The bull charges. Thunder cracks. Fury builds. Then my chest splits open.

Smoke bursts out of my body and propels me into the sky. I hover in the air for a moment. Giant black wings of mist unfurl from my back. The shadows that pour from my chest turn into a spear in my left hand.

I dive toward the ground as the bull reaches where I’d been standing moments earlier. With a shout I plunge the spear through the top of the bull’s skull and into the sand beneath. It splinters on impact.

The bull collapses.

I straighten, and the smoke wings disappear. The bull wiggles for a few disturbing seconds before succumbing to death, pinned to the sand like a bug to foam.

The pressure of emotion vanishes. I gasp for breath and survey the scene before me with fresh eyes.

The bull, dead.

The spear, broken.

The crowd, silent.

Time pauses. Then four men in armor enter the Arena with their own spears made of wood and metal that look very ready and able to stick me through. They surround me, but I have no interest in fighting them. I’ve emptied myself of my conviction and energy.

Whatever just happened has scared them.

Scared me.

The other noxiors cower against the inner wall of the Arena. A soldier holds the dad and two daughters at sword point.

Crixus saunters across the Arena and stops near the circle of foot soldiers. He crosses his arms and regards me.

“Well, well, well. You’ve been keeping secrets.” He smirks, but it doesn’t hide the wariness behind his eyes. “Tirones,” he says to the soldiers. “Bind him. We’re taking him to the Emperor.”

The spell over the crowd breaks at these words. As the soldiers—tirones—lead me away, bound by chains, the people are back to cheering again. They holler in a way that makes them sound far hungrier than when I first walked in.

I’m taken to a cell “to cool off.” I don’t need to cool off. My emotions are drained from doing . . . whatever I did. I made wings. Flew? And then killed an enormous Nightmare bull.

How?

Something tells me this shouldn’t be possible—some knowledge from my life in the Real World. But I can’t pull up details. This Nightmare brain fog is starting to grate on me. I close my eyes, and I think I sleep at some point. Time passes, but there’s no way to determine how much.

When Crixus comes for me, it’s to take me to the Emperor.

Does this make me a citizen now? It’d be nice to graduate out of their sick games. “Are you going to explain?” I ask.

Crixus opens my door with a creak of rusty hinges—how have they had time to rust? The Nightmare hasn’t been around that long. Whoever created these cells added the rust for effect. No detail left behind.

“Save your questions for the Emperor.” Crixus smells even more of blood, sweat, and something foul. Maybe they don’t have showers in this place. How are my olfactory senses even working? Isn’t this all in my imagination?

“Will the Emperor answer them?”

“I guess you’ll find out.” Crixus leads me through the training grounds to a double-gated door guarded by four soldiers, tirones.

There is no escaping the noxior indentureship. One can only be released from it. I like to hope that’s what’s about to happen to me. The tirones nod to Crixus as he passes, then lock the door behind us.

We exit from an alleyway into a wide road illuminated by the false sunlight that is really fire on the top of the coliseum walls. The road runs along the coliseum’s circumference inside the wall. Crixus hauls me aside as two chariots, each drawn by four horses, speed by. Racing through the streets? They could kill someone.

“Four horses to one chariot,” I say. “Overkill, don’t you think?”

“It’s called a quadriga.” Crixus resumes our walk.

I give him a side-eye thinking he must be joking. “It’s called Ben-Hur.” He really has embraced this whole Roman Nightmare world. “I don’t know if your knowledge of ancient Roman terms is concerning or just nerdy.”

He stays in character. No smile. No response. One hand keeps its grip on my forearm, and the other holds the hilt of his gladius. It’s not like I’m going to run. I want answers, and so far, it sounds like he’s taking me to them.

Homes and apartments are built into the thick walls of the coliseum, strings of laundry crisscrossing the sky above our heads. Market stalls exist underneath the dwelling spaces at street level. “Who all lives in here?”

“Citizens.”

“All citizens?” I ask. “What about the houses outside of the coliseum?” We passed several on our way here.

“Abandoned. Some people refuse to enter the coliseum. They’re not interested in learning to survive and earn their right to live here. Non-citizens.”

“So you kill them?” I ask, disgusted.

“Tenebra kills them.” Tenebra. This world. “Citizens don’t leave the coliseum unless it’s absolutely imperative. If a citizen leaves the coliseum without permission, they lose their citizenship.”

“How can someone leave while it’s on fire?”

“The fire won’t burn a citizen.”

That explains why Crixus could part the flames for me and why they still scorched my skin. “And yet if a citizen leaves without permission, you kill them?”

Crixus shakes his head. “You keep thinking we want everyone to die. That citizen would merely return to noxior status and have to earn their citizenship again. Earn our trust again.” He gives me a hard look, not breaking his stride. “You saw what was out there.”

I think of the hooded and cloaked people who dragged Erik away as he clawed at the road. Who killed James the Vetter. Who caused our cart to crash and crush a man. “The Spores.”

“You learn quickly.”

“What does it matter? We’re all dying in the Real World anyway.”

“Not all.”

I snort. “What does that mean?” Nole and I studied this Nightmare. We watched people use up their final 22 days and then get trapped in the Nightmare coma, withering away in a matter of days.

“How long have you been infected, Cain?” Crixus dodges my question.

Now that I’m not consumed by angry energy, I’m able to think about other things, though thinking about life in the Real World seems hazily distant. Like an old stew of memories neglected and then vaguely stirred. I try to pull up a timeline of my real life but can’t seem to settle on exact numbers.

I instinctively pat my pocket for my time card, but it’s not there. Obviously. My clothes followed me in here, but not the items in my pockets. Go figure. No sticks of gum either. And here I thought this place couldn’t get worse.