The smell hit him first—liniment and sweat and the particular staleness of a gym that never quite got clean. Santino's Boxing Gym. Liam knew that smell like he knew his own heartbeat, had breathed it in for eight years until it became part of his DNA. But that was impossible, because Santino's had closed down three years ago when Vinny finally retired, and Liam Page was supposed to be dead.
His eyes snapped open.
Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, casting harsh shadows across a room that couldn't exist. The heavy bags hung exactly where they'd always hung, worn leather patched with duct tape and prayers. The speed bag platform stood in its familiar corner, the bag itself swaying slightly as if someone had just finished working it. Even the ring looked exactly the same—canvas stained with eight decades of blood and dreams, ropes that had seen more broken promises than a politician's convention.
Liam sat up slowly, his body moving with an ease that felt fundamentally wrong. Where was the chronic shoulder pain from that bad fall in his fifteenth fight? Where were the arthritic knuckles from throwing punches with terrible form for eight years? Where was the persistent headache that had plagued him since his twentieth loss, when a southpaw named Jimmy Castellanos had rattled his brain with a series of uppercuts that had left him seeing double for three days?
His hands looked... young. Unscarred. The calluses that had built up over years of hitting heavy bags were gone, replaced by smooth skin that belonged to someone who'd never thrown a punch in anger. The small scar on his left knuckle from the time he'd split it open against Carlos Mendez's elbow was nowhere to be seen.
He stumbled to his feet and caught his reflection in the mirror that ran along the far wall. The face staring back at him belonged to a stranger who looked exactly like Liam Page—if Liam Page had never spent eight years getting systematically destroyed by men with better fundamentals and stronger wills.
Seventeen years old. The same age he'd been when he first walked into this gym, full of dreams and devoid of the hard-earned wisdom that only comes from repeated failure. His jaw was unmarked by the accumulated damage of a hundred sparring sessions. His nose sat straight and unbroken, not twisted to the left from the time Marcus Williams had caught him with a perfect right cross in his amateur days. Even his posture was different—straighter, more confident, carrying none of the defensive hunch that had developed over years of trying to minimize incoming punishment.
"No," he whispered, then louder, "No, no, no."
But even as denial spilled from his lips, memory came flooding back with perfect, terrible clarity. Every fight. Every loss. Every mistake that had led him from promising amateur to professional punchline. He could feel the phantom pain of Tommy Morrison's fist connecting with his skull, could hear the referee's final count echoing in his ears like a death knell.
He was dead. He was absolutely certain of it. The memory was too vivid, too complete to be anything but truth. But he was also here, in a gym that shouldn't exist, in a body that belonged to his teenage self, breathing air that tasted exactly like the Philadelphia morning he remembered from nine years ago.
"Well," said a voice that seemed to come from inside his own head, clinical and completely without warmth, "this is certainly irregular."
Liam spun around, but the gym was empty. Just him and the ghosts of eight years that hadn't happened yet, or maybe had never happened at all. The voice had been crystal clear, as if someone were standing right next to him, but there was no one else in the building.
"Who's there?" His voice cracked like he really was seventeen again, that awkward breaking that had embarrassed him throughout his senior year of high school.
"I am the Athlete Rehabilitation Protocol," the voice continued, each word precisely enunciated like a medical diagnosis being delivered by a particularly unsympathetic doctor. "You may refer to me as ARP. I have been assigned to address your catastrophic athletic failure."
"My what?"
"Your boxing career represents one of the most comprehensive athletic failures in recorded history. Three victories in twenty-five professional contests, representing a twelve percent success rate that falls well below statistical expectations for random chance. Sixty-eight percent knockout rate against you, indicating a fundamental inability to absorb or avoid punishment. Performance degradation in every measurable category over an eight-year period, suggesting not just lack of improvement but active regression of skill. You are, quite literally, the worst professional boxer I have encountered in my extensive database of athletic failures."
Liam would have been offended if the assessment wasn't completely accurate. Every number, every statistic, every brutal evaluation was exactly right. He had been terrible at boxing, not just compared to champions or contenders, but compared to other terrible boxers. His career had been a masterclass in how not to approach professional athletics.
"I don't understand what's happening," he said, his voice barely above a whisper.
"You experienced clinical death following severe cranial trauma. During your neurological transition, I interfaced with your neural pathways and established a permanent connection. Consider this a form of... technological reincarnation. You have been granted an opportunity to correct your previous failures through systematic rehabilitation."
"That's impossible."
"Your entire situation is impossible. Yet here we are." There was something almost like amusement in the AI's tone, though it remained as emotionally cold as a computer readout. "I should mention that I was originally designed to rehabilitate athletes recovering from career-ending injuries—torn ACLs, traumatic brain injuries, spinal damage that threatens neurological function. Treating actual death as a career-ending injury is... a novel interpretation of my programming parameters."
Liam sank onto a nearby bench, the worn leather creaking under his weight exactly the way it used to. The sound was so familiar, so perfectly recreated, that for a moment he wondered if he'd simply gone insane. Maybe this was what happened when your brain was dying—it created elaborate fantasies to protect you from the reality of your situation.
