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“Again,” he said.

I spat on the floor, wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. “You think this is going to save me? The pit isn’t about skill. It’s about who Authority wants alive at the end of the day.”

He didn’t blink. “That’s not always true.”

“No?” I hissed, twisting under his weight. “Is that what you told yourself the last time they sent you in?”

He flinched for real then, a pulse of pain or memory or both. For a second, I thought he’d snap my neck and be done with it.

Instead, he got off me, stood, and offered a hand. I ignored it, pulled myself up, fists raised.

The next round was faster, more desperate. I aimed for his solar plexus, faking high and driving low with my knee. He grunted, surprised, but didn’t drop. Instead, he countered with a headbutt that missed my nose by a centimeter. His arms locked around my torso, pinning me against the icy metal of the table.

“You’re better than you think,” he murmured, and for a second the sound was almost tender.

I went limp, let my body sag. He relaxed just enough, and I snapped my head up, catching him under the chin. His teeth clicked; I tasted blood—his, or mine, impossible to say.

We broke apart, both panting, sweat already cutting lines through the grime on our faces.

“This is pointless,” I hissed.

He shook his head, wiped the blood from his mouth, then stalked to the table and pulled something from beneath—two bands of black Authority rubber. He tossed one to me. “Put it on your wrist,” he said. “Left side.”

I did, without thinking. The band was heavier than I expected, with a strange knot of metal inside, like an implanted tracker.

He pressed his own into place, eyes on the floor.

“What is this?”

He met my gaze, and the pain in his eyes was raw, unshielded. “It’s the override. If things go sideways, you’ll feel it—here.” He tapped his own band, just above the pulse point. “Don’t let anyone get it off you, or they’ll trigger the collar instead.”

I remembered the spectacle in the yard—the body in the white smock, the hiss and twitch and limp fall.

“You want me to survive,” I said, not a question.

He nodded. “I do.”

The air between us went thin. For a long moment, we just stood there, breathing each other’s sweat and anger, the only sound the far-off hum of the block’s air system.

Finally, he spoke, voice low and rough.

“Tomorrow, same time. I’ll teach you how to win.”

I almost laughed. “You’re assuming I want to.”

He gave a flicker of a smile, then was gone, leaving the door open behind him.

Back in my cell, the vent hummed. I stared at the Authority band on my wrist, turning it over and over, feeling the weight settle into the bone.

It was the first gift I’d gotten since they put me in this place.

I lay on my cot, counting the seconds, letting the pain in my muscles anchor me to the world.

For the first time in months, I wondered what I’d do if I lived.

The next night began the same. Kang appeared at my cell door without ceremony, just a sharp tilt of his chin and a clipped jerk of the wrist, like I was cargo, not consequence. I fell in step, and we retraced the now-familiar path through the half-lit arteries of the block, where the night shift dozed in pools of yellowed light and the security lens blinked on every third corner, dead for two and alive for the third. Neither of us spoke.

In the meeting room, the stasis of the day before was preserved: no new marks on the wall, no evidence that anything human had ever transpired here. The fluorescents buzzed overhead, a high-pitched hum worming into my skull, ticking like a countdown I couldn’t stop.