Level Up- The Knockout

by Dan Sugralinov

  The Björn Tattoo

  Object class: Talisman

  +5 to Luck

  +4 to Charisma

  Requires activation

  Valid for: 25 years

  Activation implied getting the design tattooed on one’s skin for it to work.

  Hagen pointed at the bear without a hint of indecision. “I want this one. How long will it take?”

  “Money is more important than time behind bars, comrade. Our time is not our own, whereas our money... A tat like this will set you back two hundred bucks.”

  “I don’t have that much right now.”

  Roman pondered this for a moment before replying. “OK. But you’ll owe me two thousand once you’re released.”

  “Two grand? But why?”

  “A dollar has a different value here than it does on the outside. A prison dollar’s exchange rate is ten regular ones.”

  Hagen took a look at the bear. He then studied the entire catalog, only to confirm that the Björn tattoo was the only one that would give him a bonus.

  So he agreed.

  It took him several sessions with the artist to get his left forearm inked. One of the things that slowed down the process had been the constant need to watch out for the guards. The tattoo artist had his own network of inmates who would watch the guards and warn him whenever they’d approach.

  He was done in a week. Once Hagen’s skin healed and the swelling abated, the system informed him that the Björn talisman had been activated.

  Mike called up the window with his detailed stats:

  Mike “Björn” Hagen

  Age: 29

  Level: 18

  HP: 29,000

  Battles/victories: 65/59

  Weight: 148 lbs

  Height: 5’ 4”

  Characteristics:

  Strength: 16

  Agility: 14

  Stamina: 29

  Intellect: 17

  Perception: 16

  Luck: 15

  Charisma: 14

  He’d also managed to learn many skills. Knee kicks, sweep kicks, low kicks, hip rolls... He had them all, even if some of them were still at Level 1. Mike had even unlocked Head Butt, which helped him win his latest fight by using the technique to knock out the opponent in a spectacular manner, the other man’s unconscious body ending up just a few inches away from Billy Palermo’s feet.

  Still, though, the most effective skills he had relied on were the leveled-up direct kicks and punches. They were simple but effective.

  * * *

  HAGEN COULDN’T wait to fight Constrictor. He could feel freedom almost within his reach, just one fight away. That might not amount to complete freedom, but he’d get time off his sentence for sure, which would be good enough too.

  However, a few days before the final match Hagen got a sign that defeating Constrictor would indeed set him free, and much earlier than he’d imagined.

  “Mike Hagen,” Jim peeked into the cell. “You have visitors.”

  The guard took Hagen to the visitation room filled with voices and sounds of crying.

  An enormous neo-Nazi with more ink on his skin than you’d find graffiti on an inner city wall was standing on his knees before his children, hugging them and bawling openly. A black guy from Pirus Brothers was crying, too, with a young woman in mourning before him—she’d just told him about the death of his father who’d never lived to see his son a free man again.

  The atmosphere in the room was truly depressing. Besides, all those outbursts of personal grief happened under the vigilant eyes of armed guards.

  Uncle Peter was behind one of the tables, accompanied by some familiar character in a blazer and a waistcoat. His uncle looked a little under the weather, and the man sported an enormous shiner under one of his eyes that he’d unsuccessfully tried to cover with concealer.

  Once Hagen approached, Uncle Peter looked at his nephew in surprise. His eyes tried to find someone behind Mike’s back, then traveled back to him.

  “M... Mikey?” he must have expected to see anything but an athletic man of average height sporting a tattoo.

  Hagen chuckled. “It sure is me, Uncle. It seems like I’ve gotten into the habit of surprising you each time we meet.”

  They hugged warmly. Hagen tried not to hit his uncle accidentally with his shackles.

  “I hope we’ll never have to meet in this room again,” Mike’s uncle said, casting furtive looks at the wailing neo-Nazi and the wailing gangster.

  “Why would you say that?”

