There’s no more disciplined son of Duelist traditions than my rival. He kneels at the very edge of the hangar’s light where it falls across the highway, two fingers on the dust-caked asphalt, wide braid dangling out from beneath the waist of his poncho. Lanky and thin and silhouetted, a dancer and a killer. The ocean that dictates my hurricane. Crowned by distant halogens and surrounded by fuzzy motes, he looks a figure ripped straight from theatre of the rustic villages beyond the capital, not a native of this urban hell. Even the simple manner in which he stands dashes his disguise to pieces. I know his footwork better than my own. Peerless precision ensures the balance of his feet stays firmly centered beneath the toes, a pindrop away from striking.

Ajax coughs as he rises, splashing dust through the air. His fencing blade whips into the Lungracian stance. Tip aimed at the ground behind his feet, one empty hand poised to defend in front of his chest. The blade’s cyan stunning edge slashes the air with a warning hum as it flares to life, illuminating the folds of his ragged disguise from beneath.

“Hold,” he calls out in a penthouse accent, taking a slow turn of the pillar-lined lobby. Eyes as blue as his blade lower from inspecting the rest of the highway to fall atop my wide shoulders, studying their outline. Then they narrow. “Mars?”

White aura purges a twenty-foot pillar of air around me with roaring brilliance, then swirls into my open palm. All the outpouring ki focuses into a ball of roiling starlight between my fingers. Perfectly balanced. Scalding the darkness with eyehurting brilliance.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” I reply, tossing the ball up and down with one hand.

Surprised confusion scrawls across Ajax’s face while he stands there. His blade lowers out of stance. “What on earth is that supposed to mean? Did you follow me here?”

“Do you seriously think I just walk around looking to pick fights with people?”

“You started a barfight in Cayman’s last week!”

“That was an accident,” I growl. I aim the palmful of ki straight at him. Cock my head to the side in challenge. “But I’m not going to pass up a chance to even out our record, either. So square up.”

“What? No. Are you crazy?” His eyes widen as he stands on tiptoes, trying to look over my shoulder. “Jolie? Is that you back there?”

My sister steps forward with her collapsible blade in hand, folding her eyepiece to the side. Ajax just shakes his head. Incredulous. And accusing, as his gaze returns to me.

“You brought your sister to the Vents? That is so messed up.”

“He didn’t bring me,” Jolie snaps. “I brought myself.”

I shrug. “You heard her. Why are you here?”

Ajax deactivates his blade and slips it into its sheath. “I’m…” His accent falters as he glances over his shoulder, towards the dimly lit hangar. “I’m investigating a personal matter. That’s all.”

“A personal matter all the way in the Shocks?” Jolie scoffs. “Don’t give me that. You’re the top rank fighter at the top rank university, Ajax. The Vents is the last place you should be. And besides, you’re from the villages.”

“So what if I am? Perhaps I have friends down here.”

His hand strays towards his blade when I take a step forward, dropping just as fast when I dispel the ball of energy I’d been gathering. For all his bravado, for all his skill on the battlefield and confidence around campus…

“You are,” I say, striding right past him, “a terrible liar.”

One hilt-worn hand halts me with an iron grip. “Perhaps I am,” Ajax growls, still facing Jolie. “But you’re even worse, Mars. You and your laughter couldn’t stick to a lie if your life depended on it. Why are you here?”

We stand shoulder to shoulder, back to back. Iron against iron. Rivals anywhere, but perhaps not here. I can always fight Ajax tomorrow. He’s not my reason for coming this far into the undercity; nor am I about to let our rivalry explode any chance of a clue about what really happened in last week’s minor league match. I’m better than that.

And so, it seems, is Ajax. Though we stubbornly continue talking in opposite directions, neither willing to bend so much as a micrometer.

“I’m here for the same reason you are,” I say, knocking his hand away like it’s dust on my shoulder. “Bishop’s disappearing act from the minor league.”

“What’s it to you?”

“I was watching the fight live. What’s it to you?”

“I watched the replay.”

I fake a gag. “You watch tryout replays? Seriously?”

“I watch every highlight from the Blockhouse. There’s a lesson in every fight, no matter how small. Perhaps you should try it sometime. It could keep you from making the same mistakes two months in a-”

“-This again? Imagine what you could do if you took your discipline out of your ass for one single night, Ajax. Who knows? You might even get l-”

“Boys,” Jolie snaps.

