“Every batch of trainees has at least one who walks up to the shard and just… waits.”

  “For what?”

  “No idea. A tutorial, maybe.”

  — Overheard between two Scavantis containment techs, SMB11

  Floor 2-C turned out to be easier to find than Floor 48-E, probably because the chaos containment section actually had proper signage. Hard to misplace the wing of a building dedicated to storing reality-warping anomalies that occasionally exploded.

  The signs were impossible to miss: bright yellow with black text, mounted every ten meters like someone had been very insistent about preventing lawsuits.

  ? CHAOS CONTAINMENT AHEAD

  ? AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY

  ? MAINTAIN A SAFE DISTANCE FROM ACTIVE SHARDS

  I followed the corridor until I reached a set of reinforced doors with a scanner beside them. I pressed my thumb to the pad, and it beeped approval. The doors slid open with a heavy mechanical groan, revealing another hallway that smelled faintly of ozone and something else I couldn’t quite place… like burnt metal mixed with static electricity?

  At the end of the hall, a plain door marked “EXAMINATION ROOM 2-C7” stood open.

  I stepped inside.

  The room was... surprisingly normal. Rows of standard-issue plastic chairs arranged in tiers, facing a raised platform at the front with a podium and a large blank screen. Fluorescent lights hummed overhead, and the walls were that specific shade of beige that existed only in corporate training facilities.

  About thirty chairs and maybe a third of them were already occupied.

  In the far corner, a group of four clustered together, all wearing matching tactical vests with what looked like custom team patches. They were laughing about something, voices low and confident.

  Three more sat in the opposite corner, quieter, older, checking their gear with energy of people who’d done this before.

  In the middle section, two identical-looking girls sat together, and I had to physically stop myself from staring.

  Not at them… at their jackets.

  Sleek, form-fitting, with that distinctive geometric paneling that screamed high-end fashion. The material caught the light in subtle ways, shifting between deep blue and black depending on the angle. Armored, but only technically. The gear you wore when you wanted to look like you could fight but never actually planned to.

  Syntavelli. Had to be. Probably their Corazza-X line, the one they marketed as “luxury combat ready.” Each jacket probably cost more than Eddy’s shop.

  The girls noticed me looking and immediately went back to their conversation, voices dropping to whispers. I walked to the back row, far right, end seat, and dropped into the chair as quietly as full armor would allow.

  Which is to say, not quietly at all. The plates clanked against the plastic, and my rifle’s barrel caught on the backrest.

  Everyone glanced at me.

  Just glances and quick assessments. Then back to their groups, their conversations, their pre-exam rituals. No one said anything or nodded. I might as well have been a piece of furniture that made noise.

  Great.

  I’d come alone. Who was I supposed to bring? Comma? “Hey, little sister, want to risk your life in a reality-warping death trap with your weird older brother?” Yeah, that would’ve gone over well. Or schoolmates? They might… but then I would have to explain why said I had a system. Omar would go without even asking, no doubt.

  And… there will be a problem when Mom learns about my diving into shards. We agreed on… uh… being slow. This wasn’t it.

  To distract myself from these thoughts, I pulled out my holoband and loaded up Pulse? feeds I’d already read in the waiting room. Anything to look busy. Anything to avoid the creeping realization that I did not know what I was about to walk into.

  Chaos shards.

  I knew the basics. Everyone did. They were... system things. Fuckery. Anomalies. Fragments of something that didn’t belong in normal space. Occasionally they exploded and leveled city blocks. System users “dove” into them for loot, materials, experience… whatever the hell that meant.

  But how did you dive? What did that even look like? Did you just... walk into it? Did it teleport you? Was it like an incursion tear, or something completely different?

  The school curriculum had covered chaos shards for maybe two days, at least the non-system information, and I’d been too busy trying not to fail math to pay attention, and still that was only the surface information. And now here I was, about to take a practical exam on something I barely understood.

  Fantastic.

  More groups trickled in over the next twenty minutes. Fours and fives, mostly, clustered together with the calm confidence of people who’d trained as teams. They filled the chairs in waves, voices rising as the room got crowded.

  I stayed in my corner, scrolling through Pulse?, pretending I wasn’t tracking every new arrival.

  By the time the chairs were nearly full, I’d counted twenty-eight people. Twenty-eight system users, or people who claimed to be, all here for the same exam. All in groups.

  Except me.

  I glanced at the two girls in Syntavelli jackets. They were laughing about something, holo-phones out, probably taking selfies. One of them had her feet kicked up on the chair in front of her like she owned the place.

