The rain in Sector 4 didn't wash the city clean. It just made the grime slicker, turning the streets into a blurred oil painting of neon and despair.
Marcus Graves walked with his head down, the hood of his canvas jacket pulled low over his eyes. The air here was different from "The Sump." It was colder, sharper. It tasted of ozone and filtered exhaust, a metallic tang that coated the back of his throat. This was the mid-level, the territory of the "High-End" underground, where the brutality was the same but the floor was marble instead of mud.
Two days.
That was the only number in Marcus's head. It had been two days since Vargas had sat in his armchair and dismantled his life—two days of running the math until the numbers burned into his retinas. Fifty thousand credits. The interest alone was five thousand, and it was due in less than a week.
He stepped over a body huddled in the alcove of a ventilation unit. The man was unconscious, a "wire-head" with a datapad jacked directly into his temple, drool freezing on his chin as the rain lashed against his face. Marcus didn't stop. In this city, empathy was a luxury he couldn't afford. You stepped over the debris or you became it.
He stopped in front of a monolithic structure that looked like a tombstone for a dead god. It was an old atmospheric processing plant that the Syndicate had repurposed into "The Foundry." The entrance wasn't a door but a gaping maw of reinforced steel, guarded by two biological nightmares—genetically bulked bouncers with dermal plating that shimmered wetly under the streetlights.
They scanned Marcus's retinal ID without a word and jerked a thumb toward the freight elevator.
Marcus limped past them. His right knee was stiff, the damp cold seeping into the joint like ice water. Every step was a negotiation between his brain and his body. step, ache, adjust. Step, ache, adjust.
He stepped into the elevator, a massive industrial cage designed to haul tonnage rather than people. The floor was a grate looking down into a shaft of infinite blackness. He hit the button for Sub-Level 8.
The gears ground together, a metallic scream that vibrated in his teeth.
Check engine, he thought. The mantra returned unbidden. Oil pressure low. Structural integrity compromised.
He leaned his forehead against the cold metal mesh of the cage wall. He was tired. A bone-deep exhaustion that sleep couldn't touch. He thought of Leo. The kid hadn't spoken since Vargas left. He just sat in his room surrounded by his circuit boards and staring at the wall.
"Going down or just heavy?"
The voice broke Marcus's trance. He hadn't heard the elevator doors slide open before they started descending, nor had he noticed the man slip in beside him.
Marcus turned his head slowly.
Standing there was a scarecrow of a man. He couldn't have been more than five-foot-seven, wearing a lab coat stained with multicolored fluids—blue, neon green, and something that looked suspiciously like dried arterial spray. He wore complex multi-lensed goggles that magnified his eyes to insectoid proportions. His hair was a shock of white static, standing on end as if he were permanently plugged into a socket.
"Doc Halloway." the man chirped, extending a hand wrapped in copper wire and medical tape. "But you can call me Doc. Or Halloway. Just don't call me late for the autopsy."
Marcus stared at the hand then up at the goggles. He didn't move.
"Tough crowd," Halloway said, retracting the hand and tapping a rhythm on his own thigh. "I know you. You're the Piston. Marcus Graves. Vintage model. Heavy chassis with low maneuverability but high torque."
"I don't know you," Marcus rumbled.
"No, you wouldn't. I work on the specialized cases. The modifications. The tuning." Halloway stepped closer, his lenses whirring as they zoomed in on Marcus's face. He leaned in uncomfortably close, smelling of formaldehyde and peppermint.
"Fascinating," Halloway whispered. "Look at the scarring pattern. Asymmetrical. And that stance favoring the right leg? Patellar tendonitis? No. Worse. Meniscus degradation. Bone on bone."
Marcus shifted his weight and towered over the little man. "Back off."
Halloway didn't flinch. He just tilted his head. "You're leaking. Not blood. Energy. You're bleeding efficiency with every breath. You're walking rust, my friend. Oxidation in human form."
Rust.
The word hit Marcus like a physical blow. It was the echo of his own thoughts, the fear he saw in the mirror every morning.
"I'm still standing." Marcus said. The words came out as a warning growl.
