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The sun was rising on the third day of the Apex Games, bright and warm, and Elliot Witt was a dead man.
He rose to a crouch—slowly, casually, like maybe he could trick his leg into working again if he just acted nonchalant enough—and then collapsed back into a crumpled little heap of pain and stupidity as white-hot agony burst across his knee.
"Augh," he wheezed. "Fuck."
Broken. Obviously. Not like he didn’t know that already. Some part of him had just been hoping that maybe it wouldn’t end up as bad as it seemed: a dislocation or a nasty bruise or anything at all that meant he might be able to survive this. No such luck.
Elliot sighed. "Mom," he said out loud, to the air or to the little flitting drone-cameras that probably weren’t even bothering to broadcast his prolonged and extremely boring death. "For the record? You were right. Should've been more careful."
Really, he should he be glad he was screwed, because at least now he’d never have to admit that to her face.
He‘d signed up for one of the lower-tier games this time around: jet in, survive for a week on the island, collect his fabulous prizes on the way out. Easy. (There were more exclusive games he could participate in, of course, but the bloodbaths of the most prestigious tournaments—twenty enter, twenty leave, nineteen of them in body bags or as smears of blood and meat jelly scraped off the ground—were… no. He wasn’t that desperate for fame.) Except he’d taken a bad hit early on, and then a worse fall, and now he was stuck in a shallow crevasse of red rock and scrub with no way out but to crawl.
And the arena was shrinking, of course. Couldn’t forget about that fun fact.
Slowly, right now. It was early still. But he could hear that distant, droning hum as it swallowed up the landscape, and it was getting closer. If he started moving now, he might be able to limp his way ahead of it for a while. But he had—Elliot patted the pocket of his mirage cloak—exactly four bullets reserve, plus one chambered in his P2020. Even if he managed to keep away from the barrier long enough to find someone else, that wasn’t a fight he was going to be winning,
Shit, he thought tiredly.
There was one thing he could use his remaining bullets for. (He’d only really need one of them, even, and wasn’t that environmentally conscious of him?)
Death by being stranded outside the arena was, famously, excruciating: flesh burning off in sizzling chunks, bones liquefying, the whole nine yards. Those little drone cameras, right now off capturing footage of people not stuck in ditches, would fly their way over to him just in time to broadcast it.
He didn’t want his mother to see that. It would be better, really, to take care of things here and now.
Elliott stared at his gun a few seconds longer, then tucked it back into the holster on his suit.
He was going to die, and it was going to be a slow, horrible, embarrassingly stupid death. But he was going to die fighting, damn it.
The arena’s slowly-approaching edge at his back, Elliott started crawling.
—
Sweat stuck his hair to his forehead in a limp, pathetic mop. It dripped into his eyes, forcing him to stop and rub the sting of the salt away far too often, and collected in the creases of his suit.
Honestly. Honestly. They couldn’t have run these stupid games somewhere a little more temperate, could they? At this point he was daydreaming about freezing to death.
Elliott made his way forward, achingly slow, mostly crawling, limping along one-footed whenever he could find a tree or a protruding rock big enough to cling to. Every time he approached somewhere that looked like it could be hiding a combatant he’d spin up a duplicate and send it running, carefree and doe-eyed, into the open. (And wow was he starting to get weirdly jealous of his own holograms, what with their working limbs and all.)
So far he hadn’t had a single bite. A shame, really; either he’d pull off the biggest clutch victory the Apex Games had ever seen or he’d get shot in the head, and either of those sounded like much more appealing options than the wall of eerie orange-red light that was slowly gaining on him.
It was like a horror movie. A really terrible, low-budget horror movie that had spent all its budget hiring B-List actors and had nothing left over for the VFX. Haunted by the Gelatin Wall. He’d watch it if he was drunk.
(Hell, he felt drunk right now—light-headed on pain and adrenaline, dizzy with a strange mixture of resignation and desperate desire to survive.)
The trees were getting more frequent, at least. The light, half-forested cover left him harder to spot and made moving a little bit quicker. (Not quick enough to save him, of course. Just enough to draw things out.) Surrounded by lush grass and saplings sprouting tender new growth, he could almost pretend he was just out here on a nice, relaxing walk. Almost.
