1

Amos "Zorro" Rankovic passed from this world yesterday afternoon, at approximately forty-five minutes and thirteen seconds past three. On the other side of the glass, his friends and family watched him die like an animal, and there wasn't a dry eye in the viewing room. Hearing the sobs of Zorro's mother was akin to having your own heart ripped from your chest and consumed before your very eyes, while the cannibal in front of you grins as the blood dribbles down his chin, staining his shirt with long, stabbing spills of red.

That's certainly how I felt in there, too numb to write my thoughts, just listening and looking, seeing the guards dragging the horrible body away, my eyes watering while I tried to make sense of what I'd just seen as Rita Rankovic screamed and howled and clawed at the glass. Her fingernails broke but she just kept clawing.

It's hard to believe such a renowned boxer, beloved by many and for so long, could be gone from this world in the blink of an eye. It all happened so fast—my head is still spinning. His arrest immediately followed the incident, his trial was expedited for reasons few understood, and his execution occurred the very next day. Just like that. None of it made any sense. He didn't deserve what he got. Fighting with the best of them, and then dragged down to darkness as the dirt was shovelled on his fresh-created corpse. It doesn't seem fair to me; just making an example out of him. Not fair at all.

Because it wasn't his fault. It could have happened to any one of those newly nano-augmented boxers, accidentally killing a man in the ring. Zorro just happened to be the unlucky first. And likely the last.

2

I wasn't even supposed to be at the fight that night. The last fight at The Amber Hour. My editor refused to put me on the fight-coverage story. Front-row seats had sold out months ago for prices only a nut or a fanatic would pay, and I certainly wasn't going to pay fifty bucks for a seat way up in the nosebleeds, where even Zorro would look like an ant fighting a slightly smaller ant.

Content with merely watching it on TV at some out-of-the-way pub—the name of which I can't and probably shouldn't remember, lest I be sued—I sat on a barstool, nursing my bottle of Jandover's Pale and contemplating how much I could afford to lose that night. You see, I'd placed a few wagers with a disgusting brute by the name of Swine; he was the guy to place bets with, and he loved to needle you about it until you won, in which case he'd disappear like your own shadow after the lights go out... That is to say, he'd still be present, but good luck finding him.

One hundred that Zorro would win the fight against Jake "The Rake" McReedy, another hundred that he'd win it in the second round, and two hundred it would be a one-hit knockout punch in said second round. Some very specific bets, I know, but I'd made a living off going with my gut, so this was more of the same for me. Meanwhile, I owed a friend three hundred for some primo white, which he'd already given me on the assumption I'd pay him later. We both knew I wouldn't be paying him—but so what? There'd come a time in the future where he'd need some drugs pronto, and I'd be the one to share... As it was in the beginning, and so it shall forever be. Amen. Selah. And whatever else the kids are saying.

"You gonna drink that swill, or take it home and fuck it in the mouth?" Gangly, another good friend and regular patron of that particular bar, said from behind.

I swivelled on my stool and saw the rheumy-eyed, drip-nosed bastard himself. "That depends," I said. "Do you have something better for me?"

He wiped the grey mucous leaking down onto his chapped lips. "To drink or to fuck?"

"Whichever. Who cares?"

Gangly laughed at that. "You're one fucked-up farmer, Orson. But that ain't why I'm here. I picked up some sweet tickets for the match. You're betting on it, yeah?"

"To answer that question, you've got to answer me this, Shiteyes: Do you fuck your sister?"

He nodded. "Thought so. How 'bout front-row seats. You'll be able to see beads of sweat rolling down The Rake's right butt-cheek as he gets sucker-punched. Only two hundred for you, because we're so close."

"Fuck you, you dirty pig-fucker," I told him. "You owe me for that speech-impediment gig back on Turko Prime." I was referring to the time when Gangly inadvertently exposed himself to a roomful of small, slush-mouthed children. That had been one nasty scene—I'd saved his skin from a life of slaving away in the turkite mines, though he still had to register as a sex offender and couldn't lick an ice-cream cone within a hundred feet of a child for the rest of his days—but there's not enough time to get into it now. "Ticket for my silence. I'll scream." I inhaled deeply.

"Keep it down, Orson," he hissed, shooting glances over his shoulder to be sure no one had heard. "Fine, fine. Here you go." He smacked a card on the table next to my drink. "We're fuckin' even now, asshole."

