VT hit the floor on one knee.
All five of us held him.
NS controlled one arm. HS locked the other against his shoulder. JP's cane hooked behind his ankle. TZ wrapped both hands around the remaining leg. I drove my weight across VT's back and pushed him toward the concrete.
For the first time, strength stopped being enough for him.
Then he changed the problem.
VT threw his head backward into my face.
Pain exploded across my nose. My grip weakened. He twisted the arm HS held, dragged HS forward, and drove his shoulder into NS. Both fell against the pipes.
JP pulled harder on the cane.
VT dropped his weight onto the injured leg.
JP screamed and released it.
TZ held on longest.
VT kicked him into the wall.
Five bodies had forced him down.
Five separate bodies allowed him to stand again.
Blood ran from VT's mouth now. His breathing had lost its calm rhythm. The victory had lasted only seconds, but it had removed the certainty from his face.
"Again," NS said.
Nobody asked whether he meant us or VT.
We stood anyway.
The patients had reached the eastern stairs.
We could have run.
The service door remained open behind us, and the path to pathology storage was temporarily clear. Even injured, five people could move faster than one man whose bodyguards were still trapped behind debris.
VT knew it too.
"Go," he said. "Carry your wounded into another room. Hide behind another wall. My father owns every exit."
JP recovered his cane.
"He owned the northern entrance too. Then he had to bring a tank."
"And the tank entered."
"You really struggle with the emotional meaning of things."
VT stepped toward him.
This time, nobody rushed to intercept alone.
We moved with JP.
NS took the space on VT's right. I stayed on his left. HS remained behind both of us. TZ moved along the pipes, forcing VT to keep checking the narrow side of the corridor.
JP waited at the center.
The most injured person became the one controlling our distance.
VT attacked me first.
I raised both arms and accepted the impact instead of trying to win the exchange. His fist struck my guard. His second blow reached my ribs.
I stayed upright long enough for NS to reach him.
VT turned, blocked NS, and tried to throw him into me.
HS caught NS from behind.
TZ struck VT's shoulder with the empty radio case.
JP's cane hit the same shoulder one second later.
VT drove an elbow into NS and kicked TZ away, but the damaged rhythm did not return to him.
Every time he finished with one of us, another body occupied the space.
We were not better fighters.
We were finally one fight.
Outside the basement, MALT's forces heard that the northern bridge was failing.
Government Royal Militia vehicles had crossed the first checkpoint. Constitutional army units pushed from the industrial road. City residents opened side streets the junta believed remained blocked.
The red-armband commander ordered a second tank withdrawn from Utopia.
VT's remaining tank refused to move.
Its crew reported that Mr. VT had not returned.
The commander sent another squad into Campus 2 to recover him.
The order changed the raid.
Soldiers who had been advancing toward the clinic turned toward the basement corridors. KM and his Engineering crew saw them leave.
"They're going for VT," HTN said.
KM pressed a torn sleeve against the cut on his arm.
"Then the five idiots are still alive."
"How does that prove they're alive?"
"If VT had won, he would already be outside posing for cameras."
KM lifted his wrench.
"We keep his rescue team busy."
His crew followed him back into the smoke.
VT struck HS across the jaw.
HS fell against the service door and did not rise.
I looked toward him.
That was enough.
VT's fist hit my throat. He seized my shirt and drove me into the floor.
"You keep watching everyone else," he said. "That is why hurting them controls you."
He pulled me up and struck me again.
The basement became the rooftop.
Dark clouds replaced the pipes. June stood inside a distant window wearing VT's ring. Kitty's funeral photograph floated across the wall. JP's voice disappeared into Heshan. NS walked toward an airport without turning back.
VT's hand closed around my throat in both realities.
"Look at what your love creates," he said.
My feet left the floor.
Then JP's cane struck his wrist.
The rooftop broke.
Air returned.
I fell onto real concrete.
"Stop taking vacations," JP said.
VT turned toward him.
NS hit him from the side.
Not one dramatic punch.
A shoulder against his chest. Both bodies struck the pipes. TZ wrapped himself around VT's waist before he could recover. JP planted the cane across VT's shin.
I rose beneath the emergency light.
HS opened his eyes.
"Left shoulder," he said through blood.
The same shoulder JP and TZ had struck twice.
VT protected it automatically.
That told us where his attention would go.
NS attacked high without trying to land. VT raised his good arm. I struck his body. TZ pulled from behind. JP blocked the step that would have restored his balance.
HS came off the wall last.
He drove both hands into VT's damaged shoulder.
VT shouted for the first time.
We pushed him out of the narrow corridor and into the wider maintenance room beside it.
There was nowhere for him to place one of us between the others.
The numbers became real.
VT still nearly won.
He threw TZ across a workbench. He caught JP's cane and broke it against the edge of a concrete sink. He struck HS in the abdomen hard enough to leave him unable to breathe.
NS attacked through the opening and received two punches for one of his own.
I reached VT from behind.
He threw me over his shoulder.
I hit the floor beside JP.
"This plan is terrible," JP said.
"Do you have another one?"
He looked at the broken half of his cane.
"Make him turn right."
"Why?"
"Because I am on his right."
It was not a complete plan.
It was enough.
I stood and rushed VT from the left.
