Fighting Chance 7

“Fuck—”

He didn’t even get the word all the way out before something in his hand snapped cold through his bones like a jolt, like getting tagged in the ribs with a live wire, and his whole body locked up, buzzed out.

What the hell—?

The chain was looped around his fingers now, coiled around his wrist too. He didn’t even remember grabbing the thing, not really. One second, he was flying through the air after things had gone south in the most colossal way and it was all glass and fists and fear and soy sauce, and the next, it was like the floor beneath all that cracked open.

Not literally, of course, cause they were on the eighth floor, be for real, but… something. Something shifted, or tightened, or whatever else you could call it.

Not like a superpower in the comics.

Not like a movie, either.

Like the entire room bowed its head.

Zain blinked. Everything inside him had that snap. The kind that came after you’ve been flinching so long your nerves gave up trying.

And then it hit—he wasn’t flinching anymore.

The chain just—fit.

Like it had been waiting. Like it knew his hand better than he did. Nah, that sounded stupid. He didn’t care. Something in his chest pulled taut like a tripwire and his brain was still trying to play catch-up but his grip was already solid.

Okay… okay, weird.

Cool-weird?

No, wait—kinda terrifying weird.

But also kinda… badass?

The chain pulsed once, not like visibly, but in the air around it. Just enough to hum around where he grabbed it.

Zain’s lip curled. Not from anger. Just reflex.

Bet.

He’d read books before.

Comics, yeah, sure, all the time, he loved comics. Video games, too. What thirteen-year-old boy didn’t love video games? And movies, too, being honest. But like, books-books too. Old fantasy stuff. Stuff where the kid who was scrubbing dishes or stealing food or whatever got some magical sword dropped on him by fate and everyone acted like it was destiny and all that.

Or some random swordmaster was described as moving “like he was born with a weapon in his hand”.

He used to think that was cap.

He still thought it was cap, honestly.

But this?

This was giving that same vibe and it was almost pissing him off how good it felt. Because it just made no sense.

His whole body felt… aligned. Like his bones remembered something before his brain did. Like if he moved, the chain would already know where he was going. And yeah, okay, that sounded corny as hell—but it didn’t feel corny.

It felt right.

Which was the scariest part.

He glanced down at the thing again, the coils gleaming soft under the busted display light, the ends hanging like a question mark.

Nah. Nah, this wasn’t real. This couldn’t be real.

He tightened his grip anyway.

He didn’t risk letting go.

Really didn’t wanna.

He grinned without meaning to, chest tight with something he didn’t know how to name yet. It could’ve been panic, but he was pretty sure that was a few seconds ago. It could’ve been power. Or it could’ve just been the fact that everything in the room felt like it had slowed down and all the volume in the world had disappeared.

He looked at the chain again.

Insane.

Zain rolled the chain once around his wrist, just to feel the weight. Solid. and real clean, dangerous in a way he had never thought of about a chain weapon.

Across from him, Chen was posted up like someone kicked his brain out his nose and it hadn’t come back yet, as shaky as he was you’d think the guy had almost forgotten how legs worked. One hand shook a little, whole body tilting like gravity got personal before he stilled himself and tightened his fighting stance. Blood still running from his face like a leaky faucet—drip, drip, drip—onto black hardwood floors that probably cost more than anything Zain’d ever stolen.

Which, yeah, felt kinda poetic.

Probably not, but what did he know about poetry?

The big dude though?

Nah, Muscles wasn’t hurt, or at least he didn’t really act like it.

Not really.

Yeah, the glass shards were all over his face in little bits like really sharp and shiny freckles, scratches and blood too with it, from where Zain’s earlier lucky shot just managed to crack open against his hard head. Muscle’s fists kept clenching, slow and mean, and the sound of his knuckles cracking sounded as dangerous the guy looked. The big guy wanted blood.

Cool. Love that for me.

Zain adjusted his stance, one foot sliding back, fingers flexing around the chain again. He couldn’t feel his ribs—probably bad—but the high buzzing under his skin drowned that out. Like the pain was still there, just dialed down under something louder.

The chain spun once. Then twice.

Faster now as his wrist moved on instinct, lazy at first, then tighter, tighter, until the blur of silver started to glow a little just from motion.

This wasn’t training. This wasn’t technique. This was just him doing what came natural.

He grinned, teeth slick with red from the gash in his cheek where he bit the inside of his mouth on one of his hard slams to the ground. “Round two?” he muttered, half to himself, half to the room. Was it a dumb move? Sure, but it felt good saying it and that was all Zain cared about right now.

Muscles spat to the side, blood leaving his mouth in a thick glob.

Then he charged.

The floor shook under him, hardwood not built for three-hundred-and-fifty pounds of Chinese elephant abusing it.

