"Security Online"
– One minute earlier, Security Control –
The night shift command center looked less like Fort Knox and more like a teenager's bedroom with better cameras. Eight feeds glowed across the wall, none of which currently held the attention of Terry Volkov, union jacket unbuttoned and belly walled up against a folding table. A bakery cake sat open between two laptops: WELCOME JOSH!!! piped in neon frosting, the exclamation points slowly sliding toward the edge like jumpers.
"WoW is dead, kid," Terry declared, left hand on a mouse, right hand in a bag of chips. "Tonight we ascend." He pinged midlane with the solemnity of a sacrament. "Watch your minimap. Last guy ignored his minimap, had a heart attack. Not saying it was related, but I'm saying it was related."
Josh Volkov—nineteen, new badge still creased—had his own laptop open, knees jiggling like they'd been caffeinated at birth. "First day buff, Uncle T. I'm cracked." He cracked a soda. "We queue again after this. Best of five."
"Best of one, junior," Terry said. "Hospital job. Security. Protective presence." He leaned into his mic. "And also—gank now."
They were both mid-teamfight when the control room coughed up a tone it only used for bad ideas with legs. CODE GREY blinked across the top banner. Camera 11-7-06 switched itself full-screen.
On the screen, Mike Tyson walked out of Room 617 in a hospital gown that had renounced its vows. The privacy sheet fluttered off his shoulders like a cape and then like a surrender flag. He shouldered a cart aside. A family at the ice machine scattered like pigeons. Behind him, Nurse Eleanor Hartley materialized with a clean blanket and the kind of British determination you usually only see in nature documentaries about stoats. The physics of her scrubs did a lot of extra work. The cameras noticed. So did both men.
Terry and Josh shared a single, shocked look—the kind you read about in history books right before a disaster.
"Pause?" Josh asked.
"There is no pause," Terry wheezed, already up. "There's cardio. Six floors. Pray for me."
– Hallway, six flights later –
Josh hit the eleventh-floor landing first, lungs burning, eyes huge. Terry arrived half a dozen heartbeats later, pink-faced and panting, one hand on his radio, the other braced on a knee.
Tyson was already there, halfway down the corridor—barefoot, wild-eyed, wires trailing like party streamers. He raised a palm and made a slow, deliberate wave.
"There's no need for security," he intoned, trying for baritone, getting thunder. "The person you lookin' for ain't here."
Nothing happened. The hall continued to be real.
Eleanor slid in behind them with the blanket like a matador's cape. "Stop him!" she called in crisp Home Counties, trying not to breathe through her nose. "He's just assaulted Dr. Belmore!"
Tyson's gaze cut to the guards. His lips peeled back into something that was not a smile. "You boys wanna be heroes?" he lisped softly. "I'll rip your heart out and feed it to you, right now."
Josh swallowed and drew his Taser like a cowboy who had watched too many movies. He planted his feet the way he imagined Dirty Harry did. "On the floor, sir. I—I'm a big fan, but you've broken the law. Your move, punk."
Terry found speech between breaths. "We don't get paid enough for this," he confided to the air, then dragged his own yellow-cased Taser up in solidarity.
Tyson stepped forward, the gown flapping traitorously. Eleanor, cheeks high with color, did what decency demanded: she threw the blanket like a net. It landed across Tyson's shoulders, slid, then settled around his waist and hips in a lopsided toga. It didn't help much. It helped enough.
"Last chance," Josh said, voice going up a key. "Taser, Taser!"
He fired. The cartridge popped, wires sang, and confetti tags fluttered. One dart bit Tyson's chest. The other buried itself in blanket.
Electricity bit. Tyson jerked, knees buckled—then he kept coming, jaw clenched, eyes bright with something unholy and convinced.
"Backup!" Terry barked, and fired. Both darts landed—flank and thigh. Five seconds of angry buzzing turned Tyson's muscles into ropes. He stumbled, cursed, accepted it like rain—and walked through.
Josh's eyes did math and found only anime. "Okay," he breathed, holstering. "Then I gotta go Vegeta." He lowered his shoulders like a linebacker who'd studied physics on TikTok. "THIS IS FOR PLANET E—" he began, and charged.
