Theaella

21

Placing one Original S.W.A.T. boot on the back of Raffi’s head, he firmed his grip on the belt and jerked back.

A crackle as the vertebrae gave.

Raffi twitched. And then he didn’t.

Matthew scooped up his ARES and surveyed the mess of a conference room, his shoulders bowed, catching his breath. The noose of the belt dangled from one fist.

The phone continued to ring, but Matthew saw now that the cords had all snapped free when Yeznig had hurled the table at him.

Something moved in his peripheral vision—Vincent’s hand reaching for a gun?—and Matthew swept the ARES over and fired through Vincent’s heart. But the corpse absorbed the round without complaint.

Another ring and something moved again on Vincent’s chest.

A cell phone inched further into view, worming up out of his breast pocket.

Matthew recognized the rectangular slab of technology as a Turing Phone. Boasting end-to-end encryption on a security-geared operating system, it was engineered out of a rare alloy of zirconium, aluminum, silver, copper, and nickel, marketed under the comic-book name Liquidmorphium. It was physically unbreakable, un like the RoamZone, whose broken pieces were jabbing Matthew’s thigh through his cargo pants.

Matthew fished the Turing Phone out of Vincent’s rumpled shirt.

It would do for now. At least until he got back to the Vault and replaced the shrapnel in his pocket with a new RoamZone.

Given Jack’s circumstances Matthew had to be reachable at all times, so he thumbed off a text to Jack: THIS IS ME. USE THIS NUMBER IN CASE OF EMERGENCY.

Then he pocketed the Turing. He was just about to rethread his belt through the loops when shouts rained in from the lobby door, the no-neck brigade arriving in force. Through the glass wall, Matthew saw two of the bouncers breach the lobby, no doubt in response to the commotion.

Putting his back to them, he raised the ARES and shot out the one-way window. Ducking through the shower of glass and holstering his pistol, he jogged toward the cafeteria and the rear gate beyond.

As he neared, a pair of bouncers spilled around either side of the cafeteria, walkie-talkies to their faces, blocking Matthew’s way. They spotted Matthew and froze.

He had blood on his shirt and a noose-shaped belt in one hand.

Conspicuous.

They sprinted at him.

He shot a glance over his shoulder. The other bouncers emerged through the shattered maw of the window onto the walkway. They looked stunned from the violent aftermath they’d witnessed inside. And they looked angry.

He didn’t want to kill them.

Holstering his ARES, he spun back around. The men pinched in at him from both directions.

Directly ahead, no more than twenty yards away, the side door of the cafeteria lay open. The gunfire had spurred a flurry of panicked movement inside. Most of the gamblers stood in the bleachers, confused, but a few were already running, strobing across the doorway.

He sprinted for it.

The bouncers closed in around him. He snapped the belt to the side, the buckle smacking a meaty chin and causing the others to veer and duck.

Without slowing his momentum, he flew through the doorway.

As soon as he cleared the threshold, he clipped the shoulder of a hulking guy in a biker jacket. Muscle and leather, undentable. Physics assigned them the roles of bumper and pinball.

Matthew felt himself go weightless, the floor scanning by several feet below.

He hit the polished floorboard in a spin and slid a few feet. He’d just rotated around to see the gaping pit in the floor before he was weightless again, falling ten feet into the fighting arena. Impact jarred the breath out of him. Dirt in his eyes, under his nails. Grit against his chin, his cheek. The smell of musk, feces, and blood.

The bouncers appeared at the lip, leaning over Matthew. They were laughing, which did not strike him as good news. Beyond them loomed the jeering gamblers in the bleachers.

The dirt was moist, warm, sticky. When Matthew lifted his hand, his palm came up bright red with blood. Not his own.

The crowd roared. Feet stomped vociferously on bleachers.

And he heard growling coming from either side of him.

He swung his heavy head and blinked through the tangle of his bangs.

The scene down here took a moment to assemble.

Near the dirt wall by a knotted rope ladder stood a man with a bald crown, a horseshoe of stringy hair curtaining his shoulders. His gut bulged out between his dirt-stained T-shirt and tattered sweatpants. He held an empty syringe in each hand.

Not a fighter.

Matthew blinked again, trying to clear his head.

There was a stainless-steel transport crate just in front of him.

And another behind him.

Each crate was ventilated with narrow slits through which he could see a creature snarling violently, cords of saliva dangling from scarred pink jowls, yellow eyes bulging with steroidal rage.

And each cage had a guillotine door on the end.

Tied to the top of each guillotine door was a rope that stretched up out of the arena and looped around a suspended pulley.

That’s when it dawned on Matthew.

Vincent hadn’t been running a street-fighting ring.

He’d been running a dogfighting ring.

The man who’d administered the steroid shots to the dogs finished hoisting himself up the knotted rope ladder and out of the pit.

He looked down at Matthew from the rim. A carpenter’s belt hung around his waist, filled with the tools of the trade. One of the bouncers grabbed the man’s arm. Matthew couldn’t hear his words over the hyped-up crowd but he could read the bouncer’s lips.

Do it.

The man dropped the syringes and grabbed the ends of the ropes.

There was a screech of metal against metal as the guillotine doors lifted in unison and the animals shot free.

Living Plaything

From both directions the dogs flew at Matthew, barrels of muscle tapering to bared fangs. One looked to be a pit bull–mastiff mix, the other a bully kutta with leopard spots and cropped ears. Their heads and chests bore scars from battles past.

Each was easily 180 pounds.