Year: 2015
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Consciousness returned to Kyon in layers, each one more painful than the last. First was the sound: the low, steady beep of a heart monitor, a familiar, sterile cadence. Then the smell: antiseptic, bleach, the faint, metallic scent of his own blood. Finally, the feeling: a profound, all-encompassing ache that seemed to originate in the very marrow of his bones and radiate outward. His ribs were a universe of purple fire. His jaw felt misaligned, held together by swelling and soreness. His head… his head was a separate entity, a throbbing, cotton-stuffed orb resting uneasily on his neck.
He opened his eyes. The light of a single, dim hospital room lamp was still too bright, sending a lance of pain through his optic nerve. He squinted, his vision swimming.
"He's awake."
Thorne's voice, gravelly with exhaustion, came from his right. Kyon turned his head slowly, a movement that sent fresh nausea rolling through him. Thorne was slumped in a vinyl chair, his face drawn, shadows like bruises under his eyes. He looked ten years older.
"Don't try to talk," Thorne said, leaning forward. "Just blink if you understand me."
Kyon blinked.
"Good. You're in Sunrise Hospital. You won. You're the national champion."
The words landed, but they had no weight. They were facts from a story about someone else. All he felt was the pain and a deep, cellular exhaustion. He remembered fragments: Volkov's icy eyes, the white flash of the uppercut, the cold canvas, the roar of a crowd that sounded like it was underwater. The final, desperate charge… that was a blur of instinct and rage.
A nurse came in, efficient and kind. She checked his vitals, shone a penlight in his eyes that made him wince, asked him simple questions. "What's your name?" Kyon Wilson. "Do you know where you are?" Hospital. Vegas. "What year is it?" That one took a second. 2015.
"Cognitive responses are okay," she said to Thorne. "The CT scan was clear—no bleeding. But he has a grade three concussion. Rest is the only cure. No screens, no reading, no stimulation. Just quiet. The doctor will be in to see him in the morning." She adjusted his IV and left.
Thorne moved his chair closer. In the quiet hum of the room, his voice was low. "You scared the hell out of me, kid. Out of everyone. What you did… getting up from that… I've never seen anything like it. It wasn't boxing. It was something else."
Kyon tried to speak, but his throat was raw. "Water," he rasped.
Thorne held a cup with a straw to his lips. The cool liquid was a blessing.
"Volkov?" Kyon managed.
"He's fine. Concussed too, but he was conscious after a few minutes. Tough son of a bitch. He asked about you before they took him out."
There was a long silence, filled only by the beeping monitor. The magnitude of what he'd done, of the title he'd won, began to seep through the pain medication and the mental fog. National champion. The best amateur 165-pounder in the country. The path to the Olympics, to his ultimate goal, was now wide open.
And it felt like ash.
"How long?" Kyon asked, his voice a whisper.
"No contact for at least three months. Doctor's orders. Probably longer. The brain…" Thorne's voice hitched. "The brain isn't a muscle. You can't just ice it and run it again. It needs time to heal. Real time."
Three months. An eternity. In the grinding, forward-marching timeline of a fighter's prime, it was a canyon.
The door opened softly, and Miguel peeked in. His usual brilliant smile was absent, replaced by a look of profound relief. "Hermano. You are one crazy fantasma." He came in, holding a small, gift-wrapped box. "This is from the gym. From everyone." He placed it on the bedside table next to the monstrous gold trophy, which looked absurd and garish in the clinical room.
Over the next 24 hours, Kyon existed in a limbo of pain and disconnection. The doctor, a neurologist with a gentle manner, explained the injury in stark terms. "Your brain slammed against your skull. The neural pathways are bruised. You need darkness, quiet, and time. No training. No sparring. No getting your heart rate up. You'll have headaches, dizziness, sensitivity to light and sound. It will get better, but you must be patient. The most dangerous thing you can do is get hit again before you're fully healed."
USA Boxing officials visited, full of congratulations and sober warnings. Colonel Jenkins was among them. He shook Kyon's hand, his grip firm, his eyes serious. "A legendary fight, son. You showed more heart than any fighter I've seen in twenty years. You've punched your ticket to the Olympic Trials, no question. But that ticket isn't for next month. It's for next year. Your job now is to heal. The nation will be watching."
