The Receiver

2 - R U L E S

The Samurai's sword shinks down on one of the Reaper's suits, the tip of her blade nearly poking the eye of a camera. This is the first blow and everything after is a mad fight to take out La Señora as quickly as possible. It never goes well. Within the first thirty seconds of the match The Raven takes a punch to the face from Rodriguez, though it was meant for Lady Death. In the dugout, my head jerks to the side and I can't help but cry out, clutching my face. It feels like he cracked my cheekbone. Iris abandons her drill and pulls me to the floor beside her.

"C'mon," she says, "We'll ride it out together."

She makes a space for me to sit between her legs and lean back against her chest, just like the time I Received a childbirth. (Never again.) I watch the fight from the biggest laserscreen. The Reapers have split two and two, each team facing Lady Death. The Surgeon goes down quickly when a hologram of one of the fighters materializes behind him. Rodriguez seizes the opportunity to bash his bat into The Surgeon's suit, opening metal, then skull. Four medidrone rush into the ring, pick up the suit with the dead man inside, one at each limb, and carry him off the floor and out of sight, all to the sound of the crowd screaming, "Reap! Reap! Reap!"

On The Reapers screen, The Surgeon's name is struck through in a red splatter and then disappears. The Samurai almost finishes off Rodriguez before any of the fighters manage to take a shot at La Señora. With a clean slice of her katana she just misses him, nearly severing his techsuit in half laterally. The crowd stomps and whoops at the close call and I can feel their energy through the ground. Then Rodriguez, who has beaten his bat to splinters, busies his fists with The Raven. My side erupts with fire and I hope Milo and Katz can't see me from the stands for what must look like I'm in a fistfight with a ghost. And losing. The blows let up ten seconds later when The Samurai returns her attention to Rodriguez. They circle one another, their suits glinting beneath the laserlight. She slices at him faster than I can comprehend until the arm of his techsuit falls into the dirt, quickly followed by his head. She punts it like a soccer ball across the arena and I watch as it lands, hard, in the dirt, his half broken face blinking twice before the drones reach him.

The crowd is hypnotized, singing their Reaper cry. We're about five minutes in and I can't believe Asper has made it this far, though I can tell from the camera inside her suit that she's haggard and sweaty. At this point she could tap out, but I know she wants to climb the board. To prove herself. As I've been focused on Asper, Lady Death has seized The Samurai's blade. A high-pitched shriek comes from The Samurai's dugout and her little sister runs out into the ring, yelling the word katana as if the sword were a person. A medidrone swoops down and picks the screaming child up, limbs flailing as she's dropped back into her dugout.

"They really love that sword," Iris says.

The Samurai and The Raven momentarily team up to take on Lady Death. Her face is blank of emotion, but a thread of red liquid drips from the side of her mouth where she's bitten into a piece of candy. If I had to bet, I'd wager she's more bored than worried. Without her sword, The Samurai bends down on one knee, relinquishing herself from the game, then rises and walks back to her dugout. The crowd boos. On The Reaped board her name drops to the bottom. I never thought I'd see The Raven's name next to La Señora's but with two deaths and a forfeit, Asper has risen to second place. Despite this, fear wracks her body and I shake violently as if from the cold. An overpowering weakness spreads through me and I can tell Iris is the only thing keeping me from falling over.

"She's scared," I whimper.

"Of course she is."

I know the second half of that sentence, the part Iris won't say out loud to avoid further terrifying me. The Raven is about to die.