Pale Viper

 

We were lucky we had only known each other for a few hours, so it was easy to change the way we addressed one another, and we decided not to risk it for fear of 'instantaneous death'. And of course, it was shocking to us that there were 998 other people who had also been abducted and shoved into a hole like me and Neo, but we decide to focus on the problems at hand before worrying about that.

The days after the announcement have been quiet. Every three days a small basket hardly bigger than my head was lowered down into the hole with our 'food', though, which meant there were at least other people here. It was just enough to sustain two people, and consisted of moldy bread, a flask of water and some slightly rotting leftovers. We would divide the food every time it was delivered and ration it out. We had no choice if we wanted to live, and I spent every day longing for a soft bed at home.

We didn't have much time to waste. 600 vacancies in 1,000 contestants was scary. Every time the food came down, there would be a scribbled note telling us how long we had left. And one time as it was lowered down the pit, the note told us that we had two and a half weeks left, but we were still working on that part. Since we're suffering from malnutrition and losing weight, the climb has naturally been harder.

"Shit!!"

My hand slips off the rock I'm holding and I slide back down to earth. Neo shakes his head at me.

"I estimate about thirty feet," he says. "Barely three-quarters to catch up to me." 

"Oh, shut up" I groan, my voice slightly high pitched as my whole body aches. "Damn combat graduate." 

"Do we really have to keep the lights off like this?" Neo asks, helping me up to my feet. 

"Yes," I reply. "Already said why." 

It was because I want us both do get better vision in the dark. I'm betting that after this crap there'll be more, and I have no idea how much longer we were to stay in this cave, so getting better vision in the dark would hopefully prove useful.

Over the one and a half weeks that have already gone by, me and Neo have been training ourselves for the climb we are going to make soon to survive, honing our bodies, and practicing climbing the wall.

Luckily, depsite being malnutritioned, our bodies seemed strangely sturdier and stronger compared to before, – in the past, it would have been a dream for me to climb up an almost flat wall with my bare hands, and even if I could the fall would've d turned me into a grease spot. Now, all I get are scrapes and bruises. It's probably got something to do with the high concentration of chrona lingering in the air that gets absorbed into our bodies every time we breathe.

"You climb up then. I'm going to take a break since I just climbed up the wall six times in a row."

"Alright," Neo decides, stretching, "I'll see if I can reach the top."

"If you do, then don’t just run off by yourself!" I call after him, as he begins to ascend at frightening speed. "We're in this together!"

"You've said that once!" he shouts back down to me, his voice bouncing off the walls.

I sigh and slump against the side of the cave, fiddling with a piece of flint and a rock. I've been trying to carve a knife out of the flint since day two – but unfortunately we have no access to the chronatech we use for everyday tasks. Oh, what I would give for an auto-shower or nanotech wardrobe. 

But before I can do anything, a spine-chilling hiss echoes in the darkness. Instantly, I'm on my feet and have the knife ready. It comes gliding through the shadows like a ghost, a ghastly white snake, with bright red, bloodthirsty eyes staring straight at me. About two foot long, it's fixed its hateful, hungry eyes on me. I rack my brains. 

Think...! What do you know...? 

It clicks. A certain lecture in the past, in my academy. 

"Students, this is the pale viper," the professor said, showing us a snake with pearly white scales and red eyes on the large screen. "I doubt you'll ever come across one, since it lives in the Central Region deep in dark caves, but has enough venom in one bite to kill a hundred healthy men." 

"What happens if I ever do meet one, sir?" someone had asked out of curiosity. 

"Run," he had said. "And pray. Although you'll probably die anyway." 

 

How fucking helpful. Sir.

 

I stare at the pale viper oozing towards me, and the knife feels slippery in my hand because of all the sweat. I blink and the snake's gone and there's a flash of white before me. Without thinking, and my heart leaping into my throat, I jump back and lash out with my other hand. My palm hits something hard and cold and next thing I know, two feet of writhing white muscle is pinned to the ground under my hand left hand. In a split second I strike the snake hard on the head with my knife.

 

It stopped writhing around and went stock still, blood pooling around its kite-shaped head. I breathed heavily, and then let go of it. The corpse went limp on the ground, and I was about to hurl the thing into the darkness until I remembered something else my professor had taught me about pale vipers.