Zain swore under his breath and Chen twitched forward too, wobble-step with one hand diving into his jacket—gun? Knife? Hell no. No time to wait and find out.

Zain pivoted, chain riding the twist of his body, and let it fly.

It sang through the air like a razor, the sound of metal moving wrong but perfect, and the impact? That hit dead center.

CRACK.

Right across Mr. Muscles’ nose. The hit stopped him cold—literal whiplash, as his head snapped back like he hit a wall. Blood exploded out in a spray to match Chen’s, red catching the light like it belonged in a movie.

Zain’s eyes went wide. Oh damn. That worked.

The big dude staggered back, blinking as if he couldn’t believe what happened all of a sudden, like he hadn’t seen it coming. A single hand went to his face to make sure of it. When he pulled it away? All red dripping down his palm to match the face that looked like a crime scene. But it was his eyes that really changed. Confusion turned to rage in one blink.

Zain didn’t flinch.

Didn’t stop.

Didn’t even breathe.

He stepped. Spun. Whip in hand again. The chain blurred with speed, slicing air as he brought it back around for another hit.

“Haha!”

No, for real, it was crazy how this chain felt like it was built for him, all the way down to his barely teenage hands. Like it’d been waiting this whole time, tucked away in some crusty cabinet full of ancient nonsense just so it could end up in his busted-up hands tonight.

The thing almost flowed. He had no other way to describe it, really.

He just threw his weight around, and the chain followed like it already knew what he wanted, every impact from the end of it landing with a hard snap like a full-force punch from his fist.

The big dude backed off now, which, yeah—about damn time. Arms up, elbows catching arcs of steel, forearms turning red fast. The chain bit and Zain wasn’t letting up with. He couldn’t afford to, not if he wanted to get out of here in one piece. His ribs were still screaming, but if that mattered, it definitely didn’t right now.

Not when this was working.

Not when the mountain-man was finally treating him like more than a speed bump.

Then Chen decided he wanted seconds.

Dumbass.

Dude lunged from the side with a knife out and murder in his eyes, face still leaking from the soda-can-and-headbutt combo earlier. His nose was clearly broken, Zain’s head as hard as his mom always said it was and his mouth? Painted with blood like he bit a grenade. His eyes were wild, different sizes too. Zain wasn’t a doctor and never wanted to be one but he was pretty sure the guy was definitely concussed.

Didn’t stop Chen from trying to stab him, though.

The teenager’s eyes went wide as he ducked a slash from the man in the soda-wet suit and then flinched left to dodge another. At the very same time, the chain whipped right.

It snagged and Zain’s eyes went wide for a different reason.

Totally by accident, but hey—he’d take it.

Links wrrapped tight around Chen’s wrist, chain digging deep, silk sleeve dug deep into his skin. Once again, Zain didn’t bother thinking. Instead, he just yanked.

Just pure get off me energy. His feet slid on the floor like a bowling alley, the chain went tight, and then—

Chen flew.

THUD.

And landed face-first into the wall, his whole body behind him. The knife clattered to the ground, and Zain didn’t even get time to appreciate the ragdoll physics before a painting crashed down after him. The frame broke and glass went everywhere as Chen slid to the floor like a dropped puppet, nose leaving a red trail down the white paint like a crime scene.

“Sit down,” Zain muttered, mostly to himself, but he didn’t even get to celebrate.

Because the fridge monster was still standing.

Correction: charging.

Mr. Muscles, aka the Big Man, came roaring back at Zain, moving with all the speed of a linebacker who knew his contract was on the line. He looked like death and smelled like soy sauce with glass shards still literring his face like he got glitter sprayed into his face like mace. One eye was totally shut now, and a cheek cut open like raw steak. It was downright unfair how much damage this guy could take, but all that size wasn’t for nothing, apparently.

Zain swung.

Didn’t help.

The length of chain cracked hard across Muscle’s chest, his arm, his leg, his shoulder. The hits landed—Zain felt them land—but they didn’t do much at all. Not to this dude, at least. H

e had steeled himself or something compared to last time, because now he was just eating every lash with the chain, barely even flinching anymore. Zain heard that a pitbull wouldn’t let go of whatever it had its teeth around even if you hit it on the head with a sledgehammer. He wasn’t sure but he felt like he found the human version of that right now.

“Just—go—d-down!” Zain shouted out. His voice cracked in a way that would have been embarassing any other day but he barely even noticed, fear and pain and adrenaline overriding everything else at the moment. His back smacked against the kitchen island, and he realized he had almost nowhere else to go. Shit!

He swung anyway, the chain moving in wide arcs. Sloppy now, wilder, with Zain desperate to put as much power behind each lash as he could. He caught the dude in the ribs, in the collarbone. He could have sworn he heard a crunch.

It was like it didn’t matter.

Then—some miracle. Or just dumb, lucky physics.

The chain wrapped around another target again.

