Gideon woke up with what was without any doubt the worst hangover he had ever experienced. His head was about to split, or worse, to shatter into tiny bits. The room around him was completely unfamiliar, and he didn't have any idea at all how he had ended up in it. His memories of last night were vague, and now that he thought of it, he couldn't even tell what day it was.
He had apparently fallen asleep – or whatever – wearing his uniform, but he didn't have his PPG, or his comm link, or anything that would tell him anything useful. He realized he didn't smell all that good. A moment later, it came to him that it wasn't the scent of someone who had spent the night out in some smoky saloon, but something else completely. There was dried blood on his knuckles, and splotches of it stained his clothes. Some of it had to be his own, and perhaps the assortment of aches he felt wasn't just the result of too much drinking. So he'd been in a bar fight? That wouldn't have been the first time, to be sure.
The vague memories about what had happened were slowly becoming more tangible. He had been in a fight. More than one, actually, and he hadn't been in a bar. He hadn't even been drinking. Overlapping the memory of the fights was an odd feeling, an urge to gain glory through the fighting, because it was the right thing to do, and the only thing there was. He had to kill, or he would get killed.
He remembered the first face, the first person he had fought. The fight had been in an arena of sorts, walls and floor of metal, and somewhere above it, a crowd, watching them, cheering. He knew the face, and the second face as well. They were members of his own crew, and the more he concentrated, the clearer the memory became, the more certain he was. He had killed his own men. He had killed Newfield and Ashley. He didn't want to believe it.
There were several other faces as well. A pierced Drazi, a young Minbari – and then he remembered the last fight, and everything that had happened before he woke up here, in the room that had become his prison. He had fought Galen. Galen had tried to speak to him, but he had not understood. He had had no idea of what he was doing, or who he was fighting. And as far as he could remember, he had lost that fight. Galen had hit him, and he had lost consciousness.
Gideon knew the rules. After all, they had been among the very few thoughts that had gone through his head during the time he had been caught here. He knew that there could only be one survivor from each match. Galen had attacked him and struck him down, yet now he was here, in his room, with a devastating headache, but not much more. He was not dead, and that could only mean one thing: Gideon had not lost the match. Galen had. And that would mean...
It couldn't mean what Gideon thought it would. There was absolutely no way Galen could possibly have died in that match. Gideon hadn't even gotten anywhere near to hitting him. With all the techno-mage powers Galen had, surely he could've handled a fight were no weapons were allowed. But still, why would they have let Gideon return to his room if his opponent had not died? Maybe Galen had fled. That was the only explanation that made any sense at all.
Obviously Galen had done something to snap Gideon out of whatever had had hold of him. He lifted his hand and tried his forehead, where he felt a strange weight. His fingers touched something cold and metallic. He followed its lines. It was a device of some sort that covered most of his forehead. He could guess it was what had kept him from thinking, waking up and understanding. Galen had disabled it somehow, and now Galen had probably fled, and was busy figuring out a plan to get them out. Gideon should think of a way to make it easier, or just get out on his own. He left the device in its place. Maybe it would fool his captors into thinking that he was still under their control.
With some effort, Gideon rose up from his bed, stood up. As soon as he got on his feet, the door slid open. Almost as if they had been waiting for him to come around. Behind the door stood his regular Drazi guard, a big, muscled one who spoke little, except with not-so-gentle nudging and pushing about.
"You win. You loot," the Drazi said.
The thought hadn't crossed Gideon's mind. He cast a glance at the shelf, the only other piece of furniture in his room apart from the bed. On the shelf rested a few trinkets he had taken from his earlier opponents. Some of the more expensive bits of jewelry from the pierced Drazi, a fake antique pocket watch from one of his crewmen, a locket the young Minbari had had. Things of not much value. He remembered he had taken them because it was his right as the winner, it was expected of him, and every piece was further proof of his superiority.
Gideon could've just attacked his guard and tried to run away, but he didn't think he would make it very far that way. And he couldn't just leave Galen behind. He followed the Drazi's lead in a stupefied silence. He had won. Now he got to loot. The Drazi was taking him to loot Galen. He had won, and Galen was dead.
Galen woke up to the horrible feeling that he was under water. He was suffocating. There was something wet in his mouth, on his face, inside his chest.
He had spent most of his life training and striving for control, and now it took every bit of that training before he could calm himself and look at the situation in a detached manner. Of course, he was not really drowning. It was among his first thoughts that made sense. He tried to stop panting and took a deep breath, which he regretted immediately. It sent such an agony tearing through his chest that he nearly passed out again. He concentrated, gathered all his willpower, and settled for lighter, shallower inhalations.
Galen accessed his sensors and assessed his situation. It was, perhaps, a bit better than he had expected, but considering he had thought he'd be dead, that wasn't very much. He was lying on his stomach, and the hilt of the knife still stuck out from his back. His organelles had mended much of the damage it had inflicted, but as long as the blade was in its place, all they could do was to close the edges of wounds around it. The cuts were still bleeding, the blood gathering in the chest cavity, making it increasingly difficult to breathe.
Despite the serious hemothorax, he had been lucky. The blade had not went as far as he had feared. It was lodged in a precarious position, the tip just touching the pericardium. As he looked, he noticed that where it had scratched the membrane, the organelles were working furiously. The cut was newer than the rest. He must've inflicted it on himself, must have caused the knife to move those few critical millimeters when he fought to breathe.
