Yaron didn’t answer. Just looked away. Like he was too afraid to talk to me now. He’d been wearing his usual suit earlier. But now, he only wore an undershirt.

“What’s going on?” I asked again, this time gathering the strength to direct the question at Victor.

But Victor didn’t answer either. He simply walked into the freshly opened space and stood directly in front of Yaron. And nodded.

No words were spoken or signed. But somehow, Yaron seemed to know exactly what to do.

He pulled a phone out of his back pocket and, with shaking hands, pressed his finger into its touch screen a few times.

After he was done, Victor pointed at the phone. Then pointed at me.

Yaron came over to me but stopped at least three feet away.

“He wants you to hold this,” he explained to me.

He held out the phone to me, and I took it. There was a three-minute timer going on the phone. A countdown. But to what? I didn’t understand.

Then suddenly I did when Victor threw the first punch, which Yaron just narrowly missed.

Fighting…they were fighting! Some kind of mix between martial arts and bare-knuckle boxing. What the hell?

More than thirty seconds had come off the clock by the time they started, and Yaron dodged and weaved like a pro for the next minute. I began to hope that the countdown would conclude before anyone got hurt. But then Victor connected a hit, kneeing him in the gut.

Yaron staggered. And it was all over after that. I spent the last thirty seconds watching Victor coldly eviscerate him. Landing hit after hit.

Yaron didn’t last long under the assault. He fell to the ground, and with more than thirty seconds to go, Victor raised his foot to….

I don’t know what, but it was right above Yaron’s face, and I couldn’t. I couldn’t let Victor hurt him, possibly end his life.

“No!” I screamed, charging forward. I shoved Victor and sent him tumbling onto his back.

I caught Victor just enough off-balance to make him fall. But he wasn’t down for long. Like something out of horror martial arts film, he arced up with more core strength than I could have ever imagined and came right back to his feet.

“Get out of my way,” he signed. “There is still time on the clock.”

“Who cares about the clock!” I yelled back at him. “I’m not going to let you kill him!”

An old-fashioned car horn sounded somewhere in the distance. The timer going off, I dimly realized. I must have dropped the phone when I charged forward. But I didn’t dare to move from where I was standing.