"So what happens now?" he asked, not sure if he was talking to an AI, a hallucination, or his own fractured psyche.
"Now, Mr. Page, we begin the arduous process of rebuilding you from the ground up. But understand this clearly—I will not grant you superhuman abilities. I will not make you faster or stronger than the upper limits of human potential. I cannot give you reflexes that violate the laws of physics or punching power that exceeds what your skeletal and muscular systems can generate. What I will do is force you to confront every character flaw, every technical deficiency, and every mental weakness that led to your spectacular failure."
A translucent blue interface materialized in Liam's peripheral vision, displaying rows of statistics that made his stomach sink even lower than it already had:
CURRENT ASSESSMENT:
Power: 23/100 Speed: 31/100 Reflex: 18/100 Stamina: 29/100 Ring IQ: 15/100 Mental Toughness: 8/100
Additional Metrics:
Defensive Awareness: 12/100 Combination Fluency: 19/100 Footwork Integration: 14/100 Psychological Resilience: 6/100
"Eight?" Liam stared at the mental toughness score, feeling heat flood his cheeks. "Eight out of a hundred?"
"You died because you turned your back on an opponent throwing a wild punch. In the middle of a professional boxing match. Against an opponent with marginal skills and limited knockout power. The score may actually be generous, considering the circumstances."
The clinical brutality of the assessment hit harder than any punch Liam had ever taken. Even his own personal AI was roasting him with the efficiency of a machine designed to identify and catalog failure.
"Furthermore," ARP continued, "your psychological resilience rating of six reflects a pattern of mental collapse under pressure that characterized your entire professional career. You consistently performed worse in meaningful situations, suggesting an inverse relationship between stakes and performance that is... unusual, even among failed athletes."
"Okay, okay, I get it," Liam said, though part of him was morbidly fascinated by the precision of his own inadequacy. "I was terrible. What's the plan to fix it?"
"Your first mission," ARP announced, "is remarkably simple in concept but challenging in execution given your established patterns of behavior. Survive your first day back in this gym without embarrassing yourself further than you already have. Given your track record of making poor decisions under minimal pressure, this represents a significant challenge."
Before Liam could respond, the gym door squeaked open with the particular sound he remembered from a thousand mornings. Vincent Santino walked in exactly as Liam remembered him—stocky, gray-haired, with the particular scowl of a man who'd spent sixty years watching young fighters waste their potential. Vinny moved with the economy of motion that marked all great trainers, no wasted energy, every gesture purposeful.
He stopped when he saw Liam, looked him up and down with the practiced eye of someone who could assess a fighter's worth in thirty seconds. Those sharp eyes took in everything—posture, hand position, the way Liam held himself, probably even his breathing pattern.
"You the kid who called about training?" Vinny's voice carried the rasp of a man who'd inhaled too much gym dust and shouted too many instructions over the sound of speed bags and heavy bags. "Little early, aren't you?"
Liam checked the clock on the wall—6:30 AM. Right. He'd shown up at dawn on his first day the first time around, eager to prove something to nobody in particular. The memory felt like watching someone else's life, but the details were perfect. How had he forgotten that Vinny always arrived exactly at six-thirty, that the old man unlocked the gym with a ritual precision that never varied?
"Yes, sir. Liam Page."
Vinny nodded curtly, studying him with those eyes that had seen every type of fighter imaginable walk through these doors. Champions and tomato cans, prospects and has-beens, dreamers and realists. Most of them left disappointed.
"You box before?"
This was the moment. This was the exact instant where everything had gone wrong the first time. Liam had lied, claimed he'd been training at another gym across town, tried to sound more experienced than he was because he'd thought it would impress Vinny. The lie had led to Vinny throwing him in with more advanced fighters before he was ready, which had started the pattern of taking beatings that had defined his entire career.
One lie. One moment of teenage insecurity. Eight years of consequences.
"No, sir," Liam said, his voice steady despite the weight of the moment. "Complete beginner."
ARP's voice hummed with what might have been approval: "Interesting. Your first correct answer in what may be your entire athletic career."
Vinny's expression shifted slightly, surprise replacing the practiced skepticism. In forty years of training fighters, he'd probably heard every variation of teenage bullshit imaginable. Young men claiming to be the next Muhammad Ali, kids who'd watched a few UFC fights and thought they understood combat sports, athletes from other disciplines who assumed boxing would be easy to master.
"Most kids your age try to tell me they're the next Muhammad Ali," Vinny said, echoing Liam's thoughts. "Or they've been training somewhere else and just need a new gym. You sure you never threw a punch?"
"I'm sure I've never thrown a good one."
That earned him something that wasn't quite a smile from Vinny, just a slight softening around the eyes that suggested the old trainer might be reassessing his initial impression.
"Honest. I like that." Vinny gestured toward the heavy bags. "Come on, let's see what we're working with."
As Liam followed the old trainer deeper into the gym, ARP's voice whispered in his mind with the cold precision of a computer analyzing data: "This is your second chance, Mr. Page. Do try not to waste it as spectacularly as you did the first time."
Liam Page, seventeen years old and carrying thirty-one years of mistakes, walked toward the heavy bags where his real education was about to begin.