Demon Contract

The prep hall didn't greet him with noise this time. It settled around him like a held breath. Conversations thinned out. Steel stopped clinking. Even the air seemed to draw back a step.

Victor walked in slow, boots leaving faint tracks of drying blood. Three Razor-Backs had bought him attention he didn't want. The kind that measured him, not admired him.

Tamara stood near the benches. Her hands were steady, but her eyes weren't. She kept glancing down the tunnel as if expecting someone to follow him out.

"You look like hell," she said quietly.

Victor gave a tired half-smile. "Feel about the same."

A few younger fighters stared openly. The older ones looked everywhere except at him. He could sense the shift in them — not fear exactly, but a wariness that made people keep their distance from hot metal.

Victor brushed sand off his arm. The Marks in his pocket pulsed against his leg. Too warm. Too eager. He didn't like the way they sat under his skin, as if they were waiting for permission.

A veteran fighter rose from his seat and stepped back, giving Victor the kind of space reserved for unstable things. Victor met his eye long enough for the man to look away.

"Didn't realise I smelled that bad," Victor murmured.

No one laughed. That, more than anything, told him where he stood.

Tamara approached, lowering her voice. "They're reassessing you."

"Because I survived?"

"Because you weren't meant to."

Victor huffed out a breath. Not amusement. Resignation. "Yeah. Figured."

Another fighter muttered something under his breath. Victor caught only fragments — dangerous, wrong, keep clear. He didn't bother correcting any of it.

He let his shoulders settle, trying to ease the tightness building under the brand. It didn't help. The sensation there felt sharper now, like someone tuning a wire inside him.

Tamara stepped closer. "You changed the odds. The House pays attention when that happens."

Victor nodded. "Always wanted an audience."

This time she did look at him — a mix of sympathy and warning. "It isn't an audience you want."

Before he could ask, a soft chime rolled through the hall. Controlled. Precise. Meant to be heard without being loud.

Every conversation died instantly.

Fighters straightened. Some moved aside without thinking, clearing a line from the hallway to Victor. A few wouldn't even meet his eye now.

Victor exhaled slowly. "That's for me, isn't it."

Tamara didn't answer right away. Then she gave a small, reluctant nod.

"That sound means someone important wants to see you," she said. "And there's only one person who sends that call."

Victor felt the brand tighten like a cold fist under his collarbone.

"The Warden," he murmured.

Tamara stepped back. Not from fear of him — from fear of what stood behind the summons.

"Be careful," she said. "You're on her ledger now."

Victor let his hand hang loose at his side. His pulse steadied in a way that didn't belong to him alone.

"Too late for careful," he said under his breath. "But I'll try."

The hall stayed silent as the handlers arrived. No one spoke. And for the first time, Victor felt the Pit watching him as if it had plans.

***

The handlers guided him into a side corridor, and every step felt sharper than the last. Victor kept his expression steady, but the rhythm under his ribs was wrong. Too fast. Too aware.

He'd spent the whole fight thinking the announcer's voice was familiar. When the mask slipped and he'd felt the cadence under it, something inside him had tightened like a fist.

Isabella.

He didn't dare say the name aloud, but it slammed through his head with every footfall.

How did she know he could survive three Razor-Backs?
How did she know he was here?
And why was she alive?

The corridor was glass and steel, bright enough that the reflections flickered along his skin. He caught glimpses of himself in the panels: dried blood, bruises blooming across his ribs, eyes that looked far more unsettled than he wanted to admit.

The shorter handler walked beside him with a tablet, firing questions in a careful, clinical tone.

"State of pain."

Victor forced a breath evenly through his nose. "Fine."

He didn't trust what would come out if he said more. His mind wasn't on pain; it was on the booth, the silhouette, the voice that had slipped through distortion like a knife he recognised before he felt the cut.

"Muscle fatigue?" the handler asked.

"Manageable."

He could hear his pulse in his ears. It didn't feel like fear. It felt like shock that hadn't been given a place to land.

The taller handler checked a monitor embedded into the wall as they walked. "Your brand activity increased during the match."

"Yeah," Victor muttered. "It wanted the wheel."

"Did you resist it?"

"I'm standing here, aren't I."

