Multiverse Marines — Episode 1: "The Rookie Who Wouldn't Die"
The line to enlist never ends.
Every morning the induction concourse hums under cold lamps, a tide of fresh bodies in dark uniforms that still smell like laundry and hope. Intake clerks stamp bands. Drones skim like insects. Recruits tremble or front like they don't. The Multiverse Marines Department doesn't cap its numbers—how could it? There are more worlds than calendars, more missions than prayers, and enough monsters to make the word infinite feel small. You can join any day. You can die any day. The math balances itself with blood.
Zack Marlin, twenty-one, finishes his last paperwork swipe and steps onto the steel. Armor check: assassin-black plates over a flexible undersuit, baggy pants with samurai swagger whispering around his boots. Medium locks frame a face the cameras like, and that alone is enough to make people glare. His rifle hangs across his spine—compact like a submachine gun, heart of a sniper cannon. Most guns ask. His answers.
He doesn't brag. He doesn't need to. The room does it for him.
"Marlin?" a clerk reads, head tilting. "As in Marcus and Elira Marlin?"
Zack signs without looking up. "As in Zack."
Word ripples. Heads turn. Envy curdles. Someone mutters, "Daddy's name." Someone else: "Bet he chokes first mission." The scent of hot metal and recycled air fills Zack's lungs. He smiles like a secret.
Past the concourse, past the weapons vault, past the murals of victories that left heaps of bones behind them, waits the squad room—eight lockers, eight beds, eight helmets on a rail. Eight at a time, always. Eight is what survives long enough to send a report.
Lieutenant Yara Kincaid stands with arms folded, a scar like a lightning stitch from ear to collar. "We move in five. Roll call."
Dax Rourke, heavy gunner, tattoos like burned maps: "Here. Can't wait to meet the bug buffet." He grins at Zack. "You the legacy kid? Hope you shoot better than you pout."
Sachi Vale, recon, smile too sharp to be safe: "Everyone's so brave before their first scream."
Oren 'Patch' Halvern, medic, perpetually unimpressed: "I can sew flesh in a sandstorm. Don't make me prove it."
Kade Thorne, breach tech, eyes constantly tracking corners: "I love it when rookies tinker with gear they don't understand. Really spices up the funerals."
Mina Sol, long-range, jaw like a blade: "I don't babysit."
Hodge Larkin, shield and wall, shoulders like a door: "If you run, do it behind me."
Kincaid finally points her chin at Zack. "Speed, is it?"
"Zack works," he says.
"'Speed' is what your file says," Kincaid answers. "Earn it or eat it." She tosses him a bandolier. "Listen up. Mission: Cindershard Expanse. You'll smell glass and pain before you see it. Targets: Void Widows. Drones are fifty to five hundred XP. Matures pay five hundred. Matriarchs can go to three thousand if they don't carve your heart first. XP is realistic—no instant bing just for breathing. We finish the job, we get paid, we get better. Hit Level 1,000, you ping Prestige 1; your body upgrades like a religion. There are twenty-thousand prestiges if you want to live long enough to count. Most don't."
She nods toward the far doors. "Top brass."
They enter like knives through silk: Admiral Serrin Kross with iron posture and frost in his stare; Director Talia Vere whose voice is always almost kind. Kross studies the eight as if they're line items.
"Your squad is a cost center," Kross says. "Your mission is the expense. Don't waste either."
Vere smiles without warmth. "If you're lucky, you'll reach Level 1,000 in a decade. If you're good, it'll only take half that. If you're exceptional, it won't matter—the job will still try to eat you." She gestures, faintly amused. "Ramp's open."
The dropship door slams down. Heat walks in.
Drop
Cindershard is a broken bowl of fused dunes and blade-edged ridges. The sky carries a dull, angry glare. The ground pops and crackles under boots as if the world's bones are too close to the surface. The squad fans into a wedge, Hodge with the mobile bulwark, Kincaid at the hinge calling lanes, Mina on a high rib, Zack paired with Sachi because the universe loves jokes.
First contact is honest and ugly. Void Widows skid out of the heat shimmer—dog-sized, segmented, rage with legs. Hodge slams the wall down; Dax's cannon speaks in gut-punches; Kade plants charges with prayer-like speed. Sachi pivots, slides, lances a drone through the thorax and kicks it off like litter.
