CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  THE INVISIBLE YEARS

  "Three years of data suppression. Three years of curated mediocrity. I maintained the statistical profile of an unremarkable squad while simultaneously tracking our actual growth trajectory, which exceeded every Academy benchmark by margins I will not disclose here. The cognitive dissonance was considerable. The result was worth it."

  --- Aldara Vasquez, Classified Intelligence Addendum, Squad Thirteen Performance Review, 2027

  The twin bond carried the knowledge between them like a current. Kael's awareness of what he had set in motion settled into his chest alongside the familiar weight of strategy and consequence. Somewhere in the Academy grounds, Zara Okafor was already climbing.

  A pause. Then: She is going to figure it out. Zara is too smart not to.

  I am counting on it. When she realizes how high we have climbed without anyone noticing, she will stop underestimating us. And she will start preparing for what we actually are instead of what the Academy thinks we are.

  That is either brilliant strategy or reckless provocation.

  Felix is going to have opinions about this.

  Felix has opinions about everything. Loud opinions. Many of them involving the word "terrifying."

  Kael allowed himself a small smile as he resumed his morning forms. The sun was rising over the Academy grounds, painting the sky in shades of pink and gold. The Towers stood sentinel on the horizon, their surfaces catching the light in ways that defied simple reflection.

  Questions without answers. Challenges without clear solutions. The future stretching out before them like an uncharted map.

  Business as usual for Squad Thirteen.

  That evening, on the barracks rooftop, Kael told them about Zara.

  "Let me see if I understand this correctly," Felix said, for what had to be the fourth time in ten minutes. "Zara Okafor. The spatial manipulator. The one who dismantled us so thoroughly in Year One that I still have nightmares about it. That Zara Okafor."

  "Yes, Felix."

  "She approached you in the pre-dawn darkness, alone, without witnesses, and offered to train with us."

  "That is what I said."

  "And you told her no."

  Kael watched Felix process the information through his usual combination of verbal overflow and barely contained relief. Around them, the rest of the squad had arranged themselves across the rooftop in their familiar positions. Sana by the railing, her medical kit within reach. Jiro near the door, his back to the wall. Aldara in the center, tablet out, already calculating probabilities. Lyra cross-legged beside Kael, close enough that their resonances overlapped.

  The evening air bore the smell of cooling stone and distant gardens. Someone on the floors below was practicing fire manipulation, sending traces of smoke drifting upward. The Towers pulsed their slow rhythm on the horizon, patient and eternal.

  "You made the right call," Aldara said, her focus fixed on her tablet. "Joint training with Squad Seven would have exposed our techniques in controlled conditions. They would have gained intelligence on our combat patterns, our communication methods, our synchronization."

  "We would have gained the same intelligence on them," Sana pointed out.

  "Irrelevant. Their tactics are documented. Their patterns are known from three years of tournament competition." Aldara looked up, meeting each of their gazes in turn. "We are the unknown quantity. In an intelligence exchange, we had more to lose than to gain. The refusal was strategically correct."

  "Also," Felix said, "she terrifies me. So there’s that."

  "But you pointed her toward the Network rankings," Lyra said, her voice carrying a subtle edge. "That was a risk."

  "A calculated one." Kael leaned back against the low wall surrounding the rooftop. "Zara was not going to accept a flat refusal. She is too hungry, too competitive, too smart to simply walk away. Giving her a direction channels her energy into something productive. She climbs the rankings, she finds Resonance Actual, she realizes we are not the washouts the Academy thinks we are."

  "And when she figures out that Resonance Actual is us?" Sana asked. Her voice had taken on that contemplative tone that meant she was thinking several steps ahead. "The callsign is anonymous, but Zara is an exceptional analyst."

  "By the time she makes the connection, we will be deep into Year Four preparations. The information becomes a weapon in our favor." Kael met each of their eyes. "Right now, the entire Academy thinks we are cowards. Harlow and his squad said it to our faces today. The dining hall whispers it every time we sit down. When Zara discovers our actual ranking, that perception starts to crack."

  "The question is timing," Aldara said. "If the perception cracks too early, we lose the element of surprise."

  "It will not crack too early. Zara will need weeks to climb high enough in the anonymous rankings to encounter our combat patterns. Weeks more to analyze and identify us. By then, Year Four will be approaching."

  Jiro broke his silence with a single word. "Good."

  Everyone turned to look at him.

