The next day at work, Kay refused to say more than a couple of words at a time to Jackson. As they went through their morning chores at Sato, she kept up her icy airs no matter how Jackson tried to break it. Finally, after hours of the mostly-silent treatment, he cracked.

“Look, I’m sorry, okay,” Jackson said. “But I don’t have any other choice.”

Kay looked up from the pile of manure she had her pitchfork buried in. She wiped her forehead with a gloved hand and shot Jackson a glowering look that felt hotter than the afternoon sun beating down on them.

She looked like she was about to say something but seemed to stop herself before walking away.

“Kay!”

“I’m going on my break,” she said, making her way to the main building without removing her gloves.

“Trouble in paradise?”

Jackson jumped at the sound of Fiona’s voice. Fiona stood a few paces away, watching him in her usual, confident pose.

“How many times have I told you, we’re not dating,” Jackson said. This was the first time he’d seen her since their night at the pit, and in all honesty, he’d nearly forgotten about Tessa Green.

“But you two are fighting,” Fiona said.

“Do you need something?” Jackson said. He wouldn’t normally snap at her like that, but given the circumstances, he couldn’t help but feel the heat rise in his face.

But Fiona didn’t seem to have a taunting look on her face. “I have something important to ask you. Sorry if this isn’t a good time, but it’s not good news for you.”

“Oh?” Jackson said, his stomach dropping. What else could go wrong?

“Do you mind telling me what this is?” Fiona said, flicking open a message on her holo-watch.

Jane’s face popped up in front of him.

Oh, no.

“Hello there, Ken and Yuki, this is Jane Hunt. I’m just calling to thank you so much for what you’re doing for my grandson.”

Beep! Fiona shut off the message. “That’s the start of a five minute message. Five minutes, Jackson! You know what she talks about? How proud she is of you and how grateful she is that we’ve been giving you all these extra hours. You mind telling me what extra hours she’s talking about?”

Jackson opened his mouth to speak, but shut it again after he couldn’t find the words.

“I’m waiting,” Fiona said.

“So I’ve been…not entirely honest with my grandma.”

“You think?”

“But that’s my business, okay?” Jackson said.

“I know it’s not my business what lies you tell your grandma, but when you’re doing so, how about you keep our name out of it? And if you’re going to lie, why not make it more believable?”

“Believable?”

“Yeah, don’t you think she’ll get suspicious when you literally have no extra spending money?”

Oh, I have extra spending money, Jackson thought, but knew he shouldn’t say.

“Now I’m going to have to explain this to my parents, and they’re going to call her back. I wanted to give you a heads-up. Whatever you’re hiding from her is probably going to come out.”

“Please don’t,” Jackson said. “This doesn’t affect any of my work, but I can’t let them tell her I haven’t been working extra hours. Would you please do me a solid and keep this between us?”

Fiona gave him an unamused look. She bit her lip for a second and scratched her forehead. “I’m sorry, but that’s just not in the cards right now.” She walked away from him, leaving Jackson’s world completely shattered.

“Wait,” he called out to her.

“I won’t change my mind.”

“Are you sure about that, Tessa?” Jackson said. The words had come out almost without him even thinking. He wasn’t even one hundred percent sure Tessa was her, and even if he was, blackmail wasn’t exactly what he wanted to do with that information. But there it was, out in the open.

Fiona stopped immediately, but didn’t turn around. “What did you call me?”

No turning back now, he thought.

“Tessa Green,” Jackson said with a gulp. “You know. Tessa Green. Darling of the Underground.”

Fiona turned around. Her mouth was pursed up, her brow creased, and her eyes filled with a fury he hadn’t seen since back when they were in high school.

Bingo.

“Who told you that?”

“I’ve seen you fight,” Jackson said. “There aren’t many people around here with Megalas.”

“So you’ve been there?”

Jackson smirked involuntarily. “I’ve fought there. Just like you. That’s what I’ve been keeping from her, and I’m assuming that’s something you’ve also been keeping from your parents.”

Fiona face tightened and her eyes turned to the side. She stood there thinking for several long seconds as the knots in Jackson’s stomach continued to twist.

“I’ll delete the message and keep it from my folks,” she said finally. “You don’t speak a word of this to anyone. Not even Kay.”

“Kay already knows,” Jackson said. “She’s been going with me.”

Fiona groaned in resigned irritation and pinched at the bridge of her nose. “Does anyone else know?”

