Chương 1: Start Reading

"Three…. Two…. One…. FIGHT!", as the buzzer rang, Freya dashed forward at maximum speed, her war-axe trailing behind her. Just before she reached her opponent, she abruptly stopped and stepped back once, calmly spacing herself just far enough outside of Fel'Keza's reach to dodge the incoming swipe of his claws. Taking advantage of the missed swipes, she moved into range once again, knocking Fel'Keza off-balance with a well timed strike of her war-axe.

Without wasting any time, Freya immediately followed up with a vertical slice, launching Fel'Keza around three metres into the air, before jumping up herself to meet him mid-air with another attack…" Dash into range, back-step to dodge the swipe, dash into jab to stun, followed by up-special to knock him up. Then it's just air-juggling with a couple bounces for resets and we should be golden…"

Thea calmly reflected upon her initial Freya vs Fel'Keza gameplan, clicking her tongue at the sub-par performance she had portrayed so far." Could've been more than a second faster on the last round, I'm really off my game today…" Seven seconds later, the game screen flashed with the announcement of the winner.

WINNER: Freya Score: 3 - 0 FLAWLESS VICTORY Thea took off the VR Helmet, unwinding her dirty blonde hair from the cable that attached her controller to the arcade machine, before she carefully detached it from the input port.

She gently wound the cable around the controller, making sure to leave enough leeway for the cable to coil around it and hopefully not break internally. Most players preferred to use the neural-link to play games, due to the ease of access, simple handling and superior performance created by the missing lag-time between the input and triggering of the action.

Thea, however, had always favoured the more antique command interface of a controller, whenever she didn't require the performance of the neural-link, such as for big tournaments or the like. Just a couple of years ago she had finally managed to get her hands on one as a prize for winning the local arcade tournament. The very one she was caringly placing into its protective casing in her bag now.

It had originally been intended as a collector's item for the winner of the tournament, as controllers were not seen as a premiere input device anymore, ever since the mainstream introduction of the neural-link about 600~ years prior. While it took some time for most people to accept the new technology, by now, the amount of newly produced controllers was exactly 0, as far as Thea knew.

She had searched for years to try and find a way to acquire one so she could stop using Thomas' old showpiece for her less-competitive matches, but had continuously failed to do so, as they were simply collector's trophies at this point and she sorely lacked the funds to buy anything from a collector, much less an old-tech electronic.

With a slight smile on her face, as she reminiscently thought about her past woes of acquiring the old-tech device, she finished packing up and shouldered her old, worn bag with the one remaining synth-leather strap before heading towards the front-desk of the arcade to say goodnight to Thomas. Without realising it herself, it had already become quite late, but there was nothing she could do about it. It was the last day before the monthly reset, after all!

She had to get all the remaining high scores set and finish all her competitive matches today, otherwise she would miss out on this months' drawings and prizes. By this point, nobody around her age was still around in the arcade. The night was home to the old folk: Adults and fossils alike gathered here at night, to lament about their lives while drinking cheap alcohol and playing video games from their childhood, reminding them about a better time.

Thea knew she didn't belong here at this time of day, so she quickened her steps.

"Ahhh, looks like you're finally done? I was getting worried there, Thea." Thomas looked up from behind the front desk with a broad smile, wiping his oil-slicked hand on an already filthy rag before running it through his perpetually greasy black hair. His usual jumpsuit-and-vest combo was, as always, a complete mess by now—streaked with grime, oil, and a few other questionable stains that hinted at a long day elbows-deep in machine guts and dealing with various customers of questionable repute.

He swore the outfit made him look like a serious businessman while still being ready to dive under a console or crack open an entire arcade machine at a moment's notice. To Thea, though, it just made him look exactly like what he was: Thomas.

"Hope all went well? Got everything lined up for tomorrow?" he inquired in his usual friendly tone.

"Yes, yes...! I know, I'm late! So many people challenged me and my Freya this month, I hadn't anticipated that at all… The devs really ought to put a limit on challenges, else I'll be swamped so much that I can't finish all of them every month in the future…" she playfully pouted.

