At the start of this iteration, T’balt could only wallow in his doubt and his self-loathing. But his passive nature always changed when loot was in him.

  It had a way of making his natural tendencies more aggressive. But really, it just gave him a conduit to release his anger. That’s all he felt when he saw Chosa appear in front of him. For a moment, the overload of loot in his system caused him to black out.

  To the others in the room, he’d charged at Monan in a blind rage, gauntlets ready to drive a hole through the man’s heart. He was possessed by fury, eyes wide, breath like a wild boar in the heat of combat. The cracks in his skin grew more pronounced.

  T’balt was stopped short by an invisible wall that sparked with electricity. A forcefield. Though Monan sat still, amused by the attempt on his life.

  Nrv held his hand up, the activator of the barrier. Another loot. T’balt was forced back as the forcefield deflected his charge.

  “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were holding a grudge, T. Shit. I thought we were friends,” Monan said. “Ah, well… but you know the deal. Beat the bird here, and then you’ll get a shot at me. Not before.”

  “I’m not fighting her!” yelled T’balt. Though the one he spoke of, he couldn’t bring himself to look at. For some reason, all the fear that he had let go of had hit him, and all he could do was look at the floor.

  “Well, that sucks. Cuz looks like she’s fighting you.”

  T’balt’s hypersensitivity activated on its own, him hardly able to control it because of the overload. It alerted him to the scythe flying to kill him.

  He leapt away as the sharp end of the blade buried into the concrete. The scythe was attached to a ghostlike chain, wrapped around Chosa’s arm. And she called it back to her like a dog on a retractable leash.

  “T’balt, you know how much I hate being ignored,” she said.

  “Don’t do this… I’m not gonna fight you.”

  “Come on now, you two,” Monan said. “You gotta take this couples therapy seriously. Otherwise, nothing’s gonna get resolved.”

  “That’s right,” Nrv called behind him.

  “See, the kids got it. Fist bump.” Monan threw out a fist for Nrv to pound, making an explosion sound effect at the end of it, much to the kid’s delight.

  T’balt hated to see him taking everything so casually. It really was just a game to him. But this was his life he was playing with. “Why are you so obsessed with using Chosa against me?” he seethed.

  “Using me?” Chosa interrupted. “That’s your problem.” She threw the scythe at him again, swinging it wide around the room. T’balt jumped to dodge it. “You’re na?ve and stupid. You’re fighting me. Not him. So look at me, you coward.”

  Then T’balt felt the wind push from underneath him, and he lost his footing as he landed. The scythe spun around Chosa and came down on top of him. He was barely able to roll away from the blow, it catching him on the cheek and drawing a trickle of blood.

  He tried to get back to his feet but was blown over by a strong push of wind that knocked him back into the loot killer pit.

  He hit the cracked floor hard in an impact that he was sure drove his shoulder out of its socket. He retched in pain.

  She then gently floated down into the arena, the wind moving in swirls beneath her. Wind loot.

  T’balt forced himself to his feet. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

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  “What? You think that you can hurt me now? You’re still my little bitch. And your Redeemer powers aren’t gonna change that. Look, you’re even wearing the choker I got you for your birthday, wearing your collar like a good little dog.” As she spoke, he could almost feel the choker tightening around his throat.

  Her words didn’t stop the scythe from coming at him. The speed loot was all that was between him and an early death.

  She was almost too proficient in its use, as if it were a weapon made for her. It connected with her, the chain driving up the length of her arm and hooked to a metal hook sticking from her spine.

  His senses were having trouble predicting the long-range weapon. The movement of her hands and the reaction of the blade were so far disconnected that he had to rely on instincts to move out of the way. Her manipulation of wind to guide it amplified its unpredictability by 10.

  Where Chosa lacked in speed, she made up for with the wind. It allowed her to control the arena. He could move as fast as he wanted, but as long as she controlled the air, the battlefield was in her control.

  He dodged and zipped around the pit, only for her to push gusts of wind around herself to trip him up. He stumbled. The chained scythe, backed with an added speed boost of rushing wind, pushed it to a speed that he couldn’t process. And the blade sank right into his shoulder.

  The pain burned his skin, tearing at his flesh. His scream rang through the room. It was his left arm, less than a foot from his heart. She was really trying to kill him.

  “Why?” he said, panting. He still couldn’t look her in the eye.

  “Because I committed to you and then you decided to throw me away. You couldn’t even look me in the eye then. Well, look at me now.” She strolled up to him and grabbed him by the hair, forcing him to look at her. She was smug, but her round face had gotten thinner, her eyes darkened and filled with disdain. But she paused, not expecting to see the tears in T’balt’s eyes when he looked at her.

  “Why did nothing ever mean anything to you?” he said. She dropped him then, causing him to collapse to his knees.

  “I could ask you the same.”

  He was limp, looking solidly defeated. “You were there for me. You were the only person who I thought gave a damn about me. I love you, Chosa. That’s why you hurt me so much. That’s why I couldn’t forgive you.”

  But this Chosa, he knew, likely didn’t know of her past transgressions. Monan wouldn’t have told her. And she couldn’t have the memory that he did. So it was like he was speaking to a ghost operating someone else's body.

  “Did you hate me the whole time? Did I really mean that little to you that you could kill me?”

  Chosa avoided his gaze for a moment, realizing herself. T’balt was the man she spent a year of her life with. She remembered the times they ate together, bathed together, went shopping, watched movies, pigged out on ice cream, and fast food. She remembered the times they sat in the dark when T’balt had forgotten to pay the bills and cuddled for warmth.

  She took a deep breath—a deep breath that turned into unbridled laughter. He could almost see the ice replacing her blood as the laugh got more maniacal by the second. It was almost as if she had lost her mind. Then her face turned serious. “All you do is complain. Every day, it was a pain just to get you out of bed. You barely left the house, and you only mildly took care of yourself because I made you. You had chance after chance after chance after chance… But I would always have to baby you because everything was too hard for you. And after all that, you tried to toss me out like trash.”

  He remembered their last conversation and was struck silent. She stood over him, looking directly down on the top of his head, letting his blood drip on her feet.

  “Don’t pretend like you didn’t want me to die. You sent me out on my own, knowing all this was going to happen. You forced me to survive, but you didn’t know I’m an expert on surviving. That’s exactly why I used you. Yes, T’balt. I hated you. I always have. I always will. I was only with you because you were convenient for me. A bitch for me to kick my feet on when I got tired. Now that that’s over, I don’t give a shit what happens to you anymore.”

  She swung the scythe down, but T’balt caught it. Not with his gauntlets but his bare hands, the blade slicing through the webs of his fingers. “You know… despite all that, I still love you. And that’s what I hate most about myself. I don’t have the self-respect to believe you. You’re telling me right to my face that you’re a liar.”

  She struggled to pull the scythe away, locked tightly in his bleeding hand. “That’s right. We never had a relationship. You were a pet project, but now you just look like a corpse to me.”

  He inched down on the blade. It was an excuse to touch her hand, letting his blood lock them together. “Thanks. For making things clear.” He looked her in the eye then. Her beautiful brown eyes. And he smiled.

  Then his gauntlets appeared, and he drove his fist straight at her, causing her to retreat in a hurry.

  He knew then that nothing he could say would salvage a thing. Chosa was nothing but a stranger to him. He had to see her that way if he was going to move on. He had to look at her as nothing but a piece of this bad dream, standing in the way between him and waking up again.

  Once he did that, he could find his rage for the woman who had killed him.