I winked. "Until next time."

And away he went, leaving me to ogle in surprise at the ticket he'd given me. On the side facing me, in blue neon letters: THE AMBER HOUR—THE FIRST EVER NANO-AUGMENTED MATCH!!! ZORRO VS THE RAKE. Underneath, lifelike miniatures of the two fighters: Zorro, a big beast of a man, punched his gloves at the space between himself and the other man, a wiry but no-less-powerful McReedy, who nodded and flexed his back muscles up and down like they were wings.

I downed the last of my Jandover's, inserted a tip into the bartender-bot's slot, and hit the streets with my shiny new ticket in hand.

3

After a couple lines of white in the bathroom stall, I was ready to watch some heads get smashed. The excitement in The Amber Hour that night was something else: a collective pulse wilder and more frantic than the pounding of my own drugged-up heart. We knew we were about to see something special—the first nano-boxing match—but we didn't know how special. I doubt anyone had been prepared for it. I know I wasn't, as I navigated my way through the crowded stands to my seat in the middle of the front row, hotdog in one hand and a too-full cup of Satan's golden piss sloshing around in the other.

I took a sip of the beer and looked around, horrified by what I saw. These animals had actually taken their children to this madness. I may do many questionable things, folks, but one thing I wouldn't ever do is take little Raulston to see a blood sport. He'll have plenty of time to get weird when he's older. Why even risk traumatizing your kid? Who knew what hell would be unleashed that night?

Indeed, who knew?

The lights dimmed and the boxers strutted out from opposite ends, Zorro first from the corner closest to my right. I'd never seen him in person, so it was quite a sight to see his immense bulk up close and personal, and I'm no small potato, either. Zorro gave the crowd a little twist and turn, pumping his muscles, nodding, grinning, and then the wet towel went over his head, getting his brain nice and cool for the fight to follow. The man had gotten bigger. It was obvious, and understandable, too, since he was now nano-augmented. His muscles swelled with nanoparticles, working overtime in ways nature hadn't deemed possible, pumping oxygen in and out, feeding the cells manufactured electrolytes whenever necessary. This man was no longer just a man. He was part machine now. And I did not envy Jake "The Rake"—not one iota.

And out he came from the other side, blown up on the big screen above. Not a man you'd like to accompany your mother to church, that was certain. McReedy was big and tough-looking by anyone's standards, though he didn't quite look like Zorro's weight class, but with the augments it didn't really matter. Or did it? I suppose we'll never know, or it will take another sixty years for the technology to be reworked—and a lot of political pussyfooting—before it's acceptable to give it another try.

Both fighters ducked through the ropes—which weren't so much "ropes"; more like highly flexible lasers—and knocked gloves at the centre of the ring. Mouthguards in, the referee-bot spoke briefly to both men, backpedalled out of the way and dinged the bell.

The fight was on. And as I'd wagered, nothing much happened in the first round: just a testing of boundaries and an attempt by each to learn their opponent's style, and what changes the augments had brought on. A few jabs here and there, not meant to deal any real damage. Some fakes to see how spooked the other was. Which tends to be the case when two high-class boxers knock heads in the ring.

Though I wasn't so close as to see sweat rolling down ass-cheeks, I was incredibly close to the action. And the snack- and beverage-bots seemed to hover around the front row, too, so my hotdog and beer were both quickly replenished as needed. I could get used to being entertained like a king.

The first round ended in a draw, eliciting boos from a rowdy crowd who were hungry for blood. The fighters went to their respective corners and rested, eyeing each other as their coaches whispered sweet nothings to them. Were the coaches really necessary? Maybe so, if only to try and avoid what followed...

And then round two began. Circling one another like starved lions wanting to strike but not quite hungry enough to actually do it, then—

Zorro seemed to rush forward. His fist shot out with the same mechanical efficiency of a piston, but the power behind that punch went way beyond that. Veins swollen, sweat rolling, Zorro's fist collided with McReedy's jaw in what I experienced as slow motion. The man's mouthguard went flying, alongside a heaping glob of blood-tinged spit. McReedy's head snapped back, the bulbous rear of it somehow managing to make contact with his own neck.

And McReedy fell to the mat, bouncing up and down a few times before going deathly still.

The crowd was silent. All of us—including Zorro himself—were too busy staring open-mouthed at McReedy's body, hoping it would move, even just a little, so this damn dreamlike state wouldn't turn nightmarish.

