Cale wiped himself down with a towel and slapped his face so he could stay focused. The part of his brain that kept reminding him that he was in a simulation had been re-allocated into helping him survive. The lines between reality and AI fever dream had faded more and more every round, and now whatever round he was in, the line marking reality had disappeared completely.

  Every fight was as real to Cale as life itself. And in this life Cale found himself living, he now faced the biggest, meanest, most ferocious fighting machine that he knew this planet offered and he didn’t care. His fear had dissipated when the lines of reality had broken and he was determined to beat some of the pain he felt into his opponent.

  The pain this beast had given him had been unmeasurable in a sense that he was not sure how he was still standing. Thankfully, between rounds the damage to his body would be repaired, but the pain always lingered. He had been stomped on, crushed, gored apart, sliced across his beautiful face, and partially swallowed. But he didn’t give up, because every time he took a hit, every time his money maker was sliced to ribbons, he would hit back, and he would hit back with everything he could muster.

  In the back of his mind, he knew this fight was on a time limit, but he had been unable to focus on the round counts or how long he was supposed to fight for. Some rounds back Maggy had managed to get his attention and she pointed to some clock. Could he read the numbers? Yes, could he SEE the numbers? Yes. But did he care? No. There was an opponent that had caused him an unforgivable amount of pain and he wasn’t about to let it get away without payback.

  DING! DING!

  A bell rang out signaling that it was time to start another round, the sound penetrating the smoggy rage haze he found himself in as the remnants of the last matches pain still clung to him like molasses filled with glass shards shoved under your skin. He pulled himself out of a daze and tried to get his vision to stop swimming as he let the lights above the ring slowly come back into focus. He stood up with a groan, using the ropes to guide himself, and looked at his opponent.

  The damn mini Red Terror looked just as fresh as the first round and HATRED burned through him as he thought of the pain he had just gone through. When Maggy had told him that he would feel pain on his soul she made it sound like some of the pain would be a muted feeling, like getting pinched. But the least of the pain had been far, far worse than that.

  He found himself unprepared for the fight when it started. On the first round the Red Terror had run its sharp tipped rat tail straight through his chest and Cale could even feel it sticking out of his back. It had hurt so badly that he thought he would pass out, but before his consciousness could fade, the pain hit his head and pulled away the dark edges of his vision and replaced them with dark red rage!

  The pain was far worse than any he had experienced in his life on Earth, with each hit adding to the experience of his amplified pain. He raged at his situation. He raged at the pain. And in his rage, in that first round he grabbed on to the tail with one hand and started punching it with the other. For every ounce of pain he felt, he was determined to give it back equally.

  That was his mindset from then on forth. For every strike he took, he returned. For every bit he suffered, he kicked the beast in the face. Sometimes he found himself frustrated when he would miss a big swing or when the Red Terror was able to dodge. It was even more maddening that if he went into an uncontrolled frenzy, the Red Terror would just hit him even harder as Cale flailed about. It forced Cale to have to think through the pain and to channel his rage into an appropriate outlet, like his fists.

  Could he have given up? At any moment he could have, but he absolutely refused to stop trying and give up. He hadn’t seen his kids in years and he missed them! He, the cloned version of himself, had yet to visit his late wife’s grave and he had many, many stories he wanted to share with her. And this new interface was key to everything. Without it, he was nothing, with it, he could be anything.

  This drive, this desire, it kept Cale aloft in the sea of pain and searing misery. Sometimes all he could see were his kids’ faces. Other rounds he saw Leo, and in the latest one, his mother, Diana. All people he cherished and if he let himself fall into the pain now, they would be lost to him, forever. And in turn, he would be lost to them.

  He walked the final step to the center of the ring and found himself standing face to face with his opponent once again. He barely remembered walking to this spot and he found his pain seemed to cause time to jump, or his memories to be lost, he wasn’t sure.

  In one of these lost moments in time, Cale must have asked Maggy to create an Umpire Bot because for the last few rounds, their fights had been mediated by an oversized orb that was colored in black and white stripes with a pink, glittery top hat. It had red boxing gloves for hands and was currently counting down until the round started with its fingers.

  When the big umpire orb’s glove had made a fist finalizing the countdown, the fight started and Cale dove toward the Red Terror. The Red Terror swiped at Cale, its front leg fazing through Cale’s arms that were blocking his body and a big gash appeared on Cale’s chest. He took the pain as he felt it reverberate through him, his vision darkened but he forced himself to stay awake and with willpower alone he forced his body to move.

  He slammed his opposite knee upward, catching the forearm of the beast and smashing into it with a giant CRACK! Maggy never let Cale dodge the pain, as it was inevitable, but she also never stopped him from retaliating. Long digital cracks appeared on the Red Terror’s arm and spread all the way up to its shoulder. If Cale didn’t know he was fighting a bot, he would have sworn he had seen a look of fear in the Red Terror’s eyes.

