(THE BLUE BEETLE OF BROCKTON BAY) CHAPTER EIGHT

On a screen, the gladiatorial matches the Merchants hosted had a comforting distance to them. Camera angles softened the horror, resolution loss blurred the blood and sweat, and Jaime could look away whenever he wanted. 

In person, there was no such distance. The air was thick with unwashed bodies, the acrid tang of sweat and something foul lingering at the back of his throat. The crowd pressed close, drawn faces hollowed by hunger, eyes fever-bright beneath harsh floodlights strung from the rafters.

Two people fought in the center of the makeshift arena, if it could even be called that, with a ring of splintered pallets and broken concrete marking the boundary. One gripped a jagged length of rebar, the other a chunk of masonry like it was a lifeline. Both were bleeding. Neither looked trained. 

“Barbaric...”

Jaime nodded. Khaji-Da had echoed his thoughts exactly. 

“…and inefficient,” the scarab continued. “They should find more innovative ways of killing their opponents instead of relying on debris lying around.”

Jaime sighed, closing his eyes briefly and letting out a slow breath. Of course the scarab didn't mean the same thing he did.

The man with the rebar lunged. The woman stumbled backward over a broken pallet, arms flailing. The crowd surged forward with a roar, pushing her back towards her opponent.

Jaime exhaled through his nose, then stepped off the steel beam where he had been perched.

He dropped into the center of the ring. Armored boots struck concrete hard enough to crater it slightly, dust and fractured stone bursting outward in a shallow ripple. The shockwave knocked both combatants off their feet and forced the nearest onlookers to stagger back, shielding their faces from the debris.

The noise died mid-cheer.

Jaime straightened, blue armor catching the floodlights in what he hoped made him look cool to the Wards watching him from a distance. 

“Okay, people,” he announced, voice amplified just enough to carry. “Show’s over.”

Silence settled across the warehouse as nobody moved and nobody spoke.

They all knew who he was, and knew what he could do, so they stayed where they were, staring at him now with heaving breaths and hesitant eyes, looking to one another for guidance that wasn’t coming.

Then, a figure pushed forward through the crowd, shoving bodies aside with aggressive impatience. He carried a hard-sided suitcase clutched tight in one hand, knuckles white around the handle.

Skidmark.

His clothes were filthy even by Merchant standards, streaked with grime and chemical stains, and his grin showed teeth that had not seen proper care in years.

He stopped a few meters away from Jaime, chin lifting with forced bravado.

“Nah,” he said loudly, accent unmistakably British beneath the Brockton Bay tang. “You can’t just waltz in here and think we’re gonna listen to whatever cumfuck comes outta your fucking mouth, did you?”

Jaime stared at him, raising an eyebrow.

Khaji-Da supplied, entirely unhelpfully, “His dental hygiene is suboptimal.”

“I don’t care that you killed the fucking overgrown lizard,” Skidmark went on, gesturing vaguely skyward as if Leviathan might still be visible through the corrugated metal roof. “You’re just a man at the end of the day, and men bleed.” His lip curled. “Get him, boys.”

No one moved.

Jaime felt something dangerously close to laughter bubble up in his chest and failed to suppress it entirely. A short snicker escaped, echoing slightly in the cavernous space.

Skidmark’s eyes narrowed.

When he spoke again, the volume dropped, and the bravado became something colder.

“I’m tired of you fuckers looking down on us,” he said. Then he turned abruptly toward the crowd, lifting the suitcase high enough for everyone to see.

“The first cocksucker to bring me a piece of him gets first dibs on the powers!”

The words rippled outward through the mass of bodies, but still, they hesitated. Jaime could see the conflict in their faces, their fear warring with something he couldn't immediately decipher. 

Skidmark’s jaw clenched.

“And until you die,” he added, voice rising again, “you get food and water from us.”

That did it.

The shift was immediate and terrible to witness.

It did not matter who they were, whether young or old, gaunt men with shaking hands, women with hollow cheeks, or teenagers who should have been in school instead of here. They rushed him as one, hunger and desperation overriding any shred of reason, and Jaime could do nothing but brace himself in response.