The emergency lights inside the VT training center activated before the campus lights finished dying.
White strips illuminated the cages, sponsor refrigerators, medical room, and every black camera mounted above us.
Outside the windows, the eastern half of Campus 2 disappeared.
The library bridge became a dark line over the lake. Students turned on their phone lights inside the dormitories. The grand fountain remained invisible except when lightning formed behind it.
"Independent power system," Jihye said.
"Expensive buildings have those," Anna replied.
"The Emergency Medicine laboratory had to choose between oxygen cylinders and a generator. VT's cameras didn't even blink."
The maintenance worker who had accepted JP's water stood near the entrance. His radio repeated reports of an unannounced ration cut across three campus districts.
"How long?" Mr. Kim asked.
"They don't know. The electricity crew says their night shift walked out after two men were suspended."
Another strike.
The worker looked toward the fully illuminated sponsor logo.
"This place isn't connected to our emergency line."
"Private generator?" NC asked.
"No sound. No fuel delivery. No exhaust."
Before anyone could ask what powered it, PL entered through the medical corridor.
She carried a black equipment case and a new physician's authorization.
"XH's alternative assessment begins tonight," she said.
Mr. Kim did not take the paper.
"His original physician did not approve this."
"The tournament appointed an independent neurologist."
Jihye leaned over Anna's shoulder to read the signature.
"Independent of whom?"
PL looked at me instead.
"Seventy-two hours of ambulatory monitoring. If no further episode is recorded, he receives conditional clearance."
Kitty still held the report describing the six missing seconds.
"And if there is another one?" she asked.
"He is removed from the card."
"By the doctor or by VT?"
PL's expression tightened.
"By the report."
The answer satisfied nobody.
I took the authorization.
"Where do I sign?"
The neurologist fixed small electrodes across my scalp and covered them with a thin netted cap. Wires ran behind my ear to a recorder clipped at my waist. A separate patch monitored my heart rhythm.
He handed me an event button and a paper diary.
"Press this if you experience a visual fragment, missing time, unusual smell, sudden fear, auditory disturbance, or confusion. Record the time and what you were doing."
"What if I am asleep?"
"The device continues recording."
"What if nothing happens?"
"The absence of an event will not prove that you are healthy. It will only allow us to assess immediate risk."
Mr. Kim folded his arms.
"Then why does the sponsor describe it as a path to clearance?"
The neurologist adjusted one electrode without answering.
Kitty stood beside the examination bed.
"No showering, no removing the recorder, no contact training, and no hiding symptoms," she read from the instruction sheet.
"I can read."
"You can also delete medical notes."
PL looked toward the floor.
The neurologist placed the consent form in front of me.
"The person observing you should keep a separate record."
"I will," Kitty said.
"That wasn't an invitation," I replied.
"Good. I accepted before you offered."
I signed.
The recorder's green light began blinking against my hip.
For the next seventy-two hours, every second of my brain belonged to people I did not trust.
The electricity returned to the Medical Building twenty-three minutes before our morning Pharmacology assessment.
The classroom smelled of overheated wiring. Half the ceiling lights remained off, and the projector restarted twice while our lecturer distributed medication charts.
"Today you are calculating emergency doses," she said. "A decimal error is not a small mistake. It is a different patient outcome."
JP looked at the electrodes beneath my cap.
"If your brain sends the answer directly to the projector, I am reporting you."
"My brain is currently under sponsor ownership. Ask VT for permission."
"Do you think he can improve my grades?"
"He can improve the recording."
Jihye looked up sharply.
PL's warning remained between us.
If a recording reaches you before the fight, call the person inside it before you believe it.
No recording had arrived yet.
That made waiting worse.
The assessment began.
Our first case involved a child in anaphylaxis. We had to calculate intramuscular epinephrine from weight, identify the correct concentration, and list the next management steps.
The second involved suspected opioid toxicity.
The third asked us to prepare an infusion using a vial concentration designed to punish anyone who moved a decimal point too quickly.
Around me, calculators clicked beneath the hum of unstable lights.
I finished the first two cases without difficulty.
During the third, the numbers moved.
Not literally.
For one breath, the black ink became white road markings beneath headlights. My fingers tightened around the event button in my pocket.
Then the dosage chart returned.
I checked the wall clock.
No time had passed.
I did not press the button.
