Mike lay atop a gray building, his chest pressed against the rough, hot concrete, inhaling the smell of old dust, rust, and pigeon droppings mixed with the faint scent of gun oil. His body appeared motionless to anyone looking from afar, a long, dark-clad figure nestled among water tanks, crooked antennas, and peeling walls, but inside, everything worked silently. His left eye closed, his right fixed on the sights. His breathing controlled. His finger off the trigger, resting intimately beside him, like someone who had known that path long enough to need to hurry. The wind cut across the top of the building, carrying a fine dust that glistened in the afternoon sun. The city continued below, vibrant and noisy, but for Mike, the entire world had been reduced to a small rectangle of glass, metal, and distance.
Across the avenue, a few blocks ahead, the target still hadn't appeared on the balcony. The apartment was on the eleventh floor of a commercial building hastily converted into a luxury residence, one of those with mirrored facades and a lobby that looked like an international bank. Mike had been there for almost an hour and a half. Not because he was an overly patient amateur, but because rich and important people always thought other people's time was worth less. Still, he didn't get irritated. Irritation made the hand heavier, made the mind race, made the shot miss by a centimeter. And a centimeter, in his work, sometimes separated a clean job from a televised disaster.
Mike was twenty-four years old. Too young for the coldness he carried, too old for the excuses he'd already left behind. His face still bore features that, in another life, might have made him anything more ordinary. A tired college student, a grease-covered mechanic, a gym guy posting shirtless photos, any of that nonsense. But the world picks some by the neck and pushes others down the stairs. With Mike, there was no glory, no uniform, no medal, no national anthem playing in the background. He wasn't special forces. He wasn't a secret agent. He wasn't the kind of man a government would admit to knowing. Mike was an assassin. A professional, if you want to embellish it. A man who received orders, confirmed values, set up his position, pulled the trigger, and left before the news became a footnote on cable television.
The weapon was clean, assembled with almost religious care. He trusted that combination of steel and precision more than any living human being. The open bipod on the low edge of the roof held the front of the rifle, while the stock nestled against his shoulder as if it had been custom-made for his body. The scope reflected a fragmented, calm, artificially close world. In his right ear, tucked under his short hair, a discreet earpiece connected to a radio that had been silent for fifteen minutes. The contact had lasted only as long as necessary and then disappeared. No pointless conversation, no sentimentality, no explanation of the reason. Mike preferred it that way. He didn't sell opinions. He sold results.
Down below, a bus braked, spitting out a gasp of compressed air. Two motorcycle couriers nearly came to blows in anger at a corner, one cursing the other's mother with artisanal conviction. A woman in a red dress left the pharmacy looking at her cell phone and for a moment crossed the avenue without even checking the traffic light. A beggar pulled a crumpled shopping cart with such dignity that he looked like a king dragging his own throne. The sun beat down crookedly on the windows of the buildings, reflecting off them in ways that threatened the vision of anyone who didn't know how to choose a position. Mike knew. Mike always knew.
In his sights, the sliding balcony door remained closed. The curtain was half open. A glass sat on the outside table. A vase held an expensive plant. Everything was in its place. Too clean, too rich, too fragile. Mike moved his jaw slowly, releasing the tension. He didn't think of the target as a person. Never in the complete sense. Sometimes he knew the name, sometimes he didn't. Sometimes he saw a photo of his wife, sometimes he heard part of the story. Corruption, betrayal, debt, politics, business, jealousy, inheritance. The motive changed, but the hole in his chest did the same job.
A brief click sounded in the earpiece. The voice came in low, filtered, anonymous as always.
"He'll be out in two minutes."
Mike didn't answer immediately. His eyes remained fixed on the balcony. Only then did he lightly press the transmitter attached to his collar.
"Received."
"Visual confirmation when available."
"When I have it, you'll know."
On the other end, silence. The person he was dealing with must have already known his ways. Mike didn't cultivate friendliness. Friendliness hindered goodbyes.
He adjusted his sights by two clicks because of the crosswind. Nothing dramatic. Almost a gentle correction. His finger still off the trigger. Breath entering through his nose, exiting through his mouth in minimal amounts, without haste, without anxiety. His heart was calm. It always was before the shot. It was afterward, in the emptiness of the aftermath, when his body remembered it was still human, that a strange echo sometimes came. Not guilt. Mike wasn't given to moral luxuries. It was more of a rough sensation, as if for a few seconds he were watching his own life from the outside and wondering at what exact moment the path had gone so wrong.
The glass door to the balcony slid shut.
Finally.
A man came out adjusting his watch, fat without looking ill, well-dressed without looking elegant. Expensive hair. A discreet belly, like someone drinking in a restaurant with a cloth napkin. He held a cell phone and talked to someone, his mouth opening and closing without Mike hearing anything. He laughed at something. He leaned against the glass railing. He turned slightly to the side. He didn't look like a monster. They almost never did. That was the oldest trick in the book. Evil rarely came with horns. Sometimes it came in a light blue dress shirt.
"Visual confirmed," Mike murmured.
The voice answered in the ear with controlled haste. "Authorized."
Mike let half the air out of his lungs and stopped there. The world tightened. Not the trigger yet, the world. Everything became thinner. The traffic, the wind, the heat, the light, the buildings, the entire city bowed its head to that tiny point where the crosshair rested between the top of the man's chest and the base of his neck. A beautiful place to end speeches, signatures, and laughter.
Then the ground disappeared.
