-Aftermath of the Heist-

  The room stank of sweat, blood, and cheap disinfectant. Dim fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, casting sickly white shadows across the stained walls. Sen sat slouched in a rusted metal chair, wrists shackled to the table in front of him. Dried blood crusted his knuckles, his shirt torn from the struggle. His lip was split, but he barely felt it.

  Across from him, a detective mid 40s, balding, and reeking of coffee sighed as he flipped through a thick case file.

  "You really did a number out there, huh?" The detective's voice was calm, almost tired. "Four dead officers. Another three in critical condition. Civilian casualties? Eight. You guys turned that bank into a goddamn war zone."

  Sen didn’t respond, just tilted his head back and stared at the flickering light above.

  "You know how this ends, right?" The detective leaned in. "Death row. No deals, no appeals. You’re done."

  Sen exhaled through his nose, barely acknowledging him. He’d heard it all before.

  The detective waited, then shook his head. "You’re a real piece of work, Deadly Fist." He smmed the folder shut and stood up. "Enjoy your st few days of freedom."

  As the detective stepped out, two officers entered. One of them grabbed Sen’s cuffs and yanked him to his feet.

  "Time to face the music."

  Sen smirked. "Took you idiots long enough."

  -Supreme Courtroom-

  The courtroom was packed. Journalists, victims' families, officers everyone who had a reason to hate him was there. Cameras clicked as he was led in, shackles clinking with each step. He walked with the same confidence as he had in the ring, head high, shoulders loose, like he was just there to pass the time.

  At the front, the judge sat behind an elevated podium, fnked by stern-faced officials. The judicator, a tall, thin man with rimless gsses stood and cleared his throat.

  "Sen, also known as 'The Deadly Fist' in the underground fighting circuit, you are hereby charged with multiple counts of murder, armed robbery, destruction of property, and resisting arrest. Your actions during the bank heist resulted in the deaths of w enforcement officers and innocent civilians. Do you have anything to say for yourself?"

  Sen leaned back slightly, arms resting on his p, yellow eyes scanning the crowd. He looked completely unfazed, as if the entire process bored him.

  The judicator frowned but continued. "Given the severity of your crimes, the court finds you guilty on all charges. You are sentenced to death—execution to be carried out within the next three years. Any final words before this ruling is made official?"

  Sen let out a slow breath, then finally spoke. "Yeah." He gnced at the clock on the wall, then back at the judge. "Hurry the hell up."

  A murmur rippled through the crowd. Some gasped. Others cursed his name. The judge smmed his gavel.

  "Take him away."

  The armored transport rumbled down the highway, cutting through the neon-lit skyline of China’s megacity. Sen sat in the back, wrists and ankles locked in titanium restraints, surrounded by armed guards. The prison they were taking him to wasn’t just any prison. It was Baikal Bcksite, a maximum-security facility buried beneath a mountain, rumored to be escape-proof.

  The guards barely spoke. They knew who he was. Knew what he’d done. The only sound was the hum of the engine and the occasional radio chatter.

  After hours on the road, the convoy reached the heavily fortified entrance. Towers lined the perimeter, their floodlights slicing through the dark. Automatic turrets tracked their arrival, following every movement.

  As the transport slowed to a stop, one of the guards finally spoke.

  "This is where monsters like you belong."

  With that, he was tossed into a cell lined with reinforced gss, sers marking boundaries he wasn’t supposed to cross. No bars to break, no weak spots to exploit.

  Sen sat on the stiff mattress, exhaling. It wasn’t the first cage he’d been in. But something about this pce felt different.

  Within the first week news spread quickly in Baikal Bcksite, especially when it involved someone like Sen, known as The Deadly Fist. Even though he was shackled like everyone else, his reputation always seemed to be a step ahead.

  And legends tend to attract trouble.

  Meet the Hungry Tiger.

  Real name - Bao Jie. Once an MMA champion, now a lunatic. He gained notoriety for breaking opponents in illegal fights just for kicks. Rumor had it he’d taken out two guys in a cage match in Thaind and wore their teeth as a trophy. Inside Baikal? He ruled the yard like it was his own training ground.

  He wasn’t thrilled to hear there was a new top dog in the cage.

  Sen had just wrapped up his daily push-up routine when he heard the unmistakable sound of boots approaching—fast, loud, and full of swagger. He didn’t even gnce up.

  "You the so-called 'Deadly Fist' everyone’s dick-riding over?" The voice was cocky, typical of guys who think they’re more important than they really are.