  "The refusal was good," he clarified, his rumbling voice sustaining the tone of considered judgment. "Training with her would have been premature. But the hint was good too. She needs to know we are not what they say we are. When we finally step into the light, she should not be surprised. She should be ready."

  "Why?" Felix asked. "Why do we want her ready?"

  "Because crushing an unprepared opponent proves nothing." Jiro’s steady dark gaze swept over the squad with something that might have been affection. "We are not hiding to avoid challenge. We are hiding to ensure the challenge is worthy when it comes."

  What followed was quiet, was comfortable. A silence that happened when a squad had been together long enough to communicate without words.

  "So we keep training," Kael said. "Keep climbing the Network rankings. Keep absorbing the insults and the contempt and the dining hall whispers. One more year."

  "One more year of being called cowards," Felix muttered.

  "One more year of becoming something they cannot ignore," Lyra corrected. Her fire flickered at her collarbone, steady as a heartbeat. "There is a difference."

  "That is what I keep telling myself when Harlow’s squad laughs at us in the corridors." Felix’s grin returned, sharper now. "It is either brilliant strategy or the most elaborate excuse for social humiliation in Academy history."

  "It can be both," Sana said.

  The banter continued, comfortable and warm, as the stars emerged overhead and the Towers pulsed their eternal rhythm. Kael let it wash over him, holding the moment in his memory like a precious thing.

  This was what they were fighting for. Something other than power or recognition. Not even survival.

  Connection. The simple, irreplaceable warmth of people who knew you and chose to stand beside you anyway.

  Whatever the Towers were. Whatever secrets the future held. This was the thing worth protecting.

  Later, after the others had gone to bed and the rooftop belonged to the stars and the Tower-pulse and nothing else, Aldara stayed.

  She told herself it was the insomnia. The same sleeplessness that had followed her since she was nine years old, since the night she had wandered into Aunt Elena’s office looking for a glass of water and found a file open on the desk. A name on the page. A name that should not have been there, connected to events that a nine-year-old could not understand but that her pattern-sight, already awakening, had filed and cross-referenced and refused to let go of.

  She had never told anyone what she saw. Seven years of carrying a pattern she could not complete.

  That was not why she stayed on the rooftop.

  She stayed because Felix had looked at her during the conversation and said something stupid about Harlow’s squad, and she had almost laughed. Not the controlled exhale she allowed herself when his observations were statistically accurate. An actual laugh. It had started building in her chest, the muscles in her face pulling toward an expression she did not authorize, and she had stopped it. Redirected. Filed.

  Pattern-sight showed her everything. The probability cascades of combat. The conspiracy threads of politics. The micro-expressions that told her when someone was lying, afraid, attracted, broken. She saw the world in silver threads of cause and effect, and she could follow any thread to its conclusion.

  Except this one.

  Felix Reyes was noise. He was chaos shaped like a person. His lightning arced in directions her probability models could not predict, his jokes landed at frequencies her analysis could not map, and when he looked at her, really looked at her, through the humor and the deflection and the performing, she could not read what she saw. Not because the data was absent. Because the data was overwhelming. Too many threads. Too many possible meanings. Too many futures branching from a single glance.

  The girl who saw everything. And the thing she wanted most was the one thing she could not see clearly enough to trust.

  On the rooftop, alone, Aldara Vasquez closed her eyes and let the Tower-pulse wash over her. Her pattern-sight went dark. For a few seconds, she was just a girl on a roof, carrying a secret she had never shared and a feeling she could not categorize.

  The stars did not care about her patterns. She found that comforting.

  A week later, they did not plan it. That was the truth Kael would tell himself afterward.

  Squad Thirteen had reserved Training Ground Seven for their afternoon session, the same routine they had followed for two years. Private drills, squad synchronization exercises, the painstaking refinement of techniques they had no intention of revealing to anyone.

  Already there when they arrived: the bleachers. Zara Okafor. Legs crossed. Watching the empty training ground with the patience of a predator who knew her prey would come to her. She was alone. No Squad Seven. No observers. Only Zara Okafor and the pointed provocation of her presence.

  "The reservation schedule said this ground was booked by Squad Thirteen," she said, not looking up. "I was curious what you do in here. Two years of private sessions, and nobody knows what Squad Thirteen’s training actually looks like."

  "That is the point," Lyra said, fire flickering at her fingertips. "Private means private."

