And that was enough. It would have to be. If he couldn’t have his kelarris, then he would spend what was left of his life trying to get justice for those who had had everything ripped from them.
Grabbing the roll of athletic tape off the bench, he wound it around his wrist in tight, overlapping strips. Three wraps, then four, then a tuck and pull that locked it in place. His fingers moved without thought, muscle memory taking over while his mind drifted somewhere far away.
He flexed his wrists, testing the limits of the restriction. Perfect.
Bending, he reached for the heavy combat boots. The laces were thick, woven synthetics meant to withstand plasma burns and friction shearing on the pitch. Left foot first. Cross the laces and double-knot. Tuck the slack in the upper housing to prevent grabbing, and then tape everything down.
The ritual never changed. His body knew the steps even when his head was an utter, draanthing mess.
He dragged in a deep, slow breath. His quad muscles twitched, tight and coiled, primed and ready. He was a warball player. No falsified medical file or exile could take that away from him.
Straightening up, he held his taped hands out in the harsh overhead glare and stared at the white gauze binding his knuckles.
Before he could stop it, memory blindsided him. The defiant line of her chin in that cleaning closet… the frantic thud of her heart, and the softness of her mouth under his. Her red hair tangled through his fingers… her back arching on the narrow bunk mattress and the sharp little gasps she made right before she came apart in his arms. But it was the look in her eyes—wide, dark, and full of trust—that almost brought him to his knees.
His throat seized as a hard, jagged knot choked off his air. Clenching his jaw, he ground his teeth into his bottom lip until he tasted the hot copper snap of his own blood.
He couldn’t take her onto the pitch. If he did, if he let his mind stay in that heaven of a cramped bunk on a freighter light-years from here, he was a dead male.
Warball didn’t tolerate split focus. The game punished distraction with broken bones and ruptured organs.
He squeezed his eyes shut and locked it all down. He’d had a lot of practice at that. Compartmentalization wasn’t just a skill on Parac’Norr, it was survival. You learned to box up the things that hurt and shove them into a corner of your mind where they couldn’t reach you. Otherwise, they would eat you alive.
The entrance music started. Low at first… just a rumbling bass note that vibrated through the floor and up into his bones. Then the drums kicked in, a driving rhythm that matched the acceleration of his pulse. The other instruments layered over it, building and building toward the moment when the tunnel doors would open, and the crowd would see the players for the first time.
Opening his eyes, he picked up the mask.
He was ready.
The stadium lights were blinding.
Not the welcoming brightness he remembered, but interrogation-room bright… a harsh white glare designed to expose every flaw and magnify every failure.
The noise of the crowd rolled down from the tiered seating in waves, a physical pressure against his eardrums, and the painted field stretched out before him like a green ocean he’d once commanded.
Raaze stepped out of the tunnel, and the laughter started straight away. It rippled through the nearest sections, the cheap seats where the die-hard fans sat close enough to see the players sweat.
He knew what they saw: a wildcard. Some nobody in borrowed armor and a plain mask, walking onto the pitch as if he belonged there.
“Look at this draanthic!” someone bellowed from the front row, voice cracking with glee. “Thinks he’s hot trall in hand-me-down plates!”
Laughter exploded, feeding on itself until the whole section shook with it. Ignoring it, Raaze kept his shoulders loose and his chin high, the way he’d done a thousand times before when the roar had been for him instead of against him.
“Hey, Mask-boy! Where’s your real kit?” another voice jeered. “Or did they pull you from the draanthing trash heap?”
He didn’t flinch. Not with every set of eyes in the stadium locked on him as he headed across the turf.
“Wildcard, my ass!” A fat male in the third row stood up, waving his drink so it sloshed over the rim. “This is what they send us? Some draanthing scrub who couldn’t hack it on the practice squad?”
The insults piled on, faster and uglier, each one sharper than the last. They called him fraud. Pretender. Washed-up nobody. Someone even shouted that he looked like the kind of male who’d draanth his own sister for a taste of fame.
Raaze’s jaw tightened behind the mask. Keep laughing, you pieces of trall.
He rolled a shoulder, feeling the makeshift armor shift and pinch. The laughter swelled again as he reached the center mark, drowning out the announcer’s voice trying to introduce him. They didn’t want his name. They wanted blood. They wanted the joke to fall flat on its face so they could tear it apart with their teeth.
Let’s see how funny they find it when this nobody starts breaking their precious favorites in half.
He planted his feet, eyes scanning the far tunnel where the two teams would emerge any second.