They noted that down without comment. He wasn't sure if that answer helped him or dug him deeper.

They turned a corner, passing a reinforced door. A memory hit hard enough to pull his breath: Isabella leaning in the doorway of their old flat, arms crossed, telling him he worked too late to notice anything important. A younger version of her laughing by the kitchen sink. A different fight entirely, the kind that ended with silence instead of blood.

He pushed the thoughts down. He couldn't afford them now.

Another question from the handler. "Your regeneration accelerated after the first Razor-Back. Explain."

"No clue." He swallowed lightly. "Didn't feel like my choice."

Truth. And telling it made the brand twitch under his skin.

The handlers exchanged a look. Victor caught it and felt heat curl low in his chest — frustration, fear, and something rawer.

She's here. She's alive. And she knows exactly where I am.

They reached a junction where a House courier waited. The woman held a metal card with both hands, chin lowered. She didn't look at Victor. She didn't have to. The formality said enough.

The handler accepted the card, pressed his thumb to it, read the single line pulsing across its surface.

His jaw tightened.

"The Warden requests evaluation," he said. "Hold him until she's ready."

Victor felt his pulse spike hard. He hid it with a slow inhale.

Hold him.
Evaluation.
Like he was inventory returned to the shelf.

He stepped back a half-inch and reminded himself to breathe. She shouldn't be here. She shouldn't be alive. And if she knew he was in this pit, then she'd known for longer than the announcer's act had lasted.

The handler motioned toward a sealed chamber. Transparent walls. No restraints. A single chair.

He'd seen interrogation rooms that looked friendlier.

Victor kept his tone even. "You treating everyone this gently, or am I special?"

Neither handler answered. That was answer enough.

He stared at the door, pulse still too fast.

She's here.
She wanted the match.
She watched him fight.
She waited until the end to call him in.

He swallowed again. "How long am I waiting?"

The taller handler kept his gaze on the ground. "As long as she decides."

Of course she did. It was exactly the sort of line she would enjoy giving shape to.

Victor exhaled through his nose, slow, controlled. "Fantastic."

He leaned against the wall, but the glass was cold enough that he had to shift his weight. His heart was still racing under the surface, refusing to match the calm he was trying to hold.

In the quiet that followed, he felt it again — that sense of attention on the other side of the sealed door. Not imagined. Not hopeful. Sharp. Focused. Familiar.

As if Isabella had been watching from the moment he walked into the corridor.

Victor lowered his head for a second, breathing hard enough he could taste dust.

Why are you here?

The brand tightened under his collarbone.

And for the first time in years, Victor felt something he didn't have a name for — fear wrapped with longing, threaded through disbelief.

The handlers stepped away from him.
The corridor fell silent.
The door remained closed.

And Victor waited, pulse hammering, for his past to walk through it.

***

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The corridor lights hummed overhead, steady and white. Victor kept his breathing even, arms loose at his sides, trying not to look like someone slowly being pulled apart from the inside.

He wasn't afraid of handlers. He wasn't afraid of the Pit. He was afraid of the question chewing through his nerves.

Why is she here?

The walls vibrated — barely, like a tremor riding under the concrete. Victor straightened. The two handlers with him stiffened at the same time, shoulders locking, eyes flicking to the far end of the hall.

"Don't move," the taller one said.

Victor didn't need the warning.

The lights shifted, dipping once. On the second flicker, the whole stretch of corridor filled with a faint gold halo. Not warm. Not holy. Wrong. Like light reflecting off metal left too long in the furnace.

Footsteps followed. Not heavy or slow.

Perfect.

Three silhouettes appeared first. Tall. Straight-backed. Their shadows didn't waver on the floor the way living bodies should. They walked in a line, each movement matched to the millimetre — shoulders rising, heels touching down, hands swinging with the same measured distance between fingers.

When they stepped into full view, Victor's breath thinned.

Skin like polished metal, threaded through with molten gold. Not glowing — pulsing, like something alive under the surface was breathing for them. The brands on their chests burned bright, spreading up their necks in thin branching lines.

No armour. No weapons. They didn't need any.

The handlers pressed themselves flat against the wall. The shorter one dropped into a half-bow, eyes locked on the floor.

