Page 78

All I could see was the empty strip of turf where he fell. All I could hear was the echo of my own pulse, while the stadium keeps roaring like this was entertainment.

I swallowed and tasted bile.

If he was gone, it was because I had let it happen. Another loss I couldn’t control. Another thing I couldn’t keep.

He was gone.

And I was alone.

Anatol Getha stood in our goal, watching me watch the tunnel, and shrugged. A simple roll of the shoulders that crossed sixty yards of turf.

Rage was too small a word for what came next. It was a cold black liquid filling my lungs from the bottom, displacing the oxygen. The blood on my jersey caught my eye. My blood or the Reserve’s blood, it didn’t matter anymore.

MATCH PROTOCOL UPDATE.

SUDDEN DEATH.

NEXT GOAL WINS.

The announcement boomed from the speakers, and the crowd screamed, sensing the kill.

Helier stood in the center circle, wiping blood from the nose Leander had broken, vibrating with excitement.

“Where’s your dog?” he called out. “Did we break him? Did we send him back to the farm?”

He stepped on the ball.

“Guess you’re all alone now. Just a pretty boy in a room full of beasts.”

If he was still talking after that, I stopped receiving, because something was happening in my chest that I had no procedure for.

I let my arms hang loose at my sides like Leander’s hung when the cage in him came forward. The bio-monitor on my wrist was flashing red, screaming warnings about critical stress levels, but I couldn’t feel my heart. It had stopped beating. It had become a cold hard stone in my chest.

“Give me the ball,” I said to Varo.

Varo looked at me, terrified. “But we need to park the bus. We need to defend.”

“Give. Me. The. Ball.”

The whistle blew. Varo flinched and tapped the ball to me at the restart.

I drove straight at Helier.

He grinned, opening his arms. “Come here, beautiful. Let me finish you.”

He lunged, shoulder aimed at my chest to put me on my back in front of sixty thousand people, and I did not spin, I did not feint. I used Sector 9 rules. I waited until the last fraction of a second, planted my foot, hardened my body into a weapon, and instead of absorbing the impact I delivered it, driving my elbow up under Helier’s ribs as we collided.

Crack.

Helier folded around the sound, eyes bulging, and stumbled backward clutching his side.

“Get up,” I snarled, and did not break stride.

I was through the first line. The Reserve midfield collapsed on me, three of them, black jerseys swarming like roaches. They jockeyed, keeping their distance, cutting off the passing lanes. They were treating me like a technician who needed space to create art, expecting me to dance around them.

They were wrong. I was playing for blood now.

I pushed the ball forward, too far. It looked like a mistake. The lead midfielder bit. He slid, studs up, hunting my leg like they had hunted Leander’s.