Copyright © 2023 - Written content by J.E. Maurice (unless otherwise credited) - All rights reserved by the creator. Reposting is permitted as long as proper credit is given (I.E., a link to the original story and/or links to the author's social sites.)
/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/
Short flashes of luminescence flitted by in the darkness as the elevator descended, passing by dimly lit floors on its journey to the subbasement, the crack in the metal doors allowing slivers of light to illuminate the cramped space for only seconds at a time. The thumping music of the nightclub above gave way to the thrumming of machinery, and the unmistakable sound of a crowd cheering beneath. The faint buzzing of the blue lights within the lift was barely audible, but still present enough to aggravate one of the elevator’s occupants.
Orion Slade stood with his hands clasped resolutely behind his back, his yellow eyes locked onto the elevator doors in front of him; his long tail twitched to and fro with increasing frequency the longer he remained otherwise still. To his immediate left, an intimidating silverback tapped his foot impatiently, eager to exit the small area, and occasionally casting uneasy glances at the tall figure to the cougar’s right. It was shrouded in a dark rain cloak, its features all but a mystery to everyone but Orion, and this did not sit well with the gorilla.
“Are you sure about this guy?” the silverback asked the cougar in a hushed tone, though the hooded stranger would have to have been deaf to fail to hear the question in the tiny room.
“Yes, I’m sure, Jaxon,” Orion answered, his gaze fixed straight ahead. “If you ask me that again, you’re fired.” Under the circumstances, Jaxon could not be sure if this threat was an attempt at a dry joke, or if it was genuine potential consequence of reiterating the inquiry one more time. However, it took very little weighing of his options to decide to play it safe.
A gentle, electronic pinging sound filled the space, and the thin doors slid open with a whir. The trio stepped out into the expansive room beyond, squinting in the smoky air. Orion’s poor mood improved rather drastically as he stared at the towering balconies encircling the concrete arena before him; the arena was a massive square—spanning easily 1600 square feet—and bordered on each side by mezzanine-like platforms, which bustled with activity. The dusty floor of the crude colosseum was dotted with various brownish stains, the implications of which were evident.
“This’ll be fun,” the cougar said, a sly smirk spreading across his face. “Jaxon, go find us some seats near the elevator.”
Jaxon gave his boss a very tense look before wordlessly disappearing into the throng. Once he was out of sight, Orion turned to his disguised companion, who was ominously silent and motionless.
“You’re doing well so far, Sylux,” said Orion. “Remember, you’re to stay hidden under that cloak, no matter what. If your identity is revealed, everyone in this room who sees you will have to be eliminated. Nod if you understand.”
The figure nodded obediently.
“Good boy,” said Orion. “And remember that you’re not to use your more… attention-grabbing skills while we’re maintaining your anonymity. It sparks too many questions.”
“Orion Slade, is that you?” asked a booming voice, ringing out over the noise of the crowd. The cougar turned his head to find the origin of the sound, and spotted it instantaneously. A tall, muscular buffalo was rather brusquely pushing his way through the sea of observers, a wide grin plastered across his face.
Sylux watched the buffalo with suspicion, though there did not appear to be any threatening body language, and Slade seemed to be reciprocating his cordial demeanor; however, there was something strangely performative about both of them, which Sylux noted. While the conversation between the two was pleasant in tone, it was feigned.
“Fells, you old bastard,” Orion chuckled, shaking the buffalo’s outstretched hand. “You’re looking well.”
“I feel well!” Fells exclaimed, throwing his arms up in an enthusiastic shrug. “You look very debonair, as usual. It’s great to see we could get ya outta that creaky tower for a night on the town.”
“I’ve just had the creaks oiled,” the cougar said dryly. “But I’d hate to miss another fight club. I even brought a fighter to celebrate the occasion.”
“Ohhh, have ya now?” Fells bellowed with laughter, looking Sylux’s veiled form up and down. The protogen had long since disabled all illuminated functions, otherwise his crimson eyes—and the myriad other status lights—would have been undoubtedly spotted in the folds of his cloak. While his legs and feet were somewhat visible when he moved, the smoky air and inadequate lighting of the primitive stadium rendered this a nonissue.
“Mysterious fella, is he?” Fells wondered. “What’s his fighter name?”
“Ares,” Orion answered.
“The god of war and courage!” the huge buffalo declared excitedly. “Great name for a fighter! Well, we‘ve got several opponents available; there’s Kragen the bull, the twin gators Sage and Gare, and Osund, our very own giant insectoid champion. Do any of those interest ya, Ares?”
“He’ll take all four,” Slade interjected immediately.
