Level Up- The Knockout

by Dan Sugralinov

  You’ve received a new level!

  Current level: 4

  Characteristic points available: 1

  Skill points available: 1

  XP points received on the current level (4): 1/4

  That was some reward! He really wished he could have used all the points to boost his Stamina, but restructuring the body would take time and he’d have to sleep a lot. What remained of his body’s reserves might not suffice, given his sorry condition. He’d have to heal and whip himself back into shape first. Then he’d see...

  He also checked his HP: 2255. Not much—but more than he’d had on leaving the ring. So his health was restoring itself gradually. At the very least, the interface no longer urged him to visit a hospital or write his last will and testament.

  He wondered what would happen if his HP fell all the way to zero. Would he die? Or was that merely a threshold figure for a state where the user wouldn’t die immediately, but would no longer have any need to see their remaining HP?

  The locker room door would open every now and then; someone would come in—fighters, perhaps, but not necessarily. Their arrival would be heralded by the mixed smells of sweat, cologne, and alcohol. The door would also let in the sounds of the roaring crowd, the announcer’s remarks, and all kinds of other sounds. New fighters were going at it in the ring—the entertainment machine never stopped.

  Most of the people who’d come in wouldn’t pay him any attention. They must have been used to seeing all kinds of things in the ring. The only person to address Hagen was a guy in a track suit. He grinned at Hagen,

  “There’s some old geezer in the bar who’d gone totally bonkers about you. He keeps on yelling about you being a godsend, and how he’d won five grand. He claims that was the very amount he’d needed to heal some sort of a problem with his guts. Judging by how much he’s put on his bar tab already, buying drinks for whores left, right and center he won’t have a cent left by the end of the evening. And he pours so much bourbon down his gullet it doesn’t seem like he takes good care of his guts, anyway.”

  Mike was at a loss for a reply and decided to stay silent. Each time the door would open, he’d look toward it with longing. He kept hoping the next person to step in through the door would be Lexie. Where could she possibly be? Was it that she couldn’t handle the sight of violence?

  That didn’t seem likely. She’d demonstrated a definite interest in the fights.

  The hack finished his job, then reminded Hagen to pay a visit to the hospital and exited stage left. Hagen kept on sitting there, waiting for Lexie. Eventually he rose, approached the locker where he’d left his clothes, and started to change slowly. As he was pulling his pants on, he noticed that someone had rifled through his pockets while he’d been fighting in the ring. His wallet was intact, but all the cash had been taken.

  Some elite club that was. Tight security and big city VIPs...

  Or was it Hagen’s bad luck to be faced with a petty nuisance like that after his glorious victory in the ring?

  * * *

  THE DOOR OPENED again, and Hagen peeked out from behind the locker door, looking hopeful, but it wasn’t Lexie—it was the bald-headed fellow whom Gonzalo had pointed out to him as a UFC producer.

  “So there you are, kid! Just the man I wanted to see!”

  “Why, sir? If you’d like me to fight, I won’t be able to do it right now. I’m nowhere near ready.” Hagen started to feel embarrassed—he’d been saying pretty much the same before his fight with Gonzalo. “Anyway, it looks like I might have a fracture in my thigh bone...”

  “What fracture, kid? You sure have a big head thinking I’ll just offer you a contract like that. To begin with, Luke Lucas is the name,” he offered Hagen his bear paw in a firm handshake. “Another thing, you fight like a jackass. Sorry to burst your bubble, kid, but that’s the truth. And your opponent’s a jackass, just like you. And this club is for assholes, anyway. And it’s run by assholes, too.”

  “Then why do I interest you in the first place?”

  Luke Lucas didn’t offer an immediate answer. He took his time scrutinizing Hagen—just like the medic that had been turning his head this way and that. Mike started to squirm, lowered his head, and proceeded with the zip on his pants. Luke Lucas munched on his lips, spat, produced a shiny cigarette case from his jacket pocket and took out a cigarette. He lit it up unhurriedly, the lighter making the same noise as a car door when it shuts, and said, in a businesslike manner,

  “I’m a producer and I work for the UFC. Do you have any idea of what a producer is?

