The waiting area of Sector 4 smelled of antiseptic pine and fear. It was a chemical scent, sharp enough to burn the back of the throat, designed to mask the underlying odor of three thousand bodies sweating in close proximity.
Su Yuan leaned against a pillar of brushed aluminum. The metal was cold against his shoulder, seeping through the cheap fabric of his second-hand jacket. It felt good. The cold numbed the ache in his ribs where the binding was too tight.
He checked his vitals on the internal HUD, keeping his face blank.
**[ Host Condition: Sub-Optimal. ]**
**[ Muscular Recovery: 14%. ]**
**[ Soul Energy: 0.04 Units. ]**
He was running on empty. The fight with Kael had been two days ago, but his body still felt like it had been disassembled and put back together by a mechanic who had lost the instruction manual. His joints clicked. His bone marrow itched.
Around him, the competition preened.
These weren't the gutter-rats of Sector 9. These were the children of mid-tier executives and successful merchants. They wore compression suits that retailed for more than Su Yuan's lifetime earnings. Their skin was flawless, scrubbed clean of industrial grime, and their temples hummed with the soft, azure light of legitimate, high-end implants.
Su Yuan had a hole in his head and a lie in his pocket.
"Hey, Miner."
The voice came from the left. Su Yuan didn't turn immediately. He let the silence stretch, a trick he'd picked up from Node 33—the accountant who used silence to make clients sweat.
Slowly, he turned.
A boy stood there. Blond hair, gelled into a rigid fin. His eyes were modified, the irises replaced with gold apertures that clicked as they zoomed in on Su Yuan's frayed collar.
" ID 892-BB," the boy read from his own HUD. "Outer Rim Settlement 4. Mining accident survivor." He smirked. "Didn't know they taught calculus in the rock pits. You cheated on the written, didn't you?"
Su Yuan looked at the boy's neck. There was a pulse point there. A cluster of nerves just under the jaw.
*Node 001 (Li Wei) suggests a throat jab,* the System supplied unhelpfully. *Probability of collapse: 94%.*
Su Yuan pushed the thought away. "I read a lot," he said. His voice was gravel. "It gets dark in the mines. Nothing else to do."
The boy laughed. It was a sharp, barking sound. "Right. Well, don't worry about the cheating. The Combat Exam filters out the trash. You can't fake reflexes."
He shoved past Su Yuan, his shoulder checking Su Yuan's bad side.
Su Yuan didn't flinch. He didn't grimace. He just took a shallow breath and waited for the pain to subside into a dull throb.
*Trash,* he thought. *He calls me trash.*
**[ Genesis Protocol: Observation. ]**
**[ The organic unit 'Blond' has weak knees. Structural integrity of left ACL is compromised. Recommended Action: Kick. ]**
"Shut up," Su Yuan whispered.
A chime rang out. It wasn't a bell; it was a sub-bass thrum that vibrated the floor.
The massive blast doors at the end of the hall hissed open.
"Group C," a voice amplified by speakers announced. "Proceed to the arena."
Su Yuan pushed off the pillar. He fell in line with the herd, a wolf in a sheep's skin, walking toward the slaughterhouse.
***
The arena was a circle of white sand surrounded by tiered seating. High above, behind polarized glass, the shadowy shapes of the Admissions Board watched.
Down on the sand, twenty combat droids stood motionless.
They were Mark-IV Suppressors. Bipedal, matte grey, with hydraulic pistons for biceps and a sensory array where a face should be. They weren't military-grade—Kael would have torn them apart like wet paper—but for an eighteen-year-old student, they were a nightmare.
Standing in front of the line of droids was Instructor Lin.
She was a woman carved from flint. Her hair was pulled back so tightly it pulled the skin of her forehead taut. She wore a sleeveless combat vest, revealing arms that were a roadmap of scars and subcutaneous plating. She didn't hold a weapon. She didn't need one.
She walked down the line of trembling students. Her boots made no sound on the sand.
"The test is simple," Lin said. Her voice didn't carry; it cut. "The droid will engage you at Level 2 intensity. Your goal is not to win. Your goal is to survive for three minutes while maintaining combat efficiency."
She stopped in front of the blond boy. He stood straighter, puffing out his chest.
"We measure neural reaction time," Lin continued, staring into the boy's gold eyes until he blinked. "We measure force output. We measure stress management. If you panic, you fail. If you freeze, you fail. If you die..." She paused. "Well, the waivers are signed."
