Death Cultivator

by eden Hudson

  “No.” I grimaced at how harsh that had come out. “Sorry, I don’t think I can keep anything down right now.” Very carefully, I massaged the ice pick stabbing into my skull. “And we need to stay. If we leave, Warcry doesn’t have anyone supporting him.”

  “Whether we’re here or not won’t have any bearing on his fights,” Kest said.

  “That’s not the point.” But with the concussion I was having a hard time figuring out the words to explain what the point was.

  Rali frowned down at me. “I hate to say this, but I agree with the Death cultivator.”

  “Fine,” Kest said after a second. “We’ll stay and watch and keep an eye on anyone who’s also entered in the riot bracket.”

  Now that I’d been eliminated, I wasn’t allowed to stay on the arena floor, so I followed the twins up to the spectator seating. The kokugikon didn’t have those fold-down seats like a stadium on Earth; it was all tiered floorspace where you could sit or kneel on wide, cushy mats separated into bed-sized rectangles by low railings. We found an open rectangle big enough for the three of us about halfway up and settled in.

  As much as I’d wanted to win, it was also pretty cool to watch the other fights. I saw a lot of combos I wanted to try and a lot of mistakes I wanted to avoid. Warcry won his next two rounds like they were nothing. He looked like a redheaded Tony Jaa taking down kindergartners, and the crowd was going nuts for him.

  Eventually, Kest forgot about her plan to watch the riot bracket competitors and got caught up in Warcry’s opponents, reading their profiles to Rali and me and analyzing the strategies he could use to win. It was interesting, but I couldn’t absorb a lot of it. The haze from the concussion was starting to get better, but I still had trouble focusing on what she was saying.

  Rali wasn’t paying attention to his sister or the fights. He’d gotten Kest to buy these pita-style wraps from a seller working the crowd and spent all of round seven infusing one with Spirit.

  “You don’t have to miss the matches to do that for me,” I said.

  Rali grinned. “I can disapprove of violence with my eyes closed. It’s like I’m protesting this whole display.”

  “Did you guys see this?” Kest turned her wrist over so we could see her HUD. “Everyone on the tournament boards is talking about Warcry. A new arrival making it to the final thirty-six fighters—and not just a new arrival, but a human. They’re saying there’s no way he doesn’t get recruited.”

  “Yeah, but that’s not an actual Big Five guy making an offer,” I said, thinking of the Ylef I couldn’t remember fighting who’d made it to the final ten the previous year and still hadn’t gotten an affiliation. “It’s all just speculation.”

  In front of us, a catfish guy twisted around and hooked an arm over the low railing around his seating cushion.

  “You might be surprised how accurate the tournament board chatter is,” he said, long whiskers twitching. “General popularity plays into many of the Big Five recruiters’ plans. That’s a key reason they open the tournaments to spectators and broadcast the fights, to see what sort of talk it stirs up.”

  Kest wasn’t buying it. “Not for the money?”

  The catfish made the same kind of croaking sound catfish on Earth do out of water. It took me a second to realize he was chuckling.

  “The money doesn’t hurt, either,” he said.

  While he and Kest talked about Big Five marketing strategy, I studied the guy. I couldn’t tell whether this was the same catfish I’d seen on the platform the night before. He wore regular street clothes, not a pinstriped gangster suit, and he was up close instead of watching creepily from afar. But he must’ve been listening to our conversation to have come in when he did, so watching creepily wasn’t out of the question for him.

  “Here,” Rali said, handing me one of the infused pita wraps. “Eat this.”

  “Thanks.” I took one cautious bite, realized I was starving, then scarfed the whole thing in about two seconds. The soft bread, savory meat, and cooling sauce really hit the spot, and Rali’s Healing Restoration cleared up the last of the concussion.

  Down on the arena floor, round seven was starting. The catfish turned back around to watch, and we leaned forward in our seats.

  Warcry was up against the Ylef I’d lost to. They bowed to each other, then took their fighting stances. The Ylef formed his hammers, and Warcry’s whole body burst into flames.

