[Genius Strike Force. Training assembly by 09:00.]
The bio-clock vibrated and then blared as if it meant to strike him deaf.
[Training assembly by 09:00.]
[Training assembly by 09:00.]
[Training assembly by 09:00.]
It was 7:30 in the morning.
Doyun had managed a short nap after being released from the disciplinary committee, and he pressed randomly at his wrist to shut off the bio-clock — but the noise wouldn’t stop. He’d seen automatic doors for the first time upon arriving at Varnas Space Station; there was no way he had figured out how to operate a bio-clock. He ended up slamming his wrist down against the pillow and swallowed a groan.
Getting into uniform didn’t take long. He’d worn it every day back at the Zervia Talent Development Institute too. If anything, the quality was far superior to regular clothing, which was why both Espers and guides on Earth wore military uniforms. The problem was everything else inside the dorms.
“Why isn’t the water coming out.”
He hadn’t believed from the start when they told him that standing in front of the sink would automatically trigger a jet of water toward his face like a pistol — but he hadn’t expected it to produce nothing at all. Doyun was banging his fist against the sink when a burst of cleanser shot out instead of water and hit him straight in the eyes.
“Aaagh!”
With trembling hands, he grabbed the wet wipes from beside the bed and scrubbed furiously at his face. One eye had gone completely red.
After barely managing to brush his teeth as well, Doyun stood before the greatest challenge of all — the dorm room door.
“Why won’t it open?”
Every door within United Space Forces bases required biometric authentication, heat detection, and optical pattern recognition to trigger simultaneously. His damp fingers kept getting rejected, one failed attempt after another.
“Come on. Please open, please!”
He’d started with curses and ended up pressing his palms flat against the door and begging. The moment he leaned his face in desperately pleading for it to open, iris recognition and fingerprint recognition completed at the same time and the lock disengaged with a sluggish click.
8:25 in the morning.
He was already late. Would the excuse that it had taken him nearly a full hour just to get out of his dorm room hold any water? Doyun ran down the empty corridor, undoing the button at his constricting collar as he went.
The Genius Strike Force’s dedicated training facility was on the eleventh basement level. Doyun sprinted to the door and tried to open it, failed the biometric scan again, and finally just yelled into the air.
“Oh for — seriously?!”
At that, the door swung wide open.
“Get in.”
The first floor of the training facility was made entirely of smooth metal, the walls and ceiling blending into one another with no clear boundary. On the second floor sat a single room with floor-to-ceiling reinforced glass.
All four members of the Genius Strike Force stood watching the new guide with their arms folded, perfectly at ease. This training, which they had run through more than a hundred times already, was for the new recruit — not for them.
“That him?”
“Younger than I expected.”
Word of the disciplinary committee that had been called in the early hours of the morning because of Doyun had already been making noise across the entire United Space Forces base since morning. The unit members exchanged glances and studied the subject of the rumors.
A red-haired major drinking water in the corner let out a low whistle. At that, the other three members all rose from their seats. Doyun quietly read the room and positioned himself at the very back of the line.
“Nine-oh-seven. I’d call that outright defiance.”
Doyun’s official rank as the Genius Strike Force’s dedicated guide should have been Major upon enlistment, but given his complete lack of experience, he was a Warrant Officer for the duration of the probationary period. That meant he was the most junior among the four here.
Doyun straightened his back and spine, fixed his gaze forward, and answered loudly.
“My apologies.”
“Still not taking this seriously? You take down a Lieutenant Colonel on day one and now you think you can do whatever you want?”
“No.”
“We have exactly one month left before the next reconnaissance.”
“My apologies.”
Because of the new recruit, the training schedule had been tripled. Odin had decided that he had to accumulate as much experience as possible before being deployed in the field, and there wasn’t a single unit member who could argue with that.
Major Kapu Adim tied her flowing red curls back into a tight knot and explained.
“Listen up. Today we begin ‘Vacuum Corridor Escape Training’ in preparation for the next reconnaissance.”
She pointed to the projected display on the wall with her baton and mechanically recited the entry routes and safety precautions she had gone over more than a hundred times before.
“…To reiterate — the objective is to locate and open the exit from inside a corridor that is depressurizing, within ten minutes.”
Kapu looked at Doyun. Even though the explanation was essentially for the one new recruit, his expression somehow looked as though he wasn’t taking any of it in.
“Starting now, set the MILES gear to ten percent oxygen restriction and forty percent comms interference. Execute.”
“Execute!”
All the other unit members were already putting on their MILES gear and goggles in preparation for the training, but the new recruit alone was standing there blankly.
“New recruit. Are you paying attention?”
“Execute!”
Only then did Doyun pull the vest scattered on the floor over himself and look around. Everyone else seemed fully absorbed in operating the equipment attached to their vests. But Doyun couldn’t bring himself to touch gear he had never laid eyes on before in his life.
“Need help?”
Startled by the young voice, Doyun looked down. A girl who barely reached his waist — and he was 178 centimeters tall — stood there with a blank expression. Dirty blonde hair tied up in two bunches and chubby cheeks; she looked younger than his own sibling.
