6:30 AM
The sun was just starting to force its way through Virexion's thick layer of atmospheric smog, casting a hazy, bruised-orange glow through the window of a cramped Mid-Tier apartment.
Inside, the rhythmic, punishing thud-thud-thud of running shoes hammering a rubber belt filled the small room.
Zane Alaric was on his treadmill, absolutely drenched in sweat, his dark hair plastered to his forehead.
The terrifying mask, the kimono, the spear—they were all locked away.
Right now, he was just a twenty-one-year-old kid wearing faded grey gym shorts and a ratty t-shirt that read Virexion University - School of Medicine.
His legs were a blur of motion. The treadmill was cranked to its absolute maximum setting, the motor whining dangerously under the strain of his pace.
A normal athlete would have hit a wall and collapsed five minutes into this sprint. Zane had been maintaining it for an hour and fifteen minutes.
Without slowing the machine down, he grabbed the rails, vaulted his body over the moving belt, and dropped lightly to the floor.
He wasn't even breathing hard. He immediately hit the deck, launching into a set of explosive pushups, launching his upper body an inch into the air with every rep.
98... 99... 100.
He rolled onto his back, staring up at the water-stained ceiling. He pressed two fingers to his neck. His heart rate was already dropping back to a resting rhythm.
Being the God Killer required a biological baseline that completely shattered human limits, but that kind of conditioning didn't maintain itself.
If he slipped, even for a week, it could mean taking a blaster bolt to the face instead of the shoulder.
"Zane! You're going to be late!" his mother's voice filtered through the thin drywall from the kitchen.
Zane let out a groan, rolling onto his feet. He glanced at the holographic clock floating near his door. 7:15 AM.
He moved with practiced efficiency, stripping out of his soaked clothes and stepping into the sonic shower.
The high-frequency waves vibrated the grime, sweat, and lingering smells of Sector 27 off his skin in a matter of seconds.
He threw on a pair of dark jeans, a plain black hoodie to hide the fresh bruise on his shoulder, and slung his weathered leather messenger bag across his chest.
He shuffled into the kitchen. His mother was standing at the counter, expertly flipping a row of synthetic protein patties in a sizzling iron skillet.
The heavy smell of frying grease hit Zane's nose, making his stomach do a slow, uncomfortable flip.
After the stench of charred organs the night before, food was the absolute furthest thing from his mind.
"Morning, Mom," he mumbled, snatching his apartment keys off the counter.
"Sit down and eat, Zane," she scolded, not even bothering to look over her shoulder. "You're practically skin and bones. How exactly are you supposed to become a brilliant surgeon if you starve to death before graduation?"
"Can't, Mom. Dr. Vane is a hard-ass about punctuality. If I'm ten seconds late to the amphitheater, he locks the doors. I'll grab a nutrient bar on campus."
"You said that yesterday," she sighed, finally turning around, tapping the spatula against the edge of the pan. She gave him that hyper-specific, piercing look that only mothers have—equal parts deep pride and relentless worry. "Are you getting enough sleep? You look pale. And you have bags under your eyes."
"Just studying, Mom. Xeno-medicine doesn't memorize itself." He stepped forward, planting a quick kiss on her cheek. "Love you. Tell Dad I'll catch him tonight."
"He's already at the plant! Zane, don't forget your—"
The front door clicked shut before she could finish. Zane was already sprinting down the hallway, making a beeline for the grav-elevator.
Virexion University was a massive, sprawling architectural marvel of reinforced glass and brushed steel, built directly into the side of a sloping hill overlooking the city's central power grid.
It was a haven for the elite, the ambitious, and the chronically over-caffeinated.
Zane stepped off the magnetic transit rail and blended into the river of students flowing through the main gates.
The campus was alive with morning energy. Massive holographic advertisements for memory-enhancing study aids and unregulated energy drinks hovered in the courtyard, buzzing softly.
"Yo! Zane!"
Zane stopped, suppressing a sigh as he turned around. Walking toward him was the duo he spent most of his waking hours trying to survive.
Sloane Aris was marching ahead, her hair dyed a toxic, neon pink that practically hurt to look at in the morning sun.
She wore a pristine white lab coat thrown haphazardly over a pleated skirt, her heavy combat boots clicking aggressively against the pavement.