“Not that I know of,” Jackson said.

Fiona’s face remained stoic, but Jackson couldn’t help but notice her clenching her fingers into a claw at her side.

“Can I trust you to keep my secret?” she said, calmer than Jackson expected.

“Of course,” Jackson said.

“I’ll keep your secret if you keep mine.”

“Deal.” Jackson held out his hand.

“But we don’t talk about this. Not at work. Not at the Underground. Not anywhere.”

Jackson couldn’t help but feel the slightest pang of disappointment. He’d hoped once the cat was out of the bag he’d be able to share his passion with someone else, but in this case, it was just another secret to be kept.

“Okay, then.”

“Then we’re agreed,” Fiona said finally taking his hand.

* * *

The next few weeks were the most torturous of Jackson’s life. Although he somehow managed to keep up his training with Briggs, make it to work on time, help his grandma, and win the fights at the Underground, the boulder on his back continued to grow.

Most of the time, he walked around in a daze and constantly found his bosses, his grandma, and Briggs yelling at him for not paying attention. As much as Asena hated being inside her ring, Jackson envied the rest she was able to get while he wore himself to the bone.

Soon, every day started to feel like an impossible slog. Several times, he found himself sleeping in, rushing to either make it to his shifts or his training. At times like that, he wished he’d had someone like Kay to count on to keep tabs on him, but she still wasn’t speaking to him. Even at work, she’d restricted her conversation to the bare minimum to get their jobs done. Whenever he tried to say anything else, she’d just ignore him.

Jackson’s grandma commented on the dark bags under his eyes and told him he was working too much. He couldn’t eat, and half the time his sleep was plagued by nightmares involving some variation of his Djinn fighting being discovered and Asena being taken from him. Every time his watch rang, he was sure it would be Sato, Jane, or Briggs messaging him to say the jig was up and he’d been found out.

But somehow, he wasn’t, and the money started coming in. With the additional bets Tak placed for him, Jackson nearly tripled what he brought home each weekend from the Underground fights. Asena continued to grow stronger and kept winning. It seemed like his general approach to his Djinn Point allocation was working wonders. As he’d expected, an inordinate number of tamers at his level spent a lot of their DJP on defense, and his already naturally strong Lyote — coupled with his Attack-heavy allocation — made him a force to be reckoned with in the ring.

In many ways, his strategy worked so well, he won in spite of his exhaustion. Although their Bond continued to grow and become fine-tuned under Briggs’s tutelage, Jackson was so worn out by the time night rolled around that his strategies and commands came out muddled.

No matter how many energy drinks he downed, nothing made up for a lack of sleep. Instead, he became jittery and even more paranoid and anxious. Briggs took it as a lack of focus and pushed him even harder.

Jackson didn’t know how Fiona did it. Like him, she was at the Underground a few times a week, but he made good on his promise not to approach or converse with her. That suited Jackson just fine. He had enough to worry about as it was.

Throughout the week, Jackson counted up the money, willing it to earn interest even though he only brought in extra cash from the Underground fights. He constantly counted down the days to eviction, dividing them by the amount he needed to win each evening at the Underground to meet his goal. He knew the numbers backward and forward but they never added up.

As a result, Jackson’s fighting style became more erratic and aggressive, and without Briggs’s training and Asena’s natural edge in her Attack strength, he was confident he would have lost every bout.

“You look like trash,” Laila said as Jackson handed her another envelope.

“Yeah, well, such is the life of a tamer, I guess,” Jackson said absentmindedly. “What’ve you got for me today?”

Laila gave a smirk. “I think you’ll be happy with this one.”

* * *

Dodge, Asena, Dodge! Jackson commanded.

Laila had mentioned he’d be happy about this fight, but after setting him up with so many patronizingly dull fights, he thought she was underestimating him on purpose. But this fight against a Brawlaroo had been quite the surprising skirmish, to say the least. It was all Asena could do to avoid its quick blows. Furthermore, it looked like this trainer had taken the same approach to DJP allocation as Jackson, focusing mostly on beefing up its Attack, which made every impact between the two potentially match-ending.

Asena jumped aside just as the Brawlaroo jumped back on its tail and lashed out with its powerful legs where Asena has stood moments before. The fight had been neck-and-neck the whole time, and Jackson knew whoever landed the next hit would likely earn the KO and the win. As fast as Asena was, the Brawlaroo was almost as fast, even more agile, and had made the most of their close quarter encounters.

