He was cold. That much came to him immediately. Bitterly cold.

It took him a moment longer to realize that he was also naked.

The table he lay on was bare metal, warmer than the air only by the heat it had leeched from his body. It felt like a corpse’s slab, without the relative privacy afforded by a white drape. The whole place had the aura of a hospital morgue, really: somber and clinical under stark white fluorescents, the stench of death and blood and old pain not quite hidden by the medicinal stink of disinfectant.

A small, cool hand brushed the inexplicably sweat-drenched bangs away from his forehead, lingering to press tentative knuckle-backs against his brow, then his temple and the swollen ache there. The voice kept repeating itself, the same set of three nonsensical syllables over and over... and something else, something about heat, about burning. Foolishness. He wasn’t burning; he was freezing.

It hurt to listen. It hurt to be touched. It hurt to *be*.

"Aya-kun? Aya-kun!"

He tried to bat the annoying presence away, to get it to shut up and leave him be so he could spiral back down into the beckoning anesthesia of darkness, but his arm refused to lift more than a few inches above the table. It shivered momentarily in place, strengthless, before falling back with the clink of metal against metal. He could feel the thinly padded edge of a leather cuff digging into his wrist now, similar restraints buckled tight around his other forearm and both legs at the ankles.

The last thing he remembered clearly was Yoji, being with Yoji . . . in every sense of that phrase. For a single, confused instant he wondered if he’d passed out in the midst of one of Yoji’s rare but intense bouts of kink. Yoji had never hurt him, not intentionally, but . . . no. They hadn’t been home. There’d been a mission, then something to celebrate. He remembered cold wind, colder water . . . the vanilla scent of Yoji’s shampoo . . . white wings torn by black shadows . . .

The intrusive hands had him by the shoulders now, shaking him as the once soft voice sharpened in demand, recognizing his interrupted struggle as a sign of dawning consciousness. He forced his eyes open, if for no other reason than to stop the shaking and the flashes of agony it shot through his body. He had to clench them shut again as the blindingly bright whiteness of the room assailed them like flying shards of glass. The persistent intruder stroked his hair, encouraging him to try again. He did so reluctantly, cautiously, but the other’s face was now an indistinct, backlit shadow right above his own, blotting out the worst of the glare. Huge, worried blue eyes slowly swam into dim but adequate focus.

"Omi," he murmured, or tried to. His dry throat closed on the word, starting a coughing fit harsh and painful enough to threaten his tentative consciousness.

"Don’t try to talk, Aya-kun," Omi admonished, leaving his side just long enough to draw a paper cup full of lukewarm water from a nearby sink. He carefully rationed what actually dribbled into Aya’s mouth to keep him from choking on his own greedy swallows. "You have to save your strength. I’m going to need your help to get you out of here."

Omi brought him a second cup but he only managed half of it before his stomach twisted with sudden nausea. He was still dreadfully thirsty but, even drugged half out of his mind, he had sense enough to know that there was no point making himself vomit. Closing his eyes, he lay back and let Omi set the cup aside, turning his attention instead to the problem of the restraints.

The young blond rambled almost cheerily as he took on the stubborn buckles, a bad habit of his when he was particularly nervous. "We didn’t even know you were here. We thought you were running late but we had to go ahead with the mission. Yoji-kun was *so* worried. Ken-kun thought you were just pouting . . ."

Aya might have chuckled at that forcedly casual revelation if he hadn’t already known what it would cost him in pain. He smiled slightly instead.

Omi rolled right along, oblivious. "Our main target wasn’t in the arena but there are closed-circuit cameras all over the place. I was trying to either figure out where the Prime is watching the feed from, or . . ." – with a grunt of effort, Omi finally managed to free Aya’s right hand, allowing him to fumble blindly with his own restrained left hand while Omi moved on to his ankles. – " . . . find the main computer room, wreak some havoc there and try to flush him out. The air-conditioning vents were the safest way to travel and I just happened to pass by this room and see you. When the others left, I . . ."

Aya’s eyes snapped open. "Others . . .?"

"Shhh," came the gentle reminder as Omi got Aya’s right foot loose of the straps. "Yes, two others. There was an older man in the *strangest* costume and a younger one with him. He had a bandaged nose. The older man wanted to talk to someone and the younger said that he refused to come. Something about ignoring his pages . . . anyway, they stormed off together, probably to go get whoever they were talking about."

"How long ago?"

"Maybe five minutes," Omi said. There was an apologetic tone to his voice as he added, "You wouldn’t wake up." Another quick motion and Aya’s left leg was free.

Aya swung his legs around and over the left edge of the table, blocking Omi’s advance on the final restraint. He’d only managed to get one of the buckles undone on his own. The remaining two wobbled in his vision as he clung to the table, willing the sickening dizziness to pass, willing his muddled brain to work as it was supposed to. He’d always had a decent danger sense – vital in his line of work – and it was currently going off like a fire alarm in Hell.

