The Combat Codes Read online

  That’s the thing with us Grievar. We rot.

  He cracked his knuckles as he walked in no particular direction.

  Murray felt his body decaying like the old foundations of this crumbling Underground city. His back always hurt, nerve pain shooting up his sides whether sitting, standing, sleeping—it didn’t matter. His neck was always stiff as a board. His wrists, elbows, and ankles had been broken multiple times and seemed like they could give way at any moment. Even his face was numb, a leathery exterior that didn’t feel like his own anymore.

  He could remember a time when his body was fluid. His arms and legs had moved as if there was a slick layer of oil between every joint, seamlessly connecting takedowns into punches into submissions.

  He’d seen his fair share of trips to medwards to sew up gashes and mend broken bones, but he’d always felt smooth, hydraulic even. Now, Murray’s joints and bones scraped together with dry friction as he walked down Markspar Row.

  It was his own fault though. Murray had his chance to stay young and he’d missed it. The first generation of neurostimulants had debuted when he was at the top of his fight game. Most of his team had started popping the stims under the recommendation of then-Deputy Commander Memnon. “We need the edge over the enemy,” Memnon had urged the team of Grievar Knights.

  Coach hadn’t agreed with Memnon—the two had been at each other’s throats for those last few years. Coach believed taking stims was sacrilege, against the Combat Codes. The simplest precept of them all: No tools, no tech.

  The man would often mutter to Murray, “Live and die like we’re born—screaming, with two clenched, bloody fists.”

  It wasn’t long after the stims started circulating that Coach had left his post. The bridge in Command had grown too wide. Memnon would do anything to give Mercuri the edge, even if that meant harnessing Daimyo tech. Coach would rather die than forsake the Codes.

  Even after Coach had left, Murray kept with his master’s teachings. He’d refused to take stims. A few of his teammates had stayed clean too—Anderson, Leyna, old Two-Tooth.

  At first, they’d kept up with the rest of the team. Murray had even held on to the captain’s belt. It wasn’t until a few years later that he’d felt it.

  It had been barely perceptible: a takedown getting stuffed, a jab snapping in front of his face before he realized it was coming. Those moments started adding up, though. Murray aged. He got slower and weaker, while the rest of Mercuri’s Grievar Knights maintained their strength under the neurostimulants.

  And then came the end. That fight in Kiroth. His whole team, his whole nation depending on Murray. Everything riding on his back. And he’d failed.

  Wherever Coach was right now, he’d be spitting in the dirt if he could see what Murray had become. Sulking in the shadows, stuck with a lowly Grievar Scout job to be forgotten. Another cog in the Daimyo machine.

  Before Murray realized it, the light had nearly faded. The streets were quiet as most Deep folk returned to their homes for the blackshift.

  Murray was walking on autopilot toward Lampai Stadium, now only a stone’s throw away, looming above him like a hibernating beast. Shadows clung to him here, deep pockets of darkness filling the folds of his cloak as he made his way to the base of the stadium.

  Murray stopped abruptly, standing in front of Lampai’s entrance. He stared at the old concrete wall and the black wrought-iron gates. He craned his head up at the stadium’s rafters towering above him.

  Murray placed his hand against a gold plaque on the gate. It was cold to the touch. It read:

  Lampai Stadium, Construction Date: 121 P.A. Let this be the first of many arenas, to serve as a symbol of our sworn Armistice and a constant reminder of the destruction we are capable of. Here shall Grievar give their blood, in honor and privilege. They fight so that the rest shall not have to.

  “We fight so that the rest shall not have to,” Murray whispered. He had once believed those words. The first precept of the Codes. He would repeat the mantra over and over before his fights, shouting it as he made entrances into stadiums around the world.

  The Mighty Murray Pearson. He’d been a force of nature, a terror in the Circle. Now he was just another shadow under these rafters.

  Murray inhaled deeply, his chest filling with air. He pushed it all out again.

  *

  Murray returned to Thaloo’s every day that week and saw more of the same. Just like it had been every year before. The well-nourished, stronger Grievar brood beating down the weaker lacklights. There was little skill involved, the brutal process pitting the weak against the strong. The strong always won.

