Chapter 11 — "Knockout"

📕👉 Read Chapter 10 Here

Firefly stuck the ink syringe into his leg. He wasn’t allowed a coach anymore—probably Hayden’s doing—but it didn’t matter. He knew what he needed to do. With refreshed karma, Firefly didn’t feel any pain. Not only that, but he felt amazing. As more time passed, the better his leg felt—almost as if it had never been injured in the first place. A growing confidence boiled inside him, ready to spill over.

Gorilla crouched on the other side of the cage as Mr. Green spoke to her in a harsh whisper. Never before had Mr. Green shown such blatant favoritism or even come near the cage. Firefly secretly delighted in watching their scramble. No matter what scheme they came up with, he couldn’t be beaten. Even with a massive injury, he was still outpacing the best of the best.  

Clouded by the numbness of his new sigil, he looked out toward his father, who was shouting something at him that he couldn’t hear.

DING!

The second round was starting. Firefly expected it to be more of the same and prepared to wait for an opportunity to strike. He could out-dodge her, and her fury would give him room to attack. He waited, watching as Gorilla, instead of leaping at him as usual, began pacing along the cage.  

“She’s acting strange,” he thought, preparing himself for anything. “What has Mr. Green told her?”

She was pumping energy into her sigils but wasn’t charging at him. Then, she turned to the cage wall, gripping the chain link with her large hands. Letting out a terrifying scream, she began to shake the walls of the cage. She pulled back, slamming her fists into the ground and pounding her chest, almost like an enraged animal. She ran around her side of the cage, seemingly without rhyme or reason. Firefly was taken aback.

Finally, she turned her attention to him. Her pupils were small dots in the large whites of her eyes.

“She’s lost it!” Firefly thought, pressing his back harshly against the cage wall.

His opponent bared her sharp, dangerous teeth, her darting, dot-like eyes scanning erratically. She coiled back, more like a snake than ever, her arms and legs twitching in anticipation.

She charged at him wildly, almost running past him as he dodged with a wide sidestep. She slammed into the cage wall on his side, then began scratching at the metal as though she wanted to escape. Without warning, she turned and ran to the other side, as if ignoring the fight altogether.

The sight was terrifying. Firefly continued to give her a wide berth, but her movements were so unpredictable that, at one point, he ended up on the same side of the cage as her.

He could hear her ragged breaths from this distance, her hair spiked on end. Finally, she seemed to notice him and swung her large, hairy gorilla arms at him. He kept sidestepping, ducking under her uncoordinated attacks. Forced to move away from the wall, he edged toward the center of the ring. Gorilla followed lazily, pulling her arm back for a wide hook.

The punch was over-exaggerated, and Firefly’s eyes widened.

“This is my chance!” he thought, planting his weight on his right leg to send a devastating blast with his left.

She drew closer, but at the last moment, she switched directions with a feigned attack. Her pupils were now focused, and a fanged smile spread across her face.

“It was all a trick!” he realized too late as her legs swung around, catching his bad leg off guard and sending him to the ground with a hard thud. The impact knocked the air from his lungs. His concentration broke, and his leg seized up, gripping him in paralyzing pain.

He hadn’t been watching her feet, and it had cost him. Before he could even blink, she was racing to the cage wall, climbing it.

“NO!” he thought, panic surging—she was taking the opportunity to finish him off.

Stuck in the center of the ring, he couldn’t focus the energy into his sigil to move.

Just as she came crashing down, he pushed with his bad leg, managing to get most of his body out of her path. Almost everything cleared her descent—except his left leg, which was crushed beneath her devastating blow.

A sharp, agonized cry escaped him as his left leg—the one that had been unharmed—snapped under the force of her terrible fists.

DING!

The second round was over. Junior couldn’t move and just stared up at the karmastry lights that seemed to float down around him like ghosts. Finally, he weakly sat up and looked at his left leg. It was broken—not as badly as the other one—but there was no way he could put any weight on it. Both his legs were mangled. The pain came, but he couldn’t even cry out. Slowly, using his right leg for support, he dragged himself to the cage wall.

“I… I can’t do it. I failed,” he thought miserably, tears spilling down his face as he looked at his leg. He made it to the edge of the arena and looked out to the crowd, which had not stopped screaming since the start of the battle. In a pain-filled daze, he saw his mother and father in the front row. They were shouting something at him.

He couldn’t hear them. He was on the verge of losing consciousness from the pain. He tried to focus on them, just enough to make out what they were saying.

His mother was shouting, “LET’S GO, JUNIOR! FIGHT! DON’T GIVE UP!”