  The group of four in tactical vests were running gear checks, testing comms, synchronizing their watches. Professional.

  And me? I was sitting alone in the back row, wearing cobbled-together armor and a random rifle. This was fine. Totally fine. Just another day proving I belonged somewhere I absolutely didn’t.

  Then the door at the front opened.

  A man walked in, mid-fifties, broad-shouldered and with a smile that immediately put you on edge. Too wide. Too friendly. The smile of a corporate trainer who was about to make your life difficult and enjoy every second of it.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  He wore Scavantis contractor gear, reinforced jacket, utility belt, boots that had seen actual use. Behind him, an assistant wheeled in a cart carrying something large and covered with a thick gray blanket.

  The man stepped up to the podium, planted both hands on it, and let his grin widen.

  “Who’s ready for a chaos dive?” he boomed.

  Cheers erupted. The group in tactical vests raised their fists. The girls in Syntavelli jackets whooped. Even the quiet group in the corner cracked smiles.

  I stayed silent, watching.

  The man let them cheer, nodding along, soaking it in. Then his expression shifted. The smile vanished, replaced by something harder.

  “I know it’s just a gray shard,” he said. “But I’m required by law to caution you. This—” he gestured toward the covered cart “—is the shard where most divers die.”

  The room went quiet.

  “Gray shards are easy to underestimate,” he continued. “They’re the lowest tier, so people come unprepared. Overconfident. They think a gray dive is a joke.” His eyes swept across the room, landing on the group of four in the corner. “Like going in with only two people.”

  Then his gaze shifted.

  To the two girls in Syntavelli jackets.

  They froze mid-giggle, suddenly very aware they’d been singled out.

  “Yeah?” one of them shot back, voice full of defensive indignation. She pointed directly at me. “He’s alone!”

  I blinked.

  Every head in the room turned.

  The instructor glanced at me, his expression unreadable. Then he looked back at the girl. “TitanWard armor. Customized. Custom weapons. Real gear.” He gestured at her dismissively. “You, though? Luxury clothing. Nothing else.”

  The girl’s face flushed red. “Whatever,” she muttered, turning back to her friend. They both laughed, but it sounded forced now.

  The instructor shook his head slowly, as if he’d seen this exact scenario a hundred times and was tired of it. “By law, I’m also required to ask if everyone here knows what a chaos shard is. But you wouldn’t—”

  The same girl’s hand shot up.

  “I don’t know!” she called out, laughing again.

  The instructor stopped mid-sentence. His jaw tightened. He closed his eyes, took a slow breath, and when he opened them again, his smile was back. The corporate-approved smile. The one that didn’t reach his eyes.

  “What do they teach you at school?” he asked, the question clearly rhetorical.

  She answered anyway.

  “I was... uh... sick! Yeah! I missed the day we talked about chaos shards!” She grinned as if she’d just delivered the world’s best punchline.

  Everyone knew she was lying. Everyone knew she’d asked just to be difficult, just because he’d called her out.

  The instructor’s smile didn’t waver, but his eyes looked like he was calculating how much paperwork it would take to fail her on the spot.

  “Right,” he said slowly. “Sick.”

  I sank a little lower in my chair and tried very hard not to be noticed.

  “System is order, fighting entropy. Chaos shards are pockets where entropy won. You dive in, you stabilize them by existing inside, you collect results of the stabilization process. There. Explanation done.”

  He glared at the girl, who took it in stride and with a smile, clearly enjoying getting under his skin.

  The instructor nodded at the cart. His assistant moved forward and pulled away the gray blanket in one smooth motion.

  Underneath sat a containment unit.

  It was smaller than I expected, maybe the size of a briefcase, made of reinforced steel with glowing seams that pulsed faintly with contained energy. Through a thick transparent panel on top, I could see it.

  The chaos shard.

  It was tiny. Maybe a few centimeters in diameter, hovering in the center of the containment field like a droplet of liquid starlight. Its surface shifted constantly, colors bleeding into each other… violet into silver into deep black into something that wasn’t a color at all but felt like one.

  Looking at it made my eyes itch.

  “And you stabilize the chaos,” the instructor continued, gesturing toward the shard. “Which you will be rewarded for.”

  He nodded at the assistant, who pulled out a stack of bags from beneath the cart. They looked ordinary at first glance, gray canvas, drawstring tops, but the moment she set them down, I saw it.