  Hagen sniffed. “There are no producers in the UFC.”

  “Hah! Another know-it-all. What am I, a phantom? Don’t you mind my age. I can twist your arms around your legs and stick you into that locker without breaking a sweat. Although it wouldn’t be a first for you, would it? Isn’t that how they’d always treated you in school?”

  Hagen gathered all his courage to raise his head and take a look at Luke. He instantly saw a system message above the older guy.

  Luke “Coyote” Lucas. Age: 54

  Level: 122

  HP: 69,000

  Battles/victories: 1859/1202

  Weight: 225 lbs

  Height: 6’ 3”

  Come again? Mike could barely believe his eyes. Level 122? Was such a thing even possible?

  How does one get to be that strong? Hagen felt hopelessness descending on him like a dark cloud. The Coyote’s level seemed unreachable.

  Luke Lucas blew smoke into his face—apparently, as a test of Mike’s mettle. He tried not to cough, crouching to tie his shoelaces, while Luke paced back and forth, saying,

  “A producer has to be able to see the future. And seeing it isn’t enough—you’ve got to figure out a way to make money off it.”

  Hagen deliberately took his time adjusting the tongues on his sneakers, hoping the strange visitor would lose interest and go away.

  “Any good producer has to be an analyst—and also know divination, and feel the way the wind blows,” Luke continued. “It’s someone who can see potential even in clubs for assholes such as this one.”

  Mike stood up straight, looked at Luke towering over him, and turned away. He took out his jacket and started to see to the wrinkles in the fabric.

  “Listen up, kid. Ever heard of Demetrious Johnson?”

  “You bet! The flyweight champion! He took down so many fighters...”

  “Hey, don’t you tell me about his victories. I know all about them,” Lucas flipped the ash off his cigarette right over Hagen’s shoes. “You’re a jackass, kid, but you have uncanny potential. And you need to train more. You’ve spent years in some sordid little gym...”

  “I’ve only started training recently.”

  Luke gave him a hairy eyeball. “Don’t try to bullshit me, kid. I can see you have a trick or two up your sleeve, but you’ve never been trained properly.”

  “But it’s true. I’ve only started training re...”

  “You ain’t too bright, either, if you think I’ll buy the story about you being a newbie. It takes a while to develop a punch like that. And that punch is the only thing you’ve got. You move like an old lady in a traffic jam, and your stance reminds me of a monkey that’s about to hurl a turd at another monkey. And what’s with the tears, anyway? I’ve seen a boxer cry, but that was a result of taking too many punches to the head and a victory at a championship. Indeed... There are fighters who become real maudlin after a victory. But a fighter crying during a fight is something I’ve never seen before.”

  Hagen checked himself. Lucas was the last person he’d have wanted to tell about the Augmented Reality Platform, the interface that could develop one’s fighting skills better than any trainer, giving him an advantage—something that had appeared in front of his eyes out of the blue; something he still couldn’t quite believe in.

  Luke Lucas took a stronger drag from his cigarette. “My point is that time will pass, and you’ll still be an asshole figh
ting in dives like this one to please old perverts. There’s a deficiency of good flyweight fighters in the UFC. That’s why Demetrious has remained a champion for so long. There are very few fighters of your height and constitution. Everyone’s seven foot tall these days, and weighs way over two hundred pounds. As a proud American, I can only say we’re turning into dinosaurs. We’ll get extinct like that... I blame the Dems, the libtards, and the feminazis. Whatever happened to the First Amendment? Anyway, I digress.”

  Luke put his cigarette out, grinding it into the bench, dropped the dog-end onto the floor, and fished out a business card from the inner pocket of his jacket. “My producer center holds amateur contests among fighters to pick out the best. We do it twice a year. You have a chance to be noticed. You’d have to leave this shithole first, of course. But the most important thing is to find a proper teacher instead of the asshole from your backwater gym where you waste your time pounding fucking punch bags.”

  Hagen felt slighted on Ochoa’s behalf, but he took the card, anyway.

  “Call me whenever you get there, and I’ll put you in touch with a good instructor. Don’t take too long. Time goes by, and none of us get any younger... Duh!”

