by Tarah Benner
Harper stays close to me as I push through the cluster of couples pressing every part of their bodies together on the dance floor. Every now and then, we pass a concrete column stretching up toward the ceiling that’s enveloped by a cluster of people making out and groping each other.
I try to stay close to the wall, but somehow the tide of people manages to jostle us closer to the middle. The music is getting louder, and the crowd is converging to form a mosh pit.
Behind me, I hear an angry growl. I whip around just in time to see Harper getting crushed between two bare-chested guys wearing what look like leather harnesses. They’re dancing wildly and have her trapped between them. One guy has a green mohawk and wide gauges in his ears. The other has so many piercings that his entire face seems to be made of metal.
I lunge backward, but their friends have formed a solid wall of bodies, and I have to forcibly shove my way through.
The two leather-clad guys have noticed Harper. She doesn’t see me, but I can detect the panic in her eyes.
One guy grabs her arm to yank her toward him, but she pushes him away. She stumbles backward on her heels — right into the orbit of the mohawk guy.
I shove the nearest guy harder to get to her, but Mohawk Guy buckles, and I know he just got an elbow to the gut.
Finally, Harper spots me fighting through the crowd. She throws out her hand, and I grab on and yank her toward me.
“You okay?” I yell.
“Yeah.” The adrenalin is still sparkling in her eyes, but clearly Harper can handle herself.
Unfortunately, we’ve caused a bit of a scene, and the people around us are glaring.
Harper’s VocAps score gave her some notoriety in the compound, and I’ve been in too many fights to get through Neverland unnoticed. They know we’re from Recon.
A few guys are talking to each other, glancing in our direction and looking as though they’re out for a fight.
I really don’t want to deal with it, so I tug Harper through the crowd toward a flight of rickety stairs near the back. She struggles up behind me, and I realize her heels keep getting caught in the metal grating.
Standing in the shadows at the top of the steps is a big beefy bouncer. He holds out a hand to make us stop, and Harper straightens up to her full height.
“We’re here to see Shane,” I say.
“Shane’s not here.”
I roll my eyes. “Yeah, right. He’s always here. Tell him Eli Parker’s got a fighter he might be interested in, will you?”
The bouncer crosses his arms and raises his chin. He’s trying to intimidate me, but he’s curious. “Shane knows every fighter in this place. Who’ve you got?”
“Someone he hasn’t seen before.”
The man looks skeptical but intrigued enough to care. “Where is he?”
I step aside so Harper can come up beside me on the narrow landing. “It’s her.”
“Name?”
“Harper Riley,” she says with a feisty edge to her voice.
The bouncer’s gaze flits up and down Harper’s body in a way I don’t like, but then he jerks his head toward the door and leads us inside.
I’ve been up to Shane’s private room plenty of times, but I’m always shocked by the cramped quarters. It’s another remnant of the old Underground — a retrofitted conductor’s office that he’s turned into a VIP area.
There’s a high-backed leather bench that snakes around the perimeter, framed by mirrored shelves of alcohol and a low glass table.
My eyes dart from the two bodyguards posted in the corners to the line of surge on the table. Two leggy blondes with bleary eyes are draped over Shane’s lap. Their clothes are so skimpy they may as well not be dressed at all, but they seem completely unfazed by our arrival.
Shane is a tall man with dark hair combed back into a short mullet. He’s wearing a black suit, black shirt, and ostrich-skin boots that he must have had brought in from the Fringe. Trading pre–Death Storm relics is illegal but not unheard of, and it’s certainly not the only crime Shane partakes in. The drug trade, the sex trade, illegal fights — he has his hands in all of it.
“What can I do for you, Lieutenant?” Shane asks in that slow, mocking voice of his. He smiles lazily, and I catch a flash of silver in his teeth.
“I’ve got a fighter for you.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Who?”
“Me,” says Harper fiercely, taking a step toward Shane.
His eyes rake over her intrusively just as the bouncer’s did, but she doesn’t flinch or shrink away from his gaze. If anything, her posture becomes more defiant.
“I take it you’re a beginner.”
“Yep.”
“And what will you do for me?” he asks.
I get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, and every muscle in my body tenses. I take stock of the room again, planning to go for the biggest bodyguard first if we need to fight our way out of here.
But Harper doesn’t miss a beat. “Absolutely nothing,” she says in that stubborn tone of hers. “Except make you a fuck ton of money.”
Shane grins. “Really?” He sounds amused more than anything, which I take as a good sign.
Harper crosses her arms and tosses her hair over her shoulder. “I’m not an idiot. I know you take a cut of everything.”
“That is true. And why wouldn’t I?” His smile widens, revealing even more silver. “I’m a businessman.”
“And I’m a fighter. Do you have a match for me or not?”
I cringe. Harper’s attitude was enough to get Shane’s attention — maybe even earn a little respect — but you can’t push him too far. I’ve dealt with Shane enough to know that he respects someone who can hold their own, but he still likes to feel as though he’s in charge.
“I might,” he says lazily. “Let’s see what you got.”
