Scar
Scar stood in the center of the Blacks’ arena.
The floors were polished composite built to take impact, wall panels that stifled sound, ceiling rigs with cameras, sensors, and programmable drones.
Racks of weapons lined one side, gleaming in orderly rows. Everything from blades, spears, bows, machine guns, to fucking boomerangs and nunchucks.
Nothing in the vast space was decorative, even the lightning was designed with a purpose.
Scar had been in the arena for two hours already, sweating through his shirt, hands wrapped, knuckles throbbing in a satisfying way.
He’d run the simulators until their predictive algorithms started lagging. He’d sparred with holographic opponents that’d tried to learn his habits and failed. He’d lifted fifty-pound dumbbells and squatted four times that, until his muscles burned.
He’d hoped it would’ve bled some of his anger out, but…
The rage wasn’t a result of the room. It belonged to the images that wouldn’t leave him alone.
Adrian’s too-familiar lean-in and Gage’s hand gripping his bicep were coupled with his humiliation.
Midnight got closer. Scar got tenser.
He checked the time more often than he wanted to admit, hating every time he did.
He told himself he wasn’t waiting, he was staying ready.
Right.
At eleven fifty-eight, he stopped looking.
At midnight, the doors still didn’t open.
At twelve-ten, his jaw locked hard enough to ache.
At twelve forty-five, his anger went bright red.
He drove his fists into the heavy bag with a steady, brutal rhythm, each hit landing with enough force to make the chain struggle. He pictured ribs, not the bag. A smug smile instead of leather.
A smooth voice slid through the space behind him, calm enough to make it feel like a hot palm on the back of his neck.
“Sorry I’m late.”
Scar could see Gage’s reflection in the mirror, but he didn’t turn around, didn’t stop punching.
The bag took another sequence of blows that would’ve dropped a man, maybe for good.
“Save it,” he said, voice rough. “What’d you guys do? Praise God at seven and was fornicating by eleven.”
A soft chuckle filtered through his haze.
“You really gonna’ preach to me?” Gage asked.
Scar landed another hit that shocked his shoulder before he stepped back, breathing steadily, sweat making his shirt stick to his skin.
He turned to brush past Gage as if he wasn’t there, but he immediately answered the insult with his cane.
It took a split second, metal shot out six feet with a vicious click. The spearhead tip stabbed into the padded wall beside his shoulder, the titanium bar now a blockade against his chest.
Scar froze. That had been close…too close.
