The infirmary ceiling had a crack that looked like a jagged moon. Rhys traced its shape in the air, muttering numbers under his breath while the irritated medic changed his bandages.
"Hold still," she snapped, tightening a wrap around his ribs. Her fingers trembled slightly. "Three cracked, but not broken. You're lucky."
Lucky. The word made him giggle, a sound that sent the medic stepping back. Her eyes darted to the guard by the door, then back to her patient. The guard's grip tightened on his stun baton, uncertainty written in the tension of his shoulders.
"The patterns," Rhys whispered, fingers dancing in the air. "Can't you see them? Like the ones up there, but smaller. Always smaller as you go down." His movements matched the crystal resonance frequencies perfectly, though to them it looked like madness. "One-three-seven-nine... the harmonics are beautiful when they break."
"Fusion burnout," the medic muttered, making a note on her tablet. "Recommending psychiatric evaluation before next bout."
Perfect.
Three days later, they threw him back into the arena. His opponent was Razor, a man who'd earned his name carving tallies into his own arms – one mark for each fight he'd won. The newest cuts were still fresh.
In the yard, betting odds heavily favored Rhys's hospitalization. The crime bosses who ran F-Block's gambling rings had started paying special attention to his matches – not for his fighting, but for the sheer unpredictability he brought to their calculations.
"Fighters ready!"
Rhys swayed on his feet, humming a children's song about wolves and shadows. His wrapped ribs restricted movement, but that suited his purpose. Razor circled like his namesake, sharp and eager.
"Begin!"
The first exchange was pure physics. Razor's right cross met empty air as Rhys stumbled backward, apparently tripping over his own feet. The follow-up kick caught him in the side, sending him sprawling. The crowd roared their approval.
"Fight back, burnout!" someone shouted. Others took up the cry, hungry for violence.
Rhys pushed himself up, still humming. His eyes never focused directly on Razor, instead tracking something that seemed to dance between the lights above. When Razor rushed in, Rhys's defensive movements were pure Hunter training – smooth, efficient, perfect.
For exactly three seconds.
Then he collapsed into flailing panic, taking a solid hit to the jaw that dropped him again. The crowd's excitement peaked. In his premium box high above, a Guild representative made another note without really watching.
But he should have watched more closely.
Because in the moment before Rhys hit the ground, his eyes locked onto a specific crystal node in the B-Tier section. His fingers twitched in a pattern that perfectly matched its resonance frequency. A pulse of feedback rippled through the containment field three levels up, causing a minor disruption in the B-Tier match. By the time anyone checked the systems, Rhys was curled into a ball, giggling as Razor's kicks found his kidneys.
"Had enough, freak?" Razor grabbed him by the hair, pulling his head up for the crowd's amusement.
Rhys's eyes were wide and unfocused. "Do you want to know a secret?" His voice dropped to a child's whisper. "The Wolf showed me where they hide the truth. In the spaces between. In the harmonics where reality bends." His fingers danced along invisible strings. "Would you like to see?"
Something in his tone made Razor's grip loosen. That moment of uncertainty cost him as Rhys's elbow snapped up, catching him perfectly in the throat. A textbook Hunter strike, but Rhys immediately ruined the impression by covering his ears and screaming about shadows.
Razor staggered back, coughing rage. His next series of strikes were calculated to cause pain, each one aimed at Rhys's injured ribs. Each impact drew a different sound – whimpers, giggles, broken nursery rhymes about wolves and moons.
But through the punishment, Rhys's twitching fingers continued their subtle dance. With each fall, each roll, each seemingly random movement, he mapped another crystal resonance point. The containment field fluctuations were minor, dismissed as routine power variations. No one connected them to the pathetic fusion burnout being beaten in F-Tier.
After all, nothing was meaningless.
Ten minutes in, something shifted. Rhys's laughter changed pitch, becoming something that raised hackles on the back of Razor's neck. His eyes snapped into sharp focus, fixing on his opponent with an intensity that made Razor stumble mid-step.
"The Wolf wants to dance!"
What followed wasn't combat – it was chaos given form. Rhys moved like mercury, his techniques flickering between perfect Hunter forms and complete madness. One moment he'd execute a flawless counter, the next he'd fall over his own feet while laughing at shadows. Razor found himself giving ground, unable to predict what would come next.
The crowd's excitement took on a different edge. This was no longer simple violence – this was something else. Even a few B-Tier viewers glanced down between their matches, drawn by the weird energy emanating from the lowest ring.
It ended as suddenly as it began. Rhys ran headfirst into the chain-link barrier, bounced off, and collapsed into a giggling heap. Razor approached cautiously, but there was no need. The fusion burnout had knocked himself out.
"Winner: Razor," the official announced. "Time: twelve minutes, forty-three seconds."
As medics carried him out, Rhys continued muttering numbers. His fingers twitched in specific patterns, each one corresponding to a crystal node he'd mapped. In his seemingly random movements, he'd identified thirty-seven key resonance points. More importantly, he'd confirmed that the containment field's base frequency matched the corrupted patterns from the terminus chamber.
They were using the same technology. The same crystals. The same fundamental flaw.
In the infirmary, the medic noted his elevated heart rate and dilated pupils as signs of mental instability. The guard reported his bizarre behavior to his superiors, who added it to a growing file. In his premium box, the Guild representative finally paid attention long enough to mark him as a potential psychological risk.
No one noticed that his "random" number sequences were actually precise measurements of crystal resonance patterns. No one connected the containment field fluctuations to his movements. No one suspected that the fusion burnout's madness might be something else entirely.
After all, he was nothing. And nothing, by definition, wasn't worth watching too closely.
Rhys smiled at the ceiling crack that looked like a moon. Soon, they'd start to believe his performance completely. Soon, they'd write him off entirely. And in that dismissal, he'd find the spaces between their certainties, the cracks in their system where a different kind of power could grow.
Sometimes the most dangerous thing to be was nothing at all.
Because nothing could move through the spaces between everything. And in those spaces, the Wolf's howl grew stronger.
Soon.