The first breath of Moscow air was a knife.
It wasn't just the cold, a dry, biting chill of early June that spoke of winters that never truly surrendered. It was the taste. Jet fuel, old stone, and something else—a faint, metallic tension, like the static before a storm. Kyon Wilson stood at the top of the mobile stairs, his carry-on slung over one shoulder, and let the feeling wash over him. The city sprawled under a leaden sky, a fortress of concrete and ambition. He didn't see an arena. He saw battlements.
"They know we're here," Lena said from behind him, her voice carrying over the whine of the engines. She was bundled in a severe black coat, her eyes hidden behind sunglasses despite the gloom. "The feed's already live. 'The Phantom's Ghost Lands in Mother Russia.' They love a villain."
Kyon didn't turn. He descended the stairs, his movements economical, heavy. The 175 pounds he carried now wasn't bulk; it was density, a geological fact. Each step thudded with purpose. On the tarmac, a small, unfriendly delegation waited alongside three black SUVs. A customs official with a face like a closed fist, two stone-faced security men, and a smiling man in a too-thin overcoat.
"Mr. Wilson! Welcome to Moscow!" the smiling man announced, his English slick with accent. "I am Anatoly, your liaison. Everything for your comfort."
Kyon's eyes swept past him, taking in the distant terminal windows lined with cameras, the security personnel whose hands rested a little too near their belts. They see a problem to be managed, he thought. A weed.
"My comfort," Kyon repeated, the words a flat, warm puff in the cold air. "Let's go."
The processing was a theatrical display of petty authority—passports studied under lamps, bags opened with deliberate slowness, questions about the purpose of his vitamin supplements. Kyon stood in the center of it, a statue of patient contempt. He watched Anatoly's smile flicker each time an official raised a new objection, a dance he was meant to find frustrating.
Siege mentality, The Professor's ghost whispered in his mind. First, they try to weary the walls.
After forty minutes, they were released. The ride into the city was silent. Lena scrolled through her phone, her jaw tight. "Volkov's done three interviews today. Says he will send you back to America in a plastic bag. The networks are eating it up. His nickname's trending in five languages."
"Good," Kyon said, watching the monolithic Soviet-era buildings slide past. "The bigger they are."
"This isn't Detroit, Kyon. This is his house. The referee is Yuri Vasiliev. He's reffed Volkov's last four title defenses. The judges are… predictably local."
"I know."
"The commission rejected our request for neutral officials. Called it an 'insult to Russian sporting integrity.'"
Kyon finally looked at her. A faint, cold smile touched his lips. "I don't need judges, Lena. I need a ring and ten seconds alone with him."
She held his gaze for a moment, then nodded slowly. The monster was here on business.
Their hotel was a stark, modern tower near the river, a monument to new money. Their floors had been secured, but the lobby was a zoo. Russian and international media formed a shouting, flashing gauntlet. Kyon moved through it like a ship through a churning sea, Lena and their security clearing a path. Questions in Russian and English lashed at him.
"Kyon! Are you scared?"
"Do you regret coming to Moscow?"
"Is it true you are a criminal who bought his freedom?"
"Do you have a death wish?"
He stopped. The scrum froze, microphones thrust forward like spears. He turned his head slowly, making eye contact with the reporter who'd asked the last question—a young, slick-haired man with a smirk.
"A death wish?" Kyon's voice was quiet, but it cut through the noise. "No. I have a killing wish. There's a difference."
A beat of stunned silence, then a renewed explosion of flashes. He turned and walked to the elevators, the chaos boiling behind him.
---
The gym they'd secured was in a basement in the Presnensky District, a cavernous, damp-smelling space owned by a retired trainer who owed a favor to one of the Professor's "Friends." It was spare, outdated, but clean. Most importantly, it was defensible—one entrance, no windows, their own people on the door.
Kyon's small, essential team was already there: Darius, his conditioner and de facto chief of security, a mountain of calm vigilance; and Doc Faraday, the ancient, razor-eyed cutman who had seen every trick. Gregor, his Berlin coach, would arrive tomorrow.
"Swept it twice," Darius said, his voice a low rumble. "No bugs. No cameras. Water's from sealed bottles we bought ourselves. Food is from a trusted source, cooked here." He gestured to a small hotplate in the corner. "It's a bunker."
"Good," Kyon said, dropping his bag. He was already in sweats. The hunger was awake, a gnawing void in his gut that food couldn't fill. Only action. Only violence. "Wrap my hands."
