from the creature. It will kill her, and then he, he and no one else, will be responsible for the death of another champion. It is one thing to kill someone in self-defense; it is another to sit idle and watch them die, and while Khan may be comfortable with the former, he cannot abide the latter.
Khan grabs his sword from where it lies discarded on the riverbank and plows into the river. The noise startles the crocodile, and it stops its rolling, Mayari limp in its jaws. Khan grips the back of Mayari's uniform with one hand and hacks indiscriminately at the crocodile with his sword, the blows leaving long gashes in the creature's thick skin. When he feels the creature's grip on Mayari loosen, he pulls her free, deals the crocodile a massive swipe across the head, and swims for shore, dragging the Contra champion behind him.
Khan hauls Mayari onto the riverbank and spins around, scanning the water for the crocodile. But the beast has slid back into the river. Even so, he is careful not to present his back to the water as he crouches down to examine Mayari.
It does not look good. The Contra champion is unconscious; the front of her uniform is shredded and bloody; and worst of all, she's not breathing. Her pulse is faint at best. Khan stares at her hopelessly for a moment, trying to judge the likelihood of broken ribs, and then decides that he cannot afford to wait. He begins CPR. The gong sounds, ending the fight and startling him, but he keeps going. He is the first to admit that he knows little about either medicine or physiology, but he knows that the longer the brain is deprived of oxygen, the less likely the patient is to recover, and he did not rescue Mayari from the crocodile to have her die on him.
Mayari's mouth opens and a gush of pink-tinged water spills out. Khan barely manages to turn her on her side in time, and she lies there, coughing and gagging, tears streaming from her eyes. Khan sits back on his heels, watching her, and from somewhere above him, he hears the sound of helicopter blades beating the air. The officials are coming to retrieve them.
Mayari spits out more water and, with some effort, turns her head to look at him. "I was wrong about you," she gasps, her voice hoarse, and then the helicopter lands and a group of medics and officials charge onto the scene. Mayari vanishes from view behind a crowd of white-coated doctors, and Khan never gets the chance to ask her what she means.
He feels his eyelids sliding shut, and he makes no effort to keep himself awake, sliding into darkness even as the medics approach him and the amplified voice of the announcer declares victory for the United States.
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