Dawn at the End of the World

“How in the fuck did I end up here?”

It’s a question that’s taken up permanent residence somewhere behind my eyes, but tonight—inside the steel belly of the USS Octane—it lands different. Heavier. Louder. Like the ship itself is echoing it back at me with every groan of its frame.

The Octane hums. Not in the gentle way a home hums, but in the way an old machine does—reluctant, stubborn, too used to war to ever really settle. The walls vibrate in a low, grinding thrum. The grated walkways beneath my boots rattle. Pipes overhead complain in tired creaks. When you live on a decommissioned warship now commandeered by the Red Army, noise stops being background.

It becomes pulse.

It becomes breath.

It becomes the sound of something that should’ve been allowed to die deciding it’s not done yet.

Boots clank above me in staggered rhythms, like a lazy marching band. Somewhere deeper in the hull, a crew member barks orders in Russian. The language is sharp and percussive, consonants snapping like rifle bolts. The air tastes like rust and salt and stale cigarette smoke, layered over old diesel. You can scrub this place for a hundred years and never get the war out of it.

And then there’s me.

The Hawaiian who practically wrestled title matches in flip-flops. The guy whose biggest decision used to be, “Do I wear the loud floral shirt or the louder floral shirt?” Standing here in a fur-lined military coat heavy enough to pull my shoulders down and give me a mild case of scoliosis. My skin, my blood, my bones aren’t built for this kind of cold. Somewhere back down the line, my ancestors are staring at me like, “Bruh. Ice?”

Zarya sits in the center of the bay like some sleeping god of outdated violence. Her olive paint looks bruised under the low red emergency lights, every scratch and weld line a scar from a life lived in gunfire and sand. Her turret is angled toward the bay door, unmoving but somehow alert, like she’s listening for footsteps that don’t belong.

You spend enough time with her, you start assigning intent to metal.

She’s the only thing here that doesn’t lie.

Or at least, if she does, she doesn’t bother trying to make it pretty.

I step closer and lay my palm against her armor. It’s cold—not just “metal in winter” cold, but the kind of cold that sinks into your hand and tries to climb up your arm. “I think you’re the only one on this ship I can trust,” I say.

Somewhere inside her, metal shifts. A small creak. A settling. Rationally, I know it’s nothing. Emotionally, it feels like acknowledgment.

For a second, I just…breathe. No cameras. No Ivan. No Max. No stipulations, no contracts, no voice in my head screaming about what happens if I lose.

Just me.

Just a tank.

Just a heartbeat.

Because once Atlanta hits and the cage door closes, I don’t know how many more quiet breaths I’ve got left. 🍍🍍🍍 I take the stairs up to the catwalk, the old steel steps complaining under my boots. From up here, the tank bay looks like a museum exhibit dedicated to Soviet overkill—rows of machinery, crates stenciled in Russian, shadows moving between them like ghosts too disciplined to rattle chains.

The Octane feels like it shouldn’t be afloat. It’s too heavy with history. Too stacked with men and machines and ghosts. But it glides through the North like it was built for this exact brand of frozen hell.

Colossus is days away now.

A year.

It’s been almost a full year of this. Of Max. Of that laugh. Of the way he can turn a room into a trap and a sentence into a weapon. Of the way he got into my head and rearranged the furniture so every memory of Kai and Nico now comes with a layer of static.

He didn’t just kidnap the mother of my child. He didn’t just steal my family. He installed himself in my life like a parasite and dared me to act like it was all one big joke.

I told him this would end with just the two of us.

I was right.

The Siberian Steel Cage. Bars, not chain link. Steel chains holding the “ropes” in place, rattling like manacles every time somebody hits them. Barbed wire stretched across the top like the world’s ugliest halo, promising that if you try to climb out, you’ll leave pieces of yourself behind.

He wanted my son on the line. Nico.

Fine.

If Max wants my son’s future so badly, he can come take it from the man willing to die to protect it. But I get Kai. I get the truth. I get something to show for the year of hell he dragged us through.

It’s a funny thing. Somewhere along the way, the part of my brain that cared about “win/loss” started…fading. When you wake up every day wondering if you’re going to catch someone you love on a broadcast feed from a dungeon or worse, your relationship with “victory” changes.