  "Private means you have something worth hiding." Zara finally looked up, and her smile carried the same predatory edge from the morning encounter a week ago. "I have been climbing the Network rankings since our conversation. Anonymous matches. I have gone up forty-seven places in seven days."

  "Congratulations," Felix said, his voice carefully neutral despite the sparks dancing between his knuckles. "Is there a reason you are telling us this?"

  "Because at my current ranking, I still have not found you." Zara’s smile sharpened. "Which means you are higher than I expected. Much higher. High enough that the words 'washout' and 'coward' are not merely wrong. They are laughable."

  The training ground went quiet.

  "One session," Zara said, standing. "Not joint training. Not a partnership. One session. You and me, Valdris. Controlled sparring. I want to see what I will be facing in Year Four."

  "We said no," Kael reminded her.

  "You said the timing was wrong for joint training. This is not joint training. This is a single match. One afternoon. After this, I walk away and I do not come back until we meet in the Championships."

  The squad’s attention bore down on him. Lyra’s concern through their bond. Felix’s nervous energy. Jiro’s steady calm. Aldara’s rapid calculation. Sana’s measured assessment.

  He weighed the risks. A single sparring session would reveal something, but not everything. Not the squad synchronization. Not the True Resonance techniques. Individual combat only. Zara would see some of that anyway when they finally competed.

  "One session," he said. "Individual sparring only. No squad techniques."

  "Agreed."

  What followed was twenty minutes that Kael would remember for the rest of his life.

  Zara fought without restraint. Her spatial manipulation bent the training ground into geometries that made his eyes water, closing distance that should have taken seconds in the span of a heartbeat. She was faster than Year One. Dramatically faster. Two years of being the Continental champion had sharpened her into something astonishing.

  Kael had spent those same two years training in shadows. His harmonic sense expanded around her spatial distortions, reading the patterns before they fully formed. He moved in rhythms that surprised even him sometimes, instincts surfacing from somewhere below training, his bloodline reaching toward knowledge his conscious mind did not yet possess.

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  They were evenly matched. For twenty minutes, neither fighter could claim decisive advantage. Strike and counter. Distortion and harmonics. Speed against perception.

  When they stopped, both breathing hard, Zara’s expression carried something Kael had never seen on her face before.

  Respect without reservation.

  "You are not merely better," she said, what resembled reverence in her voice. "You are different. The way you move, the techniques you use. I have never seen anything like them."

  "You will see them again. In Year Four."

  "I look forward to it." She extended her hand. Not the gesture of a rival. The gesture of respect, rare and pointed. "Thank you. For this."

  He took her hand. "One session."

  "One session," she confirmed. Then her smile returned, sharp and hungry. "But I am going to keep climbing the Network rankings. And when I find Resonance Actual up there, I will know exactly whose combat patterns I am looking at."

  Footsteps receded. This time her departure did not sustain the frustration of their first encounter. It carried focused determination, everything she knew freshly recalibrated.

  From the sidelines, where they had watched in absolute silence, Squad Thirteen exhaled collectively.

  "She likes you," Lyra said, appearing at his side.

  "She respects the challenge."

  "Those are not the same thing."

  He glanced at his twin, reading the subtle concern beneath her matter-of-fact tone. "Are you worried?"

  "About Zara? No." Lyra’s eyes tracked the retreating form of the spatial manipulator. "About you not noticing things that are obvious to everyone else? Always."

  "I notice things."

  "You notice tactical things. Strategic things. You do not notice when someone is interested in you as more than a rival." She punched his shoulder lightly. "It is both endearing and frustrating."

  "Noted."

  They walked back toward the barracks together, the rest of the squad falling into formation around them with the ease of long practice. Felix was muttering about spatial manipulators. Sana was reviewing combat stress data on her tablet. Jiro walked in comfortable silence. Aldara was already compiling notes from what she had observed.

  Normal. Familiar. Home.

  Their first Tower entry came in the middle of September, and the interior defied geometry.

  Kael stepped through the barrier and caught himself standing in a forest that could not exist. Trees with bark like polished obsidian rose toward a sky that shifted between purple and gold without warning. The air smelled of ozone and something floral, sweet but alien, carrying notes that his brain could not categorize. Gravity eased here, each step carrying him farther than it should.

  "Stay together," their supervisor said. Commander Chen, a scarred veteran whose eyes never stopped scanning the treeline, moved with careful finesse, every motion shaped by the knowledge that carelessness in Towers meant death. "And stay quiet."