"As said before, pale vipers are incredibly dangerous," he had said. "But they are still in high demand both in the black market and between aristocrats, and thousands of people still risk their lives hoping to catch one every day. This is because if you kill a pale viper, then remove it's venom glands and squeeze out the dead viper's venom, it has unique properties which increase your bone and muscle density by several-fold, making you much stronger and durable along with higher stamina. Call it an elixir of sorts."

He had then proceeded to show us a clip of how to remove the two venom glands of the snake, and back then I had thought that the fact that we were being taught that was ridiculous, but now I am nothing but grateful for that lesson.

 

I take a hold of the sharpest edge of my flint knife, and look down at the snake's corpse.

"I'm sorry," I mutter. "You were just hungry and trying to survive, but… I need to live too."

 

Neo slams back down to the ground a few minutes after. He had climbed up about sixty feet, and then climbed back down before jumping the last twenty like the stupid monster he was.

"Whew," he pants, dusting himself down and stretching. "That sure d- what the hell?"

He stared at the snake carcass lying next to me in a puddle of blood.

"Oh, hey Neo," I say, turning around and showing him the venom glands. "You know what these are?"

"Isn’t that a pale viper?" he asks, examining the corpse. "You managed to kill this thing?"

"Why do you look so surprised?" I demand, miffed. "I did also graduate at hand-to-hand combat. Maybe I won’t give this to you after all."

He stares at me incredulously.

"You're eating that?" 

"Yeah?" 

"I know that pale viper venom IS an elixir that only the super soldiers on the front lines have the privilege of getting, but that's after refinement with thousands of chemicals. Right now, that raw thing has a ten percent chance at succeeding, and even if you do, you'll  have to endure extreme pain, like you've just stubbed your toe on the doorframe." 

"Don't exaggerate."

"Fine" Neo agrees. "It'll feel like you’re having molten lava poured down your throat with a siding of shredded glass, seasoned with fresh metal-corroding acid and boiling water."

"Yeah," I say, looking at the glands, "But its effectiveness raw is thrice that of a refined one."

I hold one out to him.

"For the sake of our survival," I tell him, "We need to do this. We don't have long left and any moment these days another group will make it to the top."
"No thanks," Neo says, pushing the venom sack back at me. "You have both if you will. I'm not riskin' it even for the possible upsides." 

"I'll leave you in the dust."
"It doesn't matter. I'll climb up behind you anyway and if I get tired you can carry me, can’t you?"

"You've got it all planned out, huh?"

He grins at me mischievously.

"Came up with it on the spot," he says. "You just told me didn’t you?"

He made a fair point, so I left it at that.

"Are you sure you want to do this?"

"Yes." 

I've cut off one end from both venom sacks, and I am holding them both together in one hand, with purple liquid venom inside gazing back at me.

I'd be bluffing if I said I'm not having second thoughts just looking at it. My fingers are trembling, and my insides are squeezing in on themselves. I want to stop what I'm doing right away and hurl them across the diameter of my rocky prison. But no. This is something I have to do.

I will survive. And when I get out of this hellhole, I'll survive then too. 

I steel my nerves, and raise the venom up to my lips. I can do this. I can-

"Remember you have a ninety percent chance of dying on the spot," Neo says at the wrong time.

I forgot he was there. My hand jerks in surprise and the venom shoots down my throat. 

It is difficult to describe the feeling of (accidentally) pouring the venom of the 3rd most poisonous snake in the world down your throat, but I will endeavour.

The second it touches the back of my throat, the world goes swirly with pain, and I feel like my insides erupting into flames while being stabbed by thousands of little knives. Something makes its way up my throat, and I try to hold it back, but the force is too great and a waterfall of blood comes hurtling out my mouth onto the ground before me. I'm retching and gagging and clawing at my stomach, but it's no use, I can't think straight and everything's going spotty. Neo's shouting something, but I can barely hear him because every part of my body, ears included, is exploding in pain. My stomach and organs are imploding in on themselves, twisting round and round and then untangling itself a million times in a second. My lungs feel like they're going to pop any moment now. My neck's melting off and my throat's gone at this point. My vision darkens completely, and the last thing I feel is the cold, hard ground as I keel over, and then I slip out of consciousness.

"…ord! Sword!"

My eyes jerk open. Neo is in my face, staring down at me.

