Existence Saga Book 1: Charlie Foxtrot Zero Chapter 1: The Sky Looks So Beautiful From the Gutter

John never imagined his failings as a gutterball captain would forever reshape his marriage to violence. His team squatted in a semicircle around John while he outlined the battle plan. Grime smeared the blues, browns, yellows—even a white from the academic caste—of their jumpsuits. Each wore their jumpsuits unzipped to the waist, the arms tied around. Wasn’t like the two teams couldn’t tell who each other were, though. Gutterball was a small world on Hadfield Station. The game was deep underground, in status if not location. Yet, those bare and clothed torsos held a primal meaning. Shirts versus skins. Us against them.

With his thick finger, John drew a line in the ancient crud, the buildup of untold generations of insects that dwelled in the abandoned level. “I’ll pass it to Aiden right off.” He drew a small circle about a third down the line. “This is the column where they got us the last time we had the ball. You guys will go around the right instead. I’m betting they’ll go for the tackle there again, but you guys,” John picked out two more fleet-footed of the team, “will plow through before they get their speed up.”

Aiden piped up. “You think that’ll work?”

The guy was their star player, broad-shouldered, layered with muscle, without a touch of fat on him. He wore the brown of the agriculture caste, but his skin wasn’t pale like the rest of his kind. Rather, it had a deep tan that only came from working in the raw sunlight of the innermost level of Hadfield Station. Only the elite farmers worked on those crops. Aiden had a lot to lose.

“It’ll work.” John bounced the hand-stitched, rounded oblong ball in his hand, letting it spin on its axis. “I might wear the black of an artist,” he pulled on the dark fabric of his jumpsuit, “but I was born Leadership. If there’s one thing I know, it’s how to outmaneuver the other guy.”

The rest of the team shot each other wary looks. No one wore the burgundy of the leadership caste, and for good reason. Should Leadership catch wind of a forbidden gutterball game, they’d all get divorced from their caste families. John had married out of Leadership altogether, but mentioning the authorities made his teammate’s blood pressure spike. Kept them sharp.

“Guys!” John tapped the ground. “Get your mind on the run. Aiden will carry the ball to the doorway.” John drew a long box halfway down the line. Might have been a control room at one time. “Before he goes through, he’ll pass back to Hashim. There is only one way out of there so they’ll block the exit. Aiden, I need you to punch a hole through their defenses, big enough for Hashim to slip through.”

Aiden nodded. “Gotcha.”

“Hashim will carry the ball to the bridge,” John drew two lines about two-thirds of the way, “but he’ll only look like he’s about to cross it. They’ll send their fastest guys to wait at that checkpoint, so I want Sylvester,” he pointed out the shortest of his players, “to climb the stairs.” His finger drew a diagonal line jutting from the main one before the bridge. “See, he’ll wait on that walkway a couple of meters before the bridge.”

Hashim raised his hand. “So, Sylvester will distract them or something?”

“Nope. What you going to do is toss the ball back and up to Sylvester.”

Their faces twisted. A few cleared their throats. Sylvester put his head in the palm of his hand and winced.

John pointed the ball at him. “Sylvester here will come through. He’s my ringer.”

The ringer’s shoulders slumped and his posture collapsed. It was the perfect plan. No one expected Sylvester to carry the ball, least of all Sylvester. The poor guy looked out of place in his own body, let alone among the fitness freaks on John’s team. If he kept it in his hands, he’d blow through the gap in their line. All he’d have to do was one decent catch. Simple.

John stood, shaking the ache out of his muscular legs. If there was one thing that the Easterbrook caste-family was good for if nothing else, it always gave him a chance to move, to be physical every single day. And when frustrations boiled over, well… John saved that energy for gutterball.

The rest of his team trotted to their starting line.

“Ready?” John barked out.

The other team perked up. John would try his damnedest to grind them all into the ground for no better reason than they were the shirts, the other. The opposing captain gave him an affirmative.

John paced out twenty steps from the starting line and turned. He made a quick assessment of his player’s order. Aiden and Hashim were in the middle. Sylvester was on the far end, covering his visible ribs with his thin arms. The poor guy wasn’t even close to good at running or passing, but he risked his marital status to play. Maybe that was enough.

With a quick motion of his hand, John told Sylvester to change his starting position, indicating to move between the two superior players. Sylvester raised his eyebrows, shrugged, and pointed down the line as if he didn’t understand where to go. The two more competent players made room for the hanger-on.

John faked as if he threw the ball. The shirts jumped over the starting line.

“Ball still in hand, folks.” John broke out a snide grin, holding up the ball.

The other team shuttered to a stop and shuffled back over the line, muttering. Out of the murmur, John couldn’t help but hear one of them call him ‘divorcee.’ It was a dirty trick to play, an example of ungentlemanlike conduct, but it was no excuse to break out the insults. John chalked it up to one of the other team not having the moral fortitude to keep his anger under control. Once they were all back over the line and turned around, John flicked the ball to Aiden. It landed in the man’s calloused hands. It was game on.

Aiden tucked the ball into the crook of his elbow, protecting it with the meat of his arm, and launched himself over the starting line. Hashim matched his pace, but Sylvester seemed almost surprised by the start of the run. Despite being in the heart of the action, Sylvester was the last to drag himself off the starting line.

John followed his runners and took up the rear. “Get up there.” The order to Sylvester was low, covered by the thunderous footsteps. To his credit, Sylvester quickened his pace until he caught up to Hashim, right where he should have been. A runner from the other team tried to squeeze through the rear. With his arm extended, John matched the runner step for step and blocked the intrusion with his shoulder. That was the role of a gutterball captain. He won when the team won. At least, that’s the way it meant to happen. It wasn’t often that John ever got his hands on the ball. That only happened when his careful plans went counter-spinward.

