"I would wish you luck, but I know you don't need it." Ezra gives me the thumbs up in the mirror.
"I think a wish of luck would be nice, though," I say, taking a look in the mirror to make sure everything's in place, turning so I can see a bit of my back. "At least for my opponent." I wink at my reflection.
Ezra laughs. He's got tissues crammed up his nostrils, and a pack of ice pressed to his jaw. His wifebeater is stained with blood and grime, and his dark curls are filled with sand. He's paler than pale, even though he sits in a shadowy corner of the change room. In contrast, Ceres stands close to me, skin a lustrous ebony, his head bald and his attire clean and polished.
"So I was thinking," he begins, his voice the deepest I've ever heard, "that I should give you something." He pinches my bright yellow bodysuit where it clings to my hip. "This thing's getting old, and it doesn't even fit you."
"Well, you did say it was a man's originally," I point out. "It certainly smells like a man's."
Ceres wrinkles his nose. He takes a few steps back, going to one of the rusted lockers mounted on the right wall of the room. He swings the door open and produces a shiny black bodysuit that he tosses in my direction. I hold out a hand to catch it, my eyes still on my reflection.
"Was this in the locker the whole time?"
"Ezra was supposed to ask you to open it up," Ceres tells me. "But he forgot, as always. He can never be trusted."
Ezra makes a crude gesture and leans back where he sits, crossing one leg over the other. "I just got beat up. Cut me some slack, High Chancellor Ceres Ryder."
"High Chancellor," I snicker. "A bit dark to be a politician, isn't he?"
"More like he's on the opposite end of the colour spectrum." Ezra mutters.
I hold the black bodysuit up to my form as Ceres crosses the room to smack Ezra's head. It's soft and liquid-feeling, as if the tips of my fingers were dragging across the surface of water. When I stretch the leg out as far as it will go, it snaps back into position, no worse for the wear.
"Are you trying to buy my affection or something? Because I can assure you, Ceres, I cannot be bought. Moreover, my brother will have your head for trying to take me away." I raise a finger to lecture him. "He may look like a stoic man, but you haven't seen him at his worst."
"You definitely haven't." Ezra chimes in.
"Oh, be quiet," he snaps. "Both of you. Get changed and get out there."
I strip off my old yellow bodysuit and put on the new black one. Ezra tosses my boots towards me, discoloured and grey and more comfortable than any pair of shoes I've ever owned- not that I've owned many pairs of shoes.
"You've been filling out, haven't you?" He muses.
"Leering is rude," I say. I fasten the buckles on my boots, and take one last long look in the mirror to make sure everything's in place. I definitely look intimidating, what with the padding in the suit that makes me look way more muscular than I am. "Wait, are you referring to the padding? Because it's padding."
Ezra just laughs at me. I roll my eyes. Ceres puts his hands on my back and pushes me to the corner of the change room, where a cylindrical glass pod sits open, waiting for me.
"I'm going, I'm going! There's no need to push." I shake away Ceres' hands and hop into the pod, shaking out my muscles and stretching. "Thanks for the bodysuit, by the way. It feels great."
Ceres goes to the panel by the pod and keys in the command to take me up to the arena floor. His dark eyes meet mine, and he smiles widely, exposing his too-white teeth.
"It wasn't from me."
I blink. "Then who?"
He just points his index finger upwards, and the pod closes around me, blocking me from exiting. The tube moves upward at a slow but steady pace, and I stretch out my muscles briskly, cracking my knuckles and loosening up in preparation for the fight. I wonder who I'll fight tonight. I've seen all sorts of people, young and old, dark and light, big and small. Some of them have sponsors at their backs, like me with Ceres, who bet big money on their victories.
Or, more like their would-be victories, if I wasn't their opponent.
The tube moves up faster, and the floodlights of the arena momentarily blind me. The arena is boxed in by hardened, transparent glass, and outside of it are countless faces peering in, held back by a pulsing, electric forcefield, waving their betting tickets in the air. I can't hear them, but they'll be able to hear every grunt and every scream that echoes within this box. That's the way it works. That's the way it's always worked.
The pod beeps and I step off of it as it opens; it descends back into the change room a moment afterwards. I see someone hold up a banner with "ONE" written across it in bold black lettering. A few people have their faces painted bright yellow. They must be cheering my name. I look up to the VIP box, mounted high above the arena on the domed roof. The glass so heavily tinted that I can't see into it. Is Ceres already in there?