  Splack!

  The rat-like tail whipped across his back, “AAGHH!!!” He screamed out as the pain ran along his skin and into his head like a rod being shoved into his brain for a few seconds. Thankfully, the excruciating pain was short, and Cale was back on his feet, sprinting toward the beast. He was long past caring if he got hurt and you could say he was very, very motivated to make something else feel pain.

  The beast bit down at him, and pain ripped through his shoulder as its great jaws squeezed down trying to rip his arm off his body. Cale didn’t give up and grabbed onto one of the beast’s scales with his other arm. Seeing no other choice, he braced his leg against the beast and pulled on the scale trying to make it come lose. Cale screamed as his arm, which was only holding on by a thread, was ripped off his body.

  The Red Terror did not come out unscathed, Cale had succeeded in ripping the scale off its face, causing the Red Terror to roar in pain and give Cale a look of hatred of its own. Lost in the bloodlust of his success, he wasn’t even bothered by the fact that he could see his arm inside the beast’s mouth as it roared. It hadn’t been the first time that day that he had seen himself be mutilated with such horror and it probably wouldn’t be the last.

  Using the scale like a rock, Cale made up for only having one arm by using it to attack his opponent, bashing its body with its own scale. The Red Terror swung in retaliation and nailed Cale’s leg with a swipe of its claws. Compared to losing an arm, the pain in his leg felt like he had barely been touched. Cale used his opponent’s attack to power his own as he spun, using the momentum he had gained with his now shredded limb he slammed one of the scale’s pointed corners directly into the same spot that he ripped it from.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  The beast didn’t seem to be regenerating correctly as the battle progressed and Cale’s attack, capitalizing on this weak point, was devastating. He put every ounce of effort he had into his strike and could swear he felt his arm shatter at the collision and it felt like part of the scale was sticking out the back of his hand. He willed himself to push just a little extra harder just because he could hear the roars of pain coming from his opponent and it felt like a cool fresh breeze on a hot day as he successfully returned some of his pain.

  THUD!

  “Ommph!” Cale heard the noise come out of him as he hit the ground landing on his back. He heard the dinging of the bell signaling that the round was over and found that he didn’t want to move. As he laid there, he saw beautiful bright tiny specs of lights coming from somewhere to his side and fading into nothing as they wafted toward the ceiling. It was a calming sight and Cale wondered if he had died or was about to. Suddenly Maggy came into his view, albeit upside down, as she leaned over the top of his head looking at him.

  “You broke the Red Terror,” she said flatly.

  “Huh?” Cale said intelligently, his brain hadn’t caught up yet and the lights above him were very distracting.

  “You broke the Red Terror, look at it.” This time he saw her turn her head in the direction the pretty lights were coming from.

  He turned his head to look and sure enough, the Red Terror looked broken. It was disintegrating into the pretty lights that Cale was looking at.

  “Huh,” Cale, once again, said very intelligently as he looked back up to Maggy.

  “How much time is left? Do I even want to know?”

  “Oh, you are done. I have been ringing the bell for over a minute but neither you, nor the Red Terror would stop. I was trying to figure out why the stop command wasn’t working when you ended up finding another way.” Maggy explained.

  “I survived then.”

  “Yes. You survived.”

  “I want out of this hell.” He exhaled.

  “Understood. I am removing the consciousness stream redirection web from your soul. Close your eyes and relax. When you wake up. You will be out of here.”

  Cale stared into Maggy’s eyes and thought about saying something, after all, they had been through a lot. But as he was about to say something, he realized that she wasn’t sentient. She was just a very advanced, partially screwy, Artificial Intelligence and the effort would just be a waste.

  He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and let the pain, the worry, the pain… fade away into... Nothing… Silence…

  ***

  Shuffle, shuffle.

  Cale’s ears twitched at the sound that came from his side. Why is Maggy making that noise all of a sudden? Is she re-arranging stuff now that I’m gone? Typical. All my settings get reset as soon as I close my eyes. Wait when was the last time I slept?

  Screeechh… Shuffle, shuffle.

  Ok Maggy has got to calm down with the noise. She told me to relax, but this is making it really, really hard to do so!

  Shuffle, shuffle. THUD!

  Ok Maggy, that’s it! He thought to himself and opened his eyes, sat up and yelled. “WHAT ARE YO… AHH.”

  “AAHH!!!!!!! HOLY DIVINE SHIT, AHH!!”

  Cale found himself yelling in surprise at the fact he was being yelled at.

