Opus

26. Hail Mary Pass

I want to ignore the other player. I want to harvest the spheres. May the best man, or woman win.

I can feel him lurking in the shadows. Are all winners thieves?

I pick chips. He follows.

For each two targets I come across, I leave one untouched for him. Yellows, reds, even blacks. Sometimes he takes the chip. Sometimes he doesn't. I can't figure out his end game. I keep track of my score on my left thigh, his on my right. I'm way ahead.

He doesn't seek me out. I don't take him out. Hours and hours of fun. I don't dare sleep. Eat. Stop. In the darkness he lurks. Coward.

Rule 24: Neither positioners, gaters, observers nor referees are allowed to carry weapons of any type whatsoever.

"This is it," I want to shout at him. "Play, you asshole!"

Why cheat when you can win fair and square? Do all games end this way? That's one thing the stats don't tell. I know the names, the average mean scores, the number of sets played, the age of each participant even, but about how it really went down, here in the gutters, history doesn't say squat.

I fantasize that my companion is the exception, and all other games ever played were won by the book. As proof, I'll point out that my opponent did defy the numbers. He remained in the top three all through the sets. Before last of six kids, nothing preconditioned him for such greatness. Firstborns are the studious types while seconds, the spares, are the independent ones; thirds are overachievers wanting to one up the older twos, and youngests, the spoiled, lazy ones. The in-betweens? They're just filling in the blanks. Or so the numbers show.

This one here is acting out of his rank. Fifths often do. Or so I presume since I've limited experience with fifth-rank progeny. Come to think of it, except for a pet bunny I had as a kid, l've never personally encountered a fifth child. This freakish eight-kid family used to live in the castle's shadows to the north, but their house burned to the ground before I was old enough to go about unattended. Only the parents survived. Last I heard, they had moved overseas and started another incubator there. The rumors circulating in the kingdom would amaze you. We as a clan have quite a colorful imagination.

Fifth is a lazybones overachiever. Two can play this game.

I pick. He follows. He picks. I study. His body hisses a steady wuzz-wuzz-wuzz. Try listening to that for hours. It gets to the point that his annoying buzzing is all I can hear. It drowns out the targets. Drowns out my own heartbeat.

Patience is a virtue I haven't acquired just yet. Hence, my aborted career as a huntswoman. I am cunning, though. Blades in hand, I look for an opening between each target. Arse, thigh, arm, trunk, I am willing to take anything.

My bag is heavy, heavier than it needs to be, my bloodied left thigh attests.

What is tiredness but a diversion for the too many thoughts crowding my mind? I stood a fraction of a second too long in the open, barely enough for him to take a shot, but he did. Cocky overachievers are the fucking worst. They make me want to one-up them.

The brick hits me square in the back with enough strength that I stumble forward, landing on my knees. I would have fallen flat on my face but for my lightning fast reflexes−thank you Kendrick. My hands drop the blades and shoot out to brace me, breaking my fall inches away from an even more humiliating position. Little does it help me, though.

By the time I realized I haven't merely tripped over my own feet but am in fact under siege, Fifth is trying to tackle me into the wet dirt, his elbow is around my neck, crushing my trachea.

He's too heavy. Panic overtakes me.

He's too strong.

I can't breathe.

I pull at his arm with my left hand. Dig my nails into his skin. Flay about. All the while my right elbow is locked, my forearm to the cobblestones now, stopping him from taking me down.

I. Can't. Fucking. Breathe.

Tears stream down my face. I will not go down.

If he pushes me down to the stones, I'll die. I know I'll die. Already, black spots dance in front of my eyes. I'm lightheaded. If I could breathe, l'd throw up. My neck is on fire. My lungs are ready to explode. Dad was killed wrestling a band of seven smugglers. He took out four, four before they got him. I can't even survive some lazy, cheating, fifth-child player!

My shoulder shakes as my elbow gives.

I cannot breathe.

Is that so bad?

I close my eyes and let go of his arm.

I fall down on my face. The stones are cold and silent against my cheek. The wuzz the only sound ringing in my ears.

In the end, my pride saves me. That and luck, and centuries of ingrained stubbornness.

In a daze, my left pinkie touches the cold handle of a blade. It's in my fist before my last hiss, and pushing, twisting into Fifth's belly. I'd like to say I fought valiantly, but that would be a slight embellishment.

I wake, my lungs on fire, an unbearable necklace of pain around my throat, and an unconscious player at my side.

Throwing up hurts worse than breathing. Somehow I manage both.

Time slowly passes when one's dying. Surviving also takes an eternity in itself. This night, survival won, go figure. I can't say I am overly ecstatic.

My father's mother was a witch doctor. Based on the amount of blood and on how quick Fifth passed out, she would have diagnosed a puncture to a vital organ, a kidney maybe, or a lung, and a hemorrhage. My blade must have severed a major blood vessel on the way to said organ. Daddy would be so proud.

Why had the idiot removed the blade? I check for a pulse. Weak, erratic, but still going. Even the wuzz beats on. I make no moves toward my knives glinting a few paces away on the cobblestones. The playground can have them.

Dilemma. Will the cleaning crew find him on time or should I drag him to the gate? Will it make a difference? What time is it anyway?

My skin burns. The color of my time bracelet fades before my eyes.

When I come to, the player is dead. How long have I been out? Vomit and blood cake my hair. That will make one hell of a picture on the Wall of Fame. Now, if I can only make it back to my gate, everything will be peachy. Stubbornness, pride, ancestry and all that shit are all well and good, but nothing beats desperation.