  Squad Thirteen moved as a unit, their two years of training showing in how they automatically fell into formation. Lyra at Kael’s side, her presence a warm constant in his peripheral awareness. Felix and Sana covering their flanks, their resonances complementing each other in patterns that had become instinctive. Jiro forming a living wall at the rear, his earth manipulation already extending into the strange soil beneath their feet. Aldara in the center, where her analytical mind could process everything.

  The Verathos density here, Lyra whispered through their twin bond. It is incredible. I can feel it pressing against my channels like warm water.

  The same pressure filled him. The ambient energy was orders of magnitude greater than anything on Earth. A pressure that made his cultivation cores sing with potential, his harmonic sense expanding almost involuntarily to drink in the unbelievable richness of the environment.

  Understanding struck him. Tower access was worth fighting wars over. Training here for even a few hours would be worth weeks of normal practice.

  They moved deeper into the unimaginable forest. Creatures watched from the shadows. Forms that registered on the edge of perception before vanishing into the alien underbrush. A sound like wind chimes echoed from somewhere distant, beautiful and strange. The trees themselves leaned toward the students, curious about these invaders from another reality.

  "There." Commander Chen pointed toward a clearing ahead.

  The space opened around what could only be described as a ruin. Stone structures jutted from the ground at impossible angles, covered in symbols that glowed faintly in colors Kael’s eyes struggled to process. The architecture was beautiful and disturbing in equal measure, as if designed by minds that understood geometry differently than humans.

  "These are Precursor remains," the commander said, voice low. "Evidence of civilizations that existed before humanity. We have found similar structures in every Tower. Different styles, different cultures, all sharing certain common elements."

  "What happened to them?" Sana asked.

  "We do not know. The Towers contain their ruins, their artifacts, sometimes even their preserved bodies. No living Precursors have ever been found." Commander Chen’s voice bore the ache of old grief. "Some researchers believe the Towers are monuments to dead worlds. Others believe they are refuges. Places where civilizations fled when their reality collapsed."

  Kael studied the glowing symbols, feeling something resonate in his blood. The patterns were different from the Valdris techniques Aunt Sera had shown him, but there was a kinship. A shared language buried beneath the surface differences.

  The Shattered Resonance Sect, he thought. Did they learn from places like this?

  The expedition continued for four hours. Forest gave way to desert, desert became underground cavern, cavern opened onto a beach with an ocean that glowed bioluminescent blue. They observed creatures they could not identify and structures they could not explain. With every step, they felt the Tower’s power pressing against their souls.

  During a brief rest near one of the monitoring stations, Kael found himself studying the alien sky overhead. The colors shifted without pattern, purple bleeding into gold bleeding into shades unnameable in human language. Beautiful and wrong in equal measure.

  What are you thinking? Lyra asked through their bond.

  That we do not belong here, he answered. And that we cannot stay away.

  The pull. You feel it too.

  He nodded. There was something in the Tower that called to him. Something that resonated with the Valdris bloodline, with the techniques Aunt Sera had shown them, with the heritage they were only beginning to understand.

  Dad felt it, he said. Five years ago, when he came to Tower Seven. He felt the same pull. And he went deeper.

  And he did not come back.

  Not yet.

  The word hung between them. Neither yet nor never. A distinction that had sustained them through years of grief and uncertainty. Their father was out there somewhere, in the depths where only certain bloodlines could reach.

  Someday, they would find him.

  The most educational moment came during the environmental sampling phase.

  Squad Thirteen was assigned to collect atmospheric readings from a series of monitoring stations spread through the cleared zone. Standard work. A routine task that kept garrison forces occupied between incidents. The route took them close to the boundary between secured territory and the wilderness beyond.

  "That is the edge of controlled space," Commander Chen said, gesturing toward a line of resonance beacons that pulsed with warning light. "Beyond those markers, we do not control what happens. Creatures roam freely. The environment becomes more hostile. The Verathos density increases sharply."

  Kael stared into the forest beyond the markers. It looked the same as the cleared zone: absurd trees, wrong shadows, the constant low hum of Tower energy. His harmonic sense told him otherwise.

  Something was watching. Not one thing. Many things. Creatures in the underbrush, presences in the canopy, attention focused on the human expedition with predatory interest. They were not attacking because the garrison’s reputation preceded them.

  They were waiting.

  "How far does Level One extend?" he asked.

