Chapter 18 · Torn Tape and Cold Steel

Chapter 18: Torn Tape and Cold Steel

Vance's boot came down on my wrist before my vision cleared.

"There she is." His voice bounced off wet concrete, too loud, too pleased with itself. "The flash-bang do that to you, or are you always this slow?"

I blinked grit out of my eyes. Ears still ringing. The tunnel had dumped me somewhere lower than the fight cage, somewhere the floor hummed under my spine like a live wire. Turbine housing. Intake chamber. I knew the smell before I placed the room — ozone and chlorine, and under it, old rust that never washed out no matter how many decades the river ran through here.

"Where's Kane," I said. Not a question. If I made it a question my voice would crack, and I wasn't giving him that.

"Somewhere else. Somewhere that isn't your problem right now." He ground his heel deeper into my wrist bone until my fingers went numb. "You should be more worried about you."

I rolled my hips, got a knee under me, and drove it up into the inside of his thigh.