THE ALL-PRO (Galactic Football League)

  And somewhere, deep inside, Quentin had known all along.

  Gredok had played him. Quentin had thought himself good at the manipulation game? Good at seeing the true emotions of others? He saw nothing. Gredok had been setting this up since last season. Quentin never saw it coming.

  Now, Quentin’s full attention focused on Cillian Carbonaro.

  Rage had always been Quentin’s tool, the source of his on-field power, the driving force behind his relentless work ethic. Then, he’d learned to control it, to channel it, to push it down for the good of the team. He’d learned that he couldn’t solve all of his problems with his fists.

  Not all of them.

  But for this problem?

  And that man is not our father.

  Yeah, fists would work just fine.

  BLINK

  He reached past Cillian, toward Gredok, grabbed the edge of the table and ripped it backward, sent it sailing through the air. Food flew, drink splashed, candles spun and snuffed out in mid-air.

  Quentin stepped toward Gredok the Splithead. Cillian stood and put his hand on Quentin’s chest. The older man’s head shook in slow motion, his lips started to form the word don’t, but they didn’t finish because Quentin head-butted Cillian right in that hateful, lie-spewing mouth.

  The older man sagged. Quentin again reached for the Quyth Leader, but Gredok was already scrambling away and a well-dressed HeavyKi was rushing forward, club in hand. The HeavyKi swung — so pitifully slow — but Quentin side-stepped, grabbed Gredok’s chair. The club hissed through empty air. Quentin lifted the chair, twisted and brought it around in a fast, wide arc, smashing it into the HeavyKi’s vocal tubes. The 750-pound thug let out a low-toned squeal of pain, black blood already streaming from its head, its front-right and right-side eyelids shut tight against splinters that jutted forth from the torn eyes beneath. Four arms spread wide, too wide to dodge — it rushed forward.

  Ju Tweedy blind-sided it, his oversized Human shoulder smashing into the HeavyKi’s head. Both sentients fell to the ground, fists flying.

  Quentin had only one thought: Kill Gredok.

  The black-furred Quyth Leader ran for the exit. Quentin hurdled Ju and the HeavyKi. He saw the Sklorno bodyguard drawing a gun, a gun that looked like the one he still had in his pocket, draw it and point it at Quentin.

  Two bodies flew through the air — Bobby Brobst, the Human bodyguard, bent over at the waist because he had John Tweedy’s shoulder in his stomach, John’s arms wrapped around Bobby’s back, John’s big legs driving forward. John screamed a scream of joy, then drove the Human right into the Sklorno, the three of them crashing into the wall hard enough to splinter wood and crack plastic.

  Hate. Kill. Hurt. Kill.

  Quentin ran for the door. Virak the Mean appeared in front of him, blocking the way.

  Virak held up two pedipalp hands — just stop, don’t do this — but Quentin didn’t slow. He stepped forward and threw a big overhand left. Everything else, the fist included, seemed to be moving in slow motion, but not Virak. The big Warrior stepped inside the punch, drove both of his lower fists into Quentin’s stomach. The air shot out of Quentin’s lungs. He dropped to one knee, tried to get up, but before he could, a shelled fist cracked into his right ear.

  BLINK

  Quentin fell face-first into a broken plate, bits of shredded meat smearing on his skin.

  “Stay down,” Virak said. “If you get up, I won’t hold back.”

  Quentin grabbed the broken plate and threw it in one quick motion. He saw Virak’s armored eyelid close just before the plate smashed against his face, driving the linebacker back a step.

  Virak opened his eye, then reached into his gray pants — he pulled out a foot-long knife. “You side with that genetic reject, then turn against my Shamakath? I’ll make you stay down.”

  A shadow passed by Quentin’s head.

  Choto the Bright, diving over him.

  Virak seemed surprised, as if he didn’t know how to process an attack by his teammate and fellow bodyguard. Choto slammed into Virak, driving him backward. The two big sentients crashed through a table.

  Quentin stood, looked around. The restaurant vibrated with fists and knees and grunts of pain and John Tweedy screaming wooo-woo! It’s the Pain Train! over and over again. Ju and John were on top of the bodyguards, beating them senseless.

