Eternal Cage: King of Ash

Chapter Two

I woke up in a body that wasn’t mine yet felt like home.

Chicago. South Side, third-floor walk-up above a shuttered pawn shop. The mattress smelled like mildew and gun oil. My new reflection stared back from a cracked mirror: same height, same scars, but the eyes were colder. Hungrier. Forty-seven deaths colder.

The system panel hovered the second my feet hit the freezing linoleum.

[Regional Circuit – Chicago]  

[Time until fight: 23 hours, 58 minutes, 11 seconds]  

[Opponent: Ivan “The Bear” Volkov – 43-0 (39 KOs, 4 deaths ruled “accidental”)]  

[Venue: The Meatpacking Plant 17 – Red Hook District]  

[Special Rule: Fight continues until one fighter is dead or carried out on a stretcher. No surrender accepted.]  

[Hidden Objective Detected: Discover why the Circuit wants Volkov dead. Reward: 25,000 Death Points + Unique Title.]

I exhaled slow. Someone upstairs was moving pieces on a board I couldn’t see yet.

First things first: recon.

I stepped outside into a January wind that could skin a man alive. Snow swirled sideways. My new leather jacket (left hanging on the chair like a welcome gift) had a burner phone in the pocket and a single text already-read message:

“Package under the loose brick by the dumpster. Don’t be late tomorrow or we feed you to the Bear piece by piece. – V.”

V for Volkov. Cute.

I found the brick. Inside: a Glock 19 with two spare mags, suppressor, and a Polaroid of Lana Moretti’s grave covered in fresh roses. On the back, written in red Sharpie: “See you soon – V.”

My blood went arctic.

Volkov knew who I was. Knew what I did to Vincent. And he was already hunting.

Good. Made this personal.

I spent the next six hours turning myself into a ghost.

Bought new clothes—black hoodie, black jeans, black beanie. Stole plates off a Camry three blocks over and swapped them onto a beat-up Tahoe I hotwired outside a crack house. Drove the city like a shark, memorizing every alley, every camera blind spot, every escape route to Plant 17.

At 11 p.m. I parked two miles out and walked the rest. Snow muffled everything. The plant loomed like a dead cathedral—brick walls bleeding rust, windows smashed into black teeth.

Two armed guards at the side entrance. I watched from the shadows as a panel vans rolled in, unloading crates stamped with Russian port markings. Not betting money. Weapons. Lots of them.

This wasn’t just a fight night. It was a fucking summit.

I circled to the roof using a rusted fire escape. Found a skylight crusted with ice. Scraped a peephole and looked down.

Inside, the kill floor had been converted into the biggest cage I’d ever seen—forty feet across, chain-link topped with razor wire, concrete stained the color of old meat.

In the center stood Ivan Volkov.

Seven feet tall if he was an inch. Shoulders so wide he had to turn sideways to walk through doors. Shaved head, beard like black steel wool. Wearing nothing but fight shorts in sub-zero temps, steam rolling off his skin.

He was shadowboxing. Every punch cracked the air like a baseball bat breaking bone.

Around the cage, fifty men in expensive coats—Russian mob, Italian mob, Irish, even a couple Triad—watching in silence. Money on the tables in bricks. Guns everywhere.

And in the VIP booth elevated above it all, a woman.

Mid-thirties. Platinum-blonde hair in a tight bun. Black dress that cost more than most people’s cars. Legs crossed, eyes like winter itself.

She smoked a cigarette in a long holder and never blinked.

I knew that face. Everyone in the underground did.

Anastasia “The Ice Queen” Volkov. Ivan’s older sister. Real boss of the family. Rumored to have fed her own husband to pigs when he looked at another woman.

She was the one running this show.

My burner buzzed. Unknown number.

I answered.

A man’s voice, thick Russian accent: “You are early, Gravedigger. Good. Saves me the trouble of dragging your corpse here tomorrow.”

Volkov himself.

“How’d you get this number?”

“I own this city tonight. I get everything.” A pause. “My sister wants to meet the man who killed Vincent Moretti. Come inside. Alone. Weapons on the table. You have five minutes or we start without you.”

Click.

I stared at the phone. Every instinct screamed trap.

The system pinged.

[Hidden Objective Updated – Meet Anastasia Volkov alive. Bonus 10,000 DP if you leave the building breathing.]

Trap or not, the loop wanted me in there.

I descended.

The side door opened before I knocked. Two giants in tracksuits patted me down, took the Glock, smirked when they found the knife in my boot, took that too.

Then they marched me through corridors that stank of old blood and bleach until we reached the main floor.

Silence fell like a guillotine.

Every eye turned to me.

Anastasia stood at the edge of the cage, cigarette glowing.

“Jax Harrow,” she said in perfect, icy English. “The man who dies and refuses to stay dead.”

Murmurs rippled through the crowd.

I stopped ten feet from her. “Word travels fast.”