The word "nation" felt abstract, distant. Kyon's world had shrunk to this room, this bed, this pounding in his skull.
On the second day, he was discharged. Thorne helped him into a wheelchair, then into a cab. The sunlight was an enemy. The noise of the Vegas street was a physical assault. He kept his head down, sunglasses on, a hat pulled low.
Their flight back to Detroit was a nightmare of overwhelming sensation. The airport's fluorescence, the roar of the engines, the pressure changes—each was a fresh torment. He slept fitfully, dreaming of falling through silent, white spaces.
When they finally pushed open the door to The Last Round, a surprise awaited him. The gym was clean—spotless, in fact. The bags were neatly hung, the floor mopped to a shine. And in the center of the ring, on a small, draped table, was his national championship trophy. Around it, in a semicircle, stood the entire gym family: Big Ben, Miguel, the other fighters, the regulars, Mrs. Gable. They didn't cheer. They applauded, a quiet, respectful, sustained ovation that spoke louder than any roar.
Ben stepped forward, his gruff voice uncharacterually soft. "Welcome home, Champ."
The word didn't fit. He didn't feel like a champion. He felt like a ghost who'd tried to possess a bomb and was now picking up the pieces.
Thorne set him up in the office on a fold-out cot. It was quieter than the storage room. The next week was a lesson in a new kind of discipline: the discipline of inertia.
His routine, once a symphony of strenuous exertion, became a minimalist composition of survival. He would wake, eat the bland, healthy meals Thorne prepared, then lie in the dim office with a cold pack on his head. He was allowed short, slow walks outside, but the city sounds were too much. He mostly wandered the silent, empty gym at night, a phantom in his own domain, tracing the ring apron with his fingers, feeling the familiar textures of the heavy bags.
The headaches were a constant presence, a dull throb that would occasionally spike into debilitating ice-picks behind his eyes. Bright light was agony. Loud noises made him flinch. His balance was off; he'd sometimes list to one side when walking. The mental fog was the worst. His thoughts felt slow, viscous. He'd start a sentence and lose the thread. Reading was impossible—the letters swam on the page. The intricate fight geometry that usually played in his mind was just static.
One afternoon, about a week after their return, Lionel Hayes, the manager, showed up. He was all sympathetic smiles and expensive cologne. He'd seen the fight, of course. Everyone had.
"Kyon! My God, what a war. You're a made man. The footage is everywhere. 'The Phantom's Last Stand.' It's iconic." He sat across from Kyon in the office, his eyes gleaming with dollar signs, not concern. "This is the moment. The narrative is perfect. The wounded warrior, the triumph against all odds. Sponsorship deals that were interested before are now clamoring. We're talking six figures, potentially. Apparel, energy drinks, a documentary interest…"
Kyon listened, the words bouncing off the fog in his mind. Six figures. It was a number that should have been staggering. For the kid who'd starved in the duplex, it was a fortune. But it felt meaningless next to the cost.
"He's not signing anything," Thorne said from the doorway, his arms crossed. "He can't even read the fine print right now, Lionel. His brain is scrambled."
"Of course, of course!" Hayes held up his hands. "This isn't about signing today. It's about positioning. While he heals, we build the brand. Social media, a website, a PR firm to handle the media requests—and they are pouring in. We protect the asset, Marcus. We capitalize on this momentum."
"The 'asset' needs quiet," Thorne growled. "Not a PR circus."
"Quiet leads to obscurity," Hayes countered smoothly. "The sports world has a short memory. We need to keep the Phantom in the public consciousness while he mends. It's for his own good."
Kyon looked from Hayes's eager face to Thorne's protective scowl. He understood both sides. Hayes saw a product to be sold. Thorne saw a broken kid who needed to be fixed. Kyon just saw a path forward that was currently shrouded in fog and pain.
"No," Kyon said, his voice quiet but firm. Both men looked at him. "No media. No PR. Not yet."
Hayes's smile tightened. "Kyon, respectfully, this is a critical window—"
"I said no." The words came out sharper than he intended, sending a spike through his temple. He winced. "When I can think straight… we'll talk."
