Hagen lost all track of time. He never noticed the gym emptying and the street lamp outside turn on. He fell onto the punch bag, breathing heavily and holding on to it to keep himself from falling.
Congratulations! You’ve received a new skill level!
Skill name: Punch
Current level: 17
Congratulations! You’ve received +1 to Strength!
Current Strength: 7
Mike smiled wearily. He was nearly collapsing, without being able to do so much as raise his arm, but it turned out the interface could be controlled by mental commands as well. Mike opened the tab with his only combat skill:
Punch: Level 17
Damage: 11,900
+50% to the probability of ignoring any block.
You have to use the skill more often to level it up.
He’d just become stronger. But a strong punch wasn’t everything — after all, his opponent wouldn’t stay put, and landing a punch would become quite a challenge. Apart from that, his opponent would try hard to punch him, so it was just as important to be able to keep going until presented with a chance to land a critical blow. He’d have to think about upping his Stamina and Accuracy pretty soon.
Ochoa approached him. “Hey, lad, that’ll do for today. The mop and pail are in the utility room; you know where that is. Get on with the cleaning.”
Then the old man gave him an approving pat on the shoulder.
* * *
HAGEN TOOK a shower, changed, and headed toward the utility room where he steered the janitor’s trolley with mops and detergents out into the gym hall. By then, he was already fond of these quiet hours when there was no one in the gym — all that remained was the pungent smell of sweat and deodorant. The hall seemed to be growing still; only a few punch bags would keep swinging for whatever reason.
Old Ochoa was always on his way home. He trusted Hagen enough to have given him another key and the alarm codes.
It seemed like the perfect time for him to be on his own for a while. Mike took a cloth and got lost in his own thoughts, wiping the equipment automatically.
“Hey, bro!” somebody’s voice brought him back to his senses. “What did you say your name was?”
Hagen was approached by one of the guys he’d met in the locker room, but he couldn’t remember his name. He’d had too many people introduce themselves to him at the same time, so their names didn’t stay in his mind. He hadn’t met new people all that often in the past, that’s for sure, so he’d never gotten the chance to develop a good memory for new names.
The guy looked like a stereotypical Latino wearing wide shorts, a red bandanna on a shaved head, a checkered shirt, and the inevitable tear tattoo under one of his eyes. Thus, either a minor member of a cholo gang or someone fronting. Hagen would always keep away from such types, even though there were lots of them in the neighborhood where he’d grown up. Mom had told him they were nothing but trouble. Baby Mikey wasn’t even supposed to approach them, let alone engage in any communication. But they would invariably approach him, instantly seeing just which school kid could be relieved of a dollar or two — it must have been written all over his face. By the time he entered high school, he realized there were indeed a few truly cruel and psychotic characters among them — they wouldn’t just beat you up; a lot of them carried knives. Some of them would carry guns tucked underneath their belts, covered by checkered shirts just like the one this guy was wearing...
Hagen instinctively got tense, his head shrinking into his shoulders.
“Bro, that was a great fight!” the guy spoke animatedly and even imitated the punch he threw the day before. “I didn’t see it myself, but some brothers of mine sent me a video. So, what was your name?”
“Mike. Mike Hagen.”
“I’m Gonzalo Herrera,” the guy offered him his hand. “You’re really something, bro! Who could have thought Juan could be knocked out by a single punch? Ha-ha!”
“Uh... Thanks...”
“Hey, bro. How about making a quick buck?”
“Nope.”
The reply must have been so unexpected that the cholo froze for a moment like a Windows OS during an update. But Hagen could still hear his Mom’s words in his mind — she used to watch FOX series and must have known everything about street gangs. She’d always say, “Mikey, don’t you ever accept any offers from thugs. They’ll tell you about an opportunity to make a quick buck. If you agree and start selling meth, the DEA will come to get you sooner or later.”
