The Foundry was nothing like the Sump.

  Seven days since he'd been dragged from the ring. The tournament ran a 127 fights without him. The bracket closed in. Half the names were gone.

  Marcus stood in the Red Corner, chest rising and falling in slow breaths. The stark white LEDs caught the deep, oxidized scoring on his right leg. Titanium prosthetic from the knee down. Rusted. Ugly. An analog relic in a room built for sleek, corporate killing.

  "Ladies, gentlemen, and stockholders!" the announcer boomed. "Welcome to Stage 2 of the Apex Tournament! Opening the floor today, in the Red Corner, we have the relic of Sector 4! The man who just sent Dextier to the morgue with a fatal systemic collapse... Marcus 'The Piston' Graves!"

  The crowd roared. Sump rats howling for their folk hero. Corporate workers cheering their bets. Same noise, different reasons. Marcus kept his eyes forward. The crowd roared his name, and something sharp twisted low in his gut. There was no word for what he was now that didn't end in blood.

  "And facing him today, out of the Blue Corner!" the announcer's volume spiked. "The heavyweight nightmare! The man who battered his Stage 1 opponent until his face caved in! Give it up for... REN!"

  Ren stepped under the lights. Massive. Violet-skinned. He was vibrating — a fine, high-frequency tremor shaking his entire frame, blurring his silhouette at the edges.

  First-time Iron Pulse user, Marcus realized. Leaking energy. Can't lock it down.

  The buzzer shrieked.

  Ren crossed the ring in a violet blur. Marcus barely got his guard up before a sledgehammer fist slammed into his forearms. The impact lifted him off his left foot, threw him backward.

  Ren kept swinging. The Iron Pulse gave him lightweight speed with freight train mass. A hook to the ribs stole Marcus's breath. An uppercut glanced off his jaw, snapping his head back. Marcus retreated, shells dropping, just trying to survive.

  But an unrefined engine burns hot.

  Ten seconds in, Ren's chest heaved. The Pulse was starving his brain of oxygen. He stopped. Dropped his guard. Dragged a breath.

  Marcus took it.

  He planted his organic left foot. Fired his right leg. The rusted servos in his titanium knee locked with a metallic clack. The heavy prosthetic cut through the air with a high whistle.

  It connected with Ren's hip.

  The impact sounded like a sledgehammer hitting cinderblock. The Iron Pulse had made Ren's muscles hyper-rigid — the bone had nowhere to flex. His hip joint didn't just break. It disintegrated.

  Ren crashed to the mat. The vibration stopped. He clutched the ruin of his pelvis and screamed — a high, airless sound that didn't stop when his breath ran out.

  The crowd went dead silent.

  Marcus stood over him, breathing. The audience saw a counterattack. Only Marcus felt the recoil snap back through his torso. Two of his organic ribs groaned and fractured. He tasted blood.

  He had survived. His body was already tearing itself apart.

  —

  Vane's office was three floors above the main labs. To Leo, it was worse than the horrors below. Sterile. White polymer and brushed steel. The air filtration pumped in a synthesized floral scent that failed to mask the underlying tang of chemical preservatives. On Vane's desk sat a paperweight: a cross-sectioned human heart, perfectly crystallized.

  Leo swallowed bile.

  His first day back. Discharged hours ago, his right hand encased in a synthetic-mesh brace. Angry red burns beneath it. Fresh grafts. The official story was a corrosive solvent spill. The real story was the Iron Pulse sabotage.

  Despite the throbbing agony in his nerves, Leo's left hand moved across the terminal with mechanical precision, sorting genomic sequencing files. He didn't look at his hand. He didn't need to.

  Vane stood by the smart-glass window, posture rigid as a cadaver. He had summoned Leo to observe. His pale, unblinking eyes were locked on Leo's working hand.

  "Your cellular regeneration is above median baseline," Vane stated. His voice was entirely devoid of inflection. "The necrotic tissue sloughed off on schedule. A typical Sump resident would have succumbed to sepsis within forty-eight hours. Your biological resilience is almost as efficient as your cognitive processing."

  He tilted his head — a gesture that mimicked curiosity without containing it. "I find myself perplexed. How Vargas managed to dredge a specimen like you out of Sector 4 is a statistical anomaly I have yet to resolve."

  Leo kept his eyes fixed on the terminal, acutely aware of the razor-thin ice beneath him.

  "Biological variance, Dr. Vane," he said, his tone carefully neutral. "The Sump filters out the fragile early. I'm fortunate my baseline meets your requirements."

  This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  Vane made a soft clicking sound — his version of approval. He tapped his control ring, and the entire wall shifted from opaque white to a high-definition broadcast.

  The Apex Tournament. Stage 2.

  Muted. Crystal clear.

  Leo's fingers stopped.

  There was Marcus.

  Leo hadn't seen him in weeks. Marcus looked older, hollowed and haunted, but moving with a desperate, calibrated precision. Fighting a violet-skinned giant — Iron Pulse.

  Leo's eye caught the right leg. The same rusted titanium. But the micro-adjustments in his posture. The sheer survivability after a lethal dose of neurotoxin. Sector 4 clinics couldn't do that.

  Someone is backing him, Leo realized. Someone with deep pockets and high-grade tech. Whoever had saved Marcus wasn't being charitable. They were investing.