This isn’t just a match. It’s a verdict. On me. On who I’ve been. On who I’ve become.

On whether there’s anything left worth salvaging once the door opens again—if it opens.

I stop at a porthole, palm pressing flat to the cold glass. The sea is black, broken by streaks of reflected light and the occasional burst of white as a wave hits the hull and explodes.

“You want to see what you made this year?” I murmur, voice fogging the glass. “Come to Colossus, Max. I’ll show you.”

The ship hums in response, indifferent. 🍍🍍🍍 The mess hall is a long, echoing space lined with tables bolted to the floor. Stainless-steel trays clatter. Utensils scrape. Men laugh in short, tired bursts. There’s a TV in the corner playing some old Russian war film with the sound off, subtitles flickering across men in uniforms from another time. The smell of boiled potatoes and something approximating meat hits me before I even step inside.

Nico is easy to spot. He’s tucked at the end of a table, hunched over the notebook Alexei gave him like it’s a textbook. The coat they gave him is one size too big; the sleeves swallow his wrists. His hair’s gotten longer. Kai would kill me if she saw that. Or maybe she’d laugh and ruffle it and tell him he looks “artfully disheveled.”

His face brightens when he sees me, instinctive and honest…and then he clamps down on it. Replaces it with an almost bored expression. He’s Kai’s kid through and through.

“Comrade Alexei said I should take observation notes,” he says, tapping his pen against the notebook. Hearing him refer to the most dangerous man I’ve ever encountered as a comrade sends a chill through my body that a cold Siberian winter never could. “Like soldiers do. For training.”

The way he says “soldiers” twists something in my stomach. He shouldn’t know what an observation report is. He should be worried about math tests and whether his favorite band’s new album sucks.

“You doing okay?” I ask, taking the seat across from him.

Shrug. It’s amazing how much you can say with shoulders.

“What are you observing?” I push gently.

He flips the notebook around. There are messy columns labeled “strengths,” “weaknesses,” “habits.” Some of them are about Hessian. Some about Gamble. One column has my name at the top, with half a sentence scratched out so hard it tore the paper.

“That one better say ‘Dad’s awesome’ or we’re gonna have words,” I joke.

He doesn’t laugh. Not fully. His mouth twitches like it wants to and then remembers what year it is.

“Do you think Mom’s cold?” he blurts suddenly. “Wherever she is. Do you think she’s scared? Do you think she asks about me? Or does Max…does he even let her?”

Every word is a little knife, slid in carefully. He doesn’t say “I’m scared.” He wraps it in concern for her and hurls the blade at me instead.

“I’m gonna bring her home,” I tell him. “That’s not a maybe.”

He nods, but his eyes search my face for tells. For flinches. For lies. He’s a smart kid. Too smart.

For a second, in the way the light hits his face, he looks exactly like Kai the first time I met her—skeptical, guarded, unwilling to trust the guy in the loud shirt just because he smiled pretty.

He closes the notebook, fingers worrying the edge of the cover. “Dad…what happens after Colossus?”

I think about saying, “We go home.” But I haven’t had one of those in a very long time.

“I’ll tell you when I know,” I say.

Something in him relaxes at that. Honesty, even when it sucks, sits better than a lie.

He nods. I ruffle his hair. He bats my hand away with a “Daaaad,” but doesn’t move out of reach. That tiny, stupid little moment might be the only thing keeping me from dissolving right there into the cold mess hall tile. 🍍🍍🍍 The tank bay at night feels different. The lights are lower, more red than white. Shadows collect in corners and hang from the rafters. The sounds of the ship are dampened, like someone has thrown a heavy blanket over the Octane’s shoulders.

Zarya looms at the center of it all, the queen on a chessboard made of rust and concrete.

I climb up and slide into the hatch, lowering myself into the driver’s seat. The familiar scent hits me—diesel, burnt powder, a faint hint of something floral baked deep into the velvet. Ivan told me once about the upholstery—how he stripped it from a theater in Arkhangelsk after the war, in honor of his mother. The idea of a tank lined in stolen opera seats has never stopped being insane to me. And yet, sitting here, it feels…fitting. War making a home out of something meant for beauty.