Kitty sat two rows away. She looked at my hand inside my pocket, then wrote something in her own notebook.
When the lecturer collected our papers, June approached her near the supply cabinet.
They spoke quietly, but the power outage had silenced the ventilation system.
"Is he all right?" June asked.
Kitty closed the notebook.
"You can ask him."
"I don't think he wants me to."
"Since when has that stopped anyone in this class?"
June looked toward me.
NS waited beside the door with TZ, Bunny, and Cherry.
"If the episodes are real, he shouldn't fight," June said.
"They are real."
"Then stop him."
Kitty's face changed.
"You stood in front of every camera and chose NS. Don't hand me responsibility for what your choice does to XH."
"This isn't about choosing sides."
"Everything is about choosing sides now. You just dislike hearing which one you chose."
June lowered her voice further.
"I don't want either of them hurt."
"Then you are going to have a terrible evening."
Kitty walked away before June could answer.
NS had heard enough to understand the subject.
He looked at my monitoring cap.
Then he left with June.
The sponsor required every fighter to rehearse the arena entrance one week before the event.
City Square Sports Hall had two concrete tunnels leading beneath the seats. KM and JP received the western entrance. NS and I received the east, separated by thirty minutes so the broadcast team could test each sequence without placing us together.
JP's walkout music failed on the first attempt.
He entered to eleven seconds of silence, followed by a detergent advertisement playing at full volume.
"Keep it," he told the sound technician. "Fear is psychological. Nobody expects a man sponsored by clean laundry."
NC laughed from the tunnel.
The technician did not.
During the second attempt, JP stopped beneath the final light and looked into the empty cage.
Four round markers had been placed on the broadcast table for camera testing.
The fifth remained inside a box.
He touched the tape hidden beneath his sleeve.
"You are supposed to keep walking," I said.
"I was appreciating the architecture."
"You were counting."
"Architecture contains numbers."
Mr. Kim sent him back to the beginning.
JP completed the third rehearsal without stopping.
When our group left, NS's black-and-gold car entered the underground loading area.
June stepped out first. TZ followed with the training bag.
NS remained inside for several seconds while a call continued through the car speakers.
The voice belonged to his father.
I could not hear every word from across the loading area.
I heard enough.
"Our name is already inside their headlines," his father said. "Do not give them another reason to laugh at it."
NS saw me before the call ended.
His expression did not change.
"I understand," he told his father.
He left the car and closed the door.
Neither of us spoke.
The entrance rehearsal continued after we were gone.
NS stood inside the eastern tunnel while the production team tested the red overhead lights.
June waited near the cage entrance. Bunny and Cherry watched from the first row. TZ held the round timer and NS's gloves.
"Again," the director called.
NS returned to the tunnel mouth.
TZ followed him.
"Your father sounded angry," TZ said.
"He sounded careful."
"That is how powerful men sound when they are angry near a phone."
NS tightened the tape around his wrist.
"Start the music."
TZ did not move toward the control signal.
"When we stand here for real, I need you to remember something."
"Not now."
"You don't even know what I was going to say."
"You were going to tell me XH used to be my brother."
The red lights reflected across the concrete walls.
TZ held the gloves more tightly.
"Was I wrong?"
NS looked through the tunnel at June.
She stood beneath the cage lights. For a moment, NS saw the nightclub instead, with June between them while XH gripped his collar. Reporters had since asked whether she belonged to one man or the other, and the public had turned every private wound into a prediction poll.
"Start the music," NS repeated.
TZ signaled the production team.
The King entered beneath artificial thunder.
TZ remained in the tunnel after everyone else followed.
He knew the conversation was not finished.
He also knew NS intended to finish something else first.
June found NS in the warm-up room after the rehearsal.
He had put his gloves back on and was striking a heavy bag that nobody had asked him to use. TZ stood beside the wall with the timer lowered at his hip.
"Your rehearsal ended," June said.
NS landed another combination.
"I know."
"Then why are you still training?"
"Because XH received another path to clearance."
"That is what you wanted."
"I wanted him healthy enough that nobody could excuse him afterward."
The bag swung back. NS stopped it with one forearm.
June looked at TZ.
"What did his father say?"
"Ask him," TZ replied.
NS began striking again.
"He said not to embarrass our name."
"Your family name isn't inside the cage."
"It has been inside every interview since VT arrived."
