Eva had paused. “I’ve had worse.”
Pink carried her own case, a doctor’s bag full of medigel, bandages, splints, quick-casts, a fresh roll of Everseal with its cheerful Grippy the Seal logo, and the disassembled parts of her sniper rifle, Anthia. At Eva’s insistence, she had also included a nanoscalpel and a small pistol, though she had insisted on bringing a range extender for it.
Yeon-ha waited for them at the back door, clapping with glee when they saw Min’s bot. “I love it!” they said. “It’s so different from Daltokki, but still pink.”
“Totally 4D,” Min agreed. “I can’t wait to hit things with it.”
Sue ducked her head shyly at the compliments, hiding in Gustavo more than usual.
They headed for the designated waiting area, the crowds parting to allow them through. Fights had already begun, and an assortment of other bots milled around or rested on transport platforms, or in one case were being put together from a stack of boxes. There were remote-controlled models, like Min’s, and mechs like Sue’s, but no one else seemed daring—or foolish—enough to opt for Eva’s approach. The buzz of conversation was almost louder than the clashing of metal on metal and the discordant music from the band, which was still playing off in the background, and between that and the smells of grease and ozone and soldering fumes, Eva was working on a wicked headache.
“So you finally showed up,” Miles said, the crowd parting around him.
Eva’s headache immediately intensified. “I know you were hoping I wouldn’t, since we’re going to kick your ass so hard,” she said.
“Well, actually, I can’t wait to show you what a real fight looks like.” He gestured at Nara and the black-haired man from earlier, who flanked him. “Nara and Jei are going to be on my team, as a little test for them.”
“Test?” Eva raised her eyebrow at Nara, whose expression was hidden behind her shiny black armor. Jei frowned but said nothing.
“Not your problem.” Miles smirked and made a show of examining Eva and her team. “I only see two fighters here. Where’s your third?”
Eva gestured at the briefcase Vakar held. “I’m the third.”
“Is that Protean armor?” Miles laughed. “This is going to be fun. You’ve got a shitty mech, a bot that looks like it was built from scraps, and that death trap. I’m not even going to have to tag in.”
Eva didn’t dignify his taunting with a response. Let him be surprised when Min beats him like an egg, she thought.
Meanwhile, Sue had climbed out of Gustavo and approached Jei with an awkward smile.
“Hi,” she said. “I’m Sue. I really like your arm cannon. Is that modular?”
“Why do you want to know?” Jei asked coldly.
Sue blushed and fiddled with a pocket of her jumpsuit. “Sorry, I was just curious. I didn’t mean to—”
“Keep your curiosity to yourself,” he said.
Sue’s expression fell, and the pink of her cheeks darkened. “Rusty buckets, you don’t have to be such a jerk about it.”
“You don’t have to work for a cowardly murderer, and yet you do,” he replied. “So which of us is the ‘jerk’ then?”
“You are,” Min said, stepping in front of Sue, eyes wide with an anger Eva had never seen before. “Eat taffy, you little shit.”
Eva’s neck heated up, and she turned her full attention to Jei even as he shifted away so that he was clearly ignoring Min and Sue. Did she know him? He didn’t look familiar, or rather, he looked like plenty of humans she had met over the years. And she had killed enough people that running into someone with a grudge wasn’t unbelievable. But what exactly was he referring to?
Does it matter? she thought. He’s not wrong, and you know it, and that’s part of the shit sandwich you have to eat every day until you die. So stop whining and start chewing.
“Don’t worry about him,” Eva said. “We’re here to deal with Miles, find out what he knows, and get Josh back.”
Sue nodded grimly, narrowing her eyes and clenching her jaw even as Min rubbed her arm. She climbed back into her mech, her tiny bots swarming over her like a personal pit crew, and Eva wished for a moment that someone so sweet had never been dragged into a life like this.
That was life, though, always dragging people around who didn’t deserve it.
Min shot one more nasty look at Jei, then perked up. “Okay, team,” she said, clapping her hands. “We’re slotting in for a special time since there was already a championship fight planned for the end of the night. Yeon-ha says this is modified three-on-three rules, so we have to stay alert, keep an eye on the back line, and move quickly during tag-ins. Got it?”
“Not even slightly,” Eva said. “What are the rules?”
Min deflated a little, but recovered. “So it’s three of us against three of them,” she said. She gestured at the pit as she spoke, pointing at the various bots already inside and engaged in their own battles. “One person from each team fights at a time, but you can swap out whenever you want. Like if you need to make quick repairs or something, so you don’t get knocked out.”
“Knocked out, as in thrown outside the fighting area?” Sue asked, watching the fight nervously.
“Sometimes,” Min said. One of the bots in the pit grabbed another one and ripped its arm off, then whacked it into the translucent energy fence. It fell to the floor and didn’t move again.
“Oh,” Sue said, slipping slightly lower inside Gustavo.
“The match ends when time is up, or when an entire team is knocked out,” Min continued. “If everyone on both teams is still able to fight when the timer goes off, there’s a sudden-death round.”
“Sudden death?” Sue asked, her face pale as bleached protein powder.
“Sue, por favor,” Eva said. “This isn’t the first time you’ve fought worse things that were definitely trying to kill you.”
“But this is regulated! And people are watching.”
“Sudden death means you go until someone is knocked out,” Min interjected. “It’s not real death.” Behind her, a small bot exploded, spraying parts against the fence. The audience roared.
“Bueno, we hit them until they stop moving and we win,” Eva said. “Anything else we need to know?”
Min tapped her cheek thoughtfully. “You can pretty much do what you want, as long as your weapons are street legal. It’s good to play to the crowd if you can, so if a referee needs to jump in, they’re more likely to be on your side.”
“You mean like if someone does that?” Eva asked.
One of the back-row bots had snuck forward and landed a punch on the opponent its teammate was fighting, then jumped back into place as if nothing had happened. The bot on the opposing back row made a petulant squealing noise, and its operator shouted at a man wearing a pink uniform that looked like an old-fashioned karate gi—the referee, presumably. They argued briefly, and the fight stalled, until the referee pointed up and the operator followed his finger.
Leaning over the edge of a balcony was a human with long, blond hair wearing an impressively large black hat and a brass-buttoned jacket cut like a corset at the top. Her right eye was covered by a strip of fabric, while her left was dark, and the expression on her olive-skinned face conveyed the kind of disinterest that would at any moment become interest sharp enough to cut bone.