  I remembered to trigger my Ki-sight just in time. Without it, I wouldn’t have been able to see anything but a blur.

  As soon as the official’s hand dropped, Warcry and the Ylef exploded at each other. The glass hammers refracted the light from Warcry’s flames as they fought back and forth across the cage. Warcry slipped every shot the Ylef swung at him. The Ylef blocked every kick Warcry threw.

  Beside me, Kest shook her head. “He’s got to stop that. The joint of the PR-168-L isn’t made to take that kind of impact.”

  “That’s his go-to move,” I said. “The big roundhouse with his prosthetic. It’s too effective not to use. Trust me, I’ve been hit with it a lot.”

  “But his opponent has Glass Spirit. It’s similar to the other ore and mineral Elemental supertypes in that he’ll see the breakage planes—”

  Before she could finish the thought, one of Warcry’s burning fists found an opening. Instead of dodging, the Ylef sent a huge amount of reinforcement to his jaw where the punch was going to land and swung both his hammers down on the prosthetic’s knee joint.

  Even with the Spirit fortifying the Ylef’s face, Warcry’s punch spun him around.

  But the Ylef’s double-shot caved in Warcry’s knee joint. The hammers shattered, exploding like a bomb.

  I winced as Warcry caught a thigh, groin, and stomach full of glass shrapnel. He folded over, hop-hobbling as he tried to stay standing. The Ylef darted in and slammed a forearm into Warcry’s chest as he swept the redhead’s good leg.

  Warcry crashed onto his back, coughing up blood.

  The place went so quiet that I could hear the official yell, “Match!”

  The crowd lost their minds. I thought my eardrums were going to burst with all that noise.

  Down in the cage, Warcry’s head and shoulders blazed with red fire. He wiped the blood off his mouth with his arm, then turned over. I thought he was going to get up and go after the Ylef while the guy was facing the crowd, but Warcry didn’t. He didn’t even spit.

  He pushed up onto his real knee, put his fists at his sides, and bowed to the Ylef.

  “Wow,” Kest said.

  “No kidding,” I said.

  Rali smiled. “A true warrior.”

  Warcry dragged his glass-shot body out of the cage and fell against the wall in a bloody heap. He was definitely in worse shape than I was after my fight with the Ylef. I’d been unconscious, but I hadn’t taken a ton of glass shards below the belt. Even from way up where we were sitting, you could see he was really struggling to keep it together.

  I stood up. “Better go give the true warrior a hand.”

  Narrow Escape

  WARCRY WASN’T HAPPY about me helping him, but he didn’t put up a fight when I shrugged his arm over my shoulder and got him to the hallway off the arena floor. He was pale and sweaty, and his skin felt kind of cold, so I figured he probably didn’t have the strength right then to be a jerk about it.

  One of the kokugikon staffers stopped us as I was half-dragging him toward the exit.

  “If he dies off the arena floor, that doesn’t count toward disqualification of his opponent,” she said.

  I looked at her like she was crazy. “Okay.”

  “And just so you know, implant-swapping won’t work. Before they’re signed, all Big Five recruits are required to pass scans to prove their workup matches the body scans from tournament registration.”

  “Cool.” I tried to steer Warcry around her, but she got in front of us.

  “I also have your picture.” She tapped her thick-framed glasses. The right
lens glared red for a second. “If he turns up dead on the street, I’ll know who to send the Peacemakers after.”

  Warcry raised his head long enough to give her a bloody grin.

  “Oi, lovey, this grav couldn’t kill me with a poisoned razor wire garotte and a ten-minute head start. He’s one of me lads, so don’t worry about it.”

  We started toward the exit again.

  “Once you step outside the kokugikon doors—”

  “It’s my responsibility,” Warcry said, lurching forward and almost dragging me down with him. I shuffled him back up onto my shoulder, drawing a pained grunt. “This ain’t my first tournament. I know all about the liability shift. Now, if you don’t mind pissing off, I’m gonna go leak the rest of this blood somewhere besides your nice clean floor.”

  She scowled, but finally got out of the way long enough for me to get Warcry through the door.

