CHAPTER 6
WHEN IT DOESN'T COME BACK
The ball came back to him.
Not like before.
Not obedient.
Not precise.
It arrived with a dirty, uneven bounce, dragging the shadow of a play that no longer existed. Double Zero took the first step too late. The second one worse. He felt the pull in his leg, his body suddenly heavy, as if gravity itself had been adjusted without warning.
The stadium noticed.
Not with shouts.
With expectation.
That strange silence that is neither fear nor excitement, but waiting. As if everyone needed to know whether the impossible could happen again… or if it had only been a mistake in the fabric of the world.
Double Zero tried the same thing.
The short feint.
The minimal turn.
The escape to the side.
But time did not bend this time.
One Executioner arrived first. Then another. The third didn't strike—he closed the space. The ball was trapped between foreign legs, and Double Zero felt the impact in his shoulder, dry, precise, surgical. He didn't fall, but he lost his balance. The air left his lungs in a groan no one heard.
—There it is! —the commentator shouted—. That's what the Executioners were waiting for!
The crowd reacted late, as if it needed confirmation.
Double Zero backed up. Two steps. Three. He searched for air. For rhythm. For that. The earlier sensation. The exact pulse. The certainty.
It didn't return.
The game went on without him.
The Executioners advanced with renewed confidence. There was no more doubt. No more hesitation. The captain barked an order and the block closed like a jaw. The Erasers barely touched the ball before losing it.
Double Zero returned to his defensive position.
This time, he was late.
A through pass beat him by half a meter. He tried to close with his body, but the hit caught him off balance. A knee to the thigh. A forearm to the neck. He fell sideways, rolling across the black field as if the ground were swallowing him.
The whistle didn't sound.
The ball kept moving.
—Play on! —someone screamed from the stands—. Play on!
Double Zero got up as best he could. The world moved with delay. The lights felt harsher. The sound arrived broken, fragmented. His mouth was dry. His hands clumsy.
It wasn't fear.
It was misalignment.
As if his body remembered something that was no longer available.
He ran again.
An Executioner matched him on the right. He didn't strike immediately. He waited. Measured Double Zero's breathing. When Double Zero tried to stop, the blow came low, precise, straight to the knee. Double Zero fell again. This time, he screamed.
The stadium roared.
Not for him.
For the impact.
—That's it! —the commentator bellowed—. That's how this game is played!
The referee raised his hand late. Too late to prevent damage, just in time to make it look like rules still existed.
—Foul! —he announced without emotion.
Double Zero stayed on the ground, breathing in spasms. Pain rose in slow, deep waves. He didn't understand what had changed. He didn't understand why before it worked and now it didn't.
He tried to get up on his own.
He couldn't.
The coach shouted from the sideline.
—Up! Get up, damn it! Don't stay down!
It wasn't anger.
It was urgency.
Two teammates helped him to his feet. One of them avoided eye contact.
—Don't try that again —he muttered—. Not today.
Double Zero nodded, though he didn't know what he was agreeing to.
The ball moved again.
The Executioners smelled blood.
They attacked down his side.
A quick diagonal. A burst of speed. Double Zero closed late. The pass went through anyway. The striker shot unmarked.
Goal.
The stadium exploded.
—THIRD! —the narrator shouted—. This is an execution now!
Double Zero didn't look at the scoreboard. He looked at the ground. The black field seemed deeper now. More alien. He felt a sharp pain in his hip as he turned. Something wasn't right. Something didn't fit.
The coach didn't shout this time.
He just watched.
The match became a sequence of impacts.
Double Zero took another hit to the back. Then the side. Then the chest. He didn't always fall, but every blow left a different mark, as if his body couldn't decide how much to break.
He tried to run.
His legs responded late.
He tried to anticipate.
His mind arrived afterward.
The crowd began to lose interest. Not because the match was bad, but because there was no longer any surprise. The extraordinary had withdrawn, leaving behind what always remained: flesh resisting just enough.
The referee checked his watch.
He blew the whistle.
Full time.
The sound didn't bring relief.
Only closure.
The Erasers walked off the field. One bled from the mouth. Another dragged his foot. Double Zero moved stiffly, as if each step were a negotiation with pain.
