I’ve been learning hard lessons since I started fighting at seven years old. It was cuter back then. Little Tetsuka, wanted to grow up and be just like the father she watched on the news streams, late-night wide-eyes popcorn-crunching with a cozy blanket around her shoulders and an empty house around her screen. It didn’t hurt her that he was never around. Not being pushed hurt. Not impressing him enough hurt. He would have given me the gentlest life in the world, but I wanted the sharpest. I could take it. I was special. I could take anything. Anything to keep him around just a second longer.
All those years, all those lessons, and I can still count on my one hand how many of them hurt like this.
Day one thousand, two hundred and six starts like most of the others. I’m awake before I open my eyes, but I already know I won’t recognize the ceiling. That I’m still living at all is the real surprise. I’m a mess inside and out. Last thing I remember is a fireball flash through closed eyelids. A twisted lump in my stomach aches with the rise and fall of my chest. Shrapnel scratches itch along my cheeks, arms. Burns from the gas explosion flash with hot pain wherever they rub against clothing, concentrated at my back and legs.
Icy nanospray seeps into the open wounds beneath their bandages, a disinfecting tang. I shiver from pain and cold chills, slowly digesting my surroundings. Processing that I’m not dead yet. That I lucked out again. Too close, this time.
This small room is not warm, my ratty clothes are shredded up and down, and my stomach lurches with sickness. Goosebumps stipple my left arm. My right is still connected; awkwardly pinned beneath me. Sweat dampens the lumpy spring cot I’m laying on. Petals of dirty hair drape limply over my forehead, pooling across the mattress. Low voices mutter indistinctly in the distance. Somewhere above, a climate control unit whirrs quietly. Nearer, the rhythmic sound that woke me continues unabated. Thump-thump-slap. Floor-wall-hand. Thump-thump-slap. Moody sigh.
Spitting out a dry cough, I crack open my eyes to the grey confines of a small jail cell, three walls concrete and one barred with iron. The sound repeats, thump-thump-slap. A white rubber ball arcs off the wall and returns perfectly to the cot on the other side of the cell, caught by a small, well-manicured hand.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” I groan.
Laying down with one knee bent, Feint holds the ball as high as her arms can reach, eyes sullenly fixed on the ceiling. “Morning, sunshine.”
Patches of her pale skin are splotched with angry red burns up. Only one half of her torso is marked by the burns, blindsided by the gas explosion just like I was. Sensing me looking, she tilts her head enough to look at me out of the corner of her eye. “Enjoying the view?”
I flip her off with my real hand, but my dislocated middle finger can’t get all the way up. Feint smirks and goes back to watching the ceiling. Her playful façade slips back into place with an understated lethality it no longer bothers to conceal.
“You look like you slept well.”
“As well as I could with a hole in my stomach,” I growl. “Thanks for that, by the way. Really the pick-me-up I needed after a night of getting jumped by a bunch of uni fighters.”
She wiggles her shoulders, sinking deeper into the cot. “Happy to help. Customer satisfaction is my guarantee.”
“And yet you’re perfectly happy to sit there and let me sleep after trying to murder me.”
“Ooh, burn. Careful with that death wish, pal. Might cut yourself on it.” Feint closes her eyes and hooks her hands behind her head, still managing to look animated. “What can I say? Maybe I have a weak spot for your rustic charms. And I can’t exactly finish the job in a jail cell, can I?”
My eyes narrow. Anger, hot for once, flashes through my arm. I slowly ease up, getting an elbow down, and bite back a gasp as the myriad wounds along my sides suddenly split open. “I’m… sure plenty of people have done it before.”
“God, you have such a dark sense of humor. It’s so funny.”
“Whoever hired you wants me dead. Do you really think they’d bother paying you to commit that level of sin if I weren’t worth killing?” I lurch off the cot and onto shaky feet, real hand clenching and unclenching, and stagger one step across the cell. Feint catches her ball and shifts to watch me. “You think watching me sleep off a knife you put in my stomach is a good idea? Is this a joke to you?”
Her brow narrows. “Yeah, it is.”
She flicks the ball into my ankle, dropping me painfully to the concrete floor. The ball bounces and rolls off into a corner. I hit the ground in a puddle, groaning and swearing at her as pain lances through my joints.