Victor didn't bow. He couldn't even force his knees to bend.

The creatures didn't look at him. They didn't look at anyone. Their eyes — if they were eyes — held a dull, metallic sheen, like coins hammered into skulls. No focus. No pupils. No awareness. Just forward motion.

They marched past him in perfect synchrony.

Victor felt the brand under his collarbone recoil, then reach.

A small, cold tug in his chest. A whisper of recognition. Something in those things was calling to what lived under his skin.

He swallowed that reaction fast, jaw tightening until the muscles in his face ached.

Tamara came rushing up the corridor, stopping short when she saw them. Her entire body dropped into stillness, head bowed. She didn't breathe until the last one had passed.

When the gold light faded, when the weight in the air loosened, she finally dared to lift her eyes.

"They used to be fighters," she said quietly.

Victor kept his gaze on the direction they'd gone. "Used to?"

"They took too many Marks." She didn't look at him. She didn't look anywhere near where the Hollows had walked. "The House calls them Hollows."

The word sat heavy.

Hollows.

Victor rubbed a hand across his jaw, trying to ground himself. The brand in his chest was still trembling, like a muscle about to spasm.

"How many Marks is too many?" he asked.

Tamara didn't answer right away. Her throat worked in a tight swallow. "Depends on the fighter. On their soul. On how much of themselves they had left to overwrite."

Her voice lowered. "Those three… they didn't have anything left."

Victor felt heat move up the back of his neck. Not anger. Something colder. The image of them walking in formation burned into his mind — the straight spines, the dead focus, the way their steps never fell out of rhythm. They were no longer soldiers, or even monsters. They were simply products.

The corridor brightened again, the gold trace fading fully. The handlers started breathing normally.

Victor didn't.

The brand pulsed once, sharp enough to make him flinch.

Tamara finally met his gaze. "You feel that, don't you."

It wasn't a question.

He didn't lie. "Yeah."

"That's why people here avoid the gold." Her voice had the tone of someone sharing a truth she wished wasn't real. "Once you take enough Marks, you stop being you. The Pit finds a better version."

He let those words settle against the back of his skull.

A better version.

Something in him wanted to laugh. Something else wanted to break something.

Instead, Victor leaned back against the glass wall and breathed through the tightening in his chest.

He had come down here hunting for freedom. A way to claw back control of a life that had spun too far out of his hands.

Now he was staring at the finish line of that path — a human engine wrapped in gold, marching wherever someone else pointed.

And through all of that, one question kept burning.

Isabella sees this every day. And she wanted him here anyway.

Tamara touched his arm, a quick gesture, gone too fast to linger.

"They're calling you soon," she murmured. "Whoever she is to you… make sure she doesn't see you crack."

Victor let out a slow breath. "No promises."

Tamara stepped back. The handlers returned to their stiff positions near the door.

Silence settled again.

Victor stared down the hall where the Hollows had vanished — three perfect machines disappearing into the golden haze.

The brand throbbed once more, responding to something he couldn't see.

He closed his eyes.

He was not going to become that.

Whatever Isabella wanted, whatever the House wanted — he would not let them carve him into gold and call it progress.

The door behind him clicked.

The summons was coming.

And Victor pushed off the wall, pulse steadying into something sharp and dangerous.

***

A buzzer cracked through the corridor, sharp enough to make one of the handlers flinch. The door at the far end slid open with a hydraulic hiss, revealing a length of glass and stainless steel built with the kind of money meant to intimidate, not comfort.

"Drake," the taller handler said. "Inside."

Victor didn't move at first. The brand pulsed a warning under his collarbone, a little spark of pressure, like someone pinching a nerve from the inside.

He pushed it down, rolled his shoulders once, and walked.

The handlers kept a full meter of distance behind him. Not because they respected him. Because they didn't trust themselves near someone the Warden had specifically requested.

The corridor curved in a slow arc, its walls switching from industrial concrete to glass. Through the transparent panels, Victor glimpsed the Pit from above—an aerial view of the sand, the blood, the drag marks from where they'd hauled the Razor-Back corpses away. The whole arena looked smaller from up here.

It didn't feel smaller.

