"What the hell was that about!?" Renn's voice cracked as he yanked off his helmet, shaking his messy blond hair loose.
His face was flushed with both sweat and irritation. "I mean seriously, what's up with Instructor Kieran? Who in their right mind sets the difficulty to max and tosses us in blind? Of course we were going to get wrecked!"
His glider's servos whined as he fumbled with the latches, his clumsiness making the automated release arms stall. He smacked the side of the chest plate in frustration.
Lira's soft laugh cut through the air as she stepped past him.
She was tall, her dark hair tied into a neat braid that refused to loosen even after an hour-long simulated fights. The robotic arms at her station extended with smooth precision, sliding her armor free like peeling the skin from fruit.
"Relax, Renn," she said, her voice carrying that balance between warmth and sarcasm that only she could pull off. "He just wants us to be ready for the worst-case scenarios. Better we fail here than in the Games. And besides—" she tilted her head slightly toward Ashen, "someone managed just fine."
Renn snapped his head toward Ashen, his expression caught between respect and annoyance.
"'Just fine'? Lira, did you not see the part where I got slammed into the mud like a rag doll? The thing picked me up, swung me around, and tossed me like—like—" He waved his hands for a word. "Like I was some kind of chew toy!"
"You kind of are," Lira teased, grinning. "At least to beasts like that."
Renn's eyes widened. "Unbelievable. First Kieran, now you. My suffering means nothing to you people." He slapped his palm over his chest dramatically. "Do you know how close I was to death?"
"You were already dead the moment you opened that cursed mouth of yours," Jaro muttered from behind.
Jaro towered above most cadets, his glider's frame broader, the plating dented from repeated hitting. He carried himself with the natural weight of someone who expected people to move out of his way. His hair, short and cropped close, dripped with sweat, and his voice carried that gravelly irritation he never seemed to lose.
"Can you just shut up and change? We've been in there since dawn, I'm starving."
Renn gasped. "How can you think about food after that trauma? I almost got eaten alive!"
"You almost get eaten alive every session," Jaro grumbled, shoving past him toward the robotic arms that waited to strip his armor. "At this point, the hounds should be tired of the taste."
Lira chuckled again.
Ashen remained silent, following their back-and-forth with the same detachment he always carried. He had long since grown used to the trio's banter. It was noise—sometimes irritating, sometimes amusing, but never worth adding to.
One by one, the robotic arms unlatched their armor.
Mechanical clamps clicked, plates slid free, hisses of air escaped hydraulic joints. The suits clattered into the designated holding racks with metallic finality, leaving the cadets in the sweat-soaked undersuits that clung to their skin.
The changing room hummed with activity. Other squads were already there—young men and women stepping in and out of their gliders, stretching sore muscles, comparing bruises, joking about failures, and cursing instructors.
The air smelled faintly of oil, disinfectant, and body heat.
Overhead, screens replayed simulation statistics: survival times, energy output, team formations, failure points. Numbers that measured effort, mistakes, and potential. For most, those numbers were reminders of how far they still had to go.
For Ashen, they were all background noise.
"Worst scenario my ass," Renn muttered, still peeling out of his undersuit. "No way we're ever going to fight something like that hound. Too broken. If the Games actually throw things like that at us, we're screwed."
"You're always screwed," Jaro shot back, tugging his boots free. "The rest of us have a chance."
"Ha! You say that now," Renn snapped, pointing a finger at him. "But when something six-legged and slobbering is chewing on your glider, don't come crying to me."
"I wouldn't cry to you if my arm was hanging off."
Lira rolled her eyes, smoothing down her braid as she adjusted her uniform. "Both of you shut up already. If the hound didn't kill me, your whining will."
The group laughed, all except Ashen, who pulled on his academy-issued jacket and zipped it without comment.
It wasn't that he disliked them.
Renn's complaints, Lira's calm, Jaro's bluntness—they balanced each other in a strange way. They had been through countless simulations together. They'd eaten the same bland meals, endured the same lectures, shared the same exhaustion. In their own way, they were family.
But not for him.
Not fully.
Ashen had learned long ago to keep his words to himself.
Talking wasted energy.
Talking created expectations.
Silence kept him sharp, unburdened.
Jaro glanced over as they finished dressing. "You heading to the canteen with us?"
Ashen shook his head.
"Not hungry. I'll go to the assembly hall early."
"We'll catch you later then." Jaro shrugged. He didn't push further; none of them did anymore.
The squad split at the corridor junction.
Renn still grumbling, Lira laughing softly, Jaro muttering about food. Their voices faded as Ashen turned down the opposite hall, boots echoing against polished floors.
The academy stretched out around him—gleaming steel, clean lines, the faint blue glow of energy conduits running along the ceilings.
H-Academy.
It hadn't existed when the Games first arrived.
In those early years, humanity had stumbled blind into the Dominion, full of pride and arrogance.
They thought their weapons, their numbers, their ingenuity would be enough.
They had been wrong.
Terribly wrong.
Other races had powers, mutations, symbiosis with alien fauna—things beyond human understanding. Earth had nothing but fragile flesh and rusting steel. The first teams had been massacred.
The following years weren't much better.
So humanity had adapted.
They poured their resources into engineering, into building the gliders—mechanized suits that turned the fragile human body into something more resilient, something that could survive where bare skin never could.
And they built the Academy, to forge children into soldiers who could wield those suits. Boys and girls as young as ten were drafted, their childhoods traded for training, drills, simulations, and discipline.
At eighteen, they were sent into the Games, humanity's fragile offerings to the Dominion.
Ashen had been fourteen when he was chosen, one of the first batches.
Now, at nineteen, he had been molded into one of the hundred who would soon represent Earth.
Ten years.
It had been ten years since the Games first came.
Ten years since the world turned upside down. Ten years since his parents had vanished into the chaos of that first selection.
And Ashen had been left behind in the orphanage, staring at a door that never opened again.