He stooped for the bills, then came with his chin tucked and the big fists up. He thought the fight was a joke, that X was used up and stupid-crazy, an old man with half the reach. In a different life, he might have been right, but X, in motion, was a marriage of power and speed that few in the world could match. He worked the right eye first—four hard jabs—then bloodied the mouth, the nose; cracked a rib on the left side.

That was the first nine seconds.

X slipped out of reach, then came back for the face, two lefts and right, then a roundhouse kick that cut cables in the big man’s knees. X danced away a second time, not yet breathing hard. He saw the fear then, the understanding.

What if they were true?

The stories …

X smiled as that fear opened like a flower. The big man saw it, and hated it. “You paid me to fight, so fucking fight.”

He came harder that time, and X bled, too. It’s why he’d picked the big man in the first place.

All those kills.

That readiness.

X made it last the full ten minutes, but the fight was never close. X got hurt; the big man got ruined. By the ten-minute mark, he was bent at the waist and half-blind, too bloody and broken to lift his hands. He looked once at the guard, and X felt the first real distaste. “He can’t help you.”

“Do it if you’re going to do it.”

The man’s face was a mask of blood, one eye ruined for life, the right shoulder out of its socket. The rage was still there, though; he could go longer. But what was the point?

“Guard. We’re finished here.”

The guard kept his eyes down, but knew from long experience what to do. He got the big man up and out, and never looked at X.

When they were gone, X went into a second cell, washed blood from his hands and face, then taped up the cuts.