The seat is still warm from earlier. We ran drills again today. Maneuvers. Firing sequences. Hessian in the commander’s station, Gamble on the gun. They took to Zarya like they’d been built for her. We were a machine: three men, one beast. It almost makes me sad that I didn’t get more time behind her controls before ReVival 79.

Now it’s just me and her.

But something’s off.

A maintenance pouch is shoved halfway under the commander’s chair, zipper crooked like it was closed in a hurry. A clipboard is wedged beneath the traverse ring, its metal clip bent. At my feet, near the pedal, a floor panel sits just a fraction too high, one screw not fully seated.

It could be nothing. A lazy mechanic. A rushed crewman. On this ship, tools and paperwork live everywhere.

But my gut won’t let it go.

I kneel and pry the panel up. The screw grinds as it turns, complaining with every pained rotation. Beneath it, the cavity is dark and narrow—just enough room for someone to hide something they didn’t want casually found.

My fingers brush paper.

Not one sheet. A bundle, folded and refolded into a brick.

I pull it out.

Even before I open it, I know.

Red Army letterhead. Official stamps. The dates jump out at me first. Months ago. Before the Red Army “ran out of leads.” Before Dmitry shrugged and told me he was sorry, truly sorry, but Kai had disappeared off the map.

I unfold the first page. SUBJECT: KAI MAKANA LOCATION: ARKHAM, MASSACHUSETTS. STATUS: CONFIRMED The words slam into me like I ran into the NEWS van mere days ago.

I read the next line. Do NOT inform Comrade Dawkins. Await further directive. Surveillance maintained. Report upward only. My throat closes. The humming in my ears gets loud, high-pitched, like feedback.

There’s a signature at the bottom. It’s indecipherable, with chicken scratch turning into a smear after half a letter. Maybe someone with shaky hands didn’t want it to be legible. Maybe someone who knew better “lost” that signature on purpose.

Another line sits above the sign-off like a landmine.

Commissar clearance pending.

My heart stutters.

It could mean Ivan never saw this. It could mean it sat in a stack on his desk and he looked at it and chose not to move. It’s Schrodinger’s Bear, sitting in a box made of plausible deniability.

My hands start to shake. The papers rattle. My breath comes thin, too fast, trapped at the top of my chest.

“No,” I manage. “No, no, no…”

Zarya groans softly, some bit of expanding metal settling as her warmth leaks away. To anyone else, it’d be nothing.

To me, it sounds like judgment.

Everybody lied.

And saying it out loud feels like stepping on a mine I buried myself. 🍍🍍🍍 I don’t remember climbing out of the hatch.

One minute I’m in the velvet-lined gut of an old tank, the next I’m on the catwalk above the bay with the documents buzzing in my hand like a Soviet wasp’s nest. The fluorescent lights overhead blur, leaving streaks when I move my head. The edges of the world feel too sharp.

I walk.

Past sleeping quarters where young soldiers snore with their boots still on. Past a rec room where two officers play cards in tense silence, a chess game abandoned mid-match on a table nearby. Past a hallway lined with portraits of stern men in uniforms whose medals probably cost other men their lives.

Every nod, every “Comrade Dawkins,” every respectful glance bounces off me like rubber bullets. It all feels fake. Staged. A play I’ve wandered into halfway through with the wrong script in my hands.

Did you know?

Did you know?

Did you fucking know?

The questions hammer against my skull in rhythm with my footsteps.

Did Ivan see those reports and choose not to act?

Did Dmitry switch sides and sell me out?

Did Alexei, with his constant clipboard and bureaucratic bullshit, know exactly where Kai was every time he told me to “have patience”?

I walk until I hit the end of the world—the forward deck.

The moment the hatch opens, the cold hits me like Max’s Reality Bending Elbow. The wind howls across the steel, slicing through my coat, straight to bone. The sea below is black and churning, waves smashing themselves bloody against the Octane’s hull. The air tastes cleaner up here, sharper, but it doesn’t make it easier to breathe.

I grip the railing until my knuckles ache.

