10.

I lay in bed with my hands tucked under my pillow, slipping towards sleep and picking up on snatches of Silver and Monkey-Wrench’s conversation, so muffled they sounded as if they had been wearing gas masks, and I thought of the man in the trench-coat with the steroid-pumped bruiser chick standing next to him. That same night, after their voices lulled me to sleep, Bicep and Mad Eye appeared in my dreams, rolling through the desert in Old Rusty and firing from the windows with semi-automatic assault rifles, spraying down Rogue, then Silver, and then . . . me. Blood, everywhere, and it wasn’t the nice sort; this blood was thick like lava, lipping and swaying, pooling around my eyes and bubbling as if potted above a campfire. Darkness . . . darkness, and . . . 

I woke up panting and covered in sweat. My Infrared was vibrating and beeping at the same time. Once I calmed down—Just a dream, Ashe, just a fucking dream—I squinted at my overlay and found the number <<1>> next to <<Inbox>>. One notification. I tapped it. Something called Event-Rules. It was sent less than a minute ago at four in the morning.

“What the hell . . . ?” I said, then remembered Android 316. I licked my lips, savagely dry-throated, and rubbed my eyes. (At first I tried to rub them with my right hand, but I remembered, like at the surgery, it was gone, leaving only that phantom-tingling.) 

Once my eyes adjusted to the holo-screen, I tapped <<Event-Rules>> and a message popped up:

I sort of expected a lot of these rules, especially the one about not being able to opt out, though I had thought it would have been as soon as signing up, as opposed to as soon as reaching my designated Station. To me, the rules weren’t that bad. I liked the part about the City providing armour for those without it. I saw how easily Gatling Guns had torn through metal, and my metal-plated trousers would not have been enough. 

I closed my Infrared and went back to stuffing my hands under my pillow, listening to the steady thrum of the ventilation shaft as I drifted into a dreamless sleep. My final thought before the darkness came was I’d like to come back to Ma in ten years the same way Silver came back to Monkey-Wrench. But part of me thinks she’s already dead.

11.

Come morning, Silver headed into the City, sold the allypus like he promised, and returned to Withergate with eighty bucks and three wingboar noodle cups. He told us about it while Rogue, Monkey-Wrench, and I pulled up chairs to the hollow table and chopsticked the noodles into our mouths. 

The smell . . . so breathtaking and savoury. It had been such a long time since I had food like this. 

I told them about the rules list I’d received that morning, and Rogue and Silver agreed with them. He had already known; she was shocked at how precise a bloodsport could be. Eventually, we ended up talking about Monkey-Wrench, her past, why she was working in a shitty motel like this (although those exact words weren’t used, as much as I wanted to use them), and she told us that she ran away from home.

“Where’s that?” I asked.

“The North,” she said, twirling the noodles into her mouth—a true expert with the chopsticks. “My parents were cannibals.” She spoke with such level-headedness that I thought she was joking at first, but I remembered the way Mylo’s folks had died, and knew her to be telling the truth. 

I was shocked, but fully understood why someone would want to run away from that, but not how. She told me her grandpa drove her away from there, stopped in the City looking for work, couldn’t find any, and ended up discovering the Underground by talking to enough people. They stayed here, got a job working for Charlie the Robot (and yes, it turned out Charlie had been running this place long before she came), and sustained themselves until her grandpa died from old age. 

A truly sad story. I couldn’t imagine the trauma she went through, yet here she was, strong as ever, a lot stronger than me. 

For the next two days at Withergate, we kept a low profile, refusing to go out and instead just . . . relaxed, watching TV: old shows that existed before Jet Corp came here, and hundreds of ads. Hundreds. 

At the same time, we chatted, and my arm started feeling a lot better. The phantom-sensation had disappeared, and I stopped feeling sick and tired all the time. Tomorrow would be the Grand Fiesta, and according to the TV, it would take place at nine o’clock at night. Was I nervous? Of course. I was shitting myself a lot more than I let out, but it was the only way to get this money, and it wouldn’t be the first time I stared death in the face and lived. I was going to win this. No matter what. For Ma, for all of us. 

