Monsters, Matt Rogers [ereader for android .txt] 📗

King spoke slow but firm. ‘The nerves are because you’re desperate for the result. You need to succeed at this because it’s your pride, your ego, everything you’ve promised your family you’d do. If you give it your all and it’s not good enough you’ll consider yourself a complete failure. That’s where your anxiety is coming from. It’s your body’s built-in excuse. “If we shut him down before he even has the chance to compete fairly, then he’ll never have to deal with the possibility that he just wasn’t good enough.”’

Danny stared at the floor, blinked. ‘Fuck.’

King didn’t respond.

Danny said, ‘So what’s the solution?’

‘To not care about the result.’

‘I can’t do that. If this doesn’t work…’

‘That’s exactly it,’ King said. ‘It won’t work if you need it to work. The more you want something, the less likely you are to get it. Next time you go to hard sparring, I want you to tell yourself, “I don’t give a shit.” And I want you to believe it. For once I want you to genuinely not care whether you have a good session or not. Make it a game, with zero stakes, but promise to give the game your full effort. Work as hard as you can but tell yourself over and over again, “I don’t care where this gets me.” Watch what happens.’

Danny wiped sweat off his face, furrowed his brow. Then he looked up. ‘Who are you, man?’

King climbed to his feet. ‘Just a guy who’s figured some stuff out. That’s all.’

He started to walk away.

Danny called out. ‘Jason…’

King turned.

The young man was frozen, his mouth a hard line, like there was something he was burning to say. Then King saw his brain switch gears, witnessed the shift behind his eyes.

Danny said, ‘Thank you, man. I…never really talked to anyone about this stuff.’

King said, ‘You can always talk to me.’

‘How long are you in town for?’

King hesitated. ‘That depends. A couple of days, at least. You got anything else you want to talk to me about, you tell me.’

He walked off the mats.

29

Alexis quickly discovered what it was like to poke the hornet’s nest.

‘Here’s what’s going to happen,’ Heidi said, leaning forward, lowering her voice. ‘Whatever this is…whatever you think it is, it’s going to end here. You’re going to get up and walk out, whoever you are, and you’re going to go do something else with your life. You’re going to be grateful you cut your losses while you were ahead. In exchange I’m going to forget all about that call I got ten minutes ago from a couple of very disgruntled friends in the ICU. You’ll tell whichever people you’ve got working for you to give up on this blackmail attempt. And that’ll be that.’

Her eyes burned hot, daring Alexis to reply.

Alexis did. ‘There’s no one else working with me.’

Heidi computed that. ‘Then you’re an idiot. You got some independent contractors to beat the shit out of my men?’

‘No. That was me.’

‘Bullshit. That’s the cover story they gave me. I don’t know why. Like their pride couldn’t take any more of a hit.’

‘They gave you the truth.’

Alexis lifted her right hand out of her raincoat pocket, placed it in a fist on the desktop. Her knuckles were red and raw, the skin cracked and swollen. The top of her hand was in the process of turning purple, bruising flushing its way up to her wrist. Nothing was broken — she’d know if it was — but she’d be hurting for at least a couple of weeks.

Registration flashed in Heidi’s eyes as she studied the clenched fist, but she moved on immediately. It was clearly an elite business tactic she could apply to any arena. Disregard what you can’t control, focus on what you can. ‘Okay. So you’re the Terminator. But you came here alone.’

‘Because I needed to talk to you. It couldn’t wait.’

‘You have no fucking idea what you’re getting yourself into.’

‘Don’t I?’

Heidi mustn’t have met anyone who could match her unashamed confidence. It rocked her back for a second. She didn’t physically react, but the eyes betray all. After a pause she said, ‘What exactly is going on? Mary hired an assassin twin?’

‘Mary has no say in this. I’m just someone who heard things through the grapevine and decided to get involved.’

‘If you think that’ll make me refrain from punishing her…’

‘Oh, it will. But not because of what Mary knows and doesn’t know. You won’t lay a finger on her because you’re screwed, and you’re so stubborn and full of yourself that you haven’t realised it yet.’

Now Heidi did lean back, placing an elbow on the armrest, resting her chin on a closed fist. She stayed remarkably composed. ‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah.’ But inwardly, Alexis wavered. This was a higher-stakes version of a business negotiation, and she had to admit there was a world of difference in experience there. She was no hard-charging CEO. But she’d seen the worst of humanity, and it had taught her certain things that apply not just to business but to life.

First and foremost: don’t waver. And if you do, don’t show it.

How you do anything is how you do everything, and one moment of indecision can kill.

So she pushed ahead, regardless of inexperience. ‘Mary knows more than enough about the R&D side of things to provide a comprehensive breakdown of exactly what you’re lying about. Which, from what I’ve heard, is most of it. I transcribed everything she told me and it’s rigged to blow with a button-down system. Do I need to explain to you what that means?’

‘No.’

‘I will anyway. Just in case you were under any illusions. If I don’t walk out of this building without a scratch on me, my contact off-the-grid will send every scrap of information to every major newspaper in America, not just those in the SF bubble. Something like this, with billions of dollars in the mix and your own recent celebrity status…you really think any of them will hesitate to print it?’

Silence.

Alexis