Another pod rises up from the ground, about one hundred meters away. The man that steps out of it is dressed in black like I am. He's tall, but takes up a lot of space horizontally- his shoulders are broad, almost too broad, and he looks like he has nothing better to do besides build muscle mass. His face is cruelly handsome, sharply angled, and there's something about the pallor of his skin I don't see often: not totally olive, like most people from the Outer Ring, but instead a ruddy sort of yellow-brown.
Something about him strikes me as odd, like I've seen him before. His eyes, however, narrow and an almost unnatural black, hold no recognition. They're blank and devoid of light.
"You're awfully unsettling," I call over to him. "Did you know that?"
He just stares back. I frown.
"Do you have a sponsor?"
He assumes a brash stance, and nods. He speaks, and his voice is sharp enough to cut. "Good luck."
A buzzer sounds and hovercameras are dispatched. They're small, round, and move around by means of the magnetic field in the arena. The room around the arena lights up with holographic screens displaying the fight from every angle.
The man streaks towards me, faster than he looks, and I roll out of the way just in time for him not to bowl me over. I'm barely on my feet before he's charging at me again, and this time I slide between his legs, hitting his spine with quick, precise jabs. Usually, this move makes my fights end prematurely; people either tense up and fall in the best case scenarios, or have a difficult time controlling their movements in the worst. For a man as brawny as this one, I'd expect the latter, which is certainly better than nothing.
That's why I don't react fast enough to evade him when he swings his fist towards me. It catches me right in the jaw, and I fly backwards, skidding across the waxed arena floor, my bodysuit squeaking against it. I scramble to my feet, wanting desperately to rub at where his fist connected with my face. I stay in my fighting stance, my knees slightly bent, my arms raised in a defensive position, as he watches me from across the arena.
"What are you waiting for?" I bark. "Come at me, musclehead!"
"It's Anden," he sighs. "Anden Veiga."
Anden Veiga. That's an awfully pretty name for someone who looks like they could slice through flesh with their cheekbones.
He starts out walking, but builds up momentum until he's running at me head-on. I begin to run, too, and in my periphery, I see the distorted faces of our spectators, mouths agape. They're ready to watch us collide.
When Anden Veiga and I meet, right in the very middle of the arena itself, we slam into each other's bodies. I grip his upper arms, right near his shoulders, and he does the same to me. I push against him, and he pushes against me in an attempt to make me fall. He has the advantage of strength and weight, but even as our pushing match continues, he seems surprised when I don't fall back. My thighs ache from holding my body in place, and my biceps tremble with every passing second.
A droplet of sweat trickles down Anden's temple. His lips are pressed tightly together, and when I quirk a mocking eyebrow at him, his narrow eyes form slits. He pushes harder against me, and my trembling muscles nearly give out. I look down at my body, at the way it strains just to keep itself in place.
"Powerful, aren't you?" I breathe.
Then I snap my neck forward, headbutting him. He stumbles backwards, his hands leaving my arms, and I take action. I crouch and hook a leg behind his, forcing him onto the ground. He smacks onto the floor, dazed, and I stand, pushing my shoulders back, raising a fist in triumph. The crowd erupts, and not even the forcefield and the glass can separate me from the roaring cacophony of cheers. I win. Again.
Suddenly, the world is tilting around me. The air in my nose comes to smell like honey, like sunlight, like sweetness, and copper curls flit across my vision.
Damn it, not now!
The next thing I know, Anden's pinning me down, his knee against my neck. I gasp, trying to force myself up, counting the seconds off in my head. Anden looks down at me, his expression for some reason grim, as he mouths numbers to me.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
Another buzzer sounds, but this time it's not to signal the start of a fight. It's to signal an ending. Anden stands immediately, brushing himself off. He offers me a hand up, but I just lie there on the floor, unmoving, staring at his hand, wanting to bite it off.
"Sorry," he says nonchalantly, shrugging like it's nothing, "about beating you. But I had to."
"You had to?"
When he sees I won't take his hand, he bends down to take my hand himself, dragging me to my feet. "For my sponsor."
"Yeah, what's new? Your sponsor's going to get a lot of cash for this," I grumble. "Who is he?"
Anden's lips turn up in the slightest indication of what I think could be a proud smile.
"Idris."
A/N: Oh boy! Deva's a bit of a sore loser now, isn't she? Rowan Keirstead didn't serve a whole lot to the plot, so I cut him out of it. Anden's cooler than he is, anyway.