"This third someone . . . did they say his name?"

Omi shook his head as he made a try for Aya’s wrist. "I don’t remember."

"Was it Kalen?" Aya pressed, blocking him.

"I really don’t remember. Please, Aya-kun, let me . . ."

They both froze, Omi emitting a tiny squeak of frustrated panic as the staccato rhythm of swiftly approaching footsteps clattered in under the door.

Pushing Aya frantically out of the way, Omi scrabbled at the remaining restraint, his hands shaking too hard to effectively get at the buckles. Aya didn’t bother wasting what strength he had left trying to stop him, just lay down and slipped his right hand back into the open straps. "Put the leg restraints back on," he ordered calmly. "Leave them unbuckled."

"I’m not leaving you . . ." Omi had already bloodied his small fingers trying to pry the buckles loose. Panicking, tears streaming down his cheeks, he grabbed a pair of scissors from a nearby countertop and began hacking at the securing strap. Given an hour, he might have managed to sever the double-thick material that way; they had a matter of seconds.

Aya caught Omi’s eyes, shaking his head firmly. "Omi . . . look at the vent. It’s at least seven feet off the floor. I can’t climb that . . ."

"No!" he groaned, a strangled, barely coherent cry of frightened negation.

"It’s all right." Aya pulled his hand free again to caress his young friend’s cheek, marveling as always that someone who had seen just as much horror as his compatriots – if not more – could remain so innocent and so giving. He’d realized long ago that Omi could touch his heart in ways that even Yoji never could, in places that only his sister had been before. "I got through Human Chess. I can get through this.

"Omi leaned into the touch, salt tears pattering down on Aya’s chest, but he’d given up with the scissors. "I saw the intell photos, Aya-kun, same as you, and we both know Masquerade makes Human Chess look about as sinister as a child’s game."

"There’s no other option," Aya stated simply. It was only the truth, after all, and it didn’t frighten him. There was something comfortable about the inevitability, like slipping into a favorite old sweater found whole after a few lonely years lost in the back of the closet. "Go."

He wept and struck his small fist against the table with a muffled clang but, in the end, Omi knew that Aya was right. All he would do if he stayed was risk capture or death, which would not only be a pointless sacrifice of his own life but would endanger Ken and Yoji as well. The best he could do for Aya was get out of earshot and report to the others what he’d found. Maybe together they could come up with a plan that didn’t involve the lot of them getting up close and personal with a shallow mass grave in the woods.

With Omi’s help, Aya got the unbuckled restraints back on and turned so that the tampering wasn’t immediately obvious. Aya knew perfectly well that it would make no difference – he was no match for anyone in his current state, bound or free – but there simply wasn’t time to put the damned things back as they’d been. The approaching men were within a few feet of the door when Omi paused to press a gentle kiss against Aya’s cheek . . . and the pair of scissors into Aya’s right hand.

"We’ll get you out of here," Omi promised solemnly.

The air vent clattered shut behind him bare seconds before the door was propelled inward by a human storm front.

Two pairs of footfalls clicked immediately over to the table where Aya lay, eyes closed, face slack, playing the perfect vegetable. Judging from the shuffling quality of some of those steps, one of them had been literally dragging the other along behind him. Thick, rough fingers tangled in Aya’s hair, pulling his head and shoulders right off the table as a third walker lingered in the doorway.

"Now, you smirking little bastard," thundered an unfamiliar voice, "you tell me what the *Hell* this is, and be quick!"

"Your featured prey, of course," replied the other, smooth and cool and slimily familiar: definitely Kalen. "Is that all you needed, Harlequin-Sama?"

The thunder-voiced one cuffed him, hard, and Kalen made a little noise of outrage as the third, probably Tolith, sauntered over to them, laughing loud and long. Kalen was still sputtering – softly and with considerable dignity for someone in such a position, but sputtering nonetheless – when the one he’d called Harlequin grabbed him by the ponytail and yanked his head down. Aya actually felt Kalen’s brow bounce off his sternum, his angry murmurings now a tangible vibration against Aya’s chest. He was starting to feel a bit like something naughty a dog had produced and was now having its nose rubbed in.

"We don’t feature *men*, you smug prick, no matter who brings them in or how much clout they think they have here." Harlequin shook Aya by the hair before throwing him back down. The back of his head bounced off the metal table, shattering the darkness behind his eyelids into a sky full of stars. "Even if we did, do you really expect me to feature a pile of unconscious meat? Prey sick with an overdose is no good to me!"