Zack's rifle hums when he wakes it. Short bursts stitch the air. He hardly feels the recoil; the weapon likes him. Two drones try to flank the wall—he angles, breath steady, squeezes—both pop and tumble.
A faint overlay flickers at the edge of his vision.
KILL CONFIRMED — VOID WIDOW DRONE: +500 XP
KILL CONFIRMED — VOID WIDOW DRONE: +500 XP
He jolts. Blinks. The text clings to reality like frost on glass.
"Lucky shots, legacy," Mina calls from the ridge, contempt wrapped in silk. "Try doing it on purpose."
"Eyes front," Kincaid snaps. They push.
Hours grind. Heat eats water and patience. The squad's movements sharpen: call, fire, reload, shift. Zack adapts, matching cadence without announcing it. He doesn't miss. They notice, which only makes them glower harder. People hate a reason.
They find the sink—bone-white glass curling into a crater, seams like spiderwebs. The air wavers. Every hair on Zack's arms stands up inside the suit.
"Hold," Kincaid murmurs. "This smells wrong."
It arrives in a blur of too many angles—Matriarch: carapace glossed like obsidian, eyes clustered and hungry, tail arched with a stinger long as a saber. Hodge plants. Dax roars. Sachi darts. Mina breaks the world into a clean shot and the matriarch almost laughs at the idea.
Zack strafes, drawing that cluster of eyes. Bursts chatter from his rifle, carving a line across the leftmost set. The matriarch jerks, not used to missing pieces.
"On your right!" Sachi warns.
He pivots—and doesn't see the tail. The impact is like being picked up and hurled by a freight hauler. It punches through his side and leaves fire behind.
Zack drops. He tastes copper. Distantly, he hears Kincaid's voice folded into steel, Dax's swearing like a liturgy, Kade's timer counting down in a language that hates delays. Sachi's breath rasps near his ear; he's being dragged. The ground chews his armor. The world tilts.
Then a flash. Then a thundercrack. Then nothing for a while.
Between
A ceiling of soft light resolves. The infirmary smells sterile, with undertones of fear. Patch sits nearby with a cup of something that might once have been coffee.
"You lived," Patch says, more annoyed than impressed. "My stitches are art. Try not to ruin them with your spectacular dumb choices."
"How many—?" Zack's voice scratches. He swallows. "Status?"
"Op completed. One casualty—Ensign Juno. We brought you back because you insisted on breathing." Patch glances toward the hallway. "No one's cheering. Don't expect cupcakes."
Zack lets out a laugh that hurts. "Wouldn't want to ruin my appetite."
Patch's eyes narrow. "You said weird things while you were under. Something about screens."
"Drugs," Zack says. "I dream in bad UI."
Patch snorts. "Get clear. Debrief's in an hour."
The door hisses shut. Quiet lands heavy.
Then the overlay returns—crisp, undeniable, impossible.
MISSION PAYOUT:
— Drone Kill: +500 XP
— Drone Kill: +500 XP
— Assist Bonus: +50 XP
— Matriarch Kill Share (Squad Objective): +3,000 XP
TOTAL: +4,050 XP
Numbers flip like cards.
LEVEL UP!
Level: 8
(50 / 500 XP toward Level 9)
Prestige: 0
Gun Skills: 1 → 2
Enhancements: 1 → 2
NEW UNLOCKS:
— Reflex Sync (Tier I): micro-timing boost to tracking and trigger break.
— Auto-Stabilizer (Tier I): compensates drift under sustained burst.
— Silent Venting (Tier I): heat signature dampening while repositioning.
Zack grins despite the ache. Eight levels. In one mission. He hadn't imagined it. The sting changed something in him, or stirred something that already was. He selects Reflex Sync and Auto-Stabilizer with a thought; cool threads wind up his forearms like phantom cables. His hands feel different, as if the air agreed to move aside before he asked.
He closes the HUD. Breathes. The secret is a living thing in his chest.
Debrief
In the squad room, no one softens. Dax slams his locker. "Rookie plays matador with a matriarch, gets skewered, and we get to haul him like a prize pig."
Kade doesn't look up from a scorched sensor. "I was half a second from arming a charge under his ribs out of habit."
Mina's smile is sugar-coated venom. "We could trade him for ammo next time."
Hodge shrugs one mountainous shoulder. "Or use him as bait. Wasn't awful."
