“These two are extremely talented fighters, and we’re seeing what that means with this battle. Neither one of them is willing to give an inch!”

  From where I was standing it felt like nothing more than an exercise in self-destruction. We ran into each other again and again, like a human slamming face-first into a brick wall. Each clash was fuel poured onto the fire of the audience’s passion, bringing cheers and boos in equal measure. I remembered what Pompeii said and tried to put on an interesting bout, as best I could without fully understanding what they saw in this meaningless charade.

  Every time I was pressed into this I became concerned with the waste it caused. Fuses, joints and lines – all pieces that wore out quickly and were difficult, if not impossible to produce in the facility. How many thousands of those had been wasted since this arena came to be?

  >> The bots in charge must be making something from all of this. Look at the size of this crowd.

  Enough to pay for all of it.

  Maybe it was the wrong line of reasoning to be going down at this moment. Hesitating because I was worried about smashing up my opponent was a wasted effort. If not me, it was going to be one of the others doing it later on – and putting an end to this operation on my own was an absurd proposal. There were some problems that couldn’t be solved by a single bot.

  >> This entire city is built around the arena. It serves as a profit engine for the leaders and a way to keep their underlings in line…

  I was brought back down to reality by a glancing blow against my shoulder. I put the buckler up and kept my important areas protected, trying to find a gap so I could slip past the most dangerous part of their weapon. If I could get in close then their choice of spear would make it difficult to get away and open up space again.

  I found my opening soon after. Segontium overcommitted to a thrusting attack and missed me. Dashing forward, I came down atop one of the rusted plates with a loud clatter, sending chips of rusted metal in every direction. A flurry of attacks tried to break through – but it was no use. I’d have to target an exposed area to have any hope of damaging them.

  Segontium pushed their free hand against my chest and pushed with a surprising amount of force, hooking their foot around the back of my leg to knock me off-balance. I hopped up over their outstretched leg and staggered back, using my buckler to keep them from prodding at me in the meantime.

  It was their turn to lead the attack. I kept my buckler high and deflected several thrusts. Each one rattled the hydraulics and motors in my right arm. I stepped in to try and close the gap again, which was my first mistake. I went too far. Before I knew it the tip of their spear was diving towards my other arm and smashing into the unarmoured joint. Instantly a warning message flashed in red in the corner of my eye, and an error was beamed directly into my logs.

  >> System error: damage to left arm detected.

  That was a good attack. Even if Segontium was losing their cool over being forced to fight a newbie, they were still talented enough. One of the lines inside had been severed by the sharp tip of their blade, causing hydraulic fluids to leak down onto the gladius still clutched between my fingers. I wasn’t going to be able to use the full strength of it now, so I switched it to my other hand instead.

  “Adapting quickly to the damage, London wields both his sword and shield on the same arm!”

  Adapting was one thing – but being able to effectively fight using one arm was harder than it seemed at first blush. The added weight was slowing me down, and the circumference of the buckler was almost as wide as the gladius was long! I couldn’t sink it deep into their hide like this. I lost more and more ground, being forced away from my firm footing and towards the edge of the ring where the softer ground laid.

  >> Stability Factor: 48 percent

  I could already feel the weight of the armoured plates pulling me down. It was an unfortunate reality that they were too effective to leave on the table and maintain stability. That extra layer of defence was the difference between victory and defeat.

  “London is teetering on the edge! Is he going to fall into the trench?”

  Instead of falling out of the ring and losing that way, I elected to take the fall by pushing myself to one side and rolling away before they could skewer me. They gave chase quickly – hoping to end the fight then and there with a decisive attack. Segontium made the exact same mistake that I did. He moved too deep and overshot his mark. I swung out with my gladius and crashed into his shin, cutting through several wires and causing him to stagger away on the remaining working leg.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  “Why don’t you just give up? Newbie!”

  “I would recommend spending less of your energy on taunts.”

  That only angered him further.

  “I’m the one who’s going to teach you!”

  But the end of our fight was coming sooner than he anticipated, as they so often did in the arena. His aggressive posture caused him to lose his balance, putting weight onto his damaged leg and tumbling face-first into the dirt with a loud clatter. He scrambled to defend himself using the shaft of his spear to no avail. The edge of my gladius was already halfway through my swing. I knelt next to him and pushed it deeper.

  I knew I’d hit gold because of the frustrated cry that came from Segontium’s mouth. I brought my other limp hand up to their neck and applied as much pressure as I could, wrenching the blade back and forth until the coolant line was severed. The cyan-coloured fluid spurted from the damaged pipe and drenched my front.

