Every time she walked down that glass corridor to Hoxing University's mecha pod, Ella watched their reflections. Her and Immortal Ignition. The 10-foot-tall humanoid mech trailed a couple feet behind, its long legs shuffling at exactly half the pace of Ella's. In the dead of night, the only sources of light were the twinkling tree bulbs outside and the neon bars of the distant city. Her mech's lava-orange RGB strips overpowered them easily. It was unnecessary lighting, consuming more power than the robot needed to, but every mech had their flagship colors.
Her posture wasn't as straight as it used to be, she noticed. That was good. She didn't need to prove her status anymore—that mech walking behind her showed people everything they needed to see.
Not that there were any people right now. It was 4 AM, and most of the college was asleep. Ella always came late when she had to use her university's tech to test a new component. This time it was a cooling system that could only be installed using the university's alloy molder, one of the most advanced pieces of tech in the megacity that only the government could own. It could, in theory, join any two materials no matter how incompatible they were. Atomic restructuring or something.
It was also illegal to use without a license. A license that students like Ella were not allowed to have.
Still, she'd done this half a dozen times by now. She knew how to bypass the system without a hitch. If there was a time to have gotten caught, it would've been three or four excursions ago.
Ella and her mech reached a curve in the hall. Immortal Ignition's thundering footsteps briefly fell out of sync with Ella's but quickly recovered. Up ahead were the double doors to the mecha pod. Even closer, however, was another student. A girl wearing a brown sweater and cargo pants, dragging a cart of metal limbs.
They passed each other soundlessly. The girl looked at Immortal Ignition for two milliseconds, at Ella for one, and walked right by.
Ella nearly slowed down. Not gonna say anything? No "is that Immortal Ignition?" or "didn't you get fourth at Mecha Realm?"
She mentally pinched herself. Why would she expect everyone to act like that? Some people were shy. Some people, believe it or not, didn't care; they knew the names and faces of the greatest mechs—the government made sure of that—but weren't followers of the sport. They didn't care that Immortal Ignition was arguably the greatest mech of all time, with five Mecha Realm victories and over a seven-hundred kills. They didn't care that Ella, in her first year of piloting Immortal Ignition, had gotten fourth place and 11 kills in the 75th Mecha Realm, setting the record for highest placement of a rookie.
Ella scanned her palm at the door, confirming that she was a registered pilot and student. When she entered the pod, her mech had to duck below the door frame. Stupid design. How did a door to a room specifically meant for mechs manage to be too short for an average-height one?
The room itself was reminiscent of the lower floor of a dueling stadium: A wide corridor encircled the training grounds, filled to the brim with engineering equipment, machines, and doors to various rooms. The corridor broke off at the front entrance, granting Ella a path straight into the training grounds. She didn't go in, and instead turned left.
It was eerily quiet, like always. Back at her team's workshop, something was always running. Someone was always there late—usually Luyan, the engineer. He'd been the one to suggest testing this new cooling system, and he was well aware Ella didn't have the license to attach it. Too bad. Luyan didn't even have access to the mecha pod.
The alloy molder was on the other side of the room, and the walk around was made even longer by the dead lights and absence of noise. Ella passed by two silver blades on a rack against the wall, and she recalled Saberstar's dual-bladed design. Her old nemesis.
It wasn't a rivalry, as Ella and Marvin Yao, Saberstar's pilot, had never dueled each other, but moreso a one-sided hatred. Marvin and Ella had both been rookies last year, had both outperformed all expectations, and yet Marvin got all the attention.
And then someone had killed him.
Ella had been introduced to this theory a week ago, when she'd met with Bob in the badlands. Bob was a pilot who had been investigating Marvin's disappearance, and he'd come to the conclusion that the boy had been murdered. Furthermore, he'd found that the Hosaka Roundtable, Megacity 14's oligarchy, was trying to keep the fact hidden to maintain the sport's anti-corrupt reputation.
Ella wasn't exactly concerned for herself, but this was something she thought a lot about. It was only natural.
The alloy molder was a glass and metal coffin fifteen feet long and ten feet wide. It took up the majority of the back of the room. An empty worktable stood opposite it. Ella propped Immortal Ignition against the table, then turned off the mech. She unslung her backpack, set it down, and took out the coolant system—the cap, the tank, and the dozens of pipes. She began to attach it.
With this mech, she could plausibly defeat half of the top-twenty pilots in the megacity. She had studied their patterns enough that any fight with them was a predetermined win or loss. What Ella needed to watch out for were the up-and-coming rookies. There was Caroline Sand, who'd hosted those mech-team conventions last month. Then there was Ishaan, who was rumored to practice the entire waking day. That was obviously an exaggeration, but she'd met Ishaan once before at Mecha Realm. There was an intensity to him that she hadn't noticed in any other pilot.
Ella knew she needed to work harder than ever. Take more hours off college. A well-designed mech could only go so far.
Once the cooling contraption was in place, Ella turned to the alloy molder. She looked around, confirming there was no one nearby. Then she manually activated one of Immortal Ignition's heat-drills and held it against the molder's wall. Soon, the device was tricked into thinking it was overheating, and several of its latches popped open. Ella opened the lid the rest of the way and had her mech lower itself into the coffin. She closed the lid and hovered her finger over the start button for a moment before she pressed it. It was habit. She knew nothing bad would actually happen to her mech.
The process took five minutes. Ella put in earbuds and jogged a few laps around the room. The walls were mostly glass, and although much of it was obscured anyway by the equipment, an outsider standing in the right place could see directly into the training arena. She stopped at the entrance, staring down the hall and at the sparkling yellow trees. The pod was separated from the rest of the university by a dense forest which absorbed all the light of civilization. A holopanel from a distant skyscraper changed advertisements. A stream of shuttles streaked through the sky. Not a soul in sight.
