HUMAN’S RESOURCE FILE

Name: CALAMITY GANON

Current Location: FIFTH FLOOR

Calamity Ganon, human name redacted, was most proud of her father at night. After Cal and her brothers had bloodied both themselves and the arena and then raked up the blood the best they could, the General would build a fire and pace before it, his shadow beating against the dirt with each step like big black wings.

The Pigs didn’t lie when they said her brothers had not all joined the barracks willingly, but it was around that fire that each and every one of them became his.

Which also made them hers.

“For most warriors, death is the end of the battle,” he said. “But you have been chosen, and your worth extends beyond your death. We cannot fight on behalf of Heaven with all our boots on Earth. And that is why, although only your brother Jonah survived, we have two champions tonight.”

She liked the newest recruits the most. The ones who sat through their first days of training in horror, as colorless as if it were their blood that splattered their hand-me-down combat boots. Earlier that week, Jonah had been one of those new recruits. But now he sat in the Seat of Honor, perched highest among them—higher, even, than the General himself—and drank sloppily, smugly, from a cup so full, it sloshed when he cheered.

The General stopped pacing and looked at his army, small and knotted in body but blazing hot in the eyes. He treated all of them the same, never picking favorites or mourning any with particular fervor. But Cal could tell from the way he looked at them that their pain, their death, was not at his whim or pleasure. He felt the loss of each one.

“So, let’s prepare ourselves for the fight that awaits us beyond this one, in the belly of Hell. Which is where you all will go—and must go—if not for your sins prior to your arrival here, then for the sins you will commit by the time you leave, to ensure your entry. What is the most important duty when you wake up on the other side?”

Her hand shot up, but her father called on Joseph.

“Don’t drink the water.”

When he found Joseph, the boy had been sucking men off for bus fare along Route 65, putting as much distance as possible between himself and the group home where he had grown up, having never been truly raised. He went to the barracks willingly, more or less, and he beamed the brightest when the General spoke of him as “chosen.”

“Why is that, Joseph?”

Cal threw her hand up again, even though she knew he wouldn’t pick her. He could at least know, seeing her from the corner of his eye, that she had the answer.

“The river—”

The General opened his mouth, but Joseph self-corrected. “Lethe,” he said, stumbling just to get the word out. “The water from the river Lethe makes everyone in Hell forget where they came from, who they are. Everything.”

“And one more time, men, together now: When you arrive on the battlefield below, what will you remember the most so you can remember the rest?” the General asked, booming.

Cal joined in with her full voice.

“Don’t drink the water!”

Jonah raised his cup, delighting in the right to slosh. The Seat of Honor and the full glasses that came with it always seemed to make her brothers only more wasteful, simply because they could be. But the next day, he would be one of them again.

Cal never sat in the Seat of Honor, never got a full cup, a break from the dehydration training. Not even when she won, which she did with more and more frequency. In the barracks, she was a pariah, denied all but a single privilege.

She was the only one the General wouldn’t allow to die.