Ajax ignores the hint, diving right back into our muttered war. “You want to know why I’m better than you, Mars? That is why. You want to be the best, but you’re all ego, no skill. And you have the focus of a-”

“-Oh, it’s about focus now? I don’t see you out training until midnight. Venting ki until you can fill a pool with your own sweat. You fight like a computer, sure. That’s what focus gets you. It’s why no one cheers for you, and why they-”

Golden braid flapping, Ajax whirls on me on the verge of hissing out the most vitriolic reply he can in that fake penthouse accent he adopted to fit in with the rest of us. He gets close, too. One word slips out. I. And it dies on his tongue when he sees Jolie fuming like a boiler not two feet away, face scrunched up from the strain of keeping from lashing out at the two of us.

“Boys,” Jolie growls, staring each of us into the ground in alternating glances. “Stop. Measuring. Your egos. We’ve got bigger problems.”

“Such as?”

She points at the nearby hangar, sending our attention to the steadily lengthening line of illumination stretching between the bay doors. Something moves ahead.

Ajax and I trade glances. We say it at the same time.

“Later.”

Covering her face with an open hand, Jolie takes the lead, skirting the sides of the halogen line as it continues to brighten. Ajax and I follow right behind, jostling for the second spot in our impromptu formation.

“Watch the back, ki fighter,” Ajax snaps.

“Jolie’s my sister, jackass. I’m sticking with her.”

“And I’m ranked higher than you on the PR. Seniority.”

“Egos,” Jolie hisses.

Ajax and I exchange one last glare before I suck it up and take the back. Concordia University’s princeling duelist has a point. Where my classes excel in their breadth, giving me innumerable talents that see use out of combat, Ajax’s are centered around excelling in regulation arenas. I can fly. Generate light on a whim. Sense the life force of any creature nearby with my kinetic sense, like the rats scurrying down a gloomy spark-lit hall to our left. Ajax has a sword and the frustratingly flexible ability to control metal. Only the last is of any use outside the spotlights.

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I’m most fit for the back, searching the darkness for any unwanted attention. But all of the action ahead is concentrated just beyond the silhouetted bay doors we creep along. Faint impressions of human life signatures trickle into my awareness. All are tense. Most are wary of something nearby. The best ki fighters can use their kinetic sense to divine thoughts and moods like low-budget Psis. My sense is the least trained aspect of my main class, so being able to feel as much as I do comes as a surprise. Tensions in the dock must be astronomical.

“Eyes up. Trouble ahead,” I whisper.

Jolie nods and slinks right up to the gap in the doors, then takes her scanner and holds it around the corner at floor height. A live stream of its camera plays inside her glasses. Electric-blue light reflects across her eyes. Ajax leans over her shoulder to spy on the stream. Resisting the urge to roll my eyes, I leave them to their technology and lean around the door for myself, looking over the now brightly-lit interior.

The hangar’s vast rear wall is open entirely to the elements, looking out over an inky blackness pierced by the nearly unseeable silhouette of the next block over. Remarkably clean steel decking covers the floor. Rainbow hues sheen over black smears on the edges of the open space. Recently wiped oil. Unlike our own point of entry, there are no derelict cranes hiding in dark rafters high above the main floor. Bright light beams down from floodlamps mounted to the ceiling. Too clean for a place like this. Leaves no places to hide or sneak.

A dull, unassuming shipping container rests three meters tall and five long in the center of the hangar. Locked entry portal facing us, lights blinking on a combination pad. I count fifteen men and women loitering around it. Several lounge against the walls of the container. Two sit atop it, legs dangling. Four more watch from the catwalks. A whole platoon of syndicate fighters. They wear draping gear and rakish streetwear instead of Venters’ acidproof grey. Orange and black colors accent them through jewelry, clothing, and neon tattoos. Exotic weapons glint and gleam in jittery hands.

“Dynasty,” Ajax murmurs, beating me to the punch by a microsecond. Jolie’s nose wrinkles as the bottom of his braid brushes against her nose. “What are they doing in an abandoned place like this?”

