Girl Punches Out

by Jacques Antoine

  Miss Park sat above in one corner next to an older man with thick gold insignia on his shoulder boards. He looked to be the ranking officer in the room, probably a general. Three other men in officer’s uniforms sat around the walkway, as well as two heavily armed guards. Two cameras covered the ring. She sat against one wall and waited to see who or what would come through the other door. She looked up at Miss Park and tried to force a smile. The thought of giving her any satisfaction, even the slightest hint of any distress she might feel, was entirely disgusting. But hatred could not be the basis of her resolution to fight. It provided no access to her own qi, her vital spirit. That was the deepest truth she knew about fighting. It’s what she learned from her father and Sensei: fight from the peaceful place inside, from her father’s place.

  Looking at Miss Park she knew there was no longer a place for peace in her heart. She needed to find her qi someplace else. Of course, she knew where it had to be: in the cave where her mother’s love prowled. Perhaps that’s where it had always been, and she was only now discovering the truth. Was she more her mother’s child than her father’s? She was in the abyss, plunging headlong through the darkness. Whoever she really was, she needed her mother now.

  The door grated on its hinges. Someone entered on her left. She didn’t open her eyes right away. The cave behind the waterfall held her attention. The darkness beckoned. It loved her, she could feel it. But she was no longer alone in the ring. She slipped off the awkward shoes and unfolded her legs. Two men loosely dressed standing opposite eyed her warily. She noticed their hands, strong and calloused. They had been trained. Limber legs moved with a recognizable spring. They placed their feet carefully with each step, aligning heels and toes, slowly at first, but clearly capable of quickness. She moved to keep them in front while they sought to get around her. She circled back around, in one direction or the other, always avoiding the center.

  It wasn’t clear how long she could hold them at bay like this. Why were they even here to fight her? She killed the Russian when he attacked. But now she wondered if he was trapped like her. These men looked like soldiers, professionals of some sort, mercenaries perhaps. What consideration did she owe them? She stepped forward, to the center, splitting them apart. The unexpected move disconcerted them. They hesitated. She smiled.

  Kicks from both sides, one high, one low. Crossover step to block low with her foot. Ducking under the high kick allowed her to kick to the opposite face. He would have evaded if she hadn’t already trapped his foot. Her heel loosened his teeth and bloodied his face. He stumbled backwards as his partner tried to bring his raised leg down on her head. Her fist struck his groin, not hard enough to disable him through the guard he wore, but the pain was sharp enough to drive him back. He squatted against the wall. It bought her a moment to attend to the other man singly. He didn’t want to risk another kick. A feint with his left foot covered a lunging left jab: too slow. She stepped inside his fist without blocking and landed a sharp reverse punch to his solar plexus, the soft spot under the sternum. He staggered back to the wall unable to breathe for several seconds.

  So far she had fought them off without doing any permanent damage. Unless they broke off the fight on their own, she would have to hurt them in a more serious way. She glanced up at Miss Park to read what she could from her expression. The General was nodding and smiling broadly at something she said. Were they risking everything in the ring for his amusement? Were these men trapped like the others? She could feel the fear shivering beneath their bravado. She bowed to each one and sat down with crossed legs and closed eyes. What would happen next? She was sure she didn’t care.

  A shot rang out. One of the men lay motionless on the floor, a pool of blood spread in all directions from beneath his head. She saw the other man’s terror. Miss Park stood on the walkway with a pistol in her hand. The meaning of the glare she directed at Emily was clear: “If you don’t kill them, I will.” When she didn’t stand, the second man ran to the door. Another shot ended his presumption. The bodies were dragged out, the puddles sopped up.

  “If you won’t fight, I can find someone whose life I think you won’t risk.”

  The message was clear. She still had Anthony. Emily suspected it, but this was confirmation. The effect on her was perhaps not what Miss Park intended. She had expected to have to rescue him all along. This news merely served to focus her mind on the task.

