The sound comes first.
A metallic slam—like a warhammer striking bone—echoes off the concrete walls.
Not once. Three times.
Each blow is calculated to be a commandment.
Fiona jolts awake inside the unfamiliar press of a sleeping bag. Her breath catches. Her pulse spikes. The floor is hard beneath her spine—no mattress, no padding, just stone and sand warmed by sleeping bodies now vanished. A coldness deeper than temperature seeps into her bones, foreign and detached.
A voice bellows through the open space, hoarse and thunderous—
"SEVEN SECONDS!"
Boots move in perfect rhythm around her. Uniforms snap into place. Packs rise.
No chatter. No hesitation.
The world tilts as Fiona sits up. Blinking. Sweating. Still in a hospital gown that clings damp to her skin.
She sees them—recruits, fifty maybe more, emerging from their bags like coiled machines, each one moving with the precision of someone who's done this before, or has learned fast that hesitation is death.
"FIVE SECONDS!"
She looks to her left—no explanation.
Right—no help.
They pass her by like she isn't there.
Her bag sits at her feet. It doesn't look like theirs. It's older. Heavy. Marked with a faded stenciled word:
VEGA
She doesn't move fast enough. Her arms tremble.
"TWO SECONDS!"
Someone slams their boot down an inch from her hand as they march past. The echo rattles up her bones.
"ZERO! MOVE OUT!"
A whistle. Boots thunder past her. Then silence.
She's the only one left in the hangar.
She stares at the pack like it might explain itself. Her hands fumble across the straps, tearing at them, dragging open buckles she doesn't understand. There's no touchscreen. No welcome interface. Just canvas, weight, and straps that bite her fingers.
She pulls out a uniform—stiff, sand-colored, regulation-cut. Boots wrapped in rough cloth. The whole set smells like dust and sun-dried blood.
Her fingers trace the waterproof bag, finding a notebook inside—crisp, unmarked. Pages waiting. She never asked for this. Her hand trembles slightly, and a memory surfaces:
Sensei Leonardo's voice, calm yet cutting—"How would you like to be treated, Fiona? Like a lady or like a warrior?"
At the time, her response had been immediate, almost defiant: A warrior.
Now, surrounded by the brutal efficiency of the barracks, that choice feels like a distant promise made by someone else. Someone braver. Someone who didn't feel the ache of muscles unused to this violence, the tremor in her hands that spoke of fear more than resolve.
Her fingers dig deeper into the pack, closing around something soft, folded once. A photograph. Camilla—Young. Brilliant. Signing her contract with CosmosX, her smile wide and unafraid, hair pulled back, eyes blazing with the same determination Fiona once saw in the mirror.
The photograph shifts something inside her. Resolve hardens. Muscles remember their purpose. This isn't just about her anymore. This is about the future. About providing. About showing Camilla what it means to choose a path and walk it out without hesitation.
She looks down. The gear no longer seems alien. It becomes an extension of her intention. Of her love.
But Fiona's breath leaves her.
The photo shakes in her hands.
Not grief. Not shock.
Just a single thought:
She made it.
Her chest tightens. Her eyes burn. But no tears come. Dehydration has claimed that luxury.
She folds the picture carefully. Slips it into the breast pocket of her new uniform.
Zips it shut.
No more gowns. No more straps. No more asking to be saved.
Just then, a shadow falls over her. Boots. Perfectly tied. Legs squared.
A voice:
"Vega. On your feet."
Fiona looks up.
Captain Zara, expression unreadable behind mirrored tactical glasses, arms behind her back.
"You're not dead yet. That means you start walking. Now."
Zara tosses a folder at Fiona's feet—thin, sand-blasted, stamped with three words:
"NAVIGATION – PHASE II"
Inside:
A hand-annotated map
A folded star chart
A compass
A handwritten note:
"Learn the stars. Learn the sun. Learn yourself. —S."
Zara turns without waiting.
"Three weeks. No GPS. No assistance. Fifty kilometers. If you're not at Checkpoint B by sundown on Day 21, we leave without you."
She doesn't look back.
"Welcome to the hill, Vega."
Fiona's skin still bore the tenderness of places too long restrained. Her wrists ached under pressure that no longer touched her.
The silence from captain Zara weighs heavier than the gear at her feet.
