23. Jack
Jack
The back of the old sedan stinks, but it’s the silence between my father and Uncle Ray that feels the heaviest. They have the child locks on so I don’t jump out.
Like I could anyway. My wrists are zip-tied behind my back, the plastic biting into my skin with every bump in the road.
We have been driving for an hour, and I have no idea where we are as we weave through the damp streets of Seattle before dropping lower, beneath the overpasses and into the industrial district.
Ray turns around from the passenger seat, his smile thin in the dim amber glow of the dashboard lights.
“Look at you, shaking like a wet dog,” Ray murmurs, his voice sliding over me like grease.
“Three weeks down in that hole and you still think you have a choice. You think Silas is coming for you, dog? You think he knows where the dark corners are? He’s sitting behind some glowing screen upstate, typing codes into the void, completely blind to the fact that you belong to us.”
My throat tightens, but I force my jaw shut. I refuse to give them a sound.
“Don’t waste your breath on him, Ray,” my dad mutters from the driver’s seat, his eyes fixed on the road ahead. “He was always soft. Just like his mother. Thought she could run too. Look where it got her.”
A cold spike of pure terror hits my chest, sharp enough to stop my heart. My mother. They brought her up like a warning, a threat hanging heavy in the stagnant air of the car.
“Yeah, I remember. She tried to stop us, was going to take you away from us, Jack,” Ray says, leaning in closer, the sour stench of his breath washing over me.
“And we fixed that mistake. You make one wrong move tonight, you try to throw the fight, or you look at the crowd like you’re looking for a savior…
and we’ll fix you, too. You understand me? ”
Ray’s hand drops to his jacket, and with a slow, deliberate click, he pulls a heavy black pistol into view. He rests it casually against his knee, the dark barrel pointing straight at my chest. The metal catches the dim dashboard light, a silent promise.
There is no doubt in my mind, that he will pull the trigger. If I step out of line, if I don’t give them what they want, my story ends tonight in a pool of blood behind some abandoned warehouse, and Silas will spend the rest of his life tearing apart empty servers looking for a ghost.
“I know,” I whisper, the words tasting like vomit in my mouth.
“Good dog,” Ray laughs softly, tucking the gun away just as the car slows down, bumping over rough gravel before coming to a dead stop in front of a heavy steel door set into the side of a windowless steel warehouse.
The air outside hits me like a wall of ice when they jerk the car door open.
Before my boots can even find the ground, Ray’s heavy hand grabs the back of my oversized hoodie, shoving me forward.
The gun is pressed firmly against my spine, hidden beneath the fabric from anyone passing by, but I can feel the cold metal biting through my shirt.
Every step I take toward that door feels like marching to an executioner’s block. The mental cage they built in that basement has followed me out here, wrapping around my mind so tightly I can barely draw a breath.
The transition from the freezing Seattle night to the underground fight club is a sensory overload of noise, sweat, and blood.
The venue is an abandoned completely sealed brick warehouse, that has been converted into a makeshift arena.
A chain-link cage sits under a ring of blinding halogen lights, surrounded by a roaring, baying mob of degenerate gamblers, bookmakers, and syndicate thugs.
The air smells thick of cheap whiskey, body odor, and copper.
They push me through the cramped, concrete-walled holding pen behind the stands, cutting the zip-ties from my wrists with a sharp knife.
My dad shoves my bag into my into my chest.
“Get changed,” my dad barks. “You’re up next. Do not embarrass us out there.”
They leave, the heavy door swinging closed behind them, I look around for a window or exit but there is nothing. and I close my eyes for a second, resigning myself to my fate.
I pull out the box I took from home, lifting the lid to retrieve the strapping and gloves I used before I ran.
I strip off my hoodie and sweatpants, my muscles trembling from three weeks of barely any food and brutal conditioning.
Every joint aches. My ribs are still bruised from my father’s boots down in the cellar.
As I wrap the strapping tight around my knuckles and hands, old blood flakes off onto the floor at my feet.
The material is stiff at first, but as it warms, I can feel it mould to the shape of my hands.
Once done, I run my thumb over it, seeing the stains of other people’s blood mixed in with mine, the edges frayed with use.
I pull in a deep breath, and then another.
Then another, shutting out the world around me.