“Faster when you leave forty-seven bodies in Pittsburgh in one night.” She took a drag, exhaled smoke through her nose. “My brother wants to tear your head off with his hands. I want something else.”

Ivan stepped forward, cracking his knuckles the size of walnuts. “I will give you one free punch tomorrow, American. Then I take everything.”

Anastasia raised a hand. He froze like a trained dog.

“Not yet, brother. First we talk.”

She gestured to a steel table in the corner. Two chairs. Bottle of vodka. Two glasses.

I sat.

She poured.

“You killed Vincent Moretti,” she said. “That was… inconvenient. He owed me thirty million dollars and the port rights to Philadelphia. Now I have neither money nor ports.”

“Not my problem.”

“Oh but it is.” She slid a photograph across the table.

Me. Sleeping in the Chicago apartment this afternoon. Taken from inside the room.

My skin crawled.

“We have been watching you for weeks, Jax. Ever since you started dying and coming back. We want to know how.”

I sipped the vodka. Tasted like fire and secrets.

“And if I don’t feel like sharing?”

She smiled for the first time. It was terrifying.

“Then tomorrow my brother kills you slowly. We record every second. We study the footage frame by frame until we learn what makes you tick. Then we cut you open and take it.”

Ivan laughed behind her, a sound like boulders grinding.

I leaned forward. “Here’s a counter-offer. Tomorrow I kill your brother in under one minute. You pay me the thirty million Vincent owed you. Then we discuss business.”

The room erupted in laughter.

Anastasia didn’t laugh.

She studied me for a long ten seconds.

“Very well,” she said finally. “One minute. If Ivan is still standing after sixty seconds, we take you alive and carve answers out of your organs for the next year.”

She extended a manicured hand.

I shook it.

Her grip was ice-cold.

“Welcome to Chicago, Mr. Harrow. Try not to die too quickly.”

The guards escorted me out.

Snow had turned to sleet. I stood under a broken streetlight and let it cut my face.

The system panel flashed blood-red.

[Emergency Quest Triggered]  

[Survive the next 18 hours. Powerful entities have marked you for capture.]  

[Enemies inbound.]

Headlights cut through the dark. Three black SUVs screeched to a halt. Doors flew open.

Men in tactical gear spilled out—night-vision goggles, suppressed rifles, tranquilizer darts glinting under streetlights.

Not here to kill.

Here to take me alive.

I ran.

Darts whispered past my ear. One thudded into my shoulder—burning cold spreading fast.

I had maybe thirty seconds before the drugs dropped me.

Phantom Step—once, twice—vaulted a fence into the train yard.

They followed like wolves.

I bled speed with every step, legs turning to cement.

Twenty seconds.

I dove between two boxcars, rolled under, came up running.

Ten seconds.

Vision swimming.

I saw the rusted maintenance ladder leading to the roof of a warehouse.

Five seconds.

I climbed. Fingers slipping. Muscles screaming.

They were right behind me.

I reached the roof as the drugs hit critical.

World tilted.

Last thing I saw: a black helicopter descending from the storm clouds, searchlight stabbing down like the finger of God.

Then darkness.

I woke strapped to a steel chair in a room made of glass.

No. Not glass. One-way mirror on all four sides. Bright surgical lights overhead.

Naked. IV in my arm pumping something neon blue.

A speaker crackled.

“Welcome back, Mr. Harrow. Loop number forty-eight begins in five… four… three…”

The drugs burned away.

Straps snapped like tissue paper.

I stood up laughing.

Because this time I had kept something new from the last death.

[Title Earned: “Defiant” – All tranquilizers, poi

sons, and mind-control effects 90% less effective.]

And in the corner of my vision, a countdown only I could see:

17 hours, 11 minutes until the fight.

They thought they had me.

They had no idea the monster they just woke up.

I ducked into a flooded basement two blocks from the plant and let the dark close over me.

Water climbed to my calves, ice-cold, reeking of oil and rot.

Perfect. Cameras hated moisture. So did dogs. I waded to the far wall, forced a rusted breaker box open, and killed the power to the whole block.

The city stuttered. Lights died. Somewhere, people shouted.

I waited until my breathing slowed, then climbed out through a laundry chute that dumped me into an abandoned brownstone.

Upstairs, I found a mirror cracked worse than the one I’d left behind. Same face. Same scars. New weight behind the eyes.

I cleaned the wound, injected a stim I’d pulled off the dead guard, and sat on the floor while the tremor passed. The system stayed quiet.

It always did when things got interesting.

At dawn, I watched Plant 17 from six rooftops away. Black SUVs idled. More guards. More guns.

News vans pretending not to see. Something big had shifted overnight.

A courier arrived with a briefcase handcuffed to his wrist. Anastasia didn’t send gifts without reason.

I memorized schedules. Counted rotations. Traced sightlines.

By the time the sun cleared the skyline, I knew every way in.

And three ways out no one else had noticed.

The minute hand started moving.

So did I.