Eternal Cage: King of Ash

Chapter Four

I sat in a cracked red-vinyl booth at the South Side 24-hour diner called Mama June’s, wearing a dead security guard’s coat that still smelled like cordite and fear.  

The waitress (a tired Black woman in her fifties with a name tag that read “Delores”) didn’t blink at the blood on my knuckles or the fact I was barefoot in January.  

She just poured coffee black as tar and said, “You want the lumberjack platter, baby?”  

I said, “Three of them. And keep the coffee coming until I float.”

While I waited, I counted what I had left in this world:

- One body (the original, miraculously).  

- Forty-nine lifetimes of muscle memory and murder.  

- Zero dollars, zero ID, zero phone.  

- One mission: burn every name that ever paid to watch me die.

Delores slid the first mountain of pancakes, eggs, bacon, sausage, and hash browns in front of me. I ate like a starving wolf.  

Between bites I stole a pen from the check holder and started writing on a napkin.

The List.

1. Anastasia “Ice Queen” Volkov – alive, location unknown  

2. Ivan “The Bear” Volkov – status unknown after core explosion  

3. Dr. Evelyn Voss – last seen in the fire, presumed crispy  

4. Vincent Moretti – already dead, but his money men still breathing  

5. The Investors – eight shell companies that funneled billions into Project Lazarus

I underlined #1 twice.

The diner TV was muted on the morning news.  

Breaking footage: massive explosion at abandoned meatpacking plant, cause unknown, no survivors expected.  

They showed aerial shots of the crater. Nothing left but twisted steel and steam.

Good.

Delores came back with platter number two.  

“You famous or something?” she asked, eyeing the TV.  

“Something,” I said.  

She studied me a long second, then slid a butter knife across the table.  

“Case anybody asks questions you don’t like.”  

I grinned for the first time in fifty lives.  

“Thank you, Delores.”

By the time I finished platter three, the sun was fully up and I had a plan.

Step one: clothes and cash.

I walked six blocks to a laundromat with an ancient ATM in the corner.  

Kicked the machine exactly once where the camera couldn’t see.  

It coughed up $800 in twenties like a broken slot machine.  

Old trick from loop 23 when I needed seed money.

Next stop: Army-Navy surplus on 63rd.  

Black cargo pants, steel-toe boots, hoodie, tactical gloves, and a beautiful cold-weather trench coat that hid everything.  

I looked like a homeless mercenary. Perfect.

Step two: weapons.

I took the L train north to a pawn shop I remembered from loop 11.  

Guy behind the counter recognized the look in my eyes and didn’t ask for ID.  

Forty minutes later I walked out with:

- Glock 19 with three mags  

- Sawed-off 12-gauge coach gun  

- Ka-Bar knife  

- Two bricks of .00 buckshot  

- And a burner phone still in the plastic

All for $1,100 cash and the promise I’d never come back.

Now I was dressed, armed, and dangerous.

Time to hunt.

I started with the one place Anastasia would never expect me to hit first: her penthouse.

During the loops I’d memorized every safe house the Volkovs kept in Chicago.  

The penthouse at the top of the Aurora Tower was supposed to be impregnable: biometric everything, private elevator, ex-Spetsnaz on payroll.

I took the stairs. Seventy-eight floors.  

Took me thirty-two minutes at a sprint.  

By floor sixty the guards on the cameras were already panicking.

I kicked the rooftop door off its hinges.

Four Spetsnaz in winter camo waiting with suppressed rifles.

They opened fire.

I walked through it.

Bullets sparked off the trench coat like rain on tin.  

Defiant title still active. 90 % resistance to everything.

I took the first guy’s rifle away, used it as a club, painted the snow red with the second, stabbed the third with his own knife, and choked the fourth unconscious with his own sling.

Took thirty seconds.

I dragged the unconscious one inside, zip-tied him, and woke him up with a slap.

“Where’s Anastasia?”

He spat in Russian. I broke his pinky.  

He gave me the code to the private elevator.

I rode it down one floor to the penthouse.

The doors opened into a palace of black marble and glass.

Anastasia stood at the floor-to-ceiling windows, back to me, looking out over the city like a queen.

Ivan was there too.  

Bandaged, burned, but alive.  

Half his face melted from the explosion, one arm in a sling, but still seven feet of hate.

He saw me and roared, charging like a wounded bear.

I let him come.

He swung a haymaker that could have killed an elephant.

I ducked under it, came up inside his guard, and drove the Ka-Bar through his knee from the side.

He dropped screaming.

Anastasia finally turned.

No fear in her eyes this time. Just cold calculation.

“You’re supposed to be dead. All of you.”

“Disappointed?” I asked.

She reached for the panic button.

I shot it off the wall.

Ivan tried to crawl toward me, leaving a trail of blood.

I put a boot on his neck.

“Tell me who the investors were.”

Anastasia smiled. “You think this ends with us? Project Lazarus was one lab. There are six more. Tokyo. São Paulo. Marrakesh. Moscow. Dubai. London. They all have their own Subject Zero now. You were just the prototype.”

My blood went colder than the wind outside.

She kept talking.

“You burned one anthill, Jax. The colony is global. And every single one of them is watching this feed right now.”

She gestured to the corners of the room. Tiny red lights. Cameras.

“They want to see what the original does when he’s finally free.”

Ivan laughed through the pain. “You are still in the cage, American. Just bigger.”

I looked at Anastasia.

“Last chance. Names.”

She lit a cigarette with shaking hands. “Go to hell.”

I looked at Ivan.

He spat blood at my boots.

I nodded once.

Then I put two rounds in both their heads.

No hesitation.

The cameras kept recording.

I walked to the window, looked straight into the nearest lens, and spoke to every hidden billionaire watching.

“My name is Jax Harrow.  

I died forty-nine times so I could live long enough to do this.”

I held up the napkin list, now covered in fresh blood.

“I’m coming for every single one of you.  

There are no more loops.  

No more resurrections.  

Just me.  

And I have nothing left to lose.”

I shot the camera.

Then I burned the penthouse down on my way out.

By noon I was on a Greyhound headed east with $400 left, one duffel of weapons, and a new list.

Six cities.  

Six labs.  

Six more versions of me suffering in tanks right now.

I leaned my head against the cold window and watched Chi

cago disappear behind me.

The war wasn’t over.

It had just gone global.

And this time I wasn’t fighting to become champion.

I was fighting to make sure no one ever built another cage again.