She moved on.
She stopped in front of Su Yuan.
Su Yuan looked at her nose. It had been broken once, set slightly crooked. A manual reset. No autodoc.
Lin stared at him. Her eyes were dark, devoid of cybernetics. Human eyes. They were worse than the gold ones. They stripped him naked.
"You look like you're about to fall over, 892," she said.
"I'm conserving energy," Su Yuan replied.
Lin's mouth twitched. A micro-expression. Amusement? Disgust?
"We'll see," she said.
She walked to the center of the arena and raised a hand.
"Positions!"
Su Yuan stepped into the circle marked '14'. Opposite him, Droid 14 whirred to life. Its sensory array cycled from standby-yellow to combat-red.
*Don't show off,* Su Yuan told himself. *Just survive. Dodge the heavy hits. Take a glancing blow. Roll with it. Look desperate.*
He needed to be average. Average got you a scholarship. Exceptional got you vivisected.
"Begin!" Lin barked.
The arena exploded into motion.
To his left, the blond boy engaged his droid with a flurry of practiced kickboxing. His gold eyes flashed, predicting the droid's movements, his expensive implants doing the heavy lifting.
Droid 14 lunged at Su Yuan.
It was fast. A straight right cross aimed at his sternum.
Su Yuan stepped left.
His body felt heavy, sluggish. The lack of energy was crippling. He cleared the punch by an inch, feeling the wind of it ruffle his hair.
*Node 33 (Accountant): Panic rising. Heart rate 140.*
*Node 001 (Li Wei): Pattern recognition active. It overextends on the right.*
The droid recovered instantly, swinging a backhand.
Su Yuan ducked. His knees screamed. He barely got under it. He scrambled back, kicking up sand.
"Keep moving!" Lin yelled from the sidelines.
The droid pursued. It didn't tire. It didn't feel pain. It just calculated trajectory and executed violence.
Su Yuan blocked a low kick with his shin. *Crack.* Pain shot up his leg, white-hot and blinding. He gritted his teeth, forcing a stumble.
*Perfect,* he thought. *I look weak. I look like I'm barely hanging on.*
He circled, breathing hard. The droid reset its stance.
Then, the glitch happened.
It wasn't a glitch in the droid. It was a glitch in the SoulNet.
Su Yuan's focus wavered. The pain in his shin caused a spike in his neural distress levels. The System interpreted this distress not as a signal to retreat, but as a request for optimization.
**[ Host Efficiency: Critical Low. ]**
**[ Combat Protocol: Engaging Auto-Assist. ]**
**[ Source: The Collective. ]**
"No," Su Yuan hissed. "Cancel."
**[ Request Denied. Survival Priority Alpha. ]**
The world slowed down.
The white sand froze in mid-air. The sweat flying from the blond boy's face hung like diamonds.
The data stream overlaid Su Yuan's vision. Red lines. Geometry. Physics.
He looked at Droid 14. He didn't see a metal man anymore. He saw a collection of stress vectors. He saw the gyroscope spinning inside the torso chassis. He saw the vibration frequency of the alloy plating.
*320 Hertz.*
The droid was already moving, winding up for a heavy haymaker.
Su Yuan's body moved without his permission.
It wasn't the clumsy, desperate scramble of the last minute. His spine straightened. His breathing synced with the hum of the ventilation system. His center of gravity dropped.
It was the muscle memory of fifty street fighters, refined by the cold logic of a machine.
The droid's fist came down like a hammer.
Su Yuan didn't dodge. He stepped *into* the guard.
He raised his right hand. He didn't make a fist. He extended his index and middle finger.
*The Primary Shockwave Technique.*
It was an F-rank skill. Garbage tier. It was designed to shake internal organs by matching their resonance frequency.
But the System wasn't just using the skill. It was perfecting it.
Su Yuan's fingers tapped the droid's chest plate.
It looked like a caress. A gentle poke.
*Tap.*
Su Yuan channeled the last 0.04 units of his Soul Energy into that single point.
The energy didn't push. It vibrated. It traveled through the alloy chest plate, ignoring the armor, and found the spinning gyroscope housing inside.
The vibration met the rotation. Resonance.
*PING.*
A high-pitched sound, like a crystal wine glass shattering, pierced the noise of the arena.
The droid didn't fly backward. It didn't explode.
It just... died.
