NEEDLE & KNUCKLE

“You’re dehydrated, running a high fever, and you have a fractured sternum, Daeng.” The doctor said.

Rangtana’s hospital rooms were high-tech, sterile, and minimalist. The brutalist nature of Arattani district bled even into its interiors, the cold concrete walls and light fixtures up above had no warmth. The room was spacious enough, a window overlooked the parking garage below, and a separate bathroom was at the other end of Red’s bed.

Dr. Sharma-Glasgow—a long time doctor of Yui’s, the grays of his hairs tapered into a formal cut and his white coat distinguished himself from the rest of the personnel. He was one of the few people Red trusted.

“We don’t often use the third-floor except for patients like your sister, but here, the auto-nurse won’t bother you about your citizenship status.” The doctor glanced at his watch, “I’m not sure why you’re here, but don’t cause us any trouble, that goes for your friends too.”

Friends? Thura and Li? I’m not sure that they’re friends...

“I’ll do you this courtesy, as it seems as if you’ve been in quite the rough patch tonight—but, you’re not from here and if I suspect any harm will come to my patients and my staff—Rangtana’s Police Station is close by and I won’t hesitate to send you back over the wall”

Red wasn’t focused on him or his words, instead he was looking up, “There’s a hole in your ceiling.”

“You need to rest, Daeng.” The doctor replied.

In his mind, Red recalled the primal face-off between the two, like beasts—how abrupt and brutal it was, but also how fast it had all ended. Not a street brawl, but something more animalistic—there were no words, but instead crunch, grunts, groans, and grinding teeth.

———————

A lost lens, the camcorder in Red’s care was a relic of the past. The camera’s microphone captured both—Red’s unsteady handling and Thura’s key taps off frame, in crackles. Within the flip-out monitor, Bando and Li stood apart from each other in a fuzzy nightly haze, masking their true details—their micro motions caught in a blur of twenty-four frames per second.

Li tapped his own face, beneath his bleeding eye, with the bloody middle finger he used to puncture his foe’s eyeball. Bando’s face scrunched like a snarling jackal, baring his teeth as his left eye bled and twitched.

And then they moved—shapes in the darkness; a glint from Bando’s inner jacket caught in the frame, a slice flashed inches from Li’s face. He shuffled back, making sure his legs never tangled with each step. Bando went into pursuit with chaotic thrusts toward his midsection.

A knife! The blade shimmered in Bando’s right hand, as he pumped strikes hoping to cut and stab flesh from the abdomen. Li’s left hand and fingers flexed, catching Bando’s right wrist. Red watched the spotlight of the drone circling them, mid struggle—the edge of the blade was serrated. Spitting out a grunt, Bando’s free left hand flung at his foe’s lower jaw in the form of a hook. Li slipped underneath the left hook, his silver-white hair waved like a stallion in motion, and then he closed in with a rocket-like headbutt.

Bando’s nose crunched, his head and body lurched back, but Li kept his left grip firm on his opponent’s right wrist. Red saw it. He looked up from the flip-out camera for a second—with his own eyes, Red saw Li’s hawk-like focus as he reeled his prey back into a sharp elbow that ripped into Bando’s lower chin.

Slack-jawed, Bando flailed his left arm about in limp and precision-less swings—thrashing for an escape—Li twisted enemy’s right wrist until the knife fell out of his hand, clanking into the concrete.

Bando’s arms went limp, his face mashed-and-messed-in. Li released Bando from his grip. He wobbled backwards some, stupefied, steps.

Li raised his fists in a guard, his feet were shoulder-width apart. His left foot was planted forward and the right foot was back, with the heel slightly lifted.

“One, two.”

“One, two. One, two.”

Li threw a series of low-forced rhythmic punches, sequencing and spacing them out, left than right—paused—and continued. It was like a needle jabbing at the face.

“One, two.”

Each strike, Bando twitched, painting the ground in spits of his own red. Red lowered the camcorder. There was no fight left in Bando. One, two. One, two. Li whispered over and over again with that familiar playful smile on his lips.