The reason why she’d suggested that a cholo stranger might ever offer him to sell meth wasn’t quite clear, but Hagen would still hate to disappoint his Mom. Even though she was no longer among the living.
“Uh-h-h, bro?”
Hagen dipped his mop into the pail, squeezed out the extra water, and drew it over the floor. “I won’t deal drugs.”
The cholo froze for another moment, pondering over his response, then laughed out loud, slapping himself on the knees and unable to stop for quite a while.
In the meantime, Hagen nonchalantly mopped the floor. He’d managed to make the Latino laugh, after all. That was already a good sign.
Once Gonzalo was through with laughing, he said, “What drugs, bro? I’m clean. I’m talking about fighting, hermano. Real fighting in a real ring. Are you interested? Eh? And anyway, man, what’s up with all that stereotyping? Don’t judge people by their appearance. It took one look at me for you to form an opinion, didn’t it? A Mexican is automatically suspect? That’s where you’re wrong, brother! I am a boxer! I don’t take any drugs! I don’t deal, either.”
Hagen stood silent for a moment.
The other guy took it as a sign of doubt. “Hey, listen up!” he waited for Hagen to put his mop aside. “There’s a closed club for MMA competitions in the Buckhead Island area. Anyone can participate but professionals — and they wouldn’t want to be slumming with the likes of us, anyway. So everyone who fights there is an ordinary Joe just like you and me. Most of the folks are poor and come from the streets, but no fat cat would want to participate — they don’t pay all that well down there. Juan used to fight, too. Until you knocked his lights out. Ha-ha!”
Without answering, Mike started to draw the already dry mop across the floor. He just hung his head and refused to meet the other guy’s eye, wishing fervently for Gonzalo to leave. Mom’s fear of TV series gangsters had left a deep mark on him.
“Don’t you worry, bro. The fights are real, but they’re mostly an entertainment for the club’s patrons. So you’ll get paid even if you lose. If the public likes you, the club owners will offer you a contract. Then you can fight on a regular basis. A brother of mine is one of their top stars right now! He even gets his share from the bets. He’s just bought some damn hot wheels. Do you believe me?”
Mike nodded. It wasn’t like he was in any doubt. To hell with this guy and with semi-legal fights in general. Fighting in a ring for hundreds of people to see? Always risking to take a blow, which would be painful and humiliating? No, thanks. He’d love to, but later. He just wasn’t ready yet.
Hagen would always imagine himself winning a real match, but those were fantasies. Even Ochoa had told him that his victory over Juan had been a lucky accident. No way! He’d have to listen to Ochoa and train first.
“So, what do you say, bro?”
“I’m sorry, but I’m not ready to fight,” Hagen admitted.
“Are you joking? Juan was a born fighter, and you just knocked him out like that.”
“It was just a freak victory...”
“A freak victory my ass! Look here, Mike: remember the address. Buckhead Island, Twelfth Street. The Dark Devil club sign is real huge, there’s no chance you’ll miss it. Once you’re in, tell me I sent you. Gonzalo. Got it?”
Mike nodded. The Mexican proffered his hand. Mike offered him his, and Gonzalo gave him a special handshake like one of the gangsters in the series his Mom used to like so much. Then he pressed his fist to his cheek, saying,
“I sure hope to meet you in a fight someday, bro.”
Hagen crossed himself mentally. God forbid!
He watched Gonzalo leave and gave a sigh of relief when the door closed. This Gonzalo Herrera wasn’t that scary, after all. No gun, no knife... Nor did he offer him any drugs. Could his Mom have overestimated the danger?
Chapter 5. A Clean Victory
This is America, where a lying, cheating degenerate like myself can prosper.
Red Dead Redemption
HAGEN WAS so eager to see Lexie he came to DigiMart earlier than usual. His colleague Wei Ming was the only other person present at the store. He was rearranging boxes with toasters on the shelves, attempting to make the display look more attractive.
