The next morning the fairgrounds rose out of the dark like a small city built for one purpose. Eugene saw the stadium lights first, a white glow above the treeline that turned the pickup’s hood the color of old bone. Crow silenced the engine at the competitor gate and let the white noise settle around them.
“You’ve got the registration, right?”, Ruby asked.
Eugene patted his shirt pocket and the silver device now warm against his thigh inside the metal box on his knee. “Right here.”
Crow didn’t move from behind the wheel. His hands stayed at ten and two; dark eyes fixed on the gate. “The medical tent is on the east side. Walk the long way around.”
“Why?”
“Because the device has been getting warmer since we crossed the city limits, and I’d rather not risk it.”
Ruby reached across Eugene and squeezed his wrist. Her grip was dry and strong, the same hand that had signed the bull riding entry form in a kitchen that might not be theirs much longer. “Go check in. We’ll find seats.”
The competitor gate was a folding table and a man with a clipboard and a headlamp. Eugene gave his name and watched the man run a finger down a printed list, the tacky paper damp from the pre-dawn humidity. The man checked a box and handed over a competitor number on a square of Tyvek.
“Chute assignments post at six,” he said. “Medical tent’s open if you need clearance.”
Eugene walked east, toward the chutes, and gave the medical tent a wide berth. The silver device pulsed once against his leg as he passed it, a single sharp vibration like a phone notification from somewhere else. He kept walking. The pulse stopped.
The holding pens smelled of manure, hay and the sharp chemical tang of disinfectant. Bulls shifted in shadows, their breath steaming in the cold air. A handler in a canvas jacket pointed Eugene toward the draw board, a whiteboard propped against a fence post with names scrawled in dry-erase marker.
His name was third from the top. Beside it, in block letters: LONE BLAZE. This had confirmed his worst nightmare. He was praying his mother had the wrong name from yesterday.
The handler noticed him reading. “You drew the gray. Nobody’s stayed on him past five seconds this season.”
Eugene found the bull in the third pen. Lone Blaze was the color of a thundercloud, massive shoulders tapering to a narrow hindquarter, and along his left flank ran a scar. Not a brand. Not a rope burn. A pattern. The same interlocking curves etched into the silver device, the same geometry that had hummed under his fingers in Crow’s pickup.
The bull turned its head and looked at him. One eye crusty and wet, then Eugene felt the device go still against his knee.
He walked back to the chutes.
Ruby found him near the rails.
“Lone Blaze, is that good?”
“No mom, it's not good. He's a beast unlike any other."
She flinched in fear but didn’t tell him to be careful. She didn’t say anything at all as the more words spoken could trigger him. She watched the arena crew rake the dirt, her shoulder against his, solid and warm.
At six the chute assignments went up. Eugene checked his borrowed gear: rope, glove, vest. The device stayed in the metal box, and the metal box stayed under the bench where Ruby sat. Crow appeared at the rail a few minutes before Eugene’s heat, his face unreadable.
“The device?” Eugene asked.
“Quiet now.” Crow’s tone carried something Eugene couldn’t place. Not worry. Something older.
The chute was a narrow cage of pipe and plywood. Lone Blaze stood inside it, the scar on his flank visible even in the half-light under the grandstand. Eugene climbed the rails and lowered himself onto the bull’s back, threading the rope through his glove, wrapping it tight. The bull shifted underneath him and Eugene adjusted his weight, finding the center.
The device, still in the box under the bench, had gone completely silent. He knew it without looking.
The gate opened.
Lone Blaze erupted into the arena. The first jump nearly unseated him, a twisting buck that sent Eugene’s free arm snapping back for balance. The second jump came faster, a spin to the left that wrenched his shoulder. He counted the seconds by the bull’s rhythm: one, two, three. The crowd was a roar he couldn’t hear over his own pulse. Four, five. Lone Blaze kicked high and Eugene’s spine compressed, his teeth grinding together. Six, seven. The scar on the bull’s flank flashed past his vision with every rotation, the pattern burning itself into his sight.
Eight.
The horn sounded.
Eugene’s grip loosened. He came off the bull sideways, hit the dirt, rolled, and got his feet under him. The bullfighters were already moving, waving Lone Blaze toward the exit gate. Eugene staggered toward the fence where Crow stood, and Crow’s face held a question he hadn’t asked yet.
Eugene opened his mouth to answer.
And stopped.
Above the announcer’s booth, at the top of the grandstand stairs, Director Albright stood with his hands resting on the rail. The sharp suit was gone, replaced by a dark sports jacket and a tattered baseball cap pulled low, but the posture was unmistakable. The unblinking gaze. The stillness of a man who had been frozen in place, supposedly memory swiped and was now very much not.
The crowd cheered. The announcer called Eugene’s score. Albright glared directly at him, across the dirt and the spectators. His face not amnesic