THE IBIS’ MAIN ARENA is a cramped coliseum of shitty metal bleachers and suspiciously stained sandstone. Ducking out of the lobby, I leave Lain and Matthias to their muttered bickering with the greaser and go to find a place to crash on my own, grabbing a propane torch from a service closet on my way. I soon emerge from a low-ceilinged tunnel that dead-ends in the middle of the worst seats in the house. Stunted steps to my right lead down through rows of tinsteel benches down to the fighting square itself. Square being a loan word- it’s a oval of sandstone obviously built in reference to the championship arena on the highest floor of the Metro Blockhouse. Even I know what it looks like, and I’ve never been there in person.

A martial history of crushed dreams and lost money wends between cracks in the battlefield’s uneven surface. Rather than heading down to the ringside walls, I detour to the left instead, looking for a seat on the creaky benches right in the middle of where the crowd would be. My bare feet pad quietly along the cold concrete. My shoulders feel thinner than ever as I shudder from pain and muggy cold. Freckles and goosebumps stand out together along uncovered skin while I wade through the infrequent spotlights, eventually finding a spot that isn’t covered in sticky or suspiciously colored stains.

My ass thumps down hard on the metal. Next comes my gun, unstrapped with its holster and laid to rest beside me. I turn it over before I put it down, examining the deboned section of the ammo cylinder. It’s nothing serious. But the crack in the main shell has grown even further from how much shooting I did, splintering into the revolver’s engraved steel like tree roots. Too much stress, too much heat, too many bullets in too quick a time. It’s going to shatter in my hands if I keep pushing it. A matter of when, not if.

“Sorry pal,” I mutter, gently setting it on the bench. “I don’t think we’re done yet.”

The shakes in my body get worse now that I have a second to decompress. So many different aches and pains bloom through creaking joints and strained muscles as I sit there with my elbows on my knees. Fingers sifting through the neck of a shirt that belongs to a little girl I’ll never meet and never know. Not a thought in my head. Just rocking back-and-forth, heels tapping with an uneven rhythm, thousand-yard-stare fixed on the bench in front of me.

Fuck.

Eventually I get it together, wiping my hair away from my face. I’m moving mechanically at this point, still upright only because of sheer momentum of trauma. After fixing my usual braid and leaving it to hang down my back, I smear the back of my wrist over my mouth to wipe away the smog, then fire up the propane torch.

I shudder out a chuckle as I adjust the gas flow. Before I can start second-guessing myself, I move the torch dangerously close to my open shrapnel wound, near enough for the skin to start peeling from the heat. My breathing skips straight into hyperventilating. Then, hissing between grit teeth, I press the flame directly against my skin and run it straight up the bloody fissure like a zipper.

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The pain is unreal. Blinding. I’m literally roasting a suture into place. But it has to get done. So I muffle the screams. I buck against my own grip, let the tears stream, choke back the whimpers, and eventually let the torch peter out while the telltale scent of ozone and roasted flesh oozes into the air. On the outside, all that’s left of the wound is a charred section of pulsating flesh. Only surgery can fix the inside. I imagine Lain won’t be too keen on offering her services again.

Doubly conscious of the newly burned skin, I finish tugging on the black shirt I was messing with earlier and find another injury to add to the list. That notch in my right ear from the knife the Armiger threw; took a whole chunk of the cartilage out. When I finish fingering at the wound, I pause to pick at the grime under my nails, then at long sleeves dangling all the way to my palm. Real cotton, I think. You’d be surprised how much it costs down here.

My JOY fills my palm a moment with a comfortable weight once I’m covered up top, rolling like a baseball between my fingers. My thumb slides back and forth over the power button, absentmindedly opening and closing the projector iris. Electric-blue light winks on and fizzles out again. Off and on, off and on, my brain drifting along with it, caught in its own eddies, hypnotized by the flittering particles that bloom and wither. The shakes keep intensifying all the while. Whole upper vibrating from pain, all of it centered on the tightness in my sternum. The can’t-breathe pressure coming from the shrapnel lodged in the bone there.

How much more of this can I take?

I’ve never been hurt this bad. Never been pushed like this. Sarah made sure I never got in over my head. I get why now, even if I loathed it then. I used to hate knowing she always had an eye on me. I thought she didn’t trust me to be my own woman, make my own path.

I’d give anything for her to be watching now. But all I’ve got is a responsibility I’m not ready for, a weight I can’t carry on my own, and a world that doesn’t give a damn about either.

Being a rebel was easier when I was dumb enough to think I could make a difference.

The last twenty-four hours have done plenty to destroy my old hot streak. It’s like Sarah told me: this city is a meat grinder. What can I do to fix it? Gears too big to stop, all you can do is jump between them. I can’t remember what else she said that night on the metro. Save who you can? Maybe. Like that night at her range; the girl who got fucked up and left in the alley outside. Sarah couldn’t fix the city or the gang that made the boys who did it. But she did help the girl.

My eyes feel like lead weights as they drag back to my JOY. Somehow, the time in the corner of the screen jumped forward two minutes while I wasn’t looking. I’m nodding off and don’t even realize it. Groaning out a pained yawn, I let exhaustion lay me down to rest on the bench, curling up with the 6-Teba clutched to my chest. Spooling from the sphere in my other hand, the holographic screen winking on and off, rotated ninety degrees to match me. A small list of contacts drifts down the left side, parallel to the floor. Old names, just a few of them, all greyed out, most never to light back up. Ulysses at the top of the list.

My thumb drifts and summons his contact info. And the screen stays there, untouched, slowly slipping away as my fingers uncurl and the JOY falls to the concrete floor. The screen spasms as it tries to digest the bench in front of it. Beyond, climate control units kick on above the empty battlefield, whispering and echoing like a hushed audience. A sound I’ve heard before, calling down the less-traveled paths of my memories. Ulysses’ place, everyone was there, lights just like these. Just…

Just…