You ever wake up convinced you’ve died, only to realize the afterlife is just the Selection Chamber with a migraine and a spectacular case of sand-in-your-everything? Yeah, me neither—until now.

  The last thing I remember is Elen’s hand gripping mine, Lucius at my shoulder, and Xander’s voice in my ear as we stepped into that blinding white light. The kind of light that wipes memory clean, that burns so bright it almost feels like mercy. I remember thinking: please, let this be the end of pain. For once, let the universe run out of creative ways to break us.

  No such luck.

  Sensation slams back—a hard, sterile floor under my ribs, the world’s worst fluorescent lighting stabbing my eyeballs. My head throbs, my bad arm is fire from the wolf bite that never healed right, and my mouth tastes like I’ve been chewing glass. I try to roll over, and my shoulder locks up with a jolt that nearly makes me black out. I see myself in a glass panel: hair matted, blood on my cheek, and eyes that look older than my father’s.

  “Did I lose?” I croak, voice shredded from a thousand screams.

  Footsteps thunder closer. Dad—Adam, king of tact and bad timing—skids into view, looking like someone aged him a decade overnight. He grabs my good arm, yanking me up so fast my vision flashes white.

  “Up. Now! We had to pull you out early,” he barks, his grip iron. “Elen and Lucius are already with their Houses. We’re under attack.” For a half-second, his mask slips and I see the terror underneath.

  My knees buckle. He catches me, half-drags me toward the corridor. My legs are jelly, my arm a useless lump, and I nearly eat floor tiles twice before Dad grunts and loops his arm around my waist. “Focus,” he snaps, voice sharp with fear I’ve only ever heard once before—years ago, when we thought Xander was lost on a mission.

  The Selection Chamber’s gone full horror show: white walls pulsing red, alarms blaring, soldiers sprinting by with whatever they can grab—one guy’s wielding a busted chair leg like a club. The air stinks of ozone, burnt metal, and panic.

  “Dad—” I gasp, hobbling after him. “What the hell is going on?”

  He doesn’t slow. “Alien invasion. Not ships—living organisms. Biotech. They’re inside the city perimeter.” His jaw is so tight I’m worried he’ll break teeth.

  A technician barrels past, clutching a severed tentacle, screaming for backup. My stomach lurches. This isn’t a drill.

  We burst into the command center. Bedlam: holographic maps flicker, officers shout, techs slap together gear from killed squadmates or raided tool cupboards. The air’s thick with sweat, ozone, and blood. Dad shoves me at a battered console, his face all business.

  “Xander’s already working on countermeasures,” he barks, never looking up from his tactical display. “We need evacuation protocols. You’re up.”

  My bad arm is basically dead weight, but I wedge it under the console and one-hand the controls. My fingers are clumsy, the pain in my shoulder a constant, gnawing ache. Every time I set a route for civilians, another red zone flashes—gone, overrun. My jaw aches from clenching; my vision blurs.

  Static explodes from the comm panel. I wince, stabbing at the controls. “They’re jamming us,” I mutter, voice ragged. “Chemical signals, EM pulses. Our comms are toast.”

  Dad’s face is stone. “Do what you can.”

  I try, but my right hand slips, sending a batch of evac signals to the wrong sector. I curse, scrambling to undo the mistake as casualty numbers spike. For a second, I see faces, not numbers—kids, parents, people I promised to protect. My hands shake so badly I nearly drop the display.

  “Twelve thousand dead at the med-evac center,” I whisper, my voice cracking. “All staff lost. Civilian team, peds ward… gone.”

  My stomach flips. I bite my tongue so hard I taste blood, fighting the urge to puke or just shut down entirely.

  Xander slams into the room, wild-eyed, a streak of blood down his cheek. “Dad! I found a vulnerability.”

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  Dad’s head snaps up. “Report.” He’s already swiping through maps, barking orders, but his eyes are on Xander.

  Xander flicks a cracked holotile into the air. The queen’s ship is a pulsing, organic nightmare—shields ripple like liquid mercury, tentacles everywhere. “They’ve got a queen. Neural nexus for the whole swarm,” Xander says, voice clipped, eyes on the data. “She’s on the main carrier. Take her out, maybe we break the collective.”

  “Shield barriers?” I ask, my voice shaky as I flex my swollen hand.

  “Adaptive,” Xander says, tracing patterns in the projection. “They learn from every attack. We’re giving them data, not damage.”

  Elen limps in, her face pale, blood crusted on her sleeve. She doesn’t waste time. “There’s a rhythm in the shields—microscopic resets. You can punch through, but your margin is less than a blink.” Her eyes meet mine: challenge accepted.

  My brain spins. “We strip a plane—keep it light, fast. Hit the window, deliver a payload.” My words come out faster than my thoughts, my heart thumping so loudly I can barely hear.