  A snap of the fingers and the door opened again. Four men rushed in and took up positions around the ring. Asians, probably Korean. Well-fed. Members of her team? They were armed with an assortment of clubs, sticks and one even had a sword. Some part of her wanted to ignore them, let them beat her to death. At least then she wouldn’t have to take their lives. But she couldn’t allow herself to be killed. Anthony and Li Li needed her.

  She picked herself up, surveyed her adversaries, breathed in the mixture of fear and confidence they exuded. The germ of the pattern of her movements had already presented itself: the man with the sword would hesitate. He didn’t know if he had permission to kill her. He could try to wound her, merely incapacitate her, but that would require precision, perhaps more than he was confident of possessing. Step and pivot inside his first stroke, twist and wrench his sword hand out and up, elbow to the chest. Pivot under the hand and run the blade across his ribs. Pull the sword from his broken hand. A vertical stroke through the collarbone and down the chest of the man with the clubs. Pivot and step forward, bringing the blade up through the groin of the lunging bo staff. The nunchaku would expect to be able to trap the swinging blade. Stab straight through the block with sideways edge to the center of his chest. Pull the blade through with a swinging pivot step decapitating the first man. The sequence was as clear as it was gruesome.

  She shuddered at the mere thought of it, then deflected the lunging bo staff upwards, twisted it out of his hands, swinging it vertically first down into the groin, then back up to the head. The clubs blocked the backwards lunge of the staff to the face behind her, but not the side kick to the chest that sent him crashing into the wall. She pivoted to block the horizontal strike of the nunchaku, spinning the bo through the entangled chain, wrenching them from his hands. In his bewilderment he tried to grab the staff. She released it and struck him twice across the face with the nunchaku in a crossing pattern. As he fell backwards she swept his foot with a low kick, forcing him to land flat on his back, cracking his head against the floor.

  The man with the sword was motionless this whole time, which lasted all of about three seconds. She was moving too fast for him to risk swinging the sword, perhaps killing her or one of his own men. She glared at him, holding the nunchaku ready in her right hand. Finally he lunged forward with his right foot, perhaps hoping to stab her in the shoulder. It wouldn’t be a fatal blow. Safe. She slid out of the way, swinging the nunchaku around to the back of his head and kicking through the back of his left knee. He fell to his knees and tried to compensate by spinning as he swung the sword behind him. She caught it in the chain as she kicked the back of his right elbow. He dropped the sword to clutch his broken arm. She tossed the nunchaku aside and sat against the opposite wall.

  So far no one dead. Would they attack again? It didn’t look like they wanted to. Would Miss Park shoot them? It might undermine the morale of her team to kill too many. She closed her eyes and awaited the result. She heard them pick themselves up and limp from the ring. The air was clear and cool. The rhythm beating against her ribs was not her father’s. She listened to it, savored it. It echoed in the cave as she felt herself once again falling through the darkness.

  -back to top-

  Chapter 21

  The Clone

  When she finally opened her eyes, he was standing at the opposite end of the ring, seemingly indifferent to her presence. Why should he care? She was nobody to him. A tiny, insignificant girl. She felt the darkness inside, caressing her, clinging to her heart. But she heard nothing from him. He seemed to have no vital spirit, no he
art. Was he even breathing at all?

  Emily looked him over carefully. Miss Park seemed to be giving her the time to do just that, perhaps to intimidate her. He looked terrifying: huge, muscular, lumbering. His arms were as thick as her thighs, his neck even thicker. He had no hair on his head, his face, his chest, perhaps none anywhere on his body. His baby face was utterly incongruous. All that was daunting enough, but not nearly as much as his eyes. They were black like hers. But they seemed unfocused, even glazed over. When she looked at him from across the ring, she couldn’t find him in his eyes.

  Finally Miss Park spoke. “Ba We!” Was that his name? She barked a command at him and he took a step forward. “He wants to fight you,” she called out to Emily. When she got no response, she said “Fine. Die then.”

