Prime (Chess Team Adventure, #0.5)

King was still pondering the question as Tremblay gave a shrill whistle signaling the beginning of the first round.

Zelda was grinning as she darted to the center of the ring. The mouth guard clamped between her teeth made her lips seem unnaturally full, but there was an intensity in her unrelenting stare that was like nothing King had ever seen before, not even in the eyes of men who had tried to kill him. He approached the center cautiously, his gloves up and ready to fend off her attack.

She jabbed at his gloves, testing his defenses. He effortlessly batted her punch aside. She jabbed again, but it was a feint; as he tried to block, she side-stepped and then threw a left upper-cut that connected solidly on his chin.

For a second, all he saw was stars.

It wasn’t the hardest hit he’d ever taken. He’d had his bell rung plenty of times before. The difference this time was that he had—foolishly—not been expecting her to hit quite that hard.

He staggered back, flailing his arms to ward off her attempt to follow through, and when he could, he threw a wild cross-body punch that somehow made glancing contact.

Somebody gasped… He couldn’t say for sure who, but his vision cleared enough to see Zelda’s hair, flashing gold, as she moved in for another attack. This time he didn’t bother trying to block her. Instead, he went on the attack, and this time he didn’t hold back.

Hit a girl? Ha!

There were a lot of words that could be used to describe Zelda Baker—and she had probably heard them all—but ‘girl’ he decided, was not one of them.

Time passed in a blur of disconnected perceptions. In his more lucid moments, it would occur to him to press the attack. Sometimes it worked, and he succeeded in driving her back against the ropes, but invariably she would find a way to turn the tide. What she lacked in size and strength, Zelda made up for with skill; it was plainly evident that she’d received formal training. She was fast on her feet, flitting about the ring like a moth. She knew how to use the clinch to recover her wits when King landed a blow that should have put her on the mat.

At one point, as he sat slumped in a folding chair during one of the breaks between rounds, Tremblay knelt beside him. “Boss man, I got nothing but respect for you, but how long are you going to keep this up?”

Before King could answer, he heard Zelda’s voice, strained and breathless from the exertion, reach out from the opposite corner like another punch to the jaw. “Had enough?”

He met her gaze. “I was going to ask you the same.”

She laughed. “I’m just getting warmed up.”

King shrugged. “Couple more rounds then.”

Tremblay shook his head and handed King a towel to mop the perspiration off his face and shoulders. “Just in case you’ve lost count, we’re at six.”

Six? He had lost track.

Tremblay took the towel and gave another shrill whistle to mark the start of the seventh round. King hauled himself to his feet and waded once more into the fray.

It had stopped being a fight—it had never been much of a sparring match—and turned into something more like a marathon, a test of the limits of human endurance. It was a test, not of skill in combat, but of will. In both respects however, it seemed they were equally matched.

They circled, threw punches, fell against each other, and then repeated the dance, spiraling ever closer to total collapse. Zelda’s face was flushed and puffy, her lower lip looked like a piece of raw meat, and she didn’t seem quite as light on her feet now, but the determination in her eyes remained undimmed. King’s own arms felt like they were made of rubber, and the padded leather gloves felt as heavy as lead weights.

All his attention was focused on her. He watched her eyes, searching for that flicker of movement that would telegraph where and when the next blow would come. He watched the set of her body and where her feet went; it had taken him a while to realize that she would plant her feet in a variation of a shooter’s stance just before striking.

The rest of the world had ceased to exist for him. His only connection with anything outside the rope circle was Tremblay’s shrill signal that another round had come to an end. Perhaps that was why it took him a moment to process the voice that boomed like a thunderbolt in the dimly lit room.

“What the fuck?”

As the words finally penetrated the filter, King and Zelda, as if by mutual accord, relaxed their stances and turned their attention to the group of onlookers, which had more than doubled in size. The rest of the team had arrived, but it was General Keasling, glowering at the edge of the ring, who seemed to suck the oxygen out of the room.