The southpaw landed a jab Danny didn’t see coming and his head snapped back.
He reset.
Hands up.
The man was rangy, older, patient: a gym regular Pop had pointed at Danny with one word: “Rounds.” Not friendly.
An assignment.
He circled left into Danny’s blind side and doubled up.
Danny slipped the first, ate the second clean on the temple, and his vision went white at the edges for a half-breath before it came back.
“Better,” the southpaw said, flat.
Not a compliment.
A correction.
Danny had asked for this.
Wednesday mitts with Pop had taught him how to throw a straight right that wasn’t just his arm — hips, shoulder, the whole chain — and his POWER had ticked to 39.
One point.
Earned honest.
Then Pop had put him on the speed bag for Ring IQ and told him to count the rhythm until he could hold it blind, and two days of that had moved the number to 54.
Real work.
Real results.
Then Pop had told him sparring was the only thing that built a chin and Danny had said “Yeah” like he understood, and Pop had seen straight through him.
“You been avoidin’ gettin’ hit,” Pop had said.
“That ends today.”
So here he was.
Three rounds in.
The southpaw wasn’t trying to hurt him: he was trying to teach him, and that made it worse.
Every punch landed exactly where it was supposed to, clinical, and Danny’s body was learning in the only way a body ever learned: by taking the punishment and remembering.
The man feinted high, went low, and buried a hook in Danny’s ribs.
Danny’s breath went out and his legs wanted to fold but he kept them under him because the one thing his dead self had taught him was how to stay upright when staying upright was the only thing left.
“Hands.” A flat bark through the mouthpiece.
“You drop ’em when you’re thinkin’. Stop thinkin’.”
Danny’s hands came back up.
His chin was behind them.
The bell rang.
He walked to the apron and sat.
His face was swelling under the left eye.
His ribs were singing.
The tape hung in his vision, faint, and one number had moved.
CHIN 44 → 45.
Pop was leaning against the ring post with his arms crossed.
He didn’t say anything.
He watched.
Danny stood.
The southpaw was waiting.
“One more,” Danny said.
The man tapped his gloves together.
The bell rang.
.
It was after eight when the gym emptied.
Danny sat on the apron with a bag of ice against his cheekbone and stared at the ring like it owed him an answer.
His body ached in new places.
The southpaw had given him four rounds and by the end of it Danny’s defense had started to arrive a half-beat earlier, his reads sharpening under fire, and the tape had marked each one clean.
RING IQ 54 → 56.
CHIN 45 → 46.
He’d paid for every point in bruises.
But the tape hadn’t stopped there.
Somewhere in the fourth round, between a jab that rocked his head back and a straight he’d slipped clean, the air above the ring had shimmered and something new had surfaced, not a single-line message, not a small corner notification, but a whole panel, wide and detailed, hanging in his vision like a fight-night tale-of-the-tape graphic.
He stared at it now.
⟦ SYS ⟧ ════════════════════════════════════
TALE OF THE TAPE
DANNY “———” SALERNO
════════════════════════════════════
WEIGHT 160 (nat.) / walking-around
REACH 70″ RECORD 2–0 club (0 KO)
────────────────────────────────────
POWER ▓▓▓▓░░░░░░ 39
CHIN ▓▓▓▓░░░░░░ 46
GAS TANK ▓▓▓▓░░░░░░ 44
RING IQ ▓▓▓▓▓░░░░░ 56
HEART ▓▓▓▓▓▓░░░░ 58
────────────────────────────────────
DAMAGE cheek bruised (2d) · knuckles (1d)
CARD SLOT PRELIM → next: WALKOUT
PURSE $150
════════════════════════════════════ ⟦ /SYS ⟧
There it was.
The whole truth.
He was a 39 POWER fighter with a 46 CHIN and a gas tank that could go eight rounds if he paced it right.
Ring IQ — the one gift carried over from the life before — sat at 56, the only number on the board he could be proud of.
