Before dropping us off, Earl had told me that he would speak to Lacoco once he got back from the hospital. Barely knowing the man, I didn’t know how that was going to go over. It wasn’t like I had any personal beef with Lacoco. What had happened before was stupid, and it was my fault, but it had been years ago. I’d only known the other fighter by reputation, and it was a bad enough rep that though I had felt awful for nearly killing the man, at least I had known that it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving person. But Lacoco still held a grudge. He was lethal and mad at me, which was a terrible combo. Even if he promised Earl that he would play nice, we were in the kind of business where training accidents happened. Lacoco had already gone to prison once, and whomever he’d killed the first time around hadn’t even smashed one of his eyeballs into jelly and cracked his skull open. I would do my best to avoid him, but I would have to watch my back as long as he was around.

We were a motley bunch, ripped clothing, some black eyes, busted noses, split lips, and sour dispositions, and we were the ones that hadn’t needed medical attention. In the lobby, a few men in black suits watched us with thinly veiled hostility. The suits were too expensive for them to be MCB here for the conference, so that meant that the high-end hotel security had gotten the memo and were keeping a special eye on us. Dinner had been six hours ago, so we were all too exhausted to even make eye contact with well-dressed guards as we piled into the elevator to go back to our rooms. Security had to be hating life, especially since Cooper and Lee were still grumbling loudly about how the police had confiscated some of their explosives.

The view out the crowded glass elevator was very nice, since the interior of the hotel was one gigantic open space for most of the interior. They were still painting and decorating the top floors. Despite being huge, the hotel itself was like a ghost town. The ICMHP attendees were the only people staying here. There were a few hundred guests, but that wasn’t much considering just how vast this place was. The new hotel’s staff was still learning on us. You might as well work out the bugs on people that were here for something top secret, who wouldn’t be allowed to give bad reviews afterward. We liked to think of ourselves as celebrity guests, but realistically we were probably more like test subjects.