A Second Chance at Eden Read Online Free Page A

a scarlet graffiti bomb. But the blade was deflected, slicing downwards to shatter a hole in the exoskeleton of Khanivore’s right leg. It slid in deep enough for the display graphics to tell me the tip was touching the other side. Simon levered it round, decimating the flesh inside the exoskeleton. More cobweb graphics flowered, reporting severed nerve fibres, cut tendons, artery valves closing. The leg was more or less useless.
    I was already throwing away the useless section of Turboraptor’s trick arm. One of the freed tentacles wove around the sword hilt, contracting the loop as tight as it would go, preventing the blade from moving. It was still inside me, but prevented from causing any more havoc. Our bodies were locked together. None of Turboraptor’s squirming and shaking could separate us.
    With a care that verged on the tender, I slowly wound my last tentacle clockwise round Turboraptor’s head, avoiding its snapping jaw. I finished with a tight knot around the base of a horn.
    Simon must have realized what I was going to do. Turboraptor’s legs scrabbled against the bloody floor, frantically trying to unbalance the pair of us.
    I began pulling with the tentacle, reeling it in. Turbo-raptor’s head turned. It fought me every centimetre of the way, straining cords of muscle rippling under the scales. No good. The rotation was inexorable.
    Ninety degrees, and ominous popping sounds emerged from the stumpy neck. A hundred degrees and the purple scales were no longer overlapping. A hundred and ten degrees and the skin started to tear. A hundred and twenty, and the spine snapped with a gunshot crack.
    My tentacle wrenched the head off, flinging it triumphantly into the air. It landed in a puddle of my blood, and skidded across the polyp until it bumped into the wall below Simon. He was doubled up on the edge of his chair, hugging his chest, shaking violently. His tattoo blazed cleanly, as if it was burning into his skin. Team-mates were swooping towards him.
    That was when I opened my own eyes, just in time to see Turboraptor’s decapitated body tumble to the ground. The crowd was up and dancing, rocking the stand, and crying my name. Mine! Minute flecks of damp rust from the roof panels were snowing over the whole arena.
    I stood up, raising both my arms, collecting and acknowledging my due of adulation. The team’s kisses stung my cheeks. Eighteen . Eighteen straight victories.
    There was just one motionless figure among the carnival frenzy. Dicko, sitting in the front row, chin resting on his cane’s silver pommel, staring glumly at the wreckage of flesh lying at Khanivore’s feet.
    Three hours later, and the rap is still tearing apart Turboraptor’s trick arm. Was it bending the rules? Should we do something similar? What tactics were best against it?
    I sipped my Ruddles from a long-stemmed glass, letting the vocals eddy round me. We’d wound up in a pub called the Latchmere, local it spot, with some kind of art theatre upstairs where the cosmically strange punters kept vanishing. God knows what was playing. From where I was slumped I could see about fifteen people dancing listlessly at the far end of the bar, the juke playing some weird acoustic Indian metal track.
    Our table was court to six Baiter fans, eyes atwinkle from the proximity to their idols. If it hadn’t been for the victory high, I might have been embarrassed. Beer and seafood kept piling up, courtesy of a local merchant who’d been at the pit side, and was now designer-slumming at the bar with his pouty mistress.
    The girl in the yellow dress came in. She was alone. I watched her and a waitress put their heads together, swapping a few furtive words as her haunted eyes cast about. Then she wandered over to the juke.
    She was still staring blankly at the selection screen a minute later when I joined her.
    ‘Did he hit you?’ I asked.
    She turned, flinching. Her eyes were red-rimmed. ‘No,’ she said in a tiny voice.
    ‘Will he hit