  Sen pushed himself up slowly, wiped the sweat from his forehead, and finally looked. Bao Jie stood there, shirtless, a tiger tattoo sprawling across his chest, snarling just like him. His muscles were tense, stance rexed. A fighter’s physique. His eyes starving. And they’d never be satisfied.

  "You talk too much," Sen replied, cracking his neck. "You here to pay respect or lose a limb?"

  Bao smirked. "You’re nothing. Just another loudmouth street fighter. Let’s see what those fists can really do."

  He unleashed a low Muay Thai kick aimed at Sen’s lead leg. Quick. Precise. Capable of shattering a femur if it connected.

  But Sen didn’t back away. He stepped into it.

  Their shins collided like two baseball bats.

  A crack rang out across the yard.

  Then came a scream.

  Bao crumpled to the ground, clutching his leg, howling like a wounded animal.

  Bao hit the ground, clutching his leg, howling like an injured dog. His shin was bent at a wrong angle—bone bulging under skin like it wanted out.

  Sen stood over him, expression ft.

  "Bme your luck for being an idiot."

  The yard was dead silent. Inmates frozen mid-rep, guards watching from the towers with hands near their rifles. No one moved.

  Sen crouched next to Bao’s squirming body, voice low and casual.

  "Call yourself a Tiger? Shoulda gone with house cat."

  He stood, turned, and walked off like it was nothing but a warm-up.

  Months passed. The routine of prison life was monotonous. Wake up, eat, exercise, avoid the idiots who thought they could test him, sleep. Repeat. He didn’t bother making friends. Most of these men wouldn’t be around long enough to matter.

  But something changed.

  The year was coming to an end, and suddenly, the prison announced 'special meals' for all death-row inmates. Anything they wanted. Steak. Lobster. High-end dishes that no prisoner should have access to.

  Sen sat at his cell’s table, staring at the pte in front of him. A perfectly cooked steak, mashed potatoes on the side, red wine poured into a crystal gss.

  He looked around. Other inmates were already eating, some ughing, some too starved to question it.

  Sen, however, leaned back, tapping his fingers against the table.

  "Tch, this ain't some charity."

  Sitting at the small table and poking at his steak with the tip of his fork, Sen took his time. It was cooked perfectly—tender, juicy, with a sear that only someone with real skill could manage. The mashed potatoes were rich, buttery, like they’d been made by a professional chef. The wine, though he didn’t really care about it, had a smooth taste, the kind you might find in a high-end restaurant.

  He could feel his stomach grumbling, but he wasn’t in any hurry. The meal was a luxury in this hellhole. The kind of luxury that usually came right before an execution.

  "It would make sense", Sen thought, "If they were giving all of us one st meal before they took us out". But there was no official announcement. No st rites. No orders to prepare for the end. Just this strange, sudden feast, like they were treating prisoners to a farewell dinner without the decency to tell them they were about to be executed.

  Sen didn’t trust it. Prisoners didn’t get nice things without a price.

  The guards, stationed outside the gss of his cell, didn’t seem worried. They were just doing their job, paying him no more attention than they did any other day. He’d seen their faces before—bnk, bored, detached. They couldn’t care less what happened to him or anyone else. They were just cogs in the machine.

  Sen narrowed his eyes, chewing slowly. There was something wrong with all of this. He could feel it gnawing at him in the pit of his stomach, a deep, unshakable sense that this wasn’t some random act of kindness. He didn’t trust any of it.

  He took another sip of the wine, letting it slide down his throat, and leaned back in his chair.

  "What’s the real game here?"

  The other prisoners were indulging, eating as if it were just another day. But Sen couldn’t shake the feeling that this wasn’t the kind of meal you served before sending someone to the execution chamber. Not without warning. Not without an official announcement.

  His instincts had never steered him wrong before. And right now, every part of him screamed that something was coming. And it wasn’t going to be good.

  -Underground Ride-

  It wasn’t long before the lights flickered—once, twice, and then the heavy metal doors of their cells were opened with a slow, grinding screech. A guard stepped in, his face grim, his eyes scanning each inmate with professional detachment. No words were exchanged. Just the quiet, unmistakable order.

  “Get moving. Now.”

  Sen stood without a word, ignoring the stabbing pain in his side. The food had been good, but his body still bore the scars of his previous fights. He walked out into the dimly lit hallway, the sound of his boots echoing off the walls as he made his way toward the elevator at the far end.

