No Escape

Clank. Clank. Clank.

The motel heater rattled out another weak attempt at warmth, no match for the bitter Iowa night seeping through paper-thin walls. Outside, the sputtering neon 'VACANCY' sign painted the grimy carpet an eerie, faded crimson. The room reeked of stale cigarettes and older regrets, of faded glory and fresh desperation.

Perched on the edge of a sagging mattress, Logan Drake thumbed through the crisp pages of the Jolt Fighting Ownership Guide. The words blurred into meaningless ink stains as his mind wandered to darker corners. This cheap, timeworn room - this was his new reality now. His kingdom of ashes.

This was his new reality.

A budget motel in the middle of nowhere. A future that still felt as unsteady as the flickering motel light outside. Jolt Fighting would never be PMG, with its slick corporate machinery and bottomless war chests. But it was a second chance, a slender lifeline to cling to in the wreckage of his dreams. Logan knew he'd be damned if he let it slip through his fingers.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

A sudden pounding at the door shattered his trance. Too late for turndown service. Too heavy for anything but bad news. Logan crossed the cramped room in two long strides, yanking open the door. The freezing air sliced through him like a razor. On the threshold stood a man, face obscured by a thick coat and a thicker poker face. Wordlessly, he thrust a bulky envelope towards Logan, his gloved hand an executor's flag.

"Logan Drake?" Not a question. A death sentence.

Logan swallowed hard. "Yeah, that's me."

"You've been served." The words landed like a sucker punch to the gut.

Logan blinked.

"What?" Logan gaped, but the man was already retreating, his boots crunching on the frost-slick asphalt. He melted into the shadows without a backward glance. Logan shut the door, but the cold and dread followed him inside, icy talons burrowing deep. With numb fingers, he examined the envelope, its rich, weighty paper incongruous in this temple of decay. Embossed on the front, a name leapt out like a death's head:

He saw the bold lettering at the top.

Logan Drake v. Peak Media Group.

His jaw tightened.

His skin felt hot despite the motel’s useless heater. His phone erupted in frantic buzzing, skittering across the nightstand like a live grenade. Unknown number. Every instinct screamed to let it ring out into the unforgiving night.

Logan answered anyway. He exhaled sharply and answered.

“Hello?”

A voice on the other end, heavy with false sympathy and unyielding purpose. Jolt's chief investor, playing at undertaker.

"Logan, I'm sorry..." Not sorry enough. "...we gotta drop you from the group."

And there it was. The final shot to black. 

“What? No—why?" Logan was clueless, but some irrational part of him hoped for a different answer.

"You didn't tell us you were still under contract with PMG." An accusation, not a question.

"I—I'm not though." The statement wasn’t false, yet it carried the weight of an unconvincing lie. A damning pause. The silence of a man already writing an epitaph.

"We all just got served." Each word a nail in the coffin. "PMG's attorneys sent us legal notices this morning. We don't have the funds to fight this, Logan. We can't risk it."

Risk. Funds. Can't. The words crashed over Logan in a smothering wave. He fumbled for a rebuttal, a Hail Mary, anything. But there was nothing left to say.

"I'm sorry, Logan." A final twist of the knife.

Click. The line went dead. Logan stood motionless, the envelope searing his hand, the room shrinking to a single point of hollow despair.  Jolt Fighting, gone. His last hope, extinguished. And now, PMG's corporate hounds baying at his door, fangs bared for the kill.

Game over.

No extra lives.

No continues.

Just Logan Drake, alone in a two-bit motel room.

A dead man walking.