The buzzer that Alpha-79 had been waiting for didn't just ring in the Kinetic Yard; it echoed through the sub-floors, a discordant shriek that signaled the convergence of the unit.
In the hallway outside the arena, Beta-79 felt the vibration in his teeth.
The blast doors to the central arena groaned open. Beta-79 stepped through, the cold steel of the threshold giving way to the black, scorched polymer of the combat floor. The air here was different. It didn't smell like the sterile ozone of the corridors or the rot of the Gamma labs. It smelled like ash. It smelled like the aftermath of a lightning strike.
He saw the others already positioned.
Unit Alpha-79 stood in the center, vibrating. Literally vibrating. The Ionization residue from his solo drill still clung to him, making his hair stand on end, tiny static sparks popping off his fingertips. He looked manic, his eyes wide and hungry, fixed on the far end of the room. He was a weapon that had been cocked for too long, desperate for a trigger.
To his left stood Unit Gamma-79.
If Alpha was a weapon ready to fire, Gamma was a weapon that had misfired. He was hunched over, clutching his right arm—the Metamorphoun limb. The graft from the morning's surgery was raw, the scales looking soft and bloody where they met his human skin. He was swaying slightly, his face pale, sweat cutting tracks through the grime on his cheeks. He looked at Beta-79 with glossy, feverish eyes, then looked away, ashamed of his own pain.
Beta-79 walked to his designated marker—the rear point of the triangle. Formation Delta. Support and Control.
He felt the drain of the Syphon in his own veins, a hollowness that made his limbs feel light and unreliable. He looked at Alpha's manic energy, then at Gamma's broken posture.
We are not a squad, Beta-79 thought, the analysis cold and involuntary. We are spare parts thrown into a grinder.
The lights in the arena dimmed, leaving them in a circle of harsh, focused illumination.
From the shadows at the far end of the room, a figure emerged.
She didn't walk with the heavy, stomping gait of the guards. She moved with a predatory, feline fluidity, her boots making no sound on the scorched floor. Instructor Amily.
She wore the standard Vanguard combat fatigues, but the sleeves were rolled up, revealing arms scarred by fire and combat. Her hair was pulled back in a severe knot, exposing a face that might have been pretty if it weren't carved out of granite.
But it was her presence that made the air in the room drop ten degrees.
Her mana soul wasn't suppressed. It flared around her, visible to the naked eye—a deep, oceanic Blue.
Blue Tier, Beta-79's mind cataloged, suppressing a spike of fear. Two tiers above us. Exponential power gap.
Amily stopped ten meters away. She didn't take a combat stance. She just stood there, hands loose at her sides, looking at them with an expression of profound boredom.
"Gemini-79," she said. Her voice was smoke and gravel. "The Director wants to see synergy. He wants to see if the investment is yielding returns."
She cracked her neck, a sharp sound in the silence.
"Show me why you're still alive."
Alpha-79 didn't wait for a command. He didn't signal the team. He just broke.
"Engaging!" Alpha screamed.
It was a tactical error. A suicide run. But Alpha didn't care about tactics; he cared about proving he existed. He launched himself forward, channeling Aero into his boots to accelerate, a blur of grey and orange light.
"Alpha, wait—" Beta-79 started, his voice cracking.
Too late.
Alpha closed the distance in a heartbeat, his right fist glowing with condensed air, his left crackling with blue-white lightning. He aimed a dual-strike at Amily's chest.
Amily didn't move her feet. She just sighed.
As Alpha's fist came within an inch of her sternum, she twitched. It was a movement so fast it barely registered as a blur. She caught Alpha's Aero punch with her open palm.
BOOM.
The impact shockwave rippled out, blowing dust across the floor. Alpha's eyes widened. He had hit her with everything he had—enough force to punch through a brick wall.
Amily hadn't budged.
"Sloppy," she murmured.
She twisted her wrist, locking Alpha's arm. Then, she ignited.
Pyro.
It wasn't a fireball. It was a flash-heat, a sudden, violent spike in temperature directly in front of her. The air shimmered.
Alpha gasped, choking. Amily wasn't burning him directly; she was burning the oxygen. She created a vacuum right in front of his face. Alpha flailed, his lungs pulling at nothing but superheated nitrogen. His Ionization fizzled out as his concentration shattered under the panic of suffocation.
"Gamma! Now!" Beta-79 yelled, abandoning protocol.
Gamma-79 roared—a wet, desperate sound—and charged. He didn't run like a soldier; he ran like a beast, low to the ground, using his good hand to vault forward. As he leaped, the Metamorphoun arm expanded, the dark scales hardening, the fingers elongating into razor-sharp obsidian claws.
He aimed for Amily's exposed flank.