  Eventually, the weaker brood wore down. Patrons didn’t want to buy the broken ones, which meant that Thaloo’s team of Taskers was wasting their time training them. Thaloo was wasting bits on their upkeep. So, like rotten fruit, the slave Circle owner would throw the kids back to the streets where he found them. Their chance of survival was slim.

  Murray’s head throbbed as he stepped back to the edge of the Circle. Spectrals gathered above as the light intensified on the canvas.

  The first Grievar emerged from the side entrance, stopping by his Tasker’s corner. He looked to be about fifteen, tall for his age, with dark skin and cut muscles. He had all the hallmarks of purelight Grievar blood—cauliflowered ears, a thick brow, bulging forearms, bright eyes.

  The boy’s head was shaved like all brood at Thaloo’s to show off the brand fluxed on his scalp. Like any other product in the Deep, patrons needed to see his bit-price. This kid looked to be of some value—several of the vultures were eying him like a slab of meat.

  The Tasker slapped the boy in the face several times, gripping his shoulders and shaking him before prodding him into the Circle. The boy responded to the aggression with his own, gnashing his teeth and slamming his fist against his chest as he stalked the perimeter. The crowd clapped and hooted with anticipation.

  The second boy did not look like he belonged in the Circle. He was younger than his opponent and gaunt, his thin arms dangling at his side. A mop of black hair hung over the boy’s brow. Murray shook his head. They’d just taken the kid off the streets, not even putting in the effort to brand him yet.

  The boy walked into the Circle, without expression, avoiding eye contact with his opponent and the crowd around him. He found his designated start position and stood completely still.

  “The taller, dark one—name’s Marcus. Saw ’im yesterday.” Calsans pulled up to Murray’s side again, like a parasite. “Nearly kicked right through some lacklight. This little sot is gonna get thrashed.”

  The skinny boy stood motionless, his arms still straight by his side. At first, Murray thought the boy’s eyes were cast at the dirt floor, but at second glance, Murray saw his eyes were closed. Clamped shut.

  “Thaloo’s putting blind kids in the Circle now…” Murray growled.

  “Sometimes, he likes to give the patrons a show,” Calsans said. “Bet he’s workin’ on building Marcus’s bit-price. Fattening him up for sale.”

  The fight began as Marcus assumed a fighting stance and began to bob forward, feinting jabs and bouncing on the balls of his feet.

  “It’s like one of them Mercurian eels about to eat a guppy,” Calsans remarked.

  Murray looked curiously at the blind boy as his opponent stalked toward him. The boy still wasn’t moving. Though his posture wasn’t aggressive, he didn’t look afraid. He almost looked… relaxed.

  “Wouldn’t be so sure,” Murray replied.

  Marcus approached striking distance and feigned a punch at the blind boy before whipping a high round kick toward his head.

  A split second before the shin connected, the boy dropped below the kick and shot forward like a coiled spring, wrapping around one of the kicker’s legs. The boy clung to the leg as his opponent tried to shake him off vigorously, but he stayed attached to him. He drove his shoulder into Marcus’s knee, throwing him off-balance into the dirt.

  The b
oy began to climb his opponent’s body like a sloth, wrapping up his legs and crawling onto his torso.

  “Now this is getting good,” Murray said as he watched the blind boy go to work.

  Marcus heaved forward with his full strength, pushing the boy off him while reversing to top position. Hungry for a finish again, he reared up and aimed a downward punch at the younger boy’s head. The boy slipped the punch, angling his chin at just the right moment, his opponent’s fist glancing off his jaw.

  Marcus howled in pain as his hand crunched against the hard dirt. Biometrics flashed red on the lightboard above.

  Capitalizing on bottom position, the blind boy grasped Marcus’s elbow and dragged the limp arm across his body, using the leverage to pull himself up and around onto his opponent’s back.

  Murray marveled, “Well, look at that. Darkin’ smooth back take.”

  The crowd suddenly was paying close attention to the turn of events, several spectators hooting in approval of the upset, while others jeered at a potential bit-loss on their bets.

