The other combatant cautiously sized me up before swiftly moving in with his hands guarding his face. He threw a few quick jabs that I stopped using my forearms, and then he reacted by going for low blows before…
I struck him with the side of my elbow and immediately knocked him unconscious.
The crowd was completely silent for a few moments; I searched around awkwardly for some kind of approval or at least something. But once the referee announced me as the winner, there were cheers going up all around me.
Just because he was Teach Norlin, the professor started shouting: “Knockdown T! Knockdown T!”
Everybody else began repeating the nickname, and I sighed realizing that Norlin was going to make fun of me for the rest of my career with that stupid ass nickname.
--
You know, that's how the majority of my fights went: one good hit sent them all down for the count—at least when it came to most of the lower contestants. It's a shame, but I spent a long time trying to move up in the ranks; it's just that there were so many fools trying to make it to the top for just a little bit of glory. For me, it became a journey to find someone strong like the Professor. I wanted a fight that would bring everything out of me—something that would make me feel the thrill of barely succeeding. The professor had also started adding in a weight lifting portion to my training, and damn was that man almost as surprised as I when we found out that I could heft an unbelievable amount for my age. There was a time when he desperately wanted to see how well I could perfect my bench, and everybody knew that Norlin was the reigning champion of that particular exercise. The Professor was once used to lifting six hundred but was now bench-pressing at four hundred and seventy-five on a good day for him.
The first time I touched the barbell, I almost dropped the weight on myself. But after a little practice and only two months of constant lifting, I'd reached a max of three hundred and fifty—to everyone’s shock.
And it would only go up from there.
I’d already been abnormally strong, but the room for growth was something I’d never expected. And as I slowly but surely moved up in the Third Quadrant, I brought in a small amount of prize money. It wasn't anything much, but I always brought a little bit of it to Eze to help with the rent. He was going through a phase again where he sold on the streets a few times a week but mostly just stayed at home and kept getting high. New drugs were in the Third Quad, something I didn't want to be a part of when I was almost always at the dojo.
When he wasn't beating me with his wrists and yelling at me during practice, Professor Norlin sometimes went off into history lectures. He's where I learned more about the Citadel and the Dawn Federation as a whole.
“You already know, T, that Derek, Avva, Khalil, and Ishida are typically viewed as heroes, right?”
“They aren’t?”
He smirked. “Not exactly. They were a group of mercs; contractors who fought in a war for this city. You see, the Citadel's been here longer than the Federation, it was owned by three different factions at the time Enrec was still a mercenary company. Derek and the rest of the captains of Enrec waged a secret war with those they perceived as rivals and kept pitting them against each other until they were hired by the strongest force to eliminate the rest. And would you believe it, Enrec used all of its resources to take out the opposition before turning on the faction that hired them. But you should know all this already…”
“I don't, Teach. I missed that lesson…”
“But you have the new system at home, right?”
I shook my head. “No. My family can't keep up with thr cost— ‘virtual’ isn’t cheap.”
“Well that's a damn shame, Knockdown.” Norlin sighed. “Looks like the universe needs me to teach your ass everything—but as I was saying, the Dawn Federation's oldest enemy is Alandra. It's a group of cities in the World Below and to the South that live the same way we do, but the Federation has this crazy dream of making its borders bigger and bigger. If you ask me, boy, those big-league fools in the government want to do the same thing our ancestors did: reunite the world.”
Professor Norlin coughed and thought for a moment. “An impossible dream. You can't reunite a world we no longer understand. After the First Rift, any hope humans had of 'normal' disappeared. Now we live next these… others. You can call them aliens or monsters or whatever you want—the thing is, Knockdown, many of them can talk and think like us. Many of them look just like us, but the world isn't ready to come together as one community. We have enough divisiveness within our own families—I mean, brothers grow up in the same country and somehow end up on opposite sides of a fire fight. But forget about all that,” he put his hand on my shoulder, “just keep your head where it's at, Knockdown. Don't let this world corrupt you, no matter how much a fight changes who you are.”
“Got it, Teach.”
--
Later that day, I won another competition; in fact, it was my final fight before I was able to enter a contest that would decide the Third Quadrant's Champion. It'd been more than a year since I'd met Isaac, and it was the first time I'd ever seen him act the way he did that day.
I washed my face and looked at myself in the bathroom mirror before High Rise walked in and seemed overly excited. His dad had been shot and slain ruthlessly three months ago, and his mom was getting sick… too sick to keep up with incoming bills. Isaac had been both broken and heavily stressed for a time, but this was the first that I'd seen him genuinely happy since then. He walked up to me and looked around before lowering his tone.
“Ay T, I got a proposition for ya.”
“If it's about another basketball bet, you can—”
“Nah,” he bumped me, “I'm serious, brother.” Isaac rubbed his hands together eagerly. “You remember my cousin Dfari, right?”
I started laughing. “You mean that fool with that ugly hair line up?”
“Bro!” He bumped me again. “My man has connections, you see! All this cheap cash you been gettin' for fighting professionally, Dfari's crew can top that.”
“What do you mean?”
