He also managed to see his opponent turning around again, obviously intending to hit Mike with his other elbow. That attack would have finished Hagen off for sure.
But Scissors got too close to perform his showy elbow attack, and Mike managed to perform a series of attacks—the same old Close Distance Combo.
Sounds returned when he landed his first punch. The second hand on Palermo’s clock had moved twice. Hagen’s ears registered the sound of a sea of voices—the loudest one being Fino’s. He appeared to be cursing in Spanish.
All three attacks from the combo landed while the image of the immobile opponent had still been fresh in Hagen’s mind and he could see his vulnerable points perfectly.
Jacob waved his scissor legs as he crashed into the desks, the momentum of his body shoving them aside. He lay there like a broken doll on a garbage heap.
Congratulations! You’ve defeated an opponent in a fair fight!
XP points received: 3 (three times the experience for your first victory over an opponent of a higher level).
Breathe in. Breathe out. It was hard to return to a normal breathing pattern.
Gone in 60 Seconds: quest completed!
You defeated the opponent 45 seconds into the fight.
XP points received: 1
Ability points received: 1
Congratulations! You’ve received a new skill level!
Skill name: Close Distance Combo
Current level: 2
XP points received on the current level (8): 6/8
Once he’d read those encouraging messages, a few others popped up, and those were a lot less encouraging. He’d suffered serious damage and would have to cope with the corresponding debuffs.
Mike was running out of HP and it would continue if he didn’t receive any medical help right away. He was down to his last quarter.
Hagen didn’t need the system to tell him that. The left part of his neck hurt like hell. Ditto for his left forearm. He didn’t even remember when he may have received kicks in those parts.
He plopped down on one of the desks, holding his neck and trying to catch his breath at last.
“Ha!” Palermo boomed. “Blueeyes is full of surprises! Well done! That’s what I call an inmate on his best behavior!”
“¡No manches! ¡Ni madres!” Fino shouted in unison with the warden.
Blake aka Ford didn’t reply. He crouched over his defeated friend, trying to make him come to. The handcuffs on his wrists prevented him from lifting Jacob’s head up.
He started speaking quietly, but then raised the volume.
“A doctor! He needs to see a doctor!”
Blinky Palermo took his cigar from the guard who’d managed to catch it, and placed it in his mouth.
“What would he need a doctor for? The guy is still alive. Do you want him dead? Hey, somebody! Take him to the cell and give him some Tylenol or something. If he’s worse by tomorrow, old hack Borkowski can do the last rites. In the meantime, let’s hope he survives.”
Hagen wanted to approach Jacob and apologize or offer help. Then he realized he’d been thoroughly exhausted. He’d need to see a doctor himself. A decent doctor. Anyone but Mark.
“Something to drink, please,” Hagen asked General, who’d been standing nearby.
“This is no canteen, fighter. No one’s gonna bring you any water.”
“Grab this, bro,” Felipe “Fino” said. He approached Mike, his shackles clanging, and handed over his bottle of beer.
Hagen downed it in a second. Then he rose and got a leg over one of the desks, intending to leave the wooden ring at last.
“Hey, why do you keep trying to get away?” General stopped him. “Didn’t I tell you that you’d fight for as long as you can?”
“But... I cannot.”
“I mentioned that to you, too. You’ll fight even if you cannot.”
Blinky “Cloudy Eye” Palermo kept on puffing on his cigar mirthfully. “Bring out your next fighter, Ford. Blueeyes will take out every single member of Pirus Brothers in a second.”
Ford had still crouched over Jacob. Now he looked up at Palermo. A grimace of hatred twisted his face which had stayed perfectly calm until then.
“It’s time to finish it.”
“Finish what? Your gang?”
Ford jumped to his feet and offered his hands to the nearest guard. “I’ll fight this Blueeyes myself.”
“Ho-ho-ho, it’s gonna be fun!” Palermo nodded.
The guard unlocked Ford’s handcuffs. He was about to remove the shackles from his feet too when Palermo stopped him.
“Hey, leave those on. You all know I’m a just man. Blueeyes is not strong enough to face you.”
“Like I give a shit!”
Ford climbed over the desks and started toward Hagen, his steps confined by the rattling shackles.
Hagen rose heavily, getting ready to fight.
* * *
MIKE CAME TO when someone grabbed him by the balls.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to,” the voice said.
Once Hagen managed to open his eyes, he found himself on his back, facing the prison corridor ceiling which was moving past. There were yellow lamps behind steel grilles, and light and darkness kept alternating.
Mike tried to move, but the voice said,
“Don’t twitch. Or would you prefer to walk by yourself?”
Hagen didn’t understand what was happening but he definitely had no wish or ability to walk.
The corridor ceiling ended. He heard the rattling of keys, the instantly recognizable clangor of the lock, and a squeaking door. He was now facing the much higher ceiling of the prison block.
But Hagen kept approaching it for some reason. Then he realized someone was carrying him up the stairs to his cell. Carrying him like they’d be carrying a corpse.
