A siren screams from the speaker.
Bleeeeeeeeeeeep!
It sounds like a timer at a basketball game. The moment the noise stops, the pad does the same.
“We’ve accurately recorded your physical limitations,” the woman says. “You may now step off the performance pad. Don’t be afraid.”
But I am afraid. I glance at the iron cage above my head. Then I lunge off the belt and slide across the floor. Nothing happens. I’m cool. I feel as if someone came at my head with a baseball bat, but I’m cool.
“You will now go into the pool and tread until you hear the timer. If you touch the edge or your head dips below the surface, South American piranhas will be released into the water. Do you understand?”
Do I understand? I understand she just said piranhas, and all I’m thinking is, Are South American piranhas worse than the North American version? Is there a North American version? God, I hope not.
I eye the pool, and something inside me fragments. After spending so much time in the ocean, I hoped to never approach another body of water again, even a pool, and the thought of a fish gouging chunks out of my skin produces terrible memories of Jaxon’s death. I tear off my long-sleeved shirt and pants, and step toward the edge. I may regret the decision to strip should they release the fish, but I’m betting on my ability to do this, and clothing will only inhibit my movements.
“Do you under —”
“Yes!” I holler. “I understand. Stop asking me that.”
I dip one foot into the water. It’s ice-cold, just as I had anticipated. After all, we are beneath a mountain, and here winter is in full effect. The green liquid feels thick as I wade into it, using concrete steps near the corner. I’m halfway in — goose bumps rising across every inch of my skin, my body shaking from the cold — when I spot cages built into the sides of the pool.
Small fish swarm around one another like fog in a blender. Glass separates me from them, but I wonder how fast that glass can slide away. Knowing the people running this race are watching, I swim to the middle of the pool. I won’t give them the satisfaction of seeing me afraid.
I tread for several minutes, and even though I know I shouldn’t, I find myself glancing at the sides of the pool to ensure the fish haven’t been released. I can’t see the bottom. It’s either too deep or the water is too murky. It reminds me of swimming in a pond that’s overfilled with algae and general repulsiveness.
As I tread, my body warms, and I begin to think I’ll endure this without problem. I don’t see anything else in the room they could test me with, so this has to be the end of the second round. One more after this. One more and I could hold the Cure for Cody.
The overhead lights flip off.
I’m treading water in complete darkness. Terror shoots from the top of my head and down through my feet. I can’t see anything. Not the room and not what’s beneath the water. I jolt with shock when loud, crashing music comes through the speakers. It sounds like the heavy metal Cody listened to during his grunge phase. The pounding in my head returns with a vengeance, and with the music so loud, I suddenly can’t be sure I’m breathing.
Water splashes into my mouth, and I choke. A moment later, something brushes my leg.
“No!” I scream.
I swim toward the ledge, positive I’m about to be consumed. My hand is almost on the steps when I remember what the woman said. I yank my arm back, and, thinking of my brother, I swim back to the middle of the pool. My head hasn’t dipped below the surface. I haven’t touched the perimeter of the pool. There’s nothing in the water besides my overactive imagination.
I breathe.
As I tread — body demolished by exhaustion, music blasting vehemently — I hold Madox in my mind. The sooner I’m done with these tests, the sooner my Pandoras and I will be reunited. Or at least I hope. I also think about my brother, about the time his three-year-old rear broke out of our house while Mom was in the shower, and ran stark naked down the street. A neighbor we didn’t know spotted him, put him in their car, and drove slowly by each house asking, “Is that your house? Is that your house? How about that one?”
Mom was mortified, and it later became my absolute favorite story to tell every female who passed through our humble abode.
Oh, you’re here for my brother? Want to hear a story involving nudity?
