The truck stank of blood. The smell was both strange yet unmistakable. Blood had a distinctly metallic scent. Like water that flowed from an old pipe.
A few feathers danced about inside the truck’s covered bed as it rumbled along the uneven pavement. The sight of them, pure white and soft, gave him hope that the blood belonged to animals. Chickens, maybe. But he couldn’t be for certain.
He had heard rumors about this place for years now. That kids had died there. The cousin of a friend of a friend. Those kinds of rumors. But he never believed them. It sounded like stupid stories that kids made up to scare each other at sleepovers.
He didn’t believe a place like this could be real. No one did.
“Ay, rich boy.”
The White-Haired Boy looked up from his corner. The truck was packed tight with boys. They sat shoulder-to-shoulder. All of them teenagers, give or take. Most of them were dirty. Their clothes tattered. Their hair unkempt. Their nails caked with mud. They had come from different corners of the solar system. From dark sides of planets and rundown pockets where they would be easily forgotten. No one would be looking for these boys.
He was easily the smallest. He stood average height, but was painfully thin. His mother told him not to worry, that he was born lanky. But he knew he looked frail. His hair was stark white. Like he had been struck by lightning. He had buzzed it down to the scalp the night before. But it was already growing back. And seemed somehow whiter than before.
The voice belonged to an older boy. He had a homemade tattoo on his arm. The product of a sewing needle and the ink from a ball-point pen. It was a skull. The design was poor. The edges jagged. But the manner in which it was applied made the design, and its owner, all the more menacing.
The White-Haired Boy cowered in the corner. No one was supposed to know who he was.
The older boy motioned to his sneakers.
The White-Haired Boy looked down. The shoes, too, were white. And without a scuff. He had told himself he had thought of everything. His hair. His clothes. He even stopped brushing his teeth.
But he never thought anyone would even care to look at his shoes.
He pulled his knees close to his chest. Trying to hide them from view.
The older boy snickered. It was too late. He was marked.
The truck came to a jarring stop. The driver didn’t even bother to turn around. He didn’t want to. If you do this job long enough, you become haunted by their faces. So, he just shouted over his shoulder instead:
“GET OUT. ALL OF YOU.”
The White-Haired Boy reluctantly followed the others out of the truck. He hopped down to the road. The asphalt crumbled under his feet. The roads were turning to dust. Just like the decrepit buildings that lined them. It was the middle of the day, but it was dark here. The city was located underneath the giant, humming pipes of the planet’s atmosphere generators. A few burning trashcans illuminated the street, but it was like trying to light a candle at the bottom of the ocean. People were never intended to live here. The wealthy elite of Tharsis City, and with them the government, shunned the needy from their glistening streets. And so, East Tharsis was born. A town no one wanted to live in, full of people who no one wanted.
The White-Haired Boy took a deep breath. The air singed the back of his throat, like the smoke of an unfiltered cigarette. The air quality was poor here. It always had been. The oxygen vents opened up in downtown Tharsis City and flowed outward. By the time the air made it here, it had been stripped of its life-giving elements. The air people breathed here wasn’t air at all. It was human exhaust.
But that’s how everything was in East Tharsis. Forgotten.
An older Korean man approached the group of boys. He walked with a cane. He looked over them as if they were livestock. He motioned to a couple of the boys and dismissed them with a flick of the cane. The White-Haired Boy hoped that he would be next. He figured he could make his way back home. And even if he didn’t, he thought it would be better than whatever was waiting for them.
“Nal ttalawa.”
The Korean Man pointed his cane toward a small store front. “Follow me.” The box-light sign that was hung above it flickered. Flies frantically danced about inside. The White-Haired Boy felt like them. Trapped. It read:
A small English translation was inscribed below it. DRY CLEANER.
The boys walked single file through the interior of the dry cleaner where elderly Korean women used industrial rotary irons to press shirts and replaced buttons by hand. None of them looked at the passing boys. They didn’t seem to notice. Or maybe they were just used to it.
