Trinity 1: Privilege

Three newbies were filling the cell next door. That was Kayel’s cell just one day ago. And Jarran’s. And Craw’s. Their trial had been… tough to watch.

But now that Senza had been activated—hours from his own Trinity Trial—he found it harder to mourn his friends. Let alone these newcomers.

Why bother?

Senza’s utopian world had long drifted from perfect. Expecting anything else was foolish. These cells only delayed the inevitable.

Facing the pit was a death sentence. Everyone knew. Only one in nine survived the Trinity Trial. And last night, Senza’s cell had been chosen. At random.

He stood, zipped up his gray jumpsuit, and stared out the cell’s central bars to the sandy arena several stories below. What were the odds that two neighboring cells in a structure of hundreds would be randomly selected for back-to-back trials?

***

I side-stepped a knife swing. I felt like a sober man caged in a drunkard’s oafish body. Like I was the sloshing water on the deck of a sinking ship. And, simultaneously, the sinking ship itself. My mind and my vision were all mixed up. I couldn’t keep track of everything, couldn’t control myself.

I lunged at the man before me. Knife first. The shoulder of his gray prisoner’s jumpsuit was dark red with Worow's blood.

Worow: one of my two cellmates. My friend. My brother. His body was already being removed by the black-garbed Dead Collectors.

I wanted to puke.

I missed my target by a mile, knifing the dusty air instead.

The Trinity serum that pumped through me made everything look and feel off. I could see from three different vantage points at once. All overlaying one another.

I was fighting in a death match. And I was watching myself fight in a death match from the nearby Perch, but also from much higher up. From eyes on the balcony.

It made stabbing a man one foot to your right far more complex than it ought to be. It was like trying to cut your hair while looking in a mirror.

Upside down.

And left-handed.

Missteps and clumsiness were commonplace during a Trinity Trial.

Even Jarran and Craw—Gene War veterans—hadn’t lasted twenty minutes yesterday. The violence in a trial was cringey to watch, but exhausting to experience. Brutal.

I’d seen more trials than I'd have liked. Eventually, a knife found its mark. And “eventually” came quickly enough in a battle for freedom. I ducked another swinging blade by inches, but its follow-through gashed my left arm. I brought my own knife up to parry, ignoring the stinging pain.

Your arm is weak. Your blade is blunt. An inner voice that was not my own fed my dread like pine needles on a bonfire. You shake with a child’s fear.

The Witness—today’s official observer—was dissecting me. I looked up. A blue-haired woman, immaculate in her white uniform, presided. And I saw myself—face sullen, gaunt, my gray jumpsuit dark with blood and caked with orange-red sand—meeting her gaze from her vantage. I was staring up at myself.

I could see her sights overlayed atop mine. Plus, the top of my shaved head, glinting in the afternoon sun as seen from the balcony above. Up and down, and near and far. It was everything all at once. There were too many me’s. “Disorienting” was an understatement. I had to look away.

The dizziness was beyond my threshold just then. I bent forward and vomited what little I had in my stomach. I was lucky enough to dodge a blade’s strike at that exact moment. A slash that may well have slit my throat. I staggered, slipped in the puddle of my own breakfast, and collapsed sideways.

My attacker missed me again and stumbled, nearly falling over. His jittering legs were spread wide for balance. I rolled to my feet and pounced at the man in the blood-spattered jumpsuit. I actually connected and tackled him to the ground. I groped at his body like a blind man until I drove my knife into his neck. One less combatant for me to worry over.

I stood and looked around the pit, searching for Dosk.

My other cellmate was still alive, fighting one against two. He needed help. We weren’t friends, but we’d agreed to work together, as Kayel had instructed all the prisoners in our wing. He’d made us promise. Over a year ago.

Revolution was the only way things would ever change here. I had no doubt the man was right. I ran to Dosk’s side of the arena, but before I could intervene, someone or… something else did.

A force—a shimmering push—sent one of his attackers reeling. It looked like heat distortion made solid, like a summer day’s light given mass, then flung across an arena.