  Gredok was gone.

  Quentin shook his head, tried to clear his mind. He had to stop this. He looked for Fred and Jeanine, but he couldn’t spot them.

  His sister was gone.

  He could find her, figure out what to do next, but first he had to stop all this fighting.

  Then Quentin saw him.

  Cillian Carbonaro. Entering the kitchen doors, making a run for it.

  And that man is not our father.

  Quentin covered the fifteen feet in a second and a half. Cillian pushed through the kitchen doors, which swung back as Quentin hit them, his mass smashing them open, tearing them from their hinges. Quentin put a shoulder into his “father’s” back, driving the man face-first into the hard kitchen floor.

  They skidded, leaving a streak of red blood to mark their path.

  Cillian flipped over, hurt but struggling.

  Quentin straddled him.

  Cillian stopped moving, his body suddenly rigid like a frozen corpse.

  Quentin blinked once, twice, three times. He was holding a small gun, pressing the barrel hard into Cillian’s squeezed-shut right eye.

  Only if you press it right up against a sentient’s brain case and pull the trigger.

  The trigger. Quentin felt springs resisting his finger’s pull. Resisting it, yet welcoming it, the strong handshake of a lifelong friend.

  “Please,” Cillian said. “Don’t kill me.”

  Quentin partially heard the words. They sounded distant, faint, drowned out by a roar that played endlessly, a monotone that told him to do it do it kill him kill him.

  He squeezed the trigger a little tighter. He could feel the mechanism inside, sense it was at the final release point when something would give, when springs would slam a hammer against a primer, when an explosion would drive a bullet through Cillian’s eye and into his brain.

  A tap on his shoulder.

  Quentin jumped, waited for the gun to go off, but it did not. He looked up to his right. John Tweedy stood there, gnawing on a steak bone.

  “Hey, Q,” he said. “You gonna kill that shucker?”

  Quentin blinked. The roar faded away. He looked down at Cillian, who remained stiff, trembling on the floor.

  “I don’t know,” Quentin said.

  John chewed. “Do you want me to kill him?”

  Quentin again looked up at his friend. John used his back teeth to scrape a scrap of meat off the bone. It was like they’d never left the dinner table. Fun-and-games John Tweedy had another side entirely, a side that could do bad things — like kill — without thinking twice.

  “No,” Quentin said. “I don’t want you to kill him.”

  John shrugged. “I’ll kill him for you, I don’t mind. He’s got it coming, Q. He deserves it.”

  Quentin shook his head. “No. He deserves something, but not that.”

  John nodded, held out his left hand. “Well, then give me the gun. If you’re going to whack this guy — I’d whack him if I were you — he deserves it by beating, not quick with a bullet.”

  Quentin looked at John’s empty palm. Streaked with blood both red and black. A tiny shard of glass plate was sticking out of the base of his thumb. John could kill so easily. Was that what Quentin could become?

  No. Killing was a sin.

  He handed John the gun.

  “Thanks,” John said. “I’ll be right outside. Whatever you do, Ju and I will take care of you.”

  John walked out, leaving Quentin alone with the man he’d thought was his father.

  Quentin stood up. He slid aside some food-filled bowls, then sat on a metal counter.

&nbs
p; The rage vanished, pushed away by something worse.

  Pain. Heartbreak.

  Quentin coughed. A thin breath snaked into his lungs. “How could you do this to me?”

  Still shaking, Cillian raised up on one elbow. Blood dripped from his mouth to pool on the tile floor. He was missing his frontright tooth. Quentin saw the like-father-like-son irony but didn’t appreciate it.

  “Can I sit up?”

  Quentin nodded. It seemed oddly difficult to do even that — his head felt heavy, every muscle exhausted beyond the point of failure.

  Cillian slowly pushed himself to his butt, his feet in front of him, shoes resting in a puddle of his own blood. The man hurt physically, of that there was no question considering the beating Quentin had laid down, but there was a deeper pain.

  A pain of the soul.