  Hagen’s uncle gave the man with the shiner a rather unceremonious kick under the table. The man shuddered, got up, and coughed.

  Hagen recognized him as Robert Salk, his attorney.

  “Mr. Hagen,” Salk started in a chipper voice, “some new circumstances pertaining to your case have surfaced. I can congratulate you in advance—Greg Goretsky’s legal claims will all soon be waived. In this case, considering the period you’ve already spent at a federal corrective facility, you will only have to serve two months and three days.”

  Hagen couldn’t believe his ears. He glanced at his uncle, then gave the attorney a suspicious look. He could almost feel his eyes watering. It took him some effort not to revert to Crybaby mode.

  He heard out the attorney and listened to his uncle tell him about how Riggs had unexpectedly offered help. Then his two visitors made Hagen sign a few papers.

  “Time’s up,” the guard said.

  Hagen gave his uncle a goodbye hug.

  He was in high spirits as he returned to his cell. That sure was something. Perhaps he could skip the fight with the Constrictor altogether? He could serve the rest of his two months and be released without further complications.

  He checked himself. Time was at a premium—the license would run out eventually, and he’d had no idea how to extend it. Also, two more months in prison were hardly something to look forward to.

  He’d have to finish what he had started. What would change if he lost? His physical condition, most likely. But a victory would mean freedom.

  Hagen entered the cell. Roman greeted him.

  “We’ll be installing it tonight,” the Russian hacker said.

  Hagen cast a sideways glance at his bunk.

  That piece of news instantly made him less mirthful. Would it be worth it to break prison rules and risk everything with freedom so close at hand?

  On the other hand, his refusal to participate would be an automatic death sentence.

  Hagen had also long realized that here, one needed to fulfill one’s obligations—otherwise, no inmate would escape the bullying and the scorn on the part of the others. In that scenario, Mike would definitely end up bleeding to death in some prison corridor with no one to help him. Moreover, the poor bastard who’d off him would most likely be some dogsbody like Trevor.

  “If you say we do it tonight, so be it,” Hagen sighed, collapsing onto his bunk.

  He yearned to know how April was doing.

  Chapter 25. Will to Live

  War is when the young and stupid are tricked by the old and bitter into killing each other.

  GTA IV

  THE GUARD RAN his truncheon across the steel bars. “Your turn.”

  Hagen unhurriedly put his comic book away. He’d been reading more or less highbrow literature as of late, so when he had chanced upon the comic strip section of the library the previous evening, it took him a short while to recognize them for what those things were, and it was an instant trip down memory lane. Unfortunately, the library didn’t store any of his favorite series, so he just grabbed a few issues at random.

  In the meantime, Jim opened the door, his keys rattling. Roman who’d been sleeping on the other bunk gave a snore and woke up. He sat up scratching his neck as he watched Hagen being escorted out of the room.

  “Good luck, comrade,” he said to Mike.

  “Spasiba,[4]“ Mike replied.

  Hagen started his warm-up exercises as he followed the guard down a
narrow corridor, waving his arms up, down and to the sides. The guard took a step back, giving Mike some space.

  “May I?” Hagen asked.

  The guard nodded as he moved even further back and pressed himself against the railing. Hagen walked quickly to the end of the corridor, then returned doing chassé step, repeating the procedure a couple of times.

  Most of the inmates were asleep. A few of them, however, approached the bars to watch the warm-up. Some gave him words of encouragement,

  “Good luck, Mikey! I’ve bet three packets of cigarettes on you.”

  “Come on, kid! You can do it!”

  There were naysayers in their midst as well.

  “Your skinny ass will get kicked six ways from Sunday tonight!”

  Another one clearly hadn’t gotten enough sleep. “Suck it, Hagen! Stop stomping! People are trying to sleep here.”

  Jim gestured Mike that he’d have to hurry. Hagen placed his left leg on the railing, stretching out his muscles, and then did the same with his right. The guard gave him a push, signaling his impatience and urging Mike to get going.