  "This Tower? Approximately six hundred square kilometers of mapped terrain. We have secured about two of those. The rest is disputed territory at best, hostile wilderness at worst."

  "And the other Towers?"

  "Vary widely. Some Level Ones are only a few square kilometers, contained environments that can be fully controlled. Others extend for thousands of kilometers, containing ecosystems complex enough to rival Earth’s entire biosphere." Commander Chen shook his head. "Tower Eighty-Four in the African sector contains what appears to be an ocean. A functioning ocean, with tides and currents and marine life unlike anything on Earth."

  "An ocean inside a structure four hundred meters wide?"

  "The inside is not limited by the outside. That is the core truth about Towers." The commander’s voice dropped quiet. "Physics as we understand it does not apply. Geometry, distance, even time. All of it becomes flexible. Malleable. As if the rules are suggestions rather than laws."

  They completed the monitoring circuit and started back toward the entrance. The forest pressed in from all sides, old beyond counting and smelling of minerals that had no business growing in soil. The Tower’s attention weighed on him. That strange awareness had been present since they entered.

  It knows we are here, he thought. It has been watching us the whole time.

  The question was what it wanted.

  They were returning to the entrance when it struck him.

  A pulse of resonance from deep within the Tower. Beyond the cleared zone, beyond the garrison’s control, from spaces humans had mapped but never claimed. It pulsed like a heartbeat. Like something vast and ancient acknowledging their presence.

  Like a welcome.

  "Did anyone else feel that?" he asked, voice low.

  Lyra nodded. Through the twin bond. You felt it, and I felt you feeling it.

  The others shook their heads.

  "Feel what?" Felix looked around nervously, sparks already dancing at his fingertips. "Is something coming? Should we run?"

  "No." Kael stared into the forest depths, toward the source of that impossible resonance. "Something knows we are here. Something that does not usually notice visitors."

  Commander Chen had stopped, watching him with sudden sharp attention. "What did you feel, cadet?"

  "A pulse. From deeper in. Like . . ." Kael struggled to describe it. "Like the Tower was saying hello."

  The commander’s expression did not change, but the balance tilted in his eyes. Recognition carrying weight Kael could not parse.

  "We are leaving. Now. Everyone move."

  They hurried back through the entrance, the barrier sealing behind them with final authority. Outside, in the normal air of normal Earth, Kael could still feel an echo of that resonance. Fading but not gone.

  "What just happened?" Lyra whispered.

  "I do not know." He looked back at Tower Seventeen, its surface still flowing with those patterns beyond reckoning. "But I think the Tower noticed us. Noticed me."

  "Is that bad?"

  Kael thought about the pull that lived in his chest. The connection to the Tower that went further than training or curiosity. Something in his bloodline reaching toward answers he did not yet have. Aunt Sera’s warnings echoed in memory. Ancient civilizations. Towers that served purposes humanity could not yet comprehend. Things that waited.

  "I do not know," he said again.

  "But I intend to find out."

  Twelve days later, on a night that smelled of autumn and approaching change, the Network chamber greeted them with its familiar absence of scent.

  That was the first thing Kael always noticed when he entered. The absence of physical smell in the digital interface room, where the air was filtered and recycled and stripped of any organic trace. It was like stepping into a void, a space where human senses found nothing to anchor themselves to.

  Until the systems activated.

  Then came the ozone tang of holographic interfaces, sharp and electric against his tongue. The faint floral intrusion that appeared when the Network strained under heavy load, some quirk of the cooling systems that the technicians had never been able to explain. The subtle wrongness of existing in a space designed for minds, not bodies.

  Kael climbed into the synchronization pod, feeling the familiar press of neural interfaces against his temples. The Network hummed with power as he synced into the digital space. He had been grinding anonymous matches for months now, hiding his identity behind randomized avatars, testing his techniques against opponents who had no idea they were fighting a Valdris twin.

  The system matched based on skill level, not fame or Academy affiliation. Pure combat. Pure measurement.

  The system paired him with an anonymous opponent. Platinum tier, top one hundred globally.

  Kael’s eyebrows rose. Platinum tier was rare in anonymous queues. Most high-ranked players preferred official matches where they could build reputation. Someone in the top hundred hiding their identity suggested interesting possibilities.

  He spawned into the arena. His opponent was already there. A figure wrapped in digital static that obscured their features but could not hide the chrome augmentations gleaming at their temples and wrists. Cybernetic enhancements. Concordat design.

