Chapter 11. “Mutant Dawn: The Poor Man's Virus is the Capitalist's Perfume”

 As the morning fog is tinted blood pink, the Wall Street elite are crushing the viral crystals into snuff. Old Marcus's private jet skims the stratosphere, its portholes reflecting a picture of hell - slum basketball courts melting away, kids with bone spurs for sneakers fighting over rotting Spaulding in the asphalt-boiling streets.

"Welcome to the post-apocalyptic NBA!" said the golden studio, Raine's mechanical heart jetting clone fingers, "First round elimination: the Holt's Bastards vs. Master Marcus!" In the holographic projection, Lucas was locked in an octagon of brotherly combat, his right arm mutating into a barbed bone whip.

Marcus was worse. His eyeballs split into six basketball holes, each pore oozing blood-colored viral spores: "Dad said I should change my name to something like Antivirus Jordan..." As soon as the words left his mouth, his tongue suddenly hardened into a three-second violation timer.

Elena's corpse suddenly convulsed. Radioactive crystals between the ribs penetrated the shrouded body bag and cauterized summoning formations in the ground - Clone 13 broke out, clutching the antidote serum developed by his mother in his palm, while the syringe was inserted in the LV co-branded fanny pack, "The first batch of antidote is now available on the Marcus Mall, and the set of three is only available for your kidneys for three months."

"No!" Lucas bone whips split the live satellite, only to find Marcus's six eyeballs simulcasting - Wall Street bigwigs spraying their cigars wet with antidote, slum mothers cutting open their babies' arms in search of mutated IV sites.

Rayne suddenly cuts the veins to the mechanical heart and presses the mother's fingers into the console. All electronic devices instantly went black, leaving only the synthesized voice coming from his chest, "Ross, you win."

The cloudy sky cracked open a slit. The remains of thirteen viral basketballs reorganized into a giant basket, with the silhouette of his mother hovering in it, "The last shot decides life and death, use your brother's spinal cord as the ball."

Marcus laughed maniacally as he ripped open his spine, the infected bone marrow expanding into a glowing sphere, "Come on brother! Just like when you were a kid and grabbed a bottle!"

As Lucas' bone whip rolled up Elena's shroud, he suddenly caught the familiar scent of daisies - her radioactive blood was seeping into the cracks of the earth, blossoming into a myriad of luminescent baskets in the rubble. Hanging from the rim of each basket is a picture of him and his mother in a blast cabinet, the date stopped at his real birthday: March 16, 2001.

Marcus Sr.'s fighter jet swoops down, antidote missiles locking onto all the baskets: "The rule of the game is - poor people don't deserve to shoot."