Or worse—maybe they didn’t care.
The Korean man approached the back door. It was made of heavy gauge steel. Like the kind used to secure a bank vault. He entered a pin into a keypad, making sure to cover the numeric sequence with his free hand.
KA-CHUNK!
The heavy locks clanged and the door slowly swung open. A concrete staircase led down into a dark basement. The boys began to slowly file down the stairs.
The White-Haired Boy reached the threshold and hesitated there for a moment. Unsure of what horrors awaited him in the darkness below. And then, he heard it. His eyelids peeled back. An involuntary reaction to the sound.
The sound ran up the staircase like the swell of a wave, then back down again, as it receded back to the ocean.
It was people.
They were cheering.
* * *
The work lights swayed as the White-Haired Boy made his way through the tunnel. The sound of the crowd grew louder with every step, as the earth began to vibrate all around him and flecked his skin with dirt. And as the tunnel opened up and they stepped into an impossibly cavernous room, he saw them.
The boys.
They were shirtless. They glistened with sweat and blood. Some of the blood was their own, some of it was the blood of others. Some of it had dried hours ago. Some of it was still tinted ruby, freshly oxygenated.
They fought in pits. Hollowed out from the earth. They were surrounded by risers, where businessmen in tailored suits and women in couture cheered on the child fighters. Bookies roamed like coyotes, snatching woos from the manicured hands as bets were placed.
The fights were quick, dirty and at times downright ruthless.
Was this Hell? No.
But it felt like the closest thing to it.
* * *
It seemed impossible that the sleeping quarters held twelve beds. Six bunk beds, most of them broken and some without a mattress, were packed into a room no bigger than a studio apartment.
There were mice everywhere. But they no longer scurried across the room, they just sat. They had grown used to the company.
A bald, short man waddled into the quarters. He was shaped like an egg. He seemed to be sweating uncontrollably and constantly dabbed his wet forehead with a dirty rag. He was the manager and fight promoter of this establishment. His name was Lucky but the boys nicknamed him Humpty long ago, like the children’s rhyme.
“Welcome to the Pits. We have one rule here. No weapons. Just fists and feet and whatever else you need to win. Fights are three rounds of two minutes each. Fighters will be paired up at random. There are no weight classes. Each of you will fight once a week. Win, you eat. Lose, you don’t. Lose three times and you’re back on the streets.”
He assigned them numbers at random, thirteen through twenty-four. Humpty didn’t care what their names were or where they were from. None of that mattered anymore. The only thing that mattered was their number, used to identify who would be fighting who that night. That was because the Pits had a revolving door of two dozen fighters. Boys one through twelve were relegated to the sleeping quarters across the hall. The White-Haired Boy had arrived with nine others, which meant only three fighters from the drop-off before theirs were still here. He wondered whether they had lost or just run away.
Humpty turned and scribbled the fight schedule on a nearby chalkboard.
The White-Haired Boy was number thirteen. His opponent was number twenty-one. He nervously scanned the room, hoping he’d draw one of the smaller kids, until his eyes landed upon: the older kid from the truck. The one with the homemade tattoo. He smirked. And gave a nod. The White-Haired Boy’s lip began to quiver.
Humpty motioned back to the chalkboard. “There is one more rule. No one fights on the first night. I suggest you get some sleep.”
Humpty waddled back through the door. The boys began to unpack their things, which were limited to whatever they could fit in their pockets. Some had brought candy. Others photos of family members they no longer knew.
The White-Haired Boy reached into his pocket and pulled out a chess piece. It was carved from ivory by hand. Part of a custom-made, luxury set.
He’d taken it before he left.
To remind himself why he was there.
The King.
When, he heard a whisper. An Irish accent.
“Hey, you.”
He turned and met the voice’s gaze. A smiling, blue-eyed, red haired Irish teenager who introduced himself. His eye was swollen shut and was the color of a ripened plum. “Name’s Twenty-Two.”
The White-Haired Boy smiled. It felt good to smile. “I’m Thirteen. I guess.”
