1 - THE NIGHT BEFORE…

I spit blood. My fists ache. My ears are ringing. I stare across the octagon at my opponent, who stares right back. In fifteen seconds—no, make that fourteen—the next round will start.

“Jack,” Erick, my coach, speaks right into my ear. “Jack. This is it. Last round. That bastard over there wants your belt. Your title. Are you going to let him take it?”

“No,” I say, breathing hard, barely able to hear my own voice. I look past Tseren, my opponent, and search the crowd for my girlfriend, but I fail to find her amongst the sea of blurry faces staring back at me. 

A buzzer signals that break time is over.

I rise from the stool, which my corner takes with them as they leave the octagon. It’s just me now, locked in here with Tseren. One man against another. The MFC light heavyweight belt on the line. It’s been mine for two years. Now Tseren, an undefeated fighter from Mongolia, tall, muscular, fast, skilled, and hard-hitting, wants to take it from me.

But he won’t. 

No one will take it from me.

The cage door closes. The ref, a black blur in my periphery, claps his hands, signalling that the round has started.

The crowd roars. Twenty-thousand people in attendance. A lot of them are here to support me, but I know how it really is: they just want to see blood.

And so for their pleasure, I spit some more, and grin a bloody grin for the crowd. They roar again in approval, a deafening cacophony. 

And immediately, without even needing to think, I start to circle Tseren.

He’s wary as he circles me in return. I’ve taken more damage than him, and although he’s bleeding from a broken nose, he otherwise looks relatively unscathed—unlike myself. My face is swelling badly. I can barely see out of my right eye. A rough night in the office. I’m definitely losing the fight, which is particularly frustrating, because I know I’m better than him. I have my excuses—a staph infection, leading to two weeks of antibiotics, leading me to feeling lethargic and going through a rough weight cut. And then, last night, I’d managed very little sleep. But, valid though they are, I don’t care for the excuses. Excuses are for lesser men.

I will win this.

I’m probably down three rounds to one. That means I need to finish him in the next five minutes. A submission is unlikely—Tseren is primarily a grappler.

That means I need to knock the fucker out.

I feint a jab, slam my shin into the calf of his lead leg. He immediately throws a leg kick back, as he always does, and I lunge forward, throwing a jab then a cross, snapping his head back with both. 

The crowd explodes. I swear I can hear Sarah’s voice amongst them. 

But Tseren is a tough bastard, and that’s been a problem all fight. He has an insane chin that I can’t quite manage to break. Not yet, at least. 

And whenever I hit him hard, he endeavors to come back even harder at me.

He does it now, blitzing in, throwing a four piece combination so fast that all I can do is cover up and retreat. He drops to a knee, shoots in for a takedown, and I just barely manage to sprawl on him and create enough space that we go back to circling. I glance up at the clock. 3:34 left in the round. 

Time is running out.

My heart thuds. Sweat drips into my eyes.

I simply refuse to lose.

I throw myself at him, throwing caution to the wind in the process. I abandon defence. If he knocks me out, so fucking be it. It’s time, I tell myself, to give my all, to live by the sword or die by it.

Tseren backs up. I throw two jabs, striking his broken nose, causing him to flinch. Next up is a hook to his body. I know just how much it hurts because he’s been hitting me with them all night long. 

He tries to keep me back by throwing an overhand, but I just take it.

My vision blurs. I can’t hear.

I don’t even consciously think about throwing a high kick. 

But I do. I know I do because I feel the impact of my shin against his skull.

It’s a deep, sickening impact. There’s a thud, a little like striking a bag with a baseball bat. My eyes widen. I watch, almost in slow motion, as Tseren falls.

Falls and hits the ground.

Years of instinct and hard training have instilled within me an unconscious urge to leap upon a downed opponent—to make sure that the job is finished. 

But this time, I don’t have to.

Tseren is out cold. The ref is between us, waving his arms in the air. 

Signalling that the fight is over.

I walk away from Tseren, at first numb, then, by rapid stages, triumphant.

I did it. I grin. Of course I fucking it. 

I’m Jack Ren. Two division champion. Undefeated. 

And the best fighter in the world.

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By the time we make it back to our hotel room, I’m just about ready to collapse.

“Sit,” Sarah says, taking my bag from me, nudging me lightly in the direction of the soft, wide bed. “Are you hungry?”

“Incredibly so,” I say, laying on the bed, closing my eyes. After the post-fight interview, I’d gone through medical, then had spent an hour answering questions from the press. A waste of time, especially when they all wanted to ask the same thing: what’s next for you?

The answer to which is always the same.

The next best opponent. Simply put another man in front of me and watch me knock them down.

After that, I’d had a few phone calls to make. To my mother. My brother Adam, then Caroline, my sister. Then, lastly, my agent, Tim, who hadn’t wanted to stop talking about setting up the next big fight. His main question: how soon can you come back?

Not a question I even want to think about right now.

I massage my temples. People think fights are painful but, mostly, they’re not. There’s too much adrenaline rushing through you to feel much at all. It’s the days afterward that really get you: the constant, pounding headaches, the bone-deep aches in the legs, which swell, and leave you unable to walk with assistance. Thankfully, this time, I think I’ve managed to get through it without anything worse than a broken nose and a mild concussion. I have no idea how I didn’t shatter my fist against Tseren’s granite dome.

