Chapter 23
VALTRON
You can smell sweat and steel long before you hear the crowd.
That’s how I know I’m back in the underbelly of the beast.
The fighters’ quarters on Gladiator Prime are a maze of recycled air and recycled souls — tight corridors, blastproof bulkheads, cheap fluorescent strips humming with that low, maddening buzz. Every sound echoes here. A grunt in the showers can sound like thunder. A fist on the wall becomes gospel.
I’ve spent years pretending this place was home. That the noise was comfort. That the roar of the crowd meant something besides blood being turned into profit.
Now I know better.
Rhea’s files still burn in my head. Every line. Every “accidental death.” Every transfer manifest stamped cleared for disposal.
Every lie I helped sell.
I call the meeting the only way you can call a meeting in a place like this — quietly. Off-roster. Off-record.
I pick the ones who matter.
The ones who still have enough fight in them to care.
Jax and Korra first — the twin hammers of the arena. They’ve killed more men than time has counted. Then Marrek the Crag, the half-cybernetic brute who owes me his life. Then Vela, the only one who’s ever beaten me clean, and still calls me “Blastaar” like it’s a joke she’s not done laughing at.
They come in one by one, eyes sharp, shoulders square, trying to figure out why the hell their golden boy looks like he’s about to start a coup.
The air is heavy with suspicion and stale protein powder.
Korra’s the first to speak. “This better be good, Val. I had a training slot—”
“You’ll want to hear this,” I interrupt, rougher than I mean to. My voice sounds wrong in the close space. Too human. Too tired.
Marrek snorts. “We off-contract? Thought management banned gatherings bigger than three unless it’s televised.”
“They did.”
I flash the jammer. “That’s why we’re here.”
Vela leans against the wall, arms folded. “You look like hell, Blastaar. You sick or just dramatic?”
“Bit of both.”
I grab the holo-disk from my pocket and set it on the table.
It hums to life — a sphere of flickering red light, lines of text and data spiraling like veins around a heart.
“What’s this?” Jax asks.
“Proof,” I say. “That we’re not fighters. We’re inventory.”
Korra’s eyes narrow. “You drunk?”
I hit the projection. Names spill across the air — Combat Loss Summary Reports, Resource Recovery Logs, Biotech Transfer Approvals.
Then the signatures. The same signature on every file.
Drayxon Varn.
The room goes quiet. You could hear a pin drop on titanium.
Vela’s the first to scoff. “This looks like faked feed crud. You know how easy it is to—”
“Rhea decrypted it herself,” I cut in. “This came from Quinn. He died for it. They’ve been running Combine scrap through the pit. Using our matches to cover transfers. Every fighter who ‘dies accidentally’ feeds the machine.”
Marrek laughs once, bitter. “And you expect us to swallow that?”
“Check the logs yourself,” I snap. “You ever wonder why they don’t let you see your own med scans? Why bodies vanish before the families even get the ping?”
Korra frowns. “Dren died last month. Mid-match. Heart failure, they said. No retrieval. His payout got ‘reallocated’ to his sponsor.”
Vela’s smirk fades. “And Sloane,” she mutters. “Broke his neck in the quarter-finals. No burial. Just… gone.”
One by one, the names start coming. Quiet at first, like ghosts speaking through them. Then louder.
The anger spreads like contagion.
Jax slams his fist on the table. “You telling me they’re harvesting us?”
“Not just you,” I say. “All of us. Our blood keeps the Combine rich. Every weapon that shows up in the black markets — that’s us. Our bones, our parts, our fight footage.”
Korra’s eyes glisten with something she’d call sweat if anyone asked.
Marrek’s jaw flexes until the metal creaks.
“You sure about this?” he rumbles.
“I wish I wasn’t.”
They fall silent again. The air hums like a live wire.
Then Vela straightens. “If this is true… we don’t need the Council.”
I meet her gaze.
“We don’t.”
That’s when I feel it.
The shift.
The fracture turning into a fault line.
The fire starting to catch.
Rhea slips into the room halfway through. Hood up, quiet as smoke. She gives me the smallest nod — she’s already doing her part.
While I was convincing warriors, she was planting bombs — digital ones. She’s good at that. Terrifyingly good.
She taps her compad once, and I see the glint of pride in her eyes.
“The leak’s live,” she whispers. “Anonymous source. Internal network. Every feed node inside the arena’s about to get a data package in three minutes.”
“Encrypted?” Vela asks.
Rhea smirks. “Temporarily. Once the timer hits zero, it decrypts everywhere. Comm panels, betting kiosks, locker feeds, the big screens. You’ll hear whispers before they can kill the signal.”
I love the way she says “kill.” There’s steel under that word now. Not malice. Precision.
“You’re insane,” Korra mutters.
“Probably,” Rhea says. “But it’ll work.”
I look at her. “You sure about this, Hart?”
“Too late not to be.”
I almost smile. Almost.
It starts small.
A murmur in the halls.
A flicker on the training monitors.
A couple of crew whispering as they pass the medbay.
Then the hum builds. The system flicks. Every screen blinks, all at once.
The fighters freeze. The staff turn.
And the files begin to scroll.
Names. Deaths. Logs.
Drayxon Varn’s smiling signature stamped at the bottom of every single one.
You can feel it hit them like a concussion wave.
Every lie, every bruise, every “accident” — all suddenly too real.
By the time the feeds cut to black, the arena isn’t a workplace anymore. It’s a powder keg.
Varn’s counterstrike comes faster than I expect.
Two hours later, a squad of security drones and corporate handlers march into the training sector like they own the air. They’re all polished armor and smug smiles, the kind of men who never bled for anything real.
One of them reads from a datapad. “Valtron ‘Blastaar’ Vakutan. You’re hereby suspended pending investigation into data breaches and misconduct.”
The word suspended tastes like acid.
I step forward, arms loose at my sides.
“You gonna say that again, or you want me to carve it into your bones?”
The handler’s face twitches. “You’re off the roster until further notice. Your matches are canceled, your comms restricted, and your access revoked. Any attempt to contact staff or fighters—”
I spit. Right at his boots.
The glob of red saliva steams on the floor.
“Tell Varn,” I snarl, “he can pull me from the roster. But he’ll have to kill me to stop the fight.”
The handler takes a step back. The drones all raise their stunners.
Korra and Marrek flank me before I can blink, and Rhea’s voice crackles over the comm.
“Valtron. Don’t.”
I grin.
“Let them come.”
After they leave, the others stare at me like I’m half god, half suicide note.
Maybe I am.
The war’s here now.
The crowd doesn’t know it yet. The sponsors don’t see it. But the fighters?
They feel it in their blood. In the way their fists clench tighter.
In the way the silence before each match tastes like gunpowder instead of sweat.
And me?
I’m done playing star.
I’m done bleeding for applause.
If Varn wants a spectacle, he’s about to get one.
Because the next time I step into that ring, it won’t be for the Combine.
It’ll be for us.
For Rhea.
For Ripley.
For every fighter they ever tried to erase.
And I swear by every god left in this cold galaxy —
this time, when the crowd screams,
they’ll be screaming for the revolution.