She saw her husband's face. Not dying. Smiling. Standing in the doorway of their apartment in 1988, holding the Sports Illustrated issue, shaking it in the air, laughing. "That's my girl. That's my Phantom." She saw Elijah's face three hours ago. Concrete, hollow. A boy who walked into a gym full of dreams and walked out carrying something he'd carry for the rest of his life.
She saw her sensei's hands adjusting her stance when she was 14. Heard his voice like it was yesterday. "You do not fight with anger, Wanda. You fight with memory. Your body already knows. Trust it." She hadn't trusted it in 34 years. Her knee ached. Her knuckles were stiff. Her shoulders carried 62 years of gravity. But her feet remembered everything. Left foot back. Right foot forward. Weight low. Hands open. Breath steady.
She wasn't the Phantom anymore. She was a grandmother who came here for one reason. But if this man put his hands on her, God help him. Brock charged. Brock came in fast. Right cross. Full power. The kind of punch designed to end a conversation, not start one. He expected it to land. It didn't.
Wanda shifted her weight half an inch to the left, no more. And the fist sailed past her ear so close she could feel the wind off his knuckles. Brock's momentum carried him forward off balance for just a fraction of a second. A fraction was all she needed. Her left hand caught his wrist. Not grabbed. Guided. She redirected his arm downward in a tight circular motion while her right palm struck the back of his elbow. A basic Shotokan redirect. Textbook. Clean.
Brock stumbled forward three steps, almost fell, caught himself on the ropes of the ring. The gym went dead quiet. Not the kind of quiet that follows a joke nobody laughed at. The kind that follows a car accident. The kind where everyone stops breathing at the same time because their brains haven't caught up with what their eyes just saw. A 62-year-old woman had just made a professional fighter miss by a hair and sent him stumbling across his own mat.
Brock turned around. His face was something between confusion and fury. The expression of a man who just tripped in public and needs to believe someone pushed him. "Lucky." He said. He rolled his neck, bounced on his toes. "That was lucky, old lady." Wanda said nothing. She hadn't moved from her stance, feet planted, hands open, breathing slow.
He came again. Faster this time. A jab followed by a low roundhouse kick aimed at her thigh. Textbook kickboxing combination. The kind that drops amateurs. Wanda didn't block the jab. She slipped it. Chin tilting back just enough to let it pass. Then she did something that made Derek Collins grab the door frame with both hands. She stepped into the kick. Not away from it. Into it.
Her front foot advanced at a 45-degree angle, closing the distance before the kick could build full power. It caught her hip instead of her thigh. Half the impact. Manageable. In the same motion, her right hand shot forward in a palm strike that connected with Brock's solar plexus. The sound was distinct. Not a slap. Not a thud. A deep, compressed pop. Like someone dropping a sandbag from a height.
Brock's lungs emptied. His eyes went wide. His mouth opened, but nothing came out. Before he could recover, Wanda's left hand gripped his right shoulder. Her hip turned inward, and with a motion so smooth it looked choreographed, she executed a hip throw. Ogoshi in Judo, Kosh Nage in Karate. That lifted Brock Anderson off his feet and deposited him flat on his back on the mat. The impact rattled the water bottles on the counter 20 feet away.