Jun’s knuckles were bleeding. He’d been battering the same bag for the better part of an hour now, not taking his breaks, not re-applying his wraps. He was mauling the bag, thrashing it, and now the rough cloth of the bag was slick with his blood.

  It was an awful habit of his, and if his coach were here he’d be getting an earful about pacing and responsible training, but it was the only outlet he had for the incandescent rage strobing within him.

  He’d been humiliated this last match. That Wuxi rich kid bastard had got him on the floor, the one thing he knew he shouldn’t have let him do, and he’d been choked out in front of 40,000 people. Fully unconscious. In the video, he’d swallowed his own tongue and snored like a baby.

  He’d have his revenge. They already had a rematch in the books, just ahead of the qualifiers, this time with twice the coverage. He’d knock that smirking asshole’s lights out before he had the chance to slither into another one of those cowardly fucking rear chokes. Every time he hit the bag, he hit it with the force he thought he’d need to burst the nepo leech’s liver, crack his rib, jostle his brain against his skull.

  The sound of blows echoed around the empty gym. It was late--Jun had long lost track of the hour--and he practiced in near-darkness, with just one dangling ceiling light to illuminate the sparring floor. Shadows draped the rest of the building in inky dark, which is exactly what Jun preferred. Less to distract him from his work, less to detract from the purifying flame of anger welling in his chest.

  “Jun? Ha! Found ya.”

  Jun jerked his fist back, the sudden pause in momentum nearly bowling him over. He turned to see the silhouette of a slight, almost skeletal man watching him from across the gym.

  “Excuse me?” Jun wheezed. He pumped his lungs, tried to get his breathing under control. His temper flared again; the other reason he came to the gym after close was so that he wouldn’t have to pause his workout for every delusional fan who wandered past.

  “Yu Jun,” the intruder repeated. His voice was thin and raspy. The few swaths of his skin visible in the slanted light were obviously pallid. Shit, was this guy sick? Jun couldn’t afford to catch a bug, not right now. “Do you remember me?”

  “Fraid not. Does Li know you? His gym’s supposed to be closed to everyone but me after 9.”

  The young man waved, nonchalant. His arms were shockingly thin, and the strange, monocolor jumpsuit he wore looked baggy and ill-fitting. “I let myself in. You reeeeally don’t remember me?”

  “If you’re a fan, I meet a lot-“

  “Oh!” The kid slapped himself on the forehead. Maybe it was the acoustics of the empty gym, maybe it was Jun’s growing unease, but the noise of the slap startled him. It echoed like a gunshot. “Duh. I’m old now. Wait, ok, look at my face, but picture it young. Real young, five years old.”

  The kid stepped forward, bringing himself further into the light. His hair was greasy and long, his teeth discolored. He grinned, propping his face on his hands. When this failed to jog Jun’s memory, the kid frowned.

  “Hmm. Nothing?”

  “Do you need something from me?”

  “Oh! I know.” He reeled back, then with a sudden violence that took Jun, a man very well acquainted with sudden violence, deeply aback, the kid slammed his fist into his own face. There was another gunshot retort, this time accompanied by a clattering sound as a few hard objects were sent skittering across the floor.

  The kid wiped a handful of blood from his face and smiled, his grin now featuring several obvious gaps. “I was still losing baby teeth back then. Remember me now? Huh? Little Qiang, the runt?”

  Jun took an involuntary step back, his stomach churning. “Listen, man, I don’t know what you want from me, but if you could just calm down-”

  “You’ve gotta remember!” Qiang yelped. “Think waaaaay back, back in your Pidu days, before you took off.”

  Jun felt a flash of recognition, just tangible above his mounting disgust. “You’re the little Gao kid.”

  “Yes!” Qiang threw his hands up in a cheer. “Yes! You remember.”

  The bloodied young man hustled toward Jun, who stumbled another step back. He bumped against the punching bag, halting his retreat. Qiang scampered up to him now, leaned in close enough that Jun could smell his stale breath. Absently, he noticed a tiny glimmer of white, peeking through the gaps in the gums where his teeth had been knocked out.

  “You used to-” Qiang giggled, cutting himself off, before quickly regaining his composure. “You used to beat the shit out of me.”

  Jun felt a pang, not of guilt, or fear, but more of something like mild dismay. He did vaguely remember roughing up a kid named Qiang, back in his school days. This had been before he’d been scouted, before the gyms, before he’d found a safe outlet for his temper. He thought briefly about explaining his change of heart to the kid. The weird little Gao boy had grown into a visibly insane man, and probably couldn’t be reasoned with. Still, he figured, it was worth a shot.

  “Listen, I’m sorry about that, but-”

  “I always thought you were the fucking coolest, man.”

  Jun found himself caught off guard. “Oh. Okay. That’s-”

  “You were the strongest kid in town, I was sure, I knew it. I mean, you sure hit like you were. Like a truck!” The young man collapsed into another fit of giggles. “And look at you, proving me right, all along. A real fighter! A pro! With his own special gym time and promos with ladies and maybe even going all the way to the US to fight. Isn’t that right? Los Angeles?”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  “Well, it’s just an exhibition-”

  “I’m going to the US too!” Qiang jabbed a thumb at his own chest. “Also to fight! But not- I’m not a pro like you.”

  “Good for you,” Jun breathed. There was a volatile, violent energy radiating off of Qiang, despite his effusiveness. His eyes darted over Qiang’s hands, the waistline of his jumpsuit, looking for a weapon. He’d been in plenty of fights, but he’d never had to wrestle a gun from anyone. He felt a sudden, claustrophobic desire to be far away from this guy. “How did you find me?”

  “I sniffed you out. It’s a thing I can do now.”