What had happened? He’d been installing cabinet hardware and chatting with good old Charlie... such a nice person. And then... then...
“Dem?” Hagen silently called.
“Relax, dude, you’ll snap out of it soon. You are experiencing a short-term memory loss.”
“Memory loss? I can’t remember anything... What happened?”
“You got knocked out real hard. You need to level up your Stamina so that it can’t happen again.”
“But who was I fighting? Who could have done such a number on me?”
“Your memory will return soon.”
Hagen reached his own cell. The guards threw him onto his bunk.
Roman’s bearded face loomed over him. “Comrade. You’ve been disregarding all good advice and ended up fighting in the ring. What the hell for?”
Hagen tried to sit up on his bed, but without success. “A ring? Why? I can’t remember any ring... But I must have had my reasons.”
“You’re something,” Roman sat down on his own bunk. “Did you pass the list over?”
“The list... What list?”
“Our list of parts.” Roman rubbed his forehead, and said something unintelligible that sounded like “Yop tvayu mat.[1]“
Hagen finally managed to sit up. “Oh, the list! Sure, Roman, I’ve done everything... I placed it in the box... Was it blue or yellow? I can’t remember. But I definitely made a list of parts, and it should be there. If they manage to smuggle it in, I’ll build you a powerful server. Although I don’t know why you’d need so much space and processing power.”
Roman began to reply but Hagen lay down, closed his eyes and almost drifted off to sleep. Then he shuddered abruptly. The memories came back at once—he recollected all three fights as clearly as the world when it had frozen for two seconds during the Tactical Pause.
The fight with Ford had been the shortest. He’d just managed to see his fist and then, the workshop ceiling. The ceiling of the corridor came after that. There was a message he’d missed previously, too.
You have been defeated by an opponent in a fair fight!
Total fights/victories: 16/1
It was to
o early to fall asleep. He’d have to sort out the points he’d received and find out about a few things.
“Demetrious? What was that two-second pause about? Can I really stop time?”
“Man, this isn’t The Matrix, and you’re not Superman. You cannot really stop time. Don’t flatter yourself.”
“But those two seconds...”
“The speed of the reactions in your brain had gotten a huge boost. Your metabolism had sped up, too. To put it into layman’s terms, you were thinking faster and capable of processing an enormous amount of information during those two seconds. You may have experienced it as stopping time, but it’s just that your perception of the world went into overdrive. Actually, you could feel the same on shrooms, but you wouldn’t be able to fight, tee hee.”
Did Mike imagine it, or was there really a chuckle?
“Still, though.,” he said. “If I manage to get all my stats to those levels...”
“You simply won’t be able to function like that all the time. Your body doesn’t have enough resources. As simple as that. The longest a pause can last is five seconds, and the cooldown will be real hard. You’ll spend a couple of days as a vegetable, unable to put two words together. After all, you’re burning thousands of calories in a matter of seconds—this amounts to using your own body as fuel. It is strongly recommended not to use this technique for more than two seconds. Five will bring about irreversible changes in your brain, your muscles and your bone structure.”
“Uh... Why is that ability blocked now?”
“For your own safety,” Demetrious said indifferently.
Hagen opened his characteristics to see Intellect and Perception grayed out. He wouldn’t be able to invest his new points into those characteristics.
“Dem?”
“It’s the ability cooldown. The leveling-up of those characteristics will be inaccessible for 48 hours. By the way, should you use the skill again, the cooldown period will double, and it will keep progressing in that manner.”
“That’s pretty brutal.”
“Everything has a price.”
Hagen suddenly felt that something was out of order. He opened his eyes and turned toward Roman’s bunk. His cellmate was crouching on it and watching Hagen with his mouth open.
“Comrade, what’s the matter? Have you lost it completely? Was it the fight, or have you always been this way?”
“What do you mean?”
“You talk to someone about stats, stopping time, and spout all kinds of gibberish in general.”
“It must have been a dream. Good night.”
Hagen turned toward the wall and fell asleep instantly, leaving the point distribution until tomorrow.
Roman watched his weird neighbor for a while, lost in thought.
Chapter 23. An Inmate on His Best Behavior
Death is inevitable. Our fear of it makes us play safe, blocks out emotion. It’s a losing game. Without passion you are already dead.
Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne
WHEN THE ALARM sounded, Hagen opened his eyes and instantly thought to himself, God forbid that they should make me fight in the wooden ring again.”
His regeneration hadn’t been over, and he was still missing a quarter of his HP. Mike’s neck still hurt—he’d have to see Mark Borkowski, after all. Could the doctor not have been as horrible as everybody had believed?
Hagen wolfed down his food even faster than the others. He’d polished off his ration and started to look around him. He hadn’t gotten enough nutrients, and the process taking place inside of him required more fuel.
A considerate message from the system popped up:
Undernourishment
Calories consumed: 1536. Proteins: 3.6 oz. Fats: 3.8 oz. Carbohydrates: 5 oz.
At least another 900 calories are required!
