(2023 – Four Weeks Before Moscow)
The hunger was a living thing now. It paced the confines of Kyon's mind, a caged tiger fed on raw meat and the Professor's cryptic warning. Training wasn't preparation; it was a daily blood sacrifice to the god of his own rage. The Detroit warehouse smelled perpetually of iron, sweat, and aggression.
Bruno, the Austrian strongman, had him doing things that defied boxing logic. One afternoon, he pointed to a 1,200-pound tire flip sled. "Twenty flips. No rest. Go."
Kyon's back screamed. His legs turned to burning pillars of lead. On the fifteenth flip, a wave of nausea hit him so hard he saw stars. He vomited bile onto the concrete, gasped, and then, with a roar that tore from a place deeper than his lungs, finished the final five flips. When he was done, he collapsed onto the sled, his vision swimming.
Bruno tossed him a water bottle. "Good. The Bear will push you worse. Your body must not know the word 'quit.'"
Marek, the Polish cruiserweight, was no longer a sparring partner. He was a human heavy bag with a mean streak. They didn't do rounds. They did wars of attrition. Five-minute chunks of pure, unadulterated violence where the only rule was to not kill each other. Kyon's defense became a brutal, efficient economy. He took shots on his forearms, his shoulders, the top of his head. He learned to roll with the concussive blows, to let them slide off the new, armored plate of his physique. And he gave back worse.
He began to break Marek. Not just physically—Marek was too tough for that—but spiritually. Kyon would walk through his biggest punches, shake his head, and smile. A wide, bloody, terrifying smile.
"You hit like you're apologizing," Kyon taunted one session after absorbing a right hand that would have felled an ox. He fired a left hook to the liver that dropped Marek to one knee. "The Bear hits harder than this. You're making me soft."
The taunting bled out of the gym. In a rare, controlled interview with ESPN, Kyon sat like a king on a throne of his own making, his knuckles scarred and swollen, a fresh cut over his eyebrow.
"The Siberian Bear?" he said, leaning into the camera. "Let's be honest. He's a circus animal. Trained to look scary. They parade him around Russia, and people tremble. But you put a real predator in the cage with a circus bear…" He let the sentence hang, his cold eyes doing the rest. "I'm not going to Moscow to fight a man. I'm going to dismantle a myth. And I'm going to enjoy it."
The clip went global. In Chelyabinsk, Volkov responded by posting a video of himself ripping a phonebook in half with his bare hands, then grunting one word in thickly accented English: "Soon."
The psychological war was on, and Kyon was a willing, eager participant. The cockiness was armor, a weapon, a drug. It fed the hunger.
But in the dead of night, in the too-quiet loft, the Professor's warning whispered in the dark. A syndicate. Older grudges. He is a message. The hunger would mix with a new, chilling focus. Who were these silent players? Was Volkov just a fighter, or was he a weapon pointed by a hidden hand? The idea didn't scare him. It excited him. The fight was no longer just about belts or legacy. It was a move in a deeper, darker game. And Kyon was done being a pawn.
He had Priya, his financial hawk, start digging. Quietly. Into shell companies, into the backgrounds of Volkov's obscure sponsors, into the flow of money in Eastern European boxing. He found nothing. Which, he knew, meant everything. The trail was too clean.
Two weeks before they were to leave for Moscow, the siege began.
It started with a break-in at the warehouse. Not a theft. A message. They came at night, bypassing the cheap alarm. They didn't touch the equipment. They left a single item in the center of the ring: a small, carved wooden bear, its muzzle stained dark red. And beside it, a photograph. A grainy, long-lens shot of Eleanor, leaving her diner in Cincinnati, unaware.
The cold that washed over Kyon had nothing to do with the Detroit winter. It was the absolute zero of controlled fury. They weren't threatening him. They were showing him they knew where his mother lived. The silent players had announced their presence.
He didn't call the police. He called Lena.
"Get her out of Cincinnati," he said, his voice lethally calm. "Now. Somewhere safe. No trace. Use your people."
"On it," Lena replied, no questions asked. "Kyon, this is–"
"I know what it is," he cut her off. "It's the opening move. They think it will distract me. Soften me." He picked up the wooden bear, splintering it in his fist. "It just told me exactly what kind of war this is."