  Emily picked herself up off the floor.

  “Who is he?” she said.

  “He’s nobody, a genetic experiment. We want to see how he compares to your grandfather’s experiment.”

  “Where are the children?” she demanded.

  “They’re secure. You don’t need to concern yourself with them anymore.”

  Emily wasn’t certain, but she suspected Anthony and Li Li were nearby. Miss Park called out a command to him and he lunged towards her. He was faster than she expected. She circled away, staying just out of reach. The ring was big enough to do that for a little while, but clearly not for long. She prepared herself to stand and face him. Instead of a fighting stance, she held her right hand out to him as if in a sort of greeting.

  His legs were so big she didn’t expect him to be limber enough to kick effectively. By the same token, however, she probably wouldn’t be able to accomplish much kicking his legs. It wasn’t at all clear that she could hurt him at all. He was just too big, too solid.

  He reached to grab her arm. She parried his hand and controlled his wrist, twisting his arm and flexing his palm back towards his fore arm. It took both hands to control him this way. She twisted as hard as she could but he didn’t budge. Ordinarily the pain of this hold would force an adversary too his knees, or into a flip. When she threw larger men around in a fight, she was really using their own strength against them. They threw themselves rather than endure the pain she could inflict with a joint lock. But it didn’t work this time. He seemed impervious to pain.

  He turned out to be just strong enough to bend his elbow and draw her closer in spite of the contortion of his wrist. She could no longer release him. He was too close. In a sudden reversal he shoved her against the wall, effectively extricating himself from her grip. A quick spin and a slap to the head sent her sprawling across the ring. Before she could recover her wits he was on top of her, seizing her by an arm and a leg. He would have grabbed her by the hair if she had more of it. She sailed across the ring like a leaf in the breeze, bounced off the opposite wall and fell to the floor. It was lucky she didn’t hit her head, or she might have lost consciousness. He was merely toying with her.

  She squirted out of his grasp before he could throw her again. It was time to rethink whatever her strategy was. She obviously couldn’t control him with a joint lock. And blows that didn’t incapacitate him were probably useless, too, if they brought her into his reach. She could try to damage his knees. But that would certainly take several blows. Whatever happened, it wasn’t clear that she could take another throw like that last one. She needed to get him down on the floor, but the only way she could see to do that was to get him to try to kick her. Not being able to read him, to ‘hear’ him, put her at a deadly disadvantage. If she couldn’t anticipate him, her only hope was to be faster than him, to react more quickly. But it wasn’t clear that she was faster.

  She circled away, back pedaling and watching for openings. Occasionally a kick to his knee got through. It was hard to do any real damage that way. At least it didn’t appear to slow him down any. She lunged in closer this time, kicked harder. Instead of trying to block he flicked his hand toward her head. She turned away from the blow, but it caught the side of her head just above the ear. A glancing blow, but enough to knock her across the room.

  He dove after her, hoping to get there before she could roll out of his grasp. He managed to get one hand on her waist and tore at her shirt. They slid to the wall together. The force of the collision with his shoulder allowed her to twist her hip away from his hand and scissor her legs around his neck just as they hit the wall. Before he could react, she had his right wrist in another joint lock, his left arm trapped underneath him. He was helpless, pinned against the wall. Without his right arm, he couldn’t roll over or push her off. She could snap his neck with a squeeze and a twist of her legs, and they both knew it.

  Emily was looking directly into his empty, lifeless eyes as she yanked hard on his wrist and began to force his head back with her legs. It was a grinding, inexorable process. A mute commotion swirled to life on the walkway as it dawned on them what was happening. Hushed glances on all sides. Should they stop her? Could they? How had she turned the tables on the clone? Their voices reached her ears as if from a great distance. She shut them out. Only Anthony and Li Li mattered. If she let him live, she would die, and their hopes with her. His eyes were already dead anyway. Black pools of unthinking, unfeeling hate. She could feel the tension of his vertebrae as they were gradually wrenched out of position. The pulse of the large artery in his neck beat against her thigh. Slow and powerful at first, as the echo of a mighty engine, then weaker and faster, almost desperately urgent.