The red light in its sensor array blinked out. The hydraulic pressure in its limbs vanished instantly. The heavy metal arms dropped to its sides with a lifeless *clank*.
The machine stood there for a second, balanced perfectly, and then simply tipped over, face-planting into the sand.
Dead weight.
Su Yuan stood over it, his fingers still extended.
The System released him.
**[ Threat Neutralized. ]**
**[ Energy: 0.00 Units. ]**
**[ Entering Hibernation. ]**
Gravity returned. Su Yuan slumped, his knees buckling. He caught himself on his thighs, gasping for air.
The arena had gone quiet.
The blond boy had stopped fighting. Other students were staring. The sound of that *PING* had been wrong. It wasn't the sound of combat. It was the sound of expensive things breaking in ways they shouldn't.
Sand crunched.
Instructor Lin was there.
She didn't look at Su Yuan. She looked at the droid.
She knelt down. She grabbed the droid's shoulder and rolled it onto its back. There was no mark on the chest plate. No dent. No scratch.
She pulled a diagnostic pad from her belt and plugged it into the droid's neck port.
Her eyebrows pulled together.
"Internal gyroscope shattered," she read aloud. "Main processor fused. Hydraulic fluid... emulsified?"
She looked up.
Su Yuan was trying to look innocuous. He was trying to look like a lucky idiot. He rubbed the back of his neck, feigning confusion.
"I think... I think it shorted out?" Su Yuan offered. "I just pushed it away and it fell."
Lin stood up slowly. She towered over him. Up close, she smelled of gun oil and peppermint.
"It didn't short out, 892."
She grabbed his right hand. Her grip was iron. She turned his hand over, inspecting his fingers. No cybernetics. No hidden emitters in the skin. Just calluses and dirt.
"A Mark-IV has a localized dampening field," Lin said, her voice low enough that only he could hear. "To shatter the gyro, you need to hit it with four tons of force. Or..."
She looked into his eyes.
"Or you need to hit it with a frequency that turns the metal into liquid."
Su Yuan swallowed. His throat was dry as dust. "I dug tunnels, Instructor. You learn to find the cracks in the rock. Hit it right, the wall falls. Hit it wrong, you break your pick."
It was a lie. A good one. But it was a lie.
Lin stared at him for a long ten seconds. She was dissecting him. She was looking for the tell.
Then, she let go of his hand.
"A pickaxe isn't a hand," she said.
She turned to the observation deck. She made a sharp gesture—a cutting motion across her throat.
"Test concluded!" she shouted. "Clear the floor."
She looked back at Su Yuan.
"You passed," she said.
Su Yuan let out a breath he didn't know he was holding. "Thank you, Instruc—"
"Don't thank me," Lin cut him off. Her eyes narrowed. "I'm flagging your file. 'Person of Interest.' You're admitted, Miner. But if I find out you're using unauthorized military combat software... if I find out you're a *sapper*..."
She stepped closer. The threat radiated off her like heat from a furnace.
"I will peel you apart to find the drive."
She turned on her heel and walked away.
Su Yuan stood alone in the circle. The other students gave him a wide berth as they exited, whispering. They looked at the dead droid, then at the skinny boy in the cheap jacket. They didn't see a victim anymore. They saw something confusing. Something dangerous.
Su Yuan walked toward the exit tunnel.
His legs shook with every step. He was completely drained. If a breeze hit him now, he'd fall over.
As he entered the shadows of the tunnel, away from the sun and the eyes, the System flickered in the darkness of his mind.
**[ Genesis Protocol: Analysis. ]**
The red eye opened in the black void of his thoughts.
**[ The 'Tap'. Elegant. Minimal energy expenditure. Maximum entropy. ]**
**[ This is the path. ]**
**[ But the Alpha Female (Lin) is suspicious. She perceives the anomaly. ]**
"She's going to watch me," Su Yuan whispered to the empty tunnel.
**[ Let her watch. ]**
**[ New Blueprint Unlocked: Neural Masking Algorithm. ]**
**[ You must hide the signal in the noise. The Academy is loud. We will use their noise. ]**
Su Yuan leaned against the concrete wall. He closed his eyes.
He was in. He had the scholarship. He had the access.
But he had made a mistake. He had shown teeth in a room full of wolves.
He pushed off the wall and limped deeper into the academy. The shadows swallowed him whole, but for the first time in days, Su Yuan didn't feel like prey.
He felt like a virus that had just breached the firewall.