A banging on the door of her small dorm yanked Codi rudely from her sleep. She blinked and rubbed her eyes before swinging her legs off the side of the bed. When her feet touched the cold floor she sucked in a sharp breath.

“You awake, Codi?” Max’s muffled voice sounded from the other side. “Vasco just told me. The sheets for the Mayhems are up in the fighter’s lobby. Time to find out who we’re mixing it up with tomorrow.”

“Alright, I’m up!” she shouted back. It was half true. She dressed as quickly as she could, flinging on a pair of shorts, trainers, and her old hoody and black beanie. Splashing water from the sink over her face, Codi blinked herself awake and yanked her door open. Max was waiting for her.

He indicated over his shoulder with one thumb. “C’mon, the others are already down there.”

“Well don’t let me slow you down,” she returned, closing the door behind her. Max smiled then spun around, bolting off down the corridor like a child racing to his birthday presents. She followed at a jog, down the spiralling ramps that connected the floor of the arena in lieu of a nice ordinary staircase. Even the ramps themselves were constructed of a hard transparent plastic, letting her look down and see Max barrelling along a couple of floors below. It was a singularly odd experience.

The fighter’s lobby was a large, cube-shaped room with four colossal screens, ten feet across, embedded in one wall. There the brackets of the tournament were displayed. An opening in the wall left of the screen led to the cafeteria, a chamber large enough accommodate the over three hundred strong gathering of competitors. The arena operated an open door policy without any set meal times, but Vasco had told them to enforce the same rigid schedule as they had done back in Brax-Delta.

Pulling up alongside Max, Codi took a deep breath upon seeing the gathering in the lobby area. At least a hundred other fighters filled the room, each one studying the Mayhem listings, hunting fervently for his or her name, the noise from their voices rising in a swell. She hunted for the others in her team. It didn’t take long to spot the twins, their burly forms planted side by side in front of the rightmost screen. After a moment of searching she still couldn’t spot Lita. With a shrug, she nudged Max with one elbow and set off into the crowd.

Slipping herself through the slew of muscled, sinewy bodies, Codi led her companion towards one of the central screens. Most of the other fighters wore their team tracksuits, but a hulking form coming the other way had no apparent designation. One solid shoulder knocked Codi aside and she whirled with a snarl.

“Watch it!”

The fighter in question didn’t stop, but he did look back over his shoulder. She watched the short-haired dome of a head swivel around, and then the cobalt blue eyes locked onto hers. She stopped in her tracks. Bruno Varlin raised an amused eyebrow at her before turning back and continuing on his way.

“Codi…”

“Well that’s not who I thought I’d run into on day one,” she muttered. “C’mon, let’s check the brackets.”

She rounded and resumed her journey, elbowing her way through the throng until she was close enough to see the screen. This one displayed four Mayhems worth of competitors but she couldn’t find her name among them. Suddenly a dark-skinned hand shot out from over her left shoulder, pointing.

“Well there’s me,” Lita said. “Doesn’t look like I got any of Vasco’s hard hitters in my group.”

Codi glanced at her with a smirk. “Well yippee for you.” She returned her attention to hunting for her name, but to no avail. However, Max found his Mayhem and also spotted one the fighters Vasco had warned them about. The girl, Ripple.

“Great,” he chuckled nervously. For a moment Codi wanted to reassure him, but words weren’t her strong point. In the end she just shrugged.

“We’ll have to deal with her sooner or later.” Then she began moving to the right towards the next screen. After half navigating and half barging her way into a vantage point she started scanning for her name again. At last she found it in the list of the tenth Mayhem.

So she wouldn’t be taking to the arena until the second day of fighting. At least she’d get to watch some of the other Mayhems unfold before she had to get into the middle of things. Scanning the list of fighters she spotted one of Vasco’s hit list, a young man named Dustin Morto from the powerhouse Atlantic Academy. So that was one to be careful of. However, as she ran her eyes down the list she spotted one other name she recognised.

It was Arvin Lee.

