Chapter 17. “Jihad Jump Ball: When the Basket Becomes the Shape of Freedom”

The blades of grass on the new basketball court suddenly petrify as the gilded cage burrows out of the earth's core. The remnants of Marcus' Godhead parasitize the basket rack, and data chains dangle from the rim of the basket, "Ten years of life to pay for each dunk, first order free for the poor."

Elena's burning daisy suddenly bursts into flames, sparks igniting the grass court. Out of the ashes stood the combined teams of the twenty-three universes - one-armed teens dribbling with rusty iron prosthetics, wheelchair girls with IV tubes wrapped around their tactical boards, their pupils tattooed with their mother's code of defiance.

"Overtime is here." Lucas rips open his chest; the embryonic basketball has grown into a beating heart, each vein stretching into a basketball net in a poor man's neighborhood.

Marcus sneers from the top of his cage, gilded tears solidifying into a scoreboard, "Rule update: air tax doubles every minute." He presses the Godhead remote, and the one-armed boy's iron limb suddenly magnetizes and sucks the basketball away, smashing it through his own rim.

"This is the basic law of capital!" Spikes protruded from the floor of the cage and penetrated the wheelchair girl's IV bag, "Automatic drug infusion for those who go against the flow."

Raine's seeder suddenly mutates, the mechanical arm surges to pierce Marcus' ankle. Mycelium burrowed out of his wound and bloomed into a flower of Ross's brain tissue, "Did you forget? The grass seed of the New World was cultivated with your father's ashes."

The Union leapt up at the same time. The moment their bone-spiked baskets spewed acid rain and dissolved their gilded cages, the basketball undead of the Twenty-Three Universe crawled out of the cracks in the ground, rotting palms holding up all the dreams that had been shattered by capitalization.

"Last shot," Elena's voice vibrated from every basketball net, "use your mother's tears for the free throw line."

Marcus's sigil suddenly plays childhood images - the night of his fifth birthday, when he sneaks a plastic basket to Lucas at the dump, only to be whipped bloody by old Marcus.

"No! This data should have been destroyed long ago!" He grabs the cracked holographic projection, but misses the corner: young Lucas is mending that plastic basket with rusty iron pieces, blood dripping into glue.

Lucas's heart basketball suddenly cracks, a billion poor man's palm prints converging on the sphere in a storm. Marcus activates the ultimate defense - a gilded Tower of Babel rises from the ruins of Wall Street, the top basket connected to the vacuum pump of the Federal Reserve.

As the ball strikes, Rayne's mechanical heart suddenly plays his mother's deathbed recording, "The real RH-is the ...Redemption Hoop (basket of redemption)."

The gilded Tower of Babel begins to tilt, the brickwork seeping out the serum of Marcus' five-year-old self. Elena's ashes reorganize in the storm, and she pushes away from the basket with the exact same gesture that Lucas' broken shoe flew off the arc in Chapter One.

"Game over." The mycelium wrapped around Marcus as he crashed into the grass court, "Now, it's your turn to be the ball."

The blades of grass suddenly grew wildly into a judgment seat, all the harvested lifespans flowing through the veins. The Union lifted Marcus' alienated body, and a billion hands slapped him toward the basket of redemption-

The moment the net trembled, the new universe gave birth to the first basket rack that would never rust: forged from the golden teeth of old Marcus, welded with the mechanical fingers of Raine, and varnished with the ashes of Elena.

And the basket tilted thirty degrees forever.

Just in time to catch all who fall.