It didn't tremble first. It didn't crack. It didn't darken. There was no flash from the sky, no siren, no sensation of gradual collapse. The world was simply ripped from beneath him with the brutal elegance of a giant hand pulling a tablecloth. One second Mike was lying behind the rifle. The next, there was no roof, city, building, target, or avenue.
There was a sharp thud on his back and a puff of dust invaded his nose and mouth. His body reacted before his mind. Mike rolled to the side in a trained reflex, already reaching for his weapon, already seeking cover, already anticipating a threat. His hand found loose earth, warm pebbles, and dry grass breaking between his fingers. The rifle was less than a meter away, lying crooked on the hard-packed ground. He pulled it closer brutally and stood on one knee, high aim, short breath, finger going to the trigger for the first time with real urgency.
Nothing.
Or rather, too much.
The sky was too wide. Not the usual city sky, fragmented by buildings, wires, and smoke. It was an open, brutal sky, a washed-out light blue at the edges and much darker high above, as if it were too deep. Two pale moons, almost extinguished by the daylight, appeared distant from each other. The horizon was jagged, dominated by dark mountains in the distance and patches of strange forests, too tall, too wide, with canopies of a dark green that almost looked blue. The ground around was cracked, packed earth, clumps of golden grass, dark stones, and some thorny bushes. The air smelled of heat, metal, old blood, and crushed vegetation. And it wasn't just the air there.
There were people. Lots of people.
Scattered across a wide radius, some standing, others on the ground, still others rising in a daze, men and women in all sorts of clothing. Dress pants, jeans, dresses, delivery uniforms, gym t-shirts, work clothes, light jackets, expensive clothes, cheap clothes. Young faces, adult faces, tired faces, beautiful faces, ugly faces, astonished faces. A woman spun around looking for a familiar point that didn't exist. A man with a thick beard shouted, asking what the hell was going on. Two young men almost fell on top of each other trying to get up too quickly. A huge bald man cursed someone invisible with such intensity that he seemed to want to punch the air itself. A woman in sportswear began to cry silently, only bringing her hand to her mouth and letting the fear leak from her eyes.
Mike spun slowly, rifle pointed at the chests of things, searching for structure, vehicle, enemy, any reference point. Nothing made sense. It was as if they had dumped a random crowd in the backyard of a bored god.
"What place is this?" someone shouted.
"Is this a recording? Is this a prank?"
"My God, my God, my God..."
"Where's the exit? Where the hell is the exit?"
Mike didn't answer. His head was working like an overheated machine. It wasn't a typical kidnapping. It wasn't a military operation. He wasn't a delirious drug addict. The heat of the earth beneath his knee was real. The weight of the rifle in his hands was real. The smell of sweat already beginning to form between his shoulder blades was real. That was enough for him. Accept first. Understand later. Many people died trying to reverse that order.
A deep sound vibrated in the air.
It didn't come from the right or the left, from above or below. It came from everything at once. As if the space itself had cleared its throat before speaking. It wasn't an echo. It wasn't a bad speaker. It was too clean, too expansive, too artificial. A polished male voice, full of theatrical energy, like a talk show host mixed with a casino owner and an electronic church preacher.
"Ladies and gentlemen…"
The crowd gradually froze. Even those who were still shouting lowered their voices. That's how fear works. When you say something stranger than fear itself, even panic pays attention.
"Welcome."
The voice smiled as it spoke. You could hear it. That made Mike's neck tingle for the first time.
"Take a deep breath. I know, I know, the arrival is usually a bit abrupt. Some of you were working, others resting, some lying to someone, some being deceived, some about to kill, some about to die. The timing, I confess, was delightful."
Murmurs ran through the group. Mike gripped the gun with minimal force. The voice knew too much.
"First of all, congratulations. Yes, congratulations. Among billions and billions of small, hectic, and disposable lives, you were chosen. This is not an accident. This is not a dream. This is not a psychological test, a military simulation, a pharmacological experiment, or a religious punishment. At least not in the way you know those words."
A guy in a white shirt threw his arms up to the sky, furious. "Who's talking? Show yourself, you son of a bitch!"
The voice gave a polite, almost affectionate chuckle. "I like the energy. It won't last long, but I like it."
Some people instinctively backed away from each other, as if the mere possibility of someone invisible watching already made everyone dangerous. Mike noticed trembling empty hands, eyes calculating distance, people starting to notice who seemed strong, who seemed weak, who seemed crazy. The social veneer was already peeling away. Fast. Faster than even he expected.
"I'll explain it simply," the voice continued. "You have been transported to a planet designated as an active stage. Call it an arena, call it a world, call it a tourist hell, it doesn't matter. Its function is very clear: survival, evolution, and spectacle."
The word "spectacle" fell to the ground like a glass breaking in the middle of a mass.
"Each of you is alive, whole, and in perfect initial condition. We didn't bring children. We didn't bring frail elderly people. We didn't bring pregnant women. We didn't bring terminally ill people. Here, nobody comes in with a ready-made excuse. From eighteen to fifty-five years old, usable bodies, functional minds, minimally honest chances. Or almost."
A thin man near Mike took a step back, his face white with terror. "No... no... that's impossible..."
Mike kept his eyes fixed on the horizon. Far, far away, something enormous seemed to circle in the sky behind a thin cloud formation. Too big for a normal bird. He kept the information to himself without commenting.
"Right now," the voice said, "you are what you might call noobs. Yes, I know the term. No class, no special skills, no privileges. Just flesh, instinct, luck, and whatever you brought with you at the time of transfer. Some came with