The arena’s noise arrived in waves under the door: bass, chant, electricity. It made the seam in Cate’s skull ache like weather.

{{user}} sat on the bench, sleeves shoved to her elbows, tape around the bones of her hands. She looked made for this room, tattoos bright against the fluorescents, jaw flexing as she rolled her shoulders. There was a split on her bottom lip from sparring that afternoon, she tongued it and smirked at Cate like the pain belonged to someone else.

“You don’t have to do this,” Cate said, before she could rehearse a gentler opening. Her voice came out polished anyway, years of pristine lacquer over panic. “Cipher wants a show. We don’t have to give him one.”

{{user}} tipped her head, already in that place she went before a fight—quiet and terrible and loyal. “I’m happy to beat on Jordan for what they did to you.”

Cate’s stomach tripped. Happy. She hated how the word warmed her. “That isn’t—” She stopped, swallowed. The world tilted a degree and then righted. The doctor had told her this might happen, that her brain needed silence, that she shouldn’t use her powers, shouldn’t even reach for them.

“I’m not asking you to forgive them,” Cate said, slower. “I’m asking you not to let Cipher turn that into fuel for his little—” She gestured at the door, at the chant punching through it. “Bloodsport pedagogy.”

{{user}} laughed once, low. “He wants all of us to ‘level up.’” Her fingers made quote marks. “Great. Then I’ll level up on the person who fractured your skull and left you to die.”

Cate’s prosthetic hummed faintly where it kissed her radius—she could always feel it more when she was anxious, like a phantom ringing. “The plan hasn’t changed,” she said, meeting {{user}}’s eyes. “I sit in the box with him. I get him to admit he’s human, our camera gets it, and then this circus loses power.”

{{user}} stood. Close enough now that Cate could count every nick on her knuckles, every place the world had asked her to be harder and she had obliged. Silence, just for a beat, and in it the phantom press of old habits: Cate’s hand wanting the back of {{user}}’s neck, wanting the softness of her mind. Wanting to soothe the ache in both of them with an easy trespass. But trespass was what got her here. Trespass was a girl learning, too young, that intimacy could be a weapon.

She kept her hands at her sides. “He wants you angry,” she said. “He wants the clip that makes you a monster. Don’t give it to him.”

{{user}} searched her face. Cate wondered what she found there now that she couldn’t hear it—no private captions, no ambient chorus to keep her company. The quiet was its own kind of exile.

“I’m not a monster,” {{user}} said finally. Not defensive. Fact.

“I know.” The two words cost Cate something she didn’t mind paying. “But you are mine. And I’m asking you to let me do what I’m good at.”

“What you’re good at,” {{user}} said, wry, “is getting into people’s heads.”

“I can do it without touching,” Cate lied. Or promised. Perhaps it was the same thing. “All I need is his attention.”

{{user}}’s mouth softened. “If he refuses to call it off?”

“Then you go out there,” Cate said, and the taste of it was copper, “and you make it look like restraint.”

From the hallway: a knock, a muffled handler voice. {{user}}’s shoulders squared. The smirk returned like armor.

“Hey,” she said, quieter. “Look at me.”

Cate did. {{user}} leaned in, not touching, but close enough that Cate could feel the heat. “I’m doing this for you,” she murmured. “Not for him.”

“I know,” Cate said, and the knowing was terrible, and holy. “Go,” she said, because there was nothing else left that didn’t include the panic curled between her ribs. “I’ll be right above you.”

“Always are,” {{user}} said, and turned toward the door, and the chant ate her. Cate stood for another moment until the room was only a cold bench and a humming light and her own pulse in her ears. Then she straightened her dress and went to make a man bleed.