  “Bleedin’ hell.” He winced. “I can’t make it all the way back to the hotel like this, grav. Drop me somewhere while I heal. Moving keeps tearing stuff open. I can feel it.”

  “Okay, just a sec.” I started toward a niche in the wall where we hopefully wouldn’t get stepped on by all the spectators flooding in to watch the last few rounds of the day. I was about to ease Warcry to the ground when I caught sight of a familiar bowler hat and pair of huge gray ghost arms.

  “Crap,” I whispered, pulling him back up.

  Warcry grunted in pain. “You busted in the head, grav? What’re you doing?”

  I turned us toward the far exit. “It’s the Bailiff.”

  Luckily, the Bailiff was headed in the opposite direction. I recognized a few familiar backs beside him—Ripper and the other OSS hooligans he’d been training for the small gang riot.

  Warcry choked, then cleared his throat and spat a wad of blood onto the tile floor. People shot him dirty looks as we passed.

  “You sure?” he asked.

  “Are bowler hats and ghost arms pretty common in this world?”

  He let out a string of cuss words that I agreed with.

  “New plan,” I said. “We’ll get outside, then I’ll message the twins to let them know to get out of the building. Straight back to the hotel, then lay low and figure out what to do about tomorrow.”

  We beelined out the south exit and waited for the twins there.

  Warcry turned his HUD notifications on loud and kept checking his messages in spite of the fact that he could barely lift his arm off the concrete beside him. The thing was beeping like crazy, a new message every five seconds.

  I glanced down at the screen as he scrolled through messages. They were everything from people drooling over his fights to trash-talking him for losing.

  He let out a wet exhale, disgusted. “Now’d be the perfect time for a Big Five offer to pop up. Get the Bailiff off our backs.”

  “Yours, anyway,” I said.

  His eyes narrowed. “I’d have some sway, wouldn’t I. We’d negotiate something for you three.”

  Kest showed up a few minutes later and, without even asking, went to work repairing Warcry’s mangled prosthetic.

  “I can get it functional, but you won’t be fighting on it anymore,” she said. “You really need a newer model. I could build you a new one, but that’ll take time. Or I know a smuggler who could get you a quality improvement from off-planet.”

  Warcry scowled down at the crushed knee joint. “This hunk of trash got me through two age divisions in the IFC.”

  “You can be sentimental or you can equip yourself to win,” Kest said. “I don’t think you can do both.”

  “Kest, where’s Rali?” I asked. “We need to get moving.”

  “He had me order from the concession stand on my way out, then went to pick it up. He should be here soon. The lines weren’t that long.”

  I scrubbed my hand down my face and prayed he’d hurry up. We had to get out of there.

  I couldn’t sit still with the Bailiff so close, so I paced and kept an eye out while Kest heated and hammered and welded. Warcry’s constant HUD beeps grated on my nerves, but he kept checking the messages and cussing every time they still weren’t from one of the Big Five.

  Finally Rali came around the corner with a bag of flower-shaped sugar candies. He gave the bag a shake, then tossed it to Warcry.

  “These should move the script healing along enough to stop the worst of—” He gestured to Warcry’s shredded middle section and grimaced. “—that. I can’t promise you’ll ever be a father, though.”

  “Cheers.” Warcry upended the bag into his mouth. When the healing boost kicked in, he flopped back against the building and shut his eyes in relief. “I knew I liked you, big man.”

  Rali chuckled. “I knew you did, too.”

  “That’s as good as it’s going to get,” Kest said, sitting back on her heels. “It won’t bend, but it should support your weight.”

  Rali and I each grabbed one of Warcry’s hands and helped him up. The repairs held, and we limped the heck out of there.

  When we made it back to the room, everybody collapsed—Rali across the twins’ bed, Warcry on his, and me on the couch. A little electric charge shot through me when Kest dropped onto the couch beside me. Not close enough that we were touching, but not all the way down at the other end, either. If not for the Bailiff, I probably could’ve spent the whole night trying to decipher whether that meant she like-liked me or I was just her friend she didn’t mind sitting next to. Unfortunately, I couldn’t, which gave me one more reason to hate that brush-toothed jerk.