  Dad’s lips thin. “A suicide mission.”

  I snort, rolling my eyes even as my vision blurs. “Let’s call it ‘strategic martyrdom.’ At least give me a dramatic title for my obituary.”

  Xander’s jaw tightens. He flicks a bloodied hand toward the schematic. “I’ll go. I’m the best shot.”

  I glare at him, my other hand spasming from the strain. “You’re coordinating ground defense. Besides, my reaction time’s better.” I try flexing my bad hand and nearly drop the stylus, which is not helping my argument. “Okay, maybe not today, but on average.”

  Elen raises an eyebrow, wincing as she shifts her weight. “You’re half-dead.”

  “Yeah, but I look great for it,” I shoot back, biting down a groan as my ribs protest.

  Dad’s voice is like iron. “No. No way. I won’t lose you too. We’ll put out a call for a volunteer.”

  He slams the comm: “All pilots, hangar, now. We need a volunteer for a critical mission.”

  The response is instant: every pilot volunteers. I don’t know if it’s courage or Atreu’s lack of a functioning life insurance policy.

  While Dad’s distracted, I limp out the back—heart pounding, arm throbbing, vision tunneling. Elen catches my sleeve, her grip surprisingly strong. “You’re really going to do this?”

  “Someone has to,” I mutter, voice barely above a whisper. “I can thread the needle. Besides, I’m already half a legend or a cautionary tale, depending who you ask.”

  She shakes her head, but helps me strip a wrecked training plane for parts. We curse at jammed bolts, scrape knuckles on cracked plating, and patch the hull with drone armor and prayer. Cockpit’s sealed with repair foam, targeting system is a busted recon visor. The seat smells like burnt coffee and despair.

  Xander finds us midway through the patch job, his face shadowed, hands shaking. “You’re not going alone,” he rasps. “I’ll fly escort. If they swarm, I draw fire, you get through.”

  My heart lurches. “No. Xander, don’t be an idiot—”

  He grins, old defiance in his eyes. “You always did hate solo missions.”

  Elen tries to argue, but Xander’s already climbing into the second stripped-down fighter—the one we barely finished wiring together. “I’ll be your distraction, Crimson. You just finish the job.”

  I want to scream, to order him to stay. But the clock is ticking. The sky outside glows red—alien carriers darkening the horizon, swarms of biomech horrors flooding the streets.

  I meet Xander’s gaze, and we don’t need words. Just a nod, the same one we used before every childhood dare.

  The comm crackles. I patch in, my voice raw. “To save everything we love, sometimes we have to become the shield,” I rasp, feeling the words burn. “If I don’t make it, someone please delete my browser history.”

  Xander snorts through the static. “I’m deleting nothing. You’ll thank me later.”

  The launch is chaos—engines cough, the stick jams, and every jolt is a fresh spike of pain. I grit my teeth, fighting the urge to pass out. The city below is a warzone: flames, swarms of biomech nightmares, shield domes flickering and failing. Xander’s fighter hovers close, his voice a steady presence in my ear.

  “Come on, you bastard,” I mutter, coaxing the plane toward the queen’s ship. My reactions are slow; sweat blinds me. My hand slips on the throttle and I nearly crash into a burning tower, yanking up so hard I pull something in my shoulder. My vision blurs. I almost black out.

  Xander’s voice crackles: “Resonance window in five, four—”

  Suddenly, a swarm peels away from the main horde, latching onto Xander’s fighter. His plane bucks, alarms wailing. “Aeliana, go! I’ll draw them off!” he shouts, voice ragged.

  “No—Xander, pull back!” I shout, my voice cracking.

  He laughs, wild and bright and terrified. “Tell Dad I finally outflew you.”

  His fighter spins, trailing fire, the enemy tearing at the hull. For a heartbeat, his voice is all I hear: “You’ve got this, Crimson. Make it count.”

  Then static. No more voice, just the scream of the swarm and the blip of his transponder vanishing from my display.

  My world narrows to a pinpoint. Grief howls inside my chest—but the Trials have taught me grief is for later. Now is for survival, for duty, for the living.

  I force my focus to the targeting reticle. The queen’s ship looms—bigger than nightmares, uglier than my worst day. My hands are shaking so hard I can barely grip the stick. For a heartbeat, I almost let the pain swallow me.

  No. Not now. Not here.

  “Now!” Elen shouts, voice sharp as a knife in my ear.

  I slam my fist down on the trigger. The payload fires—a jury-rigged fusion core lashed to six proximity mines and hope. My hand cramps so hard I nearly let go.

  “For Atreu!” I scream, the words ripped from somewhere raw and desperate. For Xander, for everyone.

  The world goes white—heat, light, pain. My body slams forward; for a second, I’m weightless, then nothing.