“YOU CAN DO IT!” his father was screaming, pounding his fist into his chin—his signature move.

With his other hand, his father was holding his mother’s hand. They were holding hands, screaming for him, cheering him on, raising their fists together. He couldn’t remember the last time he had seen them like this.

He took the last two syringes he had been granted and weakly gripped them with his fingers. “I can’t go down without a fight.”

“Only one chance left,” he thought, before stabbing the syringes into his broken legs, crying out in agony.

While one leg no longer hurt, his left leg—newly broken—flared with burning pain as he tried to push karma into it. The flame on his leg flared weakly. He couldn’t even bring himself to stand; he slumped back against the cage wall.

“I’ll have to do it from the ground,” he thought.

He knew that no matter what, the refs wouldn’t stop the fight until he was dead or until Gorilla was knocked out. He would go down in a blaze if he had to. He watched Gorilla, her figure shaking and doubling under the pain of her own injuries. This was it—now or never. The crowd was shaking the foundation of the arena with their stomping and screaming.

He could feel the last bell ding, though he couldn’t hear it over the roar of the arena. He couldn’t even stand as Gorilla charged, her sigils glowing, mutating her arms into that of a powerful animal.  “COME ON!” Firefly screamed at her, slamming his hands into the ground of the cage, baiting her to chase him.

He fell forward, clawing his gloved hands on the cage floor, slowly inching his way into the middle of the cage. He dragged himself until he was in the center of the ring.

Gorilla took a few steps forward, wary of a new trick from Firefly. He had nothing up his sleeve, only his determination to live another day. He was screaming at his opponent, tears flying off his face, his pain focused on his sigils. Gorilla came slowly, as if her joints were made of ice.  

“FIGHT ME!” Firefly cried.

Gorilla came faster now, her arms whirling forward as she charged. The pain was almost too much—his vision was tunneling into a pinpoint where he could only see his gorilla. He had to do something—he had to fight. He was holding tightly onto the last bit of karma he had. There had to be something he could do.

She was mere feet away, launching herself into the air, her large fists poised, ready to come down on him. He had no plan—nothing. His mind was blank. He didn’t have the strength to dodge her attack.

“What do I do?”

But as she inched closer, he realized there was nothing to do. His legs twitched, full of karmic energy, ready to do what needed to be done—but he had no plan. The energy he was holding inside, he would just have to let it go. He would have to face the consequences and accept his fate.

“Let go,” he thought weakly, as she was landing on him.

He closed his eyes, releasing the energy he had in his sigils in one swift movement. It all barreled out of him at once.

“AGH!” The blast of energy shot out of him at top speed, culminating in a wall of fire as tall as the cage itself.

The wall of fire was bright blue and white-hot. It ballooned out of him in an arc, like a blast from a bomb. Gorilla only had a moment to look surprised before she was rocketed backward, slamming into the opposite wall of the cage with force, dropping to the ground, limp. Junior, too, was pushed back by the force of the explosive blast and collided with the cage wall high above the ground. He fell numbly, hitting the ground with a thud. His body slumped. His cheek was pressed against the warm ground. He

was alive, but just barely—new injuries shot through his body, but he couldn’t feel any of them.

Parts of the cage were on fire, and smoke filled the arena. Firefly’s vision was going black, and all he could see were his parents pushing past everyone as they raced to the cage.

“I’m sorry,” he thought, allowing himself to slip into darkness.


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For a moment, he thought he had died. The world was silent and still. He felt no more pain, no more weight, as if his body had simply ceased to exist. His limbs were heavy and unresponsive, but there was a strange, almost peaceful sense of detachment. Slowly, he managed to open one eye, but what he saw only deepened his confusion.

Darkness. An all-encompassing blackness, as if the world had been swallowed whole.

Like a ghost, he reached up with what little strength he could muster, pulling the hospital blanket away from his face. The sudden flood of dim light hit him like a blow—sharp and unwelcome. He blinked hard, struggling to make sense of the shapes around him. His vision swam, but slowly it began to focus. He could only see out of one eye, and it was blurry, but enough to discern the faint outlines of two figures standing near the door, speaking in hushed, urgent whispers.

“There is no other way,” a man’s voice said, low and steady.

“Will he survive on his own?” a woman replied, her tone tense with worry.

There was a long pause before the man answered. “He will have to.”

“We don’t have much time. We need to act now,” the woman insisted, urgent.

The sound of the conversation was distant, muffled by the thick fog of exhaustion and confusion swirling in Junior’s mind. With a small groan, he tried to speak, but the sound that escaped his throat was more of a croak than a word. The figures turned quickly, rushing toward him.

His heart stuttered when he recognized them. His mother. His father.

