The mat was wet. Not from sweat but blood
He stepped over the last man's twitching foot and walked back to the chalk line, the iron door clanging shut behind him. The arena roared. High above, in the blacked-out dome of Kajlamas' Sector-9 fight pit, the spectators thumped boots on iron railings. Their screams were muffled through the layered mesh and bone-clad armor of the guards lining the ring, rifles hanging uselessly on their backs. No one interrupted a fight here. Especially not his.
He rolled his left shoulder once. Felt the tendon slide wrong. Didn't matter.
Across the ring, a new fighter was already coming through the grate. Young. Built thick, but not trained. Flashy tattoos, no scars. No hesitation. That was dangerous. He carried confidence like a borrowed blade.
The announcer barked something over the cracked loudspeakers. He didn't hear it. Didn't care. No one called him by name anymore.
They called him "the Gray Thing".
The bell cracked once, deep and low like steel hitting bone.
The kid came fast.
Jab-jab step cross. He read it. Let the first two punches skim air, tilted his chin out to bait the third. It came exactly where he wanted it. He slipped inside, elbow up, and let the momentum slam into the sharp ridge of his brow.
*Crunch*
Not his nose. The kid's hand. Metacarpals broke first. Sounded like popcorn cracking under pressure. The kid flinched his first mistake.
The second was blinking.
Gray stepped in. Left hook to the liver *thunk*. The kid buckled forward. He raised his arms to cover his head. Wrong move.
Knee. Left. Right. Elbow. Shoulder bump. Step out. Back kick to the knee.
The rhythm wasn't flashy. It was ugly. Functional. Brutal.
The kid went down. But not out. Tried to crawl. Gray let him.
Someone from the edge of the pit shouted, "Kill him already, ghost!"
He didn't.
Instead, he walked up behind the fighter, hooked his forearm under the throat, pulled back just enough to cut blood not air.
The kid thrashed once. Twice. Then stopped.
When he let go, the boy hit the floor face-first.
Breathing. Not dead.
The crowd groaned. Some booed. One threw a stim bottle into the ring. It bounced, rolled, leaked orange serum.
He didn't look up.
He sat alone in the fighters' corridor. The walls sweated. Rust bled down pipes like old war wounds. Somewhere, a generator coughed and buzzed like a drowning man.
He touched the spot above his ribs. The kick had glanced there last night. Bone was bruised. Not broken. Stillwhen he inhaled, the air felt like it tore.
The guard who always brought his earnings came late tonight.
When he arrived, he tossed the plastic cred-chit like it was trash.
"VIP's weren't impressed. Said you held back. You're not here to make friends. Next time finish."
Gray said nothing. Took the chit. Stood.
The guard didn't block the way, but leaned just enough to suggest he could.
Gray looked at him. One second. Two.
The guard stepped back.
He walked past.
The fighter's dorms were a long row of welded cots and concrete piss-tubes. Someone had died three beds down two nights ago. No one cleaned it. They just dragged the body out and put a fresh blanket on the mattress.
He didn't sleep there.
Instead, he went to the back maintenance stairwell. Climbed. No one followed him. No one ever did.
On the fourth floor, where the power flickered and no cameras were placed, there was a broken viewing grate. You could see the arena from above through the mesh. But more importantly, you could hear the breathing. The crowd didn't breathe like men. They breathed like predators.
He liked that. It made sense.
When he crouched there, with his back against the wall and one knee up, he felt something that wasn't peace but something like stillness.
Tonight, that stillness broke.
He heard a voice behind him. Not loud. Not sharp.
"Gray."
He turned.
The girl stood at the edge of the light. Black jacket. Torn at the collar. Her boots were civilian but reinforced with scrap-metal plates. Hair buzzed uneven. Eyes wide. Not afraid. Not stupid either.
He didn't speak.
She stepped forward. One foot. Then another.
"You don't remember me," she said.
He didn't blink.
She didn't wait.
"You were twelve. CrimsonRay. I saw you kill a beast with a stone."
Now he blinked.
The girl smiled. Not with her mouth with her grief.
Then she said, "Someone's coming. Not for a fight. For you."
She tossed a square of synth-paper. It fluttered in the stale air and landed by his foot. A name burned across the screen:
Ertelyom Recon Blacklist: CR-05
And under it
Status: Termination Bounty Active