KNEEL BEFORE THE HIDDEN HEIR

The Jade Rabbit

The curved silver blade whistled through the air, inches from Caleb’s jugular.

Caleb did not raise a weapon. He leaned back on his heels, the tip of the steel grazing the collar of his jacket.

Before he could reset his stance, Liviana spun on her left boot, driving a spinning roundhouse kick straight toward his temple. The kick carried the whistling crack of compressed air—pure, lethal martial arts trained to kill in a single strike.

Caleb brought up his right forearm to block.

Thud!

The impact reverberated up his arm like a sledgehammer hitting iron. The sand beneath Caleb’s feet blasted outward in a three-foot ring.

Liviana landed lightly on the bloody earth, her eyes beneath the silver mask narrow, calculating, and empty. She didn't pause. She lunged forward again, her twin karambit daggers weaving a blinding cage of silver arcs around his torso.

Slash. Stab. Sever.

Every single strike targeted a vital artery: carotid, femoral, subclavian.

Caleb retreated three steps, parrying each strike with the palms of his hands, slapping the flat sides of her blades away just before they could bite into his flesh. He could have broken her wrists with a fraction of his unsealed internal strength. He could have ended the fight in three seconds.

He didn't.

High up in the VIP skybox, Trenton Hayes laughed loudly, gripping the polished brass railing.

"Look at him!" Trenton mocked over the roar of the arena. "The great live-in son-in-law is running like a stray dog! Cut him to ribbons, Viper! Flay him alive!"

Lord Blackwood smirked, swirling his whiskey. "Commander Viper has taken forty-two lives in this pit without receiving a single scratch. Your little beggar won't survive two minutes."

In the hanging iron cage, Helena screamed hysterically, shaking the bars: "Caleb! You useless trash, hit her back! Do you want me to blow up? Fight, you coward!"

Caleb heard none of them. His focus was entirely on the masked woman before him.

Clang!

Liviana feinted a high stab to his eyes, dropped low, and drove her second blade straight toward his abdomen.

Caleb didn't dodge.

He allowed the dagger to pierce through his jacket, grazing his left ribs. Blood welled through the fabric, staining his dark shirt.

Taking advantage of the close distance, Caleb surged forward, trapping both of Liviana’s wrists in an iron grip.

Liviana gasped behind her mask. She tried to yank her arms free, but Caleb’s grip was like forged steel. She violently drove her forehead forward in a headbutt to crush his nose.

Caleb caught her forehead with his open palm, halting the strike instantly.

"Liviana," Caleb said. His voice was low, cutting straight through the roar of five thousand screaming spectators. "Look at me."

Liviana’s breath came in ragged, shallow bursts. Her blank, icy eyes twitched with confusion, but the neural conditioning kicked in. "Target must be eliminated," she muttered in a mechanical monotone. "Directive: execute."

She kicked upward, her knee aimed straight for his groin.

Caleb pivoted, sweeping her leg out from under her, bringing her down onto the sand. He pinned her wrists to the earth above her head, using his weight to neutralize her lethal strikes without breaking a single bone.

"Let go, insect!" Liviana hissed, thrashing beneath him like a cornered wolf.

"I won't let go," Caleb said softly. "Not again."

With his teeth, Caleb bit into the strap of his left inner jacket pocket and pulled out a small cloth bundle. He shook his head, letting the cloth fall away into the dirt.

A tiny green carving tumbled out onto the bloody sand, landing right beside Liviana’s ear.

It was an antique mutton-fat jade rabbit. One ear was chipped from a childhood fall fifteen years ago, but the surface was polished smooth from years of Caleb carrying it everywhere he went.

Liviana’s thrashing instantly froze.

Her eyes drifted down to the green stone sitting in the dirt.

A sharp, violent tremor ran through her entire body.

"Take it, Vivi... big brother made it for you. If you ever get lost, hold the rabbit, and I'll find you."

The memory hit her brain like a lightning bolt through concrete.

Liviana’s pupils dilated. A high-pitched, agonizing scream tore from her throat as she arched her back, clutching her head with her pinned arms. The neural-suppression chips embedded beneath her skull sparked against the tidal wave of returning childhood memory.

"Aaargh! My head... my head!" she screamed, tears suddenly streaming from beneath the silver mask.

High above, Lord Blackwood’s smile vanished. "What is she doing? Viper, execute him!"

He grabbed a microphone connected to the arena speakers and barked a high-frequency override code: "Protocol Omega! Kill the intruder now!"

Liviana clutched the sides of her helmet, crying out in pure agony, trapped between the syndicate's neural programming and the jade rabbit lying in the sand.

Up in the skybox, Trenton panicking. "She's failing! Blackwood, blow the cage! Blow the old woman to hell!"

Lord Blackwood pulled the remote detonator from his suit coat, his thumb hovering over the red firing switch.

"If you won't die in the pit," Blackwood snarled, "then watch your mother-in-law turn into red mist!"

Blackwood slammed his thumb down onto the button.

A high-pitched tone screamed from Helena’s cage. The red countdown timer on the C4 plastic explosives hit 00:03.

Down in the pit, Caleb released Liviana, stood up, and looked directly up at the bulletproof glass of the skybox sixty feet above.

His eyes flared with cold, unrestrained killing intent.

Caleb reached down into the dirt, his fingers wrapping around the hilt of Liviana’s heavy steel combat dagger.

He drew his arm back, his internal energy detonating through his shoulder like a cannon blast.

"Die," Caleb whispered.

He hurled the dagger straight up into the air.