CHAPTER 3 - WHAT WAS THAT?
The stadium fell silent.
Not a normal silence.
Not a pause.
Not anticipation.
Real silence.
One of those silences you don't hear with your ears but with your body. A thick, tangible void that stretched the air until it became a living membrane trembling inside the chest. Every breath felt like a crime. A hundred thousand people stood frozen in the pure idea of astonishment: mouths open, pupils dilated, a scream stuck halfway up their throats—suspended in that exact point where sound dies before being born.
The world stopped.
And time, for a moment, forgot to turn.
Double Zero had just stopped the ball—with his head.
Not luck.
Not a rebound.
Control.
The ball came down slowly from above, spinning in a perfect spiral under the lights. It brushed his forehead as if recognizing an old mark and dropped to his feet with impossible obedience. The murmur of the crowd rolled through the stands like a restrained tremor—a mute tide that never broke.
The ball was there.
Still.
Waiting.
And then three Butchers lunged at him.
From the shadows.
From three directions.
One from behind.
One from the left.
The last from the front.
Three enormous bodies.
Three calculated trajectories.
Three charges meant to destroy.
But they didn't touch him.
Double Zero moved.
Not fast.
Exact.
A short step.
A dry twist of the torso.
A measured leap—brutal in its precision.
The air seemed to split open. The Butchers' legs sliced through nothing. They passed by without understanding how their target was no longer there—how the body they meant to crush had ceased to occupy that point in space.
The stadium stayed mute.
Not a single breath.
There was fear in that silence. Something ancient. Something that smelled of altar and sacrifice. No one understood what they had just seen. Not the players. Not the referees. Not even the cameras, spinning madly in search of impossible angles to restore the world's logic.
In the booth, the commentators clenched their microphones with wet hands. Sweat crawled down their necks, soaking their headsets.
"What… was that?"
"What—what was that?"
"WHAT WAS THAT!?"
The question broke apart in the air, saturated with static. It was the only way to name what had no name.
Double Zero kept running.
The ball clung to his foot like a living limb. Each touch pulsed with rhythm. Each bounce echoed with a heart that didn't feel like his own. Around him, the Erasers watched him move forward in shock, backing away not by strategy, but by instinct. Something deep inside them screamed not to get in his way.
The air grew denser around him.
Lights throbbed with each step.
Shadows stretched beneath his feet, trembling out of shape.
He neared midfield.
"We don't know what that man's carrying!" the commentator shouted, his voice cracking. "No one can stop him!"
A Butcher midfielder broke formation and rushed to close him down—a compact body of muscle and rage, boots hammering into the grass with all his weight.
Double Zero didn't slow.
He felt something just before impact.
A dull pressure.
A faint vibration in his chest, as if the air itself had tensed in front of him.
The collision never came.
The Butcher simply collapsed.
Didn't trip.
Wasn't pushed.
He crumpled to his knees as if striking an invisible wall. Bounced awkwardly off the turf and lay still, eyes open, breath wheezing in confusion.
The ball kept rolling.
Time kept moving.
Double Zero kept advancing.
Midfield.
Then Krael appeared.
Captain of the Butchers.
Bigger. Faster. Deadlier.
His presence dragged the air with it—an ancient roar made flesh. The stadium awoke in a bestial clamor. They wanted to see him fall. They wanted the world restored. They wanted order, logic, blood.
Krael lowered his posture.
Feet firm.
Arms open.
A beast focused.
Then he dove.
The tackle was perfect. Murderous. Violent. A hundred and ten kilos of muscle and decision launched like a projectile.
The impact cracked loud and clean.
Double Zero flew—torn out of reality like a broken doll.
The stadium erupted.
Relief.
For a second.
Then the scream died midair.
Because Double Zero turned.
He didn't fall sideways.
Didn't twist wrong.
He spun—a clean, impossible arc that made the air fold around him. Landed upright. Knees bent. Balance intact.
And the sound vanished again.
One.
Two.
Three seconds.
Krael lay on the ground.
He didn't move.
There was no rage in his eyes.
Only comprehension.
The referee didn't blow the whistle.
He couldn't.
The Erasers' coach had risen from the bench without knowing it, mouth open, fingers clawed tight in the air—the posture of a man watching a boundary shatter that was never meant to break.
Double Zero didn't move.
The stadium's heartbeat pounded against his chest. Everything slowed. The air had weight. Sweat burned in his eyes. He thought he could hear his own heart.
But it wasn't his heart.
It was something else.
A deep hum inside his skull.
Cold.
Close.
Intimate.
A presence.
And then he heard it.
Not outside.
Inside.
I've got you.
Not a command.
Not a cry.
A certainty.
Double Zero blinked.
The stadium no longer looked the same. The lights were too white. The shadows too long. The grass darkened at the edges, and the faces in the stands merged into a liquid mass breathing as one.
I've got you.
Something burned inside him—comfort and damnation entwined. A promise glowing like iron at white heat.
And he knew.
Nothing would be as it was.
Not the game.
Not the world.
Not him.
Double Zero looked down.
The ball was still at his feet.
Still.
Waiting.
He didn't know if it still belonged to him—
or if now,
it belonged to it.