"Dake?" someone said from a faraway place, and I realized it was Zorro who said it. "Dake!" He spat out his mouthguard and rushed to McReedy's side, lifting the man's head. Blood leaked from McReedy's nose and ears. "Jake! Jake! Oh, God... Someone get help! Get help now!"

People shouted. Kids screamed. I was stunned, sipping beer but not really thinking about it, not really enjoying it. Someone shoved me from behind but I didn't turn around and club them senselessly into a coma. I simply sat there, drinking. I'd even forgotten I'd just won five grand.

Hysteria at the exits. Then an airhorn and a siren shortly after.

"Do not be alarmed, citizens. Stand back."

The cop-bots had come.

4

If you've kept up-to-date with boxing (and high-energy sports in general), you know all about the desire for even faster, even more intense games. But you might not know why nano-augmentation was seen as the answer.

Sports stars get paid a lot of money.

That's it. Yes, really, that's it, though it's unlikely the fat cats would admit their need for greed was worth the price of a man's life.

Why pay forty players over a million a year when you can pay ten or fifteen players—or, better yet, even fewer than that—only two or three million? With nanotechnology, you don't need to change lines in a game of hockey, or even shuffle the roster... Just keep the same guys on throughout the whole game's duration, all fucking season, and let the nanoparticles keep them constantly energized. It's so stupidly simple. You don't even need to buy them bottles of Regenerade to splash all over their mouths, as their enhanced bodies rehydrate and reenergize them far, far better than a bottle of fluorescent-coloured sugar-water can. With visions of massive profits, the bigwigs jumped all over it. Obviously they hadn't foreseen the sport becoming too intense, though.

They hadn't foreseen somebody dying.

As I wrote at the beginning, the arrest, trial and execution of Amos "Zorro" Rankovic seemed an expedited process. The man was too shaken to put up a fight—ironic, considering not long ago it had been his job to fight harder than anyone, except perhaps a soldier. He left The Amber Hour in cuffs with his head down, and the entirety of his lightning-quick trial he stared down at his feet and would only nod yes or no to any questions posed to him.

The judge deemed him guilty of murder and said he would be executed, then asked if he understood.

Zorro sighed and nodded.

5

Because I'd been there at The Amber Hour on its last night of being open—a death in the ring is bad for business, after all—my editor agreed I should attempt to secure an interview with Zorro before his execution. Strings were pulled, and with only two hours before E-Hour I passed through the depressingly Spartan gates of Shady Springs Penitentiary.

After parking my car in the visitors' lot, I went inside and eased through the screening area.

A tired- and bored-looking guard yawned before he asked me in a flat, droning voice, "Any weapons, drugs, explosives or pornographic materials, sir?"

"Afraid I left them in the car," I told him. "Would you like me to go out and get them?"

He laughed like I was joking and handed me back my ID. "Okay, go on through, Mr. Peterson."

Obviously my shit-eating grin hadn't stoked any suspicions in him, and my mirrored-lensed Aviators masked my wild, bloodshot eyeballs. Sniffing the white-dusted booger back up my nose to my brain, I readied my recorder and entered the prison proper.

Death row at Shady Springs is located in a far-off corner of the building's left wing. I had to walk past a menagerie of cons, who reached for me from between the bars of their cells. Some screamed at me, said they'd kill me. Others begged me for a blowjob. Others still begged me to let them blow me—for their own freedom, or so they claimed. All of them claimed innocence of their respective crimes, and no doubt some were telling the truth. Statistically, I think only three to five percent of convicted prisoners serving their sentences are actually innocent; a big number, considering the consequences of being erroneously guilty, and a bit surprising. We could wax philosophical here and mention the true crime is letting even one innocent man go guilty while many more guilty men go free—but that's not the purpose here, so we'll move on. Though it is rather apt, isn't it?

Beyond the metal-barred cells are the laser-barred cells, which hold incredibly dangerous criminals. These are the guys who would slit your guts with a hunting knife and use them as fashion accessories, or perhaps as some kind of kinky fuck-toy. These folks are lifers, where the general view is it would be a disservice to their victims—and also be considered an easy way out—to execute the fuckers. It takes repeated murders of other inmates to bring a lifer to death row. It happens, but not frequently enough for my liking. These guys were oddly pensive. Only one threatened to smash my head with a large rock and use my tongue to wipe his ass and probably his balls afterward. I suspect most had been there so long they were resigned to their respective fates, and probably their tempers were dulled over years of eating sedative-laced prison food.

