Vera called first.
Six in the morning. Rof was already awake — he hadn't really slept, just drifted in and out next to his father's chair — and when the phone buzzed, he answered before the second ring.
"You didn't call," she said.
"You didn't say I had to."
A pause. Short. Like she was filing that away. "Get to the corner of Broad and Ellsworth in forty minutes. Don't eat first."
She hung up.
Rof looked at his sleeping father. Still breathing. Still there. He wrote a note on the back of an old receipt — Back before noon. Soup's in the fridge — and put it on the chair arm where his father's hand would find it.
He put the cross on. Tucked it under his shirt.
Walked out into the cold Philadelphia morning.
Vera was parked on the corner in the black car. She looked like she hadn't slept either, but it didn't show the way it showed on normal people. On her it just looked like focus. Like she had decided sleep was optional and her face had agreed.
Rof got in.
She drove without explaining where they were going. He didn't ask. He watched the city go by — early workers, corner stores pulling up shutters, pigeons doing their business on everything.
"Tell me about the speed," Vera said.
Rof went still.
"The doctor told you," he said.
"The doctor tells me everything." She turned a corner. "He works for me. Has for two years."
Rof processed that. Slowly. He was never fast at processing things that weren't physical. "So last night. The back room. The doctor checking me out. That was—"
"Me getting information, yes." She glanced at him. Not apologetic. Just honest. "What did it feel like?"
Rof thought about lying. He wasn't above lying — he did it naturally, the way some people breathe through their mouth, without real decision. But something told him lying to Vera was like lying to someone who already had the answer written down and was just testing whether you'd tell the truth.
"Like the world broke apart," he said. "Like I could see every piece at once."
Vera nodded slowly. Like that confirmed something she'd suspected.
"Silas has something similar," she said.
The car got quiet.
"Not the same," she continued. "His didn't come from wherever yours came from. Silas trained his. Ten years. He does something — fighters call it the read — where he studies a man for the first thirty seconds of a fight and then he knows. Every habit. Every tell. Every micro-movement. After thirty seconds, he fights the version of you that's thirty seconds ahead. You throw a punch, he's already where your punch is going to miss."
Rof stared at the road. "That's just skill."
"It's beyond skill. Two men tried to quit against him. They couldn't. He was always a step ahead of the step ahead. One of them cried in the ring." Vera's voice didn't carry pleasure or cruelty. Just information. "Silas doesn't do it for money. He does it because he likes proving people are predictable. He thinks everyone has a pattern. That free will is a story people tell themselves." She paused. "And he's been right every time. Until now."
"Until me."
"You're not predictable, Rof. Not because you're unpredictable. Because you're not thinking. You're the only fighter in that building who isn't calculating. Silas can't read a man who isn't running a pattern, and you're not running one because there's nothing in your head to make a pattern from."
Rof looked at her. "Did you just call me stupid?"
"I called you an advantage." She almost smiled. "There's a difference."
She pulled up outside a building that used to be a boxing gym and was now barely holding onto that identity — peeling tape on the floors, a ring with a sagging rope, bags that had been hit approximately one thousand too many times.
A man inside was hitting one of those bags.
Not hard. Methodically. Same combination. Over and over. Textbook perfect.
He stopped when they walked in. He turned.
Silas was nothing like Tank. He was medium height, lean, maybe thirty years old. He had a face that was forgettable on purpose — the kind of face that made you look twice because you weren't sure you'd seen it correctly the first time. His eyes were the thing. Dark, very still, moving over Rof like a scanner.
Rof felt it immediately. The look. Like being measured without tape.
"Rof Leon," Silas said. His voice was quiet. Academic. "Twenty-four. No formal training. One fight, unorthodox finish. You throw your jab six inches higher than standard when you're worried. Your left foot turns out when you're about to move right." He tilted his head. "You're already doing it now. Your left foot."
Rof looked down.
His left foot was turned out.
He looked back up.
"That's thirty seconds?" Rof asked.
"Fifteen," Silas said. He picked up his water bottle. "You're simple. No offense."
Vera watched from the doorway. She said nothing.
Rof crossed his arms. Something in his chest settled — not calm, not fear. Something in between that he'd learned to trust more than either one. "So why are you showing me this? You're my next fight. You just told me what you can do."
Silas looked at him for a long moment. Then he did something unexpected.
He smiled.
It was small. And it was the wrongest smile Rof had ever seen — not warm, not cold, just empty in the center. Like a smile a man wears when he's already ten steps ahead and finds the gap between now and there quietly amusing.
"Because it doesn't matter," Silas said. "You knowing changes nothing. You'll still move the same way. Everyone does." He sat down on the bench. Opened his water. "The only variable I can't calculate is what happened in your brain when Tank threw that hook. That thing you did — the speed, the stillness, whatever it was." His eyes went to Rof's chest. To the outline of the cross under his shirt. "I want to see it again. Up close."
The room was very quiet.
"Three days," Vera said from the doorway. "Be ready, Rof."
Rof looked at Silas. Silas looked back. The smile was gone. Now it was just the eyes — still, dark, patient.
He's already running the fight, Rof realized. Right now. In his head.
And somewhere behind Rof's sternum, the cross pressed cold against his skin.
He breathed.
I ain't falling.
But for the first time, he thought: What if falling isn't the worst thing that can happen in that ring?