My stomach drops.

I don’t even recognize the name at first, it’s buried so deeply in my past.

Cal.

It’s not even one I know particularly well. Just a name connected to a name. A point on a thread very removed from mine.

But the gears are turning now. I look down at my tagalong assassin out of the corner of my eye, taking in her features from a clean slate. Her black hair. Those yellow eyes- not the right shade, yet not the wrong shade, either. But it wasn’t until I heard her real name that I made the connection. It hits me now like a bolt of thunder.

Feint- Cal- wasn’t just hired by the Champion or his agents.

She’s one of them.

And the person she reminds me so keenly of? A single glance at the walls of projector screens, where a highlight reel from a university showmatch earlier in the night plays on loop, confirms the dread rising in my gut. On stream, a dark young man with eyes like molten gold finishes dismantling another uni fighter without taking a single hit. The stands go wild. Cam zooms in on his face. Thane the Invincible, premier apprentice of the reigning champion, golden son of the capital, gives a modest wave to the cheering stands before the camera changes again. But the image of his face stays burned in my memory. Churning like hot coals as my anger builds.

Other than height, the similarities between the most popular guy in the university leagues and the short girl beside me are unmistakable. Large eyes, small nose, sharp features that could so easily be mistaken for cold and aloof. Throughout all the projectors glowing across the atrium, Thane is the only university student to appear alongside the pros. As famous, if not more, than fighters of the minor league.

Feint must have had a reason for letting me walk into the Metro Blockhouse of my own free will. All her protests and coyness had to be an act. The why doesn’t matter. But this girl who stopped us must not have been part of the plan to lure me here. She’s tall. Taller than I am, enviously full-figured, haughty lips bred for sipping wine and whispering secrets. Hip-length, silky hair the color of peaches and cherry blossoms. Heeled sneakers and midnight slacks, a slim Mage’s gloves, and a sleeveless blouse that hugs everything possible up to its high collar. Her tri-color university jacket is slid just below her shoulders, and she uses a dainty fingertip to tug it a touch higher as she sways up to us. Behind her, some massive animal that resembles an insectoid, black-chitin lion pads out of the crowd, leaking acidic drool across the polished floor.

“Valance.” Feint- Cal- casually rests her hands in her pockets, studiously avoiding looking at the animal. Her tone morphs in an instant, seamlessly shifting from off-hours-intern back to playful killer. “I wasn’t expecting to see any of the Shadows out tonight. I thought you’d be up watching the Champion.”

“And I thought you would have found another reason to keep as far from work as possible,” the girl replies with a light laugh. Her eyes go to the ceiling. “There’s nothing to see up there that hasn’t been seen a hundred times before. It’ll be over before I could even reach the booth.” She finally acknowledges my presence, gaze sliding back and forth between Cal and I. Her lips begin to part. “Wait. Don’t tell me, Cal. Are you…”

Cal’s hand drifts fractionally towards the small of her back.

“…here on a date?”

A single beat of confusion follows the question. Cal and I both whirl on each other, blurting out “A date?” at the exact same moment.

She tears away first, spluttering out a laugh. “Me?”

I scoff and look away just as fast. “With her? No way.”

“We are definitely not.” Cal rolls her eyes, all drama. “And at the M, too? This place is as normie as an arcade. Good one, Valance.”

Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

Valance’s pink eyes lid over with disbelief. “Is that so? Color me surprised, you two had all the chemistry in the world just a moment ago.” Her full hips ease to the side while she finally deigns to look me over in earnest. She plays at the smallest bite of her lower lip. “But if you’re not here for pleasure…”

“It’s nothing big. Just came by to grab some stuff from the office.”

That monstrous creature keeps padding around Valance, bringing its eyeless, armored head near enough to sniff me. It’s huge. A thousand pounds of chitinous fighting muscle, tall as my chest, that moves with the languid grace of a xenomorphic lion. Eight legs with razor-sharp digging claws. Spine-covered tail that drags like dead meat, scratching the floor. Raspy, hissing breaths. It takes every ounce of discipline I have not to react like the people who skitter nervously away from it. I’ve never seen a Tamer make a pet that exudes such an obscene amount of danger as this thing. Predatory nature almost physically drips from it like the drool from its split jaw.