After the cooling system was successfully meshed with Immortal Ignition, Ella walked it into the training grounds. It was like any other arena—a flat, circular floor with several metal obelisks placed randomly throughout. Ella left her mech standing in the center and headed to the piloting room. It was the one they had in every stadium, complete with a Bessmer chair, hologram display, and literally nothing else.
Ella set a five-minute timer on the Bessmer chair that would automatically disconnect her. Besides the emergency button on the arena wall, it was the only way for a pilot to desync on their own. A neurobrick was already on the Bessmer chair's armrest, so all Ella had to do was sit down, put on the piloting helmet, and crush the thing.
Everything went black for a moment. Then the world burst to life again, a different view, as if Ella had teleported. Seventeen metal panels around her. Two layers of glass walls beyond, and then the forest with its dim tree bulbs. Her hands were drills, her feet titanium-enforced boots, her torso an array of rockets so dense they were like scales. She warmed up her joints, then activated the tertiary engine. Her senses heightened tenfold as a warmth coursed through her veins. A trick of the mind, since she couldn't feel anything in the mech.
At her side, the drills began to glow orange with heat, distorting the air around them. The color spread to her wrists, then forearm. It crept past her elbow and towards her shoulder.
The cooling system kicked in once it was at her neck. The heat backed off, resting comfortably just below the mech's biceps.
Perfect, Ella thought. She scanned the room and noted the giant red button on the wall behind her. The emergency desync. A few feet away was a lever to activate the training program. Holograms would pop up periodically, and you had to kill each one before it disappeared.
Holograms wouldn't do. Ella needed a real test of power, so she swung for the metal panels. They were just steel lumps. They could be replaced easily. Besides, who was going to stop Immortal Ignition from breaking a couple rules?
Her drill sliced through the first panel like butter. It still amazed her how it was able to do that, considering how it wasn't even a sword. She impaled a hole through the next panel—her drill practically slid through—then she swiped upwards. Molten steel splattered across the floor.
There was some resistance, she noted. Had to crank the power higher. The mech hummed with energy and the drills began trembling. However, the cooling system stabilized everything in no time.
She dismembered two more metal columns. Good enough. Now it was time to test flash-activations. She couldn't keep the heat in her feet or she'd melt the floor, but she could turn it on and off during a kick.
Before she could initiate the test, she noticed something in the corner of her periphery. The pod door had slid open. A student wearing a black jacket and gray cap walked inside. He paused, looked like he was about to turn right, and then went left.
Another night owl. If he had turned right, Ella would've been concerned. To go right would've been to head to the Bessmer room, where she was. Left would be the metal printers, so he was probably just retrieving a print.
Ella focused on the panels. The flash activation was an automated process, but today she'd do it manually for accuracy's sake. She raised her right foot and turned on the heat. It glowed, but nowhere near as bright as her drills. She adjusted a few internal settings, increasing the resistance of coolant flow in the legs. Second attempt was much brighter.
She turned to the nearest panel and performed a roundhouse kick. Her foot hit the panel and didn't budge.
What— oh, right. Manual activation. She prepared to go again, but something made her pause. She looked at the front door, expecting to see that guy in the cap heading out. Nope. The hallway was empty.
But something had changed. She couldn't put her finger on it, but the door hadn't looked that way before. Had the tree bulbs gotten dimmer? Had a shuttle stream fizzled out?
It's late and you're paranoid, she told herself.
But then she saw it. The palm scanner was dark. Deactivated.
What did that mean? Did it turn off at certain times? Was it conserving power or something?
Ella felt a chill go down her spine nonetheless. The coolant works. I can test the rest later. She walked to the back of the arena and lifted the cover of the emergency-desync button. Through this opaque section of wall, she could hear muffled footsteps. They seemed to be walking around the arena, towards the piloting room.
Ella pushed down a spike of panic. It was fine. It was just another student.
She pressed the desync button and closed her eyes, preparing to be transported back to the Bessmer chair.
When she opened her eyes, she was still in the arena. Ella frowned and pressed the button again. Nothing happened.
There was no suppressing the panic now. The scanner and button deactivated… this was no coincidence.
The footsteps were getting faint, and Ella thought she heard them pick up near the end. She slammed the button twice more to no avail.
Memories flashed by. Memories of a news headline: Marvin Yao, out of commission after his duel with Gammagrade. Memories of a meeting in the badlands and finding out he was murdered.
Ella spun around. The piloting room was on the opposite side of the arena, marked by a metal wall with a human-sized door in the center far too small for her mech. She ran towards it. Tertiary engine active. Heat to the arms. Drills charging.
As she got closer, she realized she would not have time to carve a hole in the wall. She suppressed the coolant, allowing the red-hot energy to spread all throughout her body.
To call it ramming would've been inaccurate. She phased through the wall, rendering half of it mush.
The man was in the room, less than three feet away from the Bessmer chair and Ella's human body. He froze upon seeing Immortal Ignition, then turned and bolted. Ella started to give chase, but something within her mech suddenly popped. Smoke began clouding her vision.
Shit! Ella resumed coolant flow and put the other two engines into overdrive, but the mech was already on standby, frozen in place. Prebuilt protocols no one could override.
Within seconds, the intruder had disappeared, and Ella was alone again in the pod. In the bottom left half of her vision, a red-haired girl lay in a Bessmer chair, eyes closed, palms flat on the armrests, face as calm as stone.
If only she knew how terrified she was.