  As he passed other cells, he noticed the same confusion on the faces of the other prisoners—half-dazed, half-intrigued, all of them wondering why they were being moved. The usual chaos of the prison had been repced with an eerie calm. Not even the guards were speaking, their faces as impassive as the concrete walls they walked beside.

  When they reached the elevator, the rge metal doors slid open with a deep hiss. Inside, heavy armored soldiers stood at attention, their weapons gleaming in the low light. These weren’t the regur prison guards—these were military-grade, armed to the teeth, their visors reflecting the dim overhead lights. The prisoners were pushed into the elevator, the doors closing with a cng, sealing them inside.

  The lift began its slow descent, moving deeper underground. The walls were lined with thick, reinforced steel, and the sound of the elevator’s mechanisms grinding against the shaft was the only thing breaking the silence. Sen didn’t speak, didn’t ask any questions. He just kept his eyes on the others, studying their reactions.

  They had no idea what was happening either.

  None of them seemed to realize what was coming. Sen had seen enough in his life to know that when a system like this shifted, when something big was about to go down, it never ended well for the people at the bottom.

  Minutes passed, the elevator descending deeper and deeper into the earth. The temperature dropped, the air becoming stale, suffocating. Sen could feel the pressure, the weight of being so far beneath the surface. It was like the world above had been left behind, and they were being taken somewhere... else.

  Finally, with a thud, the elevator came to a stop. The doors opened to reveal a long corridor, lit by harsh fluorescent lights, leading to a massive reinforced door. Beyond it, he could see the shadows of figures moving.

  The soldiers motioned for them to move forward.

  Sen followed without question.

  What y beyond that door was a world entirely different from the hellish confines of the prison they had come from.

  The room was vast—rger than any gymnasium, maybe even a small football stadium. The air hummed with a strange energy, thick and electric. It was lined with high-tech equipment, computers fshing data, cables running through the floor like arteries feeding a heart that kept the pce alive. At the far end, a massive structure loomed—a Gateway that was unlike anything Sen had ever seen.

  It was bck. Bcker than bck, its surface absorbing all light. It shimmered with an unnatural aura, as though the very fabric of reality bent around it. The air around it pulsed with an ominous hum, a low sound that seemed to vibrate in his bones.

  Researchers, dressed in b coats, were frantically typing on terminals, muttering to each other in hushed tones, their voices lost in the sterile, mechanical atmosphere. The pce was a hive of activity, but the focus of everyone in the room was the 'Gateway'—the dark pool that sat in the center of it all.

  It wasn’t just the scientists and researchers who surrounded it. High-ranking officials, military generals, state senators, all stood in an observatory room above the Gateway, their faces pressed against the reinforced gss, watching the proceedings with cold, calcuting eyes. Some of them spoke in low tones, pointing and gesturing as if they were watching a parade of livestock, not human beings about to be sacrificed.

  Sen’s eyes narrowed. This wasn’t a test. This wasn’t a freak accident or a freaky government experiment gone wrong. This was something much bigger, something calcuted, something that had been pnned from the start.

  As the prisoners were lined up in front of the Gateway, mechanical arms came to life, moving massive pods into position. These pods were sleek, streamlined, with a smooth, reflective surface that made them look like something out of a science fiction movie. Each pod was rge enough to hold a man, a single occupant who would be propelled toward the center of that dark void at unimaginable speeds.

  The researchers were shouting instructions, technicians feverishly checking monitors, ensuring that every st detail was perfect. Everything was being prepared for the unch.

  The st thing he heard before they sealed the pod was the distant sound of the generals and senators murmuring behind the gss.

  “Launch sequence engaged.”

  Then he was thrust into the void. The sight of the room disappeared as he approached the inner edge.

  Sen's entire being screamed in protest as an unimaginable force squeezed him, threatening to liquefy his bones and pulp his organs. Every ounce of strength, every st scrap of vitality was devoted to fighting against the crushing pressure.

  He struggled, muscles straining, veins bulging beneath skin stretched taut. The sheer intensity threatened to overwhelm his senses, yet he refused to surrender. Not yet.

  As abruptly as it began it vanished leaving him suspended in darkness.

  In the sudden, deafening quiet, Sen found himself drifting in a featureless void. There was no discernible up, down, side or center. No hint of texture, sound or sensation greeted his heightened awareness.

  With each passing moment, an eerie sense of anticipation crept over Sen, as if waiting for... something. It wasn't quite fear, yet neither was it mere unease. The endless darkness pressed in around him like an invisible shroud, seeping into the crevices of his psyche and stirring restless emotions he couldn't quite put a name to.