She was brilliantly smart, entirely devoid of a filter, and considered making Zane's life difficult her primary hobby.
Trailing a few steps behind her was Bastien Vark.
Bastien was everything Zane wasn't: loud, conventionally gorgeous, entirely carefree, and constantly flanked by a floating camera drone.
He was the university's resident micro-celebrity, famous for his 'Day in the Life of a Hero Student' vlog that currently had half the campus hopelessly swooning over him.
"You look like absolute garbage, Alaric," Sloane announced as she reached him. She didn't hesitate to reach out and poke him hard in the cheek. "Did you stay up until 4 AM playing 'Sim-Surgeon' again?"
"Close," Zane lied effortlessly, offering a tired, lopsided smile. "Twenty-page research paper on mana-infused tumor extraction. It's a thrill a minute, Sloane. You should try reading it sometime."
"Pass," she snorted. "I'll stick to pharmacology. At least I don't have to touch the squishy stuff."
Bastien caught up, slapping a heavy hand down on Zane's injured shoulder. Zane locked his jaw to keep from wincing. "Zane, my man! You missed the absolute rager last night! It was legendary. I even got drone footage of a Level 2 mana-burst lighting up the lower districts. The algorithm is loving it—my views are through the roof!"
Zane stared blankly at him. He had been in the lower districts last night. He had absolutely caused that mana-burst.
"Sorry, Bas. Some of us actually need a degree to get a job," Zane said, adjusting his bag.
"Degrees are for people without a brand," Bastien shot back, flashing a million-watt smile over his shoulder at his hovering drone. "Anyway, skip the library. We're heading to the main auditorium. Everyone's buzzing about some guest speaker."
"I have class," Zane said, turning to walk away.
"Class is canceled, genius," Sloane said, grabbing the back of his hoodie to pull him along.
"The entire medical and tactical wing was ordered to report to the auditorium. Something about a 'special mandate' from the city administration."
Zane frowned.
A cold prickle of unease washed over the back of his neck. 'Special mandates' from the city never meant anything good.
The university's main auditorium was suffocatingly packed.
Hundreds of students were crammed shoulder-to-shoulder in the tiered seating, the vast room humming with the nervous chatter of a thousand overlapping conversations.
Zane found himself wedged between Sloane and Bastien near the middle.
He leaned back in his chair, tipping his head back to close his eyes, but the noise was impossible to tune out. Giving up on sleep, he pulled a scrap of syllabus paper from his bag.
With incredibly precise, surgeon-steady hands, he began folding it. By the time the overhead lights finally dimmed, he had a perfectly symmetrical origami crane resting in his palm.
The chatter instantly died as a figure stepped up to the podium.
It wasn't the Dean.
It was a man carved from absolute granite.
He was middle-aged, his posture rigid, wearing heavy, dark urban fatigues adorned with the silver, star-shaped insignia of the Virexion Plasma Force on the collar.
He carried the heavy, suffocating weight of a man who had seen an unfathomable amount of violence.
"My name is Miran Dax," the man stated. He didn't use the microphone, but his voice boomed effortlessly, bouncing off the acoustic panels at the back of the room. "I am a Lead Recruiter and Tactical Commander for the Virexion Plasma Force."
A collective murmur of awe rippled through the student body. The Plasma Force were the untouchables.
The frontline soldiers who held the line against rogue mages, street syndicates, and the terrifying God-Avatars that occasionally tried to level the city.
"As the more observant among you may know," Dax continued, his severe eyes sweeping slowly over the crowd, "hostile activity in the Red Zones has spiked by forty percent in the last quarter. The Gods are restless. Their twisted 'vows' are spreading like a contagion through our lower streets. We are bleeding personnel. But more importantly, we are critically short on specialized medical and tactical support."
Zane stopped fiddling with his paper crane. He stared hard at the floor between his boots.
"Effective immediately," Dax's voice rang out, "the city administration has opened the recruitment window for the Plasma Force to all third and fourth-year students in this wing. We aren't looking for bodies. We are looking for the elite. The brilliant. Those of you who want to do more than read about history in a textbook—those who actually want to forge it."
Zane felt nothing but a deep, overwhelming wave of disinterest.
He was already doing infinitely more to keep Virexion from burning to the ground than the entire Plasma Force combined, and he was doing it without some rigid commander breathing down his neck.