Every step made the brand tighten in anticipation. It wasn't painful. It was worse.

It felt expectant.

Victor exhaled through his teeth, muttering under his breath, "You're getting too eager."

The pressure flared in response, a silent correction. His jaw locked as he fought the urge to swing at the nearest wall. Anything to quiet the thing inside him before he walked into whatever the Warden had planned.

The corridor ended at a seamless glass door.

A sensor flicked green. The room beyond lit up.

Victor stepped inside.

The door slid shut behind him with a sound like something sealing.

The space was wide—twenty meters across, at least. A circular chamber with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the entire Pit. Screens ringed the upper walls, frozen on still frames of his fight: angles showing the Razor-Back's jaw snapping around his arm, the splatter pattern of blood when he used one demon to bludgeon the others, the moment he stood over three corpses with steam rising off his skin.

Whoever designed this place wanted the subject to feel watched from every direction.

A single chair sat in the centre of the room.

Not bolted down.
Not chained.
Just placed there.

A spotlight shone directly over it.

Victor stopped two steps short, staring at it.

A hospitality trick. A behaviour test dressed as courtesy.

He'd seen interrogation rooms before—military, police, corporate. This was all of them stitched together by someone who enjoyed the craft.

He didn't sit.

The brand reacted instantly.

A sharp, electrical snap tore through the muscles along his spine. His breath hitched, knees softening before he forced them back into place. A bead of sweat rolled down his neck as the pressure built and held, waiting for compliance.

Victor planted his feet wider and stayed standing.

That only made the brand tighten.

His heartbeat jumped. He could feel it hammering against the inside of his ribs—but he refused to fold. Not here. Not for her.

A soft crack spread through the lights overhead, like the wiring was straining to keep up with the feedback.

Victor dug his nails into his palms, grounding himself. "Not sitting," he breathed, quiet but firm.

The pressure mounted once more—then eased.

Not completely.
Just enough to let him breathe.

The room hummed around him, screens flickering slightly. Whoever monitored brand behaviour had just watched him override an instruction it wasn't designed to refuse.

That thought should have steadied him.

It didn't.

It only sharpened the worry he'd been avoiding:

Isabella saw this coming.
She knew he would survive the arena.
She knew he would resist the brand.
She knew he would make it here.

Which meant she'd been watching for longer than today.

Victor's pulse climbed despite his best effort to clamp it down. He didn't show it on his face, but his insides felt like they'd been wired backward.

He looked around the chamber again—glass, steel, silence, surveillance.

No chains.

No guards.

Just expectation.

His chest tightened as he tried to piece together the timeline. He had been off-grid in the wastelands for months. No contact. No trail. He'd walked into Las Vegas because he had nowhere else left to crawl to.

So how the hell did she find him before he even stepped onto the sand?

And why wasn't she surprised?

Footsteps sounded behind the glass wall.

Slow. Confident. Completely unhurried.

Victor's breath caught—not in fear, but something far messier.

A shadow crossed the frosted panel of the side door.

His heart thumped so hard it hurt.

The handle shifted.

His hands curled into fists on instinct.

The brand pulsed—sharper, faster, like it recognised the approaching presence before he did.

Victor forced a steady breath through his lungs, bracing himself.

He didn't know what he was bracing for anymore.

The footsteps stopped right outside the door.

A beat of silence.

A soft click.

The door began to open.

And Victor's throat went dry, because every question he'd been avoiding all day crashed together at once:

Why is she here?
How long has she been watching?
What does she want from me now?

The door opened halfway—

And she stepped inside.

Isabella.

Everything in Victor stilled, except his heartbeat hammering hard enough to bruise bone.

He didn't speak. He couldn't.

The room wasn't big enough for all the things he suddenly needed to ask.

***

The door shut behind her with a soft final click, the kind meant to tell him there was no point looking back at it.

Isabella didn't rush. Of course she didn't. She never did. She closed the distance between them with the same measured pace she used in boardrooms, in arguments, in the last weeks before she walked out. Controlled steps, heel to toe, never breaking rhythm.

And for a moment, Victor could only look at her.