  And then there it was, a flicker of light, a cruel tease at the edge of his perception, a fragile spark fighting against the oppressive darkness that surrounded him.

  "What... What is that?"

  He reached out, limbs thrashing in the void, but the light danced just beyond his fingertips, it was as though the light was always out of his grasp.

  Then, without warning, the world shifted. A violent tremor coursed through him, a jolt that shattered the stillness. Time reasserted itself with a brutal snap, and gravity returned, smming into him like a relentless wave. Peering through the transparent dome, he was struck by the dizzying height, the blue-green sky stretching above him, while below y an endless expanse of desotion, the pod plummeting toward the barren wastend.

  Sen's vision locked onto the alien ndscape, rapidly growing closer with each sickening drop. A maelstrom of adrenaline, panic, and a bizarre sort of etion surged through his veins, almost euphoric in its intensity.

  With a surge of desperate instinct, he gripped the emergency parachute release. It deployed with a jolt, slowing but not stopping the fall. Below him, the ground rushed up – rocky formations and jagged rock outcroppings sprawling like skeletal fingers toward the sky. No vegetation or signs of water broke the bleak expanse, only desote emptiness in every direction as far as his eyes could reach.

  Yet even amidst such apocalyptic desotion, an unexpected thrill ran through Sen - he was here. Alive and still kicking. Stranded yes, but breathing free air in an alien world he'd previously considered nothing more than a twisted experiment gone awry. For better or worse, this hostile wilderness was his now.

  As the nd rushed up to meet him like an executioner's bde, the pod shook violently, scraping and screeching against whatever rocky surface awaited his arrival with lethal precision. A final jarring thud threw Sen's compacted form sideways, knocking the wind out of him as the pod's hatch yawned open under immense pressure.

  A cloud of fine red dust swirled in, mingling with the stale air, choking off most visibility. With lungs burning from exertion and terror, Sen hauled himself to his feet.

  Blinking against the acrid haze, Sen squinted into the murk, trying to make out any details of his surroundings. The air reeked of rust, metal, and something acridly chemical - remnants of the pod's explosive decompression, no doubt. He coughed, spitting out grit as he scanned the immediate area. The pod y crumpled and mangled, its contents strewn about in a tangled mess of metal and pstic.

  Sen stood in the dust-choked opening, head ducked to shield his eyes from the raging red dust storm that battered the nding site. Visibility was nil. His nostrils stung, tasting the gritty earth. Hands spyed, he steadied himself against the pod's bulkhead as his heart galloped wildly in his chest.

  With a grimace of discomfort, Sen shifted his weight onto both feet and took his first tentative steps away from the pod. The unforgiving terrain bit into his boots with each heavy footfall, throwing his bance slightly askew. Dust devils danced erratically across the clearing, taunting his attempt at traction. Sen grunted in annoyance, spitting out mouthfuls of grit as he tried to get his bearings.

  "What in the ever-lovin' hell..."

  He gnced at the pod and then scoured the area for supplies, but there was nothing. Clearly, the government had no intention of ensuring the survival of the test subjects.

  Sen's gaze swept the barren ndscape once more before settling back on the pod, now a useless hunk of metal in the midst of this godforsaken wastend. His lips curled into a bitter smile. Of course. Why would they bother preparing for his survival? He was a disposable test subject after all. A means to an end in their twisted scientific pursuits.

  "Well, looks like I'm on my own then." The words tasted sour on his tongue, but he meant them. Sen had never relied on anyone else for long. He'd learned the hard way that relying on others only led to disappointment and pain. Here, alone, he could finally focus on surviving - on proving to himself that he was more than just a number or a failed experiment.

  As the dust settled, revealing more of the desote surroundings, Sen's yellow eyes narrowed, taking in every detail. The crimson soil, the jagged rock formations, the ck of any signs of life or vegetation. It painted a grim picture of a world that had known devastation on a catastrophic scale.

  But he refused to be intimidated. He had faced far worse odds in his past and emerged victorious. Or at least, alive. The key to survival y in adaptability and resourcefulness. And right now, those were his greatest allies.

  "So, what do we have here?" He murmured to himself, circling the pod's perimeter to assess its condition. Scorch marks marred the hull, and the hatch hung crookedly, testimony to the brutal nding. Still, it appeared structurally sound enough to serve as temporary shelter, at least until he could find or craft a more suitable one.

  First things first Though. Water and food.