The finals of the electoral tournament ran up on us. The way the bracket shook out, the Technol candidate, the Scarlet Titan’s meathead orca Gleurah was set to face off against our demon-winged buddy, Tatsu Shin Be, who represented the Quiet Storm and her Heavenly Contrail backers.

  On the other side of the bracket, it was Warcry versus a slate gray alien named Shishi, with stony skin and a face like one of those Chinese foo dogs. Like Warcry, Shishi had an Entropic affinity, Smoldering Pride. He also happened to be the Jianjiao candidate’s champion.

  Given the Dragons’ alliance with the Jianjiao, the best-case scenario would have been the Jianjiao champ dominating one side of the bracket and the Dragon champ tearing up the other, so that they met each other in the final match. Then no matter who won, the alliance still would have taken control of Selk’s monarchy—at least until the gang war was over and everybody in the Big Five turned on each other again. But sometime during bracket creation, a Technol must have put their foot on the scale to make sure the Dragons and the Jianjiao would eliminate each other to get to the championship.

  Shishi, the Jianjiao’s champ, turned out to have two IFC titles under his belt. He and Warcry had never fought before; the guy was almost forty years Warcry’s senior, so they’d never been in the same division at the same time. But Warcry had grown up watching his fights, so he was familiar with his style, and every paparazzi bot and supporter from his unofficial Selk bigwigs fan club bombarded him with questions about the upcoming bout, so it wasn’t like he could tune out who his opponent was going to be.

  “I guess that blows your go-in-blind strategy out of the water,” I told him after what felt like the thousandth mob-style press conference of the week.

  “It’s an attitude, not a blanket rule,” Warcry said. “The point is not to set anything in stone, ain’t it? You go in thinking he’ll throw this combo, so you’ll hit that counter—then what do you do when he don’t throw it? Best to leave the strategies for the moment. Fight your fight, do whatever you have to do to shut his down.” He frowned. “You’re actually well skilled at that.”

  “Pretty easy to find the shutdown switch with Death Spirit,” I said. “Although, it’s more of a candle.”

  Warcry’s lip snarled up. “Get that murder grab outta your skull for once, will ya? I meant fighting your fight. You’ve got that instinct to refuse whatever game your opponent lays out for you. Sure, it’s gonna get us all killed when Takeshi finds out you’re messing about with his grand plans. But you got to respect it all the same.”

  ***

  So far during this tournament, Warcry had been up at gray tide every morning to get breakfast and mentally prep for his bout or head for training. But the morning of the finals matchup, he didn’t obnoxiously barge into my room to tell me to get ready because we were leaving.

  At twenty minutes past, I knocked on the adjoining door.

  “Dude, are you up yet?” I called through the crack.

  Blankets rustled, Bodhi started crying, and Warcry cussed.

  I cringed. I hadn’t realized the baby had stayed with Warcry overnight. In between their blow-ups, Warcry and Hyla had sort of worked out a back-and-forth schedule for who watched Bodhi when. I’d thought he was supposed to be with Hyla right then, but I must have gotten mixed up.

  “Be out in ten, grav,” Warcry yelled. “Wait for me in the hall. And shut that door, yeah?”

  Instead of heading out into the hall, I shut the door and flopped onto my bed. I was just going to close my eyes for a couple minutes while Warcry got ready.

  I think it was the sudden loss of forward momentum that got me. You could keep running forever if you never stopped, but knowing I had ten minutes to kill…

  “Bleedin’ hell, grav, what’re you, sleeping one off?”

  I snorted and lurched up, wiping drool off my cheek.

  At the foot of the bed, Warcry glared down his broken nose at me.

  “Come knocking at my door and you can’t even stay awake.” He jerked his head at the exit. “Let’s stroll. We got a schedule to keep, don’t we.”

  “Right, I’m the one who wasn’t on time,” I muttered.

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  As I got up, my Winchester buzzed a reminder for a message I hadn’t heard come in. I checked it in the hall. Our boots clunked on the carpet as we started toward the elevators.

  “Kest’s got some kind of big candidates breakfast this morning. She says she’ll meet us at the kokugikan.”

  Warcry snorted. “Dodged a bullet there. Probably all dainty spacemoth food.”

  “Wait.” I stopped and did a double-take. Warcry was empty-handed. “What about Bodhi? Did you, like, forget you’re not supposed to leave babies alone?”

  Beet red filled in Warcry’s face. He glared at the painting over my shoulder like it might have a comeback hidden in the brushstrokes.

  Behind us, the door to his room opened.

  Hyla leaned out in an oversized t-shirt. Bodhi was asleep on her shoulder.

  “Forgot this, you prat.”

  She chucked Warcry his loaner HUD.

  The corner of his mouth lifted as he snatched it out of the air.

  “Thanks, lovey.”

  She scoffed. “Don’t look for me at the fight, lovey. I’m leaving today.”

