The Rise From The Dust

Chapter 4: Muscle Memory

The cold didn’t wake him. The pain did.

​When Shuga’s eyes cracked open, he wasn't looking at the red security lights of the warehouse or the pouring rain of the lowlands. He was staring at a corrugated tin ceiling, leaking rusted water onto a dirt floor. The air smelled heavily of diesel oil, wet cardboard, and rotting river fish.

​He tried to sit up, but a wave of agonizing white heat exploded in his skull and his knee. He collapsed back onto the thin, filthy mattress, a hoarse groan tearing from his throat.

​He touched the side of his head. His fingers came away sticky with clotted blood. There was a deep, jagged gash tracing his hairline where a bullet had grazed his skull.

​Shuga stared at his bloodied fingers. His chest heaved as panic, cold and sudden, flooded his veins.

​Who am I?

​He searched his mind, but there was nothing. No face. No name. No childhood memories. His past was a void, completely wiped clean by the trauma to his head. He looked down at his tailored suit—now shredded, caked in black mud, and soaked in grease. He didn't recognize the fabric. He didn't recognize his own hands.

​The heavy metal door of the makeshift shack suddenly groaned open.

​"Oh, look at that. The corpse is finally awake."

​A young woman stepped into the dim light. She wore a faded leather jacket, combat boots, and had a pair of grease-smudged welding goggles pushed up onto her forehead. Her hair was pulled back, and her eyes were incredibly sharp, assessing him within a fraction of a second. She carried a heavy iron wrench in one hand and a small bowl of steaming, cheap broth in the other.

​Shuga instinctively panicked. He scrambled backward on the mattress, his breath turning shallow. "Who... who are you? Where am I?"

​"Relax, corporate," she said, her voice smooth but cautious. She didn't step any closer, keeping her distance. "I found you dumped like a sack of garbage by the river docks two days ago. You were bleeding out from a head wound and your knee looked like a crushed walnut. I'm Maya. And this is the Underbelly. The place where things go when the city wants them forgotten."

​"What's my name?" Shuga rasped, his throat feeling like sandpaper. "Why am I here?"

​Maya paused, her sharp eyes narrowing. She set the bowl down on a wooden crate. "You're asking me? You don't know who you are?"

​"I don't remember anything," Shuga whispered, his head throbbing violently as he tried to force a memory to appear. Nothing came. Only a terrifying sense of emptiness.

​Maya sighed, crossing her arms. "Great. I dragged a high-end amnesiac into my workshop. Look, man, I don't know your story, but whoever put you in that ditch wanted you dead. And around here, helping people usually gets you a knife in the back. I mended your knee as best as I could, but once you can walk, you need to—"

​Before she could finish her sentence, the thin tin wall of the shack shook violently. The sound of splintering wood echoed from the front of Maya's workshop.

​"Maya!" a loud, gravelly voice roared from the outer room. "We know you skimmed off the scrap delivery from the northern port! Pay up, or we take it out of your hide!"

​Maya’s face went completely pale. "Scrap hounds," she muttered, her knuckles turning white around the iron wrench. "They followed me."

​Three large, burly men kicked the inner door off its hinges. They were thick-necked thugs, smelling of stale alcohol and cheap tobacco, dressed in heavy work coats. The leader, a man with a jagged scar across his lip, sneered as he saw Maya.

​"Well, well. What do we have here?" The leader noticed Shuga sitting helplessly on the mattress. "Who's the charity case? Forget it. Grab the girl, tear the place apart."

​One of the thugs, a massive man weighing easily two hundred and fifty pounds, lunged aggressively at Maya, grabbing her by the jacket and slamming her against the wall. The wrench clattered to the floor.

​Shuga didn't think.

​He didn't remember his name, his father, or the betrayal. But the moment he saw Maya pinned against the wall, something explosive and ancient woke up inside his bones. His brain didn't have the memories, but his body did. His muscles remembered every single ounce of blood and sweat spilled in the mud.

​Before he even realized he was moving, Shuga lunged off the mattress.

​His broken knee screamed in protest, but his weight distribution shifted flawlessly to his good leg. He closed the distance instantly. His left hand shot out like a whip, parrying the big thug's arm away from Maya. In a fluid, terrifyingly precise motion, Shuga dropped his weight, drove his shoulder into the man's chest, and delivered a brutal palm strike straight into the thug's throat.

​The giant man choked, his eyes rolling back as the air was entirely forced from his lungs. He collapsed onto the dirt floor like a felled tree.

​The other two thugs froze, their jaws dropping.

​"What the hell?" the leader barked. He pulled a heavy hunting knife from his belt and slashed wildly at Shuga’s face.

​Shuga didn't flinch. To his eyes, the knife moved in slow motion. He didn't track the blade; his eyes automatically locked onto the leader's shoulders. The moment the leader's shoulder dipped, Shuga stepped into the blind spot, grabbed the leader's wrist with an iron grip, and twisted it completely backward until a sickening pop echoed through the room.

​The knife clattered to the ground. Shuga followed up with a spinning back-elbow directly into the leader's jaw. The man went airborne, crashing through the wooden crate and laying unconscious in the dirt.

​The third thug looked at his two bleeding, unconscious partners, looked at Shuga—who was standing in a perfect, lethal combat stance, his knuckles raw, his eyes glowing with a terrifying, cold intensity—and turned around, fleeing out into the rainy alleyway.

​Silence descended on the shack, save for Shuga’s ragged breathing.

​Shuga looked down at his hands. They were trembling, but not from fear. His knuckles were perfectly aligned. His stance was completely balanced. He had just taken down three armed men without a single scrap of conscious knowledge of how he did it.

​Maya slowly slid down the wall, staring at Shuga as if he were a ghost. The fear in her eyes had turned into absolute awe.

​"You don't know your name..." Maya breathed, looking at the bodies on the floor, then up at him. "But you're a weapon."

​Shuga stared at his fists, a strange, phantom echo of a voice bouncing around the empty walls of his mind: Never give your trust away easily... make them earn it.

​"I don't know who I am," Shuga said, his voice low, steady, and dangerously calm. "But someone taught me how to fight. And whoever put me in that dirt... is going to regret it."