He looked up, a smirk playing on his lips. “Then I throw your ass over the top rope.”
I snorted, the tension in my chest loosening just a fraction. “In your dreams, Deadlock.”
The entrance was a blur. The stadium was an ocean of noise. When the buzzer hit for my entry, Number Fourteen, the pop was deafening. I sprinted down the ramp, sliding into the ring and immediately ducking a clothesline from a heavyweight I’d watched on TV since I was twelve.
The ring was chaos. Bodies everywhere. Punches flying.
Three minutes later, the buzzer hit again. Number Fifteen.
Deadlock.
The mood shifted. The crowd knew. Cal hit the ring like a wrecking ball, leveling two mid-carders before finding me in the corner. We didn’t hug. We didn’t high five. We just nodded, spun around, and went back-to-back.
For the next half hour, we were a two-man army.
The directive from the agents was clear:Survive.But we didn’t just survive. We thrived. We realized quickly that the only way two rookies were going to make it through this meat grinder was to operate as a single unit.
When Carlos Manta, one of Dante’s goons, tried to eliminate me, Cal was there, hooking his leg and dragging him back in before we hit a double team move that sent Manta over the top rope to the floor. When a veteran tried to overpower Cal against the turnbuckles, I was there, hitting a dropkick to the vet’s back that sent him tumbling out.
We moved like we shared a nervous system. The “Laws of Nature” collided not against each other, but against everyone else.
We made the final ten. Then the final five.
My lungs burned. My chest heaved. I was covered in sweat that wasn’t mine. The only people left were me, Cal, Dante Andrews, Jonathan Rockwell, and a monster heel named Titan.
The crowd was on their feet. They realized the rookies had actually made it to the endgame.
Dante and Rockwell circled us. They wanted to end the fairytale.
“Let’s finish this,” Cal growled, wiping blood from a cut on his lip.
We went to war. I took Titan, the biggest man in the ring. He charged me, looking to crush me, but I used his momentum. I ducked, scooped him up with a strength I didn’t know I had left, and slammed him into the canvas with a snap that rattled the ring. But I didn’t stop there. Before he could even register the impact, I was in the air, a standing backflip, my body tucking and rotating in a blur before crashing down onto his chest.
The crowd exploded. It was a move of pure athleticism, graceful and cruel. Titan rolled under the bottom rope, gasping for air.
But the distraction cost me. Rockwell caught me from behind. I held onto the ropes, dangling inches from the floor, fighting with everything I had. I looked up to see Cal fighting Dante. Cal saw me. He had a choice: eliminate Dante, the golden boy, or save me.
He broke away from Dante. He lunged, grabbing my wrist just as my grip slipped, hauling me back onto the apron.
In that split second of brotherhood, Dante hit Cal with a cheap shot, a low blow the refs “missed”, and clotheslined him over the top rope.
Cal hit the floor. Eliminated.
I screamed, launching myself back into the ring, but the numbers game was done. Titan and Dante double-teamed me. I fought, I hit every move in my arsenal, but Dante caught me with a superkick that nearly took my head off.
He tossed me over. My feet hit the floor.
Dante Andrews won. The Legacy remained intact.
But as I sat on the mats outside the ring, gasping for air, looking over at Cal who was nursing his jaw, I heard the noise.
They weren’t cheering for Dante. They were chanting our names.
Deadlock. Timeless. Deadlock. Timeless.
Backstage was a frenzy.
Evan, who had been eliminated earlier but stuck around to watch at the monitor, practically tackled us when we walked through the curtain.
