Kest was the only one of us who saw Gleurah’s match with Tatsu Shin Be live. It would’ve shown weakness if she had left to check on her champion, and at that point in the tournament, basically everyone expected and wanted her to be Cold Metal through and through. So she stayed in the skybox with the Electoral Council, Shishi’s devastated candidate, and the bigwigs who’d been invited to share the luxury view, while the Scarlet Titan and the Quiet Storm exchanged maliciously sweet small talk over their champions’ match.

  Later, she told us the atmosphere up there had been tense.

  That was nothing compared to the atmosphere in the kokugikan healer’s room.

  I practically had to pack Warcry out of the arena. His leg wouldn’t hold any weight. His knee had swollen to twice its regular size and turned a dark, ugly purple. His prosthetic didn’t seem to know how to stabilize him by itself. He hopped along on it, arm wrapped over my shoulders. I had to keep my fist clamped down tight around his wrist, because he wasn’t holding on.

  His skin went gray. Sweat poured off him. In no time, it soaked through my suit jacket and shirt. He didn’t say a word.

  Tournament-vetted healers met us at the tunnel mouth with a wheelchair and rushed Warcry down the hall to their onsite exam room. Hyla and I jogged to keep up. Bodhi must’ve sensed the pain or tension in the air, because he cried the whole run there.

  Even though these healers were supposedly legit, I hovered close by while they examined Warcry’s knee and pumped it full of Anesthetic Spirit. Some of the strain in his jaw and neck started to loosen as the painkilling Spirit kicked in. The sweating calmed down, and the color faded back into his face, but he wouldn’t lay back on the table like they wanted him to. It was like he couldn’t look away from his leg. His eyes stayed locked on the joint, even while he shotgunned the high-tier healing elixirs they kept handing him.

  Hyla paced the perimeter, rocking the fussing baby and never taking her cat eyes off the ginger at the center of the room. Thankfully, as Warcry’s pain levels dropped, Bodhi calmed down. Kest must have been right about Entropic supertypes being hypersensitive.

  After a while, the main healer took over. She poured Healing and Soothing into the joint until her face was dripping and she was panting like she was the one who’d defeated Shishi. That furious-looking bruise covering Warcry’s knee spread and turned yellowish-brown at the edges. A little of the swelling went down, but not much.

  “That’s it, that’s all we can do,” the healer finally said, slumping against the cabinets.

  “That’s it?” My eyebrows jumped up to my hairline. “He can drink more healing elixirs. As many as you’ve got.” I looked at Warcry. “You’ve got the bankroll to pay for it, right? Right, Mr. Thompson of the Qaspar-7 Thompsons?”

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  Warcry didn’t say anything. He just stared at his knee like somebody watching his life circle the drain.

  Maybe he was in shock.

  I tried the healer again. “What about after you’ve cultivated some more? Or you could rest and then get back to healing him.”

  Black lace faded up her neck and into her jawline.

  “Excuse me, did you spend six universal years studying sports medicine with the inner planets’ premier Healing sect? How many professional combatants have you restored in your career? Go ahead, I’ll wait while you count them.”

  She did not wait. “The ligaments and tendons were all ripped like taffy, meat roach, and the kneecap is shattered. The elixirs are repairing what they can, and I cleared as much of the inflammation as is safe in this first twenty-five hour period. With damage this significant, you risk permanent scarring if you try to push things too fast.”

  “What about a script tattoo?” If the damage wasn’t enough to kill you in the first couple minutes, those could fix up pretty much anything. Being ghost-ranked, Warcry didn’t have his Eight-Legged Dragons tattoo anymore, but we could get him some innocuous non-Big-Five tat. “Surely we can find a shop somewhere around here.”

  The healer looked me over like she’d just noticed my gangster suit, then zeroed in on my messed-up side.

  “A script tattoo? Seriously?” She stuck her hand on her hip. “Let me guess—you have one. Have you ever noticed how you never see an elderly person with a script tattoo? But I’m sure they’re all just walking around somewhere else, happy and healthy and free of pain and restricting scar tissue. Oh, and they all die peacefully in their beds of old age. Sure, we’ll just get him a script tattoo. After all, it’s working out so great for you.”

  That snapped Warcry out of his daze.

  “Oi, don’t compare me to the grav. I told him that rubbish was going to destroy his body before its time.” He jerked his chin at his swollen knee. “What’s the prognosis if we push it for the championship bout tomorrow?”

  “How does permanently limited mobility sound?” the healer said, putting on a viciously cheerful tone. “Potential for catastrophic clotting, definite nerve damage, restricted circulation, and tissue death. How’s that? Sound like fun yet?”

  “You’ll have to stay off it,” Hyla said, coming to a stop on the opposite side of the exam table. “Give it time to mend. Come back and get yours in the next tourney.”

  “Might not be an option.” Warcry caught my eye. “I was sent here to win.”

  Takeshi hadn’t told Warcry to try hard and do his best in Selk’s electoral tournament. He’d ordered Warcry to get that championship. As far as the Komodo Emperor was concerned, the Dragons had bought Selk when they paid off Warcry’s sentence and cleared his criminal record. Takeshi wasn’t going to take a doctor’s note for failure.

  “There’s got to be some way,” I said, mind racing.

  Hyla scowled at me. “Forget it. One championship isn’t worth throwing away his career for.”

  Not for the first time I wished we still had our Warm Heart cultivator and he still had his Spirit sea intact. Rali could’ve done it, I was sure he could. He would’ve found a way around the healers’ “corporate-approved wisdom.” Some crazy, outside the box answer.

  I paced to the door, then spun around to face the healer.

  “Time’s the problem here, right? You can’t heal him any faster, because time out here isn’t passing fast enough.”

  “Out here?” Obviously, she was ten steps past Done With My Crap.

  But Warcry was listening.

  His eyes narrowed. “What are you on about, grav?”

  I dug the Crucible Casket out of my shirt.

  “How much do you still want to avoid that stink of Death?”