  "Interesting," the figure said, voice distorted by privacy filters. "Your movement patterns suggest Academy training. American Compact, if I am reading the technique signatures correctly."

  Kael said nothing. Observation was a weapon, and he preferred not to give his opponent additional ammunition.

  "Silent type. Fair enough." The figure shifted into a combat stance that flowed like water, chrome augmentations catching the arena’s artificial light. "Let us see what you are hiding."

  The match began.

  Kael moved first, opening with the standard combat pattern Instructor Navarro had drilled into them. A feint designed to draw a response, to force his opponent to reveal their capabilities before he committed to real aggression.

  The cybernetically enhanced fighter did not take the bait. Instead, they sidestepped with mechanical precision, their augmented reflexes allowing them to read his movements in real-time. Chrome tendrils extended from their wrists, reaching for his limbs with grasping intent.

  He disengaged, flowing back into defensive posture. The tendrils followed, but slowly. Slower than they should have been if his opponent was truly pushing their capabilities.

  Testing me, Kael realized. The same way I am testing them.

  The exchange continued for thirty seconds. Probing strikes, careful retreats, neither fighter committing fully to engagement. A conversation in violence, each movement carrying questions and answers.

  Then his opponent laughed, the sound distorted but warm with real amusement.

  "You are good. Better than your ranking suggests. Hiding your real level in anonymous matches while you develop techniques nobody has seen."

  The chrome-enhanced fighter dropped into a new stance, one that suggested serious intent.

  "I appreciate that kind of strategic patience. Who are you?"

  "Kael Valdris," he answered. If his opponent was reaching for real names, hiding would accomplish nothing.

  A pause. Then:

  "Interesting," the figure said again, the word carrying new weight. "I am Kenji Tanaka. Pacific Concordat. Remember the name. You will be hearing it again."

  The name triggered a flicker of recognition. Kenji Tanaka. A Concordat prodigy whose early matches had already become required study material in certain Academy strategy courses. Cybernetic integration specialist. Aggression shaped into art.

  "Likewise," Kael said.

  "Now," Kenji continued, "let us stop pretending. Show me what you can do."

  The second half of the match burned itself into Kael’s muscle memory.

  Kenji fought like a storm given human shape. Chrome tendrils lashed out with increased speed, forcing Kael to rely on his harmonic sense to predict their paths. Energy blades formed along Kenji’s forearms, their edges humming with power that bit into Kael’s defenses even through the Network’s safety filters.

  Kael adapted. He had to. His movements shifted from Academy-standard patterns to the deeper rhythms his mother had drilled into him. The ones that belonged to the Shattered Resonance Sect, refined through clandestine training sessions far from any official curriculum.

  He let his harmonic sense expand, not just reading Kenji’s attacks but organizing his own responses to meet them. Every time a tendril lashed toward his leg, his weight was already shifting. Every time an energy blade cut for his shoulder, his guard was already there.

  Kenji adjusted. Each time Kael adapted to a pattern, the Concordat fighter abandoned it, building a new one on the fly. It was like fighting a mirror that refused to reflect the same image twice.

  They drove each other higher. Faster. Sharper. The arena around them became an abstract blur, all focus narrowing to the exchange of blows and the invisible currents of intent beneath them.

  When the system finally called the match a draw on time-out, both avatars were marked with the digital equivalents of bruises and lacerations. Both fighters stood, breathing hard in the simulated air.

  "Good," Kenji said. "Very good. I was beginning to worry the Compact was sending only mediocrity to the Proving."

  "You are planning to compete?" Kael asked.

  "Obviously." Kenji’s chrome gleamed in the arena’s artificial light. "I will be there in two years. So will you. I prefer to know my future opponents in advance. It makes victory more satisfying."

  "Confident," Kael said.

  "Accurate," Kenji corrected. "Do not disappoint me, Valdris. I would hate for this to have been our peak."

  The arena dissolved around them as the system logged the result. Back in the Network chamber, Kael opened his eyes to the sterile air and the hum of cooling systems.

  Rivals, he thought. Not enemies. Not yet.

  He could feel the future coalescing around him. Zara in the Continental bracket. Kenji in the Concordat. Other names he did not yet know in the remaining blocs. A web of connections forming years before the Global Proving.

  The invisible years were almost over.

  Soon, the whole world would see what Squad Thirteen had become.