If it hadn’t been for the official tone of the message, one could have imagined the system as a doting mother worried about her son not eating enough.
Hagen took his tray and went back to the counter. “Could I have some more, please?”
The inmate who’d been serving the food shook his head.
“Every meal is accounted for, brother. Sorry.”
Hagen rubbed his hurting neck and went back to the table. He felt so hungry that it seemed he hadn’t eaten anything at all.
Someone placed a burger on his tray.
“There you go, fighter,” General said.
Hagen grabbed the burger and unwrapped it, then stopped. “Are you sure?”
“Absolutely. Hunger is as natural to an inmate as confinement. You can get used to the latter, but never to the former.”
“Aren’t you hungry yourself?”
“I’m old, so I don’t eat much. And the way you knocked out that racist bitch deserves a commendation, anyway.”
General sat down next to him and put his ever-present clipboard down on the table. He leaned over to Mike and said in a soft voice,
“Blinky Palermo likes your style. He wants to put you on the List.” You could hear the capital letter in General’s intonation—the List must have been something quite extraordinary.
“What list?”
General lifted one of the sheets of paper attached to his board and showed it to Hagen.
“Blinky occasionally holds tournaments between inmates. Whoever gets to the top of the list and defeats the other participants gets so many positive marks in his file that he can walk free before serving all of his time.
Hagen looked at the clipboard suspiciously. “Even those who serve a hundred years or more?”
“Of course not. Obviously enough, only those who have a chance to be released early can participate. However, many of the inmates serving real long sentences also fight, just to get some relief. They get some perks for it from the prison administration.”
Hagen stuffed the last piece of the burger into his mouth. “I agree. But I can’t quite believe it works like this.”
General rose from the table resolutely. “Cloudy Eye might not be the best person in the world, but he’s a man of his word. He doesn’t keep his promises because he’s fair or anything. He does it because it’s easier to make us fight that way. If he cons someone just once, no one’s ever going to believe him.”
Hagen got up too. The corrections officer at the exit threw a bag with his lunch at him. He barely managed to catch it, feeling a sharp pain in his shoulder. Once he’d managed to overcome it, he turned back to General:
“These wooden ring fights aren’t mere entertainment, are they?”
“Haven’t you heard folks bet on you? There are lots of well-heeled people among the gangsters. Palermo plays on their desire for entertainment and earns money from the bets they make. I don’t know how much exactly, but they say he rakes in millions for final bouts. So he makes so much money he stays afloat. He can afford to bribe every inspection committee—their conscience always has a price.”
Hagen sighed heavily—the pain in his neck and his forearm seemed to affect his lungs as well.
General interpreted it differently. “There’s no need to sigh. Fights in the wooden ring may not be the most humane form of entertainment, but it gives Blinky Palermo leverage over the gangsters. They’re on good terms with him, which is why our prison has the lowest rate of riots or conflicts between the prisoners and the administration,” General laughed. “A few years ago our boss even received a Warden of the Year award from the American Correctional Association. Everybody wants to know how he manages to keep things so peaceful. They even ask him to give lectures to other correctional facility executives.”
Hagen nodded and started to crumple the paper of the bag he’d been holding. He still felt hungry, but he realized that if he’d eaten his ration right away, he’d suffer at lunchtime.
General nodded his understanding. “They don’t give you seconds here, but you can pay for extra food. There’s actually a special shop for inmates where you can buy quite a few things. But you have to earn the ri
ght to use it first.”
Hagen kept thinking of how to get money for food as the guards led him to the furniture workshop. The prison ration wasn’t enough to nourish a body that was leveling up.
It was a paradox, really—he had to face the same problems behind bars as he’d had when he was still free. There was never enough money for training, and the environment was never friendly.
* * *
CHARLIE WAS already at work fitting drawer slides. Hagen was surprised the old man had gotten there before him.
He greeted Mike warmly and asked him about how he’d spent the night, as if there was any difference between nights in prison. Then he noticed Hagen’s swollen nose and huffed in a knowing way. He pointed toward an endless row of cabinets and desks with his screwdriver.
“We have to manage before noon.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Charlie grinned and immediately proceeded to tell him a story of how some children who’d lived near his farm in Louisiana went to an abandoned windmill which had smelled so sweetly of grass and old wood, and then broke their arms and legs falling through rotten floorboards.
Hagen was getting used to the tragic end of every story Charlie had ever told. He wondered what they’d charged the old man with in the first place. Could it have been pessimism?
Hagen worked as hard as he could, disregarding the pain. He’d often have to bend over, go on all fours, or lie down on the floor to attach the hardware to hard-to-reach places. It may have hurt, but he managed to do everything he’d been told to do on time.
Had the old man participated, they would have managed it much quicker. However, Evans put his screwdriver aside and sat down to read his book as soon as Hagen arrived. Mike didn’t argue—the old man had been in charge of him, after all, and he felt reluctant to get on the bad side of any of the higher-ups.
“Done here, sir,” Hagen said, wiping off the sweat.
Level Up- The Knockout Page 34