“If I walk into that cage with nothing behind me but lies,” I say to the night, voice ripped thin by the wind, “then what the hell am I even fighting for?”

The waves don’t answer. They just keep crashing.

Somewhere, Max is probably smiling.

Somewhere, he’s been smiling this entire time. 🍍🍍🍍 By the time I make my way back to the tank bay, the ship has quieted. The drills have stopped. The mess hall is closed. The sounds are softer now—distant generators, the occasional pipe pinging, the low murmur of the sea whispering against the hull.

Zarya waits where I left her. Of course she does. She’s not going anywhere until someone tells her to.

I sink down with my back against her treads, legs stretched out in front of me on the cold concrete. The documents are folded and refolded in my hands until the creases threaten to tear. I could shove them back in the panel and pretend I never saw them. I could take them to Ivan and demand he look me in the eye while he explains.

Instead, I sit.

Her engine ticks as she cools—a tiny expansion, a contraction, a little exhale of heat escaping metal. Each sound is a reminder that this thing has outlived entire wars. That it’s seen boys climb into it and men climb out, and sometimes the other way around.

I think about burning the papers. Watching the ink curl and blacken until “Do NOT inform Comrade Dawkins” is nothing but flake and ash.

I think about driving her—this steel reliquary of someone else’s trauma—into whatever structure Max calls home in Arkham and seeing what happens when a tank meets a man who thinks it doesn’t matter how many times he dies.

I think about walking away. About telling Ivan to take his coat and his cause and find some other desperate soul to wrap it around.

Instead, I think about Kai.

The way she laughed when Nico finger-painted an entire wall in our old apartment, standing there with hands dripping orange and blue while I lost my mind over the security deposit. The way she wiped my forehead with her thumbs after my first match in PRIME back in 2008 and told me she’d never seen me look more alive. The way she kissed Nico’s hair the night before I drug them onto the Australia tour and promised him the world.

The phone buzzes in my pocket.

Same number.

Same name.

THE HERALD.

The manchild I almost killed. The fool who lit his shoes on fire “for science.” The idiot who tried to meditate with my son and gave him a panic attack. The only one who hasn’t stopped calling, even after I stopped listening.

I stare at the screen until it times out.

Let it go to voicemail.

Then it buzzes again.

And again, longer.

Again, even longer, like it’s not willing to be ignored this time.

Finally, the buzzing stops and the voicemail icon pops up. My thumb hovers over the delete option out of habit.

Instead, I hit play.

“THE Bryan Dawkins… please…” The Herald’s voice pours out, frayed at the edges. “Not enemy… you… listen… please…”

The message cuts out in a hiss of static, like someone pulled the plug or yanked the phone from his hand. It’s only a few broken words, but there’s no mistaking it. I know that sound.

He’s scared.

He’s hurt.

He still cares.

For the first time, it hits me: maybe the only person who wasn’t trying to use me, sell me, or manage me was the one I shoved furthest away. I let a sigh escape my lips, hoping it’ll free me of this realization.

Zarya’s metal ticks again. Another tiny sound. Another heartbeat. 🍍🍍🍍 I sit there in the red glow of the tank bay, back pressed to cold steel, hands wrapped around a phone and a stack of papers that have rearranged my entire reality in the span of an hour.

Above me, Zarya towers—silent, patient, waiting. The Octane sways with the swell of the water, the motion just enough to make the overhead lights sway.

Somewhere below deck, Nico is asleep in a bunk that’s not his, wearing a coat that doesn’t fit, dreaming dreams I hope I never have to hear about. Somewhere in Arkham, Kai is locked away, counting days she doesn’t have any way to mark. Somewhere, Max is probably laughing. Somewhere, Dmitry is wherever men like him end up when their lies run out.

Somewhere, a steel cage is being assembled.

Somewhere, my career might be ending.

Somewhere, my life might be changing for good.

The phone buzzes again.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

Same number.

Same kid.

Same stubborn hope.

I lift it.

My hand trembles. My thumb hovers over the green icon. It feels heavier than any belt, more dangerous than any weapon I’ve been handed.

I take a breath that tastes like rust and diesel and salt.

And I press the green button to answer the call.