He grabbed me. “I mean motherfuckin' dough, my man! Real cash! You're not hearing me, so let me break it down real quick:
“Junior League ain't shit, brother. It's not the big leagues, and the big leagues are taken over by a bunch of rich cats who paid their way into those matches! Those matches are rigged, I know it. The money you get from here isn't even enough for you to live on—but I got you, man. My family couldn't afford the 'virtual reality game' neither, so I gotta grind and do what my father did, you see? Not only am I going to end the punk who killed my dad, but I'm going to make two times over whatever he got for doin’ that stupid shit—but that's not all, T! Yo, Dfari's crew been watching you win and win; they know it's going to take too much time for you to make it big, they already know it’s not gonna be worth it… so they want you to work for them.”
“And what's Dfari about, huh? What's his 'crew' up to?”
Isaac smiled and shrugged. “They just about gettin' the money, T. You don't have to think about it all ethically. They'll set you up if you do right by them, brother. They already know you the best fighter, so they want to use you for security.”
“Security for what?”
“On… —on jobs, man.” He avoided my gaze. “You know, like making packages get where they're supposed to or—or providing extra muscle on a job.”
“Yeah, but what is the job? Why you being cryptic, Rise; it's just me here, man. Why'd you stop training with Teach, anyways? He been asking about you.”
Isaac reached into his backpack and searched the room again before showing me stacks of Citadel currency neatly bundled together.
My eyes went wide. “Yo! You hit it big, Rise!”
“You know it!” Isaac zipped his bag up again and slung it across his back. “So, what you think? You down to do a man's job?”
“I… I guess I can see what’s up with it.” I scratched my head, feeling uncert
ain and laughed nervously.
--
It's funny, because I thought my first job for Dfari's crew would be as a delivery boy or something you'd see in a crime film.
After I hesitantly agreed, I was told to report to the corner of some streets I don't exactly remember. I arrived to find a tall, lanky older kid wearing shades and who’d braided his hair. He was leaning on the side of a building next to a short, bald kid much younger than me who stood out on the corner and started shouting names I'd never heard before.
They noticed me as they walked up and quickly sprang into action—running to confront me like I'd just disrespected them somehow. The tall one spoke while staring me down: “You the one Dfari been talkin' about? You Knockdown T? The REAL Knockdown T?”
I stood there for a moment and was quiet until he yelled, “Well? Say something!”
“Yeah.” I said. “But I'm just ‘T’—I don't need nicknames like that.”
“Shit, whatever.” The taller guy smiled and shook my hand. “I’m just playin’ with you, I know who you are. Name's Vic.”
The shorter kid did the same and chimed in, “Little.”
“Little?” I jeered.
“Yeah.” Little became serious and reached behind his back to pull out a glock that he aimed at my face. “But that don't mean you gotta laugh.”
I put my hands up. “My bad, Little; I wasn't trying to make fun of you!”
“It's all good, T.” He put the gun away, shook his head, and smiled. “Wasn’t loaded anyways. You're good peoples—Here, hit this; you're gonna be here for a while.”
Little handed me my first properly rolled blunt, and it's a gesture I still think about to this day.
--
I kept imagining that something was going to pop off on my first shift. All we did was stand on the corner and take cash from strangers. After receiving the money, we'd tell them where to go and rotate said locations every time. The Third Quadrant had a lot of opportunities as far as good stash houses go, and Dfari only entrusted us with smaller amounts of the product. There were two other cells the same size as us operating on the fringes of the Third Quadrant, and we'd fortunately been given space to work in the center of the district’s activity.
They told me I didn't have to say anything. At this point, I’d grown into a more sizable individual and so was ordered by Vic to “look tough.” The only reason I was there was to make those two appear more intimidating if we were approached by someone trying to disrespect Dfari's name. Thus, that was what I did, which was essentially nothing at all—but at the same time, I was warned that I'd fulfill a more essential role when they needed me.
At the end of our workday, an old, rusted cruiser arrived at our spot. The driver rolled down a tinted window and revealed himself to be Dfari.
Dfari was around eighteen years old and a much shorter person than I'd remembered. He only had stubble and was missing an eye—and in a way, it made him seem more fearsome. It was rumored that although he wasn't particularly strong, Dfari had killed three people when he was a younger foot soldier for the crew. He called Little over and handed the young kid a backpack much like the one Isaac had been wearing and said: “Split it between yourself and Vic, and…” He stared at me for a moment. “Tell the newbie to get in the whip.”
I did as he asked and was surprised to find Isaac in the passenger seat. Dfari was a man of few words, as I started finding out when he tossed me another backpack and never looked back as he spoke.
“I'm told you're stronger than most. If that’s so, then we can use you, take care of you. High Rise, explain things to your subordinate.”
“That's my boy!” Isaac shouted. “Look at you gettin’ your grind on. Dfari's boss has something big planned for a group of us. He said it'll take some time to put together, but D’s requested you take part, Knockdown!”
“As long as I don't miss a fight.” I didn’t want to come off as disrespectful, but I had my own priorities. “I'm entering the contest to be Third Quadrant's Champion…”
Dfari laughed but kept his eyes fixed on the road.