He pivoted away from me.
JP swept the broken cane behind his ankle.
VT stumbled.
NS caught one arm. TZ came off the workbench and caught the other. HS drove forward at his waist.
I struck VT once in the ribs.
Then again.
He tried to turn toward me.
NS held.
I hit him across the jaw.
VT's knees touched the floor.
JP hooked his arm around VT's neck from behind, using his good leg to hold his balance. TZ pinned one wrist against the concrete. HS controlled the other.
NS stood over him, breathing through bruised ribs.
I pulled back my fist.
VT looked up.
"Do it," he said.
He wanted the beating.
He wanted a camera frame without the five days before it. XH above a fallen man. Students surrounding an unarmed government officer. Another image his bots could repeat until the invasion disappeared.
The old version of me would have kept punching.
The man who mounted KM in the Engineering lobby still existed inside my hand.
So did JP's mother asking what the towel should have meant.
I lowered my fist.
"No," I said. "You stay alive long enough to lose in public."
VT smiled through blood.
"You think restraint changes what you are?"
"No. It changes what I do next."
For one second, we had him.
Then the maintenance-room door exploded inward.
VT's bodyguards entered through dust and metal fragments.
The first fired into the ceiling.
The enclosed blast struck our ears like a physical blow. All five of us dropped automatically.
The second guard pulled VT away from JP. The third struck NS with a rifle stock. The fourth dragged VT toward the damaged western passage while red-armband soldiers filled the doorway behind them.
We could not follow rifles with empty hands.
VT could barely stand without the guards beneath his arms.
That was enough to know who had won the fight.
It was not enough to capture him.
The guards moved backward, weapons trained on us. A radio at one guard's shoulder screamed that Government Royal Militia vehicles had entered the northern district. The tank crew outside demanded immediate extraction.
One bodyguard aimed directly at my chest.
VT placed a blood-covered hand against the rifle and pushed the barrel down.
It was not mercy.
"Not here," he said.
Two documentary cameras remained somewhere beyond the broken fountain. Constitutional forces were minutes away. Killing five injured students after losing an unarmed fight would create an image even seventy-two thousand accounts could not clean.
The bodyguard understood.
He fired into the lights instead.
The final emergency bulb shattered, leaving VT's face visible only when gunfire flashed in the distant passage.
VT wiped blood from his mouth.
He looked at NS, JP, TZ, and HS.
Then only at me.
"You ate from the fruit God forbade you to touch," he said. "The consequence won't come today, XH. But it will find you."
The words were quieter than the gunfire.
They stayed with me longer.
A bodyguard pulled him through the opening.
The soldiers dropped a smoke canister behind them. White clouds swallowed the maintenance room. By the time NS and I reached the passage, VT had entered an armored vehicle beyond the ruined fountain.
His guards forced him inside.
The vehicle turned south as constitutional forces reached Utopia's northern road.
VT escaped the campus he had failed to erase.
The five of us remained on the basement floor.
JP had half a cane.
TZ had lost the radio case.
HS held one arm against his stomach.
NS's left eye had begun swelling shut.
Blood from my nose covered the front of my shirt.
For several seconds, nobody spoke.
Then JP looked toward the doorway where VT had disappeared.
"Five was enough," he said.
TZ started laughing.
HS told him laughing was medically unhelpful.
That made NS laugh too.
I joined last.
Above us, the sound of battle changed.
The firing no longer came from only one direction. Police sirens moved toward Campus 2. Government Royal Militia loudspeakers ordered MALT units to disarm. Residents beyond the perimeter rang neighborhood bells from every side.
The last working radio lay near the service door.
Its speaker crackled.
"Utopia, this is Northern Constitutional Command. Hold your positions. We have crossed the bridge."
I picked it up with a shaking hand.
"This is Utopia."
"Report your status."
I looked at the four boys around me.
"Still standing," I said.
Technically, none of us were.
JP raised the broken cane.
"Emotionally standing," he corrected.
Northern Constitutional Command repeated our reply across its emergency frequency.
The words reached the neighborhood clinic outside the cordon.
Kitty heard my voice first and sat down so suddenly that Bunny thought she had fainted. Anna stopped writing a medication label. NC found all five names on the Living List and changed their status from unknown to confirmed alive.
June held the receiver against her ear.
"Say it again," she asked.
Jihye replayed the recording.
"This is Utopia. Still standing."
June listened twice.
Then she opened the card hanging from her neck and wrote beneath the earlier sentence.
THE FIVE ARE ALIVE. XH ANSWERED THE RADIO.
She stared at the words before asking Kitty, "Did he say anything about the fountain?"
Kitty's relief shifted into concern.
"No. He said they were standing."
"Right."
June read the card again.
"I knew that."
Nobody challenged the answer while the battle continued. Kitty only moved closer and held June's hand beneath the table.
Inside Utopia, I did not know that June needed to write down the proof of my voice.
I knew only that VT's warning had found a place beside the fever dream.
The fruit.
The consequence.
Not today.
But it will find you.
I told myself it was another threat from a defeated man.
I did not yet understand how patient VT could be.
Outside, VT's armored vehicle disappeared into the southern smoke while the forces loyal to the elected government entered Utopia through the wall MALT's tanks had broken.