"I still think this is a bad idea," Odiye muttered.
"Yeah, you said that already," Piper chuckled, nudging him with one elbow. "Seriously, are you always this uptight?"
"I'm not uptight," he grumbled. "You don't know these people, Piper."
"I didn't come down here to pick a fight," she assured him. "So would you loosen up a bit? We might actually get to have some fun for five minutes."
"We'll see." Odiye relented a little though, forcing a smile onto his face. They walked on, deep in the depths of the AmpCore Academy, beneath one of the tertiary training facilities, and Piper could hear the growing swell of voices echoing down the passages towards them. Up ahead she could see other figures in the black fatigues of the academy, gesturing wildly as they spoke.
They all filed through a large, square-framed doorway, where she could see the glow of lights. Piper let her implants stir, reaching out to the world. It was a strange sensation, like being able to reach out and touch the very atoms of the world all around you.
In those atoms she could feel the cauldron of power just across the threshold. A gathering of powerful AmpCore students raging like a storm.
"Do you feel that?" she asked quietly as they approached.
"Feel what?"
"Like, in the air, the other people? It's like everything's ... on fire."
Odiye nodded slowly. "I can, if I try. It takes a bit of time to be able to filter your new senses properly." He glanced at her. "You can feel them?"
"Yeah." Piper searched for the words. "It's kind of weird. Intense."
"Your implants, however you got them," he said. "They seem to be a bit more sensitive than normal."
"Yeah, Arrow said something about my implants being deeper than everybody else, or something like that."
"They told me." Odiye's face remained impassive.
She fixed him with a beady eye. "Is that good?"
"Good and bad." He looked at her. "It means you've got a lot of potential, but it could be hard to control it." His mouth twisted as he gathered his explanation. "It's like ... peaks and troughs. Some people here are very stable. Like Arrow; they have a solid baseline, not a lot of variance. They'll probably never be able to throw around the power you can, but they'll always have control."
He inclined his head to the doorway. "Then there are people like Ferra and Toran. Volatile, but if they can maintain control they are a lot more dangerous than most people here."
"What about you?" she asked. "Where do you fall on that little scale?"
Odiye smiled thinly. "I'm sure you'll find out soon enough."
Before she could ask what he meant, they were through the archway, and Piper's breath caught in her throat at the sight that met her eyes.
There must have been two hundred people here, the vast majority of them AmpCore students or fledgling operatives in their late teens and early twenties. More surprising than that, she spotted at least three instructors – out of their white uniforms at the moment, but their demeanour gave them away.
Several years older than most of the people here, they stalked warily back and forth, keeping an eye on the gathering.
The den of the Sharks formed a kind of coliseum, a long oval with broad arcs of seats rising up on the long edges, looking down onto a stretch of armoured flooring. Here there were plenty of corporate advertisements blazing around the upper walls, a constant stream that she could feel flowing, as though she'd dipped her fingers into a flowing river.
Piper also spotted dozens of leader boards scattered across the displays, but these looked different from all the academy-sanctioned tables that infested the upper levels. These showed simple names, the corporate logo, and a record. Duelling wins and losses.
At the top of the rankings she saw Ferra's head shot. She looked vicious, even in a still image, a predatory smile on her face. A few places down, Toran's face stared out, smirking out into the arena. A few places below that, however, she saw another face she recognised.
"Odiye," she said, giving him a light smack on the arm and pointing. "You are in the Sharks?"
He winced; nodded. "I've been before."
"After all that shit about how dangerous these people are, and you're one of them?!"
"It's not like that!" Odiye blurted. "I don't organise any of this. Ferra and her little gang run the Sharks. For some of us it's not as optional as you think. Someone invites you here for a challenge, and you refuse, word will travel. It will get back to your sponsors, show them that you're not willing to stand up for their interests." He looked around, scanning the faces of the other students. "It is, at least, a good way to settle grudges."
"You must be pretty good," Piper said as they slipped through the milling masses. "To be in the top ten."
He shrugged awkwardly. "Hadrian is a dangerous place, Piper."
"Yeah, I know that."
"Not in the way that we do." Odiye made a vague gesture to the duelling ground. "This is as close to a real life fight as you'll get without being out in the city. It is a good way to train, when you're ready."
"Tambo! Tambo, over here!"
The voice sliced through the hubbub and they both followed it, winding through the group to find Holly Lockley standing with a couple of other students. When they reached her, however, her breezy demeanour cracked when she looked at Piper.
"Piper?" Her brows shot up in surprise. She stared at her for a moment, then looked at Odiye in confusion. "What is she doing here?"
"She wanted to come."
"And you let her?!"
Odiye sighed. "I didn't exactly have a choice."
"It was my idea," Piper confirmed. "Ferra's got quite a sales pitch. I wanted to see this all for myself."
Holly smiled ruefully. "Yeah, she's good at that. Just, be careful around, Ferra, alright? She's got a real vicious bitch-streak running right down her spine."
"I can tell, believe me."
"Are you fighting tonight?" Odiye asked.
"Fifth bout." A confident smile spread across her face and she exchanged a knowing look with her friends. "Saala was shooting his mouth off about our Nav-Systems glitching on the new Prometheus haulers. Everybody knows you keep a corporate like that private." A shrug. "But he decided to say it to my face in front of everyone."
Piper couldn't keep the incredulous smirk off your face. "So that's what, like slapping you in the face?"
