The Myo Edge

The stadium buzzed with anticipation as the runners lined up for the 100-meter final. Jaxon Reeve crouched at the starting block, his lean frame taut, his sleek black tracksuit shimmering under the floodlights. The crowd didn’t know it, but that suit wasn’t just fabric—it was a secret weapon.


Jaxon had stumbled across the tech on a shady X thread: smart clothing laced with nanofibers that mimicked artificial muscles. Woven into the suit were micro-actuators, syncing with his nervous system via a subdermal chip. Every stride would be amplified, every twitch optimized. He’d paid a fortune to a back-alley coder in Seoul, and tonight, at the Continental Games, it would pay off.


The gun cracked. Jaxon exploded forward, his legs pumping with a rhythm that felt too perfect. By the 50-meter mark, he was three strides ahead, the other runners fading into a blur. The crowd roared, sensing history. He crossed the line at 9.41 seconds—a world record.


But as he slowed, chest heaving, something felt off. His suit tightened, then twitched, like a living thing. He stumbled, catching himself on the track. Officials rushed over, their faces a mix of awe and suspicion.


“Reeve, you’re under review,” barked the head referee, a wiry man with a tablet already pinging data. Jaxon’s heart sank. The suit’s sensors must have tripped a biometric flag—his muscle output was too consistent, too superhuman.


In the holding room, they stripped him down. A tech specialist ran a scanner over the tracksuit, her eyes widening as the screen lit up with a web of active circuits. “This isn’t regulation gear,” she said. “It’s amplifying his movements—artificial myofibers, neural integration. He’s cheating.”


Jaxon slumped in the chair, the hum of the suit now silent in a sealed evidence bag. “I just wanted an edge,” he muttered. “Everyone’s juicing somehow—steroids, gene mods. This was cleaner.”


“Cleaner?” The referee snorted. “You turned yourself into a cyborg. Disqualified. Record’s void. And you’re facing a ban—maybe charges.”
As they escorted him out, the stadium screens replayed his run in slow motion. The crowd gasped at the unnatural precision of his strides, the suit’s subtle flexing now obvious. Whispers of “freak” and “machine” followed him into the night.


Back home, Jaxon stared at the spare suit in his closet, its fibers glinting faintly. He’d lost everything—medals, sponsors, his name. But as he slipped it on, feeling that familiar surge in his limbs, he wondered: was the advantage unfair—or just the future?