It’s that flicker-like motion again, only slower now, as if he wants me to see it. Showing me and saying, “Are you watching?” His left arm and hand, snapped like a whip—and then his right arm followed with a direct punch. At full force, these strikes would send Bando into the ground—no, this was like a ritual of some sort, a predator feasting on its prey.

Bando was on his knees when Thura finally spoke, “That’s enough, Li. I have it, the drone is ours.”

Once the drone lowered to Thura’s position, Bando had fallen to the ground, and Li stood above him as the victor. Red understood why Thura asked for time.

“Get inside, the both of you, I’ll deal with Bando and the drone.” Thura said.

Once inside, the ER’s scanners attached to both corners of the lobby filtered their bodies for any injuries. Both of them weren’t going to be admitted, due to their status as non-citizens of the Arattani District—they were to be redirected to an urgent care back in the lower pits, but Dr. Sharma-Glasgow stepped in, recognizing Red as Yui’s little brother, and admitted them anyway.

———————

After about an hour since Li’s victory—Red was in a hospital bed, Thura was leaned up against the wall of the same room, and Li was presumably being treated elsewhere for his eye injury with a nurse by the name of Addo—one of the few other human personnel at Rangtana Hospital.

“Your sister is down the hall, visiting hours are over, so her door is locked,” Dr. Sharma-Glasgow said leaving, half-way through the automated sliding door, “You’ll have to wait until the morning to see her.”

I won’t let them near her—especially not that white-haired man.

“So what have you learned?” Thura asked, calm in his question.

What have I learned? Thoughts flowed in of the senseless violence, claw machines, and overall chaos of the night. Nothing, it’s all the same as it is online. Scroll, scroll, scroll—only it’s happening before my eyes. Red’s fever ran high, his breath came out hot and slow, and his body felt like it wanted to collapse into the pillow behind him—but remained seated up with his shoulders tensed.

“I… don’t know.”

Thura responded, “You showed Li something valuable when you made that bet, we accepted the terms—the prize fell into the chute.”

The claw machine, seriously? What value is there in that? I was desperate… it was the only thing I could think of at the time. It’s just a game—It’s inconsequential. He wanted to reply.

But Red was silent, white knuckling the sheet of his bed.

“I corroborated your story,” Thura continued speaking, “Your sister...”

“You thought I was lying about that?”

Red’s eyes met Thura’s with a deep glare, though he blinked slow, unthreatened by the glare.

“I joined the game to find someone, to see how it was all organized, and truthfully, some morbid curiosity.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Daeng, this is an exchange of information,” Thura was speaking, “Whatever emotions you’re feeling or gripes you have about your situation, you’re here and you’re in it.” Thura continued, “Now think, coolie, what do you know? And in exchange, I’ll tell you what I know about the games and what we can do for you.”

Thoughts of his chaotic journey—up to this point flittered in his mind, reiterating information about Pomi and his sister and the players that he’s encountered. “I don’t know.”

“Think harder,” Thura rubbed the side of his eye with his index, “Details, anything that stuck out to you, what about the app, did anyone try and contact you?”

“I don’t-” Wait. Think. There is something that has been bothering me since the beginning. “There’s certain players worth more than others, on the playerlist I mean, they’re highlighted in different colors than the rest of us. Pomi’s phone, I was able to look through it for a minute. They were chosen." But in the long list of players, there were only a handful of chosen players with the honor of being a special target. “The player count is most likely a-”

“Yes, the one-thousand player count is a lie.” Thura continued, “It’s closer to the hundreds—ninety percent of the players listed are bots.”

I knew it! There is only twelve live drones at a time, showing twelve streams. It’s impossible to keep track of that many players with so little, so why-.

“Twelve special targets.” Thura added.

“They’re only tracking the twelve targets with the drones! So is Pomi—” as if something caught in his throat.

Thura moved across the room, placing his hands on the windowsill. “She’s alive, for now. I’ll send Li to fetch her, once he’s done being treated.”

I should be relieved, in some way, but- His eyes averted back to his knuckles, “I chose to do nothing.”

“You prioritized your sister once you learned she was in the game. Pomi knew what she was doing when she left you—she chose, like you did, to make a decision.”

“That doesn’t make it right!” Red shouted.

Pomi fought for me, she gave me a chance, and I let her down.

“What are you going to do about it?”

