The oval concrete structure was still standing, though covered in moss and neon graffiti. The pitch, sacred to many, was now a dark internal lagoon, ten meters deep, where hundreds of boats, rafts, and homemade submarines were parked.
The stands held no fans. They held stalls. Thousands of them, rising tier by tier, selling everything from fresh radioactive fish to computer memory modules from the old era.
Valéria maneuvered our amphibious truck through the entrance of the old locker room tunnel, now partially flooded.
"Valet Parking costs a fortune here," she warned, looking at a group of Crab-Men controlling the inflow. They had pincers instead of left hands and wore orange parking attendant vests.
"We're not paying with money," I said, grabbing a box of Algae Antibiotics I synthesized on the trip. "We're paying with public health."
The truck entered the stadium's central "pool." The noise was deafening.
Shouts of vendors, boat engines, mutant seagulls (with four wings) squawking, and funk music mixed with techno-magic coming from the VIP boxes.
We parked next to a raft made of PET bottles and whale bones.
One of the Crab-Men tapped the hull with his claw. CLACK-CLACK.
"Docking fee: 50 Pearls or a functional limb." His voice bubbled.
I rolled down the window and tossed the box of meds.
"Treats the fungal infection on your shell in three days. If you don't use it, your claw falls off next week."
The mutant caught the box, sniffed it, and his stalk eyes lit up.
"VIP spot granted, Doctor. Watch out for pickpockets. They are octopuses. Literally."
We got out of the truck.
The market in the stands was a sensory maze. The smell of diesel fuel mixed with fried squid and black magic incense.
"I need parts," Valéria said, eyes shining as she saw a stall selling rusted airplane turbines. "The truck's water purifier is on its last legs. If we don't change the mana filter, we're drinking mud tomorrow."
"I'm going to find food," Gristle sniffed the air. "I smell smoked shark. And... oregano?"
"Stay sharp," I warned. "Luna, come with me. We're going up to the Noble Area. We need information on the Church of High Tide."
We walked up the access ramps. We passed bizarre stalls:
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"The Necromancer's Skewer": Sold meat skewers that still twitched slightly. The slogan was "So fresh it bites back."
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"Mermaid's Pharmacy": Vials with colored liquids promising everything from curing baldness to breathing underwater (side effect: growing scales on your groin).
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"Tech-Macumba": A guy selling broken iPhones that ran on trapped spirits in the battery.
Arthur (the Parasite) was fascinated and disgusted.
[ECONOMIC ANALYSIS: CHAOTIC. VALUE IS BASED ON IMMEDIATE SCARCITY.]
[ALERT: 30% OF THE POPULATION HERE DISPLAYS UNCATALOGUED PARASITIC MUTATIONS.]
Stolen story; please report.
"It's a zoo," I commented, dodging a dwarf trying to sell me a watch that counted down the time to my death (it was showing 40 years, which I thought was optimistic).
We reached the Box level.
Here, the fish smell vanished, replaced by expensive perfume and magical air conditioning. Guards armed with homemade laser rifles blocked the entrances.
I stopped in front of the old Presidential Box. The sign on the door read: "Office of Madame Oyster".
"Who is she?" whispered Luna.
"The biggest informant in the South Atlantic." I adjusted my lab coat. "They say she hears everything that happens in the sea because the oysters tell her."
The guard at the door—a golem made of concrete and coral—crossed his stone arms.
"Appointment?"
"Tell her the surgeon who killed the Devourer King is here. And that I know she has 'calcified indigestion'."
The golem hesitated. A female voice, velvety and dangerous, came from inside the box.
"Let him in, Rocky. I'm curious."
We entered.
The box was luxurious, decorated with red velvet and giant wall aquariums containing bioluminescent fish.
Sitting in a leather armchair was Madame Oyster.
She was a gigantic woman, with pale, pearlescent skin. She had no legs; her body ended in a massive shell that served as a throne. She smoked a long cigarette holder.
