"What happened?" Wu demanded, looking around wildly as if expecting to find an explanation. "He was fine! He was just standing there and then...."
"Heart attack?" Zhang suggested, but he sounded uncertain. "Or a stroke? An aneurysm?"
They had no answers. One mont Chen had been perfectly fine, and the next he was on the ground, blood leaking from his nose and ears, possibly dead or dying.
No one looked at Shuyin, still standing calmly in the center of the ring, her glowing jade eye watching the chaos with cold satisfaction.
No one except Tank, Blade, and Razor had seen exactly where Shuyin’s attention had been focused in the mont before Chen collapsed.
They said nothing. They didn’t dare.
But they knew.
Sohow, impossibly, their Princess had done that.
The crowd’s confusion was turning into restless agitation.
They’d paid for entertainnt, and so far all they’d gotten was so weird eye condition and a guard having a dical ergency.
The warden, a corpulent man in an expensive suit sitting in the best seat with a glass of whiskey in his hand, stood up and gestured impatiently.
"Get him out of here and start the fight!" he bellowed. "We’re on a schedule!"
The guards hurriedly dragged Chen’s body away, leaving a sar of blood on the concrete. The crowd’s noise began building again, their montary concern forgotten in favor of the violence they’d co to see.
A door on the opposite side of the ring opened with a tallic clang.
And through it ca their opponents.
Eight won.
All of them looked hardened by the prison system, their faces bearing scars and their eyes carrying the flat, dead expression of people who’d long since stopped feeling.
They were bigger than Shuyin and Razor, more muscular, more experienced. They moved like pack predators, spreading out as they entered the ring, already assessing their prey.
The crowd roared its approval.
This was what they’d paid for. Four against eight. Uneven odds. Maximum violence. The perfect recipe for spectacular suffering.
The warden’s voice bood through a microphone, amplified to carry over the crowd’s noise.
"LADIES AND GENTLEN! Tonight’s main event, a special exhibition match! Four against eight! The winners walk free to their cells! The losers..." he paused for dramatic effect, "well, let’s just say the infirmary is standing by!"
Laughter rippled through the spectators, cruel and eager.
The gate behind the eight won clanged shut. The gate behind Shuyin and her companions had already been locked.
They were trapped in the cage together.
Twelve won.
Only four probably would walk out unbroken.
The eight opponents began to circle, spreading out to surround them, cutting off any possibility of retreat. They moved with a practiced coordination; they’d fought together before and knew how to work as a unit.
Tank, Blade, and Razor instinctively tightened their protective formation around Shuyin.
But Shuyin’s glowing jade eye tracked each of the eight won with cold, calculating precision.
She’d spent three years being tortured by humans.
She’d died and been reborn into this borrowed body.
She’d made a promise to a fading spirit.
And she’d just discovered she could kill with a thought.
These eight won had no idea what they were facing.
The warden raised his hand, letting the tension build, letting the crowd’s anticipation reach a fever pitch.
Then he brought his hand down.
"BEGIN!"
The eight won didn’t imdiately charge. They were too experienced for that, too practiced in the brutal choreography of the ring.
Instead, they continued their slow circle, predatory and patient, letting the anticipation build.
The largest of them, a woman with a shaved head and a scar running from her eyebrow to her jaw, smiled with broken teeth. "Look at this," she called out to her companions, her voice dripping with mockery. "They brought us the Princess. The delicate little rich girl who cried the whole ti during the last match."
Laughter rippled through the group of eight with clearly mocking eyes and lips curved nacingly.
"I heard she died," another one added, this one with prison tattoos snaking up both arms. "Guess they scraped her off the floor and threw her back in. How charitable was it?"
"What’s wrong with your eyes, Princess?" a third woman jeered, leaning forward to get a better look at Shuyin’s glowing jade gaze. "Have you been doing drugs in isolation? Or did soone finally beat the human out of you?"
More laughter echoed through the walls. The crowd was eating it up, while leaning forward in their seats.
"Four against eight," the scarred woman continued, her voice carrying to the spectators. "And one of them looks like she can barely stand. This is going to be very embarrassing. For them."
"Maybe we should make it quick," Tattoo Arms suggested with false sympathy. "Put the Princess out of her misery before she pisses herself again."
Tank’s massive hands curled into fists, her jaw clenching with barely suppressed rage.
Blade’s breathing had gone controlled and asured, her combat mode, the place she went when violence was inevitable.
Razor’s thin fra was coiled tight as a spring, ready to explode into motion.
They were preparing to fight. Preparing to lose, probably, but determined to take as many of the eight down with them as possible.
Shuyin stood at the center of their protective triangle, her glowing eye tracking each of the eight won with that sa cold, analytical precision.
They thought she was weak.
They thought she was prey.
They actually had no idea of who she was!
Her mind reached out, invisible and silent, touching the consciousness of each of the eight opponents. Not enough to kill, that would be too obvious, too suspicious after what had happened to Guard Chen. But just enough to... disrupt.
It was like touching the surface of still water, sending ripples through their awareness. Nothing too dramatic and nothing they would consciously notice.
Just a slight degradation of their depth perception. A minor delay in their reaction ti. A subtle distortion in their balance and spatial awareness.
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