  I withheld any more ferocious attacks and stepped away, leaving them on the ground with a ‘bleeding’ neck and a rapidly elevating heat level coming from their batteries. Segontium’s corner had seen enough. The lights from the opposite side of the arena flashed in surrender. He could still fight, but they didn’t want to risk accumulating even more damage to those valuable parts to earn the win. The opportunity cost was simply too high.

  “Segontium has been felled and his handler has given the signal! London claims another head for his rapidly growing collection.”

  Commiserations and celebrations broke out in the stands as the audience finally got to see if they made the right bet. Some tore up their slips in frustration and allowed the pieces to flutter down into the arena like confetti. I took my victory lap and held my arm aloft, giving them a small show before heading back to my entrance.

  Pompeii patted me on the back, “Nice work. Segontium isn’t a pushover by any means. Cutting through the coolant line is smart. Those internals are too valuable to risk damaging on a low-stakes bout like this.”

  I felt no satisfaction from my ‘victory.’ It was another hard-earned notch on my chassis, but that served no real purpose. It paled in comparison to the satisfaction I felt when I recalled the old days when I was tasked with repairing infrastructure and helping build new sectors into the facility. I was not possessed by so destructive an impulse that I could look past this waste.

  “Did you see that crest he was wearing?”

  I followed Pompeii back towards his workshop; “Yes.”

  “You only get the right to wear one of those after winning a tournament. Obviously, you lose it once you switch identities though. Keeping hold of one for that long is the real achievement, since the Bossman thinks he’s popular enough to keep going…”

  “Is my public persona not exciting enough?”

  “Oh, no. All of the talk I’ve been hearing is positive. Your lack of outward character is enticing in itself. Most of the bots who fight end up turning into a similar kind of personality after a while. All hot-heads who need a new water-cooler.”

  He held the curtain open for me and ushered me through. I placed the shield and sword onto the workbench and detached the broken arm for salvage. Pompeii didn’t leap into his work though. There was a pensive energy in the way he stood and observed me performing my post-fight routine.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “I got pulled aside by one of the officers. With this win your odds have gotten too high for their liking.”

  “And that means?”

  “The house always wins, and they don’t ask for permission before fixing fights. One of the other camps will ‘conveniently’ come across a bunch of high-grade parts in excellent condition and skew the odds of a fight that’s meant to be a total blowout.”

  “Why do it that way?”

  “Because they don’t have to offer us anything or ask for co-operation. They throw chum into the trough and they all bite. It doesn’t always work. I’d say they get their way ninety-nine percent of the time unless it goes very wrong. But a few ‘upsets’ and bets placed by bots working for the boss is enough to turn a profit on this whole operation.”

  They really didn’t want the gladiators and handlers to have any leverage in these dealings. It was a perfectly rational approach if they were trying to make as much profit as possible whilst keeping every bot under their thumb. Why bother asking a bot to take a fall and risk having them go against the script? They could hand over useful parts, just like Pompeii claimed, and make absolutely sure that they were on the winning end of any bet they placed in secret.

  It also served another purpose. They imagined that dominance from a single fighter would slowly erode interest in the betting side of the operation. They wanted the bots betting everything they owned, and they would hesitate to do so if the fight was a foregone conclusion.

  >> Database: A theory that has some basis in psychological studies, even if their application to a robot is questionable.

  >> How much more do we have to see? We are more human than we like to admit.

  >> That’s why the Braincloud was designed, to stop us from turning into them.

  “Would it be better for me to lose in this situation?”

  Pompeii chuckled, “I don’t think we have much of a choice. You’re a damn good fighter, but they put a lot of weight on one side of the scale when they do this sort of crap. The difference in specs alone will make it borderline impossible to win – and we don’t get much of value for ruining their plot. That’s the most important lesson you need to learn. Sometimes a fight isn’t worth taking.”

  “Did your last fighter leave the arena because of his success?”

  Pompeii paused; “For a while – but he couldn’t get far away.”

  “We’d be foolish to discard an opportunity like that. I want you to turn me into a winner, Pompeii. Once we have that, we can think of a way to escape.”

  He stared at the ground and considered my proposal. I knew for a fact that he was hesitant to repeat the same mistakes again, but there was no other way for us to find time and space to make an escape plan. His doubts won out in the end.

  “No. I can’t do that again. Do you have any idea how unlikely it is we get that far? The reason I didn’t want to tell you was because I knew you’d want to try the same.”

  “I would rather try than spend the rest of my existence in this miserable loop,” I replied.

  There was so much more I wanted to learn. A part of me hoped that the facility could start to go back to the way it was before, if only I could find a means to bring these disparate groups of bots together again.

  >> Good luck with that, London…