My legs feel like hollow glass as I pull the mouthguard into place, tasting old rubber and copper. Three weeks of starvation and cellar mould have turned my bones to dust, and I have to grip the edge of the locker room bench just to stay upright.
Then the heavy metal door bangs open. Ray grabs me by the shoulder and marches me out into the blinding glare of the arena lights.
The crowd erupts into a wall of sound as we step up to the cage.
Across the canvas stands my opponent. A mountain of muscle, tattooed head to toe, with a cauliflower ear and cold, dead eyes.
They call him the Beast. He outweighs me by at least forty pounds, his shoulders broad enough to block out the lights above.
The referee gives a perfunctory, brutal set of instructions that basically boil down to no weapons until you’re on the ground.
The buzzer sounds.
* * *
The Beast charges across the canvas before I can even fully settle my stance.
A massive fist collides with the side of my head, sending a white-hot flash of pain exploding behind my eyes. I hit the chain-link fence hard, the metal rattling against my spine. Before I can drop, his knee drives straight into my ribs, cracking something deep inside my chest.
“Get up, stray!” Ray’s voice cuts through the roaring crowd from ringside.
I scramble away, tasting blood in my mouth as I spit out a mouthful of blood and saliva. The Beast comes in for the kill, swinging a massive roundhouse kick that catches me across the jaw.
My vision blurs, the edges of the arena dissolving into a spinning whirlpool of black and grey. I drop to one knee, my lungs burning, sucking in air that feels like crushed glass.
He lunges on top of me, pinning me to the canvas with his immense weight, and starts raining down his fists, each blow feeling like a hammer to my body.
I feel pain everywhere, and terror slips in as he rains down blow after blow.
One to the cheekbone. One to the temple.
The world starts to tunnel, and every blow feels like an anvil coming down on my skull.
I can hear my father and uncle cheering from the front row, screaming for more blood, demanding I take the beating they think I deserve.
If I go down here, I never see him again.
The thought flares up in the dark corners of my mind, brighter than the halogen lights above. Silas’s face flashes behind my eyelids; the slope of his nose, the curve of his lips and the the way his fingers felt wrapped around mine. He’s out there. He’s looking for me. I refuse to die in this dirt.
With a surge of blind, desperate adrenaline that defies the damage that has happened to my body, I twist my hips hard, hooking my leg around the Beast’s ankle. I use his own momentum against him, bucking my entire body upward and rolling us over until I am on top.
He roars in surprise, but I don’t give him a second to recover.
I pull my arm back and drive my elbow straight down into his face, once, twice, three times, until the sickening crunch of bone echoes beneath my knuckles. The crowd goes wild, a deafening wave of noise crashing over the cage.
He tries to reach for my throat, but I slip my arm under his chin, locking in a choke hold with every last ounce of strength I have left in my battered body.
I squeeze and pull back. I channel every week of agony, every second of imprisonment, every ounce of rage and love I have left inside me into my grip.
The Beast thrashes beneath me, his massive arms clawing at the canvas, trying to tear my grip away. I hold on, my muscles trembling, my vision fading to absolute black at the edges.
Come on, I tell myself. Hold on.
Slowly, the resistance on top of me fades. His arms drop limp to the mat. The referee dives in, grabbing my shoulders and tearing me away, raising my hand in the air as the winner of the bloodbath.
The roaring crowd fades into a muffled hum. My legs give out entirely beneath me. I collapse onto my hands and knees on the bloody canvas, gasping for breath that won’t come, my body finally shutting down from the sheer trauma of the fight.
With one final effort, I lean back, kneeling on the canvas, I scream his name.
“Sol!”
Rough hands grab me by the shoulders, hauling me to my feet.
It’s Ray and my dad, their faces twisted in ugly sneers even though I won. They drag me away from the cage, pushing me down the concrete corridor toward the back exit.
“You took too long,” my dad spits, shoving me hard against the brick wall of the alleyway as the cold night air hits my face. “You looked weak.”
“Pathetic,” Ray adds, landing a vicious, unexpected punch straight to my already shattered stomach.
The pain is a blinding white flash that steals the last of my breath. My knees buckle, and I slide down the wet brick wall into the filthy alley pavement, curled into a tight ball as the darkness rushes in to swallow me whole.
My father and uncle stand over me, their voices fading into a distant echo as the blood pools beneath my face.