The lab was always quiet this time of night. A stillness most people feared — not because of what might happen, but because of what wouldn't. August Knight had once found comfort in that stillness. The silence between reactions. The clean hum of calibrated machinery. Equations that obeyed rules.
But the wrestling ring didn’t obey rules the same way.
Not all of them, at least.And that's exactly why he chose it.August stood alone under the flickering lights of an old gym in Boise — a far cry from the laboratories of Sydney or the brief tenure he’d had at MIT.
Here, the only formula was impact, cause and effect carried out in flesh and bone. Sweat hit canvas. Bodies crashed. Seconds ticked.No test tubes. No precise data.Just instinct. Movement. Calculation in motion.He exhaled slowly, standing in front of a mirror cracked just slightly down the middle.
His reflection stared back — lean but strong, his face unreadable as always. A storm always simmered beneath the calm.“Colton Hurst.”
He spoke the name as if testing its weight on his tongue. It didn’t taste like arrogance. Didn’t carry the acidic tang of cruelty or chaos. Just... neutrality.And that made him more dangerous than a villain.
August walked across the gym floor, each step measured, like pieces of a chess game only he could see. His mind ran simulations — movement patterns from Colton’s past matches, decision trees of possible counters, timing predictions, rhythm changes. It was beautiful. It was sharp.It was the thing that might undo him.
“You think too much, Knight,” his old coach used to say. “One of these days, you’ll be mid-analysis while someone’s boot hits your jaw.”August smiled faintly at the memory.
That had already happened. More than once. And yet he was still here — still searching for balance between calculation and courage.
In UOW, most people were chasing something — fame, gold, revenge, glory. But for August, this match wasn't about gold or grit. It was about proof.
Proof that intellect, structure, and discipline had a place in a world built on spectacle and brawling. That there was a method to victory that didn’t require anger. That control was strength — not weakness.
And Colton Hurst? He was the perfect variable.Not malicious. Not malevolent. Just... unbound.
Colton fought like a man who had nothing to prove to anyone — including himself. No allegiance to morality. No overt hatred of it either. He moved through opponents like weather: indifferent, unpredictable, and difficult to prepare for.
August respected that. But he also found it dangerous.Not in the way most wrestlers were dangerous — no fists to the face could scare a man who had mapped out his own muscle pain threshold. No — what scared him was what Colton represented: a world without order.A man without a code.
He dropped into a low stance, balancing on the balls of his feet, and shadowboxed silently under the overhead light. Each motion was flawless. Precise. Controlled.Jab. Cross. Weave. Step. Pivot.In his mind, Colton was already there. Moving like smoke, countering without pattern. Unreadable.
August would need more than speed. He would need faith — not just in his calculations, but in himself.
And therein lay the true challenge.“My greatest enemy,” August muttered to no one, “isn't Colton. It's hesitation.”Every move August made came from hours of study. Every reaction was backed by data. But in the ring, you only had milliseconds — and milliseconds didn’t care about research papers.
Colton didn’t hesitate.August couldn’t afford to either.He stood again, sweat rolling down the side of his neck, his breath steady. His heartbeat slow.
His mind was sharper than ever.But somewhere deep down, he could feel it.The flicker of doubt.
Not about the match — but about what kind of man he was becoming.Would staying lawful make him too rigid for this world? Would his refusal to cheat, manipulate, or brawl recklessly make him obsolete?
Was there still room for heroes in the chaos?
He didn’t know. Not yet.But he would find out when that bell rang.
Later that night, he sat in his apartment — spartan, minimal, with nothing but a folded gi in the corner, a bookshelf lined with physics journals, and a TV paused on footage of Colton’s last match.August paused it mid-frame. Colton standing over a downed opponent. No expression. No celebration. No malice.Just... stillness. A blank canvas.He could see it now.
The match. The struggle. Not between good and evil — but between structure and freedom. Discipline and indifference.
And August would show the world that discipline could still win.“You don’t have to be cruel to be strong,” he whispered, gaze locked on the screen.
“You don’t have to be careless to be free.”
A camera fades in. August Knight stands in front of a whiteboard filled with diagrams — not of wrestling moves, but of fight rhythms, balance shifts, and kinetic angles.
His hair is slicked back, his eyes calm but focused.A soft Australian accent carries his words.
“Most people step into that ring looking for chaos. For blood. For attention. I stepped into it the same way I once stepped into a lab — searching for the truth.” “Colton Hurst isn’t a villain. He isn’t a monster. He’s not even trying to be. That’s why he’s dangerous. Because when you believe in nothing... you fear nothing.”