"For now," Halloway said cheerfully. "But gravity always wins. Entropy is the only undefeated champion. You're fighting the slide, Graves. But the slide is steep. And tonight you're going to see what 'New' looks like. You're going to see what happens when we stop fixing the rust and just replace the metal."
The elevator shuddered to a halt and the doors groaned open.
"Good luck Piston," Halloway said, skipping out into the hallway. "Try not to break. Parts for your model are hard to find these days."
Marcus watched him go, a cold knot tightening in his stomach. He waited a full ten seconds before following.
The Foundry was an assault on the senses.
If Roach's arena was a basement, this was a cathedral to violence. The ceiling was lost in shadow, crisscrossed by gantries and catwalks. The lighting was sharp and halogen white, designed to highlight every drop of blood for the high-definition cameras floating on anti-grav drones.
The crowd here wasn't just junkies and scavengers. These were the mid-level corporate wolves, the Syndicate lieutenants, the wealthy sadists wrapped in synth-fur and silk. They held crystal glasses of blue liquor and wagered credits on holographic slates with the casual indifference of gods playing with mortals.
The noise was a dull roar, a constant pressure against the eardrums.
Marcus kept his head down and moved toward the fighter's viewing deck. He wasn't fighting tonight. Tonight he was scouting.
His opponent for the day after tomorrow was a kid named "Jolt." A rookie Pulse user. Marcus needed to know what he was up against. He needed to see the "New Breed" in action. The contract was three thousand credits. A pittance compared to the debt, but it was a start. A way to stop the bleeding.
He found a spot near a concrete pillar and blended into the shadows. Below him, the "Pit" was a pristine white circle thirty feet across. No ropes. No cage. Just a raised platform surrounded by a ten-foot drop into a drainage moat.
"Ladies and Gentlemen! Corporate sponsors and Syndicate lords!"
The announcer's voice boomed from hidden speakers, amplified to rattle the ribcage.
"Tonight we offer you a glimpse of the future! A demonstration of the Iron Pulse evolution!"
The crowd screamed, a feral sound that clashed with their expensive clothes.
"In the red corner…" the announcer bellowed. "The Unbroken! The Old King! Five years undefeated! Give it up for Gredon 'The Anvil' Smith!"
A gate hissed open. Gredon Smith walked out.
Marcus knew Gredon. He was a contemporary, a man cut from the same cloth as Marcus. He was six-foot-four, two hundred and fifty pounds of dense heavy muscle. He was a brawler, a man who had built a career on being able to walk through fire and crush whatever was on the other side. He looked strong. He looked focused. He wore heavy plated gauntlets and slapped his chest, the sound echoing like a gunshot.
"And in the blue corner..." The lights dimmed. A strobe effect started, flashing rapidly and disorienting the eyes.
"The Prodigy. The Blur. The Herald of the New Flesh... Kian Rask!"
Marcus narrowed his eyes. He had seen the billboard. But seeing him in person was different.
Kian Rask walked out. He was slight, wiry, maybe a hundred and seventy pounds soaking wet. He wore sleek aerodynamic compression gear that looked like a second skin. His hair was shaved on the sides and dyed a violent neon violet on top.
But it was the way he moved that made the hair on Marcus's arms stand up.
He didn't walk. He jittered. His head snapped from side to side with avian suddenness. His hands twitched at his sides, fingers drumming against his thighs at a speed that blurred.
Marcus's eyes locked on. The Fighter's Vision took over.
Pupils blown wide. Sweat glazing the skin despite the chill. Deltoids twitching in a rhythmic, chemical spasm.
The kid wasn't just fast. He was vibrating. A video glitch made flesh.
The bell rang.
Gredon Smith did what Gredon Smith always did. He claimed the center. He moved forward, a tank rolling into position with his guard high and tight. He threw a probing jab, a heavy thudding shot meant to gauge distance.
Kian didn't slip it. He simply ceased to exist in that space.
Vrrrt!
The air collapsed where he had been standing, a vacuum crack of displaced oxygen.
Kian had moved. He hadn't stepped; he had glitched. One second he was in front of Gredon, the next he was three feet to the left, hands hanging loose.
Gredon blinked, panic flaring. He turned and threw a desperate, sweeping left hook.
Swish!