“What do you want?” Sarah asks from the other side of the room. “Anything at all. I’ll order it. You just lay there, okay? I’m going to take care of you.”

I smile and crack my eyes open—though mostly, I just open the left one, since my right eye is so badly swollen. “And what, exactly, did I do to deserve you?”

Sarah smiles back at me. She’s tall—though not as tall as I am—and fit from years of volleyball and swimming. Her brunette hair—which she usually lets loose—is done up in a bun and held together with a black steel pin. Her eyes are a soft brown, and I can so easily lose myself in them. Her skin is smooth. Perfect. Her face is a perfect balance of angles and softness. She has the most kissable lips in the world. I know I’m biased, but she’s the most beautiful woman in the world. 

Right now, she’s more beautiful than ever. 

“I could list all the things,” she says. “But we’d be here for a while, and you need to get some food and some rest.” She moves toward me, her tight, black dress hugging her form. Desire stirs inside me. Injuries and hunger be damned, I have half a mind to pull her down on top of me.

“Pizza,” I say suddenly. “That’s what we’re going to have.” I sit up. Too quickly, as it turns out, because my vision swims and the world twists around me.

“Pizza it is.” Sarah kisses me, pulls away, her dark eyes gleaming. “I wonder…tonight…will you be feeling well enough to…?”

“I’ll make it work, I assure you.”

Her grin is devilish. “Good. But…food first.”

While we wait for our pizza to arrive, we stand by one of the immense, glass windows overlooking the city. New York stretches out before us, a million or more windows lit up against the darkness. A siren echoes through the quiet, midnight streets. Snow falls gently. It’s January 26th. I lock the date in my mind. Standing there, the two of us silent, our arms wrapped around one another, I feel perfectly content. At peace. I could lose every fight from here on. It wouldn’t matter. I’ve accomplished everything I set out to accomplish. I’m in love with the woman of my dreams. I have enough money to never have to work again; to live a life of relative luxury. 

Life is good.

“I love you,” I say quietly. 

Sarah turns to face me. Her smile is radiant. “I love you, too.”

And then she slowly eases herself down to one knee in front of me.

I cock an eyebrow. “Sweety…what are you doing?”

She holds something out in front of her. A small, black box. My heart pounds in my chest.

“Pretty sure I’m meant to be the one down there,” I croak out.

That devilish smile again. “Well, yeah, but I figure that, since you’re so beat up right now, I’d save you the effort and do it myself.” She cracks open the box. The ring shines in the low, warm lights of the penthouse. “Jack…will you marry me?”

I can’t help the grin that twists my lips upward. I gently help her to her feet. I kiss her.

I say yes.

Later, after we’ve eaten, after we’ve showered together and made love on that immense, impossibly comfortable bed, we sit upright amongst the pillows and simply hold each other. My eyelids are heavy. I could, if I let myself, fall asleep at any moment. 

A burst of sudden, white light blinds me.

Pure, animal instinct compels me to explode to my feet. On the other side of the large bedroom, the light, now multicolored and less bright, coalesces into a sort of…oval. An opening, at the center of which is a pool of darkness studded with stars. My heart slams against my ribs. 

I’ve fallen asleep, I tell myself. This is a dream.

Two tall, armored figures step out of the black opening. 

A violent wind whips at my hair, beats against my chest. The bedsheets are sent flying. Sarah, in her nightgown, leaps out of bed, eyes wide, hair twisting through the air. 

“Stay behind me!” I call out, teeth gritted.

I don’t know what’s happening. 

I just know that we’re in danger.

And I know, too, that I’m not going to let anyone—or anything—hurt my woman. 

The two armored figures step toward me. They’re both nine feet tall, clad in golden metal, like medieval knights. I’m a very large man—but these two dwarf me. Behind them, the black opening is still gaping, emitting a burning, metallic reek, as well as low, crackling static that fills my ears.

“Jack…” there’s fear in Sarah’s voice, and it breaks my heart to hear. “What’s happening?”

“I don’t know,” I take a step back, arms out, standing right in front of Sarah. I don’t take my eyes from the two approaching figures. They, I recognize, are threats.

And none of this makes any sense. But only a few hours ago, I took a significant number of strikes to the head, and almost two decades of training MMA is not particularly healthy for one’s brain. So, it’s possible that this is some sort of strange side-effect of the trauma I’ve received, a concussion gone wild—

But I don’t really believe that. 

The first armored figure raises its left hand and points it at me. The air starts to ripple, to distort around it, and something primal inside me screams a warning. 

I could run. I could scream for help. 

But I am, and have always been, a fighter.

I charge them. 

A burst of pure, white light shoots from the raised hand. It comes at me fast. 

But I’m faster. I duck beneath it, take another step, throw a right hook at the first armored figure—

It catches my fist. Squeezes it. My bones creak. 

Two dark eyes, like black jewels, glare down at me through the narrow visor of the golden helmet. I hear Sarah screaming behind me. The sound shatters my heart, and activates within me an ancient, primordial rage. I will destroy these things. I will burn down the world to save her. 

Except this person—this thing—is impossibly strong. Still gripping my fist, it forces me down to my knees. 

Then it touches its other hand to my forehead. 

There’s another burst of searing, white light.

And then absolute darkness.