"Thanks for always letting me stay, Thomas. You know, I really appreciate it. It won't happen again!"

"Yeeees, I get it, Thea. You say that every month, you know?" the mildly corpulent man chuckled, leaning slightly forward over the front desk, the old wood creaking under his weight.

"Now, get going. We don't want the Old Man to get uppity again, you know how cranky war vets can get... I'll see you tomorrow at the usual time." Just before he turned away from Thea to continue his work, he spoke again.

"Oh and thank you for the fixes on the tech issues, as per usual. You'll find some extra credits in your account for all the work you've done this month. While I can't hire you officially, never let anyone say I don't treat my people well! Remember to leave the keys with me, before you zoom off." With a bright smile, Thea slammed the keyring onto the front-desk "Thank you, Thomas! You're the absolute best there is! Thank you so much, I really don't know what I'd do without you!

I'll be sure to let all of them know!", while she wasn't exactly sure who "them" were, she'd be found dead in a gutter before she let anyone bad-mouth Thomas. Not on her watch! After pulling down the hood of her pullover deep enough to hide her face, she sprinted out of the arcade with a renewed burst of energy, meeting the night-life atmosphere of Lumiosia's Undercity head on. The usual aroma of rusted metal, spilled alcohol and way too many humans in one place assaulted her nose, but she paid it no mind.

This is where she had grown up, after all. With practised ease, Thea ran along the alleyways of the undercity, jumping over broken crates and humans alike without stopping, pretending she was a ninja from the old movies that the Old Man loved to watch. Passing by one of the few still maintained paved roads of the undercity, she quickly made a stop at the nutrient paste machine, to pick up an extra dosage of the chicken-flavoured one. Tomorrow was reset-day, after all. She needed to be on her A-game. At least…

that's how she justified the extra expenditure to herself. Quickly checking her account, she allowed herself a slight smile.

"734 Imperial Credits… I don't think I've had this much money in my entire life… Thomas really is the best!" She also noted the winnings from her competitive matches as being higher than the month before.

"It ain't gambling if you really are that good!" she mused Old Man James' Third Golden Rule to herself with a cheeky grin. Packing away the two chicken-flavoured nutrient packs, she picked up where she left off with a start. Just a couple minutes later she finally reached her destination: An old, worn-down metal shack located in an alleyway behind a dilapidated office complex. To Thea, this was simply "home".

As she scanned her wrist-bracelet to the rudimentary security system at the door, she pulled down her hood and started to rummage around her bag for the previously stowed away nutrient packs. It was easier to appease an angry old man with some superior food, after all.

"Well, well, well. If it isn't the long-lost Thea herself…" came the raspy voice of Old Man James through the slowly opening metal door. Thea knew this spiel all too well. The Old Man was a stickler for rules, especially those regarding being "on time". He would often say "this would not fly in the UHF, missy!" when scolding her.

"I brought chicken packs!" she quickly interjected the brewing chiding.

"... Chicken, eh? … Alright then, I guess we should eat first," the voice answered after a second of deliberation. Thea had guessed right once again. Even the Old Man himself would let rule violations slide for a chicken pack! Stepping inside of her home, Thea dropped off her bag together with her mud- and grime-covered boots at the entrance, before fully entering the main living room and kitchen. Her home, or rather, Old Man James' home that she also happened to live in, was a simple construction.

It had a living room and kitchen with a single table and two downright ancient metal chairs, two small bedrooms and a bathroom that even had a functioning shower. It was fairly luxurious for the undercity and Thea was very happy to be able to live here, even though she rarely openly showed it. Being able to have her own room was something that most others around her age wouldn't even dare to dream of!

She made her way towards the kitchen's processing-unit to heat up the chicken packs for them, as the Old Man came into the living room and kitchen from his bedroom.

"Good to see you well, Thea. Welcome home," he offered with a warm smile on his scarred, grizzled face. Old Man James was a veteran. A true one at that, not one of those fakes that merely took civilian duties and touted off the UHF's achievements as their own. He had the years and permanent injuries to prove it. Thea often caught herself wondering if he might have been considered handsome once, back before life had carved him into what he was now.

