The crowd was roaring with approval as hastily cut together holograms flashed above the field, showing the high points of the fight. As brief as the bout had been there were few enough, but this didn't stop the holovid from looping it over and over. Jocasta pushed her way through the crowd.

"You don't have to yell," she told him, "Cgyi chipped you with a mastoid implant while you were asleep." The words came clear over the noise of the crowd, bone conduction into the ear.

"I uhh.. maybe should have mentioned," she admitted. The announcer was saying something but the angle of the speakers was toward the crowd and not down into the ring so it was just a curtain of loud nonsense from Jocasta's perspective. She took Neil's hand and raised it up like a champion boxer to the screamed approval of the crowd. By the look of several hard faces, plenty of people had bet against Neil, but there was an equally number of delighted fans thronging the bookies for their long odds winning.

"A few more like that and we might just get out of here," Jocasta enthused.