The brace dug into Caleb's ribs every time he breathed.
The medics had left him in a recovery room with one arm strapped against his chest and a warning not to test the nerve response. His right hand still felt attached to him. It simply refused to do anything.
The door opened.
Caleb kept his eyes shut. If Nell had been here, she would have asked what he thought he was proving by getting hurt again. She was away on a call. Vance would have asked when he could work. The footsteps crossing the room belonged to neither of them.
A boot stopped beside the bed. Someone gave the IV stand a sharp shove. Its wheels knocked against the wall.
"Stupid," Suzu muttered. "They said your arm might not wake up."
Caleb opened one eye. Her prototype armor was gone. A dark bruise ran from her cheek to her jaw, and she held her injured arm against her side. She was watching the brace, unaware that he could see her.
"If you are pretending to be unconscious, you are doing it badly," she said.
"I was hoping you would go away."
She jumped and caught the IV stand before it tipped. The metal tray on it rattled. For a second she looked more startled than angry.
"You were listening."
"You were standing beside my bed."
"I came to confirm that you were alive." She let go of the stand. "If you die before a rematch, everyone will call that strike a lucky accident."
"You won."
"The proctor stopped the match while I was still standing."
"Then your record is safe."
"My record is not the problem." She glanced at his hand. His fingers lay motionless on top of the sheet. "What happened to the arm?"
"The suit synced with me. Then it stopped."
"That is not an answer."
"It is the only one I have."
Suzu drew the visitor's chair closer with her boot, but did not sit. She examined the edge of the brace as if it belonged to one of her family's machines. Caleb shifted to give her room and pain caught beneath his ribs. She noticed.
"You should have surrendered after the first hit," she said.
"I need the contract. I can't hold a saw like this."
"You could have lost the arm."
"I still might." He looked at the bruise on her face. "I did not mean to put you into the barrier that hard."
Her injured hand closed into a fist. "The armor took most of it."
"Good."
"It did not hurt."
"You came down here with your arm against your ribs."
She looked at the door. "Do not mistake a bruise for a victory."
"I know the difference. You were still standing."
That stopped her. She had come prepared to argue about the match, but not to be told she had won it. Her boot nudged the chair back under the table.
"Do not waste the trial slot," she said. "If the doctors clear you, fight properly next time."
"You want a rematch?"
"I want a result I can trust."
She turned to leave.
"Suzu."
She stopped with one hand on the door plate.
"Your arm is going to be fine," Caleb said. "The armor took most of it."
"I know." She pressed the plate with her uninjured hand and left without looking back.
A nurse opened the door and found the IV stand pushed against the wall.
"What happened?"
"The stand lost a fight."
The nurse looked at his brace. "You overloaded the suit link. The scan shows bruising and nerve shock, not a break. If your fingers start moving again, we will discharge you for home recovery."
"When?"
"When you stop trying to turn a medical room into an arena."
Caleb tried to bend one finger. The hand lay still on the sheet. "And if it does not come back?"
"Then Central District takes you for neural rehabilitation. The final screen will not wait for an arm to heal." She saw him looking toward the stadium lights beyond the window. "You made it through the duel. That still counts for something."
"Not to the people I owe."
The nurse had no answer for that. Caleb thought of the rent notice on his couch and the oxygen his brother still needed. Vance would give him a shift if he could hold a saw. The private viewer would still be able to watch whether the Defense Force kept him or sent him home.
She set the television remote beside him and left.
As she leaned over the bed, Caleb saw a small red light blink from the seam of her collar. The light belonged to a lens no bigger than a fingernail. He started to ask why a nurse wore a camera, but she had already gone, and the morphine made it hard to hold the question in place.
The Runner broadcast filled the screen. Eight combat rings remained. The network had put every camera on the applicants who were still standing.
Caleb's arm throbbed under the brace. He watched anyway.
Kei appeared in one of the smaller rings, backing away from a recruit in red-trimmed armor. Caleb recognized the recruit from the gate. The man had laughed at Caleb's 1.2-percent sync score.
"Stop running, coward," the recruit shouted.
Kei kept moving. The other fighter swung with enough force to tear a trench through the dirt. A camera drone veered away from the spray of gravel. Kei caught his heel on a slab and fell. The recruit's armored boot came down beside his head.
Kei rolled toward the planted leg instead of away from it. His hand found the pistol at his hip. He fired three compression rounds at the ground between his opponent's boots.
Ice sealed the armor's lower joints to the arena floor.
The recruit swore and pulled at his legs.
Kei sprinted. His fourteen-percent sync pushed his suit just far enough. He jumped and drove both boots into the trapped fighter's chest.
The ice broke around the recruit's boots. He stumbled backward under the impact and crossed the boundary.
The buzzer sounded.
Kei landed badly, rolled, and came up on one knee. He was breathing hard, but he was inside the boundary.
The announcer identified the loser as Taichi Arakawa. A viewership graphic appeared at the bottom of the screen.
23,540.
Caleb looked from the number to Kei. The fight had lasted less than a minute. Thousands of people had watched because Kei stayed calm long enough to make a plan.
Kei walked to the edge of the ring. He knocked ice from Taichi's boot before offering him a hand. Taichi stared at the glove while the cameras moved in. Then he took it and let Kei haul him up.
Caleb's eyes grew heavy. The medication pulled at him, but he kept watching the broadcast until the camera moved on.
One viewer had bought his survival.
Kei had drawn twenty-three thousand viewers by staying calm and making his own choices.
Caleb let his head sink into the pillow.
The parasite shifted under his ribs. His dead hand twitched once.
He stayed awake long enough to feel it.