"Marcus." A hand shook my shoulder. Ferdinand. "Your name. They called your name."
"What?"
"You're up, idiot." Ferdinand tried again.
The Assembly Hall swam back into focus. Three faces stared at me.
"Marcus Tiernan!" The announcer's voice boomed again, a hint of impatience breaking through the rehearsed grandeur. "Marcus Tiernan!"
"I think they want you," Tom said dryly.
Right. Yes. My name. My turn...
The Federation logo on the floor began pulsing, mirroring my heartbeat. I stepped onto it, forgetting the walk across the room. My legs felt as though they belonged to someone else.
"Uphold the name, Tiernan." Ferdinand's voice followed me.
CLINK
The platform descended with mechanical smoothness, rotating as it went. The Assembly Hall ceiling receded above me, replaced by the yawning maw of the arena. A hundred thousand faces turned upward. A hundred thousand pairs of eyes found me. They examined. They weighed.
"Marcus Tiernan!"
The announcer's voice thundered through the space, wrapping around me like chains.
"The Tiernan Line! Forty-one generations of service!"
Forty-one. I'd heard it my whole life. Forty-one generations of pilots, soldiers and heroes. Forty-one generations of spilled blood for the Federation. And now me...
"Son of Major James Tiernan! Grandson of General Arthur Tiernan, currently serving!"
Holograms lit up across the arena, revealing my family's service record. From the very first General Marcus Tiernan, all the way to my sister, Warrant Officer Sara Tiernan. Each name a weight added to my shoulders. I caught glimpses of the crowd. The Merit Seating. The Common stands. The Legacy Section. The Chen Dynasty's box, where Wei had already been escorted.
"Great-nephew of S-Grade Luminary Lydia Tiernan, who gave her life at the Battle of Proxima!"
The pin burned against my chest. Not warm anymore. Hot. The copper taste flooded my mouth so suddenly that I nearly gagged.
The crowd noise began to fade. Not quieting, distancing. As though I was hearing it through water.
"...seventeen combat..."
The announcer's voice stretched. Fragmented.
"...three gener..."
"...awarded posthum..."
Words arrived out of order. The arena had taken on a strange quality. Lights too bright. Shadows too deep. Faces in the crowd smeared at the edges.
How long had I been falling?
THUD
The world snapped back. Sound and light and heat rushing in like a wave breaking. I stumbled, caught myself. The crowd roared.
The pod waited.
Twenty meters away.
Gleaming under spotlights that made it look almost alive. The same pod Wei had entered minutes ago. The same pod that had measured every Tiernan before me and found them worthy.
I walked toward it. Each step heavier than the last. The pin burned. The copper drowned.
Ten meters.
The pod's surface caught the light strangely. Almost iridescent. Almost...
Five meters.
breathing.
I reached out, fingers brushing against its hull. Warm, but not metal-warm. Skin-warm. It pulsed, gentle and rhythmic. In the polished surface stood a silhouette, wearing my face.
Darkness.
The pod sealed behind me, the noise of the arena vanished. My own breathing was all that remained.
Then pain.
Boundless waves of invisible force slammed against my skull unceasingly. All the while, pressure built from behind my eyes, in my temples, at the base of my brain. Something was probing, searching for a way in.
The needles descended. Light pricks of pain came from my arms, my neck and the base of my spine as they inserted themselves. The sensation paled in comparison to the feeling of something vast trying to push in.
Of tendrils of ice trying to find purchase. Of something trying to reach something that should have been empty. Only to find it occupied. Then darkness.
-
I'm drowning in shadow that tastes like copper.
I lay in a vast void of darkness; no air, no up, no down. Stars begin to burn overhead, cutting through the emptiness. Constellations forming words that I can't understand; every time I reach for their meaning, they scatter and reform.
At the edge of my perception stands a silhouette. It wears my face, only— older. Deep brown eyes, scars, and cracked lips. He's fighting... Always fighting. Losing every single time. Yet he always fights.
Inside me, something vast unfurls. Unfathomable.
In the same place, at the same time, a woman made of ice stands frozen. Tears of purple gold run down her cheeks, evaporating before they fall. Her mouth shapes one silent word that I cannot hear.
The silhouette leans close now, even older and more worn. I can feel its breath on my skin.
"Find," It whispers, voice harsh and degrading.
Then, without warning, every star blinked shut. No explosion. No sound. No light. Only a dream of a dream; a memory of what once was.
I lay in a vast void of darkness; no air, no up, no down.
Only the taste of copper in my mouth, it crushes me, folds me and swallows me whole.
-
Light flooded in. I stumbled forward, legs failing. The arena swam back into existence. The crowd. The lights. The massive holographic display overhead.
I looked up.
Grey letters. Dull and lifeless.
F-GRADE
The silence was absolute.
A hundred thousand people. Not one breath. Not one whisper. The word hung above me like a sentence already carried out. Forty-one generations ended here, on this floor. With me.
The copper was gone. Without warning, it had disappeared. For the first time in recent memory, my mouth tasted like nothing. It was as if it had never been there in the first place. I ran my tongue across my teeth, searching for it. Hoping for it.
Clean.
Then my stomach heaved.
Not copper. Something else. My body rejected what my mind couldn't process. I doubled over. My hand flew to my mouth.
Blood.
Bright red. Yet there was no taste.
The silence cracked, the arena filling with murmurs and gasps. A familiar voice in the Legacy section screamed. Officials moved toward me. The crowd roared, confused, horrified.
The Tiernan heir. F-Grade. Bleeding onto the arena floor.
But I couldn't hear any of it.
Because in the ringing emptiness where the copper used to reside, something else was waking. Not cold like the machine's probing, not heavy like the presence that had blocked it. Something new. Something hungry.