He carried himself with a quiet dignity, every movement beyond precise, his posture unnaturally straight at all times—as though he refused to let his battered, dilapidated body define him. But his face told a different story. No amount of poise or willpower could hide the scars—all but a single one earned in the Marines—that crisscrossed his skin, nor the burn marks that mottled his features. Whatever he had looked like before, it was hard to imagine anyone calling him handsome nowadays.

His sharp, brown eyes and the short ashen-coloured hair, that was somehow always perfectly kept, did little to offset the impression left by the damage. If anything, they only made the contrast sharper—like he had put effort into maintaining everything he still had control over, even if the rest of him had been claimed by fire and time. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

He didn't talk much about himself, so Thea had no real way to know how he truly felt or much about his personal life. What he did talk about a lot, however, was the wars he was a part of, the UHF, his squad and his experiences in the Marines. It was truly how he defined himself as a human being and frankly, Thea was quite envious of that fact. After all, she didn't really have anything to define herself by, except for holding high scores in a local arcade or winning some competitive matches in video games.

But alas, a backwater such as Lumiosia had little chance to see a full recruitment drive from the UHF, much less the undercity she called her home. She often wondered how the Old Man had ended up down here, but every time she tried to pry large chunks of that information out of him, he deflected, giving her little—if anything—at all. Over time it had become abundantly clear to her that she was not going to learn all about that part of his history, no matter how much she wanted to.

He walked over to the singular table situated next to the cold metal wall with his typical, unusually poised stride. She often told him that he had a metal rod stuck up his ass, as he seemed incapable of drooping or relaxing his musculature, and simply shook her head at the sight with a grin.

"Yes… yes. I know, metal rod, ass. If you had been through what I have, you wouldn't be spouting your nonsense, missy," he grumbled as he sat down on one of the ancient metal chairs next to the table, causing it to creak slightly under the weight. While he looked well-trained and lean, the Old Man possessed an unusual density when it came to his overall mass. While he'd only be pegged at around 70-80 kg at most, in truth, he weighed more than 300 kg.

He blamed it all on the UHF, but he always refused to elaborate when pressed further by Thea. She had always guessed that it must have been some kind of "experiment gone wrong" or something. When the chime of the processing-unit finally rang, she took out the two heated nutrient packs from the machine and placed them on the table. One in front of herself and one for him. It felt nice to be able to return home like this and share a meal between the two of them. Over the years this had become their little ritual.

A form of normalcy in this otherwise drab and twisted world. Living in the undercity meant that crime and death were only one unlucky encounter away. Even if she was safe with Old Man James, whenever she was going about her business alone, it was never guaranteed that she'd return safely… or at all.

"Soooooo…. I got another Flawless today!" Thea opened with a bright smile.

"Also, Thomas gave me some extra creds for helping out more than usual this month. You wouldn't believe how many machines broke down! It was absolute mayhem! I swear it's those damn fossils spilling their cheap alcohol over the machines, I just know it!"

"... I'd really appreciate it if you didn't call them fossils… Most of them aren't even a third my age, after all…" the Old Man retorted with a frown on his scarred face before continuing.

"Great work on the Flawless. Make sure to bet as much as you can on 'em. After all, it ain't gambling- ""-if you really are that good!" Thea finished the sentence with a big grin on her face.

"Aye. I see you've learned quite well these past years," he responded with a deep chuckle of his own.

"Never say I didn't teach ya nothing, missy."

"Tomorrow is reset day, so I'll be out all day, as per usual," Thea informed him, while shovelling a big fork of chicken paste into her mouth, slowly savouring the taste with a satisfied expression on her face. It had been months since she had gotten to enjoy her favourite meal like this!

"Oh, that's tomorrow? Wasn't it just… like… a couple days ago? Time really flies, huh?" he dejectedly stated.

"Thanks for the delicious meal, by the way. You know, you don't have to waste your precious credits on this old man. The UHF made sure I don't keel over from lack of nutrition."

