Page 2 of Caged

The bot, shaped like a centipede, undulates out from under the furniture, and I swear it gives me a side eye.

“What’s for dinner?” it says in Ixor’s voice.

“Fuck off.” I stomp into the tiny food prep area. Swearing at something makes me feel better, even if I’d prefer to be swearing at Ixor.

Chances are he won’t be all that long. He never is when he visits pleasure houses. Which means I have to prepare his food quickly. If I’m lucky, I might get the leftovers.

If I’m unlucky, he’ll have more work for me before the day is done. And where there is a bounty hunter, the work is never going to be palatable, especially for me. There’s no getting away—from Ixor, from Tatatunga, or from Trefa—not as a lone human female, an escaped slave or otherwise.

This is my life. This grotty place and a robot vacuum which talks back. But what other choice do I have?

If I run from him, he will hunt me down and kill me like I’ve seen him do to countless of his marks. If I stay, I’m probably going to die anyway in the crossfire. At least fixing his dinner today means I’ll be alive tomorrow.

And maybe a miracle will happen.

SYLAS

The roar of the crowd is muted as the heavy doors slam shut, cutting off my access to the dome.

“I wasn’t done!” I snarl at the clerk operating the external forcefield which pushed me back into the antechamber. He stares at me with a blank face, then operates the locking mechanism, sealing me in.

“I wasn’t vrexing done!” I bellow.

Green, black, and red drips from my sword and my claws. My wing feathers are covered in body fluids, the vast majority of it not mine. I’m cut in many places. My blood mixing with the rest of what covers me.

I’ll heal.

“Sylas! Get over here!”

I swivel towards the captain, a bulky, scarred old Xnosson bull with one broken horn and many scars on his grizzled hide. I shift the sword in my hand, spinning it as I bare my teeth.

“Gladiator,” he says, the warning tone in his voice lost on me. “Sword down. The games are done for today.”

“I wasn’t done.” I narrow my eyes, calculating if I can get to where he stands and take him out.

The crowd roars again, the sound lifting me up. Making me want more violence.

“Don’t,” he says. “It’s not worth it.”

The blood screaming in my ears abates slightly, enough for some clarity. My nostrils are assaulted with the remnants of the first games of this season. My hearing remains acute enough I can hear the drip-drip of the blood from my sword onto the cold ground. All around me, the world speeds up, as if reality is breaking down the door of what I’ve done.

Rych sits quietly, wings drooped, as a clerk attends to a wound on his shoulder, his pupils already blown with the pleasure drugs he’ll always readily accept for the pain.

“Gladiator Sylas.” The captain is pointing to my usual seat, but it means I have to let go of my sword, and I don’t want to do it, not yet.

If I don’t, I’m going to end up like Blayn who is fighting with the two biggest clerks. They have managed to get on the neck restraint and are wrestling with him back to the cell block. The long poles mean he can’t reach them, but it’s clear he’d snap his spine trying.

His torso sheens with sweat and blood, his wings beating hard as he attempts to lift them clear off the ground, but it’s a battle he’s not going to win, and I hear him shouting incoherently as he is dragged away and a door slams. It’ll be pitch dark, but it won’t stop him raging. Nothing ever does when he’s like this after the first fight of the season.

At the far side of the ante-chamber, Klynn pants hard and glares at nothing, sword dangling from one hand, dagger still clutched in the other. He’s drenched from the shoulders of his wings to his feet in sky knows what, the scent of him abhorrent. Three clerks surround him warily. One darts in to take the weapons, and he lifts his lips to reveal his fangs.

Instantly the hose is turned on him, but if they hoped to drop him, they fail. Instead he simply releases his fighting implements and holds out his wings and arms as if he’s won all the prizes in the dome.

“Where is Maxym?” I growl, the captain getting closer with three of the most vicious clerks at his back.

“He’s with the medic. He took a trident to the gut.”

“I need to see him.” The blood rushes back to my head, pounding along with my heart.

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