Several servants (enslaved humans with gold collars) fanned her.
"Arthur Veras," she exhaled smoke, which took the shape of a skull. "Your fame arrived before the tide. The man who set the Amazon on fire now comes to dip his feet in my backyard."
"I came to do business, Madame." I got straight to the point. "I need to know how to enter the South Zone without being detected by the Church of High Tide."
Madame Oyster laughed. Her body shuddered, and I saw a grimace of pain cross her face. She brought a hand to her abdomen, where the skin looked stretched and hard.
"The Church..." she caught her breath. "They are fanatics. The 'Admiral Pontiff' controls the Kraken. No one enters the Lighthouse Christ area. They have biological sonars that detect even a shrimp's heartbeat."
"They have a weakness," I insisted. "Every system does."
"Maybe I know it." She smiled maliciously. "But information costs. What do you have? Gold? Mana? Alien technology?"
"I have a surgery." I pointed to her belly. "You have Pearl Hyperplasia. Your body is producing excess defensive pearls around your internal organs. It's calcifying you from the inside. Hurts like you swallowed glass, doesn't it? If you don't remove them, in a month you'll be a beautiful, dead statue."
Her smile vanished.
"My doctors said it's inoperable. If they open the shell, I die of hemorrhage."
"Your doctors are butchers. I am a bio-hacker." I drew my scalpel. The Parasite covered my hand with black chitin. "I can use my symbiote's magnetism to extract the pearls without invasive cutting. Vibrate them out through the pores."
Madame Oyster looked at me. The pain was visible.
"If you kill me, my guards turn you and your singer friend into crab bait."
"Deal."
The procedure lasted twenty minutes.
It was gross and fascinating.
I used the Parasite to create a localized magnetic resonance field.
I placed my hands on her abdomen. The pearls, which are basically calcium and mana, reacted.
I guided them slowly to the skin. Madame Oyster screamed, sweating cold.
"Luna, sonic anesthesia!" I ordered.
Luna sang a soft note that numbed the woman's nerves.
POP. POP. POP.
Small, perfect white spheres began to pop out of Madame's skin, falling into a silver basin held by a servant.
There were hundreds. A fortune in magical jewels.
When I finished, Madame Oyster took a deep breath. For the first time in years, without pain.
She looked at the basin full of pearls.
"Keep the payment." She kicked the basin toward me. "I hate those things."
"I want the information." I wiped my hands.
She leaned back, relieved.
"The Church of High Tide is building the Ark. But they need fuel. They use Leviathan Oil."
"There is an old pipeline, from the Petrobras era, linking Guanabara Bay to the base of the Christ. They use that pipe to pump processed sea monster blood."
She tossed me a digital map.
"The pipe is wide enough for a small sub. Or a tuned amphibious truck."
"But be careful, Doctor. The pipe goes through the territory of the Petroleum Sirens. They don't sing. They scream. And they are made of tar and hate."
I took the map and a handful of pearls (money is always good).
"Leviathan Oil..." I murmured. "They aren't building an Ark of salvation. They're building a warship."
"Go now," Madame Oyster lit another cigarette. "And if you topple the Lighthouse Christ... bring me the statue's head. It'll look great in my garden."
We returned to the truck.
Valéria had gotten the parts (traded for a jetski engine and a smile). Gristle had gotten food (traded for threats of violence).
"We have a plan," I threw the map on the dashboard. "We enter through the oil sewer."
"Disgusting," Valéria grimaced. "The truck is going to smell like a gas station for years."
"Better to smell like gasoline than a corpse," Luna retorted, climbing into the back seat.
I started the engines. The truck spun in the water, leaving the Maracan?.
The sun was setting, painting the dirty water orange.
The path to the South Zone was underground and underwater.
The negotiation phase was over. Now began the claustrophobia phase.
"Ready the fog lights," I ordered. "Let's see what lives inside the Petrobras pipes after the end of the world."