The Workshop is a mess of noise; the sound of hammers falling rhythmically on steel, rivets being rivetted, acetylene torches fixing seams. Row after row of concentrating faces, pit teams working round the clock to keep their Bots bout-ready in this room the size of an aircraft hanger.

Suddenly, SingularByte feels the hairs stand up on his neck. He looks up from Hard Hat and the spot-weld he is in the middle off, scans the room, steps away from his bench, looking for a threat he can sense but can’t see.

“What’s got you bothered, Hard Hat?” asks Kevan from his own bench.

“Viene la tormenta,” mutters SingularByte.

“Eh?”

SingularByte turns and faces Kevan, his eyes fixed through the other Operator, looking for something beyond the walls, over the horizon, a sense of creeping doom… “The storm is coming,” he says.

Then, the huge hangar door starts to winch open, and SingularByte turns to face it, that huge door the size of a football pitch being opened, and all for one figure, silhouetted in the frame, backlit and shrouded in smoke, one figure and a Bot besides it, while over the tannoy:

“Now announcing: SingularByte with Hard Hat will next face Darknight with The Killing Joke in Arena Hall C.”