"Something like that."
"And so you're going to have a duel over that?"
An air of mischief crept into Holly's voice. "Call it honour."
"I'd call it petty."
Holly rolled her eyes, looking to Odiye. "What about you?"
"Hadn't planned on it," he muttered. "But you know what Ferra's like."
As though they'd summoned her by mentioning the name too many times, Ferra's voice came scything through the bustle of noise in the arena.
"Good evening everyone!" she roared, and Piper turned with everyone else to see the leader of the Sharks standing on a raised platform at the head of the room. Ferra spread her hands and smiled. "Can you smell the blood in the water?"
A roar went up from the assembled students, and Ferra almost seemed to glow, feeding off the feral energy of her acolytes. The whole thing made Piper's skin crawl; even Holly and Odiye joined in. She fought down her discomfort, however, and tried to pay attention.
"We have five duels scheduled tonight," Ferra declared, her voice thunderously powerful. Piper wondered if she was using her implants to somehow augment it. "Once they have been completed, the floor will be opened to free challenges. If you want to train, if you have a grudge, or if there's someone who you just don't like," she continued, "then this is your chance to let them know."
Another roar went up, and she felt the snarling energy of hundreds of implants pulsing in the air, emotions making the machines run hot beneath the skin of their owners. She felt the crackle of heat in her bones too, unable to stop herself from getting swept up in the sensation. This wild, pulsating atmosphere felt a lot more human than that corp-stamped life that awaited back in the academy proper.
"Our first duel!" Ferra bellowed, her hands rising like the conductor of an orchestra. "I call Toran Knox, and Ranik Poulson!"
Piper saw Toran emerge from the crush first. He'd shed his AmpCore jacket, clad in black trousers and a tank-top that unveiled his taut, sinewy frame. His amplifier shimmered in one hand as he mounted the stage to stand beside Ferra.
His opponent appeared a moment later, a big, brawny young man with pale skin and a shaved head. Clad identically, he was a slab of muscle, with a face like an angry ox. She didn't recognise him, and had no idea what slight – perceived or otherwise – had let him into conflict with Toran, but he looked furious.
"Spectators, to your seats," Ferra barked. The handful of instructors swiftly made their presence known, corralling the other attendees out to the left and right in roughly equal groups.
Piper stuck close with Odiye and Holly as they took seats on the right side of the duelling ground, near the front of the ranks of dark benches – close to the action. Once the spectators were safely in place, the instructors positioned themselves at regular intervals down both sides.
"What are they doing?" she asked quietly.
"Buffers," Holly explained, though her eyes stayed rooted to the combatants. "They stop any collateral damage. These duels are violent – people don't hold back. You'll see."
An expectant hush descended on them as Toran took up his position at the far end of the duelling ground, rolling his neck from side to side and bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet before settling into his stance. His opponent, Ranik, stomped into place at the opposite side, his mulish expression not wavering for an instant. He stared Toran down, waiting for the word.
"Contestants ready?" Ferra called from the stage, her eyes lingering on Toran lustfully.
"Ready." They both confirmed, raising their amplifiers.
"Then on my call. Three. Two. One. BEGIN!"
Piper realised she was holding her breath. Even through Odiye had warned her about the Sharks, the violence of it took her by surprise as Toran and the other student unleashed their forces.
A blinding tongue of molten fire exploded from Toran's amplifier, and she thought for a second he was going to kill the other student there and then. Ranik was ready for it though. His wand flashed and the blast deflected off at a right angle, slamming straight into the ceiling.
He retaliated instantly. A bolt of blue-white electricity that looked an awful lot like lightning ripped across the air; she saw her breath misting, a sudden cold sweeping through the arena. Toran twisted with fearsome elegance, and actually caught the bolt with the tip of his amplifier. A neat spin, and he flung the projectile back at his foe.
Ranik dropped flat and the bolt tore a crater in the armoured back wall. A huge roar went up from the onlookers as the pair reset, and Piper yelled along with them, amazed by what she was seeing. She could feel the enormous forces being exerted as the duellists fought, every molecule around her shuddering with the impacts.
Blinding blasts of energy shot back and forth, battering off shields, and blasting through floor and wall plates. Pulses of gravity tore up the ground; the combatants danced and leapt to avoid the gullies of force. The instructors lining the sides of the duelling space kept a solid barrier in place to contain anything that went flying towards the onlookers.
She'd never seen anything like it. Her eyes went wide and she cheered along with everyone else as the contest played out.
Both of them were lathered in sweat, the orange red glow of their implants visible to everyone as they fought. Eventually, it was Toran that delivered a decisive blow, as he sent a rippling fist of invisible force through the haze of smoke that had filled the duelling ground. It caught Ranik in the stomach before he could properly raise a barrier, and hurled him into the air.
His heavy frame smashed into the ground with a booming thud, and for a moment Piper thought he was dead. Then he rolled onto his back with a moan, coughing for breath. A huge roar swelled from all sides and Ferra raised a fist into the air.
"WINNER!" she screamed. "Toran Knox!"
Toran let out an animal howl of victory, and she had to admit that he made for a fearsome sight, his body still glowing crimson, muscles bulging in his neck. His chest heaved and he blinked several times; she could feel him wrestling his implants back under control.
"Wow," Piper murmured.
Odiye glanced at her. "So what do you think?"
"I think..." She shook her head in wonderment. "I think it's amazing."
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