Chereads / 《Dribble Through the Dark》 / Chapter 7 - Chapter 7. “Hallucinogen Basketball: you have my poison running through your veins.”

Chapter 7 - Chapter 7. “Hallucinogen Basketball: you have my poison running through your veins.”

Lucas sees the ghost of his mother dancing beyond the three-point line as Rayne's syringe pierces his carotid artery.

Abandoned churches have been converted into bloody basketball courts, and demons spelled out in stained glass look down on him. Twelve steel cages hung from the dome, each holding wax figures in Holt High jerseys, wax oil dripping into the shape of the 2001 championship trophy.

"Last lesson," Raine ripped open his shirt, the hydraulic tubes of his mechanical prosthetic connecting to Lucas's arm, "use my blood, break your bones."

The moment the pale blue liquid flooded into his veins, the rim turned into the incinerator's feeding spout, and Elena's screams came from the cage. Hallucinations and memories began to strangle - his mother's last whisper before locking him in the blast cabinet on the night of his fifth birthday, "Don't ever drink anything Raine gives you."

Marcus suddenly kicking in the church doors, custom sneakers crushing shards of stained glass." Father and son fighting? What a fucking downer!" He was followed by the ESPN broadcast team, the camera greedily focused on Lucas's bleeding pupils.

The moment possession changed hands, Lucas saw the truth in the reflection of Rayne's eyepatch - Marcus's father was shoving cash at the referee in the 2001 finals video, while Rayne's furious fists swung at his mother in the audience.

Elena's wax figure suddenly explodes and her real body falls through the rain of blood. She has a specimen of her father's severed ring finger around her neck and holds her mother's charred lab diary, "The chemical plant explosion was remotely controlled by your father! He traded your life for gambling money!"

Raine's robotic hand suddenly twists 180 degrees as steel bones pierce Lucas' shoulder blades to crucify him." Now," he raised the chainsaw to the live camera, "show all of America how the Holt's son can fly."

Lucas bites into a miniature capsule in his back teeth - the alkaloid antidote his mother had hidden in a blast cabinet compartment. The moment his retinas regained clarity, he saw Elena stab the cage with her ribs and rush toward him, holding a half-dozen statues of the Madonna.

As the crucifix came crashing down, Marcus smiled at the camera, "Castrate the bastard if the ratings break a hundred million."

Rayne's severed limb suddenly plugs into the OB van's power supply, plunging the entire church into darkness.

Lucas touches Elena's trembling hand in the pool of blood as she tucks in the bloodstained remnants of her diary, "The antidote in the syringe only kills the next of kin who carries RH-negative blood."

Their blood is running down the cracks in the floor and into the charging slots of Raine's mechanical prosthetics.