“It’s just a number. You’ll get used to it.”
The White-Haired Boy motioned to his swollen eye. “Take it you’ve been here awhile.”
“Well, I’ve won three fights in a row. So that’s three weeks. And from what I’ve seen around here so far, that’s three weeks longer than the new boys usually make it.”
The White-Haired Boy laughed. “Any advice?”
“Yeah. Run.” The Irish teen smirked then motioned toward the door. “Hey, we’re going to watch him fight. You in?”
He thought about this for a moment. “Watch who fight?”
The Irish kid shook his head, as if to say: you’ve got a lot to learn.
“Him.”
* * *
They say he moves like water. He was only about twelve years old, no one knew for sure, but he fought like someone twice his age. There were rumors about where he had trained. Some had heard he was a descendent of the legendary Jeet Kune Do master Bruce Lee. Others heard he was a special forces recruit, some kind of government asset. But the only thing they knew for sure was he was good.
Really good.
The White-Haired Boy stood with the other boys beneath the risers, their faces pressed between the gaps in the benches trying to get a glimpse of him. He had a quaff of jet-black hair that jutted out from above his forehead like a cartoon character. It softly bounced as he jumped in place, a half-hearted warm up.
The Irish Boy nudged him. “That’s number six. Rumor is he’s been here for years, now. He’s never lost. Not once.”
The White-Haired Boy motioned towards Six’s opponent. He was twice the size of him. The veins in his arms bulging blue. His legs were thick like tree trunks.
“That hulking fella is number nineteen. But they call him the Roach.”
The White-Haired Boy furrowed his brow. He didn’t get the nickname. And asked why.
“Been here for three months now. That’s the longest of anyone besides Six. And no matter how hard anyone knocks him down… he always seems to get right back up.”
DING!
The fight began. Six slid around the ring in a fluid dance. The soles of his bare feet seemed to hover about the surface.
Nineteen cracked his knuckles as he lumbered toward Six. There was nothing technical about his fighting style. He was hunched over and heavy footed, with the discipline of someone who had gotten into too many drunken bar fights—even though he was too young to drink.
WHOOSH! Nineteen threw a hard right. A near miss!
Six kept dancing. And although he usually fought without emotion, there was a glint of happiness in his eye. He seemed to be enjoying this.
This appeared to only infuriate Nineteen more.
He threw a left! WHOOSH! Then a right! WHOOSH! Then another! WHOOSH!
But all three failed to land.
The crowd began to stir. They could feel something coming. The anticipation was palpable. The bookies collected more bets. All for Six.
Nineteen clapped his knuckles together, like a boxer without gloves. “Come on! Let’s go!”
And then, Six did it. And everything seemed to change.
It was a small. Subtle. Blink and you would’ve missed it.
A grin.
He moved towards Nineteen with alarming speed, like an alligator emerging from the water.
CRACK!
Six delivered a kick just below the right knee, causing Nineteen to buckle.
He followed with a left to the rib cage, then a right to the opposite side.
And then, he waited. For Nineteen to strike.
The White-Haired Boy watched, mouth agape. It felt like they were moving in slow motion.
WHOOSH!
Nineteen threw an absolute haymaker, the force of the punch frightening. The drag it created was immense, the air fluttering Six’s hair as it whizzed by his face…
And then, there it was before him. A window. Six brought his fists to his chin—then planted his back foot. His front foot lifting and wrapping around his body as he spun, like a serpent coiling around its prey.
And then, he connected.
Flat foot to chin.
Nineteen’s jaw broke almost instantaneously.
Nineteen fell to the dirt with an audible thud. The blood slowly beginning to trickle from the corner of his mouth.
The crowd erupts. It was bedlam. But other than the slight grin, Six showed no emotion.
He just returned to his corner. And sat.
The White-Haired Boy turned to the Irish Boy.
“If they call Nineteen ‘the Roach’… then what do they call him?”
The Irish Boy turned to him. Then smiled.
“Fearless.”