Her skin was pale—always had been—but it looked colder now, like it had forgotten sunlight existed. Her black hair hung straight past her shoulders, glossy and severe, framing a face he knew better than he wanted to. Brown eyes: steady, dark, impossible to read. She was tall, but still smaller than him; yet somehow she diminished everyone else in any room she entered. Almost flawless.

Almost.

A jagged scar crossed her lower lip, pale and long healed, a thin white slash marring the perfection she'd always carried like armour. Instead of softening her, the flaw made her seem even more distant. Colder. Like whatever had cut her hadn't just broken skin—like it had carved something out of her.

The brand thrummed under his skin like a struck nerve.

Isabella paused three meters from him, hands clasped behind her back, as if this were a performance review and not a reunion pulled from the grave.

"Victor," she said.

His name landed with the weight of something familiar pushed into a shape he no longer recognised. She didn't lace it with warmth or contempt. Just certainty. Like she had never doubted he would be standing here.

Victor swallowed once, the motion tight. He kept his stance wide, shoulders squared, every instinct telling him not to give her the satisfaction of seeing him fold. But the truth gnawed at the edges of it—he hadn't seen her since the world went to hell. Since the sky cracked. Since the screams from the Strip drowned every last goodbye.

He'd buried her in the silence afterward because that was the only way to breathe.

And now she was here.

Alive.
In charge.
Watching him like she had planned this moment down to the breath.

He scraped together something like composure. "Didn't expect to see you."

Her gaze dipped briefly to the Marks in his pocket as if she could hear them humming.

"You've improved."

He barked a short, humourless sound. "You always did love metrics."

A faint lift of her eyebrow acknowledged the jab, but she didn't rise to it. She stepped closer. One meter now. Close enough that he caught the faint warmth of her skin, the scent of steel and sand woven into whatever passed for perfume in this place.

The brand surged hard, almost buckling his knee.

He forced himself upright.

Isabella saw it. Of course she did. Her eyes tracked the twitch in his shoulder like a hawk noting prey behaviour.

"The brand recognises hierarchy," she said calmly. "It adapts. Quickly."

The implication slid cold through his ribs.

It adapts to her.

"How did you know I was here?" Victor asked, voice low but steady.

She tilted her head as if the question mildly inconvenienced her. "You're not difficult to find once you start surviving things that should kill you."

"That fight wasn't planned."

"I know," she said. "The interesting data never is."

He felt something twist in his chest—anger, disbelief, something older he didn't want to name. "You watched it?"

"From the first second you stepped onto the sand."

His heart stuttered. He tried to disguise it with a breath, but Isabella's eyes didn't miss anything. They never had.

Her voice softened, not warmly—more like a blade being polished.

"You shouldn't have been able to survive three Razor-Backs. But you did. Cleanly."
A pause.
"And you resisted the brand."

He said nothing.

She stepped closer. No space left now. Barely a breath between them.

"You know what the others become," she murmured. "The Hollows. Finished products. Beautiful in their way. But mindless." Her gaze locked onto his. "I won't let that happen to you."

Something inside him recoiled. "That's not your choice."

"It is," she said, like she was correcting a document. "Because you're mine."

The brand flared so sharply he almost gasped.

Victor clenched his jaw, forcing the pain down. "Is that why you called me here?"

"No."

Her voice dropped.

"I called you here because Orobas wants a demonstration. And I want to see how far you've slipped from the man I married."

He felt the words hit harder than the Razor-Backs.

He didn't show it.

Isabella stepped back just enough to reclaim the air between them, but her presence didn't lessen.

"Rest," she said. "You'll fight again soon."

"Against what?" Victor asked.

Her eyes held something unreadable. Not pity. Something colder.

"You'll see."

She turned toward the door.

The brand relaxed the moment her back was to him—like her absence loosened an unseen chain. His lungs filled fully for the first time since she'd walked in.

Isabella stopped at the threshold and looked over her shoulder.

"Try not to disappoint me again."

Then she left and the door sealed.

Victor stood alone in the wide, glass room, breath tight, heart unsteady, every old wound he thought he'd buried now torn open under fluorescent light.

He didn't move.

He just stared at the closed door, trying to understand whether he was more afraid of the next fight—

or of the look in her eyes when she said he belonged to her.