All right, this is all crazy talk! My stomach is coiled like a poised venomous rattlesnake, and I just can’t take standing here like a mute for a second longer. “Pete, what are they talking about? I’m starting to freak the hell out here.”
“There have been rumors about this being the match of the decade,” he answers under his breath. “They’re both stubborn as heck, and one needs to submit for the win, Brooke. It could get bad. Like you said . . . more than shit happening.”
A little flash of last season’s final plays in my head, unbidden and unwanted. I remember Remy’s fallen body on the bloodied canvas floor. The crowd screaming his name. And then the silence when they realized their Riptide—fierce, passionate, beautiful Riptide—was down.
While all my insides twist and tangle like pretzels at the memory, we start shuffling out of the elevator, but Remington grabs my hand and holds me back. He whispers in my ear, “In my peripherals.”
His eyes bore into me, and I pray, pray, pray that he doesn’t see the fear in my eyes, but he pulls his headphones down to his neck, and I hear the music streaming between us. Crazy and fast.
“In your seat at all times, Brooke,” he tells me, and he slides his hands into my hair and slams his mouth to mine, stealing a taste of me while giving me a taste of him that leaves me drugged and dazed. He sets his forehead on mine, his gaze incandescent as he looks at me. “I adore you with every breath I take—in every ounce of me, I adore you.” With another fast and hard kiss, he slaps my ass. “Watch me break him!”
As we ride to the Underground, he keeps an arm stretched on the back of my seat while he listens to his music. The rest of the car is dead quiet. I can taste the violence in the air as he walks away into the locker rooms, and I want to shout a thousand “I love yous,” but he’s with his iPod now, getting into his zone.
“Pete, is he really ready for this?” I whisper uncertainly.
“I sure hope so, Brooke. I’d hate for this episode to take another one of his dreams. Come on,” he says as we jostle through the crowd toward our seats.
At least two thousand people fill the arena tonight. The Underground has been teasing its public the entire season, and now they’re bloodthirsty to watch Scorpion versus Riptide. Faces are streaked with red, simulating blood. Bright red Rs adorn women’s cheeks and the top rises of some of their breasts.
I see red, Riptide’s red, streaked across the seats and way in the back, with the standing crowd, where there’s also a little bit of black too. Scorpion black.
Settling down in my seat next to Pete, I notice that Remington has once again secured two more empty seats to our sides, and it seems like we wait for a lifetime. Staring at the emptiness of the center ring only seems to makes the crowd scream louder as they wait for Remington and Scorpion to fill the 23 x 23’ square space they see.
“Riiiptiiiiide!” a group of friends scream in unison across the ring from me.
Behind me, a chant begins: “Bring them out! OUT! OUT! OUT!”
The speakers crackle as if the microphone has been turned on, and an announcer appears up onstage. I almost leap out of my skin.
“Ladies and gentlemen, hello!” People roar their greeting before the announcer continues. “Well, here we are this evening with you all! Are you people ready? Are you all READY for a fight unlike any other? Unlike ANY OTHER, people! Ringmaster?”
The ringmaster by the corner of the ring turns all his attention to the announcer.
“Sir, we won’t need your services tonight,” the announcer gallantly says, adding a dramatic bow that causes a thundering roar to blast around the arena as the crowd stands and screams its approval.
“That’s right!” the announcer yells in a booming voice back at the crowd. “Tonight, there are NO rules, NO ringmaster. Anything goes. ANYTHING GOES, PEOPLE! No knockouts—this is a fight of submission. Submit!”
“Or die!!” people excitedly yell.
“Ladies and gentlemen! Yes! It’s a submission fight here tonight in the Underground! Now, let’s call your worst nightmare into the ring! The man your daughters cry about. The man you want to run from. The man you certainly don’t want to be up in the ring with. Our defending champion, Benny, the Blaaaack, Scorpionnnnnn!”
I’m hyperventilating. I don’t know how I thought I would cope sitting here, watching this match of the fucking decade, because every organ inside me is shivering from nerves and I think I’m going to vomit my heart out. Anything goes. No referee. Just like they thought it would happen, it will, and I don’t even know for sure what state of mind Remington is fighting in.
“Pete, I’m going to puke,” I choke out, sucking in deep breaths as my stomach tightens in a hard, sudden contraction.
In the distance, a figure with a black robe flapping behind him approaches the ring, and the nausea rises full force as I see him.
Scorpion.
With his giant middle finger sticking in the air, I decide he’s even worse than my Voldemort, because this guy is actually alive.