Starfall (Starflight #2)(91)

Kane’s lips drifted apart. Was his addiction that bad?

“Hang in there,” his boss said, then turned and strode toward the door. “I’ll see you when it’s over.”



During the next week, Kane learned that hell wasn’t a mythical place designed to scare sinners into good behavior. Hell was a state of survival in which suffering never ended. That was the real punishment—constant pain. His nerve endings screamed from one sunrise to the next with no interruption in torture. The only relief came when he died, though it didn’t last long. The medic restarted his heart and apologized. He said he could sedate Kane during the withdrawal, but Ari Zhang had told him not to.

This was a lesson, and Kane learned it well.

He improved the following week, when his symptoms lessened to the same ones he’d felt on Batavion. It struck him as funny, how at the mining camp he’d wished for death to take away his agony. Back then he hadn’t known the meaning of the word.

A few days later a team of workers came to haul his limp body out of bed and drag him to the washroom for a shower. As the men wrinkled their noses and scrubbed him down, he noticed they were Whiteshirts, not medics, which told him his lesson was meant to be shared. Rumor would spread about what he looked like after two weeks with no inhaler—gray-skinned and trembling, his once-bulging biceps now atrophied to half their size—and the workers would think twice before disobeying.

He certainly would.

When his boss came to see him, Kane could’ve hugged the man if his arms were strong enough. His boss’s familiar face and duck-like waddle reminded him of how invincible he’d been in the dorm. He would give anything to feel that way again.

“How’re you holding up, kid?”

Kane locked eyes on the golden tube strung around his boss’s neck. A distant voice of reason whispered that the drug was the reason for all his suffering. If he used the Gold again, he would never be free of it. But that voice was quickly muffled by the screaming of every living cell within his body. He needed a breath of sweet air. He would do anything to have it.

“I’m ready,” he said. “I’ll fight harder this time.”

“That’s the right answer, kid.” His boss pulled a chrome inhaler from his pocket. “We’re gonna start you off slow and work up to the good stuff.” He shook it while glancing at Kane’s chest. “And beef you up again. You undid all my hard work.”

Kane frowned at the silvery tube. What he really craved was the Gold, but he lifted his head from the pillow and strained forward, eager to take the mouthpiece between his lips. A few pumps later, energy flowed through his veins, charging his muscles and propelling him off the mattress into a long, arching stretch.

God, it felt good to move his body.

The drug didn’t give him a rush, but the simple absence of pain filled him with so much euphoria that his breath hitched and his eyes welled with tears. “Thank you,” he said, and meant it. His boss had delivered him from hell, and Kane would never let him down again.

“Sure, kid,” the man muttered. “Now, come on. I want you back on the circuit in fifteen minutes.”



The night of the rematch, Kane was ready.

More or less.

Three days wasn’t long enough to replace all the bulk he’d lost, but the protein injections and circuit workouts had rounded his muscles and made them solid again. Most important, his boss had started giving him Gold—half strength at first, building gradually until a few hours ago, when he’d been allowed to bump up from the same inhaler as the other guys.

Drying out had given Kane an edge over the competition. He was still flying high from his last hit, punching the dorm bag as an outlet for his energy, while Cutter sat on the weight bench in the corner, grasping his knees and staring at the floor.

Kane looked away from his opponent and sank his fist into the bag. He had to focus on the equipment, to memorize its long, cylindrical shape and its cracked red surface, because that was what he would picture on the battle platform. Not a man. Just a bag.

“Time to suit up,” hollered the boss, tossing white bodysuits at them. Kane caught his easily, but Cutter’s reattached fingers hadn’t fully healed, and he fumbled with the fabric before grasping it in his opposite hand.

Not a man, Kane reminded himself. Just a bag.

He purposefully avoided Cutter while changing into his outfit, and when the time came for the three of them to leave the dorm, Kane kept the pace by his boss’s side, ahead of Cutter so he wouldn’t have to look at him. During the walk to the Vice Den, Kane distracted himself by counting the distant crashes of waves and observing the play of moonlight over the sand dunes. But that reminded him of the morning Cutter saved him from killing a guest, and Kane had to break the silence to end those thoughts.

“Is there a new maze tonight?” he asked his boss. He hoped so. His reflexes were quicker than the competition’s. If Cutter didn’t make it out of the maze, Kane wouldn’t have to kill him.

Guilt twisted his stomach. Had he really wished for Cutter to die?

“I need a bump,” Kane blurted before the boss had a chance to answer his question.

“You can have one at game time. And there’s no maze, just the final battle.”

Sweat beaded on Kane’s upper lip. “Please give me a hit now. All I need is—”