“Listen man,” Isaac said with a frown, “you gotta start thinkin' on bigger things. My father was a banger, you feel me? He did what he had to so he could put food on the table and afford what we needed—but now!” He shook his head. “I'm in the slums tryin' to make sure my mom gets the right medication. The damn doc won't diagnose her right, and he keeps charging us for his fucking mistakes!”
“I'm sorry, Rise.” I said.
Dfari pulled up to one of the more expensive apartment complexes in the Third Quadrant. It was one that actually had hot running water and its own kitchen, but it was reserved normally for the working class in the area.
Dfari spoke confidently: “Tell him, Rise.”
“Ay, brother,” Isaac’s cheerful demeanor had returned, “you see this place here?”
“I'm not blind.”
“But you see it, right? Jurulian Apartments?”
“Yeah, idiot! Why?”
“It can be yours.”
“What?!”
Isaac smiled. “If we pull off this next job, we can afford our own rooms here—and Dfari's boss knows the manager and can guarantee we end up with a spot! My mom’s going to come live here so I can get her out of that mess!”
--
The following few days I kept going to the same corner and merely watched over Little and Vic, who both quickly grew on me. Even though they didn't always show it, they had a lot of respect for who I was and had witnessed my abilities in a fight. Because of them, I made enough money to afford a virtual reality system for school, but I gave most of it to Eze so that he could handle the purchase and feel better about himself as a guardian. Unfortunately, he never bought the system. Instead, that money ended up buying a larger quantity of Graidol for his own use.
It’s my fault.
All because of that morning.
--
I'd woken up late for work and was hurrying to get dressed while Eze decided to finally confront me with every question he'd ever had:
“So, you skip school for weeks and you wanna act like it’s all good, huh? Why the change of heart, T? The only company I have now is Anubis—and he's barely here either!”
I snorted. “Look, Eze, it's probably because all you do is get high now!”
“Excuse me?!” He looked offended.
“Don't talk like you don't know what I'm saying!” I raised my voice; it was the first time I'd ever legitimately been mad at Eze. “You used to be so ambitious, pops! You wanted to move up in the world and become some yuppie big shot. Then you start getting money, realizing you can get more than you need for your fix, and now everything you got goes to those damn drugs!”
“And like you don't come home smellin' like weed, kid?”
“That's beside the point! I'm always helping you pay the bills—”
“And you should.” Eze was curt.
“No!” I shouted. “I shouldn't! I pay for almost everything around here!”
“By scrappin’ and selling drugs, what else is new.”
I couldn't believe him. It was as if he didn't remember how hard I’d worked for him on the streets before I went to the institution. I chose to calm down for a second and said, “Look… I do what I gotta do. For us.”
“You do it for yourself, T! I didn't ask you to buy me a 'K Cell'—or whatever they call it! I didn't ask for a new couch or TV or any of this!” He kept yelling. “I wanted you to keep doing what you needed to do in school! I wanted you to graduate and become something big! Not throw away your dreams banging on the damn streets, kid. You could be a doctor—or a successful manager—but you're choosing a goddamn gang over your own true values. I told you once and I'll just as soon tell you again: God is looking at you. Don’t you realize it?”
“Whatever, old man…”
I walked away from him without another word and headed into the world outside when he shouted: “I'm not wasting hard-earned money
on a virtual school since you want to act like this—And-and don't bother coming back if this is how you want to live! I don't support what they do, Tavon… I hate what you’ve done to yourself.”
--
I worked the corner that day and was getting to know Little and Vic better when I got a call on an old cell phone I'd purchased, a call from Professor Norlin.
“Knockdown T!” He exclaimed. “It's a bit of a short notice, but I finally got you in!”
“Got me in?”
Vic and Little stared at me curiously.
“People in the Third Quadrant been watching some of your wins, boy, and a petition went around requesting you fight the current Champion of the Quad. This is really big, Knockdown; it's your first shot at real fame—you'd be able to rep your home if you won!”
At last, my big break. Maybe I could go beyond my current lifestyle. I’d prove Eze wrong.
“When is it?” I was eager but cautious. “Like a few weeks from now, because I'd like to prac—”
“It's tonight at eight, boy.”
“What?!”
“You'd better be at my dojo, because HE asked to challenge you there!”
“What's the guy's name?”
“I don't know—I think it starts with a 'B' or 'D' or something, but win this match, T…” Norlin stuttered, seemingly overcome with emotion. “Son, you could change your whole life.”
14
Shook Ones
--
Janelle
--
“HOW CAN YOU JUST SIT THERE and tell your life story when we've been fucking captured!” Aaliyah yelled. “You really are insane!”
Detective Aaliyah and Tavon had been bound to wooden chairs on the top floor of a rather immense building. And, oddly enough, surrounding them were office suites with only panes of glass as well as glass doors dividing each individual room. They were being held in a black, monochrome-themed conference chamber and were both seated side-by-side before an elongated, oak table.
The two of them had woken up like this and been left alone with each other for over hours now, and thus Tavon had decided to keep talking to pass the time.
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