If there’s one thing you should know about me, it’s that I am my father’s daughter. It doesn’t matter that he expects the impossible from me. That I’ve already been fighting for an hour in the baking heat. That I’m only ten, or that I can’t count how many times I’ve been beaten down today. He would never give up. So neither will I.

Panting for breath, I get my knuckles on the ground and push up with a groan, blinking back to the blurry greenery of the rock garden. Behind me, I can feel my father watching from the shaded deck. And he’s not the only one. A calloused hand hangs in my vision, open and waiting. Crouched behind it is a boy as young as I am. I look up to find him looking down with inquisitive, golden eyes. Mouth wrinkled by opposing emotions. Worry for me, and pride for how sure his victory was.

His hand waits. Blowing loose hair away from my face, I take it and rise.

Dad smiles wryly when he sees us standing side by side, a zen circle of tempers. I am wind and sun, a girl with tape on her knuckles and a chip on her shoulder. The boy beside me is an ocean. Today he dictates my currents, and lately, I have had enough of it.

My father doesn’t have to say a thing. I’m already moving on my own. Putting the dark-haired boy behind me, I stalk to the other side of the marble fighting square, burying my temper with a long breath through my nose. When I turn back, both of them are waiting. Dad in the shade, Thane in the sun, a carved staff balanced firmly behind his back.

Our eyes meet across the marble. Thane’s narrow with martial intent. The salty wind blowing through the garden stills, one final silver leaf twirling to a stop on the center line. The buzzing insects and chirping birds hold their breath in anticipation.

Then my father nods. “Again.”

I blink awake on my side, half my skin scalded by the marble, Thane’s hand on my forehead. I flinch, slap it away, and get back up.

“Again, Tay.”

Sixty seconds, maybe less, until I end up in the dirt.

“Again.”

Bruises cry out across my body. Two fingers dislocated. Thane rushes to help me from behind. I claw to my feet faster than before.

“If you can beat Thane, you can beat anyone.”

But I go down, down, and down again. Every time, Thane’s worry makes my face burn worse. I’m not mad at him. Never him. Just myself. He starts to protest to my father while I lay stunned on the ground after our last round, thinking of all the good reasons I should stay down, and the one bad reason I never will. One by one, my fingers curl inwards. One by one my limbs find their strength. Inch by inch I force up onto my knees, head hanging, gasping for breath.

Then I slam a fist into the stone. My gaze snaps up.

And I snarl that word for myself.

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“Again.”

Murmurs erupt from the shadows of the gym. A packed crowd ripples against the stage, all eyes on me. Sweat drips from my hair. Hair drips down my face, white and tangled. Spotlights, not sun, beam hot and golden over my shoulders. My battered sneakers squeak against the polished wooden fighting square as I sag against the ropes. Still recovering in the opposite corner, my opponent, a muscled brawler with a mane of orange-red hair, waves a finger in a high circle.

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“Run it back,” he growls, still smarting from the last bruises I left. Shirtless and dense, he snatches a towel from the corner pole and smears it over his face, dislocated fingers twitching from pain. “One more,” he repeats, more a challenge to himself than me.

The gym roils around us, wall-to-wall, flooding the air with anticipation of my answer. I’ve been here before. Not this place, not this city, but this feeling, eight years after that memory from the garden, it’s still no stranger to me. It envelops me again as my eyes close. The pressure of knowing I am watched. All those expectations. Most people start to crumble from attention like this.

Snorting a glob of blood from my nose, I flick two fingers for the bare-hand boxer to wait and glance out over the body-packed floor. Upbeat Neopop pouring from crackling speakers in the rafters takes over in the interim. I grab a roll of griptape with my metal right arm and do a quick couple wraps around the real knuckles of my left hand, elbows resting on the ropes, buying time. Can’t exactly remember what round it is. Quarters? Semis? Far enough to start hearing the usual grumbles; that I’m some pro fighter who came down to the streets to farm these mooks for easy credits on a weeknight.

I do smile at that.

Out the rolled-open doors, icy autumn air and a pulsing neon metropolis of fifteen million people push back against the electric heartbeat of the music. A flood of foot traffic wanders outside, armor and armaments hanging brazenly every hip and shoulder. Blades, firearms, and copius amounts of griptape are the most common sights. More people keep swinging in to watch the fights when they see this place is packed to the sidewalk. That’s how I ended up here, too. I wasn’t meaning to fight tonight. Usually keep away from it, honestly. It’s safer that way. But in my defense, this little tournament did look like easy money. Money which I currently am very much in need of, considering when I checked my bank account this morning, the only thing staring back was a straight line of zeroes.

So I signed up. Fake name, promised entry fee, the usual. And like usual, the place stayed quiet right up until I won my second round and put some flashy Duelist on his rear with a three-sixty showstopper of a kick. Going by the dinginess of the brickwork here, I’m pretty sure I’m the most lucrative attraction this place has had in years. Haven’t taken a real hit all night. Everyone’s wondering when it’s going to come.

Unfortunately for the bets they’re making, I didn’t choose this place because of the crowds. I chose it because my stomach was growling, and the less a scene I make, the better. But the fight just isn’t ready to let me go.

There’s a stirring around me as an Oldtech scoreboard high up on the walls resets with a buzzer shriek. I rake a handful of nails through my hair, not turning back yet. A bell clangs loudly behind me; thirty seconds left. As long as I keep staring outside, I can ignore the black-hole pull, the escape that old sound promises. I can forget the garden. I can keep remembering what I swore one thousand, two hundred and four days ago: that the girl I used to be, her father’s daughter, is dead to the world. Long dead. And no one can ever suspect otherwise.

But then one shout breaks through the rest. It’s for me. Another follows. And another and another still, building to an incoherent crescendo, a roar of anticipation with no end or beginning. I can’t keep blocking it out, no matter how hard I squeeze my eyes shut. It infects me. That need to fight snakes around my heart and tightens like a noose. I start breathing harder and harder. Feeling the adrenaline coming on the more I try to resist.

Most people crumble under pressure like this. But I was made for it. I need it.

Before I know what I’m doing, I’m shoving away from the ropes and squaring up again. The tightness gripping my chest vanishes the moment I do. The answering roar raises every hair on my body. My heart skips a beat as I finish turning and see the garden again, the boy with the black hair crooking his fingers in challenge. The weight of my father’s attention from somewhere behind me. Then I blink, and they’re replaced by concrete reality. Some stranger’s eyebrows narrowed in spite, brow dark, heavy hands curling into angry fists as he brushes a mop of hair to the side. I pull my shirt up and wipe my face clear. Erase the memory and evaporate the worries. Shake my head as I sink into sideways stance, bouncing on my heels, and flashing the tiniest smirk at the stream cam floating just outside the ropes.

Screw it. I already brought the crowds. I’m just a girl with no name that no one’s going to remember. I swore I’d never say again, again. But it’s just one more fight.

What’s it gonna hurt?