Tyson didn't meet him so much as happen in the same space. An off-angle step. A palm on the back of Josh's head like a father moving a toddler past a door jamb. Then Tyson's right hand—short, savage—lifted into Josh's sternum with a thunk that sounded like a book slammed shut.
Air left Josh in a single, astonished whoof. He folded but didn't let go, arms locked around Tyson's waist because Eleanor was watching and pride is a stupid, powerful god. Blood sprang from his lip. "I—I still got you!" he wheezed, which was not strictly true.
Tyson dipped, teeth bared toward an ear with the old, terrible impulse.
"OH HELL NO," Terry roared, and launched a bear hug from behind. Not technique—faith. His forearms slid under Tyson's, hands clasping behind the fighter's skull in a wheezing almost–full nelson. Momentum did the rest.
All three went down—Josh at the bottom, Tyson on Josh, Terry on everything. They made a human hamburger and the floor was the plate.
For one stunned beat the stack held. Then physics remembered its bit, and Terry's belly—having traveled some distance at speed—introduced itself to the side of Tyson's head. Internal gasses negotiated with gravity.
The fart rolled out like a weather event.
It arrived in waves: stale cafeteria coffee, jelly donut regret, and something that had perhaps once been a hot dog in 2019. The corridor changed. Eleanor's eyes watered on principle. The blanket tried to evacuate the premises of its own accord.
"DUDE," Josh gag-laughed from geologic layer one. "FRIENDLY FIRE!"
Terry's face went the shade of a taillight. "I— that— donuts hit different—" Another treacherous brap interrupted the apology. "Oh God."
Tyson recoiled like a man yanked back from a precipice by smell alone. "Plague ddemons!" he gagged. "Ppoison gas! You tryin' to kill me with your ass?"
Eleanor, fighting through the miasma, darted in and jammed the blanket firmly over Tyson's hips, because civilization is choices. "Gentlemen," she said, voice pinched, "finish him—metaphorically."
Tyson didn't wait for metaphors. He planted a foot, bridged his hips, and peeled Terry off like a stubborn sticker. One elbow, one knee, and he wriggled free of the stack, blanket slipping to half-mast. Josh clawed for an ankle and got confetti tag instead. Tyson lurched upright, eyes streaming for reasons both chemical and cosmic.
"Where my people at?" he barked, already moving. "Follow me! Lissen to the truth!"
He ran—bare feet slap-slap on wax—toward the stairwell, yelling, "I smell your demon gas! Come out and fight!"
Eleanor let the worst of the air pass before she kneeled by the wreckage. "Are you injured?" she asked, crisp and automatic.
Josh blinked at her like a man in love with survival. "You— you saw that? I held him like Vegeta, right?"
"You held him," she said diplomatically, helping him sit. "That's the important verb."
Terry rolled to a side, clutching his stomach, eyes huge and contrite. Up close, Eleanor finally mapped the teddy-bear softness under the bluster. He seized her hand impulsively, gallantry suddenly discovered deep in his Slavic DNA, and kissed her knuckles. "As you wish," he murmured, sincere and nerdy, the Princess Bride line wobbling slightly under the circumstances.
Eleanor's eyebrows went north. She was flattered despite herself, then remembered the moment, the cameras, and her job. She gave him a brisk, offended tap on the cheek—more beep than slap. "Very sweet. Absolutely not. Up. Go do your job."
Terry blinked. "Was that a yes, or—"
"It was 'move,'" she said, already standing, already running. She scooped a second blanket from a passing cart because hope springs eternal, even in linen, and sprinted after Tyson, whose voice echoed now from the stairwell like a sermon given to concrete.
Josh staggered up. Terry hauled himself wallward. They exchanged a look that said pride had been wounded, lungs had been challenged, and the night wasn't done with them at all.
"Anime heroes never give up," Josh panted.
"Vegeta always loses," Terry replied, grabbing his radio. "But he shows up for the rematch. Let's go."
They limped after the British nurse, who was already a streak of pink scrubs and iron will, blanket under her arm, chasing a naked messiah into the next bad idea.