I think about other times, too. Like when I was a freshman in high school and all the seniors were handpicking frosh and making them walk across the stage before throwing away their lunch trays. It wasn’t a big deal, really, but it was the first day of school. And it was the stage, where everyone could gawk and holler at you for a full thirty seconds. When a senior chick told me it was my turn, I was mortified. But my brother, who was a junior at the time, yelled across the cafeteria for me to wait up. He walked across that stage with me, his middle finger waving toward the room like a great American flag. Cody was popular, and from then on out, I was, too. Never mind that he got detention for flipping off half the student body.
Later that night, after Mom and Dad had left the table, I thanked him for what he’d done. He told me to stop talking with my mouth full and that I was disgusting.
I opened my mouth wider.
He laughed.
I won.
At this point, my entire neck is beneath the water. I have to turn my face upward to keep from going completely under. My body burns like vengeance and then prickles from the cold. My lungs tighten, and my heart hardens as if Medusa stepped out in front of me and I looked those snakes dead in the eye. When I reach the point of no return, when I know I have nothing left to give and I’m gasping for air and calling Guy’s name, the buzzer sounds.
My body slides beneath the surface.
I can’t help it. I have no fight left in my muscles. For a few seconds, I float weightless in the water, not caring if the piranhas have been released. Not caring if they tear me into a billion bite-sized, candy-coated pieces.
When I emerge, the lights are back on and the music has changed to a soothing lullaby. I swim toward the steps, climb them, and collapse onto the ground. The lights dim to a comfortable level, the music lulls me to sleep, and my eyes slip closed. I battle the impulse to sleep. I can’t lose consciousness now. I can’t!
It’s no use.
Tella out.
Minutes later, a buzzer sounds for the third time. I sit up quickly, panting. I’m dead. I must be. I’ve never felt so awful in my life. If I was depleted of energy before I climbed down the crevasse and into this living nightmare, now I’m completely spent. That five-minute power nap has worsened everything. Now my head feels foggy, and my body screams for more sleep. As it is, I have to literally hold my lids open to keep them from reclosing.
The gentle music has stopped, and the lights are at the same level of brightness as they were when I entered.
On the opposite side of the room, the white door slides open.
I walk into the final challenge. I can hardly hold my head up, and yet I’m one room away from the Cure. One room from saving my brother’s life. I can’t let myself believe I’ve been beaten by other Contenders. I am first. I have to be.
Four ecosystems.
Three months.
One remaining task.
Madox, Monster, and Oz are lying on a stark white-tiled floor. My legs carry me toward them, and I collapse in a dripping, half-naked mess, exhaustion switching to panic over my Pandoras. I reach Madox first, take his limp head in my hands.
Madox? Can you hear me?
When he doesn’t move, I look to Monster and then Oz. The three Pandoras are completely out but not dead. The bear’s sides rise and fall, soothing my alarm. The wall ahead is clear glass, with a glass door in the center. The others are white drywall, and together they form a room as large as a high school gymnasium. I turn and look toward the door I came in through. As it slides shut, my eyes land on a table much like the one that held the keys.
But this table holds something different.
/>
I start to cross the area when I hear a stir from one of my Pandoras. Spinning around, I find Monster lifting his weary head.
“Monster!” I run toward him and drop to my knees. He groans like the great, lovable oaf he is, and I can’t help but laugh as I stroke the thick fur behind his ear. He cranes his neck to look at me, his eyes dull with sleep. “You’re okay,” I whisper to him. “You’re safe.”
And then Monster does something I don’t expect.
He growls.
At first, I think it’s because he was drugged. He’s confused. But when the hair on the back of his neck rises and he pushes himself up, every muscle in his body tensed with aggression, I know he realizes what he’s doing.
I stumble backward and slam into the table. It rattles, and I look down. My fingers brush a small gun. Next to it are three others like it, and around those are other weapons: axes, knives, swords, rifles. Understanding washes over me. A thousand possibilities rush through my mind, but they all end with this: Three Pandoras, one Contender who loves them, a table full of weapons, and the Cure on the other side of that glass door.
I shake my head.
No.
