Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 117363 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 587(@200wpm)___ 469(@250wpm)___ 391(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 117363 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 587(@200wpm)___ 469(@250wpm)___ 391(@300wpm)
It was inevitable that it would descend to violence, but with most of the referees and Raven staff on the court, intercepting the howling Ravens was easy work. The Foxes were quick to take a hint, and they hauled each other up so they could stumble off the court together. Jean didn’t watch them go. He couldn’t look away from Riko where he sat defeated and broken beside Josiah. The camera cut away to the sportscasters at their table a heartbeat later, and some of their words finally made it through:
“—advised us not to show a replay,” said the pale woman on the left. She was talking to the camera, but she and her partner were both watching something off-screen. Jean knew they were watching what they’d been forbidden to air, judging by the way she suddenly clapped a hand over her mouth and her partner flinched. She audibly choked as she tried to find her words again. “If you’re just tuning in—”
Jean threw the TV off its stand, heedless of the white-hot pain that lanced through his chest at such a violent move. He closed his eyes and watched in his mind’s eye again and again what they refused to give him. He only wished he could slow the memory down to better see it: the unnatural way Riko’s forearm popped into a V, the way shattered bone tore holes in his arm under force of impact, the way he screamed.
Jean sank to the ground and leaned to one side to get the weight off his aching knee. He folded his arms across the entertainment center and looked to the TV where it was sideways and half-tipped away from him. He hadn’t been able to send it far, and its cord was long enough that it was miraculously still plugged in. Riko was being led off the court between Josiah and Miriam, and although the Ravens’ coaches tried to body the cameramen out of the way someone got a shot of the shuttered look on Riko’s face and the agonized tears still streaking down his cheeks.
Jean laughed so hard he felt faint.
Unsurprisingly, the ERC chose to forego the standard championships ceremony for now. Jean watched the news for hours, sometimes flipping to other channels to see if there was any coverage. With no new news forthcoming, he kept hearing the same words and phrases repeated, and the Foxes’ unimaginable victory was mostly lost behind the violent near-miss at the end. The alarm for Riko’s well-being was nauseating to hear, but when the broadcast’s locale finally shifted to a four-man team at the studio the conversation took a more practical turn. Before long the man at the right dragged the emphasis back to Riko’s violent intentions.
“He could have died tonight,” he insisted to his companions. “We all saw—"
One of his companions tried to interject, “Now, now, Joe, all of this is just hearsay right now, and—”
Joe wouldn’t be deterred, even as the other kept talking: “—how close he got. If Andrew had been a half-second slower—”
“—can’t just make wild accusations like this, grounded on conspiracy and not facts—”
“Where is Jean?” the lone woman on the far left asked, and that was so unexpected she startled her companions into silence. She was running her fingertips along the back of her left hand as she stared down at the desk. “Just a few weeks ago Kevin implied a cover-up regarding his own injury. No one has seen Jean in over a month, even though the official story was he was only out with a sprain. What are they doing to the perfect Court?”
“That is a very bold thing to say, Denise,” the man beside her said.
There was an unspoken warning behind that reprimand: it was far too early for any of them to make such accusations no matter what they’d all seen. Jean assumed they were trying to avoid a potential lawsuit from Edgar Allan. After a tense few moments of silence, they decided either by silent vote or via a cue from their earpieces to switch the topic to the game itself.
Jean eased himself across the carpet closer to the TV. He couldn’t lift it back to its stand, but with the help of some breathless swearing he was able to set it on its feet. He watched as stellar plays were rehashed and complimented. The Ravens were finally called out for their brutal playing style, two hours too late to help anyone, and Nathaniel’s risky move to the defense line was lauded as genius.
“We’ve had pretty limited access to the Foxes since the final bell, on account of…” Joe waved his hand to indicate the obvious but didn’t let himself get distracted by speaking on it again, “but what we’ve heard from Coach Wymack is that the idea came from Andrew. Not what any of us would have guessed, I think it’s safe to say?”