"Seconds out—round two!"
The referee's voice sliced through the fog in Marcus's mind. He pushed himself off the stool, his legs wobbling beneath him. His mouth tasted like pennies and regret.
Brian "The Ox" Wilmer bounced on his toes in the center of the ring, fresh as morning coffee. The bastard looked like he could go twenty rounds. His corner was still celebrating, the trainer's shouts echoing off the concrete walls.
Marcus trudged forward, each step feeling like he was wading through quicksand.
The bell rang.
Brian surged across the canvas like a freight train, throwing punches from every angle. A left hook slammed into Marcus's ribs, doubling him over. Before he could recover, an uppercut grazed his chin, snapping his head back. Stars exploded in his vision.
Desperately, Marcus wrapped his arms around Brian's thick waist. The bigger man was solid muscle, slick with sweat, smelling of cheap cologne and violence.
"Let 'em work!" the referee barked, but Marcus held on. He needed these few seconds to breathe, to think.
Brian shoved him off with brutal force. Marcus stumbled backward, arms flailing to keep his balance. The crowd erupted.
"Finish him, Ox!"
"Put him to sleep!"
"He's done!"
The voices merged into a wall of noise that pressed against Marcus's skull. He raised his guard just in time to catch another right hand on his gloves, the impact sending shockwaves up his arms.
Brian was hunting now. His eyes had that predatory gleam Marcus knew too well—the look of a man who smelled blood. He threw a combination that Marcus barely slipped, the punches whistling past his face close enough to ruffle his hair.
But then something clicked.
Marcus saw an opening. Brian had overextended on a wild hook, his chin exposed momentarily. Marcus stepped forward and fired a perfect jab, snapping Brian's head back. The crowd gasped. Before Brian could reset, Marcus threw another, catching him square on the nose.
Blood spattered across the canvas.
For a heartbeat, the arena went quiet. Brian's confident grin faltered. He touched his nose, saw the crimson on his glove, and his expression darkened.
"You little shit," he muttered through his mouthpiece.
Then he started targeting the body.
The first shot hit Marcus's liver like a sledgehammer wrapped in velvet. His knees buckled. The second caught him in the solar plexus, driving the air from his lungs. He doubled over, gasping, and Brian's knee nearly found his face before the referee stepped in.
"Watch the low blows!"
But the damage was done. Marcus's body was shutting down piece by piece. His legs felt disconnected from his brain. His vision kept fading to gray. The taste of blood in his mouth was growing stronger.
He threw a desperate hook that caught nothing but air. Brian laughed and popped him with a short right hand that rattled his teeth. The crowd was on its feet now, sensing the end.
Marcus tried to move, stick,, and run like Ruud had taught him years ago. But his feet felt like cement blocks. His hands dropped lower with each passing second. Brian stalked him across the ring like a cat toying with a wounded mouse.
The bell rang.
Marcus collapsed onto his stool, chest heaving. Sweat and blood dripped onto his shorts. Gert appeared before him with a water bottle and ice pack, his face a mask of false optimism.
"You're doing great, kid. Just hang in there. Weather the storm."
The words bounced off Marcus like raindrops on glass. He stared down at his gloves, worn leather that had absorbed so much punishment over the years. The white tape around his knuckles was stained pink with blood—his blood, other men's blood, the blood of every broken dream he'd ever carried into a ring.
Three wins. Twenty-one losses.
The numbers echoed in his skull like a funeral bell. Six years of his life reduced to statistics that nobody would remember. Six years of getting his brain scrambled for pocket change and empty promises.
He thought about the gym back home. The one Ruud used to run before Marcus broke his heart with mediocrity. The heavy bags that smelled like leather and sweat and honest work. The mirror where he practiced combinations, dreaming of title fights and magazine covers, of crowds that cheered his name instead of hoping to watch him die.
All of it felt like someone else's life now.
The crowd noise faded to static in his ears. Gert's voice became a distant murmur. Even the harsh fluorescent lights seemed dimmer, as if the world was slowly reducing its volume.
"Time!"
The referee called them back to the center. Marcus stood on unsteady legs, muscle memory carrying him forward when his brain had already checked out. Brian was waiting for him, bouncing and grinning like a kid on Christmas morning.
"Stay down this time, Dorsey!"
