The noise didn't stop, but it changed. A shift in texture. She could feel the video moving through the room in the form of attention. Eyes finding her. Some neutral. Some not.
She walked to the far side of the mat and began her final warm-up. Moving slowly, deliberately. Not looking at the crowd. Eyes in. Body present. The last minutes before belonged entirely to preparation.
She was aware of Reese in the spectator section. The particular quality of attention coming from that part of the room. She didn't look.
She moved through her warm-up sequence, and breathed, and was here. On this mat, in this gym, where her mother had stood 22 years ago.
She could feel that. In the practical way that places carry their history, when you know what they carried. The mat under her feet had been replaced many times since 2003. But the floor under the mat was the same floor. The walls were the same walls. The proportions of the space were unchanged.
Her mother had stood here. She stood here now.
That was enough.
The organizing committee called the competitors to the mat.
Dara came from the other side of the hall. She was 22, compact and well-muscled, dark hair pulled back tight, moving with the economy that came from years of serious training. She looked at Mia with a directness that Mia respected immediately. Not contempt. Not the way Reese looked at people, measuring what they were worth. Just the focused attention of one fighter reading another.
They touched gloves in the center.
Up close, Dara said, low, "Good luck."
It was genuine. Mia could hear that.
"You too," Mia said.
They went to their corners.
The first round was exactly what Foss had prepared her for.
Dara was fast. Faster than the footage had suggested, because footage never fully captures the speed of someone who is genuinely quick. She moved with no wasted motion. Everything purposeful. The product of years of serious coaching.
She came forward in the first 30 seconds and established pressure.
Mia gave ground. Not from fear. From information gathering. Every exchange was data. The way Dara set her feet before a combination. The slight drop of the left shoulder before a takedown entry. The pattern in her breathing when she worked in close.
Mia didn't fight back hard in the first round. She absorbed, deflected, kept her positioning, without trying to win anything. She was not there yet. The space was not yet familiar. She needed a round to know it.
The crowd read this wrong. She could hear it in the quality of the sound from the section where Reese was sitting. A growing confidence. Some murmuring that carried the specific tone of people who had made up their minds before the event began.