Feint languidly swings her boots off the cot and plants them on the floor. Dead serious now. “I’d take a little look in the mirror before you get all self-righteous on me, Tay. I’m sure you’re special where you came from, and important too. But me?” She crouches in front of me and watches me squirm, voice lowering. “I’m not special. I just get called because I’m good at dealing with the special problems. Like you. And you’ve got some balls to complain about me letting-”
I lunge forward off the floor and grab her by the collar of her shirt. Drag her down and haul myself up by the fabric, point-blank, as I throw my gaze up to meet hers. “Let’s make one thing clear, Feint. Since you can’t seem to take a hint.” I blow her bangs to the side with a snort through my nose. “I. Don’t make. The same mistake. Twice.”
“Funny. I could have sworn we’ve been in this position before.”
“I could snap your neck in five different ways right now. Get real, or I’m going to pick one.”
“You seem to be forgetting something real important, pal.” Feint’s crystal-yellow eyes narrow dangerously. I’m struck by a wisp of a memory as her bangs drift past, a flash of colors I used to know. It ends as I blink. Utterly humorless, Feints finishes by flicking one of my fingers away, watching me crumple onto the concrete. “You’re in no position to be giving orders.”
I growl a curse into the smoothed floor. Her fingers wrap in the collar of my tattered shirt, lifting and dragging me back to my cot, where she unceremoniously dumps me back down like a pile of dirty laundry. “Sit down and look pretty.”
“Fuck…” A yarking cough erupts in my chest while she pats her hands clean and turns away. My hand tightens in the guts of the cot’s one pillow. “Fuck you.”
“Better,” she chuckles. “You know, you were more fun when you were less angry.”
“You could have made sure I was dead in that gym. Why didn’t you?”
Feint’s back stays turned for a moment. Body language giving nothing away. And then, to my surprise, she turns. Her shoulders roll and her tips at the barred wall of the cell, the slate-grey hallway beyond. “Figured I’d let the roof take care of the rest. It’s like I said. I don’t like killing people.” There’s a hint of reticence to her voice. The tiniest waver of something unsaid as she watches me in the corner of her eye. “Especially not girls like you.”
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“Girls like me?” I groan, raking back my hair.
She motions vaguely at all of me. “The stubborn ones.”
“Funny way for an assassin to do business.” I chuckle painfully. “I’m dangerous enough to someone powerful to be worth hiring a professional murderer to dispose of. What makes you think I won’t repay the favor the moment you turn around?”
“The fact that this job came straight from the office of the Champion.”
She drops the revelation like the bomb it is. The Champion is the strongest warrior not just in this city, but our entire Section. It’s no meaningless title. By the one martial law that dictates our society, he is our gladiator king. His power is absolute. Not even the most powerful corporations would dare resist a Champion openly, because the strength and mastery of a JOY that a Champion wield borderlines on deific. A fighter of their caliber could singlehandedly flatten an entire army of their lessers. From what I’ve seen on the streams, our Champion is no different. He’s one of the most dangerous of them all.
And I don’t even blink.
“You… already knew.” Feint arches an eyebrow. “You know the most powerful man in the world wants you dead, and you decided to come to his home city anyways? Are you insane?”
“Like I said, I’m looking for someone.”
“We’re talking about Gami. Our Sectional Champion Gami. You know, the guy who’s sitting on top of the Metro Blockhouse right now?” She scoffs. “Regular people are like ants to him. What the hell did you, an eighteen-year-old, do to piss off someone like that? Why does he even care you exist?”
“Suddenly growing a conscience, Feint?”
She rolls her eyes dramatically. “They told me you were dangerous. They didn’t tell me you were a handful.”
I hold her gaze. “Why didn’t you finish the job?”
“You’re still stuck on that?”
“Unstick me.”
“You made a mess, pal. And now I’m tangled up in it too. Because you’re supposed to be dead and I’m supposed to be off collecting my paycheck right about now.” She scratches at her neck, I start sitting up. “Instead, I’m stuck here in a jail cell with you, there’s several not-unpopular uni kids in the next cell over, a really famous building turned into a burnt muffin overnight, and our faces are plastered all over it. Together. That gym you destroyed? That was the gym where Mars Mons learned how to fight. You know, the Showmaker? The guy who’s got more memorials around this city than there are streets?”
“I’m aware,” I growl.
“And that’s somehow even worse,” Feint sighs, draping a hand over her face. “Whatever. I’m sure you’ve already figured out what will happen when those guys-” she cocks her head for me to look out at the rest of the jail- “start interrogating us. Or worse, bring in a Psi to pick through our brains. You’ve got your secrets. I’ve got mine. Be happy that me killing you here would get me thrown into solitary confinement faster than you can say Akis Prazen. It’s going to have to wait until we’re out.”