In a war between man and beast, beast will win every time. But between modern weaponry and beast? Well, that’s not war. That’s extermination.
After all this, it can’t end this way. I won’t do it. I won’t hurt them. I want to say my brother’s life is worth anything — but he wouldn’t want this, either, would he?
The alligator wakes next, his yellow eyes sharpening as if he hasn’t seen a meal in weeks and here I am, a ready-made Snack Pack.
This is a test, I remind myself. I only have to remind the Pandoras that we’re on the same team. That’s the obstacle, I tell myself. I won’t have to hurt them, I lie.
Madox raises his head, staggers to his feet. He sees me, and when he does, a vicious snarl rumbles low in his chest. This time, there’s no holding back the tears. I weep openly, my hands flying across the table out of some primal instinct.
The three Pandoras stalk toward me, snapping their teeth, sniffing the air, anticipating the scent of my blood. Like Titus, I collected Pandoras during this race. But, for me, it was done out of love. I couldn’t stand the thought of leaving them behind when their Contenders were gone. So here I am, alone in this room with one, two, three predators. I understand now why they allowed Oz to come along even though his Contender didn’t enter him into the Pandora Wars. And I understand why they let me keep Rose, too.
A memory flashes through my mind: Braun holding his dead Pandora in his arms.
“It was in my Pandora’s head. What is it?”
He pulled a silver chip from his Pandora’s skull. It blinked on and off, green. We never figured that mystery out. But we didn’t need to. It’s unfolding now, in a grand finale at the exact right time. Ta-da!
Surprisingly, the alligator is the first to reach me. He scrambles across the floor and snaps at my left leg with inconceivable crushing power.
I fall backward onto the table, sobs drowning my screams. “Please, no!”
When Monster rises up on his back legs and roars, I fumble for a weapon. I only have time to grab a knife before Madox shifts to take the lion’s shape and rushes forward. I slide to the right, fall off the table and onto my hands and knees. Then I’m up, flying across the room.
Monster rushes toward me, and I stand my ground, tossing the knife to my right hand. As much as I don’t want to hurt him, survival instincts won’t let me be eaten. Mankind has fought too long to overcome being prey. My ancestors, my blood, they all survived so that today I could stand here, shaking, with a blade in my hand.
AK-7 swipes a paw toward my body, and I leap back. As soon as his claws are out of reach, I throw my arms over my head and scream. It’s not a normal scream. It’s not a there’s a spider in my bathroom scream. It’s an intimidation tactic. A weapon of defense.
It works. He comes down on all fours.
It’s all the time I need.
I slice the air between us. I can’t bring myself to hurt him, not unless I absolutely have to, but I can show him I’m capable of inflicting harm. The bear eyes the knife, and I hold my breath. Now that I’m on the offense, he’ll either lunge or fall back. The question is which.
He falls back.
With the bear out of the way, the alligator scurries forward, hissing. I leap to the right, and the alligator follows my steps, jaws open. He snaps once at my ankle, but this time I don’t scream. I’m afraid if I scream again, I’ll lose what limited control I have on this situation. So I roar instead. I roar like I’m furious and isn’t he going to regret it when he finds out who he messed with.
He shouldn’t be afraid. As much as my instincts demand I defend myself, my heart holds my blade back. I tell myself I don’t want to die, but I also can’t wrap my mind around the alternative:
Killing my Pandoras.
Thinking quick, I race across the room, barely escaping Madox when he swings a lion paw at my bare waist. I jump onto the table like a champ, as if I was born to fight for my life after having every ounce of energy leached from my body. I snatch a sword I noticed earlier and rip the leather binding off the handle. Once again, my eyes fall on the guns. As I lunge for one, Monster dives toward the table.
No time.
I had one chance to grab a second weapon, and I chose a length of leather. This is why I’ll die. Because when I had the opportunity to pick up a gun for the second time, I didn’t. I race across the room, Madox bounding after me. I jump onto the alligator’s back, and Monster and Madox both stop to see what I’ll do.