  Okay, so no sane answers on that front. Jun decided to try something simpler. “What do you want?”

  “I want you to hit me,” Qiang said, matter-of-factly. “One time, as hard as you can.”

  “That’s it?”

  “And then, I get to hit you. Just one time. As hard. As I can.” Qiang’s smile returned. There were visible points, now, of teeth pushing in through his gums, filling the spaces his old teeth had occupied. That was patently impossible, but Jun didn’t want to think too hard about that right now.

  At least the thing this lunatic wanted from him was straightforward. Jun could hit this guy. He could hit him hard, once, and then break for it. He was confident he could outrun him, and that was only if he didn’t lay the guy out completely. He felt a little bad about the idea, but only a little; the kid was literally asking for it, after all.

  “That’s it?” Jun confirmed.

  “Yep!” Qiang nodded. “It’s no rush, though. I’d love to stay and chat, catch up on how you got here, all the way from Pidu. I bet it’s a great story. You, the farm kid, beating the snot out of everyone in your way, getting scouted, getting coaches. Having real money, moving to the city. I bet-”

  The young man stammered to a sudden stop, a glazed look settling over him. Jun paused, stuck between the impulse to prod the kid or book it for the exit, when Qiang suddenly shuddered. He whipped his body forward and hacked, loudly, as a torrent of gore slopped from his mouth and onto the floor, spattering Jun’s shoes. Jun made a strangled noise of surprise and hopped backward, past the punching bag, to get away from the blood.

  The volume of it was staggering. Maybe half a gallon of viscera had exploded from the kid’s mouth. Qiang looked up, expression more embarrassed than afraid, and held up a finger before letting loose another torrent of blood.

  He stood straight, then, thumped his own chest, as if he’d cleared a particularly stubborn loogie and not disgorged enough blood to fill a milk jug. “Sorry. So sorry about that. I- Oop-”

  One of Qiang’s eyes fell out, plopping to the floor. He laughed crazily and stooped to retrieve it, dusting it off on his shirt before inserting it back into his skull. The eye, impossibly, shuddered and jumped for a second, before returning to seemingly normal function, swiveling and blinking in concert with his other one.

  This was finally too much for Jun. He wasn’t much one to interrogate reality; this could be a nightmare, or some sort of hallucination brought on by overwork. It didn’t matter to him, really, he’d sort it out later. The athlete’s guts roiled with disgust and pure, intuitive horror, and he had no thoughts now other than escape.

  Jun juked around Qiang and tensed to sprint, to run past him, around the boxing ring, and to the single exit. He’d only made it two strides before a hand clamped on his shoulder and halted all of his momentum, a cast-iron hook digging inexorably into his deltoid.

  “Sorry! So sorry. That was so rude of me,” Qiang explained, somehow holding the much larger man effortlessly in place with a single arm. Jun, frenzied, slammed his fist down against Qiang’s arm, pried at it. He may as well have been hitting a piece of furniture.

  “I’m still getting the hang of growing all my shit back all the time,” Qiang said. “I got real hurt, a bit ago, and I’m still healing, so sometimes I puke. Sorry, I should have explained.”

  “Please let me go,” Jun hissed, ashamed, despite his fear, to hear himself tremble. He hadn’t heard that pathetic note in his own voice in decades.

  “Oh! I should’ve explained, too, how I got hurt, and why I’m like this,” Qiang gestured to the blood on his chest, the jumpsuit he wore. “I bet you’re real confused. My bad, man. I guess the gist of it is- Hmm. You know the government?”

  “Y-yeah,” Jun was surprised to hear himself answer.

  “Yeah, those guys. Uh, when I was a little kid, they kinda scooped me up, because I’d killed a guy. And since I didn’t have a good family, nobody missed me when they took me. So they could kinda do whatever they wanted to me, and what they wanted, apparently, was to kill me and bring me back over and over. Not sure why, but whenever they did that, I’d get a little bit stronger, and better at using my energy, and THEN, one time, when they killed me in a real nasty way, and I came back, I got SO good at energy that I learned how to make a lot more, and how to use it to heal myself, instead of waiting for their doctors and Mr. Zhao. That freaked ’em out, I think, so they put me to sleep, but this huge tasty explosion in the US woke me up a little bit ago, and they tried to kill me again, and that made me mad, so I, like, I busted myself out.”

  “Uh-huh,” Jun said, feet scrabbling against the floor in his attempts to pull away. Qiang didn’t seem to notice.

  “Turns out, they were keeping me real deep underground. AND under the ocean, which I didn’t even know you could do. And they had this whole system there, apparently, that if I started to break out, that let them just flood the whole place all at once.” Qiang giggled again. “Now, I’m used to getting hurt, man, but THAT. That hurt. Think about it, a whole ocean of water, pushed through tiny tunnels, hitting you all at once. BOOSH!”

  Qiang shook his arms for emphasis, and Jun was lifted bodily from the ground, jostled in the air. Jun made a choking noise as the collar of his shirt tightened around his neck.

  “It took everything I had to pull myself together from that one, and then to punch my way up through all the ground and swim through all the water. Long story short, my guy, my man, they squished me real bad, and my insides are still kinda getting un-squished.”

  Jun, now struggling to breathe, tried to throw a punch at Qiang’s head. Being held as awkwardly as he was, being actively jerked around, the blow landed just glancingly, bouncing off the side of the young man’s temple. Qiang puzzled up at him.

  “Is that your free hit? Really? I don’t think that should count. That wasn’t nearly as hard as you can go, I’m sure-” Qiang stopped. He cocked his head, listening, and turned to glance back toward the entrance. “Huh. They already found me.”

  “Wh-” Jun gurgled. “Who-”

  “The government,” Qiang rolled his eyes. “Keep up. I thought you said you knew them.”