“I can’t do anything.”

What the hell, who does he think he is?! It’s easy for someone like you and Li to come around and say whatever you want, strong and sure of yourselves. What do you know about being weak? About being helpless and afraid?

“Are you satisfied with that?” Thura turned, facing Red, his eyes cut like knives, cold—normally more composed. The room filled with tension.

What’s so satisfying about that? You people know nothing about me, about what I’m going through, and then judge me for those weaknesses.

“You came all this way for what exactly? Stop thinking about what you can’t do, and start thinking about what is useful to you—and maybe even for the sake of your sister. You’ll be much more helpful to everyone that way.”

But—Red adverted his eyes, “…How?”

A smile worked over Thura’s mouth and said, “You feed the fire, Daeng. You can help me solve this.” He continued, “I’ll come back with more details. Li will be ready soon, we’ll find irlPomi.” He, then palmed his face, in some embarrassment, “Maybe she can help grow Li’s... Utube Channel.”

“...His channel?”

“xSuperStuntGod01x.”

Superstunt—God?

The tension was gone.

Thura had finally left the room, “Get some rest, Daeng.”

I’m not sure, I can keep up with all of this… But, something about Thura discussing the layout of the whole hospital with Li and hatching some kind of plan for all of us, I don’t feel entirely hopeless anymore. The drone’s going to play some kind of factor in keeping us safe, eye in the sky sort of deal, and that the hospital being so close to the police station would work in our favor—at least that’s what Thura says.

———————

Some odd hours had past, somewhere between awake and asleep, lying flat on his bed, Red watched the hole in the ceiling—no bigger than a pin-prick. He’d shut his eyes, but the hole was ingrained in his mind—so he slipped out of bed, out of sight from the thing that seemed to fester in the ceiling.

I can’t sleep with this hole above my head. What time is it? Feed the fire? What did he mean by that?

Light from his room spilled out into the darkness of the hall. The tiled ground beneath his barefoot ran icy. Red ran his fingers along the third-floor walls. The murky corridor seemed to stretch on and on until it became black—this only made his body feel heavier and his head sank in restless thoughts.

Exhaustion dragged at his eyelids, I've made my way to Yui’s room several times, but tonight's different. 

“Why are you… here?” There was a hole in the wall, the size of a fist, opposite to him, don’t look, pay no attention to it. But like an eye—it shifted, observing him, casting its intense glare toward him. The quiet in the corridor only made his mind wander deeper, thinking about what was inside the black pit—something that crawled or slushed about—breeding, feasting, and watching and waiting for its time to come out and show itself to Red. Snap out of it. He thought, pressing forward, each step its own struggle.

“Why do you come here?” Red kept his focus on the floor and his own feet, the voice came from deep within the fist-sized cavity. “But we fell into a dark hole we just couldn’t get out of, no matter what we did. I guess we’re still in that hole, no matter how much we try and claw our way out.” Don’t look. Don’t listen. Yui’s room is there there, she’s right there, she-

“Why won’t you look at me?”

He clutched at his arm, this isn’t real. Just before Yui’s door, stood the woman with hollow pits for eyes, the blackness threatened to pull him further into her gaze. “Please, Yui—I just want to see if you’re okay.” Red pleaded at her, but it kept still, watching and waiting.

“Look at me, look at what you’ve done to me.”

As if spurred by the sound of her voice, Red shoved her, turning away—he was now faced with the hole, which had strangely expanded in diameter, now the size of a wolf’s den. Similar in shape to the woman’s eye, something was watching him from inside the void.

His breath caught in his throat. He tried to scream, but couldn’t find the voice—couldn’t control the pounding of his heart. Feed the fire. Thura’s voice clicked in his head—uncertain of what it meant, he held onto the words like a torch in a cave of doubts.

“There is no hole.” Red had said out loud, the corridor was quiet, and he was alone. Though full of sweat, his breathing had slowed, and his heart steadied itself. “There’s just you and me, Yui.” Red couldn’t see her face from the window of the automated sliding door, only her lifeless arm and hand—the dread that was in his body had dissipated. A deep sadness filled him, she was fine—frail—no marks, perfectly still in her sleep.

He thought about the day that had changed his and her life.