Soraya’s grip tightened on the diagnostic scanner. Ruzbeh lay on the synthetic counter, his breath coming in shallow rasps while the monitor issued an urgent, metallic whine. *Critical instability. Core identity flickering.* Six months to reach Zenith Tier through the Gauntlet, or his soul would vanish. Her instincts, honed by years in the cockpit, tightened around a single focus: she had to keep him alive.
“The Gauntlet is a solo climb, Ruzbeh,” Soraya said, steadying him as he sank into the worn recliner. Sweat beaded along his temples, pale skin catching the room's dim halogen hum. “It isolates contestants to test individual skill. We can't enter as a pair.”
Ruzbeh blinked, his heavy lids parting to reveal steady gray eyes. “Then we change the parameters.” A dry cough rattled his chest. “My signature is already logged into the system. Yours is too, as titleholder. Mitra permits sanctioned challenges. We submit an addendum.”
He brought up the Star Network interface with slow, deliberate gestures. His knuckles grazed the light panel as he logged a challenge not toward another pilot, but at the trial itself, keying 'Duo Co-Pilot' into the request slot. Soraya watched the system chime in erratic loops as the automated registry processed the contradiction.
[QUERY: DUO CO-PILOT PARAMETER FOR TRIAL COMMENCEMENT. NEW DIRECTIVE DETECTED. VALIDATING…]
[VALIDATION SUCCESSFUL. PILOT SORAYA VANCE’S ACCOUNT DESIGNATED AS CO-PILOT. TRIAL: COMMENCING.]
“See?” Ruzbeh managed a weak smile. “Sometimes… the easiest path is to simply walk through the wall.”
Soraya nodded, squaring her shoulders. “Let's calibrate our machines.” She loaded the scarlet chassis of her Valkyrie Ascendant into the pairing terminal. Ruzbeh, true to form, queued his grey baseline frame—a factory-standard chassis devoid of custom plating or aftermarket weapons. It looked like salvage alongside her war rig.
“Our goal isn't to take the high score,” Soraya said, falling back on combat protocol. “We need to survive to the final tier. I take point and draw fire while you conserve your strength. That stock rig carries no energy shielding and no high-output boosters. It's an open target.”
Ruzbeh merely nodded, his gaze distant. He closed his eyes for a moment, and when they reopened, the weariness was still there, but beneath it, a dormant fire stirred. “Understood.”
The Cobalt Grid materialized around them, not the familiar neon sprawl, but a desolate, dust-choked expanse. Jagged, obsidian spires clawed at a bruised purple sky, and the ground was a labyrinth of crumbling crystalline formations. This was the Echoes of Perdition sector, the opening stage of the trial. Complete stillness blanketed the ruins, broken only by the low whine of their sub-reactors.
[WARNING: INTRUSION DETECTED. EXTERNAL CODE OVERRIDING SYSTEM SCRIPTS.]
Mitra’s synthetic tone warbled with static. Soraya’s comms crackled. “What was that?”
[WARNING: SAFETY PROTOCOLS COMPROMISED. NEURO-FEEDBACK SCALING: ACTIVE. ANY VIRTUAL DAMAGE SUSTAINED WILL BE REFLECTED AS REAL-WORLD NEURAL TRAUMA.]
The floor seemed to drop out beneath Soraya. Physical nerve damage from simulated impacts meant this was an execution ground, not an arena. “Tarik,” she said through locked teeth. Only the Roshan family held the root access keys required to slice through network safeguards like that.
Ruzbeh straightened in his harness, his posture instantly level. “He intends to burn out our nervous systems,” he murmured without alarm. “A tidy ambush for an upstart and a rival.”
Before they could react, the obsidian spires around them erupted. A dozen mantis-like drones, their hulls tapered and predatory, broke from the rock fractures with particle lances pre-charging. These were not generic arena constructs; the gold-embossed trim marked them as private hardware from Tarik’s household retinue.
“Ambush!” Soraya accelerated, photon barriers flaring blue as they absorbed a barrage of emerald beams. Her shoulder railgun cracked, splitting two raiders down their engine seams, but eight more circled inward in tight interlocking arcs.
“They are aiming for your cockpit junction,” Ruzbeh said through the open channel. “That cadence is guided by human hands, not patrol algorithms.”
He was right. The raiders hammered the conduit housing behind her cockpit pod. Coherent light scored her hull plating, stripping layer after layer of heat tile. The warning console flashed red as a direct hit sheared off her primary booster manifold.
[VALKYRIE ASCENDANT: CRITICAL FAILURE. THRUST COUPLINGS SEVERED. MOBILITY DOWN SEVENTY PERCENT.]
Soraya fought to maintain control, but another volley slammed into her, disabling her right arm. The cockpit filled with smoke. “I’m hit! My mecha’s disabled!” she cried out, her voice raw with fear, not for herself, but for Ruzbeh. This wasn’t a game anymore. One more hit to her neural link, and it was over. For both of them.
Ruzbeh’s unarmored frame slipped between crossfires with unnatural ease, pivoting on basic ball-joints that should have locked up under high-g stress. He hadn't fired a round or raised a guard.
A distorting ripple bent the light along the grey unit's chest chassis. It was neither exhaust heat nor optical camouflage; Ruzbeh was circulating internal breath directly through the sensor mesh.
[WAYFARER CHASSIS: MANUAL HATCH RELEASE EXECUTED.]
The system chime sounded hoarse. The chassis hatch hissed outward, and Ruzbeh stepped onto the black dust in his plain linen tunic and trousers. Unarmored, barefoot against the virtual basalt, he stood beneath eight-meter alloy giants without a firearm or blade.
The enemy machines froze mid-stride, targeting reticles spinning as sensor suites failed to parse an infantry profile without a digital exosuit. Then the override kicked in, and every cannon swiveled toward his chest.
Ruzbeh let out a slow, tired breath. He raised his open palms into an empty-hand guard. A high-energy green bolt lanced toward his sternum; he stepped an inch to the side, rolling his wrist through the incoming thermal path, and the laser sheared sideways into a stone column as if bent by water.
The ambushers stuttered their advance. Ruzbeh closed the gap with three sliding steps, leaving no footprints in the dust. As the lead machine depressed its trigger, his palm brushed the lower hinge of its knee actuator. Metal shrieked; hydraulic fluid ruptured through the reinforced casing, and the five-ton construct folded onto its own wreckage.
A second drone unleashed a rotary pulse. Ruzbeh swayed beneath the trajectory, gripped the machine's dorsal plating with two fingers, and redirected its kinetic balance forward. The multi-ton hull hurtled straight into an adjacent unit, sending both careening off the cliff edge. He glided between beam lines without wasted effort, shattering drive linkages with light, open-palmed taps.
Soraya watched through her cockpit's fractured monitor as military-grade armor broke beneath bare knuckles. But as the last raider slumped into the dirt, a deep klaxon shattered the silence.
[CRITICAL ANOMALY DETECTED. UNREGISTERED ENTITY: DEPLOYING. ARENA INTEGRITY: SEVERED.]
The rock basin tore apart down the center, vomiting superheated plasma into the sky. Rising through the rift came a mountain of etched basalt armor and glowing heat sinks: a Void Colossus, an unindexed world-boss construct drawn in by the compromised code.
Its primary optical array flared ruby-red, swept over Ruzbeh and the crushed scrap, and locked squarely onto Soraya's stalled cockpit.