Friday nights, the festivities at the carpet factory seemed to begin later.  There was a small crowd building at the door when Geir arrived, chatting and drinking while they waited to be let in.  At about seven o'clock, the crowd started to concentrate on the door, sand in an hourglass.
"I know you don't have any money," the doorman said when Geir reached him.
"I get that a lot," Geir said.
"I did you a favor yesterday.  No more."
"Just one more, I think."
"Why?"
"Because tonight I'm going to challenge tonight."
"You have to be inside to challenge someone."
"What if it's Grouch?"
The doorman raised his chin, disbelieving, but his mouth took on an amused twist.
"Well sure, then.  But you'd better do it."
Tonight there was a big chalkboard set up to the side of the ring, listing fighters, matchups, and odds, and a cadre of bookies and their bodyguards.  There had been betting happening yesterday, but it looked like Friday was the main event, when the big money-handlers made their way to Wakefield.
It was about half an hour before the fights started.  The crowd was getting good and rowdy, presumably the first combatants were preparing.  Grouch wasn't there yet, but his seat was ready for him, in the same place and with a wide berth.  Grouch, L and R were on the chalkboard.
Geir made sure to be near the ropes.
The mobster made his appearance during the first fight.  The two humans inexpertly battering each other in the ring were interrupted by a slight hush in the audience that threw them both off their game.  Left and Right, the huge rhino and alligator zoans, towered above most of the crowd as they pushed through in front of their dour-faced employer.  Owner?
Grouch stopped to talk with a bookie at the board, grimly and quietly.  Between several yards of jostling shoulders, Geir could just see the human press his thumb to a pay block.  He spent the week building up his zoans' stats, and made his bets on Friday.  Busy man.
After several drawn-out bouts between tough-looking but clearly unseasoned fighters, human and zoan both, the squamate announcer declared that it was time for the heavyweights.  A roar of approval from the crowd.  The next matchup was between a large, scarred, and highly disciplined human, and an equally burly badger-model.  It was fast and brutal, and the badger might lose the eye his opponent jabbed at for the victory.  Right was next.
The alligator climbed over the ropes without fanfare, but to anxious applause.  His opponent was a tall, stocky, and muscular human who bounced on his feet in a boxer's stance.  From the audience's response, Geir thought the human must be a champion in his own circuit.  Under other circumstances, he would have been more than formidable. But he was up against Right.
The alligator was at least two meters tall, and broad. He hadn’t done any showing off, but as soon as his opponent was ready, rather than stripping off his white tank top, he clutched with his dull claws at the fabric and tore it in half, while showing his teeth with a growl. The crosshatching of ventral scales on his chest and belly was broken up with numerous scars; Geir guessed that his back was even worse.
As soon as the lizard started the match, Right took two strides forward to meet his opponent in the middle, and threw a wild hook with one fist. The human tried to duck it, but couldn’t. It took him square in the cheek and temple, knocked him sideways off his feet and to the ground. He didn’t get up.
The crowd cheered at the blow, but was stilled by the suddenness of the end. The cheering returned with a delirious edge, as two grunts leapt in to drag the unconscious loser away. Right turned away, confirming Geir’s suppositions about his back.
The alligator moved to return to his spot by Grouch. That was when Geir made his move.
It didn’t take any showboating to drive the audience wild with excitement. A surprise challenger ducking between the ropes, let alone after such a show, was enough to renew their fervor. Geir hung his shirt over the rope, and slid his glasses over it. The key was to appear more confident than he was.
There were no judges or referees, the only people to stop him were the lizard, the bookies, and the organizers, if they were here. There were some startled looks among those, but no objections to feeding Right another snack.
In the distance, Grouch looked on with smoldering contempt. But he also said nothing.
Right turned back around and glowered at Geir. There was real anger in his eyes, and frustration. Geir could apologize later.
“Grouch’s Right versus a Vulture!” the lizard shouted. “Go!”
The downed human’s first mistake—the only one he’d had time for—had been to assume that Right would be slow. While the alligator wasn’t fast, he was far from sluggish. When he came for Geir he tried to land a direct punch into the barbatus’s eye, but Geir anticipated and dodged it. While he did, he swung the strong point of his shin into the other’s kneecap. It didn’t put the alligator down instantly, but it would make every step painful for him.
Right grabbed for Geir with both arms, and almost got a hold of him, but the vulture narrowly slipped away. Geir drummed his fists into Right’s lower back, as if it were a tree in the arctic. The rough scutes made it close. When Right pulled away to swing at him, Geir stomped on his foot with his heel, scraping at the tip with his talons as he drew his foot away.