The next attack was more subtle. A scheduled blood test for the Moscow commission came back with a "red flag" for elevated T/E ratios—a potential sign of testosterone use. It was a lie, a planted result, but it created bureaucratic chaos and headlines: "WILSON UNDER CLOUD AHEAD OF BEAR FIGHT!" Lena's lawyers fought it, proving chain-of-custody errors, but the stain was public.
Then, Marek didn't show up for sparring. A phone call from his wife: he'd been hit by a car in a hit-and-run. Broken leg, broken ribs. Not fatal. Just incapacitating. A message: We can take away your preparation.
Kyon stood in the empty warehouse, the ghost of Marek's pain hanging in the air. Bruno watched him, his strongman's face grim.
"You want to stop?" Bruno asked.
Kyon started laughing. A low, humorless sound that built into a roar. "Stop? This is the best sparring I've ever had! They're showing me their playbook! Threats, bureaucracy, accidents." He paced, a tiger in a cage. "They think this is pressure? This is nothing. I was forged in a cellar. I was tempered in a courtroom. This… this is just noise."
But the final move was the most personal. A package arrived at the loft. No return address. Inside was a single sheet of high-quality stationery. On it, in elegant, flowing script, was written:
"Every kingdom has its architects. You are building a splendid, savage castle. But who laid the first stone? Who owns the land it stands upon? Curiosity is a dangerous tool for a blunt instrument. Focus on the bear, Mr. Wilson. It is distraction enough for a man of your… limited perspective."
It was signed with a single, elaborate initial: V.
V. The Professor's "syndicate." The silent player.
Kyon held the paper. The arrogance of it, the sheer, genteel contempt, ignited something colder and more dangerous than rage. It was a profound, clarifying hatred. They saw him as a "blunt instrument." A thing to be pointed or broken.
He walked to his floor-to-ceiling window, looking out at the city he had terrorized and which now worshipped him. He thought of the Phantom, the artist, the boy who sought truth in the click. That boy was gone. In his place stood a man who understood power in all its forms: fists, money, influence, fear.
He was done being a piece on their board.
He picked up his phone and called the one person he knew who operated in shadows.
The line rang three times before a digitally altered voice answered. "You received our gift."
The voice from the anonymous laptop. The Friend of the Professor.
"Tell me about 'V,'" Kyon said, no greeting.
A pause. "A collector. Of empires, of debts, of men. Older than Solano. Deeper. He believes boxing is a garden he tends. You are a weed. Volkov is his pruning shears."
"Can he be hurt?"
Another pause, longer. "His wealth is armor. His anonymity is a fortress. But even fortresses have foundations. You fight in Moscow. His foundation is there. His pride is there. To humiliate Volkov in front of the Motherland… that would be a crack in the wall. A small one."
"Good enough," Kyon said.
"Be warned," the voice hissed. "He will not play fair in Moscow. The ring, the officials, the environment… it will all be his. You are walking into a trap that is also a test."
Kyon smiled, the same smile that had terrified Monroe. "Let him. Tell your 'collector' that this weed has roots of iron. And I'm about to tear up his garden."
He hung up.
The siege had hardened him. The hunger was now a focused, crystalline purpose. Moscow wasn't just a fight. It was a battlefield in a war he hadn't started but was now determined to win.
The final week of camp was a masterpiece of controlled fury. With no Marek, Kyon sparred with Bruno. The strongman, though not a boxer, was immovable. Kyon practiced throwing his new, heavier weight behind every punch. He practiced clinching, leaning, using his leverage against a man who couldn't be pushed. He practiced fighting tired, fighting angry, fighting through imagined fouls and bad calls.
The day before their flight, Lena confirmed Eleanor was safe, relocated to a quiet town in the Pacific Northwest under a new name. She was scared, but safe. The guilt was a stone in Kyon's gut, but it was also fuel. They had dragged his mother into this. That was a line that couldn't be uncrossed.
On the plane to Moscow, Kyon didn't watch film. He didn't sleep. He stared at the clouds, running through scenarios. The crooked referee. The poisoned water. The glove tampering. He and Lena had contingency plans for everything. They had their own cutman, their own water, their own security.
But the most important weapon was in his soul. They had tried to scare him, distract him, weaken him. All they had done was introduce him to his true enemy, and in doing so, they had given his boundless hunger a name, a target.
As the plane began its descent into Sheremetyevo Airport, the sprawling, frozen expanse of Moscow coming into view, Kyon leaned his head against the window.
He was no longer just a boxer coming for a title.
He was a siege engine, rolling towards the fortress walls.
And he was going to break them.