He got up.
That was the first decision. Not a tactical one, not the product of any particular strategy or assessment of the situation — just the basic refusal to stay on the floor, executed before the part of his mind that was currently doing damage reports had finished filing them. His back hurt in a way that suggested the wall impact had done something structural to his opinion of walls. His chest hurt from the first strike. His shoulder from the approach. His everything from the accumulated arithmetic of a day that had been, in retrospect, a series of increasingly creative ways to arrive at this exact moment.
He got up and looked at the boss.
