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I froze. The blood drained from my face.

“You knew,” I whispered.

“Of course I knew. The emergency kits are biometrically sealed, Felix. I got the alert the second you cracked it open.” Tegula shrugged. “I let it happen. I was curious to see if the investment would yield a return. It did, you won the match. But the gel masked the weakness; it didn’t cure it. The bone snapped under pressure. He is a liability.”

He stood up and walked to the window.

“The National Team cannot afford weak points. We don’t repair lightbulbs, Felix. We replace them.”

“He didn’t break because he was weak,” I argued, desperation leaking into my tone. “He broke because a Reserve defender stomped on him. You saw the hit. It would have snapped a steel beam.”

“Irrelevant,” Tegula said. “He is down. He is being processed for reassignment. The Front Lines need bodies to clear minefields. His aggression will be useful there.”

The room spun.

Processed. Reassignment. Minefields.

He was killing him. He was taking the only thing that made me feel anything and feeding it to the war. And it was already done, paperwork routed while I stood two floors up holding champagne. Whatever else this office was for tonight, it was not a consultation. He had not called me up here to decide anything. He had called me up here to watch me receive it.

“You can’t,” I shouted.

“I already have.” Tegula pressed a button on his desk. “But don’t worry. I wouldn’t leave the King without a court. I have found a replacement. Someone who matches your new... intensity.”

The side door opened.

A figure stepped out of the shadows.

He was wearing a Tier 1 tracksuit, but it looked wrong on him. He moved with a manic energy that made the air around him feel unstable. His face was a mess of bandages where Leander had broken his nose.

“Hi pretty boy,” Helier giggled. “Did you miss me?”

I stared at him. The man who had tried to break my legs. The man who had blocked my shot with his face because he was insane.

“You’re joking,” I said to Tegula. “He broke a Head Coach’s jaw. He was blacklisted for assaulting a superior officer.”

“Details.” Tegula waved it away. “Helier is unrefined, but he is hungry. And he is durable. He took a ball to the face at eighty miles per hour and he is standing here. He will protect you, Cento. He will be the dog that bites.”

Helier stepped closer. He sniffed the air, his head tilting with a bird-like twitchy movement.

“You smell like him,” Helier whispered just for me, his eyes dilated. “You smell like the rat. Did you fuck him? Did you give him the good stuff?”

He licked his lips, staring at the pulse jumping in my throat.

“I want the good stuff, Cento. I want to be a good boy too.”

Bile rose in the back of my throat.

This was what the Director wanted. Monsters. He would pair me with a psychopath because he believed trauma produced the highest yield, because to him I was a biological component to be slotted into a new machine, and the last machine’s other half was already routed to a minefield.

I looked at Helier. I looked at the Director.

And the game never ended. Even if I won, even if I stayed Rank One forever, they would keep feeding me to wolves until I was eaten.

Unless I stopped playing.

“No,” I said.

Tegula frowned, his fingers pausing over the console. “Excuse me?”