The darkness tunneled into his eye sockets. Unnerving as it was confusing, Arthur had the impression he was in a pitch black room, empty save for him.

  There came a sound—a whisper—like secrets spoken through a keyhole. His skin prickled as he strained to hear it, and his legs began to tremble. It wasn’t the frustratingly familiar malady he’d dealt with his whole life, it was something else.

  In moments he felt weightless—a jellyfish floating in the dark.

  Still blind, the invisible current carried him upward, breaking an aquatic surface and throwing his consciousness upon the wind of a storm where he whipped without tether till the gales ceased their blowing and became chittering electricity gamboling in his ears.

  His body was amorphous yet he could still feel his teeth grinding against one another as he held on.

  Just as every morsel of his awareness was pulled from the bones of his body, the whisper—present all along—cut through the storm, clear as a bell.

  Here…is where it begins…

  The voice could only be described as all-sound, an impression one might experience as they walked through a city square, or bask in the sonorous chorus of nature at twilight.

  Arthur’s eyes snapped open. Light lanced into them with blinding color. It filled his vision like dye spilling into water. The crackling electricity returned, and he flinched away, fearing being set upon by the torrent once again.

  Birds, he realized with a resounding relief. The crackle wasn't electricity but frenzied chirps belonging to a flock of birds among the rafters of a huge empty building…

  From that focal point, the world came into focus: four doors stood open on each side, dawn spilling in, and dust motes cartwheeled through the yawning sun beams.

  Arthur looked down. His body was three meters in the air, strapped into the chest cavity of a bone-white metal skeleton. Rows of identical skeletons flanked him, each cradling a human figure within.

  Exos?

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  The pilot sticks in his hands were coarse, and the straps bit tightly across his chest. A barred cage encircled him. This wasn’t a skeleton, and this wasn’t a meck either. This was an exo, a training vehicle for new cadets.

  I’ve been here…

  Deckhands in burgundy jumpers moved at the feet of each exo while Proctors in gray jackets sat at a long table off to the side, watching. He didn’t need to check his own jumper or that of the others waiting their turn in line behind him for he knew it was black—the mark of an academy cadet.

  One proctor stood apart from the rest, facing the exos like she was an army onto herself. Angela Mersia…her name—a memory of a name—came to him in a strange echoing way. The head proctor…she had sunken eyes, thinning white hair, and sharp shoulders hunched like hawk wings.

  The familiarity slammed into him like a freight train. He didn’t simply know this place or this person. Worse, he knew this exact moment for it was a time from his past. Fear began to rise inside him, squeezing his stomach and spine together so that he thought he might vomit…but the emotion—like his thoughts—produced an odd echoing sensation, as though he were hearing someone else’s thoughts, or feeling someone else’s feelings but at the same time.

  These are my thoughts, these are my feelings, but from back then…

  He now knew that with a morbid finality.

  I’m not failing here. His younger self thought, loud enough for Arthur of now to hear.

  But you already did…he thought back.

  Proctor Mersia’s voice cut through the noise.

  “By passing the written exam you’ve proven your knowledge, but knowledge alone doesn’t make a pilot. Now you must prove your aptitude.

  “The comforts of modern piloting have been stripped away—no gravwells, no repulsors, no tract pads. Good ol’ fashioned analog piloting.” She grimaced as though something sour was on her tongue, “if you ask me, we’d have you do this part first. Better to put you in the fire to see what burns.”

  A cough came from the proctor’s table.

  “But we can’t have that, can we?” She shoved her hands in her pocket and continued. “It’s a hundred meters between you and the exit ahead. Walk the length in your exo, or fail. Fall and take too long to get up, you fail, and the next cadet gets your seat.”

  For a moment, Arthur was distracted from this—Memory? Vision?—for he was in space, marooned with his crew somewhere within the belt. Mark, Joyce, and Erin were all dead.

  Daiko is dead…but if that was so, if that was truth why could he feel himself trembling?

  “Anything else?” Proctor Mersia gestured toward the table. “No? Well then, deck hands, remove the blocks and start the show. Good luck, cadets.”

  Hope surged within his younger self, but couldn’t be more alien to the Arthur of now, for only the former knew what was to come…today was the day he was slain by a dragon.

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