Something he had learned in his time after the Brightlove House: to bring down a large opponent, deal in small injuries.
He took a number of hits himself, punches to the stomach and claws raked across his arms. Each one was a reminder of how long it had been since he had done this. But he caught them right, twisting to minimize the damage.
He trapped one of Right’s arms in the crook of his elbow, and twisted it back while he brought up a knee to drive into the alligator’s side. The huge jaw opened, reached and clamped shut just inches away from Geir’s face.
Right landed a blow to Geir’s head, and the vulture staggered. Another to his gut. Dizzy, Geir barely caught the second with his muscles. Even absorbed by the muscle, it was still like the green-scaled fist were being driven into him by a truck.
As in the rhino’s case, thick skin counted for something. Geir’s knuckles were torn and bloodied from the scutes, and he couldn’t be sure he was even hurting his opponent. Right continued to bear down with blows from his hands and knees. Geir kept in close so those couldn’t build momentum, but they were still wearing him down.
He got behind Right, and wrapped his arms around the armored back to buy himself a moment to breathe. At the same time, he raked at the alligator’s calves with his talons, pulled one hand away to give a few more stiff jabs to his side. Right twisted and reached, furiously trying to dislodge the smaller zoan.
Geir caught a glimpse of Right’s eye. It wasn’t fierce, there wasn’t determination in it. Only sheer, desperate frustration. And Geir didn’t think it was from the accumulation of small wounds, or not entirely.
The vulture let go and backed away, to steady himself, and wipe blood from his eyes, and gauge his opponent’s state from his next moves. Right turned with no great hurry, breathing hard. He was definitely taxed by the stinging cuts and bruised muscles. But in addition to that, he was visibly losing whatever discipline he had. When he swung he left himself open for a kick in the gut. And when he charged, he wasn’t prepared to catch Geir’s forearm in his throat.
It was the surprise more than pain that dropped Right to his knees. Someone smaller or softer-skinned might have come away with a crushed windpipe, and as hard as he collided with Geir’s arm, he might have thought that was what happened. He landed with his hands on the ground, gasping.
Geir raised a foot and brought the heel down between Right’s shoulders, knocking the bigger zoan’s hands out from under him. As soon as the huge, shovel-shaped mouth hit the floor, Geir punched him in the top of the head.
Right spasmed and lay still. The crowd was quiet, shocked. Geir had a clear view of his opponent’s employer, staring across the basement with burning fury. Not childlike desperation like the defeated alligator, but the rage of someone who had thought a victory bought and paid for. Someone who could—and would—do something about it.
As the audience began to come to terms with Right’s defeat, the lizard jumped in to declare the winner.
“Get this motherfucker a beer!” he shouted, and urged the victor out of the ring.
A few people cheered and slapped Geir on the back as he retrieved his shirt and glasses—the latter unwelcome, given all his new cuts and bruises. Most, probably the ones who knew the circuit better, kept their distance. They knew what wrath he was going to face. One of the organizers shook his hand, and when their implants met, transferred him fifteen hundred dollars for winning a fight. And then backed away as quickly as she could.
Geir had made himself poison. A familiar feeling; he’d missed it, a little.
Someone gave him the requested beer, and he raised it but didn’t open it. He found a spot in the stairwell back to the entrance to sit and hold the bottle against his wounds until it lost its chill.
As he’d expected, someone came for him. He didn’t know for sure if the two humans who found him in the stairwell were from Grouch’s entourage, but chances were good. He shrugged and let them drag him to his feet, back down to the basement, and into a network of halls past the boiler. Once out of the crowd, both drew pistols, one of which poked into his back the rest of the way. They left him in a storage room, amidst wire shelves packed with cardboard boxes and old clerical equipment. Not tied to the chair they sat him in, but with pretty clear instructions to stay.
The dark when they shut the door on him was probably supposed to be frightening, but it was really quite soothing for his aching head.
They left him there for hours, while his cuts scabbed over and the numbness in his bruises deepened into cloying aches. It wasn’t unlike spending the night in his base camp’s chamber, by the Mover’s rail. For a moment he thought he missed the mindless robot, having it as his only company and sitting across from it while he ate his beans. Then he had trouble picturing it at all. As if his years in the tundra had vanished entirely once he’d come back to Terrace.
There was a barrier slipping down, the one between his life here and his afterlife in the snow. It was when he saw Samuel in the news, credited for the bombing, that it had begun. It was one thing to think about his earlier life when he was outside of it.