Page 72 of Blightfall

“Do you think they took them to the space station in the sky?” Dayan asked.

I gaped at them. “Your people know about that?”

“Not everyone,” Dayan said. “Yamin gathered resources in secret—paid an engineer to build a telescope strong enough to get a good look at the space station, and it’s no star. I looked through it myself, even saw a few spacecraft coming and going. Someone is definitely watching us.”

“We think it’s Ivy,” I said. “The same person who announces the Ascension Games. What is your people’s relationship with her?”

Dayan looked confused. “The announcer voice? That’s just an output from the automated scoring system. The video drones record the matches, and the scoring system awards points—less biased that way—and then a text-to-voice program announces the results. It’s programmed to sound fancy, to rile up the audience.”

We all looked at each other. “That same voice contacted us after we arrived,” I said. “They sent fighter drones to attack us. I don’t think it’s an automated system. I think it’s the Superiority leader who is watching this planet.”

“Crabby,” Dayan said, and their tone made me think it was a swear word.

“You don’t know who Ivy is then?” Sadie asked. “If she’s influencing your people to send gladiators to Elysium, she might be part of your government or something.”

“No,” they said. “We have a representative government with council members from each city district. Contacts in Elysium send messages to our council about what they need on the battlefront. They don’t return from the war in person, so—”

Stars. “So those supposed human contacts may actually be an alien force.”

Dayan looked sick at this prospect, which might have been an underreaction, given the circumstances.

“We were originally sent here to make an alliance with your people,” I said. “If we approach your leadership, could we convince them to stop sending gladiators to Elysium?”

Dayan shook their head with a deep grimace. “Some of the communications Zimmel heard—he thought our representatives might be assisting the sabotage of our infrastructure. It’s possible some of them know they’re working with aliens. I don’t know who would be safe to approach.”

Scud, that would be a massive betrayal of Dayan’s people. It was possible Ivy was duping the council, but I didn’t like the odds enough to risk approaching them.

“So this Superiority is controlling our games, abducting our gladiators, robbing us of our cytonics,” Dayan said. “For what? Just to keep us docile?”

“It’s likely,” I said. “Our people were also trapped on a planet, though we were relentlessly attacked and driven underground. It took us a century to learn why we were being held there.”

“If you really won the war against them,” they said, “then you know how to defeat them, right? You know how to help us escape?”

Stars, it seemed like we should.

“There are complications,” I said. Since this information could be surmised anyway, I didn’t see the harm in sharing it. “Your planet has some kind of strange field around it that prevents us from hyperjumping directly here. And now that we’ve flown through that field, it also prevents us from contacting our superiors for reinforcements.”

“You and Alanik didn’t find anything that would help?” Sadie asked.

Scud, we hadn’t shared what we’d learned with the others yet. Alanik gave me a look. So far she’d kept her mouth shut—because the moment she spoke, Dayan might realize she was an alien. It was a wise choice.

“Our team snuck into the area behind the gate inside the coliseum,” I told Dayan.

“We’ve tried that,” they said. “There’s nothing there but the robed priests and brick walls. The only way out leads right back into the arena.”

I understood why they’d think that when they didn’t know what they were looking at. “Did you notice the wall covered in scribbled writing?”

Dayan shook their head. “I haven’t been back there personally, but Laryna has. We can’t ask her, because she’s gone.”

“That wall is a portal,” I said. “It leads into the nowhere, the realm that objects pass through when they hyperjump.”

“So it might lead to Elysium,” Dayan said. “Wherever that is.”

“We don’t know. There could be a significant varvax force on the other side—those are the aliens who imprisoned our people, who are imprisoning yours.”

“If we can’t get home through the portal,” Sadie said, “or by hyperjumping or by flying through the inhibitor field, what are our other options?”

I looked to Dayan. “When Ivy contacted us after we arrived, she seemed to think we were an inspection force sent by the Superiority. We could do what Sadie suggested before—contact Ivy, tell her that our inspection is complete, we approve of her work, and we’d like permission to leave now to give her superiors a glowing review.”