“…and who is this coarse friend of yours?” Valance is asking, dragging me back.

Her gaze focuses on me for a moment longer than normal. Like she’s trying to pry away my cold social shell just with her eyes. She’s a Psi, I realize. The mental manipulation class. Her small cues and social manipulation are meant to draw my attention away from her mental probing; tiny details that anyone less than a pro would never notice adding up. That tilt to her hips. A hint of a tongue wetting her lower lip. Fingertips winding through a lock of pink hair. An arm crossing under her chest as she breathes in. She’s an expert, already loosened away my suspicion. How long will it take her to strip-mine enough secrets from my head to tip her off? Seconds, if that. But a tiny twitch of confusion in her brow, almost immediately suppressed, halts my first instinct to run.

I risk a glance down at Cal’s left wrist. She’s still got her hand shoved in her pocket, and she keeps it there as she skips back over to stand beside me, easing us away from the conversation.

“This is Tay. She’s my… roommate. At the dorms.” Cal sidles close and slips her arm around my waist, gently tugging. “I’d love to stick around and chat, but we already made plans to show her around town.”

“Fresh meat from the outskirts?” Valance purrs. “I thought I recognized that tan.”

“You’ll have to forgive her for being quiet. She’s not used to the big city yet.”

“Of course. I’m sure the capital is quite a culture shock for a rice farmer,” the Psi replies. With a laugh, she daintily motions us away like she’s brushing dust from the air. “Don’t let me keep you. Enjoy the bag-fetching, Cal.” Her voice lowers to a mature, knowing tone as she sways off. “And make sure to pick an office with good insulation. I’d suggest something on the thirties.”

The flush in Cal’s face hasn’t faded by the time she starts pulling me towards the lifts. I keep an eye on the Psi and her pet for a few more seconds before returning to the crisis dragging me along at a breakneck pace. Forget the chance encounter that almost just exposed every secret in my head. The one that’s still beside me is an even bigger problem. Cal could bring the entire Metro Blockhouse down on me with a single word. Why she lied to cover for me, I don’t know. Why she hasn’t said that word yet, I don’t understand. But she’s going to regret it. I can’t break away from her yet, not while we’re surrounded like this. Have to do it in the lifts. She’s already beelining right for them.

Working around the buzzing pack of news streams and live camera equipment, Cal finds a terminal for arena staff and swipes her JOY across the holopad, admitting us to an empty cylindrical tube with polished glass walls and gleaming chrome floors. She darts inside right as the nearby excitement swells to a crescendo.

The lift beside ours, one for league fighters and VIP combatants from foreign Sections, whisks open with a hydraulic hiss. A firing line of stream cams starts flashing. Lightning-bolt staccato. Questions and calls for attention fill the air alongside handheld microphones and polearm spotlights. Sensing the action, other tourists collapse inwards on whoever is arriving like moths to a flame, hoping to see one of the city’s strongest fighters in the flesh. All I catch is a glimpse of black hair, exiting just as I enter.

What I miss is the rest of the person attached to it. A dispassionate warrior, twenty years old. Tall and powerful, handsome and dark, once-tan skin drained pale by a celebrity’s life in neon paradise. His golden eyes are riven by passionate cracks of magmatic color and blink quickly against the assault of camera flashes as he steps out of the lift’s confines. Always carefully controlled, his face betrays a flash of true emotion for a fleeting moment as he scans the adoring vultures and instead catches a glimpse of a long tail of white hair skirting around the crowd. For a moment, he thinks he sees a ghost of a memory, one whose shape he used to know better than his own calloused hands. His head cranes as he tries to follow that tail. Yet the moment he blinks, it’s gone.

And I’m inside. The metal doors of the lift slide shut, silencing the chaos of the atrium. The Electric Town glimmers through the storm outside. Rain slaps against the glass like suppressed gunfire. Two narrowed yellow eyes stare back at me in the reflection, interposed over the view.

The assassin who brought me here slowly rolls up her sleeves one at a time. I reach over without looking and press the key for the forty-second floor.

“You were so, so quick to tell it was the Champion wanted me dead, Cal,” I growl. Our lethal silence stretches as I let my hands hang, real and fake fingers curling into fists. “When were you planning on telling me that your brother is his favorite apprentice?”