“But I do believe. In precision. In honour. In mastering every part of yourself until your body becomes as sharp as your mind.”
“So no — I’m not walking into this match to punish Colton.I’m walking in to show that excellence still matters. That rules are not chains — they’re armour.”
“Colton… if you're watching this, I hope you're ready. Not for a brawl. Not for chaos. But for a fight built on purpose.”“And when that bell rings, I won't hesitate.”
“The Things That Stay With You”
Flashbacks woven into August Knight’s match week.
Boise at night was quieter than Sydney had ever been. No crashing waves, no howling wind off the coast. Just the kind of stillness that echoed when you were alone with memory.August Knight sat cross-legged on the floor of his apartment, a single notebook open in front of him — not for taking notes, but for the ritual of stillness. A meditative anchor. Pages blank. Pen untouched.He didn’t need to write things down.He never forgot.
“Knight. You haven’t left that terminal in ten hours.”
The voice was from his former supervisor, Dr. Ingrid Han, a brilliant neurologist and the only person who’d ever challenged August in a debate and gotten the better of him.He remembered the scent of the lab — sterile, ozone-tinged.
The weight of fluorescent lights. The friction-less silence of minds moving faster than sound.Back then, his world was a series of inputs and outcomes. Control variables.
Peer-reviewed logic. Predictable behaviour. Even human psychology had patterns he could map with enough time and sleep deprivation.
August had loved it. Still did, in some way.But something had shifted in him.The last time he’d run a cognitive reflex test on himself, the results scared him.Reaction time: 0.11 seconds.Pattern replication: 100%.Mimicry threshold: 98.7%.Fatigue resistance: Off the charts.What scared him wasn’t how good he was becoming.It was how little it meant.
He blinked, and he was back in the present. Same silence. Different battlefield.He moved to his feet slowly, rolling his neck. His body remembered every impact it had ever taken. Every punch, every counter, every wrong guess.His mind, though — that remembered everything else.
Flashback: 3 Years Ago
Research Facility – Northern California
August was seventeen when they brought him in to assist on a military bio-mechanics project — a joint venture between universities and defence contracts
He hadn’t flinched at the footage they showed. Soldiers in training sims. Drones mirroring human motion. AI-assisted combat prototypes.But the moment he watched a hand-to-hand sparring sequence between two trained operators, something strange happened.His eyes tracked the rhythm of their footwork, the pivot before a throw. He paused the video. Rewound it. Watched it again.
He stood up from the desk and mimicked it — flawlessly.His colleagues laughed. Then stared. Then stopped laughing.
He hadn’t just copied the movements.He had understood why they worked.From that day on, the experiments shifted focus. The data he produced became more valuable than the machines they were building.
He could dissect form in seconds, spot structural weakness, recall every move from memory, replicate it from a single viewing.He’d become what they called a "combat mirror."The perfect echo.The perfect asset.But it felt... empty.
Back in Boise, August opened a drawer beneath his bookshelf and pulled out a worn notebook — not one of his own. Dr. Han’s. Given to him the day he left the lab.Inside, a note in the margin of the last page:“Even a mirror has to ask itself if it’s ever had a face of its own.”
August closed the book.Wrestling had given him something he never found in the lab: imperfection.Spontaneity. Emotion. Instinct.He could predict Colton Hurst’s stance.He could mimic Colton’s strikes.But he couldn’t prepare for what made Colton human — that hard-to-define absence of motive. That refusal to play by any code. That strange indifference that made every move a wildcard.That’s what made Colton a test.
Flashback: 6 Months Ago
Underground Wrestling Gym – Idaho
His first sparring match.The coach had called in a semi-pro vet named Cal.Cal laughed at August’s whiteboard and notes.“Kid, this ain’t chemistry. It’s combat.”
August had smiled calmly. “They’re not mutually exclusive.”
What followed was six minutes of chaos — Cal threw stiff punches. August dodged most. Replicated one. Countered another.But in the final seconds, August hesitated.He saw an opening and thought one too many things.Cal capitalised. A boot to the temple. Knocked him cold.
When August woke up, the coach looked down at him, impressed but amused.“Next time, don’t think so hard. Just move. You’ve got all the science in the world. Now find the soul.”
August had carried those words with him into every match since. Colton Hurst would bring unpredictability. He would bring indifference. He wouldn’t care if August hesitated or executed.But August cared.Because beneath all the calculation, all the equations and mimicked forms, he had found something real in the ring: purpose.Not scientific. Not replicable. Just human.
