The Simulation: Trial Two
They barely had time to breathe.
The world twisted again—metal groaning as walls reshaped. No pause. No debrief. No warning.
Rain vanished. In its place: fire.
They stood in the heart of a skyscraper inferno. Smoke choked the air. Explosions rattled the steel skeleton of the building. Every floor burned.
Dozens of hostages—horrifyingly real—were chained to beams, screaming, pleading, sobbing.
Above it all, a timer blinked:
02:00
"Where are the exits?" Sentinel snapped.
None. No stairs. No elevators. Windows fractured, flames licking the edges.
"This isn't tactical," Brin whispered, trembling. "It's a death sentence."
Kaelis struck the wall—light-wings flaring. But every blow ignited more fire.
Ghostshade phased through the floor. Returned seconds later, pale.
"Same setup below. More hostages. No time to reach them all."
Gears stood still, silent, watching the countdown like it was a guillotine.
This wasn't about saving lives.
This was about breaking minds.
"Abort?" Brin asked.
"There's no abort," Sentinel said. "Only survive—or fail."
One minute left.
Gears stepped forward—not looking for an exit.
He was looking for weakness.
Support beam. Central shaft. Suppression line, barely functional.
A long shot.
"Gears, what are you—?" Kevin called.
No answer.
Gears overloaded his EMP slingshot. Max charge.
He sprinted through the flames. Alarms screamed. Hostages cried out.
He fired.
The beam gave. The floor buckled.
The hostages dropped—falling into the only safe zone: the elevator shaft. Fire suppression triggered just in time.
The building roared.
Gears vanished.
Steel and flame swallowed him whole.
Silence.
Then—
"Trial Two: Complete."
The world dissolved.
⸻
Simulation Room Sigma-3: Mission Brief
Objective: Infiltrate the Black Zone. Extract "The Package."
Timer: 20 minutes.
Difficulty: S-Class.
Warning: Stealth mandatory. No reinforcements.
The environment loaded.
Skyscraper ruins. Storm clouds overhead. Patrol bots roamed—scanning, listening. The simulation called it training.
It felt like war.
⸻
Simulation Room Omega-Black
Classified Trial: Dead Zone Recovery
Conditions: No light. No comms.
Threats: Silent adaptive bots. Instant kill on detection.
Objective: Retrieve Black Box Core from wrecked drop-ship.
Team: Ironclad & Umbrave
•Ironclad – Full steel integration. Walking arsenal.
•Umbrave – IL: Shadowmantle. Exists between light and void.
⸻
Begin Simulation.
Darkness. No light. No timer. Just wreckage—and silence.
Vorrin moved first. Heavy, deliberate steps. Calculated to bypass the bots' algorithms.
Ezeke emerged from the black—flowing like ink, never quite solid. Not walking, drifting.
A bot passed inches from him.
Didn't notice.
Whispered dagger. Bot down.
Then—heat surge. Trap.
Missiles fired. Target: ironclad.
He didn't dodge. He stepped into the blast.
Armor melted—then regenerated mid-stride. Nanoforges hissed, sparking inside his chestplate.
"Half-click north," Umbrave vibrated through the floor.
Vorrin felt it in his bones.
They moved.
Then came the Reaper Bots.
Voidlight blades. Adaptive AI. No faces—just death.
Vorrin caught one's blade with his arm—molten alloy locking it in place. He crushed its skull.
The second bot turned—only to find Ezeke inside its shadow. A whisper of a kill.
The third tried to run.
Didn't get far.
Vorrin's foot caved in its spine.
They reached the Core.
As they lifted it—
Omega-Class Threat inbound.
A four-armed mech dropped in. Plasma-forged. Sentient AI.
Too smart to fight. Too strong to outrun.
They split.
Umbrave baited it with phantom echoes.
Ironclad stood still. "I'll hold."
He did.
Thirty-eight seconds.
Six bones shattered. He never stopped moving.