Hayes studied him for a moment, then nodded, the salesman's mask slipping back into place. "Understood. You focus on getting well. I'll be in touch." He left a folder thick with potential offers on Thorne's desk. "Just for when you're ready."
After he left, Thorne picked up the folder and dropped it into a filing cabinet, locking it. "That's for later. Much later."
The physical healing was perceptible, if slow. The bruising on his face faded from purple to yellow-green. The ache in his ribs subsided from a scream to a dull complaint. He could take deeper breaths. But the brain injury was a subtler, more insidious foe. The headaches persisted. The fog would lift for an hour, then descend again. He had moments of startling clarity followed by periods where he'd stare at a wall, lost in a blank, timeless void.
Dr. Kozlov visited regularly, overseeing his recovery. She had him do simple cognitive exercises: memory games, pattern recognition on cards, balancing drills. It was humbling. The mind that could calculate the trajectory of a hook in milliseconds now struggled to remember a sequence of five numbers.
"This is normal," she assured him, her voice clinical but not unkind. "The brain is rewiring. Forcing it is counterproductive. You must be gentle."
Being gentle was a foreign concept. His entire life, from survival to sport, had been about forcing—forcing his body to endure, forcing his will upon opponents. Now, he was in a battle where aggression was the enemy.
One night, unable to sleep, he wandered out to the ring. The gym was dark, lit only by the red exit sign. He climbed through the ropes and stood in the center. He tried to shadowbox, just a simple jab. His body moved, but the connection was off. The kinetic chain felt broken. His timing was sluggish, his balance wavered. He threw a right hand and stumbled, his head swimming.
He leaned against the ropes, breathing heavily, not from exertion but from frustration and a creeping, cold fear. What if it's gone? What if the thing that made me special—the timing, the reflex, the flow—was knocked out of me along with my senses?
"It's still there."
He turned. Thorne stood at the edge of the ring, a silhouette in the dark.
"It's in there," Thorne said, tapping his own temple. "It's just… recovering. You don't lose what you've built. You might have to remind it where the tools are, but the toolbox is still full."
"It doesn't feel like it," Kyon whispered.
"I know." Thorne climbed into the ring and stood beside him. "I've seen fighters come back from worse. It's a different kind of fight. The toughest one. Fighting your own doubt. Fighting the fear that you'll never be the same." He put a heavy hand on Kyon's shoulder. "But listen to me. You didn't win that title with just your reflexes. You won it with your heart. With your will. That," he said, poking Kyon in the chest, "that didn't get concussed. That's still one hundred percent. We rebuild the machine around that engine. It just takes time."
A month passed. Kyon could read for short periods. He could watch film, though he had to keep the volume low and the sessions brief. He and Thorne began to slowly, carefully, review the Volkov fight. Not for strategy, but for understanding.
Watching himself get knocked down, seeing his eyes roll back, was a surreal, chilling experience. Watching his own body get up and fight on pure instinct was even stranger. It was like watching a stranger wearing his skin.
"See here," Thorne said, freezing the frame after the knockdown. "You're gone. But the programming… the thousands of hours of slip drills, weave drills… it's in your spine. Your body knew what to do even when your mind checked out. That's the foundation we built. That's what saved you, and that's what won you the fight. That foundation is still there. We just need to reconnect the foreman in your head to the crew."
Slowly, carefully, they began reintroducing physical activity. Not boxing. Movement. Yoga, at Dr. Kozlov's insistence, to rebuild the mind-body connection. Long, slow walks. Then, eventually, very light work on the exercise bike. His heart rate was monitored, kept deliberately low.
The crown—the national championship—sat in the gym on its pedestal. It was a symbol of ultimate achievement, and a stark monument to the cost of that achievement. Fighters from other gyms would stop by to pay respects, to see the trophy and the legend who'd won it. Kyon would often hide in the office, the attention too much.
He was a king with a fractured skull, ruling a kingdom of pain and silence. The Phantom had achieved his first monumental goal. But the boy from the alley, the one who promised to never lose again, was now facing a loss that didn't come from an opponent's fist, but from the terrifying quiet within his own mind. The journey to "greatest of all time" had reached a dizzying peak, only to reveal a treacherous, uncertain path down the other side. The fight was over. The recovery had just begun.