“All of ‘em…?” Fells gawked at Sylux for a moment, and then at Orion for an equal amount of time. “Well… I dunno 'bout that, Slade, I don’t think he’d stand much of a chance. It’s just not good entertainment to do it that way.”
“Oh, believe me,” Orion said confidently. “It’ll be entertaining. And I have a hefty bet to place on his victory.”
“Well… alright, if you insist!” Fells responded, the promise of a large sum of cash renewing his fervor. “Ares can go ahead and get down to the arena, and we’ll get the other fighters rounded up. And you can follow me to the bidding table.”
“Lead the way,” Orion said before turning to Sylux. “And, Ares… at least pretend this fight is a challenge for you. We want to give this crowd a good show, hm?”
Sylux nodded and watched his master vanish into the throng of bloodthirsty patrons, many of them eyeing him with everything from disdain to interest, or unease to nonchalance. The protogen efficiently navigated to the entrance to the bottom floor, and waited silently next to the metal gate that accessed the arena. While he fully intended to obey the orders he had received, he did not quite understand them. What point was there in engaging in a battle, but acting as if it was strenuous when it was not? And what did it mean to give the crowd a good show?
He did not have to bide his time with these uncertainties for long, as the voice of Fells rang out across the massive room via the public address system; simultaneously, a short avian darted into Sylux’s view, and unlatched the gate to the stadium.
“Just go through there when Fells announces you, got it?” she said, her tone of voice remarkably bored. Sylux had been instructed to remain wordless while in the presence of strangers, but it did not seem to matter. The avian departed hastily, seemingly unconcerned with whether or not he had understood the instructions.
/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/
“These are excellent seats, Jaxon,” said Orion Slade, leaning back and crossing his legs. “I won’t have to strain to see the action at all.”
“Thanks, sir…” Jason murmured, looking distracted. “If I could ask you something… I guess I don’t fully understand what we’re doing here. If this was just a money-making opportunity, why would I be here? You’ve always had me stay in the background because… well, you know.”
“You’re very persistent,” Orion replied lazily, lounging backwards in his chair. “You’re correct though, I didn’t invite you here because I thought you’d have a good time, you’re way too high-strung for that.”
“Can you blame me?” Jaxon hissed back, casting a nervous glance over his shoulder. “Some of the people I’ve seen here were friends with some of my targets.”
“If you did your job properly—as you assured me you did—then they should have no idea who you are,” Slade said dismissively. “In which case you don’t have anything to worry about.”
“I’m more curious who this mysterious *Ares* is,” remarked a jackal sitting on the other side of Orion. She looked bizarrely at ease in her tense surroundings, the rabble lapsing into an apprehensive silence as Fells continued his string of announcements, his voice electronically amplified.
“You’ll find out, Mirage,” said Orion, his fierce eyes fixed on the arena. “I can only say that I hope you placed your bets on him.”
“And now—without further ado—I give you… Kragen!” Fells bellowed, and the crowd released an enthused roar as a huge bull with one robotic arm came into their view, waving to the spectators from his position beneath them.
“Sage and Gare!” the buffalo continued, and two more fighters appeared, twin alligators that were identical in their appearance, with the single exception that one of them was wearing an eyepatch over their left eye. Whether that one was Sage or Gare, Orion neither knew, nor cared.
“And your champion… Oooo-sund!” Fells finished as the massive insectoid emerged from the darkened doorway that led into the arena; he did not wave or make a spectacle of himself. All four of his massive pincers were folded against his chest, as if he were embracing himself. Orion could not suppress a chuckle, knowing these combatants had no chance of victory.
“And now… a new challenger approaches,” Fells said in a contrived announcer tone. “A fighter unknown, who has insisted on battling all four of our warriors simultaneously… I give you… Ares!”
/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/
Sylux stepped through the entryway, his clawed feet clicking softly against the concrete floor as he strode to the middle of the ring. The four contenders eyed his cloaked form suspiciously, and the twins exchanged an uncertain glance.
“Who in their right mind would wanna fight all of us?” Gare asked Sage, who merely shrugged uneasily.
“This fight will be the most intense battle to the death we’ve ever seen here,” Fells’ booming voice rang out across the vast room. “We’ve never done four versus one in this arena before, so you folks are in for a unique experience! I wish the best of luck to our fighters, and to all of you out there placing bets. The battle begins in ten… nine… eight…”
Sage and Gare tensed, each of them drawing a pair of sinister-looking daggers from their belts, brandishing them dangerously.
“Seven… six…”
Kragen cracked his knuckles, and struck his fists together to prepare for combat, smirking with confidence.
“Five… four…”
Osund flexed all four of his arms, and committed to a basic battle stance, his heart beating fast.