  “It was just a job,” he said through split lips. “I’m an actor. Gredok offered me all this money. I got to pretend to be your dad. It was supposed to make you happy.”

  “Do I look happy?”

  The man winced, flinched away. Quentin realized that he’d come off the metal counter and was standing over the beaten man, screaming the words, bloody fists clenched into weapons.

  He forced his hands to open.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Rick,” the man said. “Rick Vinje. People call me Sarge.”

  The man’s name was Sarge. Somehow, that made it even worse. A normal man with a normal nickname. A man with a real past, a real life — a life that had never involved Quentin.

  Once again, Quentin Barnes was an orphan.

  He’d always been an orphan.

  Quentin could barely stand. So weak. He again sat on the metal counter.

  “I believed you,” he said. It hurt to speak. It hurt to breathe. How could it hurt to breath? “I believed that you were ... my father. What kind of a demon are you?”

  “I’m sorry,” the man said. “I didn’t know it would turn out like this. I didn’t think ... ” he lifted a hand to his face and wiped away a tear, leaving a streak of thinned-out blood on his cheek. “I guess I just didn’t think.”

  “Tears,” Quentin said. “I saw you cry when you talked about my mother. But that was just acting. Can you call up tears whenever you want?”

  The man nodded. “Yeah. I always could. That’s how I got into acting, actually, ‘cause someone saw me fake-crying. They said it was a rare gift.”

  “A blessing from the High One, right?”

  The man nodded again. “Yeah. But these are real.”

  “Go shuck yourself.”

  “Look, I don’t want you to hurt me anymore, but I don’t want to hurt you either. I was already having second thoughts about all of this.”

  “Easy for you to say now, isn’t it?”

  “I was,” he said.

  “Why?”

  Sarge looked away. “You’re a good man, Quentin. That’s why. You’re better than all of the people around you. You’re better than me. I don’t have a kid. If I did, I’d want him to be just like you.”

  Quentin leaned forward, just a little, just enough so that Sarge’s eyes shot back up to see what was coming next.

  “If I were you,” Quentin said, “I’d never use that phrase again.”

  Sarge nodded. “Okay, okay.”

  Quentin leaned back. “So tell me how it went down. Tell me why.”

  “I’m an actor,” he said. “Years ago, I was supposed to make a movie about George Starcher’s life, but it fell through. I would have gotten the part because I look a little like him and I’m big.”

  “You’re a foot shorter than he is.”

  Sarge nodded. “Sure, but with movie magic, I’d look big enough. The movie never got made. Gredok found some footage or something. I knew football. I really am from the Purist Nation. I left there when I was sixteen, so I knew your background. I was perfect to play the part of your dad.”

  The man paused, seemed to expect another punch. Quentin stayed still, waited for more.

  “My job was to make you believe,” he said. “Once that was done, I was supposed to remind you how much you liked playing in Ionath, that being happy was more important than a big paycheck.”

  And how the actor had played that part. Quentin thought back to their conversations, how things usually came around to how much Quentin liked Ionath, how much he loved his teammates, his friends, the life he had built here. Of how blessed he was to play football for a living, to have escaped Micovi and the Nation. The actor had been manipulating him all along.

  “Well, Sarge, do you have any idea how much money I lost because of you?”

  Vinje shrugged. “You lost more than I’ll ever know in my life and you’re making far more than that.”

  “Oh, please,” Quentin said. “I think daddy’s life lessons are over.”

  The man’s bloody lip sneered. “Poor little rich boy.”

  Quentin’s hands again balled up into fists. It was all he could do to stop from killing this man. And yet, Vinje wasn’t afraid. He wasn’t begging for his life. Vinje couldn’t do a thing to defend himself against Quentin, but he wasn’t going to cower, wasn’t going to whimper.

  That much, at least, Quentin could respect.

  “Your life is so hard,” the man said. “Your yacht, your rockstar girlfriend, your—”

  “Shut up.”

  “—huge contract, your friends that would do anything for you—”

  “I said shut up!”