His father leaned down close, his breath warm against Junior’s ear. It was hard to focus on his words—the beeping of the hospital machines too loud, too insistent. The steady thrum of his heartbeat—if it could even be called steady—was faint, fragile, like a candle flame about to flicker out.

“Stay still, son,” his father murmured. “Don’t move. We’re going to get you out of here.”

Junior could barely comprehend what was happening, but the fear in his father’s voice broke through the fog. He felt a cold pressure on his hand, and then something hard and metallic was being pressed into his fingers—ink syringes. His fingers, weak as they were, curled around the cold metal instinctively.

“Your mother’s going to make a scene,” his father continued, his words rapid now. “We need to make them believe you’re dead. Once you’re out of here, Marty will take you to safety. Don’t come back here. EVER. Do you understand?”

Junior’s weak nod was the best he could manage. His mother came to his other side, leaning down, her lips brushing against his cheek in a soft, tearful kiss. The feeling of her lips stayed on his overly sensitive skin.

“Go and live, my lightning bug,” she whispered. “Rekindle your fire, far from here.”

Her voice cracked, but she didn’t pull away immediately. She lingered, gazing down at him with eyes full of love and sorrow, her tears soaking his pillow. Then, with one last tender squeeze of his hand, she stepped back.

There was a sudden burst of noise from outside the room, followed by frantic movement. Junior’s father was pulling something black over him, wrapping him in the suffocating material of a body bag. It felt like being trapped inside a coffin, the fabric constricting around him as his father worked quickly, zipping it up to his head, leaving only a small gap near his eye.

“Deep breaths, son,” his father said. “Never stop fighting.”

Together, his parents went to the door of the room. They looked at each other, their hands never unclasping. From the small hole in the bag, Junior could see his parents standing together, holding hands. For a brief, stolen moment, they exchanged a glance—a silent connection before the chaos of what had to come next.

“You know I never stopped—” his mother began, her voice choking with emotion.

“I know. Me too,” his father replied, his voice a little softer than usual.

They pressed their foreheads together in a fleeting moment of shared sorrow. Then, the moment passed.

With a sudden, decisive motion, Junior’s father ripped the cords off the machines. The steady beep of the heart monitor flatlined with a shrill screech, echoing through the sterile room.

“MY SON! MY SON IS DEAD! THEY’VE KILLED HIM!” his mother suddenly cried out as if her soul was being torn in two.

Junior’s body, wrapped in the suffocating black bag, was pushed into the hallway. Through the haze of his half-conscious state, he could hear the chaos of people reacting to the scene—footsteps, raised voices, confusion. Amid the tumult, Junior caught the sound of a voice he recognized—Mr. Green.

“STOP!” Mr. Green called sharply, forcing his way past Junior’s grieving mother and the crowd of onlookers.

Through the small gap in the bag, Junior could barely make out Mr. Green’s form as he moved closer, his presence like a shadow in the hallway. His mother’s frantic hands gripped Mr. Green’s arm as he approached the bag. Junior’s heart thudded painfully in his chest, and he held his breath, praying that Mr. Green wouldn’t discover the truth.

Mr. Green’s face appeared in the narrow slit, and Junior could see the faintest of smiles tugging at the corners of his lips. He hesitated, his fingers hovering over the zipper, but then straightened his tie, stepping back and wrapping his arms around Junior’s mother.

“I tried to warn him, you know,” Mr. Green said, coldly.

With a swift motion, Junior’s father took off down the hall, and Junior exhaled a shaky, silent sigh of relief. His mother continued her loud wailing, crying out about her dead son, each sob like a dagger to Junior’s heart. His father didn’t say a word, pushing the bed away with stoic resolve.

As the bed moved, the muffled sounds of the commotion faded, and the world outside grew quieter. The only thing left was the constant, slow roll of the wheels beneath him. Time seemed to stretch and warp as the bed moved further and further from everything he knew.

Eventually, the bed stopped. For a moment, there was silence. The noises were now distant, and the air inside the bag felt heavy, stale, and close. It was almost impossible to breathe.

A new voice broke the stillness. “So he’s dead, huh?” Marty’s voice was rough, tinged with a toothless grin that Junior could just barely make out through the small gap.

“Yes… can you please… take care of this,” his father muttered.

Marty chuckled, his voice gruff but not unkind. “Anything for you, Conrad. I’m sorry about your loss.”

Junior’s father didn’t respond immediately, but then, with quiet strength, he called out, “Good luck, Champion.”

The bed began to roll again. Junior could see through the peephole—his father standing in the hotel, smiling, his arm raised as if he had just won a fight.