  On screen, Marcus planted his left foot. Swung the titanium leg.

  Even muted, the impact looked catastrophic. The giant's hip shattered. He crumpled, screaming. The broadcast flashed "VICTORY" over Marcus's head.

  "Fascinating application of blunt force," Vane noted, turning back to his monitors.

  Leo wasn't watching the giant. He was watching Marcus's chest. The hitch in his breathing. The way his left shoulder slumped, protecting his ribs.

  His mind isolated the variables instantly.

  Mass of the prosthetic: eighteen kilograms. Velocity: enough to shear augmented bone. Anchor point: an organic foot, an undampened knee. Newton's third law. The recoil didn't vanish into the opponent — it traveled backward. Without shock absorbers in the socket, the force shot up Marcus's femur, slammed through his pelvis, dispersed through his spine and ribs.

  Marcus had just fractured his own ribs.

  Leo looked at the bracket on the screen. Six more rounds to the finals.

  He's not going to make it. The recoil alone will grind his skeleton to dust before the semifinals. Marcus was going to win himself to death.

  Leo's damaged right hand curled into a fist under the desk.

  —

  The crowd exploded. The sound hit Marcus like a wall.

  "The Piston! The Piston!"

  He swayed, left foot anchored, titanium prosthetic hissing softly. He dragged his gaze up toward the VIP box.

  Vargas sat among the sponsors. Midnight-blue suit. Measured smile. But his eyes were polished obsidian — still and calculating. Hiding his bewilderment at the impossible math of a rusted, depreciated asset surviving the Apex meat-grinder.

  Then the adrenaline crashed.

  The recoil caught up. Two fractured ribs groaned. His lungs hitched. He tasted copper.

  The drawbridge extended over the drainage moat and slammed down with a metallic clang. Marcus took a step.

  The world went entirely, terrifyingly silent.

  Not quiet. Silent. The roar of the crowd vanished. The hiss of his knee vanished. The kinetic recoil had ruptured something deep in his skull.

  Marcus snapped his fingers beside his ear. Nothing. He exhaled slowly — couldn't hear that either. Just the pressure of his own breath moving through him, muffled and distant, like sound through concrete.

  Blood leaked from his left ear, trailed down his neck, dripped from his nose.

  A crisp blue overlay hijacked his vision.

  [Warning. Acute barotrauma detected. Tympanic membrane rupture imminent.]

  Marcus tried to speak. A wet gargle came out.

  He stumbled off the bridge, the corridor spinning into grey. Syndicate drones hovered past him, anti-grav tethers humming in silence. Suspended between them: a reinforced body bag, heavy canvas bulging, leaking dark blood and violet Iron Pulse serum. Ren was already being processed into biological scrap.

  A medical drone dropped from the ceiling, scanned his chest with a red laser, and glided down the corridor. Marcus followed it, leaving blood on the white tiles.

  He was first to the Stage 3 waiting room. White walls. White floor. Light without mercy. The drone hovered over a heavy industrial gurney. Marcus collapsed onto it.

  [Initiating localized skeletal realignment, valued patient.] the AI flashed in soothing blue. [Please remain perfectly still. Praxis Biomechanics is not liable for tissue damage caused by sudden movement.]

  The gurney came alive. Clamps locked his wrists and ankles with terrifying force. A surgical arm descended from the ceiling. No anesthesia. No countdown. It drove a pneumatic press directly into his fractured ribs.

  Marcus screamed. He couldn't hear it.

  The machine snapped his bones back into alignment and drove synthetic matrix over the bruising. The pain took everything.

  Through half-closed eyes, he watched the room fill.

  It was an abattoir. Fighters stumbled in, dragged by drones or leaning on each other. The air stank of burnt meat and old blood. A brawler with a shredded carbon-weave arm collapsed on the next gurney, his jaw hanging loose. Another fighter was carried in missing an eye — the socket a bubbling crater of necrotic tissue.

  To Marcus's left, a kid full of cheap mesh began to convulse. White foam spilled over his lips. He arched backward and died.

  No one moved. The drones didn't attempt resuscitation. They zipped him into a cadaver pouch. A second drone approached with an extraction laser.

  [Organ salvage protocol confirmed,] Redline transcribed onto Marcus's vision. [The Overworld thanks you for your contribution to the biological supply chain.]

  The horror dragged him under. He closed his eyes and passed out.

  —

  He woke to sound.

  Not voices. Not machines. Something wet tearing free.

  His hearing had partly returned, replaced by a high-pitched ringing. The clamps had retracted.

  Marcus forced his head up.

  A woman stood in the center of the room. No shirt. Her spine was a ridge of articulated chrome. Her skin shimmered — sub-dermal plating. Red hair. Blood on her face. Beautiful and wrong in equal measure.

  At her feet, a heavyweight lay torn open. His synthetic armor peeled back. His chest rose in shallow, agonizing jerks.

  She wiped the blood off her face with a bored flick of her wrist. Every eye in the room was locked on her.

  The Redline Suite boxed her in a blue reticle.

  [Nyx Vane. Augmentation: Spinal chrome ridge, sub-dermal plating. Reflex speed: +310% organic baseline. Lethal threat detected.]

  Nyx stepped over the body. Her eyes scanned the room of broken men until they landed on the rusted, blood-stained relic on the gurney.