The night before the match, August stood outside the venue. His breath fogged in the cold. Boise air had bite. He didn’t mind. It kept him alert.Inside, the ring crew was finishing setup. He could hear the dull thump of mats, the snap of tightened ropes.He closed his eyes and let the memory come — not a scientific equation. Not data. Just a moment burned into him.
Flashback: 1 Month Ago
After a tag team match loss he was alone in the locker room. Still in gear. Shirt off. Ribs bruised. Overthinking every mistake.A kid — maybe ten — came up shyly with a notebook and a smile.“You’re August Knight, right?”
August had nodded. The kid handed him the notebook.“My dad said you don’t cheat. He said you’re smart and strong. That means a lot.”
August signed the page. The kid beamed.Before he left, the boy asked, “Do you ever get scared in there?”
August thought about hesitation. About data that didn’t help. About failure.He nodded. “All the time.”“But you fight anyway?”August smiled. “That’s why it matters.”
He snapped back to the present.Match day was almost here. Colton Hurst wouldn’t try to break rules.But he might try to break meaning.And August would not let him."In a world full of variables, I’ve made one decision absolute — I will not betray who I am just to win. I don’t fight to destroy. I fight to elevate. You don’t need to fall, Colton. But you will yield — to precision. To order. To the Scientist."
Flashback: “The Reversal”
Boise. 11:42 PM. Just outside a corner store.The night air was sharp. The kind that wrapped itself around your ears and made every footstep echo a little louder than it should. August Knight didn’t mind the cold. It helped him focus. Dampened the noise inside his head — the equations, the muscle memory, the constant archive of motion that never stopped playing in the back of his mind.He was walking home from the gym. Hoodie pulled over his ears. Hands tucked in his pockets. Nothing unusual.Until he heard it.
“Hey, man — give me your damn wallet!”
The voice wasn’t panicked. It was rushed. Nervous. Adrenaline.August’s eyes tracked immediately to the alley.A young guy — early twenties, maybe. Jeans too clean for this part of town. Holding a trembling switchblade in one hand. The other outstretched toward a man in a suit, hands raised, trying not to shake.August stepped into view.The mugger spun on instinct. Blade up.
“Back the hell off!”August didn't flinch. His eyes flicked once — from the kid’s shoulder tension to the knife angle, then to his lead foot.Left knee locked. Right toe forward. Overcompensating. Weight distribution 60/40. Insecure stance.He was about to lunge.
August stepped sideways, calm.“You don’t want to do this.”“Yeah?” the kid barked.“What the hell are you gonna do about it?”
August tilted his head — just slightly.“Reflect.And then he moved.The mugger’s thrust came fast, but August’s body was already mid-step before it began — a shallow pivot into a slip.
His left shoulder dipped just enough to let the blade pass harmlessly along his hoodie.One second.August’s right hand snapped up, catching the attacker’s wrist — not hard. Not twisting. Just enough to stop him.Two seconds.The mugger tried to pull back — instinctive.
He stepped with his right foot to retreat.August matched him.Two identical steps. Same foot. Same breath. Same reaction.Only August wasn’t reacting.He was predicting.The mugger switched grip — tried an overhead slash.August mirrored it before it even started, raising his opposite arm in the same arc, intercepting wrist-on-wrist. The blade didn’t even touch him. It dropped, harmless, to the concrete.Three seconds.The mugger stumbled backward.
August moved with him. Not aggressive. Just present.His stance shifted — now echoing a Krav Maga close-range form. Disarming posture. Breathing even. Hands low, open.The mugger threw a desperate punch.August caught it mid-air. The same way he'd watched a Marine do it in a footage archive years ago.
Then he leaned in, voice low.“I’ve seen this a hundred times. I’ve lived it once. Don’t make me remember it again.
”The mugger froze.The fight drained from his shoulders. The knife clattered at his feet.August gently let go of his wrist.The man in the suit had backed up, stunned.The would-be attacker just stared.“Who are you?”August looked at him — not angry. Just… steady.“Someone who remembers everything. Including how not to hurt you.”Police sirens began to build in the distance.August picked up the knife and handed it to the arriving store clerk.“He didn’t cut anyone. He needs help more than cuffs.”The clerk blinked, still stunned, but nodded.August didn’t wait for the officers.He just turned. Hood up. Quiet again.And disappeared back into the dark.