“…Thank you.”
The girl fiddled with the MILES gear as if she’d done it a thousand times and asked Doyun as she worked.
“They don’t teach you this stuff on Earth?”
Small as she looked, this girl was one of only three S-class Espers on the team alongside Colonel Odin and Major Kapu. Her rank was also higher than Doyun’s current standing — Corporal.
“I’ve never seen equipment like this before…”
“Seriously?”
The girl’s eyes went wide and she laughed, finishing up the adjustments on Doyun’s gear and patting his forearm a couple of times. The easy touch of her hand suggested his not using informal speech with her had already won him some goodwill.
“You said you’re from Zone 4, right? Is it just Zone 4 that’s like that, or other zones too?”
To people born and raised on Varnas Space Station, Earth was more of an unknown territory than planets beyond their own star system. As the girl’s curious voice grew louder, Doyun glanced over at the major and lowered his own.
Doyun snuck a look at the girl’s uniform to gauge her rank.
“I don’t know much about training in other zones either, Corporal.”
The girl stuck out her hand for a handshake.
“Call me Anna. I’ll call you Doyun.”
Doyun stared for a moment at the hand extended toward him — smaller than even his sibling’s. As he shook it, his expression tightened for just an instant without him realizing. The hand was calloused in a way no child’s hand should be.
“How old are you, Anna?”
“Twelve.”
“……”
“Still, I’m three years in, so I’m way more senior than you.”
That meant she had enlisted as an Esper at age nine. Unlike Doyun, who was taken aback, Anna put on a deliberately indifferent expression to establish the hierarchy and offered some advice.
“Just so you know, the first time I did this training I passed out from oxygen deprivation. Good luck!”
Leaving a bewildered Doyun behind, everyone lined up in a row with their weapons. They connected cables to each other’s belts, and the door into the corridor opened.
The passage was dark and long. Warning alerts covered the oxygen level graph on the wall from end to end. Doyun followed the unit members inside and quickly rotated his wrist twice to check his bio-clock.
Each member’s rampage meter reading appeared.
Kapu Adim (S): 11%
Anna Meidil (S): 15%
Margo Timberly (A): 3%
Fred Winber (A): 2%
S-class Espers had a baseline rampage meter reading higher than A-class by default. Doyun kept his bio-clock active and quickened his pace to keep from falling out of formation.
Major Kapu’s voice came through the communicator.
[Detecting what appears to be a micro-fracture to the north. Stay alert for any signs of decompression.]
“Copy. Continuing to advance.”
[Copy. Wait — all units, step back one pace in the nine o’clock direction.]
“Pardon?”
[Keep your heads down! …! …Static…! Ksshh –]
The crackling comms cut out half the order. Kapu clicked her tongue and typed the instruction directly into the bio-clock system so it could be pushed as a display alert.
North fracture detected. Pressure spike warning. All units, ninety-degree retreat to the left. Drop to low stance.
“Copy.”
“Copy.”
“Copy.”
“……”
Doyun was the only one who hadn’t understood the order. He saw the other members suddenly shift sideways and duck their heads, and only a half-beat later dropped into a low stance himself.
Just then, a sharp metallic crack rang out from the fracture on the outer wall. A low-frequency vibration rolled through the entire tunnel-shaped corridor, like the inhale of a vast pair of lungs.
Outside the corridor was a space modeled after open vacuum. The air inside the corridor, where atmosphere had been maintained, rushed all at once through the fracture into the vacuum beyond, and the resulting pressure differential sent a current of wind sweeping along the floor. Any unsecured equipment slid at once, dragging toward the fracture.
“What the…”
Caught off guard, Doyun instinctively pressed himself against the wall and dropped even lower. Countless tiny vibrations and metallic sounds rang through the corridor, and the unit members began to stagger, dropping into lower stances against the force that seemed to be tearing them forward.
Some lost their footing and lurched forward, their bodies tilting — but they gripped the cable handles connecting them to each other and barely managed to hold on.
“What is with the difficulty level today?”
“Come on, do we really need to go this far?”
Until the automatic blast wall engaged, the corridor remained open to the fracture for several seconds. Anna, with her small frame, latched onto Doyun’s legs. But in the sudden pressure differential of the near-vacuum, she ended up clinging to his pant leg and swinging.
“Anna!”
Sensing the danger, Doyun reached out, hauled Anna up, and pulled her into his arms.
At that moment, the pressure differential detonated all at once, and the surrounding equipment was swept in one direction along with the air. A unit member who had been standing close to the fracture and reaching toward the automatic blast wall lost his balance and was violently flung forward. He thrust out his arm trying to grab the handle, but his fingertips only grazed the metal before he slipped into open air.
The body of the nearly two-meter-tall male unit member slid silently into the passage as if disappearing, and the pressure alarm filled the entire corridor.
“Damn it, Fred!”
Kapu barked an urgent order into her communicator.
[Code Red! All units, safety release!]