As the alligator thrashes, I wrap the leather band over his eyes and under his jaw, nearly losing my blade and my left hand in the process. I’ve almost got the strap secure when the alligator switches on his heat. He radiates hotter than he did in the mountains, and my fingers burn against his skin. I let go, and he throws me off like a bucking bronco. V-5 scurries in his blindness and slams his snout into the wall. After that, he lies still, afraid to move.
Monster rises up on his back legs again. I jump to my feet and raise my arms over my head, matching his pose.
“Roarrrrr!” I yell.
The bear opens his mouth and releases his own roar. It rattles the walls. It rattles the mountain. Wind fires out of his paws and slams into my body. I tumble across the floor and crash against the wall. I right myself, ready for his next attack. But the bear pauses when he sees Madox changing shapes. The yellowish fur pulls in, and a silky black skin replaces it. Two ivory horns stretch from the sides of his head and end in forward-facing points.
His right front leg kicks at the ground, though there’s nothing to kick.
My Pandora, my Madox, lowers his head.
He snorts once through his ringed nose.
A warning.
Madox rushes forward, and I scream. I can’t help it. Terror lashes at my body like a flaming whip. I dodge the bull but slip on water I trailed into the room. Madox’s horn is a hand away from tearing into my abdomen, and I think of how ironic it is that he’ll spear me in the same place Titus’s knife did on top of that desert formation.
But then he slips, too. The bull’s legs slide out, one to either side, as if he’s a gymnast in training. I right myself and run toward the table. I’m halfway across the room when I’m blindsided. Pain rips through my side, and I’m thrown ten feet. My blade flies out of my hand and lands near Oz. When I sit up, blood is seeping through four shallow gashes.
Monster’s claws are stained the same color, and fresh tears spring to my eyes. His name, Monster, isn’t so funny anymore.
The cuts aren’t deep, but my side throbs all the same. “AK,” I whisper. “You hurt me.”
His nose twitches, and for a second I wonder if he’s heard me, if there’s still a loyal part of him deep down that the people in charge of this race haven’t perverted with their chips and blinking lights. But he catches the scent of my blood, and he roars again. When
I hear that murderous sound, I realize there’s no chance I can reverse the things that have snapped in their minds. I am the enemy. I must be destroyed, or they must die trying.
I grip my side and, biting down against the searing agony, I race back toward the table. Madox drops his head and sniffs the bright red droplets I leave behind. Slowly, he follows my trail. I crash onto the table, and this time, I don’t form a plan. I don’t hesitate. I just close my hand around the cold barrel of a gun, and I take aim at Madox.
He charges toward me.
I pull the trigger.
At the sound of the gun, AK-7 runs to the other side of the room and V-5 pushes himself against the wall. And Madox, my sweet Pandora, he stumbles. The bull with glowing green eyes is on bended knees, stunned by what just happened.
My arm remains outstretched, fingers curled around the weapon, the bullet lodged into drywall. I didn’t know I was going to pull to the right until I did. Somewhere deep down, I prayed the glass would crack. But of course the bullet only ricocheted off and implanted itself elsewhere. It could have ended up in any of us.
I move the gun to the left and position the barrel between my Pandora’s eyes.
Back up, I think.
He does.
Two of my Pandoras, Madox and Monster, are on the other side of the enormous room. The other hasn’t made a sound in several minutes. “If any of you approach me,” I say. “I will shoot to kill.”
I repeat the message to Madox using my mind.
I’m not sure what I think this will accomplish. Already, Monster is edging toward me, snarling. He’s taking small steps, but it won’t take long before the grizzly bear decides to chance an attack. There’s something in their heads telling them to end me. It’s a command, and they were built to obey.
I’ve bought myself precious time, but it’s in vain. Nothing will happen between now and the moment they cross the room. It’s either me or them. When I understand this, when I truly accept that this is the final challenge, I crumble.