Jack rolls his eyes. “Let him alone.”
The bouncers step aside to let Bane pass. His face is angry and fierce and determined, and more handsome than I ever remember. I want to stop him, throw myself at his feet and force him to stay. Something inside me bursts and a roar of scalding fear and sense of loss rips through me. I realize he’s choosing to fight and die for me. For me.
I can’t lose him. I can’t.
The sudden knowledge galvanizes me and leaves me hollow.
“No!” I breathe. “No, Bane, they’ll kill you, don’t! Jack, don’t! Please!”
No one listens to me, even as my screams reach a hysterical pitch. Judge Jefferson comes up behind me and wraps his gentle but firm fists around my arms, holding me back. I’m wailing, shocked and terrified by the grief that has turned my limbs into lead. The seconds are slipping away, my last seconds with Bane.
“No don’t do this Bane! Don’t do this!” I scream. “Let me go! Let me do it! Put me in! Bane, don’t, I don’t want you to die! Please! Put me in instead!”
Bane pauses as the bouncers open the door for him. He turns his chin over his shoulder and looks at me for the first time since the trial started. As our eyes lock, I have the familiar sensation that he is reading my thoughts, seeing all of me. His face softens and there’s a ghost of a grin on his lips.
“See you, Red,” he whispers.
He turns to go.
No…not like this…
“Ava!” I shout. This stops Bane in his tracks and I see his shoulders tense. “My name is Ava.”
Bane spins slowly around, facing me completely. He’s blinking at me in surprise, the old question and the light of confidence back in his eyes. His lips part, whispering my name. I wish I could kiss them, pour myself into them, but a couple thousand pounds of mean biker muscle is standing between us and no one is letting us move an inch closer to each other.
“What is this, a god damn soap opera?” Jack roars. “Get on with it!”
Bane tries to take a step towards me but the bouncers shove him back and out the hall.
“Goddammit!” Bane shouts at the bouncer. “Don’t touch me again. I’m going.”
Bane gives me one last parting look, heavy with unspoken things. His eyes flash dark and then he turns and disappears down the hall with the bouncers. The club officers trail out after him, making a sort of dark parade to the death arena. Finally, Jack stands and leers at me.
“Well ain’t you curious Red?” He gloats. “Why don’t we go watch?”
Chapter Fourteen
There is no drumbeat; the soundtrack to this fight will be the wild pounding of my heart in my ears. Sure, the crowd is chanting their hungry song for death. In my periphery I see spittle flinging from their twisted lips and their fists pounding in the air, but I can’t hear anything over the thundering beat of my heart and a high white noise in my ears—the same ringing that I hear when I wake from a dream. Only this is no dream. It’s not even a nightmare. It’s worse.
They’ve just opened the gate and shoved Bane into the caged ring. I can’t take my eyes off him as he steps forward, all two hundred pounds of him pissed off and unwavering. They’ve stripped his shirt and jeans and he’s standing in his boxers, his tattoos and bulging muscles shimmering with sweat under the floodlights. His brow furrows as he faces the enemy gate and waits, hands swinging loose at his sides.
Oh my god. His hands are empty! They’ve not given him any weapon.
I’m vaguely aware that Judge Jefferson is still holding me up on my feet and we are standing at the edge of the ring between the fighter gates, a sort of backstage area with no seats. This is where the Death Layer officers have come to watch. My fingers are twined through the chain link that domes over the ring, as if by sneaking one tiny part of my body through the fence I can break its barrier and set Bane free. But it’s a useless fantasy. He’s in there, and I am out here, and there is nothing I can do about it.
As I stare, Bane’s body goes completely still and he bursts out laughing, his eyes narrowing. Following the trajectory of his gaze, I see why: his opponent has entered the ring, and we’ve stepped into a lethal joke.
My mouth falls open in dread. Just like the winner of the death match I witnessed before, this new guy could be Schwarzenegger’s body double. He is pale, missing teeth, missing an ear. He looks like those deep-sea creatures with external jaws and filmy eyes that spend their lives in the lowest cracks of the ocean floor blasted by lava and chewed by leviathans. He is a leviathan, fully a head taller than and twice as wide as Bane. His broad chest and back are stenciled with tattoos of what looks like the Moscow skyline, all puffy towers and crosses and alien alphabet letters. Clearly, this is not his first death rodeo. He has probably been down here fighting death matches all his life. It certainly looks like he’s never seen the sun.
Where do they find these guys? Do they fucking clone them?
My attention rivets on the punch line of the joke, the reason Bane is laughing: his opponent’s meaty fist is closed around an 8-inch bowie knife. A fucking bowie knife. Bane is unarmed, and Jack has thrown him against Vladimir Putin’s steroid-popping evil twin with a bowie knife. A hollow thrill shoots down my legs, a sense of foregone conclusion.
There’s no way out. It’s happening, happening now.
Putin throws his knife-wielding arm forward in a heavy jab and Bane’s body compacts into a capoeira ginga step, feinting away from the strike. The two men dance around each other slowly in the center of the ring, Bane’s forearms raised like a shield under his chin.
Putin moves like a Mack truck, seemingly slower because of his size but dangerously powerful. When his knife flashes out again, I realize his speed is just as potent as his girth. He’s just saving it. Waiting. Circling like a shark.
Bane manages to duck under the next jab and quickly lands a punch on Putin’s chin before dancing away again. Putin’s head wobbles a little but keeps advancing toward Bane, herding him toward the cage.
Switching tactics, Bane changes his feet around and pops up on Putin’s side behind the knife, quickly volleying a roundhouse kick and kidney punch before the giant can react. It doesn’t seem to faze him, though, and Bane retreats.
Putin’s knife flashes, and they are backing toward the fence. Bane kicks at Putin’s knees and shins, stalling, and I feel each impact, root for every flash of his feet to bring the man down. Putin pushes through it, though, deliberately following Bane’s movement like a locked-on missile. As hard as Bane is working to wear down Putin with jabs and kicks, it seems their trajectory toward the edge is inevitable.