During his early days as a mage student interested in medicine Galen had learned the principles of first aid throughly. They said that an impaled object should remain in its place until the patient could be taken into adequate medical facilities. Still, this was a special situation. If he was to have any chance of ever escaping this place, his organelles would have to be able to truly heal the wounds, not just try and close them around the sharp edges. As long as it stayed in, the blade would continuously keep causing serious damage, even lethal - it only needed to sink yet a few millimeters deeper to enter the heart muscle.
He hardly had any choice. The blade would have to come out.
His right arm was pinned underneath him, and he dared not try to pull it out. His left arm was free against his side, but considering the position of the knife, trying to move it would be even more risky. He could not think of any spell he could use. Techno-mage or not, he was no telekinetic. He could conjure flying platforms, globes and shields, but trying to clamp the knife between a formation of them so that the grip would be strong enough to pull it out was a feat he was not up to right now.
Every minute he spent considering, more blood was seeping through the partially closed cuts, and his left lung could not expand with the knife going through it. He didn't know which would come first, suffocation or bleeding to death internally.
His concentration was slipping fast, coherent thought becoming harder again. But he could not afford to pass out. Galen fought with all his ability to control so he would remain conscious.
Gideon went through his earlier memories of looting bodies. The place were they lie was horrible to begin with, a plain room with the dead just tossed in and left there, never touched again, except by the winners who came to loot. He had only seen the bodies of those who had lost during this round, the series of matches that had taken place since midday. None of them were decayed yet.
He wondered briefly what would happen to the bodies after the round was finished. The most likely option was that they were burned, or vaporized, or whatever, so there would be no traces left, no problem of hiding them or disposing of them quietly. He didn't know the time, but he was sure that midnight wasn't all that far away. They would get rid of the dead soon after the round ended, soon after midnight. Gideon would get Galen out before that, if he could. He wouldn't let them do whatever they wanted with his remains.
The Drazi opened the door, one just like the others in another identical corridor, pushed Gideon in without another word, and closed the door after him.
It wasn't hard to locate Galen among the scattered corpses. Most of them were aliens, except for the two humans at the back of the room that Gideon did not want to think about, and the one figure in a dark robe lying right in front of him, near the door, a knife in his back. And it only took Gideon two seconds to get over the first shock of it and notice that Galen wasn't dead, at least not yet. His raspy breathing sounded horribly loud in the empty room.
Gideon had thought that the match only ended with the actual death of one combatant, but now he saw he had been wrong. No, they wouldn't even let the loser die. The match would end when one was lethally hurt, and then they would just toss them here with the rest of the losers, and let them suffer.
"Matthew," Galen whispered in a weak, strained voice.
Gideon crouched closer, so he could hear properly. "They let me in so I can loot you. But whatever you did to me, it worked, I'm with you again. Now I'm going to think of something to do. We'll get out of this place," he said, trying to sound reassuring. He kept his voice low so the guard waiting outside the door would not hear it.
"The blade," Galen rasped. Gideon didn't get what he meant to say. Maybe he hadn't heard correctly, or then Galen was delirious.
"Yeah, you've been stabbed in the back, and I don't even know who, when or how. But the Doc will help you get it fixed once we get out of here."
"No!" the answer was sharp, and was followed by a pause where Galen closed his eyes, his face contorted with pain. But he continued. "You - must - get it out."
"Galen, I can't – I'll just hurt you worse. I can just guess how much it hurts, but isn't it better to let it be?"
"No. Quickly, now!"
He sounded absolutely adamant about it. Maybe he knew better. Gideon knew that as a techno-mage, Galen probably knew more about medicine than he did. Besides, he hadn't got a better plan, anyway.
"All right, I'll do it. Brace yourself, this is really going to hurt," Gideon said, but Galen didn't answer. His eyes were closed again. He had probably passed out. It was all the better, since that way he might not feel the worst of it.
Trying to keep his hands as steady as possible, Gideon grabbed the hilt. Most of the blade seemed to be in, and he couldn't tell how long it was, how deep it went. He would just have to try and get it out straight, so he wouldn't do more damage.
The blade was pretty long. Gideon could only imagine the kind of injuries it must have caused. Still it came out easier than he had expected, and Galen didn't groan or gasp, didn't even flinch. For a moment, Gideon was again afraid that he had died, just like that, but no, he was still breathing, the sound even worse than before, wet and struggling. The now open stab wound was bleeding profusely. Gideon dropped the blade on the floor and pressed the wound with both hands, trying to slow down the blood flow.
And then, at the worst possible moment, the door opened, and the Drazi glared at him. He moved his hands away from the wound, as if going over the body, looking for any pockets or anything. He found nothing, so he took the knife and stood up.
"All right, I'm finished here. He didn't have anything of value anyway," Gideon said, and reluctantly turned his back to Galen.
"Give me that," the guard said, gesturing at the knife. Of course, he would not be allowed to keep a weapon. It would be taken to a safe place where it would wait 'until he got out of the game'. And in Gideon's case, that would never happen. He knew he would have to survive a whole year here to be officially allowed to exit. It was hardly possible.
Gideon gave the knife away silently. He noticed that his hands were coated with blood. Galen's blood.
"Now you go fight."
He had thought he'd have a while to consider what had happened, and maybe try and start thinking of a plan. No such luck. On the other hand, if he managed to win this fight, he would get to loot his next victim, and then he could check on Galen again, see if he had survived.
Gideon followed the Drazi towards that particular door at the end of a long corridor, and back to the arena again.