Elliott took a steadying breath as he closed his eyes, trying just for a moment to push that sharp-edged gnawing panic away—
—a twig snapped behind him. Not great for the whole not panicking thing.
Elliott threw himself forward, activating his suit’s camouflage as he fumbled for his pistol. His bad leg scraped against the ground as he turned; he bit down hard on his tongue to keep any noises of pain from slipping out.
Fuck, fuck... He turned, curled in on himself defensively and trying not to give away his position.
Nothing to the left of him, nothing to the right… Elliott looked up to find a crow, sleek-feathered and plump, staring down at him from the branch of a nearby tree.
He sighed as he re-holstered his gun. Stupid bird.
No wonder it looked so fat. The carrion-eaters around here must feast like kings every single game. Apparently it had just decided on its next meal.
Elliott flicked his fingers at it in the universal motion of shoo, wondering whether it could sense him through his cloaking. He wasn’t opposed to the life cycle, as a general sort of thing, but having a creature following him around and waiting for him to die was just a touch too morbid for his tastes.
No reaction from the bird. It cocked its head, beady eyes glistening, but it didn’t seem to be looking Elliott’s direction. Its gaze was fixed on a point above his head.
He waved his hands a little harder, hoping the distorted edges of his cloaking field might freak it out.
"I see you, you know," said a voice somewhere above Elliott’s left shoulder.
"Augh!"
For the second time in the past two minutes, his heart leaped out of his chest.
Tucked into the crook of a tree at Elliot’s back, as quiet as the crow and every bit as wild, perched an alien-looking and yet all-too-human figure.
Face hidden behind a grim, black-lensed mask; gloved fingers wrapped around the hilt of a knife; boots already splattered with half-dried flecks of blood: Bloodhound, he thought, an icy rush of dread and adrenaline slamming through his veins.
Elliot would recognize this particular competitor anywhere. He’d seen them more times than he could count, usually projected on the giant screens showing the Best Of moments of recent games. Usually in the middle of bloodily dismembering an opponent. Or bloodily disemboweling an opponent. Or bloodily decapitating an opponent. Or—
Well, suffice to say they lived up to their name. Elliott had seen more than his share of HD ultraviolence thanks to Bloodhound, and now he was going to get to see it in better-than-HD: surround-sound, surround-sensation, all-senses-included package. Good for as long as he was still able to sense anything at all.
"Hello," Elliott said. His mirage cloak, which had been steadily heating up as the tech worked double-time to keep him invisible, chose that moment to cut out with a quiet, pathetic whirr. "Nice weather we’re having, huh? Really tempra… tempura… uh, sunny."
Oh man, was he getting loopy or what? Elliott had gone straight through terror and out the other side into a sort of cheerful acceptance. He was fucked! Nothing to do about it now! In a few moments the massive, serrated knife hanging at Bloodhound’s waist was going to plunge right into his throat (or spine, or spleen, or eye socket; he had absolute faith in Bloodhound’s ability to keep things fresh), and he had a pea-shooter and five bullets to ward off the inevitable.
"You know, funny story, actually, just an hour or two ago I’d been planning to shoot myself in the head and, honestly, right now? Kinda wishing I’d gone through with it. Ah, well. You live, you learn—or, I mean, I’m not going to be living and learning, but... you get what I mean."
Maybe Bloodhound would do them both a favor and cut his tongue out first.
Instead of going for their knife, though, Bloodhound only stared for a moment longer at Elliot’s prone form before dropping with a near-inaudible thump onto the leaf-strewn ground. Crouching only an arm’s-length from Elliott, they kept the lenses of their mask fixed on him.
"You broke your leg." With their flat intonation, it took Elliott a moment to realize they were asking a question.
"Yeah. Not my best moment."
"A fatal mistake, for a warrior." Bloodhound raised a hand—Elliott flinched—but they only reached out to brush their leather-clad fingers across his cheek. "And yet… strange."