  They descended the stairs to the main hall and crossed it. Despite Roman’s stern warning, Hagen couldn’t help throwing a glance at the ceiling as they were passing the library corridor where Hagen had nearly gotten himself killed.

  “Once we install the server, forget about it, comrade,” Roman had told him. “Don’t even look in that direction. Guards are trained professionals. They will instantly smell that something isn’t right.”

  That was the very corridor where they had installed their “startup” machine a week ago.

  As usual, a provocation had been arranged to divert the guards’ attention—a double one, even. Plumbing broke in several cells at once, with water gushing out, while the inmates started to fight, accusing each other of having broken the plumbing deliberately.

  Roman and Hagen had used the noise and the specially organized chaos to get to the corridor. Hagen climbed onto Roman’s shoulders and straightened up like a circus acrobat on top of a human pyramid.

  He was really happy he’d been investing points into his height. Had he been shorter, he wouldn’t have managed to reach all the way up. Hagen removed the screws from one of the cover panels and expertly installed the box containing the server in record time, proceeding to connect all the wires. He remembered Uncle Peter with fondness once again. If Mike hadn’t worked in his private security system company, he would have lacked the necessary skills now.

  Afterward, they had traded places. Roman climbed onto Hagen’s shoulders and started to hack away. Mike felt curious and even tried to sneak a peek at his activities every now and then, but Roman watched these attempts attentively, stomping on his cellmate’s shoulder lightly each time.

  “Stop twitching already. You won’t be able to understand what I’m doing here, anyway.”

  Hagen could only see the smartphone’s screen glow dimly. It turned out that Roman had formerly kept this phone in a plastic bag stuffed deep into one of the drainpipes.

  Then they changed again. Hagen reattached the panel just as quickly and jumped down to the floor just as a chain of guards entered the corridor, herding the inmates back to the prison block.

  “You’ll have to be more careful now, comrade. You’re no longer under our bosses’ protection, so Lorenzo might well try to send you a greeting.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “I did hint to them that should anything break, they’d need you for repairs, but they ignored it. You know how all those lamers are. They don’t even think of tech support for as long as everything works.”

  The riot had gotten Blinky Palermo so irate that he’d announced a prison block lockdown of indefinite duration.

  The prisoners’ life changed drastically. There was no workshop anymore. They couldn’t walk or train in the prison yard, either—nor did they have any TV. Four walls and your cellmate’s company were all the entertainment you would get 24/7.

  However, Roman just laughed.

  “This is perfect! Just the time to test how our server works under heavy loads.”

  Roman never mentioned what he’d used his server for. Hagen followed Charlie’s advice and didn’t stick his nose into affairs that were none of his concern so that he would know as little as possible should he ever get caught.

  However, he’d had a rough idea of what Roman might be doing: trying to sell his cryptocurrency reserves. Or perhaps, buy more. Or both. You could never be sure with his type.

  Gang kingpins also had smartphones stashed away—they must have retrieved them from their hiding places, expecting a lockdown. Everyone who’d invested anything into Roman Kamenev’s startup enjoyed unlimited Internet access now, caring nothing about Blinky Palermo’s repressive measures.

  Hagen suddenly found himself with twenty-four hours of free time on his hands, so he would spend most of them training and reading. However, it became harder to train without being able to jog in the yard. All he could do was exhaust himself with push-ups. On his palms, on his fists, on his fingers. On a single arm. On two fingers of a single arm.

  However, his trained body would get used to the loads quickly. He had to do more and more push-ups. It was so funny to imagine that if the lockdown continued, Hagen’s entire day would become a single near-uninterrupted pushing-up session. He’d even thought of asking Roman to sit on his neck during push-ups, but his cellmate didn’t care for what he called “a seesaw ride.”