“The Vents is their territory,” I snort. “It’d be more suspicious if they weren’t here.”

Jolie nods towards the shipping container in the center of the docks as a slim figure covered in simple grey body wrappings pads around from the other side, footsteps inaudible against the metal deck. “Then who’s that?”

The figure is young, lean almost to the point of androgynous, and walks with a languid, feline grace to their steps. A lethal bearing that can’t be faked, just like the nervous glances shared between Dynasty’s enforcers, the tip-tap stirring of restless fingers against hilts. It’s a warning as obvious as the colors of a snake. This one’s dangerous.

Going by the hairs I watch crawl upright on their necks, even Jolie and Ajax can tell. But unlike me, they can’t feel the miasma of bloodlust emanating from the figure’s heart like ichor from an open wound. Lethal intent pours from him in a barely restrained deluge. And it is a him- I can feel it in the tone of the hostility that washes against my kinetic sense. His force of will is so monstrously intent that even without being a ki fighter himself, it’s almost physically palpable even to the non-ki fighters.

The feeling redoubles as the figure shucks his hood and glances around the assembled enforcers. Black hair falls to shroud the shockingly youthful face of a boy near my age, maybe even a year or two younger. Two gold eyes pick over Dynasty’s fighters with draconic patience in search of a morsel worth tearing apart; hooding in disinterest when none stand out. His back turns to us as his attention returns to the crate. Enrapt, all of us strain to hear his voice as it drifts in the silence.

“Open it up.”

Elitist accent with bored intonation. The voice matches the earlier guess I made at his age. He’s young, alright. Right around a university first-year.

Jolie’s eyebrows knit in confusion as a pair of Dynasty Duelists moves at the boy’s command, entering a quick combination into the container’s keypad. The doors swing open on pristinely oiled hinges. I glance downward just long enough to see her replaying a clip of the combination and deciphering it in a side screen from her JOY. My attention returns to the docks as the gang warriors finish wheeling a tray of fist-sized vials out to the boy. With two thin, nimble fingers, he plucks out a vial at random and holds it up to the light. Translucent, indigo liquid casts gemstone shadows over the deck.

The boy stares at the contents for a nerve-wracking moment longer than normal. Then, satisfied by some unknown factor, he flippantly tosses the vial back to the warriors, leaving them to scramble into motion and stop it from shattering across the ground. The entire room lets out a collective, silent sigh of relief.

“Your Executor has upheld her part of the bargain,” he says, leaving the crate to be resealed. “Vex sends his regards. Your payment is already in the bank. Wrap the package and scram.”

We pull back.

“It’s just drugs,” Ajax mutters.

Jolie shakes her head. “Not drugs. Some kind of biological substance. I need to get closer for a good scan.”

“Too risky. You have evidence of something suspicious happening here. We can take that to the leagues.”

I countermand his caution with a single wave of my hand. “They won’t do anything about a drug deal. We need something concrete.”

“Like what?”

“There’s sixteen people in that room. Take your pick.”

One of the Dynasty warriors, a thickset man with scars for facial hair and a heavy broadsword slung behind his back, sends his lackeys into motion with a snap of his fingers. He nods to the boy as they step away from the container, moving close to the doors. So close I can hear their voices sink as they continue to talk behind the footsteps and hissing hydraulics.

“Your boss want me to leave a few mooks here, make sure no one stiffs you before your transport comes?”

The boy slouches into sitting on a wheeled stool, digs a half-finished protein bar out of his body wrappings, and takes an animalistic chomp. “No.”

“You sure? Lotsa loose tongues on the streets these days. Plenty of vigilantes who don’t like either of our kind. The Armiger, that bitch with the Sixer…”

“If I wanted to surround myself with dead meat, I’d sooner go to a butcher.”

The Dynasty veteran grunts, tone souring even further. Straining to maintain some amount of faux civility. “Suit yourself. Same place for the next drop?”

“If we need another shipment, your little fairy freak will provide the details.” The boy flicks a platinum credit shit into the enforcer’s chest; watching the man scramble to catch it with the boredom of a boot poised above a squirming worm. “For your lax policy on selling syndicate secrets.”

“Of course, of course. Always happy to help even out the negotiations.”