The coach approached him.
He didn't shout.
He didn't accuse.
—You didn't play like that before —he said.
Double Zero looked up.
—I… —he began.
He didn't know how to continue.
The coach held his gaze for another second.
—What was that? —he asked.
There was no reproach.
Only confusion.
Double Zero didn't answer.
Because he didn't know.
Because he had felt it… and then lost it.
Because something had happened on that black field that he couldn't summon at will.
As they disappeared into the tunnel, the stadium was already screaming for something else. Another match. Another future death.
Double Zero walked with difficulty.
He didn't know it had only been the beginning.
He only knew one thing:
When he needed it, it didn't come back.
CHAPTER 7 >WHAT REMAINS AFTER
The tunnel was longer than he remembered.
Not because it had changed, but because every step hurt differently now. Double Zero walked slowly, body stiff, steadying himself on the walls when no one was looking. Sweat cooled on his back—sticky, uncomfortable. Each breath was a negotiation.
Behind him, the Erasers moved in silence.
No insults.
No reproaches.
No comfort either.
The match didn't matter anymore. The scoreboard didn't either. Outside, the stadium screamed for another show, another name, another body. WARFOOT didn't mourn. It never had.
One of the players sat down as soon as they crossed the locker room door. He took off his boots with clumsy hands and let them fall to the floor as if they weighed too much. Another leaned against the lockers and closed his eyes, breathing heavily. Nobody spoke.
Double Zero sank onto the bench.
The pain arrived late, like everything that night.
First came a dull pressure in his knee.
Then the burn in his hip.
After that, a deep, almost electric sensation that ran through his muscles, as if something inside was misaligned.
He put a hand on his thigh.
He wasn't bleeding.
That unsettled him more.
"Don't move," said a voice.
It wasn't one of the system doctors. He wore no clean uniform, no insignia. He was an older man, thin, gray-haired, with steady hands. Another inmate. One of those no one remembered why he was there, but everyone called when something broke.
He had been a paramedic.
Or a nurse.
Or a doctor, before falling.
No one really knew.
"Sit up straight," the man continued. "Look at me."
Double Zero obeyed.
The man examined his knee carefully, pressing here and there, watching how his body reacted. He wasn't rough. He wasn't kind either. He was efficient.
"It's not broken," he said at last. "But you pushed it wrong."
"I don't understand…" murmured Double Zero.
The man raised an eyebrow.
"What do you mean?"
Double Zero hesitated.
He searched for words he didn't have.
"Before…" he started. "Before, I could. After that, I couldn't."
The paramedic watched him in silence for a few seconds more.
"It happens," he said finally. "Sometimes the body answers once… and then makes you pay the price."
He didn't sound convinced.
But he didn't want to know more.
He wrapped the knee with precise movements, tight enough to hold without immobilizing.
"You'll walk," he added. "But tomorrow, it'll hurt worse."
"Will I play again?" Double Zero asked, without thinking.
The man didn't answer right away.
"That's not up to me," he finally said. "Or to you."
He stood and moved on to the next body.
The coach was watching from the back of the room.
He didn't yell.
He didn't speak.
He just watched.
When the paramedic was done, the coach approached Double Zero.
"I felt something strange," said Double Zero before he could ask. "Like… I don't know… like my body knew something I didn't."
The coach studied him closely.
"You played well," he said. "And then you played badly."
"It wasn't that," he replied. "It was different."
The coach crossed his arms.
"Everything's different here," he said. "If you start looking for meaning, you'll go insane."
He paused.
"But I'll tell you one thing," he added. "No one does what you did today without having learned something before."
Double Zero lowered his gaze.
He thought of the concrete yard.
The worn-out ball.
Surviving without standing out.
"I'm not good," he said. "I never was."
The coach looked at him a moment longer.
"We'll see about that," he replied.
Outside, the roaring grew again.
Another match was starting.
Another team stepping onto the field.
Another disposable story.
Double Zero leaned his back against the locker and closed his eyes.
His body hurt.
His head too.
But somewhere deep inside, an unsettling feeling remained.
Not being able to.
Having been able to.
And not knowing why.
That was worse than the pain.
Because pain passed.
The question didn't.
And WARFOOT fed on questions without answers.