  Murray could see the shock in Marcus’s eyes. This was supposed to be an easy win for the Grievar, a fight to pad his record. His Tasker probably told him to finish the blind boy in brutal fashion. Instead, Marcus was the one fighting for survival, looking like he was treading water in a tank of sharks.

  Marcus grunted as he pushed himself off the ground. He stood up and tried to shuck the boy off his back, bucking wildly, but the climber wrapped around him even tighter.

  The blind boy began to snake his hands across Marcus’ neck, shooting his forearm beneath the chin to apply the choke.

  Either as a last resort or out of pure helplessness, Marcus dropped backward like a felled tree, slamming the boy on his back into the dirt with a thud. A cloud of dust billowed into the air on impact. The crowd hushed as the little boy was crushed beneath his larger opponent’s bulk.

  Murray held his breath as the dust settled.

  The blind boy was still clinging to his opponent, his two bony arms latched around his neck, constricting, ratcheting tighter. The boy squeezed until Marcus’s eyes rolled back into his head and his arms went limp.

  The light flared and died out, the spectrals breaking from their cluster and dissipating into the den.

  The boy rolled out from beneath his unconscious opponent, his face covered in dirt and blood, his eyes clamped shut.

  2

  Dreams from the Underground

  A Grievar needs neither tools nor technologies to enhance their physical prowess. One that resorts to shortcuts on the path to mastery will find themselves weakened. When such an individual faces true adversity, their trappings of strength will falter.

  Passage One,

  Twelfth Precept of the Combat Codes

  Just a few minutes more.

  The sun peeked over the window frame and cast a shard of light at the boy.

  He squeezed his eyes shut.

  He half expected to hear the old master’s grizzled voice from outside the loft, yelling at them to get up and begin another day of training. Though the boy was curled up on his pallet, he could already feel his muscles aching in anticipation of the arduous day ahead: sprinting across the black-sand beach, carrying boulders beneath the waves, climbing to the top of the seaside cliffs.

  Arry licked his face with her wet tongue, trying to wake him.

  The salty breeze wafted through the window, bringing with it the pungent smell of sarpin fish drying on the stone slab outside. The sigil-beaked sparrows began their morning chatter and as usual, Arry tried to join the birds’ chorus, yelping in his ear.

  He rolled over, grabbing Arry to silence her, burying his face in her warm fur. She smelled like a tuft of washed-up sea grass.

  Just a few minutes more.

  The sun crested the window, the light pulsing against the boy’s clenched eyelids. He wanted to hold on to the peaceful darkness. He wanted to let the tide lull him back to sleep. He wanted to lie still, while the world around him moved on.

  He opened his eyes.

  *

  The boy watched the little wisp dance in the air, staring at the floating light until it filled his field of vision in a white shroud. He concentrated on his breath, focusing on deep inhales and slow exhales.

  He could only stare at the wisp for so long. Eventually, the boy flinched in pain and pulled his eyes from the light.

  When he looked away, the deep shadows of his cell returned, curtains of darkness that hung around him. He stretched out his arms and touched the cold stone walls, tracing his hands along every familiar fissure.

  The boy didn’t mind the darkness of his cell. He felt at home in the shadows. It was the light that had taken time to get used to.

  When he had first stumbled into the Underground, the light had burned his eyes. The white beams had rained down on him from the arrays above. He’d clamped his eyes shut, clawed at his face, screamed in agony.

  Dressed only in dried blood, he hadn’t garnered more than a passing glance on the Underground’s streets. No one had stopped to offer him help when he’d curled up in the shadows of some looming building, desperately trying to escape the light. They’d assumed he was just another Grievar kid, used up in the slave Circles and tossed out on the streets. Eventually, he’d get swept up by the mechs like any other piece of garbage.

  Someone must have been convinced that the boy still had some life in him, though, some worth that could be wrung out of his frail body. Maybe they’d been convinced by his screams as they attempted to pull him from the shadows.

  He’d woken up in this cell. The little wisp of light had appeared on his first day here, hovering in the corner amidst the cobwebs.