He drove a right hand into the center of the bag.
"They ask whether my father's money protects me. They ask whether you chose me because of status. XH looks at everything I have as if it was purchased before I earned it."
"He never said that to me."
"He doesn't need to. He pulled my collar in the nightclub because he believed caring about you belonged to him first. He challenged me because he thinks beating me will return something you took from him."
June stepped between NS and the bag.
"Don't fight him for me."
"Move."
"Say you heard me."
NS lowered his gloves.
"If I lose in front of you, he will believe he was right about both of us. If I lose in front of the city, they will say my father bought everything except the one thing I had to earn alone."
"And if you hurt him?"
"He entered the cage knowing the rules."
"That isn't what I asked."
For a moment, NS looked past her toward the tunnel.
"I am going to make him stop getting up."
TZ raised the timer.
"The referee decides when it stops."
"Then the referee should count faster."
June moved away from the bag.
NS resumed striking.
The round bell sounded after three minutes.
He continued.
TZ let another ten seconds pass before stepping forward and catching the bag.
"Enough."
NS stared at him.
"That word is going to become a problem between us," he said.
TZ did not release the bag.
"Only if you forget who is saying it."
On the second night of monitoring, Kitty studied beside my bed.
She had arranged our Emergency Medicine notes across the floor and kept her private symptom log beneath them.
"You wrote something during Pharmacology," I said.
"You held the event button and didn't press it."
"The numbers blurred for one second. I never lost time."
"That is still a visual disturbance."
"The instructions said press for an event. It wasn't an event."
"Then what was it?"
"Stress."
"You use stress the way VT uses independent."
I closed the dosage book.
"Do you want me removed?"
"I want you alive long enough to hate me for removing you."
"That sounds romantic."
"It is the healthiest thing happening between us."
Wind pushed rain against the dormitory window.
The monitoring recorder blinked green.
Kitty moved from the floor to the edge of the bed and checked the wire behind my ear.
"Why are you really fighting him?"
"You asked this already."
"And you avoided it."
"The wager. Our places in Med Track. Everything he said."
"June."
I looked toward the window.
"If I beat him in front of her, maybe one thing stops feeling decided without me."
Kitty's hand left the wire.
"And what am I?"
"Kitty."
"That isn't an answer."
"It is your name."
"Names are what people use when the truth would cost them something."
She returned to the floor.
At 2:14 in the morning, I woke to the sound of an ambulance beyond the campus wall.
The room was empty.
Kitty had fallen asleep in the chair near the desk, but for several seconds I could not see her.
I saw fractured glass.
A red door crushed against the road.
Lights approached from far away.
My thumb found the event button.
Before I pressed it, the recorder went dark.
The green light returned eleven seconds later.
Kitty woke when I sat up.
"What happened?"
I looked at the device.
"The battery blinked."
"Did you see anything?"
The ambulance siren faded.
"No."
Kitty opened her notebook.
I lay back down before she could see my face.
The third day produced no recorded seizure activity.
The report described normal background rhythm, expected sleep transitions, intermittent muscle artifact, and one eleven-second loss of signal at 2:14 a.m.
The foundation neurologist marked the loss as equipment interruption.
Kitty marked it as possible visual disturbance.
Mr. Kim marked the entire report with a question.
VT marked it approved.
My conditional clearance appeared on the fighter portal at 6:30 that evening.
CLEARED FOR CONTROLLED CONTACT PROGRESSION. FINAL ELIGIBILITY SUBJECT TO EVENT-DAY EXAMINATION.
JP shouted loud enough for the neighboring training room to hear.
NC hugged me.
Anna reminded everyone that conditional did not mean safe.
Jihye searched the neurologist's name and discovered that his last public appointment had been at a security hospital funded through MALT's health ministry.
Kitty did not celebrate.
Across the divided gym, NS read the update on his phone.
"Disappointed?" I asked.
He placed the phone beside his gloves.
"I told them you would make it."
"You could still withdraw."
"So could you."
Neither of us moved.
TZ stood behind NS with the round timer.
He looked from the King to the King Slayer and understood that the tunnel would not give him much time.
Above us, every sponsor screen changed at once.
FINAL FIGHT WEEK BEGINS NOW.
In VT's control room, two completed files moved from storage into the release queue.
One was intended for everyone.
The other was intended for NS alone.