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Felix looked at me, a silent signal. I stepped in and my shoulder slammed into Helier’s chest, knocking him back a step.
“Back off, freak,” I growled.
Helier’s smile widened, splitting his face with a mouth too big for his skull, a shark grin of pure, manic delight.
“Ooh. The dog barks,” Helier said, dancing back. He pointed a taped finger at me, then at himself. “I like you. We have the same smell. You and I, we smell like the gutter. We’re going to have so much fun tearing each other apart.”
I hated that he wasn’t wrong. Under the tape and the chemical hair he was what the Pens grew from the same seed the Pit planted. Cage stock. Me, if the Academy had ever said no.
The drone referee descended, hovering between us with its red eye glowing.
MATCH PROTOCOL: ELIMINATION.
TIME LIMIT: 90 MINUTES.
WINNER TAKES ALL.
That last line was for the crowd, poster language, big enough to read from the cheap seats. The fine print had already reached us in a dark locker room, bottom five pairs, liquidated.
“Captains,” the drone intoned. “Shake hands.”
Felix extended a hand, a reflex of his training.
Helier looked at the hand and giggled. He leaned forward and licked the air an inch from Felix’s palm.
“Not yet, pretty boy,” Helier said. “I like to play with my food before I eat it.”
He turned and skipped back to his team, shouting instructions that sounded more like threats.
“Kill the wings! Break the spine! Let’s make them scream!”
Felix wiped his hand on his shorts, his face pale but set in stone.
“He’s crazy,” Felix said.
“He’s distracted,” I countered. “He wants a show. Let’s use it.”
I jogged to my spot on the wing while Felix took the center circle. The crowd rose with the clock, the roar climbing to a fever pitch, the air heavy with the static charge of sixty thousand people.
Felix stood over the ball, his back straight, his head high, white and gold under the floodlights, and the possessiveness that clawed up my throat had nothing civilized left in it. He was mine. I would tear apart anyone who tried to hurt him.
He looked back at me and nodded.
I was ready.
The whistle blew.
And hell opened up.
CHAPTER 26
FELIX
The whistle screamed, a high-pitched laceration across the wall of noise that slammed into us from the stands, and the roar of sixty thousand people shook the concrete foundation of the Colosseum, climbing up through the soles of my shoes and rattling my teeth.
The ball rolled into play, a stark white sphere against the unnatural high-definition green of the turf, and I trapped it. The leather felt heavy against my instep, weighted with the expectations of a nation that was starving for distraction.
Every screen in every Sector was carrying tonight’s feed. The Academy broadcast ran to the nation twenty-four hours a day, drills and rankings and mess-hall theater, but tonight was the program the rest of it existed to advertise.