He just wanted to get his medical license, keep his head down, and keep making millions in the dark.
"Those of you who have the spine for it," Dax concluded, holding up a small stack of digitized data-pads, "can submit an application today. Physical and tactical evaluations begin next week. Dismissed."
Zane felt Bastien practically vibrating beside him. He looked over. Bastien was leaning over his desk, his eyes wide and shining with ambition.
"This is it," Bastien whispered reverently. "Zane, this is the content of a lifetime. Imagine the aesthetic! 'Bastien Vark: Plasma Force Recruit.' The sponsors will lose their minds!"
"Don't even think about it, Bas," Zane muttered, grabbing his bag. "It's a literal death sentence. You're a vlogger, not a soldier."
"Oh, come on, Zane! Live a little!"
The lecture hall devolved into chaos as students began swarming the exits. Dax stood stoically at a table near the front, collecting data-pads from eager, starry-eyed kids who had no idea what they were signing up for.
Zane was halfway up the aisle, fighting through the crowd, when he realized Bastien wasn't behind him. He looked back toward the stage.
Bastien was standing right in front of Commander Dax. He was frantically tapping away on his personal tablet, a manic, mischievous grin plastered across his face.
"What are you doing?!" Zane yelled, trying to shove his way back down the stairs.
"Just securing our future!" Bastien yelled back over the din of the crowd.
He proudly handed his tablet over to Miran Dax. The Commander glanced at the screen, nodded once in approval, and swiped the data into the military's secure server.
Zane froze in his tracks. The blood drained from his face. "Wait. Bastien... what did you just do?"
Bastien turned around, looking entirely too proud of himself. "I filled out the rapid-enrollment forms! For me, for Sloane... and for you, buddy!"
Zane's heart skipped a beat. "You what?"
"I signed us all up!" Bastien laughed, jogging up the stairs to meet him. "We're a team, right? The three of us, taking on the Gods! It's going to be so incredibly epic!"
Zane felt a vein begin to throb aggressively against his temple. He stared past Bastien, looking at Miran Dax packing up the data-pads.
It was done. Once an application was submitted to the Plasma Force, it was instantly logged into the central military database.
It triggered mandatory physicals. Mandatory bloodwork. Mandatory tactical assessments.
There was no backing out without raising massive red flags. If they put Zane through a military physical, they would instantly realize his biological markers weren't human.
Zane reached out, grabbed Bastien by the lapels of his expensive designer jacket, and hauled him in close.
"You absolute, unfathomable idiot," Zane hissed, his voice trembling with a terrifying blend of rage and panic. "I have a life, Bastien. I have a career plan. I don't want to be a soldier!"
Bastien didn't even have the decency to look scared. He just grinned, completely oblivious to the fact that the guy holding his collar had snapped a man's neck with two fingers eight hours ago.
"Relax, Alaric! You're a med student. They're just going to stick you in a sterile lab somewhere, thousands of miles away from the actual shooting. Plus, think of the optics! Doctors in uniform? You're going to be drowning in dates."
Sloane finally pushed her way through the crowd, looking from the stage, to Bastien, and then to Zane's white-knuckled grip on Bastien's jacket.
"Bastien," she said, her voice dropping an octave, dripping with pure venom.
"You, fucking asshole. If I die in basic training because you wanted views, I am going to haunt your social media feed for the rest of eternity."
"See?" Bastien beamed at Zane. "She's already getting into the spirit of it!"
Zane slowly released Bastien's jacket, dragging a hand exhaustedly down his face. He looked toward the exit, where Commander Dax was just disappearing through the double doors.
His quiet, exhausting, perfectly balanced double life was officially over. He was a ruthless God Killer by night, a perpetually tired med student by day, and now... an unwilling military recruit trapped in the middle.
"I'm going to kill you," Zane whispered to Bastien, deadpan. "I'm going to wait until you're deeply asleep, and I'm going to perform a highly complicated, extremely painful, entirely unanesthetized surgery on your vocal cords."
"Love you too, man!" Bastien chirped, clapping him on the shoulder.
Zane turned and walked away, his mind already spinning out of control.
He had to figure out exactly how to spectacularly fail the military entrance exams without looking like he was doing it on purpose.
But as he remembered the cold, violently perceptive look in Miran Dax's eyes, he had a sinking feeling that failing was going to be the hardest test he'd ever taken.