To make matters worse, this tamer had also mastered the ability of using telepathy to issue his commands. This was the only other tamer he’d faced who had this ability, and as a result, Jackson had a much harder time with his own commands. So instead of attacking, Jackson found himself retreating every chance he got.

Stay away! Jackson thought, clenching his jaw tight. Stay away!

Asena prowled the perimeter of the fight and circled the Brawlaroo. Some of the spectators booed at Jackson’s unwillingness to take a chance and finish the match, but Jackson ignored them.

You’re always going to have fans screaming at you to do something different, no matter what level you’re at, Briggs had told him over and over. Never listen. Stick to your strategy and do what you think is best. There’s no faster way to lose in this business than starting to let in suggestions from the peanut gallery. Remember: you’re in the ring and they’re not.

Now! Fire Growl! Jackson commanded.

The Brawlaroo saw Asena stooped and bounded toward her with incredible speed. It jumped and landed hard on its strong, spring-like legs, catapulting it into the air over Asena’s head: a do-or-die move.

At the same moment, Asena threw back her head and let out a long, mournful howl. A twisting shot of fire sprang from between her fangs and blasted the Brawlaroo full-force, knocking it out of the air. It landed in a blackened, smoking heap and did not rise. KO. Its hit points dove from 15 down to zero.

Jackson let out a huge sigh and slumped his shoulders. Rather than being elated, he was just grateful he’d survived another round. With the added pressure of the side bets, he couldn’t afford even a single mistake. But he couldn’t keep a smile off his face when he felt is watch vibrate and the display flash:

ASENA LEVEL UP

All around him, the crowd cheered but Jackson hardly noticed their applause. Asena ran to his side and wagged her tail. Jackson gave her a big hug. For a brief moment, the pride in his Djinn washed away his stress.

“Good girl!” Jackson shouted over the noise of onlookers. “You did it!”

Jackson looked up and caught sight of the tamer he’d just beaten, finally taking a minute to get a good look at him. The man wore a strange mask that looked like something out of a theatre production. He had on a long trench coat and a tall pair of army-style boots, but aside from the mask, nothing out of the ordinary. Laila had introduced him as Dorian, but Jackson had never seen him at the Underground before, let alone in a fight. He wasn’t surprised, though. In the time he spent at the Underground, he found that many tamers entered with disguises and false names — probably so their affiliation didn’t come back to haunt them in their real lives.

The mysterious tamer returned his toasted Brawlaroo to its ring and walked across the sand to congratulate Jackson.

“Nice fight, kid,” he said, extending his hand. The man spoke in a growling voice but seemed sincere. Jackson shook it.

“Thanks,” Jackson said. He tried to pick out any features behind the mask but it covered the man’s face well. “Your Brawlaroo is quite the fighter — you almost had me! “

The man shrugged. “Just a little side project I’ve been working on. He’s coming along nicely, though.”

“Obviously, I can’t see its stats, but it looks like you focused a lot on its Attack.”

“You noticed, eh?”

“I know most newts put a lot of focus —”

“On their Defense?”

Jackson chuckled. “Yeah. And if that Brawlaroo’s just a side project, you know that real well, don’t you”

“Do you mind if I chat with you in private for a moment?”

Jackson looked around. Normally he’d ask Kay to at least weigh in on something like this, but with her gone, he only had his own instinct to go on.

“Yeah, sure,” he said.

“It won’t take long,” the man said in a voice that caught Jackson’s ear. His strange accent marked him as a native of Osmara, a large island in the middle of the Eastern Ocean. There were a few Osmarians working as ranch hands at Sato, but Jackson would have picked them out immediately if it had been one of them.

As he followed the man to a quiet corner away from the fighting rings, he did his best to place why the man sounded so familiar.

“You put on a pretty good show out there tonight,” the mysterious man said. “Some friends of mine are putting together a little tournament near here in a couple of weeks and we’ve got a couple of spots left to fill. Think you’d be interested?”

Jackson was so busy trying to figure out where he’d heard the man’s voice before that he almost didn’t catch the question. “Wait, what? Like another Underground fight?”

The man shook his head. “Nah, mate. This is the real deal — not a League fight, of course, but a sanctioned preseason tournament. I’ve been going around scouting out some fresh blood and thought you fit the bill.”

