Seeing that made me feel better until the arena camera feed started flashing the fighter’s stats up beneath them. Since he was undefeated, Nik’s win-to-loss ratio was obviously superior, but that was where his advantage ended. While the big, scary dude did have a few losses under his giant belt, he’d been in more fights, won more championships, and he was packing holy shit amounts of cyberwear. His gear list was literally three times as long as Nik’s, which I took as a very bad sign. I might not be an expert in professional arena combat, but even I knew that the guy with the fewest fleshy bits usually won. I tried to remind myself that this was Nik we were talking about, and he always came out on top, but it was hard to be optimistic when his opponent was a foot taller and two-hundred-pounds-of-metal heavier.
“He’ll be fine,” Sibyl assured me. “The betting boards favor Mad Dog two-to-one. If professional gamblers think he’s a safe bet, surely you can believe in him!”
I wanted to, but it was hard to keep the faith when my eyes were telling such a different story. The big pale guy didn’t even look nervous, grinning and waving at the screaming crowd like he had this in the bag. By contrast, Nik was staring at his feet, his dark brows furrowed in what could have been worry or thought. I wanted to believe he was planning his victory, but he could have been scared senseless. His stoicism made it impossible to tell.
By the time the announcer finished the introductions, the crowd was going apeshit. The guys around me were jumping up and down in their seats, making me doubly glad I’d sprung for the good cameras, because my actual view was nothing but hairy, waving, middle-aged-man arms. There was a short interlude while everyone was invited to place their final bets, and then the lights lowered, and a hush fell over the arena.
I held my breath same as everyone else, waiting as the spotlights narrowed on the two men standing alone in the center of the circular arena. I didn’t know if we were waiting on a shot or a horn or if they were just going to start killing each other right then and there. I was still waiting breathlessly for something to happen when the whole arena began to shake, and everyone in the audience started going crazy again.
“What’s going on?” I yelled over the racket.
“Looks like they’re changing the arena,” Sibyl replied, placing an arrow on my video feed. “Look there.”
Sure enough, the ground directly underneath the fighters’ feet was moving, the bloody sand sliding out of the way to reveal a circular platform that suddenly began lifting into the air. It must have been a planned development, because neither Nik nor his opponent looked surprised. The crowd, on the other hand, lost their damn minds all over again.
“I knew it!” one of the guys next to me yelled to no one in particular. “They’re doing the pillar! They can’t let Mad Dog have a clean fight!”
The moment he said it, I saw exactly what he meant. The rising platform the two men were standing on did indeed look exactly like a pillar. The top had risen so high that the two fighters were only a dozen feet below the peak of the domed arena roof, practically level with my cheap seat. The height plus the relatively small size of the circle—no more than thirty feet across—did indeed put Nik at a disadvantage. Unless his arena style was wildly different from the way he usually fought, Nik was a guns guy. Not that he couldn’t get up close and personal, but every time we’d gotten in trouble, he’d seemed most comfortable when he could keep at least a little range between him and the enemy.
No chance of that anymore. Unless they were willing to jump off the edge and fall a hundred feet to the ground, both men were trapped on the platform, transforming what should have been an open-ground battle into an aerial cage match. That sucked for Nik and his guns, but going by the two giant axes the other guy was pulling off his back, his opponent was clearly an in-your-face melee fighter, which meant he’d just gained the advantage. If this had actually been the open-ground arena fight it had looked like at the beginning, Nik could have just stayed out of reach and fired from afar. Up on that tiny pedestal, though, there was nowhere to run, putting Nik in a very bad spot. A turnabout which, going by the loud boos that were starting to fill the dome, all the audience members who’d put money on Nik were just now realizing.
“Clever of them to do this after betting closes,” my father remarked, looking interested despite himself as he studied the scenario. “Does your criminal have anything other than guns?”
“Would you stop calling him a criminal?” I snapped, covering up the waver in my voice with anger. “And Nik will be fine. He’s resourceful.”
“Even the most resourceful need something to work with,” my father countered, pointing at the tiny circle. “There’s little room to run up there, and with the ground compromised as well, I don’t see how he has a chance.”
I’d been so busy watching Nik, I hadn’t even looked at the ground. I did