His HEART was a 58, which the tape had measured somehow in the fourth round when his legs were gone and he’d kept his hands up anyway.
Two wins.
No knockouts.
A $150 purse.
PRELIM.
He was years of work below a real professional and the tape wasn’t lying about it.
Danny exhaled slow.
His ribs complained.
The gap between where his brain lived and where his body stood was enormous.
In his last life he’d tried to close it with volume and grit and it had killed him at thirty with a ruined shoulder and a warehouse loading dock.
Here he had a second chance and a mirror that wouldn’t let him lie about the work.
POWER came from mitts and the heavy bag.
Technique, repetition, the whole kinetic chain — no shortcuts.
CHIN came from sparring.
Eating punches correctly.
Teaching the body not to fold.
GAS TANK came from roadwork, from miles in the cold and rounds on the bag when his lungs were already burning.
RING IQ was tape study and the speed bag, drilling reads until they lived in his hands instead of his head.
HEART — he didn’t know.
Maybe it couldn’t be built.
Maybe you had it or you didn’t, and the tape just measured what was already there.
He could climb.
The numbers proved it.
Slowly.
Block by block.
The right work aimed at the right stats, and no shortcuts, and no grinding himself into the floor the way the old Danny had.
He had a granite jaw that could take a 46-level punch and a brain that could read a 56-level fight, and if he built the rest of it smart he could make a real run at this ladder.
The panel floated above the ring, steady as a pulse, and for the first time since he’d woken in this body the gap didn’t scare him.
It aimed him.
“You gonna sit there all night?”
Pop was in the doorway to the office, one hand on the frame, backlit by the fluorescents.
He’d been there awhile.
Watching.
“Studyin’,” Danny said.
“Studyin’ what? Ring’s empty.”
Danny almost said it — the tape — and caught himself.
He couldn’t explain the panel.
He couldn’t explain any of it.
So he said the other true thing.
“Tryin’ to figure out what comes next.”
Pop stepped into the ring light.
Whatever he felt stayed off his face.
“You took your beatin’ tonight. Asked for more when most kids woulda quit. That guy’s been fightin’ ten years and you made him work the fourth. You got somethin’.”
Danny waited.
There was more coming.
“But you’re still green. You’re still small. And you got a long way to go before you’re anything close to a real pro.” Pop’s voice wasn’t cruel.
It had the tape’s honesty — flat, clean, no sugar on it.
“You understand that?”
“Yeah,” Danny said.
“I do.”
Pop nodded.
He walked to the ropes, leaned against the top one, and looked at the ring like it still held a fight he couldn’t stop watching.
“I trained a kid once,” Pop said, quiet.
“Had heart like you. Thought heart was enough. Kept sendin’ him out. One time too many.”
Danny stayed still.
This was Pop’s scar — the wound under the calluses.
The reason his hand shook near the towel.
“I ain’t doin’ that again,” Pop said.
“So if you’re gonna train here, you train smart. You don’t take fights you ain’t ready for. You don’t grind yourself into the floor. And you don’t ever, ever, lie to me about what’s hurt. You hear me?”
“I hear you.”
Pop looked at him for a long beat.
Then he straightened.
“Good. Get outta here. Ice that face. You’re sparrin’ again Friday and if you show up half-swollen I’m gonna make you run stairs till you puke.”
He walked back to the office and didn’t close the door.
Danny sat on the apron alone with the panel still hanging in the air and the ice melting against his cheek.
The gym smelled like wintergreen and old sweat and hard work, and it smelled like home.
He read the tape one more time.
POWER 39.
CHIN 46.
GAS TANK 44.
RING IQ 56.
HEART 58.
PRELIM.
Not for long.
He stood.
His legs held him.
He walked out into the Kensington cold with a swollen cheek and a clear plan and the knowledge that the body was buildable, slowly, honestly, block by block, and that the tape had finally drawn him the whole map.
The stairs were waiting.
So was the work.
Five a.m.
wouldn’t wait for him to feel like it.