Can I step out of the ring and into the shadows of fatherhood?
Rhea warned me once—“You’re not the only one with scars.”
Now I see hers. And I see mine. And I realise they might not heal. But maybe they can hold, if I let them.
The next dayI walk past the press pods with the edge of the training bay behind me. I don’t look at her. Not this time.
But I feel her.
I feel her presence the way a distant star flickers despite the dark.
I feel her watching.
And I don’t flinch.
Hours later I approach her room in the compound’s private wing. The call-beep echoes softly. The panel glows.
But I stop.
I don’t knock.
I don’t wait.
I just step away.
Because I’m not ready.
And because I’m terrified.
And because I know what happens if I cross that threshold.
And I don’t know if I want to risk losingheragain.
The compound’sunusually quiet for midday.
No shouting from the rings, no PR flunkies yapping into comms. Even the omnipresent hum of the production drones seems subdued—like the place itself knows it fucked up.
The holoboards around the complex keep flickering between scheduled matches and emergency messages from NovaCast’s exec team, their apologies thin and panicked. Words like “unauthorized leak,” “pending review,” “temporary suspension,” and “nonrepresentative views” flash across the screens in corporate gray.
But everyone knows what it is.
They leaked her segment.
Rhea’s.
The one about Yorrick—the trainer who put three rookies in recovery tanks last season and called it “conditioning.” She’d worked weeks on that story. Verified every detail. Interviewed whistleblowers, scraped the truth from frightened interns, embedded with med-techs off the record.
It was good journalism.
Too good.
Somebody at NovaCast saw it, panicked, and pulled the trigger early. No polish. No legal vetting. Just dumped it mid-stream like throwing meat to wolves.
The public’s howling. Sponsors are pulling ads. Yorrick’s issued a hollow denial and gone dark. And Rhea—Rhea’s been thrown under the bus faster than you can say “brand realignment.”
She’s off the schedule.
Account suspended.