Nothing but air. Kian was already behind him.
The crowd gasped. It was unnatural. It defied the physics that Marcus worshiped. Mass required energy to move. Inertia was a law. But Kian seemed to exist in a different gravity well.
"Is that it?" Kian's voice was high and manic. "Is that the champ? You move like you're underwater old man!"
Gredon roared, frustration mounting. He lunged, unleashing a combination—jab, cross, shovel hook. It was a pattern that had broken ribs and jaws for a decade.
Kian weaved through the punches like smoke. He was laughing.
He's processing faster, Marcus realized with a jolt of horror. It's not just muscle speed. His brain is perceiving time differently.
To Kian, Gredon was moving in slow motion.
"My turn." Kian chirped.
The offensive began. And it was a massacre.
Kian stepped inside Gredon's guard. He didn't throw a single heavy punch. He threw twenty light ones.
Pop-pop-pop-pop-pop.
The sound was like a machine gun. Kian's fists were a blur of motion peppering Gredon's ribs, his liver, his kidneys. They weren't knockout blows but the volume was overwhelming.
Gredon tried to clinch, to grab the smaller man and use his weight. But Kian spun out, dancing around him and stinging him with jabs that snapped Gredon's head back again and again.
Blood started to spray. Gredon's nose shattered. His eyebrows split.
Marcus gripped the railing. Cover up, he mentally urged Gredon. Shell up and make him burn his energy.
But Kian wasn't burning out. The Pulse serum in his veins was a nuclear reactor. He wasn't panting. He was accelerating.
"Boring!" Kian shrieked. "Let's open you up!"
Kian dropped his level. He generated torque from his hips that shouldn't have been possible for his frame. He launched an uppercut.
It connected with Gredon's chin.
The sound was hideous—a wet CRACK that echoed through the silent arena.
Gredon's head snapped back so hard his feet left the ground. He crashed onto his back, his eyes rolling into his skull.
The referee started to move in.
"I'm not done!" Kian screamed.
He didn't wait for the count. He leaped. He landed on Gredon's chest, his knees driving into the big man's sternum.
Gredon gasped, a spray of blood erupting from his mouth.
Kian began to pound him. Hammer fists. Elbows. He was a blur of violence, a thresher tearing through meat. He wasn't fighting to win anymore. He was dismantling the machinery.
"Stop it!" Marcus shouted, his voice lost in the roar of the bloodthirsty crowd. They loved it. They were cheering for the execution.
Kian grabbed Gredon's left arm, the arm that had hoisted the championship belt for five years. He placed it over his own knee.
He looked up at the crowd, grinning with teeth stained red from Gredon's blood.
"Snap." Kian whispered.
He pulled.
The sound of the humerus snapping was like a gunshot.
Gredon didn't scream. He was too far gone. He just convulsed, his body arching in a final biological protest before going limp.
Kian stood up and raised his bloody hands. He was vibrating harder now, the adrenaline and the Pulse cocktail overdosing his system. He looked less like a winner and more like a junkie looking for his next fix.
"Who's next?" Kian screamed, his voice cracking. "Who wants the future?"
Medics rushed the platform and slid Gredon onto a stretcher. Marcus watched them carry the "Anvil" away. Gredon's arm hung at a sickening angle. His face was a ruin.
He would never fight again. He would be lucky to walk.
Marcus felt cold. Colder than the rain outside. He had just watched the obsolescence of his entire existence. Gredon was strong, skilled, and experienced. And he had been taken apart by a kid who didn't know a wrist lock from a wristwatch just like Roach had said.
But this wasn't just brute force. This was speed that negated skill.
I can't beat that, Marcus thought. The realization was quiet and devastating. I can't track that. I can't hit that.
"Impressive, isn't it?"
The voice was smooth, cultured, and utterly out of place in the abattoir.
Marcus stiffened. He didn't need to turn around to know who it was. The smell of expensive cologne and ozone drifted over his shoulder.
Vargas.
Marcus turned slowly. Vargas was standing there, pristine in a charcoal suit this time, a silk handkerchief in his pocket. He was examining his fingernails and looking bored.
"You're a long way from the gutter Marcus," Vargas said, smiling with his eyes but not his mouth.
