Ch. 6 - The Broken Nose

Derrick dabbed his forehead with his shirt as he walked off the court. He was all loose and ready to play some real games. He checked the battery indicator on the inside of his arm. It still read over eighty percent, so there was plenty of headroom to ramp up his game. The fine movements required to control the basketball effectively with his prosthesis tended to burn out the battery faster, so Derrick had gotten good at using his right arm sparingly and efficiently.

The next game started, between his old team and the team that had next, but there were still quite a few players in the seating areas, waiting their turn next to a court that seemed to have the most intense action. Mark’s team was playing defense, and as the opposing player made a superbly timed fadeaway shot—jumping backwards to make distance from his defender, Mark jumped to block it, rocketing a good five feet off the ground, and then landing with an audible clunk. Those legs weren’t just for show, it seemed.

Most people with leg mods, especially those who were born without feet—or were amputated for medical reasons—wore shoes around their prosthetic feet. These were usually the run-of-the-mill dumb leg prosthesis, or models with limited ankle articulation that wouldn’t break the bank. Mark, however, didn’t wear shoes on his two leg prostheses. His feet were shaped much like most human feet were: ankles, toes, an arch in the foot. Except the bottom surfaces of his feet were ruggedized: likely meant to survive all surfaces, and there were two protrusions on either side of the arch of his foot. They were circular, and pointed downwards, almost parallel to the slope down his arch. Derrick had seen them move while Mark was playing; it wasn’t clear exactly how, as it had happened too fast, but they probably contributed to his super-human acceleration.

The score was 10 to 6, in favor of Mark’s team. They played to eleven on this court, so the game was almost over. He might as well find a team, since he was itching to play some more. “Hey, anyone looking for another man?”

A group of four players who had recently lost their fifth agreed to let Derrick on, and, before long, the match they had been waiting for finished up.

Mark’s team had won, and they were taking a breather. Mark chugged from his bottle of water, and looked quite tall compared to the other players on his team. He had broad shoulders, and a strong chin. Not to mention that comically thick nose bridge. He didn’t resemble Marcus at all, besides the curly hair. But why couldn’t Derrick shake this feeling of familiarity?

“I got next,” Derricks’ teammate called out.

Derrick’s team took positions, and his teammate—a short, muscular young man—checked the ball with his defender, passing it back and forth to confirm both sides knew the ball was in play. The teammate stated driving in, and there was a flurry of action, as everyone on Derrick’s team who had been waiting was raring to go. He swiveled, and then spun past the man guarding him, while Derrick pushed his way around a defender to get in position for a pass.

His teammate attempted a layup which bounced off the rim, and Derrick jumped for the rebound along with four other guys. One hand got there before anyone else’s, and before Derrick had taken two steps, the ball was already halfway across the court. His mechanical legs pumping like pistons, Mark ran it all the way to the opposite basket and dunked it in, sending the ball swishing through the net with the sharpness of a whip. Derrick gasped for air as he and the tryhard, short muscular young man on his team stopped sprinting to the basket and watched Mark flex in front of the crowd. He was hardly winded, and showed a toothy smile as he slapped the ball towards them and ran back towards his end of the court.

Derrick’s teammate got the ball, and passed it back in to him. Derrick dribbled toward the three point line, crossing the ball over between his hands a few times to reinforce the mind-prosthesis connection in his right arm. Derrick’s prosthetic hand generally did what he wanted on the court, as long he was in control of the ball, or had time to anticipate any sudden impacts against it. The neural feedback from the pressure sensors on his fingertips was crisp, and his wrist joint moved smoothly as he dribbled the ball lower, and lower, and lower—and made a break for the court’s left-hand wing. Mark dashed out to meet him, and his team jockeyed for position behind him while he shadowed Derrick, frequently reaching an arm out to bat at the ball to keep the pressure up. Whichever way Derrick spun towards, Mark followed, his overeager arm even slapping Derrick’s prosthesis a few times. Regardless of whether it was intentional, each slap fuzzed up the fine-tuned coordination and dexterity of Derrick’s prosthetic hand, so he couldn’t keep dribbling forever.

Presumably having realized Mark was the main threat on the opposing team, Derrick’s tryhard teammate, who—in lieu of a name—was just thought of as Tryhard, ran over to screen for Derrick, blocking Mark’s path, and line of sight, long enough for Derrick to escape to the right.

There was an open spot ahead, and Derrick dashed towards it, and brought the ball up, ready to roll it off his mechanical fingers and sink a basket, but Mark’s hand was there, right in front of his face. That fast?! It couldn’t have been easy for him though, Mark’s labored breathing grew heavier as he got low to match Derrick, shuffling back and forth, as Derrick tried to shake him.

Tryhard was open—Derrick chucked the ball to him, hoping that the gaggle of teammates in between the two would be enough to slow Mark down. But hope was little use in the face of expensive technology. Derrick could’ve sworn that he heard Mark’s legs rev up as he shot past the other players, weaving side-to-side in almost serpentine pattern that should’ve been impossible for human ankles. As Mark turned the sharp bend toward Tryhard, his ankle bent almost ninety degrees, before springing back into place and launching him to the side. He was moving too fast though, colliding with Tryhard mid-shot and sending both of them down to the asphalt with a muffled thump.

The sidelines erupted, and Derrick’s teammates called foul almost immediately.

Tryhard recovered first, crawling out from underneath Mark—whose face was bleeding—and struggling to his feet. He looked down after getting his bearings and winced at the blood on his otherwise pristine basketball shoes.

“Damn, son, you broke his nose!”

“Yooo, look at that bend!”

Slower to rise, Mark propped himself up with an arm and wiped the blood off his face. “Ah shit.” Mark’s nose looked like it had been caved in. It curved to the right, and looked almost like a crescent moon . . . .

Just like Marcus’s nose had.