Death row was barren. Other than Zorro, there was only one other: a woman, Jan Sterns, who murdered her two children while they slept and then stabbed her husband seventy-two times because she blamed them for taking away her independence. Also, she claimed to be in contact with aliens... which isn't too hard to believe anymore, since we as a species are currently in contact with one hundred and twenty-nine different types of aliens, but her claims of communing with literal brown, talking swirls of shit defied present knowledge of alien life-forms. And I suspect it will for much of the foreseeable future. Jan had been on death row, waiting for her day of execution, for a few years now; she'd seen numerous folks come and go. But I doubt she'd ever seen someone come and go as quickly as she'd be seeing Zorro do it.

It wasn't fair.

I stopped in front of his cell and found him sitting like a giant in his too-small chair, staring at the wall above his measly and no doubt uncomfortable bed. He looked like a man who still wanted to live but knew he had no hope of ever doing so. As I stood there, watching him, waiting to see if he'd turn to me, I saw a tear roll down his cheek, getting lost in the forest of his bushy black beard.

"I saw you there," he said to me, and his low voice filled his cell. It sounded heavy, like it was weighted down with unshed tears. "Did you enjoy the fight?"

"Shit no," I told him. "Though I did win my bets. But if I could trade them for your life, I would."

"It wouldn't make a difference," he said. "I should've read the fine print. My lawyer told me I'd signed away my rights."

I found a cart to sit on and lit an Ecrivain's Special. I offered him one, which he accepted, so I lit it for him and passed it through the bars.

"Not like it's gonna do anything," he told me, smiling a little under that beard of his, puffing away on the smoke. "My body scrubs out the nicotine before it even hits me."

"Maybe the sawdust and rat droppings'll make it through your nanoparticle defences."

He grinned.

"Name's Orson R. Peterson." Showing him my recorder, I asked: "You mind?"

He shook his head.

I turned it on. "You prefer Amos or Zorro?"

"Zorro," he said. "Everyone else calls me it, so you might as well, too, I guess. Only my mom calls me Amos."

"Has she seen you since...?"

"Since I killed Jake? No. I didn't let her. I don't want her to see me like this," he said. Sniffing and letting the tears fall, he killed the rest of the cigarette and flicked it out of the cell. "A prisoner. When she's the one who knows most of all I'm an animal who hates being caged. She will be at my execution. Yeah. I'll give her that much."

"She saw you enter the world and she'll see you leave it."

"Yeah. Shouldn't ever happen. But it would kill her if she never saw me again."

"A parent should never outlive their children," I said.

Zorro nodded but said nothing.

"What were you saying before about your lawyer and the fine print?"

"It was in there, apparently. A condition on me accidentally killing my opponent, or them doing it to me."

"So they'd thought of it."

"Yes. And I feel like a pawn."

"How much do you think they made off this whole thing? The advertising... A lot of companies paid good money to sponsor this fight. And now with the notoriety factor. It's not everyday someone dies in the ring. Obviously it can happen, and has happened, but not very often. Certainly not like this. And you know they're replaying the match, at least until... y'know."

"I feel like I was set up," he told me. "Nobody reads those damn contracts. That's why we pay lawyers to read them for us, and that's why they have interns."

"Gonna fight it? Or try to?"

Zorro shook his head. His big hands worked at the nail on his left thumb, trying to file it down. "Too late. No point. In the contract. I got played and nobody told me this could happen. Jake..." His voice trembled then. "He was a good kid. We'd trained together before—before all this... this nanotech business. If I would've known I'd be too strong for a guy in peak physical condition and then some... Hell, I would've ran for the hills and never come back."

"It's gonna go away," I said. "Supercharged nano-sports. People won't stand for it. Not now, not with all the risks. People don't want to see people die. And they know that."

He nodded. "They wouldn't use their precious hockey players as a test run. Only us stupid fucks who get punched in the head fifty times a night. We're already as good as dead to them. Dead men walking, heading straight to an early grave with a mushy brain, headaches and confusion."

There was a moment of silence. I asked: "Are you ready to go, Zorro? Are you satisfied with how you've lived your life?"

