Chapter 65
Twelve minutes…
I glanced at the creeping light-line and did some quick mental math. We had two hours to reach the top of the tower or rather to be above the white line. Two hours meant 120 minutes. If I counted correctly, there were ten levels to the tower before the white line, which meant that the creeping light would take twelve minutes to cover each level.
For now, I had the entire wall to myself, with nobody attacking me or firing at me. If I stayed a minute's climb above the line, I could remain well behind the others and still get into contention towards the end. It might be cutting it a little close, but my injured hand made me vulnerable while climbing. The distance and ease would give me time to flex my abilities.
BEAM and AGILITY were the attributes I most needed to level. I focused on the sensory input the suit provided, feeling every minute movement as I climbed. The suit amplified my senses, making me acutely aware of each handhold and foothold. I concentrated on flexing my AGILITY, visualizing the flow of energy through my body and into the suit, feeling the smoothness and precision of each movement.
As much as I knew I was best served with BEAM and AGILITY, the POWER attribute beckoned me. I wasn't sure if I had ever heard the voice sound so genuinely impressed, so unabashedly eager about something I had done or could do. And the way the voice had talked about POWER, its tones almost dripping with desire, this tempted me.
Even as I climbed, the top of the first level drawing nearer, I paused to rest, hooking the elbow of my left arm on a pipe to steady myself and ease my throbbing wrist. I practiced flexing the cords that ran through the core of my body and limbs. As I did this, the voice chimed in, “What are we up to now? Tempted, are we? Want that extra something special?”
I hissed, “You said it would give me the greatest possible advantage.”
The voice replied, “I didn't say it would be a good investment of your energies when this challenge so clearly calls for AGILITY and BEAM.”
I retorted, “You didn't say not to... in fact, you're still not saying not to.”
Silence. I climbed a few feet, leaving the light line below me. There was the sizzle of a beam from the far side of the tower, and a female voice shrieked in pain. I wanted to go look, but I knew I had to stay focused.
After a time, I said, “You won't tell me not to flex POWER, but you know I shouldn't. What's your deal?”
The voice said, “POWER would be useful...” It sounded lame, like it was excusing itself.
I said, “You're curious! You know it's not the right decision, you know I should focus exclusively on BEAM and AGILITY, but you can't bring yourself not to tell me to flex POWER because you just want to see if I can do it.”
The voice was off balance. It was never off balance. It said, sounding like it was fumbling for excuses, “Nobody has ever achieved a level of POWER during the Choosing, not even the greatest legends.”
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I was angry. “And what, you'd risk my time in the Choosing just to see if I could do it?”
The voice was falsely reassuring. “And if you gained the attribute, then your victory would be completely assured.”
I said, “But you said yourself I probably wouldn't be able to! You'd let me waste valuable minutes that could be spent building valuable attributes that I actually can attain! All for your curiosity.”
My mind flashed back to what the strange man in the woods, Joel, had said about the voice, about not trusting it, the way his eyes had shifted at even the subject of the voice.
The voice oozed sincerity and compassion, colors that did not suit it well. "Can you blame me for believing in you, Tiberius? I've been around all of them, the greatest Swords, the greatest Griidlords—Danefer, Gold King Montarion, Jock Verdance—all the names of legend, and none of them have impressed me like you have. None of them showed your potential. Don't you understand what it's like? I've witnessed eight centuries of Choosings, across more than 30 towers. Think about the contestants I've seen come and go, and now I'm seeing the one who most impresses me. How can I not want to probe your limits, to push you to be the best that you can be? I would be failing us both if I didn't."
My eyes glanced down. I'd let the light line grow very close to me as I argued with the voice, as I wasted time that could be better spent flexing attributes. My head was spinning. What was this entity? Once I had decided that it wasn't some stress-induced hallucination, I had come to believe it was the suit, or some element of the suit—a ghost, a spirit, something tied here. Granted, I had heard the voice in the tower, but the mystorium that the suits were composed of was also stored in the tower, and I had assumed, as much as I could assume anything about such mysteries, that my proximity to the suit allowed the voice to reach me.
But the voice had described interacting with heroes, legends of the highest order, spanning back generations: Danefer, The Sword of Miami who reigned over Miami's victories for centuries until his recent disappearance; Gold King Montarion, who had built the empire of San Francisco, an empire that existed still, decades after his retirement; and Verdance, the Axe of Pittsburgh during that city's glorious and terrible reign, centuries ago.
It was hard to gather my thoughts back to the task at hand.
I couldn't pretend my chest didn't swell at the praise, but my eyes shifted behind my visor. The voice was manipulating me; Joel had said it would do such things. A bell gonged suddenly, the sound reverberating through the amplifiers in the high corners of the arena. The crowd took in a collective breath, and I looked down. To my horror, the light line had crossed over my ankle.
Mario's voice screeched over the amplifiers, "Tiberius has 10 seconds!" My brow furrowed with hatred for the small-minded bastard. I only had to raise my foot, but he couldn't pass up the opportunity to try and humiliate me. I climbed one more rung and moved above and free of the line.
Mario’s voice was less enthusiastic this time. “Tiberius is safe.”
The crowd exhaled, but there were some faint boos now, directed at me, I felt. They had come for spectacle. As much as the common folk might like to see one of their own attain the Griidsuit and become a Griidlord, they'd started the day with ale, many had continued the day with ale. This was a rare treat, a Choosing in their lifetime, the days here watching the competition might cost many of them years to pay back, and I was giving them a poor show, loitering away from the action, and now, to their disappointment, I had brushed the light line for no reason. My cheeks flushed with embarrassment, but my fists clenched with determination.
I glanced up, I was within an arm's length of the next level. I decided to proceed, to get a few more feet above the light line; if there was a serious delay at the next level, I needed some room to maneuver. Using the strength of the suit, I hauled myself over the lip of the ledge.
Then, to my horror, a huge stone-taloned claw swiped at me. The only way to avoid decapitation was to just let go. I tumbled back into space, my heart pounding in my ears, feeling the terrifying weightlessness as the ground rushed up to meet me.