Fiona kneels beside the pack, rough sand biting at her knees. The straps are thick, worn smooth by time, and somehow still stiffer than steel.
She hooks one arm through the first strap.
The canvas bites.
Then the other.
She tries to lift.
It doesn't move.
Not a centimeter.
The sudden realization is like being punched.
This is heavier than the mango crates. Heavier than the cart.
Heavier than anything I've carried before.
She tries again.
Muscles in her back tense. Her arms shake. The pack clings to the ground like a wounded animal refusing to be moved.
She exhales. Bites her lip.
Her knees shift. She braces one foot forward, the way Sensei Leonardo taught her during squats. Don't pull. Drive from the hips. From the thighs. From the earth.
She inhales again—slowly this time.
Not panic.
Focus.
She closes her eyes—and sees Camila.
That crooked, brilliant smile. The proud tilt of her chin. The pen in her hand as she signs her future with CosmosX.
She made it.
Now I have to.
Something surges—not adrenaline. Conviction.
The kind Kyokushin taught her in the dojo.
The kind Sky etched into those notebook pages.
The kind she'd forgotten until now.
Her legs bend deeper. Her hands lock onto the shoulder straps like grappling hooks. She counts down, not out loud—but in her bones.
Three. Two. One—
She lifts.
It's not graceful.
It's not even stable.
The pack rolls half onto her shoulder, crushing her off balance. She pitches sideways, catching herself with one hand in the sand. Sweat breaks across her forehead. Her muscles scream.
But she doesn't let go.
She breathes.
Regroups.
Tries again.
This time she manages to rise. Slowly. Shakily. Knees locked. Back straight. The weight clamps down on her shoulders like a yoke carved by gods.
But she is standing.
Alone.
Fiona Maia Vega Valencia—former street survivor from Bucaramanga, Colombia, single mother, dropout, dreamer, dropout again—is standing beneath fifty-five pounds of pure doubt.
Captain Zara stands several meters away, arms crossed. She doesn't smirk. She doesn't speak.
But her mirrored glasses reflect something.
Recognition.
Not approval. Not yet. But maybe… respect.
Fiona adjusts the straps. One still digs into her collarbone. Her balance is off. Her feet are bare in the boots, skin still new. But she's upright. The sweat down her back confirms she's alive.
The desert stretches ahead.
Fiona takes the first step.
The building exhales its last breath as Fiona steps outside. Concrete crumbles behind her—a dying structure of forgotten purpose, its walls more memory than substance. Dust rises in thin, serpentine columns, erasing the traces of her passage.
The recruits have vanished. No footprints. No lingering sounds. Just an horizon that bleeds into itself—a seamless merger of ochre ground and pale, merciless sky.
Above her, a machine parts the air. Not a helicopter as she might remember from documentaries or action movies—this is something else entirely.
It moves less like a machine and more like a predatory bird—all potential energy and calculated motion. Micro-turbine intakes barely whisper, carbon-composite skin absorbing and redistributing heat signatures until the craft becomes nearly invisible against the wavering horizon.
A craft that seems to apologize to the very atmosphere for its existence.
Captain Zara—her last connection to anything familiar—looks down. For a moment, their eyes meet. No wave. No gesture of farewell. Just a final acknowledgment of the journey's beginning pointing into the distance.
Then she is gone.
Fiona stands alone. The pulse rifle feels heavy at her side. To her left and right, nothing but undulating terrain the color of old bone. No landmarks. No reference points. Just emptiness stretching in every direction, promising nothing except the next step.
She turns slowly, a full circle. The crumbling building behind her is already being consumed by sand and wind—soon, it will be as if nothing ever existed here. As if she has always been here. Always will be.
Just her. The desert. And whatever comes next.
The wind bites, dry and hot.
Fiona crouches low, her boots sinking slightly into powder-fine sand. She spreads the map across her thigh, weighting the corners with callused fingers. The sun cuts through the sky like a blade, unflinching. There's no tree. No hill. No road. Just ridgelines that all look the same, and a directionless void stretching to the horizon.
She pulls the compass from her pack.
It's old. Brass. Scratched. The needle stutters, then swings north. She rotates the map, slowly aligning it—at least, she thinks she does. Sky's notes in the margins are precise, almost gentle, as if he'd whispered each one into the page himself.
