As the crowd surged forward to get a better view of Marcus’s latest knockout, Elena remained perfectly still, an island of calm in a sea of adrenaline.
Marcus was bored. He had just dispatched a nervous green-belt in under twenty seconds and was hungry for a bigger laugh. A referee handed him the microphone.
"Is that all?" Marcus’s voice boomed through the stadium speakers, dripping with manufactured disappointment. "I thought this city had fighters! I'm seeing a lot of tourists!"
His eyes scanned the bleachers, sweeping over the faces of the terrified and the awestruck, until they landed on the back of the room. They landed on the woman in the faded sweatpants who wasn't cheering. He pointed a taped, gloved finger directly at her.
"Hey, you! Yeah, you in the cheap gym clothes!" Marcus shouted. The stadium cameras pivoted, projecting Elena’s calm face onto the giant screens above the mats.
The crowd fell into a hushed murmur, then erupted into cruel laughter.
"Why don't you come down here and show us what you've got?" Marcus taunted, pacing the ring like a caged tiger. "Or are you too scared to move? Come on, give the people a show!"
Hundreds of cell phones shot up into the air, their red recording lights blinking like mechanical fireflies. They expected a public humiliation. They expected her to run away, blushing.