  Luke made a dismissive gesture with his hand as he was leaving the room.

  * * *

  HAGEN CHECKED whether he may have had forgotten anything and shut the locker door, intending to find Lexie and check on Gonzalo to apologize. He didn’t quite know why he’d have to apologize in the first place—it was a fair fight, after all—but his mom had taught him to always be polite.

  He bumped into a waiter on his way out.

  “Sorry, sir, I’m supposed to deliver this to you,” a thin wad of rolled-up dollar bills was pushed into Hagen’s palm. “Also, they’d like you to leave your phone number at the bar. You’ll be invited to participate in more fights.”

  “I see. Thanks.”

  Hagen stuffed the cash into the back pocket of his jeans and started toward the main hall. Luke’s words about a producer being a diviner kept reverberating through his mind. As well as his hints about Hagen’s potential future.

  Could he indeed leave?

  Mike whispered softly, as he was eying the crowd, “What do you know... It could be a chance for a new life without any of that ‘dickhead’ and ‘loser’ reputation. So why not?”

  He’d changed his clothes, so no one recognized him as the crybaby boxer. And no one was looking at him, in the first place. The audience’s attention was focused on the ring—a new pair of fighters was having it out. Those two were towers of muscle—so huge that the ring almost seemed too small for them.

  Mike recollected Luke’s words about dinosaurs. He’d never have thought that his constitution might be an advantage.

  Both fighters were into grappling, which meant they used a combination of all kinds of wrestling with maximum tolerance for submission holds. The two had approached each other quickly, seeming to hug like long-lost lovers for a while, and then the ring shook as one of the enormous bulks threw the other onto the floor and held his opponent in a stranglehold.

  Hagen may have been preoccupied, but that particular sight drew his interest. How would he cope with Gonzalo pulling one of those moves on him? You could hardly hit back from such a position, and a knockout would be completely out of the question. Hell’s bells! He was a lucky one indeed!

  But there was no guarantee he wouldn’t lose the next fight.

  Hagen surprised himself with how casually he was contemplating his next fight. He thought he still hadn’t decided whether or not to keep fighting at the Dark Devil club. And, all of a sudden, he found himself thinking about it as a fait accompli.

  He made his way through the crowd around the ring and past the bar where the old gentleman who’d placed a bet on Hagen had been sleeping, head on the bar, drooling over his shirt.

  Then Mike saw Lexie.

  She was crouched right in front of Gonzalo, who had bloodied cotton tampons sticking out of each nostril. One eye was completely black and swollen shut.

  Hagen approached them and stopped just behind Lexie, all his doubts gone.

  Both medics were present, too. One of them kept repeating the same questions in a monotonous voice, “So, Killa, let me ask you again. Where are you, and what year is it?”

  Gonzalo’s replies sounded muffled, as if he’d had a cold. The bloodied tampons looked like walrus tusks, moving up and down as he talked.

  “Huh? Oh, yeah! Stop checking me already, doc. I’m just fine.”

  “Are you aware of what had happened?”

  Gonzalo went contemplative for a moment, his eyes glazed in a faraway look. “Uh...” he said in a hoarse voice, looking as if he’d been trying to remember something. “There was a fight?”

  “You’ve been knocked out!” said the doctor.

  “Knocked out?” Gonzalo repeated morosely. “Nope, doc, you must be wrong there. There was a fight.”

  “So, how did that one play out? What do you think?”

  “I... I... There was a fight...” Gonzalo kept staring at the doctor without any spark of comprehension in his eyes. “Or will there be one?”

  The second medic started to change the blood-soaked tampons.

  Hagen’s horrified gaze remained riveted to the man rendered in this condition by his own punch. Watching someone knocked out, whether live or on TV, had always felt completely different. This time, he was responsible for someone else’s suffering.

  And yet, deep inside, he felt satisfied for what must have been the first time in his life. Mixed martial arts were called “arts” for a reason. Hagen was feeling like he’d accomplished something and reached an important turning point in his life, even though the thoughts of what it had cost Gonzalo filled him with unease. After all, the cholo had always been friendly and fair to him.