This time all the way around the big dude’s neck. One loop. Then two.

Then metal grinding into the vulnerable flesh of a grown man’s throat.

Zain blinked for the second time at an unexpected bonus and tightened up before his brain even caught up. Once again, he yanked.

The giant’s hands went to his own throat. Even as his eyes bulged though, he kept moving forward, unwilling to give up.

“Oh, come on!”

Closer, slower, choking, but still moving like momentum was gonna finish the job if nothing else. Zain staggered back, hands locked on the chain, every muscle in his body shouting at him to ease up while his brain screamed to keep pulling like he didn’t already know that.

His feet skidded but he kept moving, kept pulling anyway.

He wasn’t strong enough. He shouldn’t have been strong enough.

Didn’t matter.

“Go!” Zain growled through gritted teeth, desperately wanting this to be over, as his legs braced hard against the wooden floors as much as he could. “To! Sleep!”

The big dude’s knees dipped.

Like, real slow, the way a big tree finally began to tilt it when you were a few cuts away from the breaking point. His fingers kept scrabbling at the chain—Zain’s chain, now— his knuckles going so pale they looked like snow, botheyes bugging out, and his mouth open and stuck halfway between a growl and a gargle that sounded like his throat was full of wet cement.

Then finally, like a giant redwood way out in California with a lumberjack’s final axe to his stump, Mr. Muscles just… tipped. One step back. Another.

And then—

BOOM.

Zain didn’t flinch. He was too busy trying to get his own breathing back under control as his adrenaline began to leave him as quick as it came. His grip hadn’t unclenched, his chain still wrapped in his fingers like it was stitched into him. His palms were red and his shoulders were already starting to shake.

He knew the rest of him was gonna follow soon.

He’d had too many adrenaline crashes these last couple months to not know what they felt like when they were coming on.

It was still a while way, though. He could tell that much by the way his heart still hadn’t slowed down enough for his brain to really catch what the hell just happened.

Taking in another breath, not a shaky one yet, Zain just stared.

Not at the body. At the mess.

The spot used to look like a magazine spread.

Now, everywhere he looked, he was staring at a complete crime scene.

Blood on the hardwood, trailing everywhere. Soy sauce painting trails down the walls like someone tried to fingerpaint with teriyaki bleeding down the walls in long greasy streaks. The couch had gotten flipped, there were splinters of table legs under the broken lamp, and the coffee table itself? Murdered. Full CSI-type crime scene. Blood, shoe prints, cracked glass.

And then there were the bodies.

One mountain-sized dude, flat on the floor, chest doing that barely-breathing rise-and-fall that only the unconscious could pull off properly. And also one very unconscious Chen, folded up against the wall face-down and ass-up like bad origami, head tilted weird, blood puddling by his hair like a little red halo.

And in the middle of both, right where his eyes dropped without thinking—

“…aw, my egg rolls?”

Stomped. Just fully stomped. Mashed to death and inedibility under Mr. Kung Fu’s shoe like old gum.

Zain just… stared for a second. All the wild in him leaking out through the holes as his shoulders sagged. “Bruh,” he muttered, voice cracking just a little. “I was deadass lookin’ forward to those.”

His stomach answered for him, loud and rude.

He breathed out hard through his nose, scuffed one sneaker back like he was about to square up again, then just shook his head. No time. Not now. He bent to scoop the duffel—heavy as hell now, loaded with crime loot and no regrets—and glanced toward the window.

Sirens. Way off, faint but close enough to say hey, wrap it up.

Now, it was time to dip.

The window climb? Way worse going down. Legs all shaky, duffel throwing his balance off, and the wind still trying to slap him for fun. He dropped the last two feet fully blind in the dark, landed in a crouch that made his whole body yell at him even though he aimed for where he knew the bushes were.

Knees, ribs, everything on red alert and screaming at him to stop pulling off anymore stunts.

Thankfully, the worst was over, so he could listen.

Then, he ran.

One block. Then another. Then one more after that. After a while, he stopped counting. Zain just kept going till his chest burned and his throat tasted even more like blood. Finally, when he felt like he might die, the teenager ducked down a side alley between a restaurant and some closed-up laundromat, tucked into shadow like the world might forget about him for a minute.

He dropped the duffel to the floor and dropped himself to his knees, breathing like someone told him the next few were gonna be his last.

Then he looked at his hand.

A set of shiny links were still wrapped around his wrist, and coiled all the way up his arm.

Not even tight, but like it wanted to be. Not dragging, not clanking—just with him. Like it was supposed to be there. And yeah, maybe that was weird. Whatever. Everything about tonight was weird.

But it didn’t feel wrong.

Zain stared.

“Okay…” His voice was scratchy. Like his throat was still deciding if it belonged to him. “What the hell is this thing?”

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

5K Words (100 DP)

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