"Nonsense! It's the least I can do!" Thea rejected the notion immediately. Despite their stark differences and her adamant refusal of the obvious truth, they both cared deeply for each other. Old Man James had, after all, saved her from certain death—and not for the first time, Thea's thoughts drifted back to where it had all started as she quietly ate her nutrient pack. Her mother had died during childbirth—well, technically, before it.

As a citizen of the undercity, she'd had no access to proper medicine or licensed medical professionals. When the undercity's back-alley doctors told her mother she wouldn't survive long enough to carry the pregnancy to term, she had been given two choices: Abort the pregnancy entirely, or take the Cyan Solution.

The Cyan Solution hadn't been designed for this purpose, of course—it had been an accidental discovery instead, an offshoot of a high-end medication for the Core-Worlds that would have been buried forever if not for the perfect market provided by the mid-world undercities: No oversight, no regulation, no meaningful medical care—just desperation and a willingness to risk anything for a chance. It was what people called a last-resort medication for a reason.

Its side effects were guaranteed to be fatal—to the mother, anyway. The only other effect, the one that made it infamous, was that it permanently marked the child it saved. Thea had never known the real pharmaceutical name. Nobody in the undercities cared. To them, it was simply the Cyan Solution—because the children it left behind always bore unmistakable, glowing cyan irises. One look at a Cyan's eyes was all it took to know what they were, and most spent their lives trying to hide it.

Being a Cyan meant being an orphan—or nearly always, at least—and that made you an easy target. Human nature was cruel like that, she had learned very early on. People looking for a way to feel superior would always start with the lowest rung. But Thea had still never tried to hide it. She'd worn her cyan eyes like a badge of honor instead. After all, her mother had chosen— chosen —to give her a chance at life, to trust her with that choice.

To Thea, the color in her eyes was proof of that trust, proof that her mother had loved her enough to give her everything. Unfortunately, that outlook hadn't shielded her from the realities of life. Her father hadn't been there when she was born, so she'd been dumped into one of the undercity orphanages. By law, they were required to provide shelter, food, and the bare minimum of education until the child turned four. No one pretended those places were good for kids.

They were underfunded, overcrowded, and barely supervised, kept alive by whatever gangs or worse forces chose to bankroll them. She'd heard the stories, even as a child—about the places that doubled as training grounds for slaves. Kids handed over to them were never seen as children. They were stock, and their futures were sold before they could even walk. By some twisted stroke of cosmic luck, Thea had escaped that fate.

On her fourth birthday, instead of being sold, she was simply thrown out onto the streets and left to fend for herself. The memory made her stomach twist even now. She'd survived for a few days in the alleys, scavenging scraps, avoiding anyone who might see her as prey, doing things she still refused to think back on just to keep breathing. It hadn't been enough. The world was too cruel for someone that small, that hungry, that weak.

She remembered clutching a broken glass-shard she'd been using as a weapon, already blooded from acts best left unspoken, thinking it might be better to end it herself than keep being in pain, starving and cold. That was the moment Old Man James had found her. He'd never told her why he stopped for her. Dying kids were an everyday sight in the undercity, and no one person could save them all. But for some reason, he had chosen to save her.

Without him, she would have been dead more than ten years ago—of that, she had no doubt. The memory faded as Thea leaned back in the present, licking the last bit of paste stuck to the inside of her nutrient pack. She let out a long sigh, flopping into her chair.

"That really hit the spot," she muttered, then grinned, raising her fists in the air.

"I'm so ready for tomorrow!"

"Haha, yes. You will show them all, I'm certain. Make sure to take adequate breaks though, I don't want to have to pick you up from the arcade again, 'cause you passed out from exhaustion," the Old Man chided her, pointing his fork at her menacingly.

"... it literally happened once! Once, Old Man! When are you finally going to let it go!" came her immediate reply, causing him to chuckle.

"Speaking of the inevitable march of time, your birthday's coming up soon. Anything you want this old man to get ya?" James asked, his tone teasing but warm. Thea couldn't help but smile a little at that. It had taken him over five years to convince her that birthdays weren't something to dread—that getting older didn't mean she'd be thrown out onto the streets again. For the longest time, the idea of turning a year older had made her sick with fear, a reflex burned into her by that fateful fourth birthday.