“Three… two…”
Sylux’s combat visor analyzed the environment, and his opponents’ stances in a fraction of a second, calculating the most likely outcome of the battle: a decisive victory.
“One… begin!”
Kragen charged with no hesitation, leveraging the full strength of his robotic arm to attack. Unfortunately for the bull, his punch pattern was predictable to Sylux, even without the use of his combat programming. The other three warriors hung back to observe, and to stay clear of Kragen’s wild swinging. His punches smashed into the ground, sending out shockwaves that echoed across the stadium as his cloaked opponent dodged and deflected each blow effortlessly. With every missed strike, Kragen let out a string of frustrated curses.
“Ares is fast,” Osund remarked.
“We know how to deal with fast,” Gare answered.
Kragen spat in fury as his thrashing became increasingly erratic, his robotic arm punching into a wall of the arena; seeing this blunder, Sylux instinctively pressed his advantage. With augmented speed, he took hold of a large hunk of concrete—which had been violently detached from the wall by Kragen’s blow—and ferociously bludgeoned the bull’s eyes and forehead with it. Kragen futilely attempted to block the brutal assault with his free arm, but his opponent restrained it with one fluid motion, bending it to an uncomfortable angle away from his face. The bull’s wails were lost in the crowd’s roars of approval.
Gare and Sage wordlessly leapt into action, perhaps believing Ares to be sufficiently distracted enough to be vulnerable. The protogen heard their imminent arrival before they could even make it halfway to him, and his effortless dodge of Gare’s downward slash made both the twins’ hearts plummet. Kragen slumped against the wall, blood trickling down his face.
Sage successfully followed his sister’s attack, attempting to bury his dagger into the chest of their adversary, but he blinked in confusion when he found that his target was much farther to the right than he had thought. His blade scraped harmlessly against the manufactured stone wall, sparks glinting off of the metal. Both twins launched themselves towards Sylux, their vicious lunges coinciding like a choreographed dance; their synchronized onslaught was fierce, but not nearly enough to break Sylux’s defenses. His fluid deflections of their strikes began to enrage Gare, who broke suddenly to the left, desperately attempting to flank her opponent. Simultaneously, Sage pounced forward, knife raised high.
Sylux’s grip latched onto Sage’s wrist, utilizing the alligator’s own momentum to send him stumbling into Gare, disrupting their rhythm. In the blink of an eye, the protogen was upon them, disarming them both with two meticulous swipes of his claws, their daggers clattering to the floor. Sylux suddenly shifted to his right, successfully sidestepping Osund’s deadly attack from behind, the insectoid’s claws slicing through the air where Sylux had been standing milliseconds earlier. Osund was extraordinarily swift and stealthy for his size, but it was still not enough to land a hit on his opponent.
While Sylux was still on the defensive, Osund continued his offense, lashing out violently with his inbuilt weapons. Sylux rolled under the first attack, recovering just in time to elude the second, and the third. Gare retrieved her dagger from the ground as Osund distracted Ares, but Sage was not so fortunate; he watched the dark figure in the cloak snatch up his fallen blade, wielding it with lethal intent.
/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/
“He’s remarkable, isn’t he?” Orion said, his face ablaze with excitement as he watched his creation in battle. “They haven’t been able to lay a finger on him.”
“Where did you find this guy?” Jax puzzled, also intently observing the shrouded fighter in the ongoing battle.
Orion did not care to answer, but if he had, his reply would have been lost in the sudden uproar. The mob of onlookers bellowed in exhilaration as the contender known as Ares rolled between Osund’s tall stance, and thrust his dagger into the armed alligator, who was crouched behind the insectoid. Gare immediately collapsed, clutching her hemorrhaging injury. Ares turned sharply to eliminate her brother, pouncing on Sage as a spider ambushes a fly.
“He’s a juggernaut,” Mirage said in awe, peering with a warped fascination at the reptilian twins’ grisly last moments. Osund attempted to pummel Ares from behind again, but his quarry dashed to the side, causing the insectoid’s pincers to skewer only Sage.
“Yes, he is,” Slade concurred, a hint of pride in his voice. “My perfect assassin.”
This remark did not slip past Jax, who glanced uncertainly at his boss. By the time he returned his gaze to the arena, Ares had managed to perch atop the insectoid’s back, and was raining blows on it, cracking the carapace. Osund’s first three swipes at his unwanted passenger were unsuccessful; however, the fourth narrowly managed to hook Ares’ robe against his jagged claw, tearing it away. The spectators released a collective gasp as the impending champion’s true form was unmasked. His crimson eyes immediately manifested, scanning the room.
