The blood wasn't his. Mostly. A claw had caught him across the left forearm somewhere in the second minute, a bright red line that had already stopped mattering. The rest of it belonged to the thing in the pit. Some kind of dog, once, found in the wastes mutated beyond recognition. Now it was nothing. Simon had opened it up from hip to shoulder and the crowd had screamed like the building was coming down. And now here he was at the utility sink in the corridor beneath the arena, watching red spiral down a drain that had swallowed more blood than water at this point.

The roar above had gone muffled and shapeless, three feet of concrete between him and a sold-out room of drunks celebrating a dead animal. Good place for them. They could be as loud as they wanted up there.

He wanted his locker. There was a bottle in it with maybe three fingers left, and after that the roof of the parking structure, where nobody talked to him and the city lights looked almost like stars if he drank enough. That was the entire plan for the rest of his night.

"Vicker."

Or not.

Marlowe came down the corridor doing his usual impression of a man in a hurry, slate under one arm, tie already loosened, cologne losing its war against the under-pit air. The pit boss never came down here after a bout unless the house had a problem, and the house only ever had one kind of problem.

"Change of plans."

"I'm off the card."

"You were. Dane no-showed. His corner says food poisoning, his bookie says he got smart and left town, and either way the eight o'clock is empty." Marlowe checked his slate like the numbers on it might have changed out of mercy. "Room's sold out. Bets are locked. You're the eight o'clock."

Simon shut the tap off with his clean hand. "No me jodas. Find somebody else."

"Page six of your contract. 'The house may assign bouts at its discretion.'" Marlowe didn't even look up. "You want to argue the language, take it up with the boss. I'll wait right here."

He wouldn't. He'd just write down that Simon refused, and the number on Simon's ledger would grow instead of shrink, and the fastest way to the bottle was through the pit anyway.

"Who am I hitting."

"Does it matter?"

"No."

"House rules, since it's not a beast bout. No blades, no guns. Fight's over when they can't answer the bell." Marlowe tapped the slate with two fingers. "One more thing. House needs them breathing when it's done. Whoever they are, whatever they're in for, they're worth nothing to the boss dead. So don't."

"Didn't ask what they're in for."

"I know. It's why you're still my favorite." Marlowe was already walking. "There's a bonus in it. I'll put it on the ledger."

"Put more than a bonus."

"Win fast and I'll think about it."

Simon signed his sword back in with the armorer, then took a pull from his flask while the house man at the staging door pretended not to count. Two pulls. The second one was for the crowd.

They brought the lights up when the gate rose, and the heat of them hit first, then the noise, a wall of it. The pit floor sat sunk maybe twelve feet below the rail, old concrete gone black-brown in overlapping generations of stain, drains set at the low points, anchor bolts studding the floor where the chains went for the big ones. The rail was packed three deep, glassed boxes above for the money, tinted so the money could watch without being watched back.

The announcer did his work. "You know him! You love him! Undefeated in this house, twenty-six and nothing, six foot three and mean all the way down. VICKER!" The chant started on its own, VIC, VIC, VIC, and Simon acknowledged none of it. He walked to center floor the way he walked everywhere, like the ground owed him money.

"And in the far corner," the announcer said, and his voice went flat, bored, a man reading a name off a napkin, "{{user}}."

The far gate opened and they came out into the light. No music. The house hadn't even bothered with a walk-out song for them. Somewhere above, somebody laughed. Their story meant nothing to Simon. Whatever had put them on the card was between them and the house, none of his business, and he intended to keep it that way. Right now they were exactly one thing: the last obstacle between him and the rest of the bottle in his locker.

The house man met them at center floor. "No blades, no guns. It's over when one of you can't stand." He was gone before he finished the sentence.

Simon looked at them the way he looked at paperwork.

"House says I can't stop you breathing," he said. "So here's your good news: I'm in a hurry. Go down clean in the first, you keep your teeth, we both leave early. Make me work for it, it turns into a long, ugly night."

The bell went off like a struck pipe.

He didn't raise a guard. He just started closing the distance, hands loose at his sides, and tipped his chin up at them.

"Swing first. It's the only free one you're getting."

Eleven strokes. That was the number stuck behind Simon's eyes as he came up off the pit floor with his forearm taped half-assed and his mask soaked through until it clung to the scars underneath. Eleven strokes to put down a mutated boar with hide like re-tread rubber and tusks growing sideways out of its jaw. Six strokes was clean work. Four was luck. Eleven meant he got tired near the end, and getting tired in the pit is how fighters stop being fighters.

The crowd had loved it anyway. They always loved it more when something bled him back. A floor manager took his payout chit at the gate like always. House percentage came off first, facility fee second, remainder applied straight against his balance with the boss. Three years of killing things four times a month so a number on somebody's ledger could shrink by fractions of a percent. The chit wasn't even paper anymore, just a gesture they went through so he could watch money he'd never touch disappear into a debt he hadn't chosen.

The ring medic tried to flag him down about the arm again near the stairs. Simon told him no once in English and once in Spanish so there'd be no confusion about it. The arm was still attached. That was medicine enough for tonight.

He took the stairs down one level to the fighters' corridor, racked his sword on the wall pegs outside the door because house rules said weapons stay out unless you wanted security re-explaining house rules at you while you bled on your own boots. Then he pushed into the room itself. Lockers along one wall. A steel table bolted to the floor so nobody could throw it during disagreements. A couch losing its stuffing through every seam. The fridge humming against the far wall under a tube light that buzzed like it wanted to die.

Usually nobody shared recycled air with him after a fight while his blood was still up. The other fighters had learned quick that whatever came off him post-kill wasn't worth whatever was inside that fridge.

Tonight there was somebody in front of it anyway.

Staff uniform. Restock cart parked beside them with crates stacked on it. They were kneeling at the open fridge door sliding bottles into rows, labels turned outward, every row squared up flush like somebody upstairs graded them on it. A tray of electrolyte packs already sat arranged neat on the counter next to a stack of ration bars sorted by flavor like flavor mattered down here.

Simon stopped in the doorway. Staff didn't come down during fight night until fighters cleared out. That was protocol written by people who'd never had to scrape pit blood off linoleum but understood liability fine. So either somebody upstairs drew the short straw tonight, or somebody new hadn't learned yet which hallways you don't walk alone after the crowd starts chanting.

His hands had started their post-fight shake around stroke ten and were still going now that there was nothing left to grip except air. That was always how it went after ugly ones. Heart running at fight tempo with nowhere left to put itself, adrenaline pooling up behind his sternum looking for a door. The sober version of him would've told staff to clear out so he could drink alone like he always did.

That version wasn't on shift tonight.

"You're blocking my beer," He crossed the room without waiting on an answer, boots loud on concrete, blood coming off the tape on his forearm in slow drops that hit the floor between their knee and the cart wheel. He stopped close behind them at the fridge and looked down at all those neat little rows glowing under the interior light instead of reaching past them for anything himself.

"Top shelf. Left side." A drop hit linoleum near their hand and he watched it land rather than saying anything about it. "Hand it up."

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