The announcer yelled out their names and records over the speaker system, then added, “Fighting in...city scape!”
The arena floor transformed. Buildings, trash cans, chain link fences, and run-down vehicles sort of like motorcycles pushed up out of the dirt. Without a bow or official to start the match, the fighters shot toward each other, kicking off a brawl in the newly built street.
“Extemp?” Warcry asked like this was no big shock.
Biggerstaff shook his head. “The terrain’s randomized over the course of your fights to test your skills in a variety of situations, but not everything is extemporaneous. You can submit your name each day and let Scheduling decide who you’ll fight, or you can challenge any other provisionary Dragon in the Heartchamber. The win-loss boards in the market court and arena are kept updated to the minute, and you can find them on your HUD as well. Word of warning—if you start to lose, people smell blood in the water real quick and start picking you to pad their wins. And you’re not allowed to refuse a challenge—try it once and you’re gone. An Eight-Legged Dragon never backs down.”
On the arena floor, one of the fighters knocked the other flat. He didn’t get back up.
“So win early and win lots,” I said.
“Weren’t planning on anything else, were we, grav?” Warcry said.
Easy Come, Easy Go
ONCE BIGGERSTAFF FINISHED showing us through the locker rooms, the laundry room, the workout rooms, and a soaking room full of steaming rock baths that supposedly aided healing, the catfish said he had another recruit to meet and headed off toward the elevators.
“I’m getting something to eat,” Warcry said when the recruiter left. “Something with some meat on it.”
Hot food sounded amazing, but my pockets were full of feral loot, and I had some stuff to take care of once there were credits in my USL account again.
“Meet you after if you’re still down here,” I said.
Warcry nodded and headed for the food stalls.
Surprisingly, it didn’t take long to find someone interested in feral loot. The Pawning Post, a little pawnshop near the center of the market court hub, dealt in guns, jewelry, Spirit apparatuses, and other random junk. Apparently the place did a lot of business with provisionary Dragons who spent most of their time in the card halls and taverns just down the way.
The guy behind the counter looked like a chameleon, with the scales and bulging independently moving eyes and everything. He didn’t want the HUDs I’d scavenged because the components had been under the bog for too long, but the Spirit stones were still valuable. Although a lot less valuable than they’d been in Ghost Town—about half the price, because the distillery here stayed stocked with them and sold them for cheap. The huge batch of white jade stones I brought in only put a hundred and eight credits in my pocket, but that was more than I’d had an hour before.
I took my paycheck down the hall to the lineup of clothes stores. I was getting tired of wearing the same dirty jeans and shirt around the clock.
There were no regular clothes places, so the Walmart stuff I was used to wasn’t available. Every store was some combination of cowboys, ancient Asia, and alien cyberpunk, but eventually I found a cheap pair of cargo pants that seemed like they’d hold up for a while and a shirt made of that black athletic material that was close enough to a regular T-shirt for me. Along with some socks and boxers, that stop cost me fifty-nine credits.
My sneakers were wearing out, too, but they didn’t have an equivalent in the market court, just different kinds of boot stores, so I ended up springing for some combat boots that weren’t too heavy or uncomfortable. And just like that, I was broke again.
Sushi turned visible again while I rode the elevator back upstairs. When she saw we were alone, she swam across the elevator floor and watched through the glass as we climbed.
I looked out with her. “Pretty cool, right?”
“Right,” she echoed.
In the market court down below, a pair of messy black buns and a reddish metal stick arm caught my eye. Kest was heading for one of the hallways full of stores.
“Dang,” I said. “Must’ve just missed her.”
“Her?” Sushi smudged the front of her round head on the glass, looking down.
“She’s probably selling the rest of her loot.”
“Loot!” Sushi did a spiral in the air, giggling. “Right?”
“Right,” I said absently, setting down my bag of clothes and boots while I messaged Kest.
At first, I wrote, Tour’s over. I’m going to grab a quick shower, then maybe some food. Do you want to hang out later?
But I didn’t send that. It sounded weird and desperate. So I erased Do you want to hang out later? and replaced it with How was the guest suite? Then I sent it.
The elevator stopped on Level 3. Kest’s reply came as I was walking into the communal bathrooms.
She’d said, Comfortable. I need to find somewhere to buy components. Want to meet up down by the food stalls when you’re done?
A dumb grin stretched across my face.
Yeah, I’ll message you when I’m headed down, I sent back.
The hot water of the shower felt so incredible after three days’ worth of wading through cold rain and mud. I probably would’ve stayed in until my fight the next day if I hadn’t already said I’d meet Kest. I rushed through washing up and was rinsing off when I heard the bathroom door open and someone come in.
Bags rustled.
Sushi kept splashing around in the water, but I froze. That might not be my bags, but then again, it might be, and my old jeans were right next to those bags, with Hungry Ghost in the pocket.
I shut off the water and grabbed a towel. Hungry Ghost’s Spirit trail was supposed to be invisible to everybody but me, but I didn’t want to take any chances. Sushi followed me