The mech caught Umbrave echo. Turned—
Umbrave dropped from above. Daggers. AI core. Silence.
Simulation Ended.
⸻
Post-Sim Report
• Mission: Success
• Time: 12:48
• Damage Taken: ironclad – 89%, Umbrave– 3%
• Enemies Neutralized: 47
• Instructor Note:
"If those two ever go rogue—there's no countermeasure."
⸻
The Next Team
• Yvren – Plasma staff. Fast, precise, a born tactician.
• Kaelisa – Razor-winged aerial assassin.
• Dendrik – Living fortress. Obsidian alloy. Strength incarnate.
• Tyra – Rogue technomancer. Hacker. Code-twister. Not from the core squad.
⸻
Scenario: Rescue and extraction. No damage allowed.
Yvren whispered, "Fan out. Sound triangulates."
Kaelisa scanned the skies. "Three signatures. One's immobile. Hostage. Two guards."
Tyra grinned. "Give me three seconds. I'll walk one into a mine."
Dendrik cracked his knuckles. "Or I could just—"
"No," Yvren cut in. "Hostage gets tagged, we fail."
Time: 14:36
Kaelisa sliced a wire mid-flight. No sound.
Yvren struck—one guard down.
Tyra's fingers flew. The second bot turned and walked.
Override complete.
Kaelisa dove, caught the hostage in a tether, lifted—
Then the floor erupted.
Cloaked bot. Thermal-invisible.
Kaelisa was hit midair.
Dendrik moved like thunder. Through the wall. Caught her.
Collateral triggered. AI escalates.
Ten bots incoming.
Yvren activated Plasma Halo Mode—his body crackling with arcs of energy.
One second left.
Tyra slammed the evac signal.
Pulse of light. End of sim.
⸻
Post-Sim Report
• Hostage: Safe
• Kaelisa: Injured
• Collateral: 8%
• Teamwork: 97%
• Rank: 4th
Yvren paced. "We trained to be ghosts. That was a war zone."
Kaelis winced. "Then we become shadows with teeth."
Tyra shrugged. "Still passed."
Dendrik sat in silence. Hands trembling. He'd felt fear.
⸻
Simulation: Recovery Protocol
Objective: Rebuild control. Regain confidence. Controlled pressure test.
⸻
No fire. No enemies.
A garden.
Mira sat by a stream, fingers in grass. A voice overhead:
"Don't run from the smoke. It's part of you. But so is healing."
She exhaled.
Mist curled from her—gray, soft.
It didn't scatter. It formed… hands. Then her face.
She stayed.
She was learning.
⸻
Across the field, Talo walked in a ring of scorched earth.
"You're angry," his mentor said. "Good. Now aim it."
Talo flared. "They cheated."
"No. They adapted."
A spark lit his finger. He paused.
Then controlled it.
A steady flame. No rage. Just choice.
⸻
Lenna sat in a humming glass dome, surrounded by code.
She didn't hack.
She listened.
The bots weren't enemies. They were language.
She whispered back.
One drone blinked—then bowed.
She smiled.
⸻
Above them, instructors watched.
"They're not ready for war," one said.
"Maybe not," another replied. "But for growth? They're perfect."
⸻
The Scoreboard
The dome flickered. Rankings appeared.
1st: Sentinel
2nd: Psystar
3rd: Ghostshade
…
10th: Gears
Kevin blinked. "Wait… I'm not second?"
Even Sentinel looked rattled.
"Psystar? He wasn't in our sim."
Realization dawned.
He was in a sim. A harder one.
And he'd won.
A man hovered nearby—floating, eyes closed, wind curling around him.
Psystar.
He hadn't played the simulation.
He'd rewritten it.
Kaelis muttered, "He didn't take the test. He taught it."
Sentinel stood tall, cheers in his comms… but his eyes drifted to the edge.
There, Gears limped in.
Bruised. Silent.
Unranked.
But he'd saved them.
And for now—that was enough.