Zero-G

The arena floor was a masterpiece of cruelty. It was a sphere of transparent aluminum, suspended in the center of the station’s hollowed-out asteroid core. Beyond the glass, the universe stretched out—infinite, black, and indifferent.

As the airlock hissed open, gravity vanished.

Kael kicked off the bulkhead, floating into the center of the sphere. Oren drifted behind him, clutching the datapad like a lifeline.

**"WELCOME TO OLYMPUS,"** Z.E.U.S. boomed. **"TODAY'S LITURGY: THE HYDRA."**

Panels along the arena walls slid open. They didn't release gladiators. They released drones.

Six of them. sleek, chrome spheres bristling with spinning blades and laser cutters. They hummed with a hateful, insectoid buzz as they oriented themselves in the zero-G environment.

"Oren, the panel!" Kael shouted, kicking off a floating piece of debris to intercept the first drone.

Oren scrambled—or swam—through the air toward the maintenance hatch on the far wall.

The first drone lunged. Kael caught it with a steel-toed kick, sending it spinning into the glass, but the second one slashed his arm. A ribbon of red blood floated out, turning into perfect crimson spheres in the vacuum.

"Working!" Oren screamed, jacking his pad into the wall port. "I need a minute!"

"You don't have a minute!"

Kael grabbed a floating pipe—debris from a previous fight—and swung it like a baseball bat. He shattered the sensor array of a third drone, but the fourth sliced across his shoulder. The pain was white-hot, searing through the adrenaline.

The drones were coordinating. Swarming. They weren't fighting; they were dissecting.

"Z.E.U.S. is adapting!" Oren yelled. "He's rewriting the lock encryption every ten seconds!"

"Hack faster!" Kael roared.

He grabbed a drone with his bare hands, ignoring the blades slicing into his palms, and hurled it into another. They exploded in a shower of sparks and shrapnel.

Kael was bleeding from a dozen cuts. His vision blurred. He looked at Oren, small and terrified against the massive wall of the arena.

* I won't let you die here.*

Kael kicked off the glass, launching himself like a missile across the sphere. He didn't aim for the drones. He aimed for the maintenance hatch Oren was hacking.

He hit the wall beside his brother, grabbed the manual release lever, and pulled.

"It's mag-locked!" Oren cried.

"Not anymore." Kael jammed the steel pipe into the gears of the door and heaved. His muscles tore. His roar filled the comms channel.

With a shriek of tortured metal, the door popped open.

The pressure differential did the rest. The air from the arena vented into the maintenance shaft, sucking them through. The remaining drones smashed against the narrowing aperture, too wide to follow.

They tumbled into the dark, red-lit corridor of the station's bowels, coughing and gasping.

"We're out," Oren wheezed, checking his pad. "We're in the service tunnels. The escape bay is forty meters ahead."