Elliott shivered. He felt frozen, paralyzed by the knowledge that at any moment this odd touch could turn into a bone-crushing hold, and yet bizarrely intrigued all the same. Up close, their armor was so much more intricate than he could have ever guessed at. It couldn’t be more different than his own mirage cloak, but it there was no doubt in his mind that it had taken its maker just as much work. The ruff of fur was a sleek oil-black, harvested from some alien animal; the charms that hung down from the brim of the helmet were polished to a shine; and every stitch in the leather had unmistakably been done by hand. Their fingers trailed down the side of his face and across his chin, the gentleness of their touch a counterpoint to the strength in their leather-covered grip.
...Was this going to be a thing for him? God, he hoped not. Last thing he wanted was to go to the grave realizing he had some kind of costume fetish.
"Strange?" Elliott echoed.
Not that he disagreed with their words—there was a whole lot of strange going on right now—but he got the feeling Bloodhound was on a completely different page than him.
Bloodhound nodded. "The gods have spoken. They tell me your fate winds on, further than this day."
"...Okay. So, that means, uh…"
They sighed. "Do not shoot me. I will be unhappy if you try."
And with that they pushed on his shoulders, maneuvering him until he was lying flat on his back and staring up at the canopy of trees overhead; Elliott went along with it more out of sheer confusion than anything else.
A moment’s pause, just long enough for Elliott to wonder if he was about to become a particularly unfitting offering to whatever gods it was that Bloodhound worshiped—they had to realize he wasn’t going to work as a virgin sacrifice, right?—before there was the noise of plastic cracking at Bloodhound’s side.
A sudden stab of pain in his leg, enough to make Elliott yelp and lash out wildly (oh f, oh f) and then… relief, sinking into his bones, winding through his sore muscle and abused tissue. The absence of pain, so unexpected he barely knew how to process it, radiating out from a point on his upper thigh.
Elliott pushed himself into a rough sitting position just in time to watch the syringe Bloodhound had stuck into him finish pumping the last of its dose. It deactivated with a depressurized hiss, needle retracting from his body with another tug of pain.
"Oh," he breathed.
He tested his leg, rolling his ankle and curling his toes just for the sheer pleasure of being able to. The nanites in the syringe were flooding through him; he could feel the paths they took through his body, the way everything felt suddenly better in their wake.
Elliott could’ve kissed Bloodhound.
Well, no, he couldn’t have, that mask was in the way—but he would have, if he could. Relief bubbled up inside him, spilled from his throat as a half-crazed little laugh.
"Thank you," he breathed. "I… don’t have much, um"—he fumbled through his empty pockets, searching for something that could pay a debt as heavy as his life—"I’ve got a scope here if you need it, or some bullets, or I could owe you dinner? After, I mean? Not in a weird way, just—"
Bloodhound cut him off with a birdlike tilt of their head. Elliott wondered if their stare was half this intense without the tinted lenses in the way; somehow, he had absolutely no doubt that it was. Their expression was hard to read (not a surprise, given that they didn’t have one), but something about their posture made him think they weren’t angry at his babbling.
They looked amused, almost. Or maybe just confused.
"I need nothing from you." They paused, then added, "Today, at least. In the future… who knows why I was meant to find you here?"
"Right. Obviously. But, seriously, though, thanks."
"Live," they told him solemnly. "We will meet again."
There was a burst of noise behind him, a leaves rustling and wings beating against the air, and by the time Elliott had finished having a heart attack—this was, what, three today?—and turned to face Bloodhound again, his… competitor had already taken off. He caught a glimpse of them clambering over a rock, a flash of movement as they slid under a half-collapsed tree, and then they were headed into the thicker woods: nothing but a smudge of brown-on-brown, every bit as invisible as Elliott liked to be.
The last sign of them Elliott caught was a fat black crow, flying low, skimming the treetops in pursuit of its master.
"Huh," he said to no one in particular. "I can’t believe I survived that."
Today was shaping up to be very, very weird.
Elliott flicked his suit back into operational mode, letting it shake off the effects of the forced overheat. Holograms working, leg working… he still only had five bullets, but that seemed like a much fairer number than it had only half an hour ago.
Live. We will meet again. Elliott wasn’t sure if that had been a promise or a threat, but he intended to follow their advice either way. He’d make it out of this game. He’d come face-to-face with Bloodhound once more.
...And hey, who knew what would happen then. Maybe he’d get a chance to make good on his offer of dinner.