“Well, well,” she murmured. She remembered Vasco’s words – you cannot make things personal – but that didn’t mean she couldn’t exact a measure of payback on her first ever opponent. She was willing to bet that this time things would go differently.

“Mayhem ten, eh?” said a voice. She looked sharply to her right to see a male fighter looking back at her, wearing a long-sleeved black top, its front emblazoned with a white anvil. He stood a little taller than her, a playful smile on his features and his brown eyes twinkled mischievously.

“I didn’t say anything,” she grunted back.

“Y’didn’t have to. I could see your eyes.” He grinned and flicked the untidy fringe of his brown hair out of his eyes. “No uniform?”

“Why so interested?”

“The five of you stick out around here.”

“Uniform or not, we’re still here to fight,” she returned.

“Ah.” The young man’s face lit up. “So you’re from Brax-Delta then? There was a rumour going around you weren’t coming.”

“Good guess.”

“Process of elimination. There’s always a team from there no matter how badly they get beat.”

Codi spun towards the stranger and grabbed him by his top. “Maybe this year’ll be a little different, eh?”

His smile didn’t waver. “I hope so. It’s no fun watching those thugs from Battlecast win all the time.” Then in a flashing motion he knocked her grip free. Codi blocked instinctively, smacking his hand aside with her left palm and dropping into her fighting stance. They stood facing each other for a long moment, the eyes of the others fixated on them. Eventually, however, the young man gave her an approving nod.

“You’re pretty quick,” he conceded. “Look forward to seeing you in the Mayhem. Keep your eyes open.” He winked and melted away into the crowd. Codi watched him through narrow eyes till he was lost to sight, and then shoved her hands into her hoody pockets. She didn’t recognise him from Vasco’s briefing, nor did she recognise the colouring or symbol of his hoody. Still, something about the fighter lingered in her mind.

“Who was that guy?” Max asked, having moved up alongside her.

“I have no idea,” she replied. Codi shook her head and turned to the rest of her team. “Everybody found their Mayhems?” The others nodded. “Then let’s go find Vasco and start getting ready.”

***

Codi gnawed on her thumbnail as she watched the ninth Mayhem unfold on the screen before her. In the competitors’ lobby the majority of the others who weren’t competing looked on beside her. As the final Mayhem of the first day it was a climactic event, but Codi had her own interest. As best she could she followed Lita’s progress, willing her team mate on.

Max had already secured his space in the group stages earlier in the day. She’d watched as he scraped his way through the pandemonium of an arena build around mobile revolving platforms suspended over a veritable lake pumped into the lower level. She marvelled at how quickly the machinery and personnel of the tournament made the monumental changes between each Mayhem so quickly.

Her companion managed to keep himself largely out of trouble, only engaging in combat three times as the fighting escalated until eventually the group had been whittled down to four, just as Ripple had been bearing down on him. Vasco was right: a bit of skill and a bit of luck too. And watching that Mayhem she knew why Ripple had been included on the threat list. She was a nimble, effortless fighter, picking apart opponents with surgical precision.

Now, however, Lita seemed to be struggling. The arena design for her Mayhem took the form of a high-walled labyrinth, with various traps and pitfalls scattered throughout it to catch a careless competitor off guard. The bolder members of the group found their way onto the platform sections above the maze itself. While this gave them an added vantage point and safety from traps, it also left them out in the open for anyone who fancied a face to face confrontation.

Codi watched impassively as two hulking males exchanged blows on the upper level, waiting for the screen to give her a glimpse of Lita. A few minutes slipped past until the camera operators obliged, but what they displayed was not what Codi had been expecting.

Right before her eyes, Lita sent a boy flying head over heels backwards with a punishing kick to the midsection. The blow itself may not have taken him out of the Mayhem, had it not been aimed perfectly into the waiting jaws of a stun-trap. He passed through the sensor strip, igniting four rods that blasted the unfortunate fighter with a wave of electronic charge, shorting out his exoskeleton and leaving him writhing on the arena floor. A concerted ripple of appreciation passed through the onlookers and a graphic on the side of the screen clicked down from ten to nine.