“It’s gonna have to wait longer than that,” I say.
“Oh?”
“Yeah. Oh.” I catch her eye through a mop of white hair. “If you really were hired by the Champion, the moment his people discover I’m still alive, they’re going to know you didn’t follow through. Then you’re as dead as I am.”
“That sounds an awful lot like another reason to kill you.”
I shake my head. “Not if you help me.”
Feint actually stutters from laughter. “…Please, please, hahaha. Oh my god. Are you serious? Help you? That better be the concussion talking, because I did not take you for a comedian.”
“Help me. I’m serious.”
She rests her spine against the cell bars. “Tay, I was two centimeters away from murdering you last night. The Champion himself wants you and anything connected to you disappeared.” She watches me carefully, seeing how serious I am. “I’ve met him once. If you ever had the misfortune of fighting him, just know that it’d be more trouble for him to keep you alive than kill you outright. He’s on the throne for a reason. The last thing I should do is get more tied up with you.”
“I can get you anything,” I quietly say. “Whenever you want, for whatever you want.” I hold her gaze till she stops laughing. “You said the people who hired you offered you something you couldn’t refuse. Whatever it is, I can get it for you. More, even.”
Feint’s eyebrows arch with genuine interest, her curiosity piqued. “Anything is a big promise.”
“It’s the truth.” I hook my head for her to come closer. “When we met, I told you I was here looking for someone. It’s my aunt. She’s a politician; an important one. The kind that can make anything happen.”
“There’s no such thing as an important politician,” she replies. But she doesn’t say no.
“You’re the best shot I’ve found of finding her,” I continue. “Help me up. Help me out of here, help me find her and stay undercover, and I’ll get you what you want. But I’m not letting you out of my sight just so you can come back later and make me regret it.”
Feint takes her time in deciding. Hands in her pockets, eyes wandering, thinking all the angles through. In her eyes, I can see the assassin’s calculus turning. She calmly glances over and checks me up and down. There’s more at play behind that gaze. More going on to this unassuming girl who can shut down JOYs on a whim. I know why she would’ve been sent to kill me. Her power, whatever it is, is more dangerous than any I’ve ever seen. A universal equalizer in a society that stratifies itself on inequality of strength.
Like she said. She was two centimeters away from murdering me. That contract, that offer from the people who want me vanished, it’s still up for her to take. She’ll have a knife to my throat, one whim all that’s stopping her from turning me in. I’m making a deal with a devil by putting my life in her hands. But it’s not like there’s many angels left. I’m chasing down the last.
Feint makes her choice after another moment of thought. She holds her hand above mine, not quite taking it yet. “Bold offer from someone who can’t even stand on her own.”
I shoot a wry grin up at her. “I’ll manage. I’ve heard I’m pretty stubborn.”
Her slim fingers wrap around my forearm. “I assume there’s more to me being your best shot than my charming personality, yeah? Spill.”
“Depends on if you were lying about your internship too.”
“Hotshot, believe me when I say I wish I was making those stories up. Retail is a special kind of hell.” She rolls her eyes as she hauls me up. “Lying about my internship. Please, Tay. You’re not worth lying to.”
When I wait for her to say more, she just flashes a little smirk and raises her left wrist. One slight twist activates her bangle, and with a deep metallic thunk, the cell door unlocks and begins ponderously swinging inwards. Panels in the ceiling ripple out in a wave down the hall, fifteen feet radius, give or take. Just like the JOYs she disabled yesterday.
And we’re free.
We peer out of the cell together, her head under mine. Sweeping the hall together. Murmurs of police officers echo in the distance, but we’ve struck at a good time. Evening, day shifts just getting off, never expecting someone could or would bother breaking out of the drunk tank in a digital society. Our JOYs are hanging on the wall just outside the cell. I tap a couple fingers against the bars as we walk past. They’re repulsorfield reinforced, the same tech they use to contain fights in the pro arenas. Totally impenetrable to JOY classes or normal humans, from a toddler to a terajoule ki blast.
I split away from Feint into a side hall when something catches my eye. By the time she looks back and sees that I’m already around an entirely different corner, then hurries back up to catch me, I’m already rummaging through a portacrate at a small desk back down near the prisoner intake office.
“Tay!” she hisses. “Tay, what the hell are you doing? The exit’s that way.”
“Just a sec.” Holding the lid open with my prosthetic arm, I keep blindly digging through the crate with my left until my fingers brush against familiar weathered fabric. I pull out Dad’s old university jacket and don it in one smooth motion.
“Now we can go.”