"You can thank Tolith for that. He handles the pharmaceutical end of things, and he seems to have gotten a bit . . . carried away, in this case." Honey fairly dripped from the blond’s obsequious words, liberally mixed with venom. "If he’d been allowed to inject the full dose he intended, I don’t doubt this one would be dead now."

Beside them, Tolith jabbered frantic denials for a while before realizing that he was being completely ignored.

Harlequin stayed unimpressed. "Dead, he wouldn’t be such an inconvenience."

"Indeed . . . nor such a prize. Don’t worry, he’ll recover. He just needs time . . ."

"The show was set to begin fifteen minutes ago!"

The blond shrugged out of Harlequin’s grasp with the audible slide of long hair through loose fingers. "Save him for the finale, then . . ." he began, but trailed off.

"The feature is always the appetizer, idiot! A good first show drives the prices up for the rest of the night! If you have no respect for tradition, can’t you at least honor the economic principles?"

Kalen ignored him.

One of his hands had come to rest on Aya’s right wrist, causing the loosely wrapped cuff there to twist as it should not have been able to do.

The motion had brought Kalen’s fingers into direct contact with the cold blade of the scissors partially concealed in Aya’s hand."

Oi! Kalen! Is there a problem or have you finally had the aneurysm I’ve been praying all these years for?"

Aya could almost hear, almost *feel* the devious grin that commandeered the blond’s eternally sneering face. "Oh, there’s no problem, K’so-jiji, no problem at all . . . but perhaps you’d prefer to come over here and see for yourself?"

"You . . . simpering fool of a nameless *bastard*!" Harlequin hissed like a cat with his back up. He took Kalen by the collar, lifting him off the floor and turning his back on Aya in the process. "What did you just call me!?"

Kalen chuckled tolerantly. "Hmph, filthy *and* deaf? Tenure is such a sin . . ."

"Look," Tolith broke in suddenly, "there, in the vent!"

Omi, that damn fool! He’d stayed just inside the grate, probably hoping for another chance at getting Aya out, and Tolith had spotted him. He was trying to flee now, his sneakers clattering on the inside of the duct, but Aya could already hear the metallic whisper of a gun being drawn from its holster. With his bow, Omi wouldn’t be able to get a decent shot through the vent if he tried; a bullet would punch right through.

Lunging blindly in the direction of that sound, Aya managed to transfix Tolith’s gun hand with both blades of the scissors just as the weapon went off. He heard Omi yelp in pain or fear an instant later, heard something thankfully too small to be a body tumble out of the vent and down to the ground, but his younger friend was still in motion, still scrambling up the duct for all he was worth. Then the overbalanced table tipped Aya off and fell over him, bending his restrained wrist up painfully behind his back.

Somehow, beyond all hope, he managed to keep his grip on the scissors as he fell. Tolith was drawn down to his knees with him, screaming the whole way. Aya added a hoarse scream of his own, this one of effort, as he yanked the makeshift dagger from the operative’s hand and swung it toward him with all the strength he had.

It was only by sheer luck that it buried itself in Tolith’s side up to the handles.

The dark-haired operative fell heavily backward, his shrieks reduced to a whistling gurgle by the collapse of his lung. Aya’s weapon went with him this time, lodged between his ribs, but the blood-spattered gun had slid only a few feet away across the concrete. Aya lunged at it, dragging the table behind him. The tips of his fingers had barely brushed the hot metal of the barrel when something smashed into his shoulder hard enough to knock him away.

Aya tried to curl his body away from the assault but, with his left arm uppermost and still pinned to the table behind him, he had no real defense. The staff in Harlequin’s hand slammed into his body again and again, unchecked. Soon, the individual blows ceased to hurt, melding together into a new, red-tinged universe of pain, disconnected, numb.

Harlequin did have the *strangest* costume, as Omi had said. It looked like a poor man’s often-patched motley but done in expensive fabrics, covered in sparkling brocades, chains, sequins and bits of mirrors. It hurt to look at. He closed his eyes.

"I told you he’d recover," Kalen offered, casually placing himself between Aya and the enraged Harlequin before his prize catch could be beaten to death. "Now, is *that* all you needed?"

The man was either an optimist or an idiot. Either way, he didn’t see Harlequin’s swing coming. It took him on the side of the head, robbing him of his balance so that he tripped over Aya’s legs and landed in a pile beside him. Aya dragged his eyes open to watch the fireworks.

"Get rid of it," the old man hissed.

Kalen had to spit out a mouthful of blood to respond, speaking earnestly for the first time since Aya had known him. It was a convincing act, if it was one. "Please," he said, "listen to me. The Prime is bored with the auctions; you’ve spoken of it yourself. There are no more Hunts because the prey doesn’t interest him, but this one . . . look at him! This one could change everything! I could redeem . . . you *must* let me . . ."