Metal chits clink together as the veteran scoops up the bribe. I duck back as he casts a casual look back at the hangar doors. Jolie matches the motion, flattening against my side. Wrists locked, blade still. Ajax’s fingers tense on the hilt of his saber.

“You know, I could always whip up a few more secrets for the right price,” the veteran says, rubbing his chin. “Tell Vex to come by the Orange sometime. I’ll pass along a token of my own appreciation and we can work out another deal, eh? If you lot are even into that sort of thing, that is. I’ve known a couple Mechs who ain’t. Like ol’ Nero-”

“If your commentary was wanted, you’d be getting paid for it.”

The veteran shoots a murderous glare at the boy’s back. “Well ain’t you just a ray of sunshine. No wonder they picked you for an errand boy.”

“Stop squirming, gutter rat,” the boy says, ending the conversation like a knife to the throat. He licks his finger clean, then flicks another credit chit at the veteran. “Eat your cheese and enjoy your silence.”

My eyebrows narrow as the two men stand and start heading back towards the crate. Ajax taps a finger against Jolie’s shoulder to get her attention, leaning close to whisper in a huddle. “That Vex they keep mentioning…”

Jolie nods, about to finish the thought when the lights in the hangar suddenly begin flickering. Just one pulse at first, then twice, then over and over again in a spasmic strobe pattern before the power suddenly winks out of existence. Darkness descends. Hydraulics seal in the doors to prevent their closing. The faint hum of background energy cuts out. Ancient machinery protests with a groan. Surprised voices shout back and forth across the docks as lights are struck from weapons and classes, casting faint illumination of a dozen colors across the interior of the hangar space.

“What happened to the power?”

“Someone get the lights on!”

“Secure the shipment, Venter.”

“On it, on it! Sinj! Get up and check the generator!”

Jolie, Ajax, and I exchange glances as confusion sets into the Dynasty warriors.

“As good a chance as any to go for one of those vials,” I shrug.

Ajax scoffs. “You’re crazy.”

Jolie waves for us to go silent. “Ajax is right. But that’s not important. Look.” She points to the open back wall of the hangar, guiding our focus to where the distant lights of faraway blocks have begun to fade. Not because they’re losing power like us, but because a thick fog has suddenly, silently begun enclosing the hangar, billowing in from somewhere beyond the open-air edge.

A Venter-accented shout comes down from the rafters. “Boss! The generators are fine!”

“Whadd’ya mean they’re fine?”

“They’re powered up like they should be! Something’s stopping them from getting to the lights!”

“Oh shit. Oh shit,” a Dynasty woman says just inside the door. “It’s her! It’s the-”

A bolt of superheated lightning splinters the darkness and sends her sprawling across the deck with ozone pouring out of her chest. Blinding light erupts across the hangar as every single one of the overheads reactivate at once. Shadows evaporate to dust. Then the thunder catches up. A single girl, my age, surfing in from the Shocks atop a battered chrome airboard. Not a horde of law enforcement or some overcity corporation. One person. And she glides right in like she owns the place. Utterly and completely brazen as she comes to a floating stop before her captive audience, smoke drifting from her red-hot fingertips.

I’m almost jealous when she throws a wink to the swarthy veteran.

“Miss me, big man?”

Dumbfounded, pindrop silence follows her as she hops off her airboard and sends it arrowing back into the mist. Tall metal-heeled boots click as she walks, hips swinging. Her ripped, acidproof skinsuit is roped by a climbing harness and half covered by a dirty furred cape that drapes down one shoulder. Hair a red-orange comet that winds down the opposite side of her chest. One orb of elemental water coalesces above her left hand. Elemental electricity crackles in her right. An undrawn revolver hangs from her left thigh. She’s using three classes at once. Crazy and dangerous.

Dynasty blades begin scraping from sheathes. She passes through their awestruck midst. Hammers are pulled back. Lasers prime. The girl swaggers up to the shipping container and raps her knuckles against it, loosing a hollow metal knock that echoes through the air.

“Word on the street was that the boys in orange were throwing a party all the way down in the dumps,” she says, threatening the Dynasty toughs with a side-eye smirk. “I hope you left room for a plus one.”

Water meets thunder as she claps her hands together. Misty white explodes outwards, blanketing the world. The lights go out. And the party begins.