  The seams glowed faintly. System-enchanted. Pulsing with the same rhythmic energy I’d seen on high-end gear in storefronts I couldn’t afford to walk into.

  “In gray shards, it’s impossible to meet other groups,” the instructor said, “so I won’t go into the etiquette of diving. But everything you find inside is Scavantis property. You gather loot, put it in the bag, and hand it to us when you come out.”

  One of the Syntavelli girls shot her hand up. “That’s not fair! If we find it, it’s ours!”

  The instructor’s glare could’ve melted steel. “Look. The exam is expensive, and we run it at a loss as it is. Be glad we can’t charge you.”

  She opened her mouth to argue.

  He cut her off. “You need to gather loot worth at least ￠250 per person. Once you hit that threshold, you pass. Anything lower, or if you die, is a fail.” He paused, letting that sink in. “Questions?”

  A hand shot up from the group in tactical vests. One of the guys, older, maybe mid-twenties, with the careful posture of someone who’d actually seen combat. “Does our gear need to be made from system materials?” he asked. “Properly system registered?”

  The instructor laughed. Actually laughed, the sound echoing across the lecture hall. “This isn’t inter-solar teleport. This is just a shard.” He gestured at the containment unit as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “You go in, you come back out. No teleportation involved. You can wear anything you want, even cotton pajamas if that’s your style.”

  A few scattered chuckles rippled through the room. “Though I wouldn’t recommend it,” he added dryly. “Other questions?”

  The girl’s hand shot up again. He ignored her completely and pointed at me. “You. You’re alone. You go first.”

  Every head in the room turned.

  My stomach dropped.

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you.” He gestured impatiently toward the front. “Let’s get this moving.”

  I stood slowly, armor clanking, rifle shifting on my back. The walk down the aisle felt longer than it should have, every eye tracking me like I was about to walk into a firing squad.

  I reached the front and finally got a proper look at the containment unit.

  It was definitely reinforced. The casing was blast-proof, thick enough to survive a direct hit from something seriously destructive. The seams weren’t just glowing; they were reinforced with what looked like woven system-thread, material that cost more than most people made in a year.

  And now that I was closer, I noticed the room itself.

  The walls. The ceiling. The floor.

  All reinforced.

  Plating bolted over the standard construction, impact-resistant paneling designed to contain an explosion. The corners were rounded; the seams welded tight. Even the observation window at the back, the one I hadn’t noticed before, was layered with what had to be ballistic-grade material.

  This wasn’t just a lecture hall.

  This was a blast chamber.

  Great.

  The assistant stepped forward, holding one of the enchanted bags and wearing a pleasant, professional smile. “I need to scan you to prevent loot stealing. Is that okay?”

  I nodded mutely.

  She pulled out a handheld scanner, sleek and corporate, and pointed it at me. A beam of pale blue light washed over my armor, my weapons, every piece of gear I carried. The device beeped softly, data scrolling across its tiny screen.

  She checked the image, nodded, and tucked the scanner away. “All in order. The image will be compared after you leave the shard, so please don’t try to smuggle anything. That’s bannable from all Scavantis properties.”

  “Got it,” I managed.

  She handed me the bag. It was lighter than it looked, the enchanted seams humming faintly under my fingers. “All you need to do is touch this,” she said, gesturing toward a big red button mounted on the side of the containment unit. “The system will take care of everything. By clicking, you agree to Palistra and Scavantis installing plugins and collecting the data.”

  I barely heard her.

  My eyes were locked on the shard.

  That tiny, swirling fragment of impossible colors, hovering inside its cage like a caged star.

  Fear gripped me, cold and sharp.

  I had a broken system.

  A system that couldn’t track experience. That glitched my attributes into incomprehensible symbols. That had exactly one functioning plugin I didn’t fully understand.

  What if it couldn’t handle a chaos dive?

  What if I pressed the button and nothing happened? What if the system rejected me, spat me back out, and I had to walk back to that registration clerk and ask for the plebeian route like some kind of—

  Or worse.

  What if it worked, but wrong? What if I got stuck? What if the shard tore me apart because my system couldn’t stabilize the connection?

  “Yeah...” I whispered, barely audible.

  The assistant had already moved on, shifting her attention to the two Syntavelli girls who were lining up behind me, whispering and giggling.

  I looked at the button.

  Big. Red. Impossible to miss.

  My hand moved on its own, fingers trembling slightly as I reached out.

  Here goes nothing.

  I pressed it.

  TODAY’S CHAPTER IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY Syntavelli

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