  “We need to figure out what to do about tomorrow,” I said. “The Bailiff will know Warcry and I were in the individual tournament, and they’ll see the three of us in the riot bracket.” A new thought occurred to me. “They’ll be in it. That’s what Ripper’s crew has been training for this whole time.”

  Kest’s hair swished against the back of the couch as she shook her head.

  “They’re not on the list of competitors,” she said. “I’ve been watching it all day. Riot bracket registration closed last night at the same time individual registration did.”

  I stared up at the ceiling. “So, did they come in too late to sign up...”

  “Or are they just here to kill us and leave?” Warcry finished.

  “They can’t do anything while we’re in Jade City,” Kest said. “At least not until the tournament’s over. Remember the Technol Shogun’s warning? We’re registered as Hake’s gang, so an attack would be considered rival gang violence.”

  “For some of us,” Rali said, looking pointedly at Warcry.

  I sat forward and leaned my elbows on my knees.

  “Stay at the hotel tomorrow,” I told Warcry. “You don’t have any more fights, so as long as you don’t leave or take off that script-bracer, they won’t be able to find you.”

  He threw up his hands. “You lot’re acting like this blighter cares about warnings. He don’t give a bleedin’ piss because he knows the Technols can only execute him if they can catch him.”

  “They can catch him,” Kest insisted. “There’s nowhere on Van Diemann they can’t find him. Technols have every resource at their fingertips. They’re probably listening to him and his bruisers strategize right now. They’re listening to this conversation for sure. We’ve used every keyword imaginable except ‘murder’ and ‘gang war.’ There. Now they’ve got them all.”

  “The Bailiff’s on Van Diemann, ain’t he?” Warcry said. “He knew he might get caught for whatever job he pulled off-planet, but he did it anyway. He don’t care about consequences.”

  “We’ll get to the arena floor first thing tomorrow,” I said. “Maybe if we stick close to the kokugikon staff until the matches are over, he won’t try anything. And if he does, he’ll have to do it out in the open in front of everybody.”

  Warcry let out a disgusted grunt. “Oughta bleedin’ skip town while we can.”

  “We came here to get an affiliation,” I said. “I lost it for us in the indivi
dual competition. Tomorrow’s our last shot.”

  “You’re willing to gamble their lives on it, are you?” he said, jerking his chin at Kest and Rali.

  I curled my hands into fists. Dead Man’s Hand pulsed in my brain. This wasn’t a gamble. If we had to, if there was absolutely no way out, I could take the Bailiff down. I glanced around at my friends. They didn’t know about it. There was no way they’d all just be sitting there acting like everything was normal if they knew I could kill somebody like blowing out a candle.

  “We can’t go back to Ghost Town,” Kest said in this low, hard voice, “and we don’t have enough credits to buy tickets off this rock. Winning the riot bracket is our only option. We’ll deal with whatever happens when it happens.”

  Rali grinned. “Live or die in the moment. That’s something you can appreciate, Warcry.”

  Restrictions

  I SLEPT ABOUT AS WELL that night as I had the night before. Lots of tossing and turning, lots of nightmares about Kest and Rali getting gunned down in the middle of the kokugikon and me using Dead Man’s Hand on the Bailiff. Except instead of just dying, he erupted in a shower of blood and guts. In the dreams, I was totally fine with that. “You shouldn’t have tried to hurt my friends,” I told the puddle of gore.

  As soon as I heard someone in the hotel room stir, I jolted awake.

  Kest was getting out of bed, her long black hair hanging down around her shoulders. She stretched and scrubbed at her lacy eyes, then headed toward the bathroom.

  She smiled when she saw me pushed up on my elbows.

  “You can go back to sleep,” she whispered. “We don’t have to leave for another couple hours.”

  I nodded, but there was no way I was getting back to sleep. When the bathroom door closed behind her and the water started, I pulled my shirt on—I’d been sleeping in my jeans because it would’ve been too weird to sleep in my underwear with three other people in the room—and went out on the balcony.