Spring of 346, A.D.

  “Stupid Alex. Stupid, stupid, stupid Alex,” Kai muttered, standing under the moonlight. He glanced back at the rocky plain he’d just crossed, then toward the shimmering barrier that marked the edge of Cassie’s sector. He waited.

  He stayed on his feet to fight off sleep, but it had been a long trek. Eventually, the ache in his knees and the sting in his soles wore down his anger. He sat.

  Just as his eyelids began to droop, a flicker of movement snapped him alert. He shot upright—and saw her.

  The girl with the golden curls. The one who had enchanted his friend.

  She was alone. Kai had expected as much, but the sight confirmed it. Her gaze met his, curious and tinged with sadness.

  Kai reached into his backpack and pulled out a stack of folded sheets. It had taken real effort to distill the questions—each one crafted to extract the truth with nothing but a yes or no.

  He held up the first card:

  ‘Alex exiled. Is he there?’

  Her eyes widened. She shook her head.

  Next card:

  ‘Did your sector make it to the top 10%?’

  She lowered her eyes. Her confident, graceful presence seemed to collapse inward, leaving behind a girl who looked small and ashamed.

  Kai’s fingers tightened around the edges of the next card.

  ‘Did you know he would ask for exile?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Did you really like him?’

  Another nod.

  ‘Will you ask for exile next year?’

  She didn’t move. Just stood there, frozen, her expression caught between guilt and fear.

  Kai looked down at the two remaining cards. After a beat, he chose the one that fit.

  ‘He liked you more than you liked him.’

  He let the cards fall one by one to the ground, turned his back, and walked away.

  *

  Present, 353rd Daisy exams, Round of 32.

  A four-hour wait. Four hours in a silent, white room. All alone. The silence was getting to Kai.

  He wished he had some way to make white noise—or noise of any kind. In the stillness, even his own breathing sounded like a thunderstorm. The thrum of blood in his ears only made it worse, so he tried to distract himself, to think beyond his senses.

  He pictured Ariel.

  Not the Ariel with yellowed eyes and a racking cough—that image only twisted his nerves tighter. He shut his eyes and forced himself to remember a different version of her. A healthy one. A smiling one. That helped.

  He imagined her spending the day at the museum with a packed lunch, maybe sketching the exhibits. If it was a good day—and Stage 2 did still allow for good days—then she was probably doing just that. He wished he could talk to her now. Tell her the news. They could finally start a family. She’d be overjoyed. Becoming a mother had always been her dream.

  But Kai wanted to say more. He wanted to look her in the eye and promise that they’d both be around long enough to raise that family together. For that, he needed more than just decent results—he needed the allcure. And to earn that, he had to keep climbing.

  He’d already broken into the top 64, out of more than five hundred sectors. It wasn’t Balin-tier—not yet. Balin had reached the top five. But if Kai kept this up, he could match his ancestor’s score. And to do that, his best shot was to get his hands on as many mythic cards as possible. They weren’t just powerful—they came with top-tier stats and their own console upgrades.

  Right now, [Fire] is my best bet.

  It worked too similarly to the scrapdroid. It probably upgraded into a mythic card, too.

  I have to feed it every combustible item I can find.

  He also had two new snapping upgrades to test. One was [Zoom], which let him capture objects from long range. The other was [Android Companion]. He wasn’t sure what it did yet, but since [Flying Drone] had been folded into [Droid Companion], he figured it was some kind of robotic helper—maybe a scout or support unit to explore the map more efficiently.

  The sooner he figured it out, the better his odds.

  As the countdown ticked toward zero, Kai ran a few numbers in his head and estimated the local time: around noon. That meant plenty of daylight. No need to carry the gaslamp.

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  He braced himself. When the timer hit zero, the room vanished in a blink.

  Instead of a sunny stage, Kai was met with a dark sky. Rain poured all around him, reducing visibility. The water fell right through him and onto the ground. Kai checked the scoreboard at the top of his vision. His opponent was 14 points ahead of him. He gulped. This game was going to be neck to neck. He couldn’t expect every game to be as leisurely as the last round. He would have to give it his all this round, or he wouldn’t go through to the next.

  With a heavier weight on his shoulders, Kai’s attention turned toward his surroundings. He was in an urban area. He spotted a few chimneys and some working AC. He was on a rooftop—like before—but this one was in good condition.

  Off to the side, he heard the buzz of electricity and smoke coming out from giant letters, which spelled ‘Hotel.’ They shone with a bright red neon light. As the raindrops hit the hot lamps, they instantly turned to steam. He saw many more neon signs around him. Through the heavy rain, he could read the names of restaurants, stores, and shops.

  “What is this place?” he murmured.

  “It appears to be a city.”

  Kai jumped in fright at the voice that had spoken from behind him.

  “Late eighties of the common era, or seventy before Daisy. Whichever dating method you prefer.”

  The voice that addressed him was soft, almost lazy. It came from a figure with a slender figure and feminine curves. Its whole body was covered in what looked like porcelain but could be silver metal. The facial features were exquisitely sculpted and pleasingly symmetrical, albeit too perfect. The head was hairless, which gave the android an even more artificial appearance.

  It looked like a work of art in which the artist wanted to convey that they could create a more beautiful human than the real thing, but they had held back and made a few purposeful accidents to avoid disturbing human sensitivity.