Between the nagging feeling of not being able to place the voice and the sudden overwhelm at receiving an invitation to a legitimate Djinn tournament, Jackson could hardly speak. “Yeah! Of course! I uh…”

“Speechless,” the man said. “I know. I’ve seen the look before.”

“It’s not just that. It’s just…do I know you from somewhere?”

The man flashed a toothy grin through the mouth opening on his mask. “I don’t think so.”

The grin gave it away. Jackson’s mind went back to the countless times he’d seen it and heard that accent in post-match interviews on the holo. But it couldn’t be — not here, in the lowest level of Djinn fighting.

“No way,” Jackson whispered. The man must have noticed the recognition in Jackson’s eyes because he took a step back and readjusted his mask. “You’re Vance freaking McAllister!”

The man threw back his head and laughed. When he’d finished, he tipped his mask up, revealing the face of the world’s most famous Djinn Tamer — a man who’d not only beaten Cassius Briggs in his prime but stayed among the best of the best in the decades since, with no signs of slowing down.

“Good eye, kid,” McAllister said. He reached into his trench coat and pulled a card with gold trim. He held it out but when Jackson reached for it, McAllister flicked it out of reach. “I wasn’t joking about a place at my tournament, but…I’ll need you to keep quiet about our little encounter here if you want that spot. We got ourselves a deal?”

Rather than remaining tongue-tied, words started pouring out of Jackson’s mouth in rambling, incoherent stream. Vance McAllister laughed again and cut him off. “I’ll take that as a yes. But remember: not a word about running into me here, got it?”

Jackson nodded and Vance winked before pulling down his mask. He nodded to Asena. “That’s quite the Lyote you’ve got there. Keep raising her right, you might even make it into the Gold League one day. I’ll see you around.”

With a swish of his trench coat, Vance McAllister turned and disappeared into the crowd. Jackson stared in the direction he’d gone for several moments afterward. He wasn’t quite sure what had just happened, but he looked down at the invite in his hand and knew he couldn’t be dreaming. If he was dreaming, the air wouldn’t smell like vape clouds and steaming, hot garbage.

What was going on here? Cassius Briggs and Vance McAllister were just at the same fight together, and only Jackson knew about it. It’s as if he’d just entered his own wildest dream.

“Hey, kid!” A voice brought Jackson back to reality.

Laila approached them with one of her meathead bouncers at her side. A shock of fear ran through Jackson. This was it: she’d found out about his side bets and he was going to be beaten to a pulp.

Sensing Jackson’s sudden spike in adrenaline, Asena growled at the pink-haired woman. Laila countered with a scowl.

“Not a bad fight tonight,” Laila said. “That Dorian guy and his Brawlaroo have been mopping the floor with quite a few of the newts around this place.”

“Does that mean you’ll match me up with a fight against Tessa Green?” Jackson asked. Even if no one knew it, he’d just beaten Vance McAllister and wanted a shot at Fiona. Somebody needed to knock her down a few pegs and he was just the tamer to do it.

But Laila shook her head. “Nah, kid, but I’ve got another proposition for you — one that’ll make it so you don’t have to do any more side betting with your buddy, Tak.”

Jackson’s heart barreled into his throat. “I don’t know what —”

Laila waved her hand. “Cut the crap kid — I’ve known about it for weeks. It’s all good — that’s how most of these dirtbags around here make their dough. As long as you’re not betting against yourself and throwing fights, I ain’t got a problem.”

“So…you’re not going to throw me out?” Jackson asked in a tentative voice. He didn’t know how he would explain to Briggs why he couldn’t fight in the Underground anymore without telling him the truth.

“Of course not,” Laila said. “I told you — I’ve got a sweet deal for you. How about a rematch with Drill? He thinks his old goat can take on your Lyote and he’s willing to drop eight grand to prove it.”

Jackson’s jaw dropped. This was exactly the kind of match he’d been hoping for from day one, but he couldn’t but feel a distant nagging at the back of his head.

Fittingly enough, the voice was that of Kay’s. Were she there, she’d tell him he’d be an idiot to take something like this on. She’d go on about how hard he’d worked for all his money and that it wasn’t worth throwing away on some gamble. She’d also say that if something seemed too good to be true, it’s because it was.

On the flip side, Jackson had been running the numbers, and no matter how much he’d win on those standard matches, he wasn’t going to make it without taking a big risk like this.

“Whaddya say, kid?” Laila asked.

This was his do-or-die moment.

“Let’s do it.”