“What in the hell is that?” Jaxon breathed, staring in astonishment at the cyborg.
“Oh, dear…” Orion murmured, casually inspecting the claws on his fingertips. “It might be best if you two got out of here.”
“What, why?” Mirage demanded, snapping her head in his direction. “What’s going on? What is that thing?”
“He’s a new addition to our team,” the cougar explained. “Unfortunately, no one outside our organization can know he exists. And he doesn’t know that you two are members yet. If you want to live past the next two minutes, then take the elevator out of here… now.”
/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/
Sylux’s awareness returned to him in an instant, his mechanical heart thudding quickly inside his chest. As he sat cross-legged on the floor of the Locke conference room, the panicked clamor of the crowd from that night seemed to echo in his perfectly engineered ears.
Sylux had not informed anyone about these dreams that he had begun experiencing; he felt that his master learning of their existence may result in consequences, though he did not know why. It defied his programming to keep secrets from Slade, but he was finding that bending the rules was becoming increasingly less difficult; the conflict it caused in his psyche lessened with each occurrence.
“Sylux?”
The protogen’s eyes snapped to the doorway as two familiar faces came into view. Jaxon and Mirage were approaching him cautiously, and Sylux could not comprehend how he had not detected them before they detected him.
“We saw you on the cameras,” Jaxon growled. “What the hell are you doing out here, wandering around? You’re not allowed out of your cell.”
“Your room,” Mirage leapt in to correct the silverback. “You can’t be out of your room without permission, Sylux.”
“My apologies,” Sylux humbly answered, inclining his head to them submissively. “That room… it makes me… feel…”
His sentence trailed off as he seemed to struggle to find the words to explain himself, which he had never once done before. From his place on the floor, Sylux gazed up at them both with an oddly expressive look on his glass face. To Mirage—in this moment—he seemed so peculiarly harmless that she almost wanted to let this misbehavior slide, but the terror she had felt during their first encounter at that fight club came rushing back to her, as it often did.
“I really couldn’t care less about your excuses,” Jaxon snapped. “Get back there, now.”
Sylux slowly stood, that strangely poignant expression still in his expressionless eyes. He looked distressed. It was so jarring, Mirage took an involuntary step backwards. Jaxon either did not see what she saw, or he cared not at all about it. Sylux slid past them both, his large tail dolefully swishing against the tiled floor as he went. Jax abruptly stepped into the protogen’s path, obstructing his exit; he very nearly matched Sylux’s height when he stood up straight.
“Don’t let me catch you skulking around out here again,” the gorilla snarled, jabbing his finger against Sylux’s chest. “I don’t trust you as far as I could throw you. You’re not one of us, no matter how much you pretend to be. A mutant robot like you isn’t ever—”
In a heartbeat, Sylux seized Jaxon’s wrist in one clawed hand, and wrapped the fingers of the other around the silverback’s throat. Without a word, he violently slammed his tormentor against the conference table, denting its surface. The dazed and choking Jax was attempting to pry the assassin’s fingers off of him, but it was futile.
“Sylux, no!” Mirage gasped, grabbing at his shoulder. “Stop! You’ll kill him!”
This fact did not dissuade Sylux; rather, it seemed to be nothing more than commentary on his intent.
“Sylux, look at me,” Mirage said in as calm a voice as she could muster. “Please look at me.”
Jaxon’s grip on the protogen’s fist was slipping, and he seemed to be losing his grasp on consciousness from the brutal withdrawal of oxygen from his body.
“Sylux, you need to look at me,” the jackal pressed again, laying her hand on his arm. He finally turned his head to look at her, and she almost instinctively retreated from the cold bitterness in his eyes. It sent her heart racing, but she did her best to keep her composure.
“Slade wouldn’t want you to do this, Jaxon is his friend,” she insisted, her desperation rising. “You need to let him go. I’m sorry he said that to you, but you have to stop.”
All at once, Sylux unhanded Jaxon, and took a few steps backwards, appearing almost startled by what he had done. The gorilla collapsed to the floor, wheezing and coughing in his fight to fill his lungs with air again. Mirage kept her eyes locked on Sylux, terrified that he might attack again.
“That’s a good boy,” she said, putting herself between Jaxon and Sylux, and maintaining as soothing a tone as possible despite her wavering voice. “Just calm down now, it’s okay. Good boy, just calm down.”
She stared at him—heart pounding wildly—and scrutinized him carefully as he gazed back at her, now strangely passive again. That anger in his eyes that she swore she had seen had vanished. Had she imagined it?
What the hell has gotten into you? she thought.
/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/
END OF ENTRY 004.
Comments