  “—millions of adoring fans, that wide-eyed fullback girl who is dying for your every word, your—”

  Quentin came off the bench and swung, a shoulder-twisting, hip-turning straight left that smashed into the actor’s nose. The fist hit so hard that blood splattered, sprayed across the floor.

  Vinje sagged.

  Quentin stood, stared. Waited.

  Was the man breathing?

  Oh High One, what have I done?

  Then the man coughed, drew in a wet breath. He moaned, half-in, half-out.

  Quentin turned to the door. “John?”

  John rushed in, skidded to a halt. “Yeah?”

  “Get a doctor,” Quentin said. “Or an ambulance. Or whatever. I don’t care. Just don’t let this guy die.”

  “On it.” John shot out of the kitchen as quickly as he’d come.

  Vinje reached up a weak hand. “Help ... me up.”

  Quentin gently reached under the actor’s shoulders, lifted him, set him on the metal counter. Sure, the actor was a big Human, but beaten and weak like this it brought home the discrepancy in size. Quentin had used all of his strength on another sentient, a sentient who was not an athlete, a Human who was pushing fifty years old. No matter what this evil man had done, he didn’t deserve to be beaten to death.

  “You ... can really punch. I don’t feel so good.”

  “John’s finding you help. I’ll get you to a hospital, then I never want to see you again, you understand? If I see you again ... I’m not sure I’ll be able to control myself.”

  “This is you under control?”

  Quentin shrugged. “Yeah. Pretty much.”

  Vinje gently touched his ruined nose. “I wonder if they can fix it. How bad does it look?”

  The man’s nose was slanted to the left and already swelling at the bridge. Even Doc Patah would have a tough time repairing that.

  “It’s okay,” Quentin said.

  “I lied about something else,” Vinje said.

  “What a surprise.”

  “I am a sports fan. I know this is really messed up, what I did to you and all, but I was a fan before I was your dad.”

  “Pretended to be my dad.”

  “Right, pretended,” Vinje said. “Well, you’re fantastic. It’s great to watch you play. And getting to hang out with you was a real bonus.”

  “If you ask me for my autograph, I’ll stomp on your throat and watch you die. Just sit there and shut up.”

  Vinje nodded. He fell silent other t
han coughing every few seconds, splatting droplets of blood onto the floor.

  Together, they waited for the ambulance.

  • • •

  THE ELEVATOR STOPPED. Quentin stepped out into the musty hallway. Sagging smart-paper — paper that had long ago lost its ability to flash images — hung on the walls. Bits of trash lined the hallway’s stained carpet.

  Quentin walked toward Suite 1510. From twenty feet way, he could see that the reinforced metal door was open.

  Fred usually kept that door shut. Shut and locked.

  Quentin walked into the office, his eyes glancing over the symbols on the door that spelled out gonzaga investigations in fifteen languages. Inside the long, thin office, Quentin found something he didn’t expect.

  Choto the Bright.

  Alone, sitting on the edge of a white desk, his right pedipalp arm in a sling.

  There was no one else.

  “Quentin,” Choto said. “I have been looking everywhere for you. I thought you might come here.”

  Quentin looked up to the piñata, still hanging from the ceiling, then back to Choto. “What did you shuckers do with Fred?”

  Choto’s baseball-sized eye swirled with green. “Nothing. I did nothing and I don’t think Gredok knows where Frederico went. The office was empty and open. Frederico is nowhere to be found. Neither is your sister.”

  “Right. And I’m supposed to believe that?”

  More green, a deeper shade. “I promise you, I had nothing to do with any of this. I didn’t know.”

  Quentin shook his head. “Save it. You work for Gredok. I know where your loyalty is.”

  Choto stared at the floor. “I don’t work for him anymore. I ... I have been ...”

  “Fired?”

  The Quyth Warrior looked up. “That is not the exact word for what happened. I have been kicked out, Quentin. Because I fought Virak at that dinner. Because I fought Virak to stop him from hurting you.”

  Quentin glanced at the sling. Choto had been injured fighting Virak? Could it be true that Gredok had fired Choto, or was this just another trick?

  “I don’t care,” Quentin said. “Outside of the practice field, the locker room and during games, I don’t want to see you.”