"I *must* nothing, brat," – another blow connected with Kalen’s cheek – "and if you value what little position your supposed blood privilege has given you thus far, you will obey me without question and dispose of that worthless creature before it causes any more damage!"

"But . . ."

"Shut up! Then you will bring the prize of Dorian’s catch up here from the pits, the ash blonde. Do it quickly and quietly and the Prime may never have to know of the mischief you’ve caused tonight. Am I clear?"

Kalen remained silent until the staff bruised his shoulder one last time. "Yes," he murmured, "crystal."

The door suddenly burst open on a wave of security guards, weapons in hand, attracted by the sound of gunfire. Harlequin waded into them before they could move to assist Kalen or the still wheezing Tolith, his staff swinging wide and hard into shins and buttocks. They parted for him like the Red Sea for Moses, following behind as he swung his way out the door, thundering orders as he went.

"Idiots! It’s about Goddamn time! There’s someone in the ductwork. Find him and kill him! The show will begin in ten minutes, intruder or no bloody intruder!"

The door whispered shut on its air-cushioned hinges, and the room lapsed into a shocked sort of silence.

"Please . . . he-help me . . ."

Not quite up to reclaiming his feet yet, Kalen simply crawled over to his fallen companion, straddling the other’s blood-soaked belly and groin in an oddly sexual manner. Tolith looked up at him through dark, white-rimmed eyes, distrustful but desperate. There was blood dripping from the corner of his mouth: an ill-boding amount of it. He screamed again in that painfully breathy manner as Kalen laced his fingers together, resting his chin on them and his elbows on Tolith’s punctured chest.

"You know, this would have gone much better for both of us if you’d just kept your wretched mouth shut, Tolith."

"Help . . . help me . . ."

Aya got the distinct impression that Tolith was calling out to *him* in his desperation, but Kalen answered anyway.

"I’d love to help you, old friend, really I would but, you see, Harlequin ordered me to see to the featured prey . . . not you. Why, he must have simply forgotten you."

"Please . . ."

"That’s what comes of an undistinguished career, I’m afraid; taking no risks, holding no aspirations beyond the life of a toadie . . ." He yanked the scissors from Tolith’s side with a savage twist, carefully wiping them on the other’s bandaged nose. "Running to your superiors with a wagging tongue every time one of your colleagues tries to better himself. You are – and ever shall be – eminently forgettable, Tolith, my boy."

"I . . . I’m s-sorry . . . *please*!"

"Common whore, indeed . . ."

The scissors snickered down, the sound of their blood-slicked passage through the air a gleeful whistle. Tolith convulsed, bucking against the man straddling him as the twin blades plunged deep into his throat, then fell still. His last breath was a plaintive, confused moan, the low of an injured lamb. Kalen laughed at the incongruity, leaning forward over the motionless chest. Ever so gently, he laid a soft kiss on his onetime companion’s blood-painted lips, then rolled off to lay at his side, the scissors still clenched in his fist as he laughed and panted like a spent lover.

"You’re insane," Aya murmured. There was no venom in his words, only an exhausted sort of wonder.

"They say it runs in my family, but I wouldn’t know," Kalen said good-naturedly, lurching to his hands and knees to crawl back in Aya’s direction. "Don’t mourn for him. He almost killed you with his needle, you almost killed him with your scissors . . . nature abhors a draw, so I settled it."

Kneeling beside him, Kalen reached out to stroke Aya’s back. His touch left behind a stripe of scarlet-black blood, already cooling in the refrigerated air. Aya jerked away, repulsed, swinging out blindly with his free hand. Kalen caught it easily, twisting it around behind him while pulling him to a sitting position, drawing him into the circle of his arms.

"Now, now," the blond soothed, smoothing back his hair, "don’t worry, my little one. I have no intention of hurting you. Harlequin may not see your potential, but I do."

"Fuck you," Aya gasped through the pain, racked with fever-chills.

"Ah, full of fire to the last," Kalen chuckled, "though not a poet, I see. No matter. It’s not as though I love you for your mind . . ."

He cupped Aya’s cheek in his palm, tipping the redhead’s face up toward him and regarding his catch through slivered eyes. It might have had as much to do with the battered state of Aya’s body and mind as anything else, but Kalen did have the most entrancing eyes. They were pale blue-grey, flecked with a darker blue, shimmering like discs of silver with cobalt rims. It was almost possible to be hypnotized by them, if one made the mistake of looking too long.

"Shame that things are as they are, really. If the world were as it should be, *I’d* be Hunting you tonight." He drew Aya closer, deeper into those intoxicating eyes. "Or granting the admittedly . . . tempting request you just made . . ."

