Ash stood still in the silence that followed his last breath in the pit. His chest rose and fell, steam curling from his mouth in the cold air. All around him, the crowd held their breath. Somewhere above, announcers were scrambling for new scripts. The show was changing, and not how they’d written it.
He raised his eyes.
There, above the last platform, still dangling by the neck—Corwin.
He wasn’t dead.
His body twitched. His legs kicked erratically, trying to find a foothold. His hands, now free from their binds, clawed at the rope, pulling, lifting, trying to relieve the pressure from his throat. His face was purple. Eyes bulging. But he was alive.
For now.
Ash’s gaze flicked back to the path ahead.
More pistons. Gears grinding with the mechanical rhythm of execution. Fire spitting in intervals. Beyond that, the raised platform and its cluster of shadowy fighters waiting like beasts behind bars.
Ash didn’t move.
Then he did something no one expected.
He laughed.
A broken, dry chuckle at first—but it grew, shaking his shoulders, mouth splitting open as if something had finally cracked inside him.
Mouse groaned behind him, still conscious but unable to rise. Ash turned to him.
“Sorry,” Ash muttered. “I need this more than you do.”
He crouched beside Mouse and started peeling the armor from his limp body. Piece by piece, the tech clattered to the floor—arm guards, chest plate, greaves. Ash wiped sweat from his forehead and hefted the helmet.
The crowd began to murmur.
He turned toward the gauntlet machinery.
And threw.
The helmet sailed in a clean arc and slammed into the exposed joint of a massive piston.
CRACK.
It sparked. Shuddered.
Ash followed it with Mouse’s arm guard—shoving it into the groove of a rotating gear. SCREEEECH.
The machine groaned, metal protesting, and somewhere beneath the arena a loud, sick clunk echoed.
The pistons began to stutter. Gears ground against broken teeth. Fire burst sideways, uncontrolled, licking the arena walls.
The gauntlet shuddered.
And began to collapse.
Panels buckled. Columns cracked. One of the drones shot up to the ceiling, alarm signals flashing red. Enforcers scrambled at the arena’s edge.
Ash stood at the edge of the pit, face lit by the flicker of burning wires and short-circuiting conduits.
He looked back at Corwin—still kicking, still fighting to live.
And he ran.
Frank M. Anderson's Writing 
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