On the other side of the court, it was dead silent.
That's the weird thing about losing, the silence actually has a volume. All around the Colossus players, the arena was fucking roaring, but on their own bench, the sound just stopped. It was like they were trapped in a bubble of failure.
You can tell when a loser has given everything and still failed. It's written all over them. You can see it in their hands.
Kael was sitting at the edge of the bench, mindlessly ripping and re-wrapping his wristbands over and over, his eyes locked on a single spot on the floor. Hall had a towel draped over his head, frozen in place, elbows digging into his thighs. Vex hadn't even moved from under the basket. He was just standing there, two meters of pure muscle looking like a statue, staring at the court as if something was about to crawl out of the floor.
And the breathing... They weren't panting; they were just empty. Like guys who ran ten miles only to find the river dried.