The system interface scrolled the following information above the seller:
Wei Ming “The Cat” Xuan
Age: 29
Level: 22
HP: 25000
Battles/victories: 346/234
Weight: 170 lbs
Height: 5’ 4”
Hell’s bells! Even Wei Ming was a fighter, let alone his amazing victory record. And Level 22, too!
Mike kept perusing his colleague’s profile with amazement.
“Hi there, Mike,” Wei Ming said without as much as bothering to turn around.
Wei Ming’s hearing was quite extraordinary. He would sometimes freeze right in the middle of the shop, cupping his ear, and then grab a baseball bat and head toward the basement. His movements were silent and swift. Then he would return, wiping his bat with tissues.
“Got two of them today at once.”
He meant rats.
Wei Ming would kill a few rodents infesting the warehouse with electronic devices on a daily basis. It’s not that there was anything for them to feed on there. Yet they would nibble at the boxes and make the goods look unsellable as a result, destroying the packaging. Neither traps, nor rat poison would affect them. Thus, things got rather personal between the rats and Wei Ming. Mr. Howell, the owner of the shop, even made Wei Ming employee of the month in appreciation of his efforts.
Hagen wondered if destroying vermin counted as points in Wei Ming’s battles and victories. If it had—why, it might be a cheat code.
He heard the sound of a crunch. It was Wei Ming snacking on a cucumber—a habit of his Mike had always found odd.
“Do you eat them all the time?”
“You cannot underestimate how good all that fiber is for you,” Wei Ming said, pointing upwards with the remnants of the vegetable. “It keeps you regular.”
That sounded bizarre to Mike. He grunted in response and went into his cubicle to put on his DigiMart shirt and get to work. His task that day was to fix a broken screen on a laptop. Hagen knew where he could find all the information he’d needed—a web forum where hardware repairmen would hang out.
He’d found the model in question and started reading the posts. Then he clicked on a YouTube link to see a video where another repairman explained how to dismantle and fix the same kind of laptop with the same kind of problem. He didn’t even have to engage his brain—it would be easy enough to follow the instructions in the video.
The time kept passing by swiftly, but at some point Hagen noticed Wei Ming go tense and stiff. Having located the source of the sound, Wei Ming turned around, heading for the basement door—like a real cat trying to locate its prey. On his way, he grabbed the bat waiting for its owner ever-faithfully in the corner.
Having found out the kind of screen Hagen needed to replace the broken one with, he sat there waiting for Wei Ming to return. But time was at a premium. Mike had spent the previous day working on that damned Xbox. The customer with the laptop was supposed to arrive before noon.
He looked at the glass door at the entrance. No other colleagues were present yet. The security guide whose name Hagen didn’t remember had gone to the nearby snack joint, as was his habit. The guy must have felt empowered by the very feeling that all the junkies would run away at the very presence of a cop. The old man needed some sort of confirmation of his own worth, after all.
Hagen came out from his cubicle and headed toward the basement. Once he descended the stairs, he saw Wei Ming in the middle of the room, holding a bat. There were two dead rats nearby. The tail of one of them was twitching.
Wei Ming took another swing. There was a thud and squeak. Hagen felt a gag reflex once his colleague crossed a couple of feet in a single leap and hit the floor with the bat again. Another rat squashed.
“Hey, that’s a record,” Wei Ming said, looking somewhat amazed. “Three in a single morning. The vermin have really been at it.”
“Well, as long as Mr. Howell has you, you’re saving him a lot—he’d have to pay the exterminator service otherwise.”
Hagen approached the shelf with the screens and started to look for the right model.
“Hold on. Who’s watching the main space? Wei Ming asked.
“Well, our cop is somewhere hereabouts...”
“Mr. Riggs goes to the snack shop every morning!”
Hagen looked at Wei Ming gormlessly. The latter froze, cupping his ear. Then he gave a start.
“Someone’s rummaging through the store stuff! Come and have look!”
Both of them dashed upstairs and entered the main space.