"If lost, find high ground. Shadow at noon is due north. Use your breath—not your eyes—to pace your steps."
Fiona chews her lip. The map shows Checkpoint B, circled in red, but without coordinates. Just a note:
"You'll know it by the silence."
She sighs.
I don't know what I'm doing.
She turns the compass again. It wavers. Points. Points again. It's not lying—but it isn't helping.
Her eyes drop to her left wrist—the gauntlet Firelez gave her. She hasn't touched it since the DRD. It's matte black now, its surface smooth and inert. But something inside it… shifts.
Her hand twitches.
She blinks. The compass in her gauntlet activates. Unbidden. Silent. The interface glows faintly beneath the surface like a memory trying to resurface. A needle appears—unlabeled. It doesn't point north.
It points west.
She frowns.
Raises her physical compass. North.
Raises her wrist. West.
That's not…
She moves her arm. The needle adjusts. Not with magnetic pull. But with something else. Deliberate. Alive.
She rotates in place.
The needle swings.
Then pushes—gently—like a magnetic current against her wrist.
What the hell…?
It doesn't pulse. Doesn't beep. It just urges.
She remembers Sky's note again:
"Learn the stars. Learn the sun. Learn yourself."
But now she wonders if the last line meant: Trust the thing inside you trying to guide you.
She squints up at the sun, gauging her shadow. She traces a line with her hand across the map, trying to triangulate, even clumsily.
She draws a crude heading.
Then glances at the gauntlet.
Still west.
She hesitates.
This could be a trick. A glitch. Or worse, a test I'm failing.
But then she thinks of Camila's smile, frozen in the photograph.
And of Zara's voice:
"Three weeks. If you're not at Checkpoint B by Day 21, we leave without you."
And she whispers—dry-throated, half-cursing:
"Fine. Let's see where you're taking me."
She rises. Adjusts the pack. The straps bite again, but less now. Her muscles are remembering.
The gauntlet's needle doesn't glow brighter. It just holds steady.
And she walks.
Navigation becomes a nightmare of incremental madness.
The compass within her gauntlet pulses—an alien directive. West, it insists. Electromagnetic whispers contradict the traditional needle spinning lazily in her hand. North, says the old instrument. West, hums the technology grafted to her skin.
She chooses the traditional compass. A mistake.
Hours bleed into each other. The sun—that merciless eye—tracks her stumbling progress. Her steps grow heavier.
The backpack she carries—that monstrous 55-pound companion—becomes a torture device with each step. Survival gear from a bygone era weighs her down: water purification tablets that would have saved a soldier in the Afghanistan campaigns back in the 21st century, emergency rations sealed in packaging that predates her birth, first-aid kit with analog instruments that demand human skill over technological precision.
Sweat becomes her new constant companion.
It starts at her scalp—a greasy film that mingles with desert dust, creating a paste of exhaustion. Her shirt—regulation, sand-colored—is a second skin now. Dark patches spread from her armpits, her lower back, tracing the outline of her clothes like a cartography of suffering. The fabric chafes. Every movement is a negotiation with pain.
Her muscles scream a language older than words. Quadriceps trembling. Lower back a knot of molten wire. Shoulders bearing the Bergen's weight like a medieval punishment. Each step becomes a negotiation. Bargain. Compromise. Surrender.
The pulse rifle—once a marvel of technological potential—now feels like a mockery. A dead weight that mocks her increasing weakness.
By midday, the horizon begins to twist. Not physically—no. Something more insidious. Optical illusions breed at the edges of perception. A dune that was certainly to her left now appears slightly to her right. Distance becomes a lie. Perspective, a cruel joke.
She realizes she has returned to her starting point not by walking, but by observation. The crumbling building—now more suggestion than structure—sits where she first emerged. But this recognition comes with a terror that crawls beneath her skin: How did she return? Her footsteps should have been linear. Directional. Predictable.
The desert does not follow rules.
Shadows lengthen. Not the predictable shadows of geometry, but living things. They stretch impossibly. A dune's shadow reaches toward her, then retracts—as if breathing. Tasting.