James had been patient, though. Patient and stubborn enough to hammer the truth into her until it finally stuck—well, mostly. A sharp pang of anxiety still flared in her chest whenever one of her birthdays came up, but she'd learned to bury it deep, to keep it off her face and out of her voice, and most importantly, to never let the feeling dictate her actions. Even now, years later, she knew he still hated those orphanages with a passion.

He'd curse them under his breath whenever the subject came up, always angry at the damage they caused kids like her—but even he admitted there wasn't much he could do to change it.

"Hmm… let me think… How about one of your UHF contacts? I'm old enough to sign up, I'm certain you can help me out!" she teased him. This was her usual request, every year. Thea knew that the Old Man wasn't sure how to feel about all of it. On one hand, he had always spoken about the UHF like it was the greatest opportunity he'd ever been given—the thing that had pulled him out of the gutter and turned him into someone who mattered.

On the other hand, it had also clearly left him broken, scarred, and slowly dying in the undercity of a backwater planet. Whenever she thought about it too long, Thea couldn't decide if the UHF was something to chase or something to run from. But deep down, she also knew that it was the UHF that had put the Old Man on her path and given him the tools to save her, to feed her, and to teach her everything he had over the years.

And no matter how grim some of his stories were—bloody battles, lost friends, the kind of horrors that stuck in her head long after he'd finished telling them—they always lit a fire in her. A burning need to follow in his footsteps, to see if she could become what he had been.

"Unfortunately not, missy," he said, his rough laugh carrying a sharp edge.

"You know as well as I do that the UHF doesn't care about backwater planets like ours. If I could get in contact with my old pals, you think I'd be rotting away on this shithole instead of kicking back on some paradise-world?" Thea huffed, a small grin forming despite his clear bitterness.

"Alright, fine … then I want you to teach me more about the UHF. Tell me about your time in the Marines! All of it. I want to hear the boring stuff too—like how you trained, what you learned— and the good stuff. Like all the ways you know how to kill a guy!" she said with a spark of excitement that she couldn't quite hide, nor bothered to. The Old Man sighed and muttered under his breath, "I honestly don't know if I should be proud or horrified about how much you want that…"

But then a crooked smile broke through, and he flexed his still-impressive arms.

"Alright. Starting on your birthday, we'll get back to lessons. This old man's still got a trick or two left."

"For now, though," he added, tone shifting into something closer to parental authority—or at least what Thea imagined parental authority to sound like—"you should get to bed. You were out past ten again tonight, and you'll have to be up early if you want to fix those machines before the monthly reset. Unless you want Thomas to catch you slacking off."

"... Yeeesssss, Old Man," Thea groaned dramatically, dragging the word out as she slid off her chair with slumped shoulders. She trudged toward her bedroom, muttering to herself about "slave drivers" underneath her breath, but the faint smile on her face betrayed that she wasn't really that upset… PoV: James McKay Hours later, around 0400 local time, James jolted upright in bed, heart hammering before his mind had caught up.

Decades of conditioning from his days with the UHF Marines had left him with the kind of hyper-awareness that never really let go, even amidst deep slumber. Something had disturbed him—something that shouldn't have been possible. Swinging his legs off the bed, he padded across the small room. He stopped at the old steel dresser shoved against the wall and placed his hand against the biometric lock. The faint click of it disengaging filled the silence.

Inside, buried in between several antique lockboxes and a few other personal keepsakes, sat an ancient data pad. Its casing was worn, the edges scuffed from years of handling, but James had kept it safe all this time. He pulled it free, his chest tightening when he noticed the faint glow on the display. A tiny number "1" blinked in the corner of the screen. A new message. That alone was enough to stop him cold. He hadn't received anything on this pad in nearly ten years.

A mix of dread and something dangerously close to hope knotted in his chest as he opened it. The message was short and ever-so-typically blunt for the author.

"Tomorrow. This better be worth it. – A" James sat back heavily on the edge of the bed, the pad clenched in his hands. He read the message once, twice… then a dozen more times. Hours slipped past, the same thought gnawing at him over and over.

'Tomorrow…'