The two friendly interceptors flew past the column. Like John had predicted, the two enemy shirts, the same from the run before, waited for the ball carrier. One friendly shoulder-checked a shirt, making him trip over his own feet and fall. The other shirt leaped over his partner’s flailing limbs and put on a burst of speed. The second interceptor missed his target by an arm’s length.

Aiden approached the column and juked like he was going around the left again. He slid around the right and let the shirt float by. He laid the speed back on. John’s ball carrier left them in the dust.

The shirt runner pressed into John’s line, but John had more bulk. He steered the runner at the column, leaving no room for two. The runner bounced off of John. When the runner tried it again, John relented, letting the runner think he had compromised John’s line. John shoulder-checked the runner, and he hit the column hard. The guy would have a hard time explaining away those bruises to his caste family tonight.

Aiden came to the doorway and flicked the ball back to Hashim, all according to plan. It was a risky gambit, but the other players didn’t see the pass. They put all their energy into blocking Aiden at the exit. The three of them moving around the doorway could take him out, but all Aiden had to do was make sure that Hashim made it through.

Sylvester ran with the crowd on the outside of the room. The other team ignored him. That’s what John was banking on.

Sounds of struggle came from the exit, no doubt Aiden bowling over the interceptors. Hashim, almost whisper quiet with his feet gracing the floor, pulled away from the scrum and off down the hall, the ball tucked in the crook of his arm.

Sylvester climbed the stairs to the walkway, two at a time. Each foot tapped out the rhythm of his ascent. The thumps came at near-perfect regularity until Sylvester’s toes were about to crest the highest step. The sole of his shoe caught the edge. His shin slid down the sharp edge and his upper half crumpled on the walkway.

Hashim checked his shoulder. His eyes widened when they focused on the walkway and Sylvester wasn’t there. He slowed to scan the length of the walkway, searching for the next link in the chain. One of the other runners slammed his weight into Hashim from the back. He let out a yelp while the ball floated beyond his fingertips.

One of the other team’s interceptors put out his splayed hand and plucked it out of the air. The other team had the ball. The runner kept up his momentum and left everyone else behind.

John’s pulse pounded his ears. The muscles in his cheek spasmed. His vision narrowed on that abject failure, that disaster of a man, that loser who couldn’t even climb some steps. He stomped up the stairway.

Sylvester rolled over, rubbing his shin, a wince on his face. Blood seeped out from between his fingers. Sylvester focused on John’s eyes. “Sorry, I—”

John punched him in the face, under his eye.

Sylvester’s skull bounced off of the metal walkway. One arm let go of his leg and curled over his damaged cheek. He didn’t let out a sound and ground his teeth together trying to will away the pain.

John always had that want—that need—to know what it was like to destroy someone with his own fists. It had forever haunted the darkest recesses of his mind, only to scurry away at the faintest traces of the sunlight of civilization, first born when his older brothers lured him into the back of their residence with a promise of a game of hide-and-seek. They beat John and laughed.

When he, raw and weeping, told his blood mother, she replied that one day John would be strong. One day, he would do the same to the weak. Today was the day. John didn’t plan it, but what could he do? That one strike had broken the seal. The demon in the lamp had escaped, ready to grant him his blackest wish.

With one hand, John pulled away Sylvester’s arm, exposing his face. The whites over Sylvester’s pupils showed. John struck again.

Aiden, further along the run, stopped and turned. “What are you doing?” He didn’t look for an answer. His lips curled into a snarl.

Sylvester tried to pull his arms out of John’s grip, tried to push on the floor with his feet, but John hit him again in the side of his head. John raised his elbow, fist pointed downward, and slammed his knuckles into Sylvester’s forehead. The bone was dense like punching a stone slab covered in a layer of moisture.

A small bit of tension inside John’s fist snapped. Something wasn’t right. John tucked his fingers back into his fist and smashed Sylvester’s jaw. A part inside John’s hand ground against itself.

A pair of thick arms draped in brown came from behind John and squeezed his elbows into his sides. Aiden lifted him off the ground.

“Get off me, divorcee!” John said, wheezing, the air rushing out of his lungs. How dare his own teammate betray him? John was their captain. They did what he said.

The other team’s runners came from the other end of the walkway, one with the ball still in his hand. They didn’t even bother to take the point that Sylvester surrendered to them. The men pulled the bruised and battered loser up and onto his feet, brushing him off.

“You okay?” The other player put the ball down to examine Sylvester’s face, the new lumps that appeared under his skin.

John, his feet free from the floor, kicked at Aiden’s legs. “Dammit! Get off me!”

“What’s wrong with you?” The vice grip tightened around John’s ribs.

John tried to say something, but the air escaped his lungs. Blood coursed through the arteries in his neck, throbbing with every heartbeat. Pressure built up in his face. John flailed harder but only landed his heel on the railing. More pain shot up.

Aiden let off only to raise John above his head. For a moment, John floated weightless at the apex before Aiden turned him flat and smashed him back onto the floor. Mandalas of white-hot hurt exploded through the back of John’s head. He attempted to breathe, but his diaphragm refused to move. His peripheral vision went black. John needed oxygen. Aiden, Hashim, Sylvester, the rest of the team, and all the players of the other team crowded around him.

“Damn LC psycho.” Hashim’s mouth turned into a sneer. ‘LC’ meant leadership caste, a slur for the whole class of people in control. No one used it to mean Labor. He brushed off some dust from Sylvester’s jumpsuit. “Every single one of them I’ve ever met has been sick in the head.”

Aiden picked up the ball. “We’re done playing gutterball with you, John. Find another team you can freak out on.”