The entire arena was being covered in an octagonal grid of what was basically giant barbed wire, except the wire was steel cable and the barbs were two-foot-long metal spears. The spikes weren’t so close that you couldn’t walk between them, but anyone who fell off that pillar was pretty much guaranteed to get skewered. Add in the hundred-foot fall, and getting knocked off was pretty much guaranteed insta-death. A fact Nik’s opponent was obviously intending to take full advantage of.
“Looks like your streak ends today, Mad Dog!” he yelled, pointing down at the grid of spikes. When the crowd hissed and booed in reply, the huge pale man flashed them a rude gesture. “Should have made the smarter bet!” he taunted them, his scarred face pulling into a sneer. “Your champion’s fleshy legs couldn’t take that fall even without the spikes! And his weapons are useless against this.” He beat his armored fists against his chest, causing the metal under his shirt to ring like a gong. “Hear that? My entire torso’s covered in ballistic steel! Your dog never had a chance!”
Taunting an audience in the DFZ was always a terrible move. Sure enough, gun shots rang out from the stands as the angry crowd took offense, but the one bullet that actually hit its target just bounced off the man’s chest, proving his point. Seeing the bullet crumple made me wince again, because the giant man was right. I’d known it wouldn’t be a fair fight, but this entire situation seemed designed to get Nik killed. I wanted to believe they were just making it look like Nik was guaranteed to lose so it’d be more dramatic when he didn’t, but all I could think about was how surprised I’d been that the Gameskeeper had only asked for five fights. I’d thought the number sounded low, but that was assuming the Gameskeeper’s goal was profit. If he just wanted Nik dead, then five fights would be plenty, especially if they were all like this.
“He’s going to die,” I groaned.
“Don’t be defeatist,” my father scolded. “You picked this man. The least you can do is have faith in your own judgment.”
“But the space is so small! And that guy’s axes are like four feet long each! There’s no way Nik can dodge both of them while firing back, and if he trips, he’s toast.”
“The same goes for his opponent,” Yong said, floating down to hover at my eye level. “Look.”
He pointed at the cybered giant, who was grinning at the booing crowd as if he couldn’t get enough of their hate. “The obvious move would be to let the bigger man charge and then trip him at the last moment so that his own momentum would carry him over the edge. But while that would be enough against a normal opponent, this man is an experienced fighter. Despite his boorish behavior, he clearly makes his living doing this, which means obvious moves won’t work. Your human is the same, which puts them on much more even footing than is immediately apparent. They both already know all the obvious moves and counters, which means they’re going to have to try something non-obvious to win. That’s what makes fights between experts fun to watch. They have to be creative.”
I stared at my dad in horror. “Don’t tell me you’re enjoying this.”
Yong shrugged. “I’ve been watching humans fight for thousands of years. It’s hard to find something I haven’t seen before, so naturally I’m interested when I do.” He frowned. “It’s a pity this place is so low-class. Whomever is running the fights here clearly has an exceptional understanding of what makes combat interesting. Any two idiots can kill each other, but it takes expertise to make it dramatic.”
I made a disgusted sound. The last thing I wanted to hear was anything resembling praise for this horrible, violent place where Nik’s life could be thrown away for drama. As distasteful as I found my father’s commentary, though, his words made me feel better. My dad hated Nik, so if he thought he had a chance, then he must actually have one.
It helped that Nik didn’t look nervous in the slightest. He mostly just seemed embarrassed, standing at the edge of his half of the tiny circle with his shoulders hunched up like he couldn’t wait for this to be over. It definitely wasn’t the posture of a man who thought he was about to die, and I tried to take comfort in that as the horn sounded.
Despite what my father had just said about him knowing better, the very first thing the big guy did when the fight began was charge. He ran at Nik with both axes, practically begging him to dodge. That was what I would have done if he’d been running at me. Just step out of the way and let the oversized idiot plummet to his death.
But that was why Nik was the professional and I wasn’t. He didn’t move an inch, and a second later, I saw why. The big man looked like he was charging, but as I’d seen listed on the screen earlier, practically all of his body was cybernetic. Including his feet, which—thanks to the drone camera’s suspiciously well-timed zoom-in—I could now see had retractable spikes in the heels that allowed him to dig into the platform’s surface. If Nik had tried to sidestep, the bigger man could have simply dug in his spikes and pivoted to slam his ax into Nik’s open back.
Nik clearly realized all of that way before I did. Not only did he not move, he actually hunkered down, dropping into a