The day of the event, sometime in the afternoon, Rogue and I had some alone time. Some honest-to-God alone time which we hadn’t had in forever, not since that asshole Mylo rolled into the Gloom, and not since Silver had us out on constant raid after raid.

I was delighted, almost ecstatic, when it came to things being like they had in the old days. Even more, when they made me feel the way I had in the old days. Rogue was someone I loved to spend time with, no matter where, but especially when we were alone and away from other people. The fact that she probably didn’t swing the same way I did was a gut-wrenching reality that hurt about as much as my infected hand did, only the pain was steady and had begun to worsen with every moment spent together, every minute, every second. I needed to tell her how I felt, someway or another, but I couldn’t risk shattering that connection we wove, that bond that came from our past grievances and memories and damn well trauma, because God knew trauma brought people together more than it ripped them apart. 

She and I sat in her motel living room, swiping past channel after channel. The sofa was comfortable, made of leather though musty all the same. 

“Are you nervous?” she asked.

“No,” I lied. “We’ll win this thing and make it out alive. It won’t take long. We listen to Silver and that’ll be our golden ticket.”

“What if Silver doesn’t make it?” She pressed her lips together in a flat line, and slowly a trace of a quiver shimmied.  “I’m worried, Ashe. I’ve never done something like this before.”

“Neither have the other participants,” I said, disregarding Bicep and Mad Eye. “If they had, then they’d be dead. And they can’t have all won the last however many.”

She didn’t look convinced. “Do you think it’s rigged?”

“What do you mean?”

“With those two previous winners,” she said. “Could Jet Corp be trying to have them win? I mean, why the hell would they do it a third time?”

“Because they’re crazy,” I replied, smiling wanly. “Just relax, okay? Everything’ll be fine. Remember what you always tell me? Everything’ll be fineeeeee.”

That cracked a laugh out of her—a sound that came from the heart. “I miss the old days,” she said. “When we were kids.”

“I miss ’em, too,” I said. “When we’d steal from the market?”

She shook her head. “That was just you being a bad influence,” she said. “I’m talking about before everything, before Jet Corp.”

I propped my head in my thumb and forefinger, my elbow on the sofa arm. “I know what you mean.”

“Do you?” she said quickly. “I mean, you seem to enjoy killing people.”

I knitted my brows. “Enjoy killing?” There was truth to it, and I hated finding satisfaction in murder, but I didn’t like her knowing that about me, as obvious as it probably had been. 

She said, “Yeah, that old man at The Mopes.”

Oh, yeah . . . that. 

“I’m sorry, okay? That was a few days ago and he shot me first,” I said, as if that would do anything. 

“Sometimes it’s hard to watch you, Ashe. Because I honest do care about you, but . . . God, I’m scared something similar might happen out there, in the Grand Fiesta. Like . . . you’ll focus on killing so much that you end up screwing us over. That’s what I think.”

I had no intention of letting that happen. As Ma said: Listen to Silver. He’s an intelligent man. That was the plan, and I re-explained that to her.

“I dunno,” she said softly. “You’re a bit crazy.”

I blushed at this, and goosebumps rashed out across my arms and legs. “Sorry? I’m crazy?”

She burst out laughing. “Relax, you moron. I’m joking with you.”

I laughed fakely. “Good one, Crimson.”

“But I’m serious about you being all about the killing,” she continued, pursing her lips for a moment. “Please, just this once, can we all focus on one goal together? Whatever the objective is, let’s focus on that and avoid as much bloodshed as possible?”

I considered her words for a moment, and I didn’t think her point was entirely reasonable because regardless we would probably have to kill people in a bloodsport, but still, I nodded. “Okay. I’ll listen.”

“Good,” she said. Then she leaned in close (close enough to where I could smell the sweat off of her) and said with a throaty, conspiratorial whisper: “Witch of the West.” She beamed.

I did, too.