The Privileged woman. The Witness from yesterday’s trial. Amby, I remembered her name. She had… cheated. She had helped Kayel win. They’d executed him for that. And punished her with her own Trinity Trial the very next day.

She’d used her Privilege to help Kayel… and now she was using it to help me. A combatant appeared at my right and threw his knife directly at my face. I didn’t even have time to flinch. I was dead.

But before I was, the blade veered away as if by a gust of wind. Another combatant shot into the air, flailing backward like a puppet yanked by invisible strings. The rippling waves of red-orange sand and dust created rings in the arena’s floor that centered around the staggering woman. She left a strange trail of circular sand patterns in her wake.

Amby wouldn’t stop shaking her head. As if that would relieve the Trinity’s hold on her mind. The fact that they left her telekinetic Privilege intact and sentenced her to a trial was an obvious message aimed at the elite: “Even Privileged ones can be put on Trial. And even they can die.”

You know you must die. And this woman, too. She will die at your hands. If you want to live….

***

The last four combatants had been at it for no more than fifteen minutes. The trial would end soon, Aihmin knew. He watched from the balcony, nervously stroking his lengthy mustache, the pit six stories below.

From this height, it made the prisoners look like ants in a tussle. But, of course, he knew better.

These were people. Prisoners, but… real people. He just… couldn’t connect with them well enough.

He considered placing another bet….

***

But Senza connected just fine. Too well. He saw someone else's vantage of himself atop the Witness’s view of him. Atop his own sight.

It was like looking at your reflection in the reflection of a reflection. Too much to take in.

His mind threatened to shatter under the stress. He saw too much at once. Too fast. His brain rushed toward its breaking point.

***

You will kill.

Dosk lay on the ground, held down beneath the last of the other combatants. He gasped for life.

You are nothing.

I killed the man who was choking my cellmate. My knife must’ve punched a dozen holes into his lungs before I realized what I’d done.

Nothing but a monster.

I left him in the sand like a beached fish, gurgling like a madman. Drowning in blood.

I felt nothing.

Then it was just me, Dosk, and the woman—Amby. Only one of us would leave here alive. I didn’t want to end Dosk. And I barely knew this woman, but something told me she was worth protecting.

She had risked her life for Kayel and his ideological revolution. She was the enemy. And yet, she’d saved me five minutes ago.

Amby raised her hands at the blue-haired woman on the Perch. The Witness raised hers in return. There was an invisible struggle. Amby’s hair waved as if she stood before a hurricane. She slid backward under the force, her feet carving lines in the sand. Blood dripped from her nose.

I needed to do something. Help her.

Dosk decided that I needed to bleed instead. He stabbed me in the back. I spun around to confront him, his knife still lodged in my shoulder. His eyes were no longer human. There was no remorse. Just wild, animalistic hunger.

And still, I found myself empathizing with him. He just wanted to win. To be free. Maybe more than I did.

Maybe he deserved to.

He punched me in the mouth. I hit the ground and spat blood in the sand. I grabbed a handful as Dosk gripped the handle of the blade in my back and twisted. I shrieked, sprang to my feet, and threw the sand in his eyes. He grunted and stumbled back from me.

I couldn’t find my knife.

You don’t need it, the Witness invaded my thoughts. Use your hands. Kill them!

Win!

Live!

Amby screamed from my right. She lay sprawled in the sand like a rag doll. The blue-haired Witness looked winded, but her smug grin made her emotions perfectly readable. She was the one who was winning.

I felt the spins again. I tried to shake the Trinity loose from my brain. I wished it would bleed out through the wounds that marred my body. But it only grew stronger. As if my adrenaline was amplifying the gene’s effectiveness. I swallowed the rising bile in my throat and steadied my quivering legs.

I dove at Dosk. We grappled in the sand. He was a far bigger man than I. A muscular brute hellbent on winning his freedom. I tore the sleeve from his jumpsuit as he flipped me around and shoved my face into the sand.

In twin flashes of agony, his knife ripped from my back and plunged into my side. I groaned and nearly retched again, but there was nothing left to heave.

