The four teens had expected something low-key, a converted industrial barge or something along those lines, to arrive in the port. The ship that arrived to take them to Isla Refugia, the island off the coast of northern Mexico where the Parasite Tournament would be held, was, in fact, a retired Carnival cruise ship, complete with all of its external-facing amenities still intact.

“Whoa, sick,” Ava said as the massive cruise liner pulled into port. The others nodded and muttered their agreement.

What struck Sam as odd was that, out of the people who piled onto the cruise ship, not all of them registered to his heightened senses as parasite hosts. The people who weren’t hosts, moreover, seemed to all be extraordinarily wealthy; the men were all in designer suits, and the women were in red-carpet dresses and carrying designer handbags. He even thought he spotted a few A-list celebrities, though he wasn’t entirely sure of it.

He dismissed his thoughts, figuring that naturally the tournament had to have some sort of audience, and joined the others on the ship.

As the crowd started to disperse, Mr. Johnson found his way over to the group, well-dressed as ever, in a dark purple Gucci suit with a black silk undershirt.

“We’ll be on the ship until tomorrow morning,” he said to the group, looking at nobody in particular. “Would you like me to show you to your accommodations for the night?”

The four looked at their boarding passes.

“Seems like we can figure it out,” Ava said. “We’re all on the Empress deck, it says?”

“Yep, you’ve got it,” Mr. Johnson said. “Two connected staterooms, E241 and E245. The back three quarters of that deck is competitors and teams only; the peanut gallery can pass through, but you’ll have your privacy on the way to the tournament and back when you need it, I can guarantee you that.”

“Sounds good,” Ava said. “What should we do while we’re waiting around?”

Mr. Johnson laughed.

“You’re on a Carnival cruise liner that the tournament committee bought and took over, keeping every single amenity intact for our competitors and audience members in order to ensure the smoothest experience possible. I think you’ll be able to find something to do,” he said, walking away and vanishing into the blur of humans that walked to and fro on the ship.

Ava looked up at the other three, who were looking at her expectantly.

“So, what do you guys wanna do?” she asked.

“I could eat,” Luke said. “Haven’t had lunch yet.”

“Yeah, I’m hungry too,” Scott said. Sam nodded his agreement with the other two.

“Yeah, fuck it, I could put something down,” Ava muttered, as they called an elevator to go up to one of the dining decks.

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“Y’all saw that, right!? They have minigolf on this ship! And a big-ass water slide!” Luke said, excited, as they exited the elevator.

“Jesus, what are you, five?” Ava asked. “Did I hit you that damn hard!?” Sam nudged her in the side.

“Two out of the four of us are potentially gonna die here, and I don’t know what happens to the remaining two of us if that does, but I’m guessing it’s not great,” Sam said. “Let the guy have a little fun if he wants to.”

The dining room on the Lido deck, which they’d decided on because there was a buffet, was massive and already filled to the brim with guests. It almost made Ava feel a little agoraphobic.

“Jesus. I don’t detect a single parasite here outside of us,” Sam said. “This is all peanut gallery.”

“I guess we’re not gonna get ambushed, then,” Luke said.

“Smart thinking from the guy who was just freaking out about minigolf,” Ava said. Sam nudged her again, and the four found a table; a waiter, who appeared to be an Asian man in his mid-twenties, noticed them and quickly came to take their drink orders.

“What can I get you four to drink? Water, soda, beer, wine, cocktails?” the waiter asked.

“…wait, I’m confused, you said beer, wine and cocktails? You know we’re kids, right?” Ava asked. The waiter looked unamused.

“You’re on a private cruise in international waters, about to go to, essentially, an unsanctioned MMA event on a private island between superheroes straight out of a fucking Marvel movie where people pretty regularly die in pretty nasty ways. Not even a little bit of this is legal, and I don’t think there are even laws covering some of this,” the waiter said. He leaned in a little closer, so that the rest of the patrons wouldn’t hear. “And, like, I can kinda tell you guys aren’t audience members. Those guys are all rich ghoul motherfuckers. You guys aren’t; you look… well, normal,” he continued, quietly. He leaned back to his usual posture. “So, long story short: you tell me you want a shot of Jameson or something, and I’m not gonna ask questions like ‘are you twenty-one years old’ or ‘can I see an ID.’ I’m just gonna get you your damn liquor,” he finished.

“You know what, you’ve sold me,” Ava said. “What’ve you got on tap?” The waiter looked down meaningfully at a menu that was at the center of the table.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

“If you’re in the tourney, everything’s comped by whoever’s sponsoring you, so by all means, go wild,” the waiter added as Ava picked it up and looked it over.

“Huh, you guys have Lone Star in the bottles,” Ava said. “My mom always told me my dad really liked that beer. I’ll give that one a try.”

“Alright, one Lone Star,” the waiter said, marking it down. “And you three?”

“Y’all got Dr. Pepper?” Luke asked.

“Diet Coke for me,” Sam said. “Or Coke Zero, if y’all have it.”

“We do,” the waiter said. “Last one standing?”

Scott had been looking over the cocktails list after the waiter gave his whole spiel, and had finally settled on something.

“I think I’ll have this blueberry mojito y’all have here,” he said.

“Rockin’ Blueberry Mojito for the last one standing,” the waiter said. “Alright, I’ll have that for your table in a second. Y’all can get started on your plates right now, if you want.”

“Don’t mind if I do,” Luke said, speeding towards the buffet lines, as the others followed at a more leisurely pace.

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“Christ, I can barely move,” Luke said as the group walked out of the dining room. For good reason, too; he’d pounded back several entire buffet tubs of their Korean fried chicken, along with several entire pizzas, an entire Porterhouse steak, and three packed plates of sushi. The other three were, to put it frankly, terrified by his prowess for putting away food; Sam briefly wondered if maybe he’d read Luke wrong and Luke had actually gotten the Code of Eat A Whole Fucking Lot Of Food.

