Caleb shut the side-room door with his heel and pulled at the collar of the dress uniform.
The jacket looked good under camera light. That was the problem. It had been made for a stage, not for a body that had been torn open less than a day ago. The seam along his left side rubbed against the raised spiral marks every time he breathed, and the stiff fabric kept catching near his ribs like it wanted to remind him where the hole had been.
He unbuttoned the jacket and dropped it over the back of a chair.
The room was one of the arena's private prep rooms, built for quick makeup checks, emergency uniform repairs, and sponsor-approved composure before walking back into the lights. A narrow examination cot sat against one wall. A medical cabinet hung above it with clean bandage packs sealed behind glass. A mirror covered the opposite side of the room, too wide and too polished for anyone who had just crawled out of a collapsing dungeon.