I begged him to stop, but my pleading was only answered with another flare of pain as Dosk’s knife jabbed in and out of my back once again, bare inches from my spine.

I wish I could say some part of me unlocked in that moment. That I snapped out of my laxity and finally stood up for myself, fought for my life. That I transcended the torment. But I’d be lying.

I was done for. Beaten. A coward… just waiting for the end….

Dosk rolled me over and straddled me, his knife held aloft in both hands. He brought it down, aiming for my heart, but before I could feel its point, the large man was flying away from me. He flipped and tumbled in the sand as if he’d been hit by an airship.

His face was shocked, almost betrayed. He slowly crept to his feet and eyed Amby, standing above me, her hands up, ready for more.

I nodded at her and stood slowly, nearly falling over as I struggled to my feet. I longed to lean against her. To take her shoulder for support. But I wouldn’t let myself appear so weak. Not in a packed arena. I felt a wooziness that was not entirely from the blood loss. The Trinity pulsed in my head, the conflicting perspectives stirring my vision like a cloudy, spoiled soup.

Dosk made a move. His dominant foot slid forward as he launched his knife at me. I slumped where I stood, resigned to my fate. Maybe death was the real freedom worth fighting for. Maybe death was the only way any of us “won” in such a world. I wanted to look down. To close my eyes and let it all end around me. To finally die. But I couldn’t bring myself to do so.

I stood frozen in the sand, staring at the blade hurtling in my direction, heading straight for my head. I almost stepped into it. It would have been easier.

Instead, Amby jumped in front of me at the last second and screamed as the knife lodged into her chest.

Her breath was ragged. Words wouldn’t come. I wanted to thank her. But I couldn’t speak either. We were both dying. She just… more quickly. The sand was dyed a deeper red beneath her writhing body.

The Privileged woman who had been sympathetic to Kayel’s cause. The Privileged woman who had taken a knife for me. The Privileged woman who was bleeding for me.

Dying for me.

Dying for us. For the revolution.

For freedom.

The Privileged woman who was a handful of breaths away from martyrdom.

Or insignificance….

No. I wouldn’t let her die for nothing.

I couldn’t let her sacrifice be a waste. It had to mean something.

Dosk would fade into obscurity after winning his freedom, I knew.

But I would do no such thing. I would use my freedom as a platform for change. For revolution. For Kayel’s and Amby’s vision. For my daughter’s future. And for the future of Mars.

My legs moved beneath me. My head lolled back and forward and side to side. I had no control over my own body. And I was sprinting.

Dosk looked dumbfounded. His eyes were human again as he blinked his last blink.

My hand clawed his neck and found purchase, my nails digging into his throat as I lifted him single-handedly, swept his legs out from behind him, and drove the back of his head into the red-orange sand. I heard the break of his neck, but I did not stop.

I forced my former cellmate’s head beneath the sand and felt a gritty moistness as my fingers tensed around his throat. My fingernails were biting into his neck, dyeing themselves red with his blood.

I held his face under the sand for what felt like a year. His final grunt was muffled beneath the sand. I felt his spine crush in my grip. I don’t know from where I found such strength.

The arena was aghast. A collective groan from the balcony. Then, the roaring applause from the barred cells that bordered the pit. I was a hero. To the ones who mattered.

I was the victor.

I was… free.

***

The pit was cleared of bodies, weapons, and debris. Pitmasters and guards “turned” the sand, refreshing the arena’s floor and removing the blood stains for tomorrow’s trial. I watched them do their work from my back as I was carried out of the arena on a stretcher.

My vision was going black, my eyes squinting further and further. Amby was nowhere to be seen. I hadn’t seen her crawl off, nor had I seen the Dead Collectors scoop her up.

The blue-haired Witness scowled at me from atop her Perch. She didn’t look happy at all.

You’ll hate that you won. Her voice was like a neurotoxin oozing inside my brain.

You’ll see. She didn’t sound happy either. Freedom... her tone soured the word. Congratulations... she hissed between my ears. Menacing.

You just won yourself the Privilege....

And a lifetime of anguish.

Enjoy....