Amily didn't even look at him. She just released Alpha, shoving him aside like a sack of grain, and pivoted.
She met Gamma's charge with a kick.
It was a high, sweeping roundhouse, augmented by a flare of mana that hardened her shin guard to the density of tank armor.
CRACK.
The sound of bone snapping echoed off the walls.
Gamma-79's guard shattered. The kick drove through his forearms and slammed into his ribs. He was lifted off the ground, spinning in the air, before crashing down hard on the metal plates. He slid ten meters, leaving a smear of blood where his unhealed grafts had torn open. He didn't get up. He just curled into a ball, wheezing.
"Pathetic," Amily spat. "The beast hesitates. The soldier rushes. And you..."
She turned her eyes on Beta-79. They were blue fire, cold and consuming.
"...you just watch."
Beta-79 felt the paralysis gripping his chest. His Lumen sigil was itching, burning under the skin. He had to do something. He was the Control. He had to blind her, create an opening, give Alpha a chance to breathe.
Manifest, he screamed internally.
He thrust his right hand out. "Lumen! Flash!"
He poured everything he had left—every scrap of mana Veres hadn't stolen—into the sigil.
A burst of orange light erupted from his palm. It was meant to be a supernova, a blinding white-out.
But it wasn't.
It was a flicker. A sputtering flare, like a dying candle in a windstorm. The drain from the Syphon had left him too empty. The light washed over Amily, weak and amber-colored. It didn't blind her. It barely made her blink.
She looked at the fading light, then at him. Her expression wasn't angry. It was disappointed.
"Is that it?" she asked softly.
She walked toward him.
Beta-79 stumbled back. "I... I can't..."
"You can't?" Amily mocked. "The enemy doesn't care what you can't do, 79. The enemy will carve your heart out while you make excuses."
She raised her hand. A ball of fire, condensed and white-hot, formed in her palm. It swirled with a terrifying, beautiful symmetry.
"Defense protocol!" Beta-79 shrieked, his voice jumping an octave.
He tried to bring up his left hand, to use Infusus to absorb the mana of her spell, to suck the heat out of the air. It was a desperate, theoretical maneuver he had only read about.
He wasn't fast enough.
Amily closed her fist, extinguishing the fire, and stepped into his guard. She didn't burn him. She punched him in the solar plexus.
The air left Beta-79's body in a rush. His vision went black. He collapsed to his knees, retching, clutching his stomach. The pain was absolute, radiating out from his center, shutting down his limbs.
He fell face forward onto the cold floor.
Silence returned to the arena.
The only sounds were Gamma's wet, bubbling breaths and Alpha's ragged gasping as he tried to pull air back into his scorched lungs.
Beta-79 lay there, his cheek pressed against the metal. He could see Alpha's boots a few feet away. Alpha was trying to stand, his legs shaking violently, but he kept slipping in his own sweat.
Amily walked to the center of the triangle of broken children. She looked down at them. She didn't offer a hand. She didn't call for a medic.
"You are dead," she stated. Her voice was flat, devoid of pity. "If this were the Surface, the Animatia would be eating you right now. If this were the Border, the Ningen snipers would be putting rounds through your skulls."
She nudged Gamma-79 with the toe of her boot. He groaned.
"Pain is a teacher," Amily said, looking at the ceiling, as if reciting a scripture she hated. "But you aren't learning fast enough."
She looked at the observation deck, where the silhouettes of the Directors watched. She gave a subtle shake of her head, a micro-expression of disgust—not at the children, but at the waste of it all.
Then she looked back down at them.
"Get up."
Beta-79 forced his eyes open. The floor swam.
"I said get up!" Amily roared, her voice amplified by a burst of mana that shook the room.
Beta-79 pushed himself up. His arms trembled like leaves in a gale. He spat a string of saliva mixed with bile onto the floor. He grabbed Alpha's shoulder, using the other boy as a crutch. Alpha grabbed him back, his grip bruising. Together, they swayed, locking knees to stay upright.
Gamma-79 dragged himself up on his good arm, his legs wobbling, blood dripping from his nose.
They stood. Broken. Bleeding. But standing.
Amily stared at them. For a second, just a second, the hardness in her eyes cracked. There was something else there. Fatigue? Regret?
It vanished instantly, replaced by the mask of the Instructor.
"Reset positions," she commanded, turning her back and walking to the far end of the arena.
Beta-79 looked at Alpha. Alpha's eyes were dead again, the mania gone, replaced by a hollow, crushing shame.
"We go again," Amily's voice echoed from the shadows.
Beta-79 closed his eyes for a heartbeat. He felt the darkness of the room pressing in, heavy and suffocating.
"Again," he whispered.
The lights flared back up. The bad dreams reset.