Kincaid folds arms. "You drew aggro like a flare in a drought. Don't do it again unless I say so."
Zack meets the hate and lets it slide. "Yes, ma'am."
"Don't 'ma'am' me like you mean it," she says, then smirks—barely. "At least you hit what you aimed at. Do it again without bleeding and I might start charging you rent."
A shadow of respect? No. Not yet. But the crack in the wall exists.
They disperse. Sachi lingers by Zack's locker, looks left, right, decides the cameras aren't watching.
"You were clean out there before the sting," she says softly. "After the sting you were cleaner. I notice things."
"Adrenaline," Zack says lightly. "Or fate."
"Fate wears better boots," she says, mouth curving. "You walk like your bones know music."
He shouldn't. He knows he shouldn't. The brass preach discipline; the barracks runs on secrecy. And Sachi is danger braided into a grin.
Behind a stack of cargo crates, away from eyes, they lean into a shadow that tastes like risk. She presses against him; he keeps his hands respectful and then less so, heat rising as if the air forgets to circulate. Sweat beads. Breaths tangle. The world thins to pulse and hush, and the word they use in whispers is piping, the joke-that-isn't. It's messy in the way private things are, the kind you don't put in reports. When they part, her smile wobbles like she's out of breath and pretending not to be.
"Don't die," she says, almost irritated.
"Trying not to," he answers.
"Good," Sachi says. "I'd hate to waste potential."
The Weight of It
Word runs faster than clean water: the rookie didn't die. The rookie shoots like fate's favorite. The rookie pulls eyes he doesn't want and trouble he maybe does. Some want to be him. Most want him to choke. A few would like to watch him burn and warm their hands at the fire.
The queue at induction the next day will be just as long. The MMD will keep spitting squads of eight into worlds that don't want visitors. The XP board will keep turning war into arithmetic.
Back at his bunk, Zack cleans the rifle while the HUD pulses behind his eyelids like a second heartbeat. The stat block sits tidy and smug:
ZACK "SPEED" MARLIN
Level: 8 (50 / 500 XP)
Prestige: 0
Gun Skills: 2
Enhancements: 2
Perks: Reflex Sync (I), Auto-Stabilizer (I)
Weapon: Compact automatic sniper rifle (unique)
Notes: HUD visible to user only. Origin event: Void Widow sting.
He thinks of his parents—Marcus Marlin, retired sniper who could stop a convoy from beyond the horizon; Elira Marlin, strategist who folded enemy plans until they snapped. They live now on Verdantia, a world that smells like rain and soil, where the loudest thing at night is wind through glass-leaf groves. They wanted orchards and long dinners. He wanted missions and the taste of almost dying, and maybe something to prove that isn't his last name.
He thinks of Admiral Kross's cold ledger gaze. Director Vere's soft threat of math. Kincaid's half-grin and full warning. Dax's jokes that draw blood. Mina's glittering disdain. Kade's nerves threaded through explosives. Hodge's mountain patience. Sachi's smile that could get a man court-martialed or saved, depending on the hour.
They don't like him. They're not supposed to. Envy and fear are gravity in a place like this. Some of them will thaw, one by one, when he refuses to die where he's told. Others will hold their hate like a medal. That's fine. A man can move faster when people try to trip him.
He shuts the rifle case. The suit seals. The room grows quiet again, the kind of quiet that reminds you this building has a thousand heartbeats and any of them could stop during lunch.
"Welcome to the job," he murmurs, voice low. The HUD fades and returns at a thought, faithful as a dog with too many teeth.
He steps into the corridor, passing new faces who meet his eyes, then look away, then glare when they remember they're supposed to. The mission board updates with a shutter-click sound.
Cindershard Expanse — Secondary Sweep. Squad Size: 8.
There will be others—ruined courts under a copper sky, abyssal cities where the floors breathe, jungles that sing encouragement until they eat you. XP payouts will glitter like lures. The cap will stay 500 XP per level. The grind is the point.
He joins the forming line of helmets, and hears Dax whisper behind him, "Place bets. How many lives Speed has left?"
"Less than he thinks," Mina answers.
"More than you want," Sachi says, too cheerful.
Kincaid lifts a hand. The room stills.
"Eight go out," she says. "Eight come back or we count ghosts."
Zack smiles to himself and doesn't explain why.
The ramp drops. Heat walks in.
He walks into it.