Death Cultivator by eden Hudson (best books to read .TXT) 📕

way to grab a heaping slice. “You sick or what?”

Rali smiled, but it wasn’t his usual carefree grin.

“I’m not hungry yet,” he said. “I want to take some time to reflect on the day before I dive in.”

That horrified look on his face when he saw his sister bleeding out flashed through my mind. I felt my stomach flip all over again, and cold sweat broke out across my forehead.

Kest was too absorbed in her HUD to notice anything was off, though. She had the band squeezed between her knees and was busy tapping the screen with her remaining hand as if she’d always done it that way.

“Where’s the holoscreen control?” Warcry asked, setting his pizza down long enough to rummage through a drawer. “Did one of you lot have it?”

“I’ve never even heard of that,” I said. “I’m going to go take a shower.”

I didn’t stay in the tub as long as the night before. Partly because I wasn’t trying to wash off a month’s worth of dirt this time, partly because I didn’t want anyone to think I was in there freaking out over almost getting my friends killed.

When I came back out, Warcry was kicked back on his bed with a remote, and he and the twins were watching a projection on the far wall of the room. It was a post-tournament breakdown with interviews, replays, and analyses of the new affiliations.

I relaxed a little bit. This was something I knew how to do. Hang out and watch TV.

The couch was on the projection wall, so I sat on the floor, leaning against the side of the twins’ bed. We pointed out the best techniques and made fun of the junk ones and talked back to the commentators. Just a bunch of messing around, nothing serious, which was great after what felt like a month’s worth of everything being life or death. It was kind of like going through the nightly routine with Gramps. After a while, the ball of guilt in my gut loosened up and unleashed a starving monster, so I helped Warcry and Kest demolish the pizza. Rali picked at a slice, which I guess was better than nothing.

The Ylef with the hammers had won the individual championship. Once he and his real crew had been found, he’d been ready to kill someone, and you could tell it from his fight. The commentators had to slow the footage way down before you could see his individual hammer strikes. They played the fight in real time with a clock running in the corner just to show how fast it happened. The whole thing was over in one point eight seconds.

“A submission hold would never work on that,” I said, thinking back to my fight with him. “Not at that speed.”

Kest frowned up at the slow-motion replay. “He’s good. There’s nothing in his technique to exploit.”

“Sure, he’s the bet in a weapons fight.” Warcry threw a piece of his crust at the image. “Bareknuckle, that cove would snap like a twig.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” Rali said.

“Gonna test it for yourself someday, big man?”

Rali laughed. “Not unless he attacks one of you while you’re unable to defend yourself.”

I laughed with him, but I kept seeing him in the cage after Kest’s arm came off. Those OSS jerks hadn’t been a match for him. Nobody we’d fought today had been able to touch him. Rali had basically been playing around from the first match until the second his sister got hurt. If he ever decided to do some damage, I doubted Warcry, that Ylef with the hammers, or even the Bailiff could take him.

Over on his bed, Warcry was squinting at Rali sidelong like he might be thinking something similar.

“Why didn’t the Technols sign him?” Kest wondered. “He won, and they had the champion pick this year.”

“’Cause the Technols are all Ylef trash, aren’t they? They won’t acknowledge a Nameless.”

“Why not?” I asked, glancing away from the projection.

“To them, the Nameless’re only about a tick above a human. Probably why they didn’t sign the cove last year, either.” He nodded at Kest. “Give us another slice, yeah?”

She passed him one over my head.

The Winchester buzzed. Warcry’s HUD went off while I was opening the message.

“Biggerstaff?” I asked.

He nodded. “It’s the offer with our demands written in.”

Kest leaned over my shoulder, trying to read the message, so I got up on my knees and leaned over her and Rali’s bed with the screen out where she could see.

“I’m going to accept,” I said. “That was the whole reason we went through with this.”

“No bleedin’ joke, grav, obviously we’re going to accept.” Warcry scrolled through his offer. “But you never give in that easy in contract negotiations. Let them see how desperate you are and they’ll walk all over you.”

I shrugged. “I’m pretty desperate.”

Kest grabbed my wrist and turned my HUD so she could see something better.

“You got them to include me and Rali in the offer?”

“Only if you’re not going to—” I stopped suddenly, realizing I was an idiot, and looked at Rali.

“Oh, he knows about the Technol offer,” Kest said. “I told him while we were on the way to the healer’s. Kind of a deathbed confessional.”

“Cool,” I said like that hadn’t been a sucker punch. I must not have been very convincing, though, because Kest smiled and gave me a soft shove.

“Don’t be dumb, Hake,” she said. “Losing a limb isn’t the end of the universe. People do it all the time. Besides, I’ve always wanted to try out biotech, but no one would let me experiment on them. I’ve got so many ideas I want to incorporate into a new and improved arm.” She went back to tapping away at her HUD. “Not to mention this Eight-Legged Dragon proposal will give me something to come back at the Technols with. See if they don’t up their affiliation offer once they hear they’ve got competition for signing me.”

I shrugged like that was a decent consolation