  Hagen took Roman up on his offer and sent an email to everyone he’d known—his uncle, Wei Ming, Gonzalo, and even April, although writing to her proved a real challenge, since he’d just had no idea what to say. The story of how the local equivalent of a village idiot had almost managed to get away with her photograph had it not been for Hagen bravely defending her honor? Hagen wanted to attach his own picture, but Roman advised against it.

  “Anything personal that you send may be used against you!”

  He’d also written to Luke “Coyote” Lucas, but only received a standard pre-written letter in response with a link for those who’d wished to register for the preliminary screening.

  Come to think of it, that wasn’t all that bad. Hagen registered at once.

  Ten days later, with the lockdown still on, the guards suddenly woke Hagen in the middle of the night and took him to the wooden ring.

  He couldn’t know for sure, but there was a nagging feeling he’d fight in this ring for the last time ever.

  * * *

  JIM OPENED the doors, taking the felon Michael Hagen where no inmates were normally allowed—personnel facilities that served as a link between the two prison units. For some reason, they didn’t take him via the usual workshop route this time.

  Mike continued his warm-up exercises as the two of them went down poorly-lit corridors, then returned doing chassé step, or ran backwards. He would jump away and make sharp turns as he went. Then he would run further, fall to the ground, and do push-ups until Jimmy came and poked him in the back with the truncheon.

  “Get up, will you?”

  They reached Prison Unit 2 in that very manner, then crossed another empty hall that must have been filled with inmates in prison uniform during the day—watching TV, playing, reading, or huddling together to listen to music. It was the spitting image of Unit 1 where Mike had been serving his sentence.

  They proceeded to a similar workshop where the inmates made furniture parts and assembled the same kind of desks and cabinets as their Unit 1 counterparts. Hagen wondered whether they might have had a Charlie Evans of their own, a cabinet hardware expert.

  The center of the workshop had been cleared. All the lathes and machines were pushed into corners. The ring was the area marked by unfinished office desks and surrounded with chairs also manufactured by the inmates. It was another wooden ring—just like the one in the workshop of Unit 1.

  Most of the lamps on the ceiling were off; the only ones still lit were those hanging over the impromptu a
rena. Still, the overall impression was altogether slicker than in Hagen’s workshop. You could instantly see it was the tournament’s final bout and not just an average fight to boost the warden’s ego.

  “Well, what are you waiting for? Get in the ring, bitch,” Jim said, giving Mike a shove and walking away.

  Did he really say ‘bitch’? Hagen thought in surprise. Oh, Jimmy, could it be that all the brass gathered to watch the wooden ring fight has gotten you so scared?

  The VIPs took their places in soft chairs which stood in the unlit part of the workshop. The glow of cigarettes or stogies visible here and there in the dark was the only thing to advertise their presence—other than the smoke and the smell of booze, that is.

  Another military analogy came to Mike’s mind—those who started conflicts spent their time hunched over maps, also puffing on cigars, while their soldiers died on countless battlefields, fighting wars they’d had no personal interest in.

  A few inmates had been present, too, but Hagen didn’t know them. He had a hunch they were high-ranking gangsters from the other unit. Fino and Ford remained in their cells. However, Blinky was completely wrong to think they’d been punished. The kingpins were overjoyed to finally be online again.

  Hagen took off his shirt and rolled up his pants to his knees, using special braces to keep them from falling down during the fight. He’d learned about that method of modifying regulation gear from other wooden ring fighters.

  Hagen was happy with his physique, even though some might have said he wasn’t burly enough. But they’d take that back at the first sight of his well-defined muscles. Some would still consider him a kid, especially in comparison to some of his fellow black inmates who’d started working out from their first day at the prison where their brothers would already have prepared a place for them. Yet in his own eyes...

  Mike punched the air a few times in a quick sequence. Someone in the audience grunted their approval. Jim produced his mobile phone and put on some music. Hagen was pleased to recognize the track by Easy Sammy, the new hip-hop star.