  In the course of squeezing the very life out of him, everything changed. She didn’t know exactly how or when it happened. Perhaps he sensed his looming end, or maybe he finally felt the pain of her grip. She was twisting his wrist back on itself with enough force to bend a tire iron, she thought. Whatever it was, she saw his pupils contract and come to focus. He saw her. And finally she was able to see him, to see who he really was. He wore the expression of a little boy. His distress was genuine, but now it was painted in the colors of a child’s fear. Their eyes connected for a brief moment. She heard a voice call to her from somewhere deep inside. At first it was too faint to make out what it said. It grew louder and more insistent, even desperate, like a frightened child: “Oonni.”

  She didn’t recognize the word. But she could feel it’s meaning clearly enough in her heart: “Sister.” Her breath caught in her throat as soon as it dawned on her. She looked at him again, contemplated him for a long moment, then relaxed her legs and released his wrist. He couldn’t take his eyes off her, now that he saw her at all. It took a few seconds to disentangle herself from his head and shoulders. She stooped to help him sit up, then rubbed his cheek and kissed him on the forehead. “Ba We,” she said and he nodded. He didn’t seem able to speak.

  All hell was breaking loose outside the ring. The armed guards leveled their weapons. Miss Park was yelling at them. Emily guessed she didn’t want them to shoot yet. One of the junior officers ran to the door shouting orders on a radio. Several men burst through the lower door wielding what looked like cattle prods and stun guns pointed at Emily.

  Ba We was on his feet in an instant and responded with terrific savagery. He hit one man so hard in the chest it seemed to collapse his ribs. He was dead before he hit the floor. He slammed two more heads together. Emily watched him in stunned silence. He moved without hesitation, completely unencumbered by doubt or compassion. The thought occurred to her: this is what I must have looked like to my friends that night by the lake. Except the level of violence is so much greater now. Where did he find the emotional energy to do these things?

  He typically dispatched them with a single blow of tremendous force. One man’s face was fist-crushed against the back of his skull, blood spurting out of his ears. He grabbed another by the head and flung him lifeless across the ring and onto the walkway. A man who seemed to be menacing Emily was pounded on the top of the head crushing his spine. He was fighting to protect her! That’s where she must have found the energy that night, too.

 
; Everything was happening so fast, no one knew how to contain them. The soldiers were afraid to shoot. But what else could they do? Without deadly force none of them could hope to overpower him. When a heavily armed assault team burst into the ring, Emily knew there was no further point holding back. These men were willing to kill her. She saw her opportunity: they had brought weapons into the ring. The team must have thought their body armor would give them an advantage, or at least some tactical protection, and perhaps they were right. One man sustained a punch to the chest that didn’t simply kill him. But others weren’t necessarily so fortunate. Blows to the head from Ba We were still deadly.

  One man lunged at Emily with a knife. She blocked him, controlled the wrist, snapped the elbow and buried the blade just below his arm pit, a spot unprotected by his armor. A kick to the knee brought him down. She seized the knife and slashed his throat as he fell.

  In a single fluid motion she turned and threw the knife to the spot where Miss Park had been sitting. She missed her, but hit the General in the center of the chest. He fell to his knees sputtering. Miss Park was stunned, her face turned grey, then white. Who was the General to her? Clearly more than just a superior officer.

  Miss Park shouted an order to the guards. She was at last willing to let them shoot. Emily ran across the ring as they lowered their weapons toward Ba We. He was occupied pressing the last two men in the ring against the wall by their necks and didn’t notice the guards. Emily was moving at full speed when she planted her foot on his shoulder and launched herself at them. She managed to grab the gun barrels and yank both men down into the ring before they could fire. They were quickly dispatched.