Aya licked his dry lips, wincing as his tongue traced the swollen flesh and the bloody split Harlequin’s staff had laid open there. When Kalen made the mistake of letting his eyes flicker down to the motion, Aya spit into them. The fist that knocked him down an instant later – slashing his cheek with the all but forgotten scissors – was neither a surprise nor enough to erase the pleasure of his meager triumph.

"Fine," Kalen snapped, wiping impatiently at the blood and saliva on his face, "have it your way."

He rose out of Aya’s field of vision, snatching something from a nearby cupboard in a clatter of fallen equipment and slamming drawers. When he returned, he flipped Aya over onto his belly, crouching over his back with one foot on the strap that bound him to the table, the other grinding the bones of his left wrist into the concrete. Something cool and smooth wrapped tight around his neck, pulled taut in Kalen’s grasp, cutting off his air.

There was nothing he could do. He had no fight left, no strength. Some instinct driven part of his brain set his hands scrabbling at the garrote, trying to get between it and his flesh, refusing to succumb to the inevitability. A less primitive part mused that there were worse ways to die, ways that he had witnessed in intimate detail during years spent studying the habits of dark beasts at close range. The emptiness came gently with its claim, like a welcome dream at the end of a long day. Aya tumbled gracefully into it.

"It’s been twenty minutes at least since they took the lights down!" Ken was bouncing in his seat like a sugared-up child impatiently awaiting the start of the latest Pokémon rip-off flick, but the grin on his face was pure plastic. "Why haven’t they started yet?"

Yoji struggled with the urge to snap at him – he’d already reminded Ken several times that they were working from the same limited pool of information – and only just won. They were both on edge for the same reason, he reminded himself, and Ken was really showing remarkable restraint for the creature of impulse he was. A few years ago, he would have literally torn into the fray at the first sign of danger to any of them, damn the consequences. If it had been Omi’s life on the line, even now, Yoji doubted that anything could have held him back.

Which was exactly why he’d decided not to mention the fact that he’d been unable to raise Omi on the comm for the past twenty minutes.

There were several possible, non-sinister reasons that Omi might have his comm off – Yoji’s own earlier pestering, for one, or a simple malfunction – but they were all about as convincing as the possible reasons that Aya might not really be in danger. Regular check-ins were part of their protocol, along with painstaking maintenance of the equipment, and Omi was the most conscientious of all of them in that regard. It didn’t bode well, but there was nothing to do except wait and hope.

His head ached. His heart ached. The helplessness was driving him insane.

Wound up as he was, Ken actually jumped a few inches out of his seat when loud calliope music suddenly shrilled into the amphitheater over the huge speakers suspended above the crowd. Yoji laid a hand on Ken’s shoulder but kept his eyes on the arena as the house lights dimmed down to nothing. The Center was left in complete darkness for a few seconds before the very air exploded into shards and tatters of colored light, ripped apart by the thousands of tiny gelled spotlights that gyrated into wild life in the rafters.

The crowd had begun to chant a word as soon as the darkness fell, a mantra that started with the experienced guests and spread to the newbies like a virus. "Harlequin! Harlequin! Harlequin!" they shouted in rhythm. Ken and Yoji joined in, too, for the sake of camouflage. This went on for perhaps a full minute before a trap door opened in the middle of the arena and the chant dissolved into a thunder of adulation, drowning out even the massive speakers.

He rose from the ground like a demon, dressed in a jester’s motley of innumerable gaudy colors, patterns and ornaments. His hat, his gloves, his curled slippers were all a shimmering patchwork, making it hard to pick out where the crazed lights left off and he began. The only solid patch of any size was his two-faced Greek mask – one the grin of Comedy, one the grimace of Tragedy – done all in silver with reflective lenses set in the eyeholes. He bore a wooden staff in one hand, wrapped in ribbons of several colors and with a model of his own costumed, Janus-faced head at the top. The other end tapered into a formidable-looking, curved blade.

Once his pedestal had risen from the floor to a height of about four feet, he raised the staff in the air and began to twirl it over his head like a baton. The crowd chanted, hooted and screamed like a pack of rabid, insane beasts. The brown-haired punk in Yoji’s jacket threw back his head and howled as savagely as any starving, hunger-mad wolf at the scent of blood. Beside Yoji, Ken growled deep in his throat, a Hunter of the Light leashed by circumstance and resenting it.

Perhaps satisfied that the crowd was at the peak of excitement, the Harlequin leapt into the air, throwing his staff into the dirt like a spear. As it struck and quivered there, the music suddenly swelled into a driving techno beat, though the circus-like calliope melody still remained over top of it. "This is Masquerade!" the Harlequin screamed, and the doors on both ends of the arena flew open in an explosion of confetti and cruelty.