Present day
The lab used to be the quietest place he knew.Cold, fluorescent quiet. The kind that hummed through sterile walls and tasted like metal on the tongue. That quiet was easy to control. Predictable. Safe.
But this?This was louder than silence.This was her breathing, steady against his chest. The hitch of her laugh when she told a story half-asleep. The warmth of her fingers tracing lines she didn’t know he memorized on day one.August Knight didn’t need a notebook for her. She was the notebook.
He lay back against the couch, her weight nestled along his side, a half-finished blanket barely hanging off their legs. She shifted slightly, fingers curling into the fabric of his t-shirt.She always did that — four fingers, not five. He didn’t ask why. He just remembered it.Her name?Madelyn.
Madelyn James, twenty-three, lived off of coffee and bite-sized revenge plots against her boss. She had eyes that could level a man, and a voice that dropped to a whisper when she talked about the things she was scared of.She never called him “The Scientist.”Just August. Just Augie, sometimes, when she wanted to make him flinch.
He did. Every time. She knew it.
“You’re thinking again,” she murmured, not opening her eyes. Her voice was quiet.
Sleepy. Laced with the kind of certainty that made his chest tighten.
“I always think,” he replied, brushing her hair back from her cheek.
“You knew that when you signed the contract.”
“There was a contract?”
“It was metaphorical. Heavily footnoted.”
She huffed a small laugh, then shifted her leg over his
.August watched the ceiling. He had memorized its pattern months ago — the faint paint crack that branched out like a spider’s web just above the light. He didn’t need to look at it.But it helped him stay still.He was always calculating. Always predicting.
Always ready to move.Except with her.Here, there was nothing to predict.Just moments to feel.
She tilted her head up toward him. Her cheek grazed his neck. She always leaned in that exact same way — a soft roll of her left shoulder first, then her jaw settling just below his collarbone.She did it when she wanted closeness, but wasn’t ready to say it.“You remember the way I breathe,” she whispered, eyes still closed. “Don’t you?”
August exhaled — a slow, controlled breath.“Every pattern.”“And?”
“And tonight, it’s slower than usual. No stress. Your REM cycle’s already deepening.”
“You are the worst,” she said, smiling into his neck.
“Maybe. But I’m accurate.”
She didn’t reply. She just kissed the hollow of his throat — soft. Thoughtless. The kind of kiss that didn’t mean anything big. And meant everything.
His breath hitched.Not from shock. But because she always kissed him there when she missed him. Even when he was holding her.And August noticed everything.Her hair had been tied back all day, so the skin at the back of her neck was still slightly reddened — friction from the elastic. Her hands were warm, but her fingertips were colder —
meaning she’d held her tea mug for too long and let it go too fast.
She was tired.But not from work.From pretending she wasn’t tired.He pulled the blanket up a little more, and wrapped his arm tighter around her waist.“You don’t have to carry it all,” he whispered. “Not here.”
She went still — not afraid. Just...listening.And then she whispered back.“I know.”
“Observed Variables”
Madelyn James had never been in a wrestling gym before she met August Knight.
Now, she knew the way the mats smelled after a long day — part rubber, part exhaustion. She knew which bench creaked when you sat down too fast. She knew that if she brought August an energy bar at the halfway point, he’d forget to eat it until she unwrapped it for him.
And she knew what it looked like when he wasn’t trying to impress anyone.
Because that’s what he was doing now.
Not posturing. Not posing. Just moving.
Inside the ring, August was running a sequence.
His opponent? A young trainee, clearly still new — but willing.
Madelyn sat cross-legged on a steel chair, notebook in her lap. Not for notes. Just for sketching. She wasn’t drawing him, not exactly — just shapes. Angles. Arcs in motion. The curve of August’s body when he slipped out of a hammerlock, pivoted, and swept the other man’s leg clean out.
There was no impact sound.
August moved too clean for that.
“He doesn’t hit hard,” the head coach had once said. “He hits correctly.”
Madelyn smiled at that memory.
It was true. He never relied on brute strength. Why would he? The man had a mind like a scalpel and a body that moved like it had been pre-programmed.
But she could always tell when he got in his head.
It happened around the third repetition.
August caught the trainee’s shoulder, ducked a hook, twisted around into a standing armbar… and then paused.
Only for a half-second. Barely visible to the naked eye.
But Madelyn saw it.
And so did the coach.
“Again,” came the call.
The trainee nodded. August said nothing — just reset.
Madelyn tapped her pencil against the pad.
He wasn’t tired. Not even close.
