Back in my dorm, the first thing I did was weld the door shut from the inside.
The heavy clang of metal echoed in the cramped space, followed by a blinding arc light that sealed the final gap. Then, I walked to the corner of the room, found the rusty main breaker, and yanked it down hard.
*Ka-chunk!*
The entire dormitory system lost power instantly, severing all physical connection to the academy's ubiquitous, nauseating network. The lights died, leaving only the faint blue glow of my personal terminal to cast a cold, frosty hue over the mountains of spare parts piled around me.
Now, this was my turf.
I dropped onto the cold floor, surrounded by the various components I had stripped from the *Marauder*. The air was thick with the scent I knew best—a mixture of engine oil, metal, and the stench of burnt coolant. This smell brought me more peace than any perfume ever could, letting my frayed nerves relax a little.
I pulled the smooth, cold black data chip from my pocket and slotted it into my personal terminal with a sharp *click*. I took a deep breath, filling my lungs with the chilly air.
Kaelan, let's see what kind of game you're really playing.
"Initiate deep scan," I commanded the terminal, my voice hoarse.
On the screen, a digital storm erupted instantly.
Countless fragmented data streams surged and tumbled wildly, like the wreckage of a starship caught in the direct path of a stellar storm. Every inch of the structure had been torn apart, melted, and haphazardly welded back together. Crimson error codes flashed incessantly like spurting arterial blood; yellow damage warnings spread in massive patches like necrotic tissue; but mostly, there were abyssal black voids—graveyards left behind where data had been utterly annihilated.I couldn't help but frown, a low grunt escaping my throat. This was ten thousand times worse than I had imagined.
This wasn't ordinary combat damage at all. Ordinary damage is like a broken bone; even if it's broken, the bone is still there, and you can find a clean break. But this mess before me... it was as if it had been vaporized by some incomprehensible force, not even leaving bone ash behind.
"Just as I thought," I muttered to myself, my fingertips tracing the pitch-black voids on the screen.
My "Engineer's Eye" could "see" things that ordinary scanners couldn't capture. Deep within those data graveyards, I could see faint, ghost-like energy remnants. They were like dried blood splattered on the walls of a crime scene, silently recounting the final moments of horror.
The form of these remnants—those twisted, unstable energy structures—was almost identical to the "Ghost Echoes" described in my parents' journals!
My heart constricted suddenly, and a bone-deep chill shot up my spine to my brain.
Kaelan... he didn't give me this by coincidence. He knew, or at least suspected, that I could understand this stuff! That bastard—he wasn't testing my skills; he was using me as his high-end scanner! A tool to decipher the whispers of ghosts!
I spat, shaking the anger and fear out of my head.
Now wasn't the time for this. Three days—I only had seventy-two hours.
I poured all my computing resources into analyzing these data remnants. My brain entered a state of absolute focus. Everything around me vanished—the welded door, the cold floor, the piles of parts... all faded into nothingness. In my world, only this wasteland of data remained.
I was like an archaeologist with a small brush, clearing away debris in a cursed ancient tomb.
And my "Engineer's Eye" was my brush, my trowel.I painstakingly extracted fragments of useful information from the chaotic, scorched data streams. I could "see" a charred energy conduction path that took the shape of a giant, dead serpent on the data plane. I had to follow the trail of its blackened skeletal remains, reconstructing its neural network segment by segment.
"...Abnormal rise in engine temperature, exceeding safety threshold by 900%..."
"...Energy core output instantaneously exceeded theoretical limit by 1200%..."
"...Keel structure stress overload; irreversible metal fatigue detected in segments seven through twelve..."
I "unearthed" the fragmented logs from the ruins, line by line. I could feel it—I was reconstructing the final moments of a mecha before its destruction. It hadn't been taken down by an enemy; it had been ripped apart from the inside, overloaded to the point of bursting by its own power!
I lost track of time until a burning protest from my stomach made me realize I hadn't eaten in over twenty-four hours. I blindly fumbled for an energy bar nearby, tore it open, and shoved it into my mouth, my eyes never leaving the screen for a second. My eyes were as dry as sandpaper, but I didn't dare blink, for fear of missing even a single fleeting data shadow.
After restoring about twenty percent of the data, I managed to piece together the outline of a mecha. Its design was... insane. The power and propulsion systems were utterly mismatched, as if some arrogant lunatic had forcibly crammed the heart of a dragon into the chest of a rabbit.