Each prisoner, dazed or screaming, bleeding or whole, was led in on a collar and chain leash by a dancer in a jester’s costume. These were far less elaborate, solid-colored versions of the Harlequin’s motley, with single-faced masks grinning or grimacing in matching hues. The jesters tumbled and capered like circus clowns as they dragged their reluctant trophies around the arena, each trying to demonstrate that his was the best and would be the most fun to torture before such a receptive audience. Mingling with the parade, the Harlequin groped this victim, slapped that one, pushed another and generally made a terrifying nuisance of himself.

The victims – all of them young, most of them female – were naked except for their own elaborate white porcelain masks, each in the shape of some prey animal and decked with feathers and beads in the same shade as their keeper’s costume. As he scanned the parade, his heart thumping at every glimpse of red hair or adult male form, Yoji picked out representations of deer, rabbits, doves and even fish. No Aya, though; nothing even close. He didn’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved.

"Where *is* he," Ken hissed; Yoji didn’t think he was even aware that he’d vocalized the thought, "Where in the Hell *is* he?"

With no answer to offer, even as the doors swung closed behind the last of the revelers – willing and unwilling – and the jesters began to tie their prizes to the pairs of poles being set up for the purpose, Yoji held his tongue.

"Works of art, aren’t they?" Harlequin boomed as the music faded to nothing.The crowd responded with a hearty affirmative.

"Welcome to my Museum of Pain, good people! A museum with a difference!" Sneaking up behind a young woman in a pink squirrel mask, he thrust the end of his staff between her legs, waggling the jester face against her genitals in a parody of oral sex. "We encourage you to manhandle the masterpieces here!"

The girl screamed and fainted, the slump of her body in the rough ropes bringing the bruises that covered her lithe body into stark relief. Her weakness earned a chorus of boos and laughter from the crowd, an apologetic shrug from the Harlequin. The bastard probably dealt with similar "disappointments" every day: hazard of the profession. He’d find someone else soon enough, someone more resilient. Yoji’s hands clenched as he remembered the pictures they’d seen, the images that had all but forced them to accept this mission. He could almost feel his wire drawn tight around his gloved fingers as it closed on Harlequin’s neck, choking the malignant life out of this creature of darkness.

A few people in the crowd were already trying to bid on their favorites, egged on by the capering jesters. The Harlequin silenced them with a gesture. He used his staff to vault nimbly back to the top of his pedestal before continuing.

"Come, come! Why would you want to waste your money on these cheap, fragile imitations when I have a true masterwork to offer you first? Are you ready?"

The crowd roared.

"Is this thing on?" He tapped the microphone embedded in his mask. "I asked if you people were ready for the Feature?"

The crowd thundered.

"Oh, please. Surely you can do better than *that*. Are you bored already?"

The entire arena shook with the cacophony that ensued and the Harlequin finally seemed content. He knelt on the pedestal, the sides of which were covered in a thick material of alternating silver and blue stripes. It fluttered softly in the downdraft of the industrial strength air-conditioners above. Reaching down to take a handful of the velvety stuff in his hand, the Harlequin did a backward somersault off the pedestal, taking the drape along with a dramatic flourish. A cage was revealed beneath. An occupied cage.

Suddenly, Yoji couldn’t breathe. He barely felt the shadowy figure that brushed by him, laying a brief, familiar hand on his shoulder, barely noticed the mixed scent of lavender and bubble gum that drifted by with him. His entire universe narrowed to the scope of that cage and a final, cruelly full realization of his complete helplessness.

"Oh my God . . ." Ken whispered. "It’s him."

Aya’s leash was a little longer than the other victims’ had been, curling around in front of him a few times before fastening securely to an eye-hook near his feet. His arms lay bent before him, wrists bound and hands curled together by his mouth, the picture of a pious child at rest. His mask was different too, black instead of white, fading into red stones as it swept back over his head to blend into his hair and covering far less of his face than the others. Thick, black leather straps and heavy buckles secured it to his head. It wasn’t in the shape of timid prey this time but of savage predator: the long, sleek lines of a feline face.

Like the others, he wore no clothes but the bruises that striped his back and shoulder. Blood still leaked intermittently from the gash in his cheek and a brutal, raw abrasion was visible around the edges of the collar, like a ligature mark. Yoji couldn’t see his eyes behind the concealing mask but it was clear that he wasn’t moving. His limp limbs and softly parted lips told a story of unconsciousness. From this distance, Yoji couldn’t even tell for sure that Aya was breathing. He lay *so* still . . ."

"Yoji . . ." Ken murmured warningly.

He’d started to rise to his feet without realizing it, instinctively trying to get closer to Aya, to help him. He slid back down with a creak of protesting muscles. Every fiber of his being shouted imprecations at him for this betrayal but, if even Ken was forced to acknowledge that advance was hopeless at this stage, he had to admit it was so. Cursing softly, he slammed his fist into his own leg, slicing his knuckle on the zipper of his coat draped there. They *had* to come up with a plan!

