"Come on, man. You’re moving like you’re underwater. Give me something. Anything. I'm falling asleep here," Brad taunted, dropping his own hands to his waist, offering his chin on a silver platter.
Tyler, desperate and running on pure adrenaline, lunged forward with a wild, looping overhand right. It was exactly what Brad wanted. Brad slipped the punch with an arrogant smirk and threw a counter right hook. He pulled the power at the last microsecond, turning his wrist, but his knuckles still caught the kid directly on the bridge of the nose.
Blood sprayed instantly, speckling the blue vinyl mat in a quick, bright crimson arc. Tyler dropped to a knee, immediately clutching his face, his eyes watering from the sudden, jarring impact.
"Time," Brad announced loudly, stepping back and raising his wrapped hands in a gesture of mock victory. He turned to the onlookers. "Somebody get this guy a tampon and clean up this mess. We're done here."
He unlaced his sixteen-ounce sparring gloves with his teeth, dropped them carelessly onto the blood-spattered mat, and walked toward the water fountain, his chest puffed out. He didn’t look back to see if Tyler was okay. He didn't care.
From the dim shadows near the locker room corridor, Hank emerged.
Hank was a fixture at Apex MMA, though most people couldn’t tell you his last name, where he lived, or how long he had been working there. He was the night janitor. He looked to be in his late sixties, maybe even early seventies. His hair was sparse, iron-gray, and cut close to his scalp. He wore faded, industrial Dickies work pants, a plain, sweat-stained gray T-shirt, and heavy orthotic work boots. He walked with a pronounced limp, his left leg dragging slightly across the floor—a silent testament to decades of hard labor, a terrible accident, or just bad luck. Probably a combination of all three.
Hank carried a plastic spray bottle filled with hospital-grade disinfectant and a thick roll of heavy blue paper towels. He moved with a slow, methodical purpose. He didn’t rush for anyone. He didn’t make unnecessary noise. He was as much a part of the gym’s architecture as the heavy bags and the rusted pipes in the ceiling, and just as ignored.
He shuffled over to the sparring area, his heavy boots squeaking softly against the vinyl, and knelt beside the fresh blood spatters on the mat. He sprayed the sharp-smelling chemical. He waited exactly three seconds for it to bind to the organic matter. He wiped it up with a firm, practiced motion. He folded the towel, exposing a clean blue side, and wiped the area again until the vinyl squeaked.
Brad was leaning against the peeling plaster wall by the fountain, drinking greedily from a gallon jug of water. He watched the old man work. Something about Hank’s quiet, unbroken dignity always irritated Brad to his core. Brad demanded attention. He demanded fear. He demanded respect. Hank never gave him any of those things. The janitor didn’t look at the fighters with awe. He didn’t flinch when the two-hundred-and-fifty-pound heavyweights slammed into the chain-link cage fencing inches from his mop bucket. He just did his job, entirely unimpressed by the violence surrounding him.
"You missed a spot, old man," Brad called out, his voice cutting through the ambient noise of jumping ropes and heavy breathing.
Hank didn’t look up. He didn't pause. He finished wiping the area, stood slowly, groaning slightly as his bad knee took his weight, and dropped the soiled blue towel into a yellow biohazard bin.
"Hey. Deaf as well as slow?" Brad took a step forward, wiping water from his chin. "I said you missed a spot."
Hank stopped. He turned around slowly. His face was a topographic map of deep lines and weathered, leathery skin. His nose was slightly crooked, flattened at the bridge in a way that suggested it had been broken multiple times and never set right. His ears were thick and scarred. He looked at Brad with dead, flat eyes—the exact kind of look a master carpenter gives a rusted, bent nail before hammering it flush.