Brian's voice cut through the fog. The words hit Marcus harder than any punch. Stay down. Just quit. Stop embarrassing yourself and everyone watching. Stop pretending you were ever meant for this.
The bell rang for round three.
Brian came out showboating. He dropped his hands, stuck his chin out, dared Marcus to hit him. The crowd loved it. They laughed, pointing at the broken-down fighter who couldn't even take advantage of a free shot.
But something flickered to life in Marcus's chest. Not hope—hope had died a long time ago. Something older and meaner. Something that reminded me of being young and hungry, convinced the world owed me everything.
Fuck it.
Marcus stepped forward and fired a combination that surprised everyone, including himself. A jab snapped Brian's head back. A right cross caught him on the temple. A left hook to the body doubled him over. For ten seconds, Marcus threw leather like his life depended on it.
The crowd actually cheered.
Brian straightened up, eyes wide with shock and fury. Blood trickled from his nose. His perfect hair was messed up. The smug grin was gone, replaced by something cold and vicious.
"My turn," he snarled.
The uppercut came from hell itself.
Marcus never saw it coming. One second, he was standing, and the next, his brain was rattling around inside his skull like dice in a cup. His legs turned to water. The ring tilted sideways. The crowd exploded into chaos.
He stayed on his feet somehow, pure stubbornness keeping him upright when his body wanted to crumble. But Brian wasn't done. He threw everything he had left, a barrage of punches that would have dropped a horse.
The bell saved Marcus's life.
He stumbled to his corner, vision blurry, everything starting to feel like a fever dream. Gert's voice sounded like it was coming from underwater. The ice pack on his neck felt like fire. His hands wouldn't stop shaking.
"Just survive," Gert was saying. "One more round. Then we can go home."
Home. The word felt foreign. Where was home for a broken-down fighter with no money and no future? His mother's apartment, where she tried not to cry every time she looked at what he'd become? The gym where kids pointed and whispered about the washed-up nobody who couldn't win a fight if his opponent had both hands tied behind his back?
"Box!"
The referee's voice was sharp and distant. Round four. Marcus pushed himself off the stool again, legs shaking, chest tight with something that might have been panic or acceptance.
Brian pressed forward immediately, throwing hooks to the body that landed like cannon shots. Marcus did everything he could to survive. He clinched when Brian got too close, smothering his work. He kept his guard high and prayed the round would end before his body gave out completely.
Brian's sweat sprayed across his face as they grappled. The bigger man shoved him off contemptuously, sending Marcus stumbling backward toward the ropes. The crowd was on its feet, screaming for blood.
Desperation made Marcus stupid.
He went for a wild hook, putting everything he had left behind it. His feet tangled beneath him as he threw the punch. His balance deserted him. He was falling even before Brian's counter landed.
But Brian's shot caught the back of Marcus's head anyway.
Time slowed to a crawl. The punch seemed to take forever to land, but when it did, it felt like someone had set off a bomb inside his skull. Ringing filled his ears, loud enough to drown out the screaming crowd. His vision went gray, then black, then gray again.
He was on the canvas before he realized he was falling.
The ring lights looked like distant stars. His body felt disconnected from his brain, like he was watching someone else's life from a great height. Brian landed another body shot before the referee could intervene, and Marcus's legs finally gave up completely.
The canvas was cold against his cheek.
He tried to rise. Managed to get to his hands and knees before everything started spinning. Faces appeared above him—the referee, Coach Gert, someone who might have been a medic. Their voices sounded like they were speaking through water.
Memories flickered behind his eyes like a broken movie reel. His mother's face was the day he told her he would be a professional fighter. The empty kitchen table was the morning after his first loss. The broken promises he'd made to himself in a hundred different locker rooms after a hundred different beatings.
The world was getting darker and quieter. The screaming crowd faded to a whisper, then to nothing at all.
In the darkness that swallowed him, something impossible happened.
A single line of text appeared in his vision, glowing like neon against the black. The letters were sharp and clean and utterly alien, like something from a computer screen or a video game.
────────SYSTEM INTERFACE─────────
SYSTEM ACTIVATING
───────────────────────────────
Marcus stared at the words, confusion slicing through the fading fog in his brain. But the darkness enveloped him completely before he could grasp what he was seeing.
Everything went black.
And somewhere in that void, a voice began to speak.