"I'm working." Marcus grated out, his fists balling at his sides. "Getting your money."
"The three thousand?" Vargas chuckled. "Pocket change. Hardly worth the effort. Did you see what just happened down there?"
"I saw a kid on drugs beating a man to death," Marcus said.
"I saw the future," Vargas corrected. "Efficiency. Speed. Power. That is the 'Iron Pulse.' And do you know the best part? It's scalable."
Vargas stepped closer to the railing and looked down at the blood-stained white circle.
"Kian is a crude prototype. Unrefined. But the potential is limitless. We just need the right cook to perfect the recipe. Someone who understands the delicate biochemistry involved."
Marcus felt the blood drain from his face. The noise of the crowd faded into a dull buzz.
Leo.
"Where is he?" Marcus whispered. The threat in his voice was vibrating and lethal.
Vargas turned to face him, his expression bored. "Leo? He's currently an asset in a secure R&D facility. Top-tier equipment. Climate controlled. Honestly, he's living better than you are."
"You took him," Marcus said, the air around him dropping ten degrees.
"I acquired him," Vargas corrected, his tone flat. "He owed a debt. He defaulted. I exercised a lien on his physical and intellectual property. Labor is the oldest currency, Marcus."
"I'm going to kill you!" Marcus roared. He took a step forward.
The two genetic monsters from the entrance stepped out of the shadows behind Vargas. Marcus didn't care. He calculated the distance. He could snap Vargas's neck before the guards could draw their weapons.
"I wouldn't, if I were you." Vargas said softly. He didn't flinch. "You kill me and the location of the lab dies with me. And Leo... well, without my protection he becomes just another expendable asset to the Syndicate. And when they're done with him? When he's cooked all the serum they need?"
Vargas laughed, a dry rasping sound.
"You'll get him back. Eventually. But he'll be empty. A husk. The Syndicate doesn't return used equipment in mint condition, Marcus. Once they burn out his mind extracting that formula, he won't be your brother anymore. He'll just be... expired inventory."
Red vision took over. Marcus roared and swung.
It was a hook that would have decapitated a normal man.
But Vargas didn't move. One of the guards stepped in, moving with a speed that shouldn't have been possible for his size. He caught Marcus's fist in a palm that felt like a hydraulic press.
CRUNCH.
Marcus gasped as the bones in his hand ground together. The guard twisted and forced Marcus to his knees.
Pain shot up his arm and settled in his shoulder. His bad knee slammed into the concrete grid.
Vargas sighed, dusting invisible lint from his lapel.
"So emotional," Vargas said, looking down at Marcus. "This is why you're obsolete. You fight with your heart while the future fights with calculation."
Vargas crouched down so his face was level with Marcus's.
"You want him back? You want to save your brother from becoming a permanent fixture of the lab?"
Marcus glared at him, breathing hard through his nose. "How?"
"The Apex Tournament," Vargas whispered.
The words hung in the air. The Apex. The myth. It was the Syndicate's private game. The highest stakes in the city. Ten million credit prize pool. Death was not just a risk. It was a probability.
"The Qualifiers start in three days," Vargas said. "I have a slot open. My previous champion retired unexpectedly. I need a body to fill the bracket."
"I can't beat them." Marcus said, thinking of Kian Rask. "They're all like him."
"Yes," Vargas smiled. "They are. The odds are impossible, but it's the only way. You win the Apex and you win enough money to pay off the debt ten times over. You buy Leo's freedom. You buy your life back."
Vargas stood up and signaled the guard to release Marcus.
Marcus slumped forward cradling his hand.
"Win," Vargas said, turning his back and walking away. "Or the asset gets liquidated. I don't keep failed investments on the books, Marcus. I'll write them off."
Marcus stayed on his knees as the crowd above cheered for another fight. He looked at his hand. It was shaking.
He looked down at the pit where the blood was being mopped up by drones.
The Apex.
It was a death sentence. He was a rust bucket entering a Formula One race.
But as he thought of Leo—frail brilliant Leo—sitting alone in the dark, Marcus knew he had no choice.
He slowly pushed himself to his feet. His knee clicked. His knuckles burned.
The rust was closing in but the engine was still running.