"God. He’s pissed about something."Yoji followed Ken’s gaze back to the Harlequin. He stood by the cage as the jesters stepped forward to remove the top and sides, still clutching the drape, staring at Aya as if he’d never seen him before. Though none of his actual body was showing, his body language made it clear that he hadn’t expected to find Aya there, was in fact highly pissed to discover this fact. How odd.

Harlequin’s doubled gaze settled on the audience, on the aisle between the section Ken and Yoji sat in and the one to their left. Now that he thought of it, that was probably the person who had bumped into him on the way by. Yoji wasn’t surprised to see Kalen there – the blond had left in the company of Tolith and an older man perhaps half an hour ago, plenty of time to attend to whatever business he’d had and return – but he was surprised to see him there *alone*. Kalen and Tolith had seemed all but joined at the hip for the brief time Yoji had known them. He stood there alone now, his long blond hair loose and wet down the back of what looked like a new jacket, staring intently into the ring with a look of smug challenge on his narrow features.

Obviously, professionalism wasn’t dead, even in the realm of public torture. With a resigned shrug, Harlequin slipped neatly back into character, cheerfully shooing away the three improvising jesters who had taken to playing jumprope with the slack of Aya’s leash. They tumbled back to the sidelines. Crouching behind the still figure, he hoisted Aya up to a sitting position by his collar, letting him dangle there when he made no move to take the weight off his own throat.

"Not so lively, ne?" Harlequin inquired of the crowd. "Perhaps we can fix that."

Taking Aya’s limp cock and testicles in his hand, Harlequin gave them a savage but practiced squeeze. The masked redhead came to sudden life with an inrush of agonized breath, swinging behind with an elbow and scoring a light tag to his assailant’s stomach. It was enough to get him released, anyway, and he scrambled away, nearly going ass over head when he tried to use his bound hands to crawl and discovered the flaw in that plan the hard way. He rolled and landed on his back, kicking out at Harlequin as he approached, but the other’s staff had a long enough reach to clobber Aya in the head without even coming within range. Aya slumped to the ground, conscious but dazed.

"That’s better . . . shall we start the bidding at $1000 American?"

There were no immediate offers. For a single, desperate moment, Yoji held onto the hope that someone like Aya actually *was* outside the interest of these people, as he’d originally thought. Masquerade was into slaughtering women and children, not full grown men who might actually have a prayer of fighting back, wounded and drugged or not. There were other men along the parade of victims but all of them were willowy bishonen with nothing to recommend them but their beauty. As Aya struggled to a seated position, legs tucked under, the muscles in his chest and back rippling as he pulled muzzily at the mask, Yoji realized with a certain pride that, even now, Aya had neither the appearance nor the demeanor of easy prey.

A horrid chill went through him suddenly as he realized that an offering not bid for might be simply disposed of. They might just shoot him and leave him there for scenery as the show went on. Crueler things had happened at these games. Luckily, someone took Harlequin up on his initial offer before Yoji could follow that thought to its unpleasant conclusion. He hid his face in his hands, not knowing what to think at this stage.

"Balinese!"

Yoji nearly jumped out of his skin when that voice shouted right in his ear, but waves of relief quickly overwhelmed any anger he might have felt at the interruption. "Bombay," he greeted in return, "where have you been?"

"No time. They’ve got Aya-kun!"

"I know that, *Bombay*," Yoji returned impatiently, reminding himself to chastise Omi for that little slip when there was actually time, "he’s on stage already! I need to know where *you* are so I can formulate a plan to get him back. Have you found the Prime?"

"No," Omi replied. There was something tight in his voice that made Yoji very, very uneasy. "I’ve been kind of busy running away . . . um . . ."

"Spit it out, Bombay.""Well, I've kind of been a little bit, um . . . shot."

"What!?"

"What ‘what?’" Ken asked suspiciously, picking up on Yoji’s startled fear.

"I’m all right," Omi hastily added, "just a flesh wound, really, in the arm. It hurts, but I’m fine. I just have to keep it low; this is the first chance I’ve gotten to transmit."

"What’s wrong?" Ken pressed, tugging at Yoji’s sleeve like an anxious child.

Yoji sighed. "Where are you?"

"Over the arena again, in the rafters. Ground level is crawling with security."

"Perfect. Listen. I need you to get to a lighting control panel. Hack it or smack it or whatever you need to do but, when I give the signal, I want all the lights in this place to go down at once. Then the mission begins."

Omi let out a nervous laugh. "That’s do-able, I think. You sound like you’ve got a plan already."

