Free City of Cruelty and Copper (Temperance Era) by Rhiannon Paille

Gladiator played the crowd, spreading his arms, laughing, pretending this was all part of the show. He lifted fake Fable over his head and twirled her around, tossing her into the middle of the Arena. Her jeans split open at the knee from the force as she slid across the gravelly sand.
    A bomb hit the Arena. It wasn’t well aimed but it was enough to make fake Fable jump to her feet. The measly fire ball popped reminding me of caps. Shots we used to put in those toy guns. They were basically blanks, but they could still generate a nasty bit of fire and smoke. They always loaded the crowd up with projectile bombs, nothing as big as a grenade, but deadly enough.
    Cotton candy bombs hit the Arena floor as Fable dragged her human body around the Arena, avoiding the Gladiator. I was surprised she was still alive. I was surprised Hattie hadn’t sent out the firing squad yet, why the F-16’s hadn’t unleashed the real bombs, why flame throwers hadn’t come to prove I couldn’t be burnt to a crisp. Fake Fable reached the Ferris Wheel again and climbed into a carriage. They didn’t turn it on, she just sat there cowering, hoping that the metal contraption would protect her from the bombs. She held her left arm to her chest, it looked loose, definitely broken. She had fear in her dark eyes, like she expected them to bring out the guillotine and chop her head off.
    If I was going to die, it wasn’t going to be a quick death.
    Hattie.
    She must have known. She must have thought that they were going to play up the death of Fable the Immortal. Make it some part of the act. Prolong the death defying stunts, make me a tourist at a Theme Park, make me seem like a normal girl. There was no way she knew it wasn’t me out there. She must have been standing there watching me like everyone else, waiting for the old Fable to emerge from the bones of this weakling.
    For once they were really waiting for me. Their voices shouted my name with a twinge of desperation. They didn’t want me to die, they never wanted me to die. It was easier to justify their insanity if I was impermeable.
    “Are you enjoying yourself?” Cray sneered.
    “The first thing I’m going to do when I get a hold of you is rip your fingernails off one by one.”
    “And why is that?”
    “Fable the Immortal isn’t meant to die.”
    “I beg to differ,” Cray said, turning his attention back to the Arena. He took a step closer, his face practically pressed up against the checkered metal window.
    I followed his gaze. The Gladiator had retreated. The trap doors opened, and fake Fable screamed as a zombie tiger lumbered out from one of the doors. Come on fake Fable, I thought. It was a zombie tiger, nothing like a regular one. Ones that hadn’t been tested on were lupine, nimble, acute. These ones were sluggish, disoriented, and easy to kill. Fake Fable noticed it at the same time I did. She crawled out of the carriage carefully, looking for a weapon. Seeing nothing she shook her hair out carefully, keeping eye contact with the zombie tiger. She reached down and plucked off her stilettos, holding one of them with the razor sharp heel outwards.
    I almost cheered her on.
    The crowd mentality changed.
    I smirked.
    “You so sure she’s going to die?” I drawled at Cray, loving the fact that any second now fake Fable was going to lunge at that zombie tiger and kill it. Pack the four inch heel into its skull and call it a day.
    Cray didn’t look at me. “You so sure she’s going to live?”
    A blast of heat erupted from behind the little stick figure fake Fable, her hair, her clothes, everything blazing. Flames rolled across her skin, blisters formed and popped, her face distorted, her eyes rolled into the back of her head. She twisted and fell on her back, seizing at the pressure of the heat. My mouth hung open, my eyes stung with tears I didn’t know I could cry, a single drop from each eye.
    The crowd went silent.
    Men in biohazard suits came with fire