  “Xavier, you are awake!” His mother yelled as she rushed in, along with his father, bringing him into a giant hug.

  “Ow, ow, ow, ow,” he rasped out before coughing a bit as he used his real throat for the first time in days.

  “Sorry!” His mom said, which made sense as she was squeezing the hardest. She handed Cale a cloth and a small cup of water with a large smile on her face. “I am just so happy you are alive!”

  Cale took the water and sipped a tiny portion of it. He was probably dehydrated, he sure felt like it, and if he drank too much it would cause him to throw it all up and waste it. He recalled what he had learned from an article he had once read about someone lost in the desert that had become very dehydrated. Someone had found them and gave them all the water they needed. He didn’t recall all the details, however he did remember that it did more harm than good.

  The correct way is to ingest small amounts, semi frequently. He would have to eat and drink sparsely at first, until his body was ready. Apparently his mother didn’t know this and she had just handed him the cup. But hey, finally a memory from Earth that actually helped him here.

  He didn’t say anything in response to his mother right away because he noticed all of the people behind her. He was finding that his mind felt clear and his thinking seemed clearer and more to the point. He wondered if he would always be this way now after the installation or if it had anything to do with the purple lines he saw going all over his body.

  He had questions, and by the looks on his parents’ faces, so did they. He didn’t want others to hear everything he had to say and he wanted to be careful of who found out what. But now that he thought about it…

  “Mom, why are there so many people here?”

  “Uh, well. You see the doctor came and uh… uh... Phil?”

  “What?! Oh, you want me to explain?” He asked her exasperatingly and his hands pointed back and forth between them making Cale smile.

  His mother nodded gently, her face looking partially ashamed as she avoided Phil’s eyes.

  “Fine. It’s ok, because he is alive. So, this is just.. It is what it was… Xavier. We were all here to see you one last time… Oh, this is harder than I thought... one last time alive.” His father said, choking on the words.

  “Excuse me?” Cale said, blinking slowly, making sure he heard what his dad said correctly.

  “See, your body took a lot, and I mean a lot of damage over the last week. The healers here could fix you, but the supplies... your predicament went through a lot of supplies…”

  “So, they ran low and told you to say goodbye before I died, huh?”

  “Pretty much... yeah.” His father trailed off.

  “Good thing I woke up then.”

  “Yes… Very much so.”

  Cale appreciated the honesty, but he felt tired after that small conversation and realized he had not had anything to eat, nor had he slept in a long time. He could tell that his body had not had the nutrients it needed to properly sustain himself. Before he could stop himself, out of habit of giving Maggy orders for days, he didn’t say please, but instead started to give orders to his parents like they were his helpers.

  “Mom, Dad. Can you tell the doctors that I am awake and that I will need food prepared for someone in my physical state… They should know. I hope. And tell them thank you for all their work. I greatly appreciate them keeping me alive.” He said calmly.

  He watched his parents’ jaws drop at their little boy bossing them around. But something had changed in Cale, he felt confident, he felt like after surviving what he just went through, that nothing could stop him.

  “Please,” he asked more softly, “I haven’t eaten in days and I need sleep. I would like to eat before sleeping.”

  “Uh... of course. We… Will go do that.” His mom said, looking like she was in shock.

  “On it!” His dad yelled, and using his scripts, jumped over the other people in the room and dove through the door in a rush.

  “XAVIER!” Leo yelled as he barreled out of the crowd and rushed over to Cale’s bed.

  “Leo! My friend! I am so glad to see you!” They hugged and cried and drooled a little as one tends to do when their friend they thought they lost comes back from the brink of death.

  Though dehydrated, Cale’s body still found ways to make tears as his body let go of the suppressed feelings he had held back while working to survive. Now that he was back he could finally express how much he missed his best friend.

  They didn’t get many words out before Cale found them being pulled apart by his parents and food being put in his hands. It looked like some slushy type thing and smelled delicious, like a cucumber with a hint of lime. He very slowly sipped/ate a few bites while his parents ushered everyone out of the room. By the time they turned around, Cale had fallen asleep.

  Diana

  She watched her little boy sleep, looking so peacefully as his chest slowly went up and down. A much calmer difference when compared to the last few days.

  “Well, he seems oddly ok,” Phil said to her as he sat on the other side of the hospital bed.

  “And very bossy.” She remarked.

  “Should we be concerned? Did you notice that he knew he had been out for days? Was he awake that whole time? Could he hear us?” The questions came one right after the other.

  “I don’t know, Phil. We will have to ask him when he wakes up.” She knew she should be thinking about Phil’s words, but she was just so happy that her son was alive that it was all she could think about. For now, she would let him sleep, but when he had his energy back, there was no way he was going to escape her gentle interrogation.