Marcus nodded.

“Will you?”

The gym went dead. The silence was deafening.

Derek’s smile vanished.

Coach Henry Walsh knocked his chair backward as he

stood up, his face suddenly pale. He recognized the shift in

Marcus's stance. It wasn't the stance of a tired janitor.

It was the perfectly balanced, impossibly rooted stance

of a master.

But it was too late to stop it.

* * *

Chapter 4: The Thirty Seconds

Marcus stepped onto the mat.

He didn't bounce. He didn't shake out his arms. He

simply walked to the center of the ring, his footsteps

making no sound in his socks.

He raised his hands, not in a traditional fighter's guard,

but loosely in front of his chest. Palms open.

Derek scoffed, recovering his bravado.

“Alright, old man. Let's see this simple magic.”

Derek didn't plan to hurt him. Not really. He just

planned to embarrass him.

He intended to shoot in, hit a blast double-leg

takedown, put Marcus on his back, and hold him there

while the clock ran out, proving his absolute physical

dominance.

The timer buzzed.

Thirty seconds on the clock.

Derek moved like lightning. He feinted a jab to get

Marcus's hands up, dropped his level with textbook

perfection, and shot forward, driving his shoulder toward

Marcus’s hips.

It was the exact same takedown he had been berating

Lucas for.

It was fast. It was powerful. It had won him a

championship.

But Marcus wasn't there.

In the fraction of a second it took for Derek to cross the

distance, Marcus didn't retreat. He didn't sprawl. He simply

stepped slightly to the left, pivoting on his bad knee with

terrifying fluidity.

As Derek's momentum carried him forward into empty

space, Marcus’s right hand clamped onto the thick fabric of

Derek's rash guard behind his neck.

His left hand gripped Derek's right sleeve.

It wasn't a grab. It was a vice.

Derek felt an immense, immovable weight suddenly

attach itself to him.

Before Derek could realize he had missed the

takedown, Marcus used Derek's own explosive forward

momentum against him.

Marcus dropped his hips, stepped his left leg across

Derek's path, and twisted his torso with a sharp, violent

snap.

Tai Otoshi. The Body Drop.

It was executed with such absolute, flawless perfection

that Derek’s feet literally left the floor before his brain

registered what was happening.

The champion went airborne.

He sailed over Marcus's outstretched leg and crashed

onto the mat with a sound like a shotgun blast.

WHAM.

The entire warehouse seemed to shudder.

Dust drifted down from the rafters.

Derek gasped, the air completely violently forced from

his lungs.

He lay flat on his back, stunned, staring up at the harsh

fluorescent lights. He tried to move, to scramble up, but a

heavy knee was already pinned mercilessly onto his chest.

Twenty seconds left.

Derek's survival instincts kicked in. He bucked his hips

violently, trying to bridge and roll the older man off. It was

a move that had escaped him from dozens of professional

grapplers.

But Marcus felt like a block of solid granite. He

anticipated the bridge before Derek even moved, shifting

his base a fraction of an inch to completely nullify the

leverage.

Derek threw a desperate elbow toward Marcus's face.

Marcus easily swatted it aside, isolating the arm.

In a blur of motion, Marcus transitioned from knee-on-

belly to a modified side control, wrapping his arms around

Derek's extended right arm and neck.

Fifteen seconds.

Derek thrashed wildly, panicking now. The sheer

strength of the man holding him was incomprehensible.

It wasn't the explosive, muscle-bound strength of a

weightlifter.

It was the heavy, agonizing pressure of someone who

understood exactly how the human skeletal system

worked, and how to compress it.

Derek's legs kicked weakly against the mat. The world

was spinning. The loud, vibrant gym had faded into a dull

roar.

He realized with sudden, absolute clarity that he was

entirely at this man's mercy.

If Marcus wanted to, he could put him to sleep.

If Marcus wanted to, he could snap his arm like a dry

twig.

Four seconds.

Derek lifted his left hand.

Three seconds.

His fingers trembled.

Two seconds.