"I do now. Balinese out." He turned to Ken, stifling the other’s questions with a finger to his lips; time was of the essence now. "What was the last bid?"

Ken cocked his head, confused. "$10,000 American. Why?"

Nodding, Yoji stood and turned toward the arena. "$15,000," he shouted confidently, raising a hand to Harlequin as the auction-master danced over to acknowledge the bid.

"Fifteen from the gentleman in the black trenchcoat! Do I have twenty?"

When Yoji looked back at Ken, he was worried for a moment that the other’s wide brown eyes might fall right out of his head. Ken took him by the lapel as if considering the option of shaking some sense into him. He went for shouting instead.

"What the Hell are you doing!? They’re gonna want cash on delivery, Yoji, and we don’t have it!"

"Twenty," bid their nearest competitor.

"Twenty for Mister Business Suit," Harlequin reported, pausing to ruffle Aya’s hair with the blade of his staff; Aya wisely froze. "Anyone for twenty-five?"

"We don’t need cash," Yoji reminded him, digging his wallet out of his back pocket and thumbing through it, "we’ve got something better: platinum." Pinching it between two fingers, Yoji drew out the ridiculously prestigious credit card that Kritiker had provided them with for just such emergencies. "Thirty-five," he shot back.

"Fifty," was the immediate reply, bitten out before Harlequin could even confirm Yoji’s previous bid.

"One hundred," Yoji stated decisively. Fuck games. Fuck the thrill of the hunt. Yoji was ready to get on with this plan and get Aya the Hell out of danger.

"And quite a jump from Mister Trenchcoat! Bravo! Can I hear two hundred?"

"Yoji," Ken whispered, "that thing does have a limit, you know. Kritiker’s been in a major budget crunch since Aya’s old friends came and smeared us all over the map. If you spend that much, Calico is going to kick your . . ."

"Calico will never have to pay it. These assholes aren’t going to be around to collect the bill tomorrow, genius. Not once we’re done."

The other high bidder, a middle-aged man with "frustrated businessman" written all over his cheap suit, dropped out with a savage glare. There was a well-endowed young woman near him, one of perhaps a dozen in the entire place, wearing enough polished leather to make one very shiny cow and a companion calf for good measure. She was more than ready to step in.

"Two hundred and fifty," she purred.

"Now we’ve made it to the serious shoppers! Do you have an answer, Mister Trenchcoat?"

Yoji met her challenging stare across the arena without flinching. "Five hundred thousand dollars American."

Kalen was looking over his shoulder at Yoji now, disappointment clear on his face. Odd, considering that his pride and joy was about to earn his organization a large – if surprisingly temporary – wad of cash. Behind the bewildered look of betrayal on his face, an expression that may or may not have been directed at Yoji, there was also some indication that he was just now beginning to put two and two together.

It was a bit late for that, Yoji realized with incredible relief. All he had to do was tell them that Ken was a co-buyer, get them both into the ring with Aya, maybe even get the redhead’s hands wrapped around something big and nasty that didn’t require great precision in the aim department. With Omi sniping from the rafters, shooting their way out of this successfully would become a much more tenable option . . . and Kalen was number one on his personal list of targets.

He cocked a finger at Kalen with a wink and a nod. Kalen turned away, staring up at the cameras spread liberally through the superstructure above the arena. It was almost as if he was looking for someone there, but not with any suspicion. It was more like a wistful hope.

"I have five hundred from my fine young friend in the leather trenchcoat . . . do I hear six?"

Silence from the arena. Yoji knew from the files that other features had gone for much more. The features that had ended up in the Prime’s official Hunts were usually bid up into the multi-million dollar range before he stepped in and claimed them. Prey like Aya were an acquired taste, though, he supposed, as evidenced by the lack of any other even remotely muscular males on the block. Yoji’s bid stood.

"Going once?"

There were no monetary responses. Mister Business Suit and Miss Dominatrix were conferring on their side of the theater, perhaps considering a combined bid. They weren’t opening their mouths yet, though.

"Going twice?"

Silence again, broken only by a few whispers and catcalls from the crowd. Aya had given up on the mask, letting his bound hands fall limply into his lap. His face was directed toward Yoji’s section, sweeping slowly back and forth as if he had heard his lover’s voice and was now trying to find him. Yoji lifted an arm to wave to him, hiding it in the guise of a triumphant wave to the crowd he’d just about beaten out. Aya seemed to relax a little with the knowledge that he wasn’t going to be sold to a sadistic stranger after all, but he didn’t let his gaze stay on Yoji. By the book, they still didn’t know each other.

"Third time’s the charm, my friends! Sold to the . . ."

Just as quickly as it had come together, Yoji’s plan fell to pieces around him with the sound of a single young voice raised above the murmuring crowd.

"Five million American dollars . . ."

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