  For a split-second, Warcry’s face caved like he’d taken a shot to the solar plexus. But he recovered fast.

  “Thanks for the warning,” he growled. “I’ll check me USL to make sure I can cover whatever you’re planning to nick on your way out.”

  Then he prowled off toward the elevators.

  Hyla raised one perfect eyebrow at me and cocked her hip.

  “What, did I stun you speechless with my sweet disposition, Death cultivator?” She jerked her chin at Warcry’s retreating form. “Jog on, you mad waster. Go do your job and guard your lad.”

  It was right on the tip of my tongue to tell her to back off Warcry. But I knew the look in her cat eyes. I’d seen it a million times in the mirror back on Earth. Mine wasn’t hidden under exotic space-elf beauty, but it was equally impossible to reason with.

  So I caught up to Warcry.

  “Not a word, grav.”

  I put up my hands like I hadn’t been planning on talking, then thumbed the elevator button.

  “But if I was going to say a word—”

  “How many teeth are you itching to lose today?”

  “—or even a few words in a row, I’d say I think you’re making progress.”

  The elevator dinged, and the doors rolled open.

  Warcry shoved in and leaned against one wall.

  I hit the button for the restaurant on the roof, then took a spot on the back wall.

  The doors slid closed. The heaviness that always comes with an elevator rising pushed down on my knees and shoulders, but in a way that was gentle enough that you could tell this was a high-class elevator, not one of those junky metal boxes in some cheap outer planet dive.

  I assumed the subject was closed, but after a second, Warcry spoke up.

  “There ain’t no progress with her. If she lets you take a step forward, it’s so she can sweep the knee.”

  I stared straight ahead at the elevator buttons, watching one light up after another.

  “Sometimes you get too good at fighting everybody,” I said. “You think if you let your guard down for even a second, they’ll tear you apart. Even people who might like you look like they’re setting up a punch.”

  Silently, Warcry studied the grain patterns in the elevator’s polished driftwood floor.

  I shrugged. “Anyway, she told me to hurry up and go watch your back. Maybe that means she’s worried about you.”

  We rose a few numbers in silence.

  “I lost me leg when I was thirteen,” Warcry said. “Accident touring one of Ma’s factories, playing the good offspring for the investors. Boiler fell and crushed the thing to paste.

  “What nobody understands about Emmie Thompson or any of the original Meat Roaches is they didn’t have nothing before the uprising. The ones still breathing think everything they got’ll all be gone tomorrow, yeah? So no matter how much she gets her hands on, she has to hoard it. We’re living in a bleedin’ gated mansion, with every cove in the system envying us, but she don’t allow air con in the summer and barely turned on the heat in the winter. We ate the same trash scraps the company stores sold, drank the same polluted water from the factory refiners. She had three luxury transports, but she walked everywhere. Unless she couldn’t, then she complained about the price of fuel. Millions in every one of her USL accounts, grav. Billions total. Forget Golden Week presents. ‘Be glad you got food in your belly and no Ylef boot on your neck’—that was my birthday present every year.”

  “It has to be some sort of mental illness thing, right?” I said, wondering why he was telling me this. “Back on Earth, there were people like that who had lived through hard times. They couldn’t get past it.”

  Warcry nodded. “Don’t make sense to anybody but Ma, but that’s just how she is. When me leg was crushed, I near died of infection ’coz she wouldn’t spring for the antibiotics the healer prescribed. The woman owns fifty mass market distilleries, and she wouldn’t buy one bottle of antibiotics to save her ugly little scag.

  “I burnt the infection off myself, as much outta spite as Spirit. Advanced to Ten in the middle of the whole sick mess. Some coves make a big deal out of that, living instead of giving up when I lost the leg. Like I should’ve at least considered never training again. But it never crossed me mind, ’coz I knew Hyla was waiting at the gym, ready to beat me arse whether I was standing on one leg or two. I couldn’t quit. I hadn’t defeated her yet.

  “And when I did come back… Every step of the way on that trash prosthetic, that I bought myself ’coz Ma wouldn’t or couldn’t shell out the credits for it, Hyla was there. Provoking me. Keeping me moving. Getting faster, getting stronger, so I had to double up on effort just to keep her from leaving me behind.

  “Come to find out, a green-haired factory orphan had been shooed away from loitering around the gates of Thompson Estate multiple times while I was down. Broke a groundskeeper’s wrist when he tried to hold her ’til the factory coppers showed up.” He snorted. “She’s always been a vicious bird. Even disregarding the head games.”

  The elevator lurched to a stop and let out a low ding.

  “But if you can get inside her guard…” Warcry grinned like he’d forgotten I was there.

  The panels started to slide open. He shook his head and pushed away from the wall.

  “Anyhow, if she thinks she can make me tap out now, she’s out of her bleedin’ mind, ain’t she?”