The ball was dying.
Carlo felt its stuttering heartbeat through his taped-up boots—a waterlogged leather corpse pumped with enough synth-steroids to make its final minutes interesting. Across the sewage tunnel, Ratto's bionic eye glowed crimson as he sized up the makeshift goal: two rusted pipes framing a flickering hologram of Diego Maradona's face.
“Last goal buys filters for the week!” shouted the bookie, his voice modulator crackling.“Or your sister’s left lung. Dealer's choice.”
Carlo spat into the ankle-deep sludge. The real match wasn't happening on this irradiated pitch. Up in the Sky Citadel, genetically sculpted prodigies were playing football so pure it made angels weep. Down here in Sub-Zone 7, they bet on how many bones you'd break before the ball exploded.
The whistle shrieked.
Ratto charged, his grafted steel legs screeching against concrete. Carlo pivoted, the ball's arrhythmic thumps guiding his steps. Left. Right. Hold for 1.8 seconds—
His vision glitched.
A translucent red arrow materialized above Ratto's head, pointing downward. Carlo's gut lurched as text scrawled across his retinas like broken neon:
[ PRECOGNITIVE FEINT: LV. 1 ]
WARNING: UNSTABLE MUTATION
Ratto's left foot twitched—the exact micro-movement the arrow predicted. Carlo reacted before his brain caught up, nutmegging the cyborg with a pass so audacious the sewer rats paused to gawk.
The dying ball soared toward Maradona's pixelated grin.
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Thump.
Thump.
KABOOM.
Shrapnel kissed Carlo's cheek as the ball detonated mid-net. Ratto howled, clutching his smoking eye socket. The bookie tossed Carlo a dented filter cartridge—barely enough to protect Lina’s lungs for three days.
“Should've taken the lung,” the bookie chuckled. “Your sister's gonna be corpse-skin by Thursday.”
Carlo was already sprinting home through corroded alleyways, the mutation’s afterburn searing his skull. He found Lina curled in their tin-roof shack, her breathing a wet rattle. The biotech heart grafted to her chest—a "gift"from last year's match—was failing, its valves clogged with black-market cholesterol.
"You… reek,"Lina coughed, smiling through cracked lips.
"Brought you a present."Carlo hung the filter above her bed. The cartridge wheezed, spitting out air only marginally less toxic than the smog outside.
A shadow filled the doorway.
"Took you five minutes too long,"rasped a voice like grinding gears.
The stranger wore a radiation cloak stitched from dead referees'uniforms. His face was a mosaic of shattered holograms—one moment a grinning old man, the next a hollow-eyed corpse.
"Your father," the stranger said, tossing a blood-caked USB onto Lina's blanket, "left you a suicide note."
Carlo reached for his knife. "Never knew him."
"He knew you. The Sky Citadel executed him nineteen years ago today." The stranger's gaze fell on Lina's shuddering heart. "They'll come for her next. Your sister's got his eyes.”
[ PRECOGNITIVE FEINT ] flared again. Carlo saw the USB's contents before touching it—a 20-year-old goal celebration. A man who looked like Carlo's mirror image raised a golden trophy… then exploded into ash mid-strut.
"Your DNA's a time bomb," the stranger said. "But it can buy her a cure. Ever heard of the Radiance Cup Qualifiers?”
Lina's monitor flatlined.
The stranger vanished, leaving behind a shimmering keycard. Carlo grabbed it, and the world dissolved into another glitching vision—a floating stadium where players with crystalline skin scored goals that made black holes look tame. Text burned across his retinas:
[ SKY CITADEL ACADEMY – INVITATION ACCEPTED ]
[ MUTATION TIER UPGRADED: CORRUPTED → STABILIZED ]
[ NEW SKILL UNLOCKED: RADIANCE EYES (TEMPORARY) ]
Across the room, Lina's dying heart flickered with impossible light. Carlo's new mutation revealed the truth—her arrhythmia wasn't a defect.
It was a countdown.