  Today, he’d kept his eyes on the wisp for one hundred breaths before flinching away.

  Every day in the cell, he’d trained himself to stare at the light. Slowly and agonizingly, the rending effects of the light had faded. The explosions of white had become smaller and the screams of brightness softer.

  It was a momentous feat for the boy, considering he’d kept his eyes wired shut for weeks to avoid the light. Even when his captors dragged him out to fight, he kept his eyes shut, much to their dismay. That’s where he’d earned his name—Cego—some derogatory term that meant blind in one of the many languages he didn’t understand down here.

  Not that being blind had mattered during Cego’s fights so far. The boys they put him up against were slow. He could hear them lumbering toward him, their labored breath betraying their movements. Though Cego was hardly an effective striker without his vision, his grappling was unhindered. Once he got ahold of his opponent, he didn’t need to see.

  Cego heard footsteps coming from outside his cell door, and on cue, the wisp disappeared, leaving him in the familiar darkness.

  “Get yerself eatin’, you lacklight twig!” A slot opened at the base of door and a metal plate covered in green slop slid through. His captors called the food fighting greens.

  The slot stayed open for a moment longer and Cego could feel the familiar eyes of the fat guard peering in at him, waiting for him to spoon the slop into his mouth.

  Cego kept his eyes shut, pretending to grope at the stone floor for his food. He let his captors think he was blind.

  A perceived weakness is strength, and a flaunted strength is weakness. The old master’s baritone voice echoed in Cego’s head.

  “Darkin’ cego. Eat, don’t eat, see if I care.”

  The slot rattled shut and Cego heard the guard spit on the floor outside his cell.

  “Think yer doin’ good so far, eh, boy?”

  Cego didn’t respond. They’d heard his screams when they took him off the streets, but he hadn’t given them anything since.

  “Seen yer type before. Boss probably thinks you’ll bring in the bits,” the guard said from outside the door. “Like when we had that one-legged kid; patrons liked that, too. Freak would hop around the Circle pretty fast, actually won a fight throwin’ jabs. Then boss matched
him up with a good kicker. Snapped his good leg clean, right at the knee. No-leg is what we called him after that.”

  The guard chuckled as he walked away.

  Cego waited until he was sure the man was gone before he opened his eyes and stared at the rusted metal plate in front of him. He reached forward and pawed some of the watery green mush into his mouth, chewing and swallowing it lifelessly. Cego hadn’t eaten his first few days down here and he’d paid for it, nearly blacking out during his first bout. Now he forced himself to eat, as disgusting as the greens looked.

  Making sure he was eating regularly was just one of many things that Cego was getting used to down here.

  He pulled a tattered blanket tight to his shoulders as he tossed the metal plate aside. Though Cego was more than familiar with pain, the cold here was different from pain. The cold lingered; it crept into his bones and made his nose run.

  Here in the Underground, Cego had realized he could wither away. He’d been helpless on those streets for days, unable to even push himself off the ground. If not for his captors hauling him off the pavement, he’d have likely starved to death.

  Cego threw the blanket off his shoulders and dropped to the floor. He started with push-ups, sit-ups and planks. He reached up and grasped the edge of the doorframe for a set of pull-ups, ignoring the splinters that dug into his fingers. He bloodied his knees on the cold stone floor as he shot for penetration steps, thrashing back and forth in the tiny cell like a tanked shark.

  Cego shadowboxed imaginary opponents until his arms shivered with weariness. He threw round kicks, the tight stone walls tearing the skin from his feet as he spun around. Sweat and blood pooled in the cobbled crevices of his cell.

  He would not wither away.

  Though many things were alien to Cego in this Underground world—the light, the cold, the food, the folk, their languages—combat was not one of them.

  Combat’s familiar scent was fragrant here, wafting down the dark stone hallways and blooming in the raucous dens. Combat blared on the boards hanging from the walls and echoed in the conversations of every guard, patron, drunk reveler, and bit-rich hawker. Combat glimmered in the eyes of the Grievar, men and women like Cego, some barrel-chested and visibly scarred from battle, and some hidden beneath their cloaks, lurking in the shadows.