He shoves one of the blondes off his lap, and she stumbles toward Harper on shaky legs. Harper swats her away impatiently, knowing as well as I do that this girl is too burned to stand on her own two feet, let alone put up a fight.
But Shane doesn’t want Harper to fight the girl; he wants Harper to lay her out with her bare hands.
“I’m not going to put on a show for you,” she snaps. “I’m not getting paid.”
“And I’m not sure you know how things work around here,” he says in a menacing voice.
Harper eyes the bodyguards, who don’t yet seem to think she’s a threat. “I’ve got a pretty good idea.”
Shane stares at her for a long moment, and I can tell he’s sizing her up. He likes Harper, but he also wants to put her in her place.
“I gotta hand it to you, sweetheart . . . You’ve got balls.”
Harper glances at me, but I try to keep my expression neutral.
“What the hell. I’ve got a fight for you. In a month. Beginner fights start just before the main event.” He glances toward me for the first time in a while. “Eli can show you where.”
“Who would she be fighting?” I ask.
“Marta Moreno.”
Horror flashes through me, and I take a step forward to get Harper out of the line of fire. “No —”
“Great,” says Harper, shooting me a deadly look as she cuts me off.
Shane continues as though he didn’t hear me. “You’re not allowed to bet on yourself, of course,” he muses. “But I’ll pay you two grand for the fight — double if you win.”
Now Harper glances at me to see if she should take the deal. I’m too panicked and angry to speak, but I shake my head, hoping that for once she’ll listen. She looks uneasy but reaches out to shake Shane’s hand anyway.
“Done.”
“Great!” he says, flashing her a smile that makes me feel sick. “Remember: You don’t get paid until the fight is over. Try to stay alive long enough to collect your winnings.”
Harper and I don’t speak as I drag her out of the room and down the stairs toward the swaying crowd. The music seems to have grown even loud
er in the few minutes we were with Shane, and the pounding just intensifies the fear that’s constricting my lungs.
I don’t let go of Harper as we navigate through the packed crowd and climb the emergency stairwell back to Recon.
As the music fades away, all I can hear is the clack of her heels on concrete. It grates on my nerves.
Every decision she’s made tonight, from her shoes to the fight, has been the wrong one. I just want to toss her over my shoulder and drag her up to my compartment before she can do any more damage, but I force myself to stay calm.
When we reach my tunnel, her continued silence makes me think she must be in shock.
I’m too pissed off to speak out where everyone can hear. Fear and rage are simmering just beneath the surface, and I know all the ugliness is going to spill out as soon as I open my mouth.
I pound in my door code with shaky fingers and toss her into my compartment.
“What were you thinking?” I yell as soon as we’re inside.
She crosses her arms and glares up at me. “What is your problem?”
“My problem? I don’t have a problem, but you sure as hell do now!”
Her eyes bug out a little in surprise. “What are you talking about?”
She’s looking at me as though I’ve gone insane, and it annoys the shit out of me.
“The fight, Harper! The fight you just agreed to! I told you not to take the deal. We agreed that if the fighter was too dangerous, you wouldn’t do it. I said no, and you took the deal anyway. Why would you do that?”
She stares at me in disbelief. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah, I’m serious!”
“We went there to get me a fight, Eli. Shane gave me a fight.”
I let out a primal groan that surprises even me. “He might as well have given you a wheelchair! Do you have any idea who Marta Moreno is?”
Harper’s trying to hold her ground, but she looks alarmed. “Sh-should I?”
“You would if you’d ever watched a beginner fight! She’s the deadliest novice in the compound!”
Harper’s face goes pale, which just makes it harder for me to stop the sickening dread pooling in the pit of my stomach. I turn away from her, raking a hand through my hair. “If you’d just listened to me . . . just once . . .”
“But two grand is good, right? Even if I lose, that’s a ticket right there!”
“You don’t get it,” I moan. “Two grand is twice what you’d normally get in a beginner fight. He only offered that because no new fighter in her right mind would fight Marta for anything less.”
Harper’s eyes are wide with terror. Maybe I shouldn’t have told her that, but she needs to know what she’s up against.
Finally, she unsticks her throat to speak. “Wh-what should I do?”
I glance at my computer to make sure we aren’t being recorded. There’s no red light, but that does little to ease the tension in my shoulders. “The only thing we can do is try to get you out of here before your fight. You can’t stay here if you decide to back out. Shane doesn’t tolerate broken deals.”
Harper looks shaken. I feel bad for yelling at her, but I’m not going to lie to make her feel better. She’s in deep shit, and no matter how much she trains in the next month, she’s never going to be able to beat Marta.
Harper leaves my compartment quickly, looking defeated in that smoking-hot dress.
I don’t go after her. I just pace my compartment until I think I might wear a hole in the floor.
I should never have taken Harper to see Shane. The idea of her fighting is ridiculous — especially since most beginners have been fighting a lot longer than she has.
Before my brain has time to register what I’m about to do, I’m heading back out to Neverland to make another deal.
The only way to get Harper out of that fight is to earn enough money to send her away. And to get that, I have to make Shane an offer he can’t refuse.
“A blind fight? Are you crazy?” splutters Miles.