  Gonzalo had fixed his fish-like stare on Hagen, as if reading his thoughts, and said it again, without recognizing him,

  “Sure, doc. Yeah, it was a fight. And I got my ass kicked a little. But, hey, there are no victories without defeats.”

  Chapter 9. The High Kick

  You must construct additional pylons.

  Starcraft

  MIKE’S HEART was beating so hard he felt a tremor in his hands. His anxiety was an insane cocktail of feeling ecstatic about his victory, worries about Gonzalo, and heart-wrenching jealousy accompanied by fear of losing Lexie, even though they hadn’t even been in anything like a relationship yet. The main thing that kept nagging at his mind though was a feeling of expectation. Something important was about to happen, and it could either give him happiness he hadn’t even dreamed of as a reward, or cast him into the abyss of unrequited love.

  Hagen touched Lexie’s shoulder. The girl shuddered as she rose and looked at him. The look in her eyes was quite unlike her usual condescending way of looking at Mike. He had never been an expert relationship-wise, so he couldn’t quite pin down the exact nature of the change. He just followed the girl, assuming she had simply gotten tired.

  They crossed the hall and went upstairs to the actual club premises where they had to squeeze through the crowd. Then they left the building. There was no longer any queue in front of the club. Everybody who had wanted to enter was either already in, or away to chase their fortune elsewhere. Another guard was standing at the entrance—just as muscled as his colleague Enrique the Big Guy.

  The cold night air was bracing, but Mike felt it amplify his pain and weariness somehow. He had to favor his wounded leg even more.

  “Will... will you be able to drive?” Lexie asked with concern in her eyes.

  “No biggie,” Mike said, trying to pretend the blows he’d been dealt were nothing out of the ordinary.

  “You’ve gotten quite a pounding,” said the girl, looking doubtful. “You should get an X-ray tomorrow to make sure there are no fractures.”

  Mike shrugged. “Sure thing.”

  “Hey, you’re stronger than you look! No offense, I just..
.” the girl said.

  “You don’t have to explain yourself. I have a mirror at home, and I know what I look like. A fucking slug.”

  Mike tried to smile, but yelped in pain, a taste of blood on his lips as one of the cracks must have opened again. So he pursed his lips glumly and stepped up his pace, disregarding the pain, trying not to fall too far behind Lexie.

  He just wanted to get back home and curl up underneath his blanket. Even the feelings he’d had for the girl had faded into the background. Even if Lexie would decide to make love to him right there in the car (his fantasy of old), he would have rubbed his forehead in embarrassment and asked her whether they could do it tomorrow.

  Anyway, Lexie was perfectly real, and a far cry from his fantasy girl. Making love to him clearly hadn’t been on her to-do list. Once they reached the car, she opened the door. However, she didn’t get behind the wheel. Instead, she took a packet of cigarettes out of the glove compartment and lit up.

  “I wasn’t aware you smoked. Mr. Howell has this policy about his staff...”

  “Well, I wasn’t aware you knocked people out in semi-legal MMA fights,” Lexie replied. “Mr. Howell can get stuffed. We’re not at DigiMart right now, are we? He’s my uncle, by the way. But I’d prefer you to refrain from sharing this information with any of your colleagues. I’d hate to be perceived as nothing more than the boss’s relative. I worked my ass off to get to my position. And Uncle Howell doesn’t give a shit about me being a relative. He demands the same of everyone.”

  “Wow, I had no idea.”

  Lexie took a long drag and looked at Hagen through a cloud of smoke. “Of course you hadn’t. That’s why I’ve just told you this. Damn, Mikey, you should really zip it when you want to state something as obvious as that.”

  “Sorry. Zip it I will.” Mike pursed his lips, feeling the taste of his blood again.

  “Hold this, please,” Lexie gave Hagen her cigarette. He grabbed it loyally, observing the lipstick marks on the filter. It felt like an intimate moment—something Hagen’d had no prior experience of. There was always the relationship with Jessie to fall back on, but she had betrayed him and he didn’t feel much like thinking about her, anyway.