He worked on the heavy bag for an hour, not with fluid combinations, but with single, shattering blows. Left hooks that cracked like gunshots. Right hands that drove the bag back on its chains until the ceiling beams groaned. The Phantom Reflex was still there—the impossible slips, the gliding footwork—but it was now the delivery system for crushing force. He was building a machine designed for one task: to dismantle a bigger, stronger machine.
Gregor arrived as Kyon was finishing, the bald, scarred German dragging a duffel bag. He watched the last few punches, his expression unreadable.
"You look like a bomb," Gregor said, his English guttural. "A tense, ugly bomb."
Kyon steadied the bag, breathing in controlled plumes. "Will it be enough?"
Gregor grunted. "Power? Maybe. Volkov, he is not a boxer. He is a force of nature. He walks through punches. His own… they break orbital bones, rupture spleens. Your 'reflex' will keep you away for a time. But in Moscow, they will not let you dance. The ref will break every clinch fast, push you back to center. You will have to stand in the fire."
"I know."
"Then you know the plan is not to outbox. It is to outlast. To make him break his hands on your bones, and then…" Gregor mimed a surgeon's precise cut. "The liver. The trachea. The tools of the butcher, not the artist."
The word artist hung in the dank air. Kyon felt a ghost of a memory—the perfect, silent "click" of the Tanaka fight, the universe aligning into a single, pure point. It felt like someone else's life.
"The artist is dead," Kyon said, wiping his face with a towel. "Bring me the butcher's manual."
They spent the evening in strategy, diagrams spread on a wobbly table. Volkov was a study in terrifying simplicity: a piston jab, a wrecking-ball right cross, a left hook to the body that had literally dropped men to their knees vomiting. He cut off the ring with surprising agility for a 6'1", 190-pound frame. He had no neck. His chin was granite.
"His weakness is here," Gregor said, tapping a spot just below Volkov's sternum on a paused video. "When he loads the right hand, his left side opens. A fraction. But it is there. A spear to the solar plexus. It will not drop him. But it will steal the wind from his engine. Do it five, six times. Then, the monster becomes a tired bear."
"And the ref?" Lena asked, leaning against the wall.
"We assume he will be Volkov's best friend," Gregor said. "So we fight through it. Kyon must be dirtier. Use the elbows, the forearms, the head. Make the ref separate you. But when you separate, you must be the first to strike. Always first."
A phone buzzed. Lena looked at it, her face hardening. She showed the screen to Kyon. It was a Russian boxing news site. The headline, in Cyrillic, translated by her phone: AMERICAN'S MOTHER IN HIDING? ELEANOR WILSON FLEES THREATS, SOURCES SAY.
The article quoted "anonymous insiders" suggesting Kyon's family was embroiled in his "criminal dealings" and that his mother's disappearance was proof of his guilt.
The cold fury that rose in Kyon's chest was so pure it was calming. It crystallized everything. This was "V". They weren't just threatening; they were narrating. Shaping the story. Making him the unstable, criminal outsider, and Volkov the patriotic hero defending the sport's honor.
"They're painting the canvas," Kyon said, his voice dangerously soft.
"We issue a denial," Lena said. "We say she's on a private vacation—"
"No." Kyon cut her off. "We say nothing. Let them talk." He looked at the grainy photo of Volkov on the screen, the man's flat, emotionless eyes. "Every lie they tell, every threat they send, is just more fuel. I'm going to break their toy in front of the whole world. That's the only statement that matters."
Later, in his sparse hotel room, the city's lights glittering coldly outside, he tried to call Alana. It went to voicemail. Her recorded voice, light and hopeful from a lifetime ago, was a fresh wound. He didn't leave a message. What was there to say? That he was in the belly of the beast, more monster than man, and he could feel the beast's acid starting to dissolve the last fragments of who he used to be?
He thought of Eleanor, hidden away in a cabin surrounded by tall pines, jumping at every crack of a branch. She had sent a single text: I'm safe. I'm praying for you. I'm so sorry. The guilt in her words was its own kind of weapon.
He stood in the dark, shadowboxing, his movements silent and deadly. The Phantom Reflex flowed, a river of instinct under the glacier of his cultivated power. For a moment, he felt the split within himself—the ghost of the artistic boy who sought perfection, and the vengeful engine he had become. They were no longer at war. The engine had consumed the ghost, using its bones for fuel. There was no doubt. Only a cold, infinite hunger.
And Moscow, with its iron snow and watchful eyes, was the table. He was coming to eat.
---
The next two days were a study in controlled escalation.
