Page 84 of Her Unending Horizon

Kobi moved like he belonged there. Loose and relaxed, shoulders down, a little bounce in his step. His body was cut, but not in a cartoonish gym-bro way. Solid. Efficient. He gave the cage a quick glance, a predator checking terrain.

You knew, looking at him, that he’d done this many times before.

Maurice cleared out, the gate clanged shut, and some guy with a whistle and a stopwatch shuffled in to give them the world’s shortest safety speech.

“No hits to the back of the head. No eye gouges. No groin. Protect yourselves at all times,” he droned.

The whistle shrieked.

Round one, Tyler tried to be aggressive. He moved forward, lead hand jabbing, doing what somebody had told him to do in some gym somewhere. But his feet were off—crossing, stumbling, never fully underneath him. His head stayed on the center line too long.

Kobi read him in about ten seconds.

He started slipping Tyler’s jabs just enough to make him miss, making him pay with clean counters. A hook to the body here, a straight right there. Nothing that dropped Tyler immediately, but enough to rattle his brain around a little more.

Tyler’s guard started drifting down as he chased Kobi around the cage, frustration mounting. He was burning gas fast. I could see it from thirty feet away.

“Breathe, kid,” I muttered under my breath. “Hands up. Stop chasing.”

Kobi’s expression never changed. Calm. Focused. There was no malice there—just a man doing a job.

He waited.

When Tyler lunged in sloppily with a wide right hook, Kobi slipped inside it and answered with a short, tight uppercut that snapped Tyler’s head back. Tyler stumbled, hit the cage, bounced.

The crowd roared. A couple of the women near the bar leaned forward, eyes bright.

Tyler didn’t go down. Credit where it was due—he stayed on his feet, shaking it off. He threw a few wild shots, most of which hit air.

The whistle blew, ending the round.

Tyler staggered back to his corner—if you could call a strip of chain-link and a folding chair a corner—and sank down, chest heaving.

No coach stepped in. No cutman. No water man.

Just Tyler, alone, trying to remember how to breathe.

Kobi stayed standing between rounds, pacing a slow circle, eyes on his opponent like a shark waiting for the next taste of blood.

Round two started worse.

Tyler went out there like he had something to prove to the people who’d never see this—his wife, that unborn baby, the bank that wanted rent. He swung like his money and manhood and future were all riding on this one night.

Which, in his head, they probably were.

He overextended on nearly every punch.

Kobi picked him apart.

A low kick to Tyler’s lead leg buckled his balance. A jab split his guard. Another straight right slammed into the same spot on his cheekbone as last time. I could almost hear Cappy’s disapproving voice in my head, counting all the ways this should never have been sanctioned.

By the midpoint of the round, Tyler’s movements had gone slow and rubbery. His arms were dropping just a little slower each time. There was a foggy, faraway look in his eyes that I did not like.

“One more,” I whispered. “Just one clean clinch, ride it out, let them call it.”

He tried to oblige. He staggered forward, arms reaching to clinch, to tie Kobi up.

Kobi swam under and around, created space, and fired a short hook to the temple.