"Neo?" I choke.

My mouth feels like I've been gargling with sand paper and every bone in my body aches.

"You're finally awake," he gasped, falling back onto his heels in surprise. "You have no idea. Your chest was burning hot, and I could barely feel your heart…"

He showed me his hands, which were bright red from trying to revive me.

"Well," I breathe, coughing and then spitting out the last drops of blood mixed in my saliva. "I'm alive, thanks to you."

"You mean my encouragement?"

"That was encouragement? If that's your idea of encouragement then you clearly can’t even encourage the piss out of a drunk man."
"Hey…"

 

After we stopped bickering, I was able to test out my new body, after getting a few sips of water from our rationed reserves.

 

Let me tell you now, it feels amazing. Imagine all your childhood dreams of punching through walls and jumping tens of feet into the air suddenly come true. Yeah, that's what it felt like to me.

 

For the first time, I easily went past Neo's record, and every time I pulled myself upwards was effortless. It almost felt like I was flying. And then, before I knew, I was looking at the rocky roof that we hadn't seen in all the one and a half weeks we had been stuck in this hole.

Ceiling…? Why the f*ck is there a ceiling?

Instantly, I want to fall right back down, and my heart begins to hammer in my chest. Surely, there has to be some way up…? I hang from a stalagmite on the ceiling with one hand effortlessly, literally just for the fun of it, and look all around, calming myself. Sure enough, about twenty feet below the ceiling, on the opposite side of the pit, there is a faint light coming from a corridor obscured from below by a ledge.

Bingo.

Swinging myself back and forth before letting go, I hurl myself across the full diameter of the pit and then grab ahold of the edge of the ledge.

This. Is. Awesome. 

The corridor is extremely short, with only a wooden door with a single, sad, flickering light next to it that casts a ghostly glow on the rocky walls. Finally. Our freedom.

"You found the exit?" Neo asked, exploding to his feet. "How far up?"

"About four hundred feet." 

"…crazy."
"I know, right?"

I clench my fingers and feel the strength between them. If there was a human arm in my hand, it'd probably be splintering right now. We can do this.

"So, when are we planning on getting out of here?" Neo asked, rubbing his hands, which were covered in bloody blisters like mine.

I look at him.

"What, you want to stay? I'm not tired."

"So right now?"

"Anything stopping us? Or do you feel some sense of connection to this shithole?"

"Fair point," he smiles. "Let's go."

He heads for the wall, eyes quickly finding the route we've painstakingly planned out over the last one and a half weeks, but just before he does I remember something I wanted to tell him, and catch his shoulder.

"Huh?"

"Neo," I say. "Before we get out of here, I wanted to say something."

He turns back to me, listening.

"…I'm sure, in the future, this won't be the last of our struggles. I was just hoping, y'know…"

And suddenly I forget what the hell I was gonna say. Good going, Rei- Sword. I'll just improvise.

"…that we'll, uh, stick together for all the rest of this."

The cave is dark, cold and damp, and I can barely see his face in the dim blue glisten of chrona in the air, but I know he's smiling.

"Of course," he says, and we shake hands.

In the freezing air, his hand is warm.

 

***

 

Suffering through hell and back was worth it, after all.  Firing up a four-hundred foot almost-smooth rock wall was something that would only be possible in my dreams just a few weeks ago. I scoff. It's ironic that the only way I was able to get so much stronger was through the very people that I want to beat up so badly right now.

 

Those motherfuckers behind this stupid 'Project Pharo'. Someday, I'll get back at you.

 

"Let’s go," Neo says, and I nod.

We begin the ascent, Neo going ahead of me, because if he fell I could catch him with one hand. When we're about a hundred feet up, Neo starts running out of strength. We both agree that it would be better if I carried him on my back while we continue the ascent, and I anticlimactically pull us up over the ledge that led the exit a few minutes after that.

 

We rest before the door that leads to god knows where for a little while, taking in the fact that we were finally leaving this hellhole behind, and Neo leans over the edge, yelling mocking curses down at the pit and the insects. We kick the doors off their hinges together, and then as soon as we step through a pang of pain courses through my head again.

 

"Number 224 'Sword' and 225 'Neo' have become the fourth participants to complete the first mission. Their rankings will be changed to 007 and 008".