His stamina was built for long-haul fights. His brain, though? That was another matter.
He’s stuck again, she thought, watching the micro-furrow of his brow. Over-correcting.
She knew what came next. The mental spirals. The fixation on “why that step was too early,” or “how the angle shifted half a degree” from the footage in his head.
August had a photographic memory.
He could mirror anyone’s style. Could break it down, replicate it, invert it.
But when it came to his own style?
He hesitated.
Not because he lacked confidence.
Because he didn’t trust instinct.
Another rep.
Clean. Precise. Nearly perfect.
But Madelyn caught it again — the faint roll of his wrist, half a beat too early. He was compensating.
Trying to force perfection.
Trying to out-think the body that already knew what to do.
The round ended. The trainee tapped out. August gave a nod of thanks — respectful, calm. As always.
He rolled under the ropes and landed in a crouch outside the ring, sweat just beginning to bead at his brow. He didn’t look over until she stood up, walking toward him, slow and deliberate.
Madelyn met him at the ropes, arms crossed, eyes scanning his face.
“You’re fighting a ghost,” she said gently.
He blinked. “I’m fighting a person.”
“Not in here you’re not.” She tapped his chest. “In here, you’re fighting an equation you can’t solve. You’re running simulations when you should be running forward.”
August looked away. Not defensive. Just quiet.
“The kid was good,” she added. “But he wasn’t you. And that’s what you forgot.”
He leaned back against the ropes, exhaling. The motion let his guard down — just a little.
“It’s easier,” he admitted, “to be someone else for five minutes. When it’s me, I start second-guessing everything. The angle. The pressure. The outcome.”
Madelyn reached up, brushing her fingers along his jaw.
“Then don’t second-guess. You’re not a variable to control. You’re the constant. You’re the one who trains until midnight, who memorises moves like languages, who knows exactly how someone breathes before they swing.”
He smiled faintly.
“Is that what I’m doing? Watching people breathe?”
“You’re watching everything. And forgetting that sometimes the body knows before the brain does.”
She stepped closer.
He didn’t move — just stood there, letting her enter his space the way she always did.
Unspoken permission. No words needed.
She pressed her palm to his chest again — this time over his heart.
“Let this lead sometimes,” she whispered.
He nodded, just once.
And for a moment, the perfectionist quieted.
The scientist didn’t analyse.
He just stood still, and listened to the woman who somehow knew how to reach the part of him he couldn’t diagram or label or explain.
Madelyn stepped back, gave his towel a toss, and headed toward the corner where she’d been sketching.
“Try it again,” she called over her shoulder. “But this time, don’t think. React.”
August looked at her.
Then back at the ring.
And smiled — not like a man who found the answer.
But like a man who finally stopped needing to.
For all his vision, it takes her eyes to show him who he really is.
“Muscle Memory”
Later that evening, long after most of the gym had emptied, August Knight stood alone in the ring.
He wasn't drilling.
Not exactly.
He moved through a sequence with no opponent — just air, rhythm, and memory.
A sweep-step into a parry. Shoulder dip. Pivot. Roll.
No pauses this time.
No hesitation.
He wasn't mirroring anyone. Not Taskmaster. Not tape. Not theory.
This was his.
“Let this lead,” she’d said.
And he had.
Madelyn had taken him bouldering once — one of their early dates. She hadn’t told him where they were going, just packed his bag and smiled.
He’d balked at first. No ropes? No gear?
“You don’t think your way up a cliff,” she told him. “You move. You adjust. You feel. If you pause to calculate the angles, you fall.”
At the time, he’d laughed. Quiet, incredulous. But he’d climbed anyway.
And she’d been right.
He hadn’t reached the summit by planning. He’d reached it by trusting.
Now, here — in this ring, on this canvas — he moved the same way.
Flowing from stance to stance, his breath syncing with each step, August felt it settle in:
Not perfection.
Not replication.
Instinct.
The final step landed. He stopped in the centre, chest rising and falling.
And he smiled.
Because for once, he didn’t hear equations.
He heard her voice.
Not every calculation needs solving. Some just need feeling.
"Colton… I’ve studied your matches. Every movement, every habit, every hesitation. You’re sharp — raw and unpredictable — and I respect that.But I didn’t come to UOW to admire talent from a distance. I came to test myself. To learn, adapt, and grow — no matter the outcome.So when that bell rings, you won’t just be facing me. You’ll be facing everything I’ve learned. Everything I remember.No shortcuts. No tricks. Just skill versus skill.Let’s see who solves who first."