The public workout was held in a shopping mall atrium, a circus of nationalism. Hundreds of Volkov fans, mostly young men in tracksuits, waved flags and chanted "SI-BIR-SKY MED-VED!" The air throbbed with bass-heavy Russian rap. When Kyon entered with his small team, the chants morphed into a unified, hostile boo. He ignored it, stepping into the roped-off ring area.
He went through a light, technical routine—footwork, slip drills, speed combinations on the pads with Gregor. It was a message of discipline, of cool readiness. The Russian commentators on the loud stage nearby scoffed. "He looks small! Like a child next to what Volkov will bring!"
Then, as his session ended, a group of men in expensive, understated suits entered and stood at the back. They didn't chant. They didn't take photos. They just watched. The leader was an older man with silver hair and the posture of a former soldier, his eyes pale and assessing. He held Kyon's gaze for a long three seconds before turning and leaving with his retinue.
"You see them?" Lena muttered, her hand on Kyon's arm.
"I saw them," Kyon said. The syndicate. "V" wasn't a logo or a letter. It was a look. It was the calm, proprietary gaze of a man looking at a misbehaving asset.
That night, as Kyon returned to the hotel from a late massage, he found a small, plain envelope on the floor of his suite, slipped under the door. No name. Inside was a single photograph, printed on high-gloss paper. It was a shot of the remote, snow-dusted cabin in the Pacific Northwest where Eleanor was hidden. The photo was taken from the trees, a telephoto lens compressing the distance. On the back, in neat block letters: NOWHERE IS FAR ENOUGH.
Kyon didn't call security. He didn't rage. He walked to the bathroom, held a lighter to the corner of the photo, and watched it curl and blacken in the stainless-steel sink. The flames reflected in his dark eyes. They had meant to frighten him, to disrupt his focus. They had no idea they were pouring gasoline on a sun.
The hunger became a silent scream in his blood.
---
The weigh-in was held in the vast, echoing hall of the VTB Arena, the site of the fight itself. It was a spectacle worthy of a gladiatorial combat. Thousands of fans packed the stands, a sea of white, blue, and red. The roar when Volkov appeared was physical, a wall of sound.
Ilia "The Siberian Bear" Volkov was a masterpiece of intimidation. Shaved head, a beard that grew high on his cheekbones, eyes like chips of flint. His torso was a slab of muscle matted with dark hair, covered in old scars and new tattoos of Orthodox icons and snarling bears. He stepped onto the scale with a predator's languor. 160.2 lbs. He raised his massive arms, and the arena erupted.
Kyon followed. The boos were deafening, a torrent of hatred. He wore a simple black hoodie and shorts. He looked smaller, leaner next to Volkov's raw mass. He stepped on the scale. 159.8 lbs. He stared straight ahead, not acknowledging the crowd, his face a mask of eerie calm.
Then came the face-off. The stage was set in the center of the arena, under blinding lights. The two champions were directed to stand nose-to-nose for the photographers. Volkov loomed over him, his chest nearly touching Kyon's face. He stared down, his expression one of bored contempt. He muttered something in Russian, the words a guttural threat.
Kyon didn't blink. He didn't lean back. He slowly, deliberately, raised a hand and placed his index finger on Volkov's sternum, right over the spot Gregor had diagrammed. He didn't push. He just touched, a cold, precise point of contact.
Volkov's eyes flickered, a micro-expression of surprise, then anger.
Kyon spoke, his voice so quiet only Volkov and the closest officials could hear. "I've seen your weakness. It's right here. I'm going to dig a hole in it."
He held the giant's gaze, his own eyes like black ice. For a long, electric moment, Volkov said nothing, his jaw working. The crowd sensed the tension, the roar dying to a murmur.
Then Kyon smiled. It wasn't a friendly smile. It was the smile of a surgeon who has just identified the exact point of incision. He dropped his hand, turned his back on the champion of Russia, and walked off the stage through a renewed avalanche of boos.
He had come to their house, stood under their hate, and touched their god. And he had not flinched.
The psychological battle was joined. The siege was underway.
Back in the sterile quiet of the locker room corridor, Lena fell in step beside him. "That was either brilliant or suicidal."
Kyon kept walking, the roar of the crowd now a distant storm. "It's the same thing," he said. The hunger in his gut had settled into a cold, focused burn. The blueprint was drawn. The tools were sharpened. The monster was ready for the forge.
Outside, the first flakes of an unseasonal, iron-gray snow began to fall on Moscow.