I saw white.
I didn’t hit the center of the table. I didn’t hit Camden cleanly.
I crashed.
Mybody missed the target. I collided with the edge of the table and the mass of bodies below. I felt a sickening crunch under me,
Martinez.
I had landed directly on him. My weight drove him into the concrete floor, his body absorbing the impact that the table was supposed to take. He went limp instantly.
But my left arm… my left arm got caught.
It hooked over the top of the metal barricade leg as I fell. The momentum of my body kept going down, but my arm stayed up.
It wrenched back violently, snapping in a direction nature never intended.
Crack.
The sound was louder than the crowd. It was a wet, organic snap that vibrated through my entire skeleton.
My ears were ringing. The crowd went silent. The cheer died in their throats, replaced by a collective, horrified gasp. My vision went blurry, tunneling into a pinprick of light.
“Silas!” I heard a voice scream. It sounded underwater.
I rolled my head. My arm felt like it had been sawed through with a rusty blade, burning hot and then… nothing. Cold. Dead weight.
I blinked, trying to clear my vision. I looked up through the ropes.
Cal.
He was standing alone in the ring.
He stopped fighting. He was staring down at me. His face was white. The anger was gone, replaced by pure, unadulterated terror. He knew. He saw the landing. He heard the snap.
He looked around. Martinez was out cold under me. I was broken. Evan was gone. The rookies were gone.
It was just him.
One against Five.
Myconsciousness was fading. Then, Cal was hit from behind. TheDemolitionteam didn’t stop, they didn’t know the extent of it yet. They swarmed him.
Nobody knows,I realized, panic spiking through the fog.The match is still going.
The screams were there, but there was too much chaos. The refs didn’t know yet. They thought I was selling.
I tried to move my fingers. Nothing. I couldn’t feel them.
Panic, cold and sharp, pierced through the fog. I finally caught eyes with someone, a ref? The ring announcer? I couldn’t tell. I lifted my good arm, shaking uncontrollably, and crossed it over my chest.
The X.
The white flag. The surrender.
EMTs and refs swarmed us instantly. The illusion shattered. My consciousness was slipping, sliding away like oil on water. I could hear words, urgent and shouting.
“We’re putting you on a stretcher!”
