Team Survival
The floor of Staging Bay 4 groaned, a sound like grinding teeth vibrating through the soles of Kaelen’s boots. Above, the broadcast drones swarmed—a predatory, multi-lens cloud curating the narrative of his failure. Beside him, three rookies from the low-tier districts stood in mismatched, rust-streaked frames, their status lights blinking a nervous, rapid amber. They were cannon fodder, the Tower’s way of ensuring Kaelen’s next ascent was weighted with the drag of incompetence.
"Keep your sync-levels tight," Kaelen said, his voice clipped through the local comms. "If we move as a block, we survive the initial pressure wave. If you deviate, you’re dead."
"We aren't taking orders from a marked anomaly," the pilot of a battered scout-frame spat back, his feed flickering with static. "The Proctor’s board says your frame is a walking EMP hazard. You want us to catch the heat so you can skip to the next floor?"
Kaelen didn’t argue. His HUD, synced through Vesper’s illegal spoofing suite, pulsed with a jagged, crimson warning. It wasn't an external attack, but a pre-emptive structural failure—the floor beneath them was a calculated trap. He shoved his frame forward, forcing the rookies to pivot or be crushed by the descending ceiling plates. They scrambled, the realization hitting them too late: Kaelen wasn't just a disruptor; he was the only thing keeping them from being purged by the architecture.
The magnetic gauntlet in the next sector shrieked. A rotating lattice of electrified tungsten plates occupied the center, spinning with a bone-crushing cadence. Kaelen’s HUD flickered: LATENCY ALERT: 42ms. EXPECTED: 5ms. The Tower’s diagnostic software was bleeding his connection, turning his controls into a sluggish, unresponsive mess.
"Kaelen, the timing window is closing!" Vesper’s voice cut through the private channel. "If you don't sync, you’re just another casualty for the broadcast feed."
Kaelen gritted his teeth, the metallic taste of blood filling his mouth. The spoofing suite was a parasite, tethering his nervous system to the Iron Leech’s failing hydraulics. To bypass the lag, he forced a deep-sync—a direct neural override that dumped the frame’s kinetic feedback into his synapses. His vision whited out, his nose streaming blood, but the frame responded instantly. He pulled the squad through the gauntlet in a blur of motion, leaving the Tower’s sabotage algorithms grasping at air.
As they hit the mid-level, a cold, synthesized voice cut through the feed: “Pilot 774-Kaelen. You are operating outside authorized parameters. Initiating purge protocol: Cull-Alpha.”
Automated drones poured from the ceiling vents, targeting lasers painting the squad. One of the rookies froze. Kaelen didn't hesitate. He slammed the Iron Leech into the path of the incoming fire, sacrificing his frame’s remaining armor plating to shield the rookie’s scout-frame. The public broadcast erupted with the shock of the spectators as Kaelen took the hit, his frame shuddering under the impact, yet holding steady.
When the dust cleared at the extraction terminal, the squad stood alive, their initial skepticism replaced by the hollow, wide-eyed stare of survivors. Kaelen slumped in his cockpit, his vision swimming in a crimson haze. Vesper’s voice crackled through, stripped of its usual bravado.
"Data download complete, Kaelen. But the Tower has locked your ID out of the repair bays. You’re officially a 'disruptive element' in the ranking algorithm. Hax is scrubbing your records as we speak."
Kaelen accessed the encrypted packet he’d snagged from the downed drones. As the data unspooled, the reality of the Proving Ground shattered. The logs were explicit: the Tower was harvesting the neural patterns of fallen pilots, stripping their tactical intuition to patch the cracks in its own failing predictive AI.
"They’re not just killing us," Kaelen rasped, his voice thin against the rhythmic thumping of his cooling fans. "They’re cannibalizing us."
He pushed the data to the public feed, a digital flare of truth in a dark sky. The Tower couldn't purge him now without confirming the leak to every pilot in the Spire. He stood on the precipice of the next floor, a marked man with a weaponized reputation, waiting to see who would blink first.