The alley offered no space for retreat — and even less for mercy.
Steam curled from a ruptured pipe along the wall, hissing in rhythm with the strained breaths rising from Eli's battered chest. A rat darted across his shoe, heedless of the blood pooling beneath him, too preoccupied with its own escape to recognize the violence still unfolding. Far off in the distance, a siren sang its weary refrain, another indifferent verse in the city's endless dirge.
Marcus's laughter echoed off the bricks, taunting. "Damn, Navarro. I figured you'd hold out a little longer. Turns out even street rats bleed like the rest of us."
Eli's frame twitched against the pavement, as if his muscles had begun to answer to something older than instinct. Pain surged through his ribs with each breath — the cracks sharp, the bruising deep — while his vision swam and narrowed, his left eye failing to focus. Blood filled his mouth, metallic and warm, but none of that mattered in the presence of what had begun to stir beneath the surface.
There was something underneath the agony.
Something he had felt before — in flashes, in fragments — rising again slowly.
Heat spread through his bruises like a low pulse, a burn that pressed beneath the surface as if his bones had grown weary of yielding. It wasn't unfamiliar. He had felt it before — when the knife pierced his side at thirteen, when the scaffolding came down at fifteen and left him stuck beneath steel and cement, and again behind the 7-Eleven, when he took the third beating for keeping the burner phones out of reach.
Back then, he told himself it was adrenaline — the body's trick to keep a broken frame upright. But that explanation had faded. The more they hit him, the less it felt like survival, and the more it became something else entirely: a kind of silence that settled in his core and pushed the pain aside to make room for something heavier:
Will.
He pressed one hand to the ground, fingers splayed against the concrete, and shoved himself upward. Marcus's boot snapped toward him.
Eli caught it.
His fingers locked around the steel toe like a clamp forged in iron. The motion was clean.
Marcus's balance faltered, surprise flashing in his posture. "What the—"
Eli pushed to his feet. His frame trembled, breath dragging through grit and blood, one eye nearly swollen shut. But he stood. There was no bravado in his expression, only the steady weight of his gaze that made one thing clear.
He was finished being on the ground.
The first strike came clean — a short-range body blow that struck with precision, crushing into a gut with a muffled thud. The man dropped instantly, gasping, knees slamming the concrete as the air vanished from his lungs.
The second came swinging with a crowbar, the metal gleaming faintly under the alley's sodium lights. It hit across Eli's back, a brutal arc of rusted iron. The blow landed. His body arched under the impact, but he didn't fall.
He pivoted with the motion and caught the next swing mid-air. His hands clamped over the weapon. The thug tried to rip it free. Eli didn't let go.
Instead, he drove his forehead forward, slamming it into the man's face.
The sound was wet and sharp, cartilage shattering beneath bone. Blood burst outward. The man dropped without a sound.
The laughter stopped.
A voice broke the hush. "Jesus Christ—"
Two more stepped in. One had a blade, the other came bare-fisted, all nerve and no plan. The punch connected — square to the jaw, a clean hit with enough force to drop most. Eli felt the impact, felt the dull crack against his molars.
But his knees didn't bend.
He hit back.
A wild elbow to the knife guy's neck sent him reeling, coughing blood. The blade grazed Eli's arm — nothing deep — but he felt it tear skin.
That just pissed him off.
He turned and drove a knee into the guy's stomach, then grabbed the collar of his jacket and slammed him into the alley wall. Once. Twice.
The thug went limp.
The last man dropped his weapon and ran without a word.
Only Marcus was left.
He held a switchblade now, but his hands shook too much to make it a threat. His face had lost its edge — the swagger gone, the bravado hollowed out into something smaller. He didn't look angry anymore. Just scared.
"I didn't—look, man, I wasn't gonna—"
Eli stepped toward him, slowly. There was no rush in his steps.
"I told you once," he rasped, "don't come near me again."
Marcus slashed at the air between them.
Eli knocked the blade aside without thought. The movement was clean, and in the same breath, he drove a punch into Marcus's face. Full-body weight behind it. The kind of blow that broke things.
It landed just beneath the cheekbone with a crunch that stole balance from Marcus's feet. Blood sprayed from his nose.
He reeled, staggered, tried to find footing, and Eli hit him again.
A shot to the gut folded him.
Another, sharp and right into the ribs.
Then a final strike — an elbow, heavy and brutal — cracked across his mouth and dropped him.
Marcus collapsed to his knees, coughing blood, clutching at nothing, gasping through a ruined face. His nose streamed red. His lips split and bloody.
Eli stood over him, breathing hard.
His fists were raw, knuckles split and bleeding. His hoodie clung to his chest, soaked through with sweat and streaked with crimson. The alley had quieted, the sound of a man catching his breath after choosing not to fold echoed.
"You think I like this?" he growled.
Marcus whimpered something, a twitch of sound barely shaped. Eli didn't care.
"You think I wanted to get good at this?"
He didn't wait for an answer. His voice held no triumph.
"You come at people like me because you think we'll just take it. That we're used to it."
He dropped into a crouch, just low enough for Marcus to meet his gaze.
"But every time someone puts me down…"
Eli rose.
"They forget something."
Then the boot came up and slammed into Marcus's chest with a force that didn't need buildup to be devastating. The thug flew back, hit the wall with a dull smack, and collapsed in a crumpled heap.
"I get back up."
Eli turned and walked away.
Pain followed. His knuckles throbbed with each pulse of his heart. His side lit with a dull ache that flared sharper when he moved. Every step jarred his skull, sent echoes through his jaw, and made his ears ring.
But he kept walking.
Two blocks passed beneath his feet before the adrenaline began to fade. When it did, it vanished all at once.
His legs buckled.
He dropped to one knee beside a dented trash bin, bracing himself as the wave hit. He dry-heaved until the spasms settled into silence.
The rage. The precision. The merciless rhythm of each strike — he hadn't chosen it. Not consciously. It had moved through him like a reflex. Like something waiting in his bones for a door to open.
His hand came up. He wiped his mouth, tasted metal, and looked down at his fingers.
Blood. Not all of it Marcus's.
"What the hell am I?"
Back in the tunnels, he peeled off the hoodie and collapsed onto the mattress. Every muscle screamed.
He prodded his ribs and hissed. Nothing broken. Not this time.
But close.
He lay back and stared at the ceiling.
The cuts on his knuckles were raw, not bleeding as much as they should. One had already started to scab. A thin line of red turned to brown.
The bruises — deep purple before — were already lightening.
He turned his arm in the dim light, flexing stiff fingers.
He should've felt proud.
But all he felt was tired.
And alone.
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