This wasn't built for combat; it was built for suicide.
As the restoration reached sixty percent, I saw the core of the disaster. I unearthed a command buried at the very bottom, one that had been repeatedly scorched and encrypted.
This command... I had never seen anything like it!
It wasn't an attack command, nor a defensive one, nor any known maneuver command.
It looked more like... a charging sequence.
A mad command that attempted to compress the engine's entire energy output into an infinitesimal singularity within a mere 0.01 secondsWhat were they trying to do?
My mind raced, countless possibilities flashing through my head only to be discarded. Compression... space... singularity...
Wait!
I suddenly remembered a theory from my parents' journals, one that had been circled and marked "Extremely Dangerous." The ultimate theoretical application of "Ghost Echoes"—using an ultra-high-density energy singularity to tear through conventional space and achieve an instantaneous "jump"!
A space jump!
My breath hitched. My head spun from the discovery, and I stood up instinctively, knocking over a pile of gears and parts with a loud, metallic clatter.
The underlying logic of this command, its utterly insane method of energy draw—it was a perfect match for the theoretical descriptions of "Ghost Echoes" in my parents' journals!
They actually tried to use this hunk of junk to attempt a space jump?
Idiots! Arrogant, suicidal idiots!
That poor mecha—its structure, its materials, its fragile frame—there was no way it could withstand that kind of energy load! The result was... *Boom!* It was ripped apart from the inside by its own engine!
The engine's wail.
That wasn't a combat log; it was a scream of agony, its last words as it tore itself to pieces!
I leaned against the cold wall, my heart hammering against my ribs.
I see now.
I understand everything!
This wasn't just an accident. This was a secret, unauthorized test of a "Ghost Engine" prototype! And Kaelan... he handed the "black box" of this failed test right to me! He didn't want to know why the engine malfunctioned; he wanted me to figure out why the "jump" failed!
A surge of fury erupted from deep within me, nearly swallowing my reason. That bastard! What does he think I am? A free failure analyst?But soon, that fury morphed into a cold, calculating thrill. I stared at the lethal string of commands on the screen like I was eyeing a perfect trophy.
You handed me a knife, Kaelan. You just didn't realize that the point is now pressed against your own throat.
I couldn't help but let out a low chuckle, the sound echoing eerily in the silent room.
Checkmate, Your Highness.
Day three. The final hour before the deadline.
I stretched, my bones popping and cracking like my whole body was about to fall apart. Before me, the screen of my personal terminal displayed the restoration progress: ninety-two percent.
That was enough.
The restored data laid it all out with crystal clarity: Imperial Year XXX, at the Imperial frontier in an asteroid belt codenamed "The Hive," a prototype unit codenamed "Icarus" suffered a catastrophic failure during a test of a "new-model FTL engine," resulting in the total loss of the craft and its pilot.
From the residual star charts, I even managed to pinpoint the exact coordinates of that asteroid belt. It was a lawless stretch of the frontier where the Empire's reach was tenuous at best. A perfect crime scene. A perfect cover-up.
I repackaged the restored data, but not without making a few subtle adjustments.
I scrubbed every mention of my findings regarding the "Ghost Engine" and "spatial jumps" from the report. What I gave him instead was a clean, purely technical failure analysis. It detailed the structural mismatch between the engine and the chassis, the fatal flaws in the cooling system, and the catastrophic spikes in the power output curve... every point hit the mark, and every one proved that my skills were irreplaceable.
But as for the true purpose of the test, I didn't breathe a word.
This was my leverage. My insurance. My... sword.
I sent the encrypted data package to that stone-cold adjutant, Seraphina, via a secure, one-time channel. At the end of the message, I left only a single line:
"Job done. Now, leave me alone."
Send.
Just as I was about to shut down the terminal and zone out, my device suddenly let out a sharp, irregular shriek.It wasn't a reply from Seraphina.
I snapped my eyes open and sat bolt upright. On the screen, an anonymous, untraceable encrypted comm request was flashing frantically.
Frowning, I opened the channel.
There was no video, only a line of cold text, appearing like a transcript from a voice scrambler, slowly materializing in the center of the screen:
"Well done. But don't celebrate too soon. Restoring the 'Icarus' data only opened the cage door. Now, the 'Ghost' is awake."