Chapter 4 — Everyone Present Is Garbage
Xen didn't rush back to the ring. He lingered at the edge of the mezzanine and watched.
Night City's arena thrummed like a living thing — neon signs strobing, crowd noise a low animal growl, the smell of sweat and ozone hanging heavy. Fighters, promoters, and hangers-on circulated below like scavengers around a fresh kill. Xen had learned to read this kind of room: who was hungry, who was selling, who was bluffing.
The selection rules were brutally simple: one stage appearance per candidate. No weight classes. No mercy. Your worth was measured by how well you handled whatever fortune (or fraud) the matchmakers handed you.
That brittle fairness bred tempers. Xen had seen it before in the old world's talent shows — contestants yelling when they felt robbed, the internet devouring every scandal — and he knew fighters were even worse. Blood and pride made for faster riots than politics.
"Either they riot or they bow," he muttered, folding his arms. Let the crowd burn itself out; when the flames were high enough, he'd step into the smoke and take what was left.
A shorter boxer, his face flushed with outrage, shoved the referee and threw his towel to the floor. "This is rigged! That guy's forty kilos heavier — how am I supposed to beat him?!" he shouted, pointing at the victor in the other ring.
The referee barked a warning, but the thrown towel and the accusation acted like a match in dry tinder. Around the room, knocked-out fighters and losers who'd been passed over began to snap. Voices rose; fists clenched in the dark.
"Rematch! There are shams out there! I'll take them all down!" someone screamed.
A water bottle arced through the air. Xen watched it sing past, its cap popping and a spray of water splashing the man it had been aimed at. The crowd hissed. Everyone's attention snapped toward the source.
From the audience, a newcomer — one of the earlier called fighters — walked down coolly, like he owned the corridor. "Someone's barking too loud," he said to the man at his side, nodding toward Victor. "It's bothering my conversation."
That line landed like salt rubbed into open flesh. The ring's anger turned new and hotter.
Xen slid down from the railing and dropped into the scramble. He dusted sweat from his gloves, the crowd's heat roiling around him. "Don't be a baby," he called, voice loud enough to cut through the racket. "Referee said follow the rules — not to protect your ego."
Trash talk was theater, and Xen played the part like a man who'd memorized his lines. He leaned over the nearest loser, eyes hard. "You're whining because you got matched with someone bigger. If you're that fragile, maybe boxing ain't for you. Or cut the drama and pick a weight class, princess."
The jab worked — predictable, crude, and effective. The smaller boxer lunged. Xen's glove slid off the incoming arm and landed on the cheek with a clean, practiced snap. The man staggered, spit blood, and in two crisp punches Xen closed it: a clean knockout that sent a hush through part of the crowd.
"Tie your ego up before you trip on it," Xen said, turning toward the rest of the melee. He spat to the floor for emphasis; the gesture drew more heat than the punch. The assembled fighters bristled.
"Who else wants to try?" Xen called. "Come up one-on-one. Beat me and I'll get Victor to talk to you. Lose, and you stop wasting his time."
At that, a chorus of indignation exploded. He pointed slowly, theatrically, at target after target — the cocky ones, the ones who'd been waiting to pounce, the masked hopefuls lurking in corners.
"You, you, you — all of you are trash," he said with the kind of contempt that made men break their posture. He didn't mean it as an empty insult; he wanted them to show themselves. To prove their worth. Or to prove his point.
But Xen wasn't a madman. He had an angle. Promise of a shot at Victor — even the faintest whisper of it — would make any desperate fighter climb into the ring. He watched the math: ego + hunger + a shot at fame = predictable outcomes.
"Fine," the big one finally growled; he had been hiding in the shadows, calculating the moment to strike. Pride and strategy pushed him forward. He climbed into the ring, mask off, jaw set. The others fell into a slow queue; if their strongest fought, the rest might edge into opportunity.
Xen cracked his knuckles and smiled. The ref tried to interpose — but when someone's willing to take the chaos you create, the referee's job becomes simple: make sure no one dies before the show ends.
The first few fights were quick. Xen used measured economy — conserve energy, take the spotlight. He baited, countered, and made each win look like a revelation. One opponent after another hit the mat; the crowd's fury curdled into something else: a frenzied love for the showman.
At ringside, Victor and the Fixer watched with different eyes. Victor's jaw tightened when a man danced too close to illegal moves; the Fixer's fingers never stopped twitching, recording, calculating. He wanted headlines, clips, merchandise — a story he could package and sell back to the city.
"You see that?" the Fixer hissed to the man beside him. "He's not just a fighter — he's starting to build heat. Give him a little more rope."
Victor didn't answer aloud. His stare was private and old, the kind that counted tolls others didn't see. He'd seen a lot of kids burn bright in Night City. Some got contracts. Others got graves.
Xen felt it all: the lights, the watching bodies, the smell of fear and hope. He tasted it in his mouth. Each knockout earned him a little more space in the room, a little more audacity to taunt. Each shout of "rematch" from the crowd became a currency he could spend.
But theater wasn't enough. The Fixer had said it: they needed a story. Xen had to make them care enough to pay for his papers — or for his future.
The queue moved on, and Xen methodically ran the gauntlet. He toyed with the crowd, elevated the rage, fed the need for spectacle. He kept one eye on Victor, the other on the Fixer, and his mind on the system humming in his skull — the R&D timeline that had already given him moves he'd never trained for.
When the last challenger fell, the arena's mood had shifted. Where there'd been open anger, there was now a smoky roar of excitement. Someone yelled a crude chant; phones recorded, feeds propagated, the Fixer smiled.
"Well?" the Fixer said as Victor stood. "We got material. We spin this right, we monetize the arc."
Victor's voice was low. "Don't make him into a product before he learns he's human."
The Fixer only shrugged, eyes already seeing profit lines. "You retire, you teach, you push talent. We manage, we promote. That's how it works."
Xen walked away from the ring chest heaving, gloves smelling of sweat and blood. For a second, alone in the corridor, he let the exhaustion slide over him like a tide. He had what he wanted: attention. Now he had to turn attention into leverage. Use the buzz to buy papers, sponsorships, a life that wasn't scavenging for the next meal.
He pocketed the feeling and let the next plan form in his head. In Night City, everyone present was garbage — and garbage had a way of being recycled. If he played the city's rules, he could make them pay to keep him alive. If he didn't, the city would write his ending for him.
He smiled, sharp and tired. Let them call him what they wanted. Let the Fixer record, let Victor watch, let the crowd roar. Xen would be the one to decide how the script ended.