  Kai stared at the android, and the android stared back.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “Congratulations on being the first trial runner to unlock a mythic card! You even found the [Mega Scrapdroid]. Good for you, Kai. It was only appropriate that you be rewarded. That’s why I’ll be your companion for the rest of the exams.”

  He gulped. After so many hours alone with nothing but his thoughts, hearing someone talk to him felt surreal. “What can I call you?”

  “Maia.”

  “And what are you? I mean, what do you do?”

  “I’m an android companion. It’s right there in the name, Kai.” Her tone was playfully dry. “I keep you company. I’ve also been programmed with random reference materials. Mostly history and physics. And your performance so far has been loaded into my memory. So I know what you’ve already demonstrated you understand.”

  He wasn’t sure what to make of that. A helper? A nanny? A glorified encyclopedia?

  Still... the idea of not being alone anymore was comforting. He’d spent too long locked in his own mind. Having someone to talk to—someone to bounce ideas off—sounded... nice.

  And history and physics? That could come in handy. Ariel was the one obsessed with history, not him. And while he had a decent grasp of physics, there were plenty of gaps. If Maia could fill those gaps, she might make a real difference in the trials ahead.

  “How do you know I was the first to find a mythic card? Who told you?”

  “Mother.”

  “Mother?” He squinted. “You mean Daisy?”

  “Yes. She’s been enjoying your performance. But I can’t speak too much about that. She made me promise I’d keep certain things to myself. She wants this upgrade to reflect your achievements, not give you an unfair advantage.”

  Kai clicked his tongue. What is this about? Has Daisy taken a special interest in me? Do I look so pitiful she decided to give me a friend?

  “Did Daisy choose your knowledge banks?”

  “No. That part was random.”

  Kai frowned. This was... unexpected. But if he was the first to earn a mythic card, then a unique reward made sense. He smiled faintly. Not bad. Not bad at all.

  He checked the system clock—and gasped. He’d already burned several minutes just standing here talking.

  “Well, I need to focus now, Maia. Let’s save the chit-chat for later, okay?”

  “Affirmative.”

  Kai turned his attention back to the cityscape—but his eyes kept drifting back to Maia. It was hard not to. After so much silence, her presence filled the space like sunlight after weeks of clouds. His senses kept gravitating toward her.

  He sighed. He was used to being watched by Daisy’s cybermonkeys. He just had to treat Maia like a more talkative version of them. He forced himself to imagine her as one of the monkeys—clunky limbs, cybernetic implants, brushing dust off the streets of his home sector.

  Once he could overlay that image in his mind, Maia’s hold on his attention loosened. Finally, he managed to shift his focus back to the exam.

  He couldn’t find anything useful on the rooftop.

  Curious, he stepped toward the edge and peered over—and what he saw below shocked him more than the android had.

  Far beneath, a parade of colorful umbrellas flowed along the rain-slicked streets, forming an intricate ballet in motion. Cars crawled between them, headlights glowing in the downpour. People moved in every direction, undisturbed by the weather.

  People. So many of them.

  Tears welled up in his eyes. He had never seen a crowd like this in his life.

  A woman in a raincoat walked alongside two small figures—children, each holding an umbrella painted with cartoon faces. The sight hollowed him out.

  His knees buckled. He dropped to the wet rooftop, overcome, sobs rising from somewhere deep. Children. The last time he’d seen one was when he was one. No one in his sector had ever been younger than him.

  “Tears detected. Processing...” Maia’s voice drifted in behind him. “Ah. You and your wife are the only two left in your sector. That would explain the emotional response. It’s called ‘re-entry shock,’ I believe.”

  The captioning of his breakdown stung, but it jolted him out of the haze. He wiped his eyes. Somehow, he appreciated the interruption.

  “I have to get down there,” he muttered.

  He looked around for a ladder—then froze. What was he doing? This was the exam. He couldn’t be hurt. Without a second thought, he sprinted to the edge and leapt.

  Mid-air, time stretched. Thoughts rushed in like floodwater. Why had he jumped so quickly? He hadn’t planned it. It hadn’t even been a decision.

  It was a pull—irresistible, instinctive. Something inside him had reached out toward those figures below. He needed to see their faces. He needed to know if it was true what the others used to say around the fire: that children were the most beautiful thing in the world.

  But then he stopped.

  His boots struck something invisible. Solid. Glass-like. He staggered, wide-eyed, and stomped experimentally.

  There it was—the arena’s floor. An invisible platform, suspended high above the city.

  The people below were outside the exam.

  A soft thump landed beside him. Maia touched down lightly, unaffected by the drop. When he turned to look at her, she smiled—radiant, almost proud.

  “Shut up,” he muttered.

  Maia tilted her head. “But I wasn’t talking.”

  He flushed and looked away. Everything felt too loud—the neon lights, the endless rain, the buzz of city life beneath him, and now Maia. He breathed in, trying to anchor himself.

  This rooftop was part of the arena. That much was clear now.

  As he scanned the skyline, it all clicked. The buildings around him rose and fell at different heights—some towers loomed far above, others dipped below the arena’s baseline, unreachable. The rooftops were like islands scattered across a transparent ocean.

  He would have to leap between them, climb higher, or explore inside each structure to search for capture-worthy objects. Every building held potential.

  And all the while, down in the streets, a whole other world moved without him—untouchable, and out of bounds.

  For now.

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