Bioasshard Arena wasn't a place. It was a product. The flagship entertainment of the Oligarchy’s pleasure worlds, streamed raw and unedited to a hundred billion viewers. They called it the ultimate sport: two hundred condemned souls injected with metamorphic bio-tech, dropped into a kilometer-square replica of a ruined Earth city, and told to fight, evolve, or die.
“Farmer,” she hissed. Her real name was lost. No one cared.
Jorge was three meters away when the soil erupted. Bioasshard Arena
He’d tested it on the cell wall. The concrete didn’t melt. It sang . A single, pure note of dissolution as the molecules unraveled. Universal solvent. A single drop could turn a steel girder into a puddle of oxides and memory.
They came for him, of course. They always did. The Arena didn't reward hiding. It rewarded adaptation . If you stayed still too long, the shard would get bored. It would sprout something useless—a third eye on your throat, fingers on your feet—just to remind you who was in charge. Bioasshard Arena wasn't a place
He pressed his right hand—the one he’d kept dry, the one with the solvent still beaded and ready—against the base of the fountain. The old stone was laced with the same bio-shard technology that pulsed in their arms. The Arena’s bedrock. Its heart.
He found the church. It felt right. The irony of seeking sanctuary in a ruin of faith wasn't lost on him. He ducked inside, past the overturned pews, to the altar. A faded mosaic of a shepherd and his sheep stared down at him, missing a few tiles. They called it the ultimate sport: two hundred
He let the solvent flow.