Night falls with geological slowness. The stars emerge—but they are wrong. Constellations twist. Familiar patterns dissolve into geometries that hurt to comprehend. Her night vision augments, and with each enhancement, the landscape becomes less comprehensible.
The compass in her gauntlet continues its silent argument with the traditional instrument. West, it demands. But west is impossible. West is a lie. West is something that should not be.
She tries again. Walks. Checks her bearings. The sand beneath her boots seems to remember her steps. Remembers, and then—subtly—erases them. By midnight, she understands: she is not walking through the desert. The desert is walking through her.
Despair becomes a living thing. It grows from the ground. Sprouts from her own exhaustion. Her breaths become shallow. The pulse rifle is not a marvel now. It's ballast. A weight she drags not for war, but for meaning.
She is lost. Not directionally. Existentially.
Her legs finally betray her.
She falls.
Not dramatically. Not with resistance. But with the absolute finality of something mechanical breaking down. First to her knees. Then forward. Face pressed against sand that is both scorching from day's heat and rapidly cooling with nightfall.
The backpack pins her down. A 55-pound testament to human survival. To preparation. To futility.
Her breath comes in ragged gasps. Dust fills her nostrils. Sweat and grime create a second skin. She can smell herself—stale human odor mixed with chemical-sharp survival gear, with desert dust, with fear.
Exhaustion becomes a parasite. Her breaths become shallow. Inconsistent.
And the desert—this place that is both nowhere and everywhere—continues to watch.
The desert does not move. It just listens.
Fiona lies face-down, the world narrowed to the scrape of sand against her cheek, the slow grind of her ribs with every dry breath. The weight of her pack presses her into the earth, as if to erase her. The pulse rifle is a cold ache at her hip, half-swallowed by the dune. Her arms are leaden, her lips split and bloodless. The horizon wavers-sky and sand, both indifferent.
She thinks—perhaps this is the end.
No hero's blaze. No grand collapse. Only dust. Silence. A vanishing—a life unremarked beneath a sky that never cared to notice.
Then-
A pulse.
Soft.
From her wrist.
The gauntlet, silent until now, stirs. Warmth blooms against her skin. Faint light seeps from the seams—it's not an alarm, not even a command. A presence. She blinks, vision swimming.
The sand before her glows. Not flame. Not weapon. A projection-gentle, insistent. The air shivers, warps.
A voice, low and androgynous, drifts from the gauntlet:
"Tianyu Star…"
She cannot move, but her eyes flicker to her wrist. The voice continues, calm as the dark between galaxies.
"Your fear is valid. Your exhaustion, understood. Your despair… anticipated. But surrender was not in their vocabulary."
The projection flickers—stars gathering against the void. A great emptiness unfurls, rimmed with galaxies.
The Boötes Void.
"In the darkness where no galaxies dared form, Sky-the Asteri Evris-spoke of warriors. Of heroes. His voice carried through silence. His breath fogged the glass of extinction."
Images bloom: a figure in a suit of battered light, tracing constellations on crumbling walls, scribbling names in notebooks worn thin by time.
"He told me of the bronze saints. Of Star Warrior. Of those who rose again. Always again. Who bore the weight not because they were strong, but because no one else could."
The constellation pulses.
Boötes.
Within it, a flicker.
Alkalurops.
"This star is dying. Yet still it burns. For you. And for the child you protect."
The light sharpens—two orbs entwined, twin stars, their gravity bound, unbroken.
"Think of them as you and your daughter."
"This is your axis. Your guide. Let it be enough."
The compass within the gauntlet shifts-now pointing west, sure and steady. No resistance. Only clarity.
"Even a dying star burns bright enough to be seen."
A pause, softer now:
"Will you rise, Tianyu Star?"
Fiona closes her eyes.
To listen.
She breathes—once, twice. The air is thin, but it is enough.
She moves, slow as dawn. Knees drag beneath her, shoulders wrench against the pack's weight. Her body is numb, her mind raw. The desert offers no mercy. But she does not ask for it.
One push. One grunt. One trembling stretch.
She rises—in the absence of triumph, in defiance of oblivion. Dust slides from her skin, regret sloughing away. The gauntlet hums—matching her pulse, her breath.
Fiona stands again, one more time.
Not because the desert has relented.
But because Alkalurops still burns.
And in the silence, that twin star listens (burns) back.