The medic wasn't in his usual room. The lights were on. Blood bags swayed. The cot where he stitched corpses looked freshly wiped, but the corner sink was clogged again. Rusted brown water pooled on the floor.
Gray stood at the threshold. The air smelled like cauterized meat and antiseptic laced with copper. Something was missing in the smell. The tension.
"You're not bleeding," said a voice behind him.
He turned. The medic leaned against the far doorway. Shirt half-buttoned. A stim-scarred hand lit a narrow cigarette.
"You should be," the medic added.
Gray said nothing.
"You fought the Surgeon. They say he killed a man in under ten seconds last month. Broke the jaw, crushed the trachea, heel-dropped the face until the ring had to be replaced."
The medic blew smoke sideways. "You didn't kill him."
"I broke his arm."
"Yeah. I saw the footage. But you didn't finish it. Not your style lately."
Gray kept his eyes on the blood bags. One of them bulged in a way that didn't look human.
The medic watched him a moment longer, then stepped past, pulling on gloves.
"You used to finish clean," he muttered. "Now you look like you're trying to see what happens when you leave a man breathing."
Gray turned.
"He screamed," he said.
The medic looked back. Raised an eyebrow.
"He was still a man," Gray said. "Under the skin."
The medic smiled. Not kindly.
"That's gonna get you killed."
Gray left the room.
He didn't go to the dorms. Not yet. His mind was too loud. The old data echoed in his head. That video. The snow. The voice telling someone to erase his name.
He walked the perimeter hallway, the maintenance ring above the cage dome. This late, only drones patrolled, their lights blinking soft amber. No sound but the hum of buried cables.
The hacker girl was waiting again.
She sat on a crate this time, near the filtration vent that kept the arena's lower heat from cooking the crowd. Her boots were off. She had a bruise under her left eye, fresh. Her hands were working on a processor core stripped from a broken stim-vendor.
She didn't look up when she spoke.
"They sent a second file," she said. "But it was scrambled. Half code, half old-world dialect."
Gray stopped three paces from her.
"I tried cracking it through a relic reader I scavenged from the outer lanes, but it needs a double-auth key."
Gray waited.
"The key is embedded in Ertelyom command tattoos."
She looked up at him.
"Do you still have yours?"
He reached under his shirt. Pulled back the cloth at his left shoulder. The scarred circle. Raised and faded.
She stared. For a long time.
Then handed him the drive.
"Put your skin on the sensor. If the lattice isn't corrupted, it'll accept the trace."
He took it. Pressed the node against his shoulder.
The drive beeped. Glowed red. Then clicked.
"Good," she said.
Gray handed it back.
She looked down at the data spike. "Do you want to know what's in it?"
"No."
"Why?"
"I already know."
That made her pause.
Then she whispered, "You remember?"
"I don't forget."
She was quiet. The noise from the arena below started again. A fight. Boots stomping, voices rising.
"You knew someone there," she said.
Gray didn't answer.
"I think I saw a name on the first file. Couldn't decrypt it, but the length matches a nine-letter entry. Could be yours. Or someone else's."
She looked at him.
"I can find out."
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because I don't want to know what they called me."
She didn't speak for a while.
Then asked, "What do I call you?"
Gray looked at her. That long, flat stare that made most men stop breathing.
"You don't."
He walked away.
The crowd noise below rose to a thunder. Someone had died. Or would soon. Didn't matter.
He reached the upper stairwell, took the steps one at a time. Every footfall sounded heavier than the last. When he opened the dorm hallway door, Rezz was waiting by his cot. Not alone.
Beside him stood a woman in armor. Not arena armor. Tactical. Fitted. High-grade. Corporate-issued, probably modified. Her skin was pale. Eyes sleepless. She looked like someone who used to matter.
"CR-05," she said, without flinching.
Rezz stepped back.
Gray didn't move.
"We're not here for blood," she said. "Not yet."
He tilted his head.
"I represent a faction with interest in relic-class assets," she said. "You are one."
Silence.
"We know about the girl. We know about the Surgeon. And we know you've accessed files that don't exist anymore."
She stepped closer.
"If you walk out of Kajlamas with her, you'll be terminated. Standard bounty. Nothing personal."
Gray waited.
She dropped something on the cot. It clinked. A coin. Old. Heavy. Not currency.
"When you're ready to remember who you are, bring that to Vemrial Core. Ask for Greywake Protocol."
She left.
Rezz didn't look at him. Just followed.
Gray picked up the coin.
It was stamped with a symbol he hadn't seen in over a decade.
A circle.
Inside it, a pair of crossed blades.
Above it, the word:
RECLAMATION
He closed his fist around it. Blood from his knuckles smeared the metal.