I didn’t tell him about my little visit to Shane last night, but I didn’t have to.
Word spread through Recon like wildfire that I would be fighting in a week, fueled by speculation about who the other fighter could be.
Blind fights have become sort of an urban legend in the compound because they’re so rare. The best fighters never agree to them because the matchups are notoriously uneven. And when you don’t know the guy you’ll be fighting, you have no time to prepare any kind of strategy to exploit his weaknesses. It’s nearly always a bloodbath.
As soon as Miles heard, he stormed into the training center to pester me during my workout.
“I always knew you were a dumb motherfucker, but I never thought you’d go and do something this stupid!”
“It was the only way to make enough money to get her out of here before her fight,” I say, tossing him some focus mitts so he can make himself useful.
“Maybe you don’t understand,” growls Miles. “You’re not going to live long enough to escort her to the next compound. You are going to die.”
“There aren’t many fighters in this place who can beat me.”
Honestly, I’m a little pissed that Miles is more afraid of me fighting than Harper.
“And I bet Shane knows every single one of them,” he says, bugging out his eyes to make his point. “He runs the fight circuit, Eli.”
“Why would he put me up against someone I can’t possibly beat? It wouldn’t be a good fight.”
“Because he’s already raking in the dough. I hear he’s getting a hundred credits a pop for these tickets. He can make a whole lot of money just by telling people that Eli Parker’s fighting again. People are going to expect you to win, but they have no idea who the other guy is.”
“I can win,” I say, throwing a hard jab when he presents the mitt.
“Maybe if your leg wasn’t fucked up. But it is.”
For a second, I think he’s going to kick me again to prove his point, but he just looks helpless. “How much are you going to get if you win?”
“Ten grand.”
Instead of looking shocked and impressed, Miles’s face becomes grave. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah.”
“Eli . . . you can’t take this fight.”
“It’s too late now.”
“Listen to me. You aren’t going to win . . . not for that much money.”
“I’ll be fine.” I’m getting sick of Miles’s cryptic warnings because they’re just piling onto my nerves.
The fight is next week. There’s no time to come up with a better plan. Yes, taking the blind fight was stupid and impulsive, but I didn’t see an alternative. Jayden is already plotting our next deployment, and I don’t know how long we can outrun Constance’s plans for our demise.
Even if I lose, I’ll get three grand. It’s not enough to get us all out of the compound, but it will get Harper out of here before her fight the following week.
I haven’t told her what I’m doing, but I’m sure she’s heard.
Part of me hopes she can see that I’m doing it for her, but the other part hopes she’s mad enough to skip my fight altogether. I don’t want her to see me like that again.
When I fight, I become a different person: the person she watched end another man’s life without remorse. Just like going out on the Fringe, it’s kill or be killed.
fourteen
Harper
The noise in the maintenance shaft is unbelievable on fight night. It fills up the crowded space and hums from the walls, the pipes, and the floor.
People are packed so tightly around the ring, I’d bet Neverland is cleared out tonight. The crowd is a volatile mix of ExCon, Recon, and Waste Management workers, and the general feeling of distrust brewing among them has charged the air with nervous energy.
These people are aching for a fight.
Lenny is right beside me, bouncing on the balls of her feet, trying to see over the crowd. I know Blaze and Bear a
re somewhere among the onlookers, too, because nearly every cadet is here to watch Eli fight. He’s a legend in Recon, but apparently it’s been months since his last bout.
The crowd’s roar grows impossibly louder, and I know Eli must have entered.
I crane my neck to look, and after several seconds, I see his watchful eyes peering over the wall of onlookers.
Then I realize what’s taking him so long. The crowd is jostling him, trying to toss him back and forth against the other spectators. Miles is right behind him, helping him fend off the ExCon and Waste Management guys, but he’s struggling just to break through.
Raw terror flares through me like an electric shock. This crowd is dangerous. All the resentment from Recon’s supposed treachery has come to a head, and the other tier-three workers want to see Eli beaten to a pulp.
Apprehension burns through me when he catches my eye. I didn’t berate Eli for taking the fight — I’ve barely said a word to him all week — but my insides have been a mess of confusion, anger, and fear.
Apparently, the compound hasn’t seen a blind fight in more than a year because the last one nearly killed the headliner. Based on the hostile crowd, they must think Eli has a shot at winning, but I can’t imagine it’s going to end well.
Eli doesn’t hold my gaze as he climbs up into the ring. He probably feels like a hypocrite for chastising me about my fight when his is clearly more dangerous, but he also needs to focus.
He’s shirtless again, and I can tell that every muscle in his body is tightly coiled, prepared to fight for his life. He has the wary look I saw on the Fringe, and I can tell he’s wondering if he made the right decision.
“All you guys need to back up,” says a familiar, faraway voice. “Please don’t crowd the ring.”
Somebody pushes me away from the platform. I jerk my head up to say something rude and take an automatic step back.
Blaze is standing in front of me, but he doesn’t look like Blaze. Instead of his Recon uniform, he’s wearing black pants and a black T-shirt. He’s on crowd control, though I can’t think why.
“Hey,” I say, still a little dazed. “What are you doing here?”