It was just as they’d feared. The junkies scared away by the ex-cop must have been hanging around the shop. There were three guys that must have noticed the shop empty inside. One was trying to break the till open, while the other two were stuffing their backpacks with cellphones torn straight off the display stand chargers.
“Ya-a-a-a-a-rgh!” Wei Ming shouted as he grabbed his bat as though it were a sword and rushed toward the nearest junkie.
The blow came just in time. The would-be robber fell to the floor, cellphones scattering all over.
Mike rushed toward the one at the till.
Law and Order!
You feel irate once you encounter law-breakers.
+3 to all basic stats
+50% to Vigor
The effect of the buff lasts until justice is restored
Mike bent over the counter and gave the thief a thoroughly satisfying uppercut. It was a slight cuff at best—his position had been rather awkward—but it sufficed to knock the junkie out completely.
Damage dealt: 5950 points (Punch)
Congratulations! You’ve defeated your opponent in a fair fight!
XP points received: 1
XP points received on the current level (3): 2/3
Hagen was happy to learn there were other people out there even weaker than him. Addicts or not—well, he cared little. He felt an adrenaline rush, the buff getting him going as he turned around to get the last one. He took a step toward the junkie when the latter pulled a piece out of his hoodie pocket, aiming it at Mike.
“Freeze, motherfucker! You don’t freeze, I’ma gonna ice you, geddit? Ima fucking kill ya, motherfucker, geddit? Ima plug ya full of slugs!”
Hagen had never faced the barrel of a gun before. It took him a few instances to realize that this nondescript object in the sore-covered hand of the robber could take his life in a fraction of a second. Just like that. A fraction. A shot is fired. The body drops to the ground. There’s nothing to follow but a goodbye message from the interface, then death. With no option to respawn.
“I’ma gonna pull the trigger on ya, motherfucker!” the junkie kept screaming haltingly. “Open the fucking till, motherfucker. The till. Ima ice you, bitch!”
Hagen felt a chill run down his spine. His knees felt like jelly; all the heroism and the outrage disappeared instantly. His only wish was to fall to his knees, crying and begging not to kill him.
He opened the till, but there was hardly any money in it—just a few dollars in small bills and a few dimes—typical for a morning.
The junkie pointed his piece at Wei Ming, who kept holding his bat as a two-handed sword.
“Drop your bat, you gook, or I�
��ll put a slug in you!”
Wei Ming threw his bat away. The robber pointed the gun at Hagen again, his chin covered in spit as he kept yelling, “Hand over the money! What the fuck are you waiting for? You’ll be dead meat, I swear!”
Hagen produced the bills and the coins, handing them over to the robber. “There you go, sir,” he kept saying by sheer force of habit.
“Are you trying to fuck with me, bitch? Gonna put a slug in you, a slug, you hear me?”
Hagen felt a chill right in his marrow. He barely managed to see Wei Ming move. The Chinese leaped high into the air and kicked the junkie right into the temple. It happened in less than a blink of an eye. The robber’s head twitched as the hood fell from his head, revealing a face covered in the same kind of sores as his hands and arms. Just a whooshing sound, and the druggie was down.
Wei Ming landed softly, muttering something in Chinese and spitting on the corpse of his unconscious enemy.
“Wh-what?” Hagen asked with a blank face.
“A flawless victory!” Wei Ming translated. “Fatality!”
Hagen couldn’t stop the tremor in his arms and feet. He was still feeling like someone was trying to aim a gun at him. All he could do was stand frozen behind the till, unable to move a finger.
Wei Ming grabbed one of the junkies by the arms with a no-nonsense attitude. “I need help here.”
“What would you like to do?”
“We should drag these creeps away before Riggs comes back.”
Mike finally managed to recollect the name of the security guard. It was Mr. Riggs, indeed. He grabbed the junkie by his legs, finally moving away from the till. “Shouldn’t we tell him? We should call the cops...”
Level Up- The Knockout Page 5
