When I rolled her arm, I put my full weight on and it came out at the shoulder. I heard it. She showed me her ribs, so I fired a side kick and broke those too.
Her eyed bugged out and her jaw dropped. Her legs gave out, and when I let her go, she dropped like a stone.
“Ten points! Calliope Flax!” the judge screamed.
The ref came out into the ring and ran over to her, but she wasn’t getting back up. He looked up at the booth and made an X with his forearms.
“That …is …the …fight! Winner, Calliope Flax! She takes it again!”
The ref had a needle and stuck her with painkillers so she could breathe. Two other medics came on to take her out back so they could put her shoulder back in. She stood—I’ll give her that—but she didn’t stare at me anymore. She didn’t even look my way.
“In round one, Minnie Botma is out of the fight!”
The crowd screamed so loud it hurt my ears. They spit and threw trash, stomping on the sides of the cage. I felt something cold on my back and something brown and sticky splashed down my leg as a paper cup hit the fence. Chew spit, by the look of it. A bottle skipped across the top of the cage; then another one smashed on the corner.
“Okay, settle down, people!”
It was a mob scene. I tried to see if Luis was getting picked up, but I couldn’t see shit. Something was wrong; I knew when I saw the guy going for him. That guy didn’t look right.
“Flax! Flax is number one!”
“Flax, you bitch, rot in hell!”
I was getting dizzy. Christ, that bitch rattled my cage….
There was blood all down the front of my tank top, and when I grabbed a towel and wiped my face, there was a lot of red. One of my front teeth was gone. I grabbed my water bottle and poured it over my face, letting it run down my neck and chest.
I had to get the hell out of there. Maybe Luis would try to meet up with me. He might try the locker room or the lobby. I climbed out of the ring and shoved past Eddie.
“Hey!” he yelled. “Where the hell do you think you’re—”
I pushed through the crowd, heading for the lockers. My hands were shaking as I got my padlock open and took my jeans and sweatshirt out, pulling them on over my fight clothes. I threw on my boots and jacket and made a run for the lobby. That’s when I heard the scream.
It was a guy, and it was loud, but it came from outside. I slammed through the doors and out to the sidewalk. No one was there. The fights were still on, and most everybody was still inside. I looked left and right; then I heard the scream again, real low, like it was from the gut. It gurgled and stopped.
I stood there, listening. My breath came out like smoke in the cold, and every time I sucked in air, it stabbed my broken tooth. A second later I heard another grunt.
The bathroom. There was a public can that filled up after the fights, but now there was no one hanging around them. I moved to the door and looked, but it opened so you couldn’t see in from outside.
“Hello?” I called. No one said anything.
I reached into my jacket and pulled out the brass knuckles, just in case. Blood still dribbled down my lip as I squeezed one set into each fist.
“I’m coming in!”
I gave it another second, then marched down and turned into the men’s room.
It took a second for it to sink in. A guy was in there, wearing a dark coat with the hood up. He stared at me when I walked through the door. On the floor in front of him was Luis, or what was left of him.
“It’s you,” the man said.
I didn’t see a knife, but Luis was cut up bad. One arm was hacked off at the elbow and was on the floor next to a toilet. His other hand was short a thumb, and the other fingers just dangled there. His guts were in a pile under him where he lay facedown, with his ass still in the air like he was trying to get up. The floor was wet with blood. It was fucking everywhere.
“That was quick,” the man said, stepping toward me. He had a weird look on his face, like he was zoning in front of the TV. An orange light was lit up in his eyes.
“What was?”
“Your fight.”
“Look, I don’t want any trouble,” I said. I took a step back, but he pulled out a gun and pointed it in my chest.
“Quickly,” he said. “I monitored the call you made to the FBI. I know he was with you, and I know the FBI is on their way to pick him up.”
“What the hell do you want?”
“The data spike,” he said. “I know you have it.”
“I don’t have it,” I said. “He told me about it, but that’s it—”
“He told me you have it.”
He was stepping in on me. I tried to fade back again, but he stuck the gun right in my chest. The look on his face never changed. The barrel was aimed dead center, right at my heart.
“This is your last chance,” he said. I smashed the wrist of his gun hand. The gun went off, but the bullet slammed into the tile next to me and I punched him in the side of the head. I gave him everything I had, and I had plenty. Something crunched under my fist. Even without the brass knuckles, it should have dropped him, but it didn’t.
When he came back around, still holding the gun, I bashed him with the other fist too. He fell back and I grabbed his gun arm, then rolled him, slamming him face-first into the wall.
I broke his wrist on the urinal, but he wouldn’t drop the piece, so I smashed the side of his face with my elbow a few times, then blasted a knee into his ribs. He went down, cracking his head on one of the sinks and rolling onto his back.
Black shit was coming out of his mouth. With the light on his face, I saw it was white as a sheet. The veins underneath looked black.
He was getting back up. I stomped down right on his face and he fell back. More of that black stuff was coming out of a cut on his forehead and his nose. One of his eyes had turned light gray or silver.
He hooked the butt of the gun on the urinal pipe to pull himself back up, so I stomped his elbow on the side and broke his arm in half. His coat fell open, and I saw the bricks underneath, each one with a thick wire coming out of it. Some kind of timer display was counting down on his chest. The guy had a bomb strapped to his chest.
I don’t know how his hand still worked, but he still had the gun, even though it just hung there. Something made a loud snap, and just like that there was a big knife in his other hand. It came out of nowhere.
He was still coming, and I would have hit him again, except for the bomb. The bomb changed everything.
The tip of the knife scraped the tiles behind me as I turned and ran like hell.
Nico Wachalowski—Arena Porco Rojo
Two blocks from the arena, the signal from Calliope’s cell started moving. Without the exact layout of the place, it was impossible to tell exactly where in the area she was, but from the basic blueprint, it looked like she was leaving the premises. She left the building, lingered near the outside, then went on the move again in the parking area.
They beat us to him. They got to him and she got too close; that’s why her signal was moving. She was
