Chapter?23 (Joshua’s?POV)

  Predawn stained the eastern sky a bruised violet, the kind of color that makes you doubt the sun will bother rising. I slipped from the cottage’s sagging porch, boards creaking under my boots, and drew the door’s improvised dead?bolt home behind me. The war?hammer rode my shoulder, its scarred head glinting with frost; the pistol nestled against my ribs beneath a thrift?store jacket that still smelled faintly of mothballs and roamer gore, I wore the Jacket over the bike leathers just to try to hide the outift incase whoever stole my bike decided to come back.

  Five hours.

  The knowledge pulsed behind my eyes—an internal metronome gifted by the Gate, ticking off the seconds until reality yanked me back or trapped me here. I should have been scavenging, mapping an escape route, something practical. Instead, some stubborn itch dragged me south toward the Iron?Elbow Muay?Thai gym—a place I’d seen only in a blur while pedaling for my life. Maybe I needed proof the city didn’t reset while I slept. Maybe I needed to hit something that wouldn’t bite back. Or maybe I just wanted to stand where people once sweated and shouted and believed tomorrow mattered.

  I followed the faint tread of my stolen bicycle’s tires down a cracked avenue that looked almost silver under the moon’s last gasp. Without wheels, every yard felt longer. Shards of safety?glass glittered like salt in the gutter; weeds bowed under my steps, releasing a peppery scent of crushed dandelion. Somewhere a loose sheet of tin slapped rhythmically against a fire escape—clang… clang… clang—the city’s morbid wind chime.

  A single roamer lurched from a driveway as I passed, jaw dangling by a ribbon of sinew. One cloudy eye tracked me, but it didn’t muster the coordination to pursue. I skirted the corpse, heart hammering until distance swallowed its moan. Lucky—luck being a currency rarer than pearls.

  Fifteen minutes later the gym hunched into view: a squat brick block behind a chain?link fence warped by rust and strangled by morning?glory vines. The sign once read IRON ELBOW MUAY THAI, bold red on white; now three letters lay shattered on the sidewalk, leaving IR N ELB W—the missing pieces like teeth knocked from a prizefighter’s grin. Heavy?bags dangled on rusted chains behind spider?webbed windows, rocking in the breeze like hanged men refusing to die.

  A shiver ran down my spine that had nothing to do with cold.

  I slipped through a gap where the fence had collapsed, boots crunching a mosaic of beer bottles and window glass. Inside, the roof’s corrugated panels had peeled away in storms, letting icy light spear the gloom. Dust motes swirled in those shafts like schools of silver minnows; every breath I drew tasted of mildew, aged sweat, and the sweet?rot tang of old athletic tape left to compost.

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  The ring still dominated the center of the floor, ropes slack, canvas sagging like an old drumhead. I climbed between ropes that left flecks of red paint on my jacket and stood on the faded blue mat. It groaned but held. For a heartbeat the room blurred: I heard the snap of jump?ropes, smelled the ghost of liniment, felt the air vibrate with the call?and?response of trainer and fighter—jab?cross, jab?cross, knee! None of it was mine, yet it flooded me like a memory stolen from the walls.

  Then silence rushed back, thick as grave dirt. I’d never felt so small.

  Why are you here, Josh?

  Anna was somewhere out there, maybe bleeding. The Gate’s timer chewed minutes like a predator. And I was standing in a mausoleum to cardio and broken noses.

  Depression pooled in my gut—heavy, cold. I stepped down and wandered to a row of heavy?bags. One’s leather hide was cracked open, gray stuffing spilling like sawdust entrails. I let my pack slump to the floor, leaned the war?hammer against a pillar, and rolled my shoulders until they popped.

  I drew a fist back and hit the bag.

  The jolt rang up my arm into my jaw; dust belched from the split seam. I hit it again, harder, feeling cartilage in my knuckles protest. On the third punch frustration roared up: red?armored men screaming under a horde, the bicycle tracks leading to nothing, Anna’s limp silhouette drifting through my nightmares. I pummeled the bag with sloppy hooks, each strike a dull thud swallowed by the cavernous room.

  Sweat blurred my vision. My breath came ragged, clouds in the frigid air. I slammed elbow, palm?heel, even drove a knee that nearly tore my jeans. The bag swung wide, chain squealing like a rusted hinge. At last my arms trembled, fists throbbed, lungs burned. I rested my forehead against the cold leather, chest heaving, listening to my heartbeat echo through the ruin.

  Nothing had changed. The gym remained a reliquary of dead ambitions, and my countdown kept ticking.

  “Enough,” I muttered, voice echoing. I wiped sweat—mingled with dust—off my brow, retrieved the war?hammer, and shouldered my pack. A single shaft of sunlight sliced through the roof, illuminating particles that drifted like radioactive snow. I stepped through it and felt momentarily weightless, as if the light might scour guilt from my skin. It didn’t.

  Outside, dawn had matured into a thin, washed?out gold. The city greeted me with its usual chorus: a distant crash of metal, the hollow caw of crows perched on lampposts, the low moan of a roamer two streets over. Wind rattled a stop?sign, its red face bleached pink by years of sun.

  I turned north. The gym receded behind a veil of overgrown sycamores, its broken sign swallowed by shadow. My shoulders sagged under the weight of minutes slipping away—four hours and change now, if the pulse behind my eyes could be trusted. No bicycle, no extra supplies—just bruised knuckles and a hollow in my chest where hope kept trying to grow.

  The streets curved toward the cottage, but blocks still separated me from its peeling clapboard and copper secrets. Sunrise bled orange along the horizon, setting fractured windows ablaze like dying embers. I quickened my pace; each footfall became a drumbeat: Go back to the cottage, survive, find Anna, survive, Go back to the cottage .

  The war?hammer bumped rhythmically against my spine, its weight both burden and reassurance. Behind me, somewhere in the dim interior of Iron?Elbow, the heavy?bags creaked in the wind—a final, hollow applause for a fight that ended long before the world did.