“Got the need for weed?” Ava asked. “Because I sure as hell do.”

“Ava, this is a cruise ship,” Sam said. “They’re not gonna have weed.”

“Remember what the waiter said in the dining room? Laws basically don’t apply here,” Ava said. “I guarantee you someone’s gotta have some smoke. Fuck, I wish I’d known this was basically an illegal underground cruise, or I’d have brought some myself.”

One of the crew members, overhearing this, did a double take and walked back towards the group.

“Hey, if y’all are looking for pot, just go to the gift shop. They’re using one side of it as a merch table for the tournament, and the other’s a big-ass dispensary,” the crew member, a grey-haired man in his sixties, said to them. Ava blinked.

“Hey, thanks,” she said. “You’re a life-saver.”

“One of the perks of this job,” the man said, winking, as he jogged back in the direction he was supposed to be going.

“Alright, so I know what I’m doing,” Ava said. “Any of you three into it, or are we gonna split up and reconvene?”

“I don’t really smoke,” Luke said. “Plus, I wanna check out the minigolf course.”

“I’m with Luke on this one,” Scott said. “I’ll smoke with you later, but I actually wanna see what the hell minigolf on a cruise ship is like.”

“I’ll come with you, Ava,” Sam said. “I wanna see what the shit kind of merch this tournament is selling. Like, are there action figures of the winners or something? Can I get a Nendoroid of this guy we’re supposed to be killing? I wanna see just how far they’re taking this idea, especially since we’re in rich-fuck land.” The glee in his voice and in his facial expression was almost palpable; the kid was outright hyped.

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When Ava found the dispensary, she was like a kid in a candy store. Cannabis flower, hashish, shatter, tinctures, all sorts of live resin cartridges and disposables and edibles and glass pipes and bongs to use everything with; and what’s more, unlike “real” recreational dispensaries, this one didn’t stop at pot. This one had mushrooms, LSD, ecstasy, even the “hard stuff” like cocaine and crystal meth and heroin (and all sorts of pharmaceutical pills).

The other stuff tempted her, briefly, but she didn’t want to touch any of the hard drugs, and she had a sneaking suspicion doing psychedelics wasn’t gonna be great for her prospects in the tournament (whereas her track record of winning fights while baked was, in point of fact, actually pretty great).

At first, Ava was cautious about wanting to get too much; she was a little worried about the prospect of not being able to bring any of it home, and about the cost. Then, she realized: everything’s comped if you’re a competitor, and it’s all on the sponsor’s dime. And her sponsor was Mr. Johnson, he of the purple Gucci suit.

The grin on Ava’s face when this realization set in for her was visible from space.

Meanwhile, across the hallway from the dispensary, Sam was poking around the merch store, which was everything he had expected and more. There were T-shirts commemorating past events, nearly every one having the face of Maxim Konstantinov on it, but with more wrinkles, less hair on his head, and more (and more grey) hair on his chin with every year that passed. It was starting to get a little clear why Mr. Johnson, a man on the tournament committee, had hired the team to kill Konstantinov; Sam was a bit of a pro wrestling fan, and to his eyes, it seemed like the Parasite Tournament had been dealing with fifty solid years of a Russian Hulk Hogan who sucked the air out of the room and prevented the proceedings from having any real drama. They were bored of him, plain and simple.

As Sam picked up a Funko Pop of Konstantinov and looked it over, admiring the simple fact that these things could somehow exist without the general public’s knowledge, he felt a presence behind him like nothing he’d ever experienced in his life. He’d felt it prior, of course, but he’d dismissed it as the mass of competitors in the deck right below; right now, it seemed to be breathing directly down his neck.

“Do you like what you see?” a heavily-accented voice rang out from about a foot over Sam’s head, sending him into the table of Funko Pops in shock.

“Christ, do you usually sneak up on people like that?” Sam asked, looking up to behold Maxim Konstantinov, in the flesh.

“Not deliberately,” Maxim said, holding out a hand to help Sam up as the latter picked up some of the scattered figures. “I apologize. You don’t look like… one of the crowd,” he continued. “Will I be facing you in the ring?”

“God, I hope not,” Sam said. “No, I’m just here to support my friend.” Maxim smiled.

“A good friend, to come to an event like this,” Maxim said. “Either that, or you simply have a very bloodthirsty streak.”

“Nah, that’s kinda more her thing,” Sam said. Maxim’s smile grew bigger.

“I think I understand,” the champion said. “So it is her I will be facing, then?”

“Again, I hope not,” Sam said. “No offense. But I’ve heard about your whole, y’know, killing-everyone thing and… I’m gonna level with you, I don’t wanna lose her.”

“I respect that,” Maxim said. “I can promise you this: if she does lose her life to me, it will be because she is worthy of a warrior’s death, in combat.”

That’s reassuring, Sam thought to himself.

As Maxim finished his sentence, Ava walked up, carrying a heavy-looking shopping bag.

“Who’s this bozo?” Ava asked Sam, not recognizing the face just yet. Sam leaned over to whisper into her ear.

“That’s the guy, you ding-dong,” he muttered, as quietly as he could. “The champ. Konstantinov.”

Ava looked up at him, noted that he was roughly twice her size and had been killing people in fighting tournaments for fifty years, and quickly realized that she was in farther over her head than she could have ever reasonably imagined in her sixteen short years of existence.

By the time that realization had fully set in, she’d already fainted, and her head came within inches of clipping the side of the very same Funko Pop table that Sam had crashed into when Maxim had first spooked him.