Codi stopped chewing her nail and nodded to herself. Every time that counter clicked down her companion was one step closer to the next stage of the competition. Lita took off and started running through the maze, away from the nearest fighters. Two more went down before she was forced to engage again.

This time another girl clad in a blazing orange exoskeleton had her trapped out in the open, back to a wall in the maze with nowhere to run. This time she would have to fight, and with seven people still in the Mayhem she would also have to win. However, those in the arena had no way of knowing how many of their opponents remained; they simply had to fight till the klaxon told them to stop.

“C’mon,” Codi muttered under her breath as the pair closed. Their training days were about to be put to the test for real. For what seemed like forever they circled, each watching and waiting for a window to open their attack. In the end it was the other fighter who took the initiative, leaping gracefully forward and launching an assault. Codi recognised the style as a derivative of Lethwei, an old Earth martial art. She held her breath.

Lita engaged well, not letting herself be backed into a wall where she could be overwhelmed. She blocked, dodged and disengaged in a series of smooth motions, rolling away from her opponent and coming up in a fighting stance several feet away. The other fighter closed in again, but more slowly this time.

“Use the suit,” Codi whispered, tapping one foot uneasily. The pair tangled again, and this time the other girl managed to trip Lita. Before she hit the ground a follow up kick sent her flying into the wall. Codi gritted her teeth, helpless on the sidelines.

Despite the impact, however, Lita was back on her feet in an instant and this time she went on the attack. And she used the suit.

Jumping, she coiled up and kicked off the wall, launching herself at her adversary like a bullet. Taken by surprise, the orange-clad fighter couldn’t get out of the way in time and Lita hit her in a flying tackle. Together they went slamming into the opposite wall and collapsed in a jumble of limbs. The camera screen stayed focused on this pivotal conflict, but while the pair battled Codi saw the number on the side of the screen click down to six. Not long left.

Lita went skidding across the floor after a prone kick from the other girl, and she rolled upright. Her opponent scrambled to her feet and once again the two faced each other. This time Codi could see that the girl was visibly wary. Then she realised all Lita had to do was push. If she went on the aggressive her opponent would fall apart. How she wished she could scream that revelation into her team mate’s ear, but right now all she could do was watch.

She needn’t have worried. It appeared that Lita, for one reason or another, also decided aggression was her best tactic. She went in hard, fists and feet flying in a storm that even took Codi by surprise. The other fighter defended stalwartly, keeping her stance and composure despite the ferocious onslaught. Gradually Lita’s momentum faded and the pair began exchanging blows. And while they did, Codi spotted another flash from the display. Five fighters left.

Putting her hands together, she pressed them against her lips, almost unable to watch. Every screen now switched over to follow Lita’s conflict. Although they didn’t know it, the pair now battled from the final place. Evenly matched, they gave as good as they received; body shots, chops, punches, kicks, grapples, until after what seemed like an age the orange fighter managed to manoeuvre herself into a position behind Lita and lock in a chokehold. Codi drew in a sharp breath.

However, Lita was not finished. Bunching her legs she pushed off hard and sent both of them hurtling backwards, smashing her opponent into the wall of the maze. The girl clung on, but no longer had a safe positioning. Taking advantage, Lita drove her right elbow savagely backwards into the girl’s midriff once, twice, three times until she doubled over.

Released from the grip, Lita whirled in a single smooth motion and connected a brutal spinning kick with the other fighter’s jaw. Codi winced as the girl was fired sideways, spinning wildly until she crashed into a wall. Even with the impact resistance of the exoskeletons Codi knew that an uninterrupted strike with that much power could well have severely damaged the girl’s neck.

The fighter tried to push herself up from her prone position but collapsed back to the ground again, clutching the right side of her neck with one hand. Codi’s eyes lit up.

The counter dropped from five to four and the klaxon blared.