He broke down again, heavy sobs into those big hands of his, which covered his face. Tears leaked through the cracks between his sausage-sized fingers. "N-No," he said. "I thought I'd live to be an old and easy-to-irritate man, my body worn out and wrinkled, bruised and broken from years of taking beatings for money. I thought I'd have a kid or two, and grandkids. Thought my muscles would've turned to fat. Thought my knuckles would be sore all the time. Thought I'd live a long time without my mom, more than I've lived now without Dad. I never thought I'd be a murderer. There. I said it. Not in a million years."

"But you're really not. Not to anyone who was paying attention," I told him. "It was an accident."

"And how many people pay attention? They'll see I'm executed and that's enough for them. Their last thoughts of me will be, 'Zorro, that boxer who killed someone.'"

I said, "Not if I have something to say about it... You didn't try to kill him."

"But what else does punching someone in the head do? Ultimately, when you get down to it, you're trying to hit them in a spot that ain't meant to be hit, because you know it's pretty fragile and you know it hurts and you goddamn know it'll take them down if you hit it hard enough."

At a loss, I tried to think of a way to cheer the man up. Because I was hungry, I decided to ask, "You had your last meal yet? What does an augmented boxer eat?"

"I'm still waiting for it. I don't even need to eat. But I will. Got some mashed potatoes and gravy coming. Some roast beef, too. Like old times."

But Zorro never got his last meal. Five minutes later, a man came and said it was time. Jan laughed and even threw some spit at me as I followed Zorro and the messenger to the killing room.

6

He sat in the only chair across from us, separated from his friends and family (and me) by a thick panel of glass. Two men were in the room with him, checking his heartrate and asking him questions none of us could hear because they'd turned the speakers off. I had my notebook out, scribbling my thoughts because it wasn't right to speak them. His mother, Rita, sat to my right. The tears rained down from her eyes.

Nobody seemed to question my presence there. Possibly they thought I was some friend of Zorro's—maybe his old high-school weed-dealer, maybe his secret gay lover—or perhaps they knew I was a reporter doing a story on him. Or maybe they just didn't care and were too focused on watching their brother, nephew, friend or son go through the last few minutes of his life.

It didn't really matter.

The speaker crackled and a voice said, "All good. Injecting prisoner now."

"All good," indeed. Those sons of bitches didn't think twice about their god-playing.

Zorro stared down at his exposed arm, watching the blue-fluid-containing syringe puncture one of its many big veins. When it was in, he looked up at us—all of us—and nodded, his mouth a tight line of acceptance.

"Injected successfully," the voice said.

And we waited. None of us knew exactly how a lethal injection worked, certainly not when the recipient was nano-augmented. I'd assumed it would be a lot like a regular lethal injection, with a gradual death as the sedatives kicked in and the heart slowed to a crawl.

Not so. I'd later gotten the resident doctor to tell me the specifics, which I'll explain to you as needed.

The fluid entered Zorro's bloodstream and immediately hijacked the nanoparticles racing through his body, bonding with each of the individual trillions and modifying their code. Instead of rejuvenating his cells as needed, the nanoparticles would instead do nothing and allow the poison to take effect.

But that took time, as there are a lot of nanites in a man as big as Zorro.

He was covered everywhere except his hands, his bared arm and his face and neck, but what happened next happened to his entire body.

The flesh grew. His body didn't know what to do. Here he was, in immediate need of regeneration but the work wasn't being done for some reason. Initially the process was being reversed, but, as more and more nanites were shut down, it all happened again and again.

The worst of it was on his face, I think. Zorro's face turned into a wriggling mass of disgusting skin. Like he was horribly diseased. Like he had worms pulsing under his flesh, struggling to get out. In a sense, they were trying to get out of him—nanoparticles have a sort of hivemind, and they sensed their imminent demise and wanted nothing of it.

He couldn't scream. His throat was full of them, too. His eyes went wide and the grey-white things hung off his forehead, cheeks and chin, growing longer and longer like stalactites in a cave.

And then he'd died, his head hanging forwards, his skin stilled at last.

Rita screamed and clawed at the glass, hammered her hands on it, and called them monsters.

I still wake up in the middle of the night and feel those things crawling all over my skin. It takes some good smoke and a glass of the hard stuff to chase away those demons. But I know for me it'll pass with time.

For Zorro's mother, I'm not so sure she'll ever stop being haunted by that horror.

Her flesh and blood left the world looking like some kind of freak. And in some twisted kind of way, she helped create it.

This next hit's for her.