“Sweet. So, Carl the Hunchback, once I win this thing—and I will win this thing—I’m gonna be making a lot of changes around here. I don’t know what those changes will be, and I don’t even know why I’ll make them. Honestly, I don’t know much about this place at all right now, because we haven’t even landed yet. But I can tell you one thing. One of those changes will involve klieg lights and moats and genetically engineered super-piranhas and bloody, gory decapitated heads. And if you play your cards right, Carl the Hunchback, you can be on the right side of those changes, you know what I mean? But that’s a very big ‘if.’ ”

Moments later, we’d landed on the roof of that lame industrial warehouse, and Carl the Hunchback was leading me through a maze of equally lame hallways. No retina scans, no electronic keypads, not even a fucking Brinks security guard. I don’t even think the drywall was finished.

We went through one twist and turn after another. It felt like we had been walking for hours—and like they could’ve at least sent a golf cart to pick me up?—when finally we came to a big set of double doors.

And what was on the other side of those doors—that was pretty fucking cool.

I mean, not as cool as super-piranhas and impaled heads. But still, pretty fucking cool.

Spread out below me was a massive arena, twice the size of a football stadium, like Jerry Jones would see the size of this place and shit himself.

It was teeming with tens of thousands of spectators, packed as tight as they could get, shoulder to shoulder, practically on top of each other—definitely a pre-COVID situationII—all of them standing, screaming, pumping their fists, waving around money to place their bets, and straight-up crackling with ENERGY and FIRE and POWER and THUNDER and SMOKE and ENERGY.

We’re talking brown people, ochre people, taupe people, black people, white people, people from every country on the planet, sweating through their clothes and speaking every language you could imagine in a booming, echoing roar.

YAYAYAYA!

And I could see why they weren’t worried about security outside—each one of these spectators inside was armed to the teeth. Switchblades, throwing stars, nunchaku, lasers, swords, scythes—seriously, who brings a scythe?—and every kind of gun. Depending on your POV, it was either the safest place in the world or the scariest.

And the Doctor doesn’t do fear.

Carl the Hunchback led me down the longest, narrowest staircase I’d ever seen in my life. On each side of us, the hoodlums and riffraff screamed curses and threats.

“You’ll never leave here alive, Two-Time!”

“We’ll put your head on a pike!”

“What kind of conditioner do you use? Your mullet is vivacious!”

I laughed. This was my kind of crowd.