Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 126003 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 630(@200wpm)___ 504(@250wpm)___ 420(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 126003 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 630(@200wpm)___ 504(@250wpm)___ 420(@300wpm)
“Where did you go?”
“To the water. Looking for the ship they brought me in on. I didn’t have anywhere to go, so I went to the only place I could think of. This is where I met Sami.”
“Sammy.” The name just comes out, low and sad.
“What?”
“Oh. We had a Sammy in our camp too. He died though.”
Eason nods. “Right. Well, Sami was a street kid. He was maybe… eleven? And he said he’d been on his own since he was eight. I think he was tellin’ the truth too, because that little fucker knew how to do everything. He’s the one who got me to Marrakesh. We hid in the back of a truck. And when we got there it was fuckin’ amazing. Every day we had food, and water, and a place to sleep. There were others too. Hundreds of homeless children running around the medina of Marrakesh. Sometimes we even worked. Helped out doing various things. It was a strange time—I was a little boy in a strange country who had escaped child traffickers after his family sold him to gain entry into a fight club. And when I thought about that, it was scary. But when I didn’t, it was… fine. I was fine.”
“So how did you get into the Ring, Eason?”
“Oh.” He laughs, still smiling. But I can see the darkness coming now. “It didn’t last. There were hunters everywhere, looking for stray children to put back on the market. So yeah, eventually I was caught. Sold. Ended up with just another random jackass. And then… fight camp. I was trained under a guy called X-Eyes.” He points to his stomach, to the scary smiley faces all over him. “His tattoos looked like this. I was there long enough to get through two death matches. The kiddie ones, right? Working my way up, I guess. And then X-Eyes lost in the Ring of Fire and… well, you know what happens next.”
I picture his life and compare it to mine. I guess I had never realized how lucky I was. How much worse it could’ve been if I had landed in any other camp but Cort’s.
Everyone wants in the Ring of Fire because the prizes—for both the owner and the fighter—are enormous. The fighters get to live. But they get other things too. Money, and gold, and houses, and yachts. Not to mention women to bed and more kids to train in their camps.
The owners get things like… controlling shares in global businesses. Ways to make legitimate billions. Respect. And more fighters, because they also get the training camp of the losing opponent. They get all his up-and-coming fighters. They get all his hard work.
Losing in the Ring of Fire has consequences for both the owner and the fighter. Of course, the fighter dies. But the owner loses all chances to fight in the Ring again because he loses his best prospects.
If he’s an older owner, maybe he’s got two camps. Two fighters at Ring of Fire level. Maybe even more. So the blow is not as bad.
But if he’s young, if this fighter was the only one he had, the fighter would’ve been very precious. Because losing means the owner starts all over from the bottom. Finding a young boy who has what it takes to go all the way again isn’t easy. There is only one Cort van Breda on this whole planet. Only one.
All the rest just… die.
“No,” I tell Eason. “I actually don’t know what happens next. Cort never lost. I’ve been with him—was with him—the whole time.”
Eason just looks at me now, his face different. It’s not anger or sadness. It might be jealousy. He presses his lips together to force a smile, then continues.
“My next camp was worse. Bigger. Kids were assholes. I did one fight there—won, obviously—and then the Ring fighter lost and we were given away again. This happened four more times in just two and a half years and then I landed at Benny’s when I was thirteen. I was put up for auction. There was so little left of the original camp I came into after all those losses, they just sold us all off like… like a fuckin’ estate sale. By that time, they all knew I was gonna make it. I was a ticket in for a hungry up-and-comer, which Benny was. He said he was part of the Saudi royal family, but I wouldn’t know any better if he wasn’t. He was someone, though. Someone important. Or, at the very least, the son of someone important. Because I was sold for a very pretty price. Almost twenty-six million dollars.”
I just stare at him for a moment, my mouth open in shock as I try to process what he just said. But mostly my mind is still stuck on the words ‘estate sale.’