Udo Gehler saw his next opponent was the Virgin Bitch of the Resistance and didn’t even blink. He’d been curled up in his personal ARMOR lounge, holo-projecting the replay of his last match frame by frame, noting every instance he’d lost momentum or ceded terrain control—but as soon as Bliss Academy shifted directions, pinging every cadet on board their new target, he reached around to the back of his neck and switched on his synchro-gear. Immediately his cradle of cushions, along with all bodily sensations, disappeared into a void.

“I fight for the Republic,” he said. “For Which We Stand.”

He’d said the same pledge at roll call every morning when he’d lived in the dorms. At the beginning of classes too, when he’d still had to attend class. The glory of the Republic, he’d learned, would impose his will over this liminal realm too. The pure force of repetition did, at least. The void transformed into an ocean. He imagined the comforting embrace of his epigenesis core. Treading water. Holding his breath.

He dove.

Clanging rose up to meet him first. Udo opened his eyes—his ARMOR’s sensors, rather—to the sight of the hanger. First-year cadets crashed around the practice track along its rim, struggling to control the titanic strides of their ARMOR units. Even more so as Bliss Academy stumbled over a particularly hilly section of terrain. Udo swung in his cubicle. As the mesh over his unit’s deployment hatch clattered aside, he could see they were making good time across the bombed-out wastes that separated the Republic from the Free States. Here on the border, any stationary settlement, or even any roving city without anti-air defenses, would wind up reduced to the same.

From here, he had a good view of the hexapod campus police units scurrying along the underside of the Academy too. One attached to the nearest loading dock with two arms, using the other four to secure a shipping container emblazoned with the stars of the Free States: winnings from the Academy Udo had just vanquished. Udo winced inwardly as the first person staggered out. Surrogates. He’d never understood why they couldn’t just be brought up on transports. There were too many, he supposed. Some in the skirts and work clothes of civilians, others in cadet uniforms, trailing bloody wires—freshly extracted from their ARMORs. As new citizens of the Republic, they’d give birth to future pilots, as well as epigenesis cores . . .

Udo.

Udo faltered—but he maintained control of his ARMOR as it dropped on its cable tether down to the sands of the wastes. A figure leaned over the surface of his consciousness, calling his name. Udo ignored it. At the speed Bliss Academy was moving, he’d have a few minutes of practice before needing to be drawn up again. He erupted a mane of spikes all the way down his exoskeleton. If he kept his opponent at a distance with his needle projectiles, she would fall like all the others. He leaped, spinning into a double tornado combo. Then a triple. Of course, if he could figure out how to bring out the true power of his epigenesis core, his Aias Field, no Free States ARMOR unit would be able to even touch him—

Udo, please. Desynch.

Udo flubbed his fifth tornado, sending the spikes pinging off one of the massive legs of Bliss Academy. Someone was shaking his real body now. He gritted his teeth and let himself desynch, kicking up to the ocean surface of the void. His unit slumped. Udo lifted his arm—aching for, instead of his frail fingers, his ARMOR’s claws—and switched off his synchro-gear.

“Udo. How many times have you dived today?”

Captain Laurent leaned over him. He was Udo’s superior officer—and the scars branching across his scalp, from the remains of a synchro-gear, marked him as a former ARMOR pilot as well. Why ask, Udo wondered? He already knew.

“I need to practice.”

“Then eat something. You need to eat something.”

Udo stared wearily at the plate Laurent offered him. A tomato, its slices dripping with juices all the hydroponics tech of the Republic hadn’t even come close to replicating. A luxurious cut of his winnings usually only reserved for the general staff in their bunker deep below. The thought of someone in the Free States crawling in the dirt to grow this, only to have it plucked away by an ARMOR match loss made Udo’s stomach turn.

“After I finish my drill,” Udo mumbled.

“Tell me what you want and I’ll get it for you.”

“I’ll eat whatever. There are shortages, right?”

“Not for you.”

Udo took a deep breath and switched on his synchro-gear again. He felt a nosebleed starting up. Two synchs back-to-back was a lot even for him. But he had to suck it up. He’d messed up his last combo chain, so he had to get at least twenty needle tornadoes in a row, then deploy down to the wastes with his sparring partner to run through a realistic battle scenario before ending his practice session for the night.

“Udo—you saw who your next opponent is, right?” Laurent’s voice floated in his ear.

“Yes.”

Udo dove, not seeing Laurent shimmering above, refusing to hear his voice. After four years as the top-ranked cadet of Bliss Academy, Udo could understand Laurent’s concerns about his physical well-being. But he could not comprehend more than that. He could not.

• • • •

Your Aias Field will arise when you least expect it, Laurent had always told Udo. Connections to epigenesis cores couldn’t be forced. So it helped to talk to it. Like you’d talk to a child, Laurent always said. She’s not fully conscious as core, but she can understand emotions. So Udo admitted to his core that everyone was watching to see if he could continue his unbroken win streak. That Bliss Academy’s general staff had put up more resources than ever on this victory, shipping containers of fuel and synth-meat, and even first-year cadets prepared to be traded in the unlikely event of his loss. And then, as the sun dipped over his third sparring match down on the wastes, Udo felt it. A certain weight. A gaze on the back of his neck. His heart pounded, his fists slicked with sweat, before he synched completely and totally with his ARMOR again. His sparring partner’s unit staggered to its feet. Udo skewered it with needles in his most fluid tornado combo of the night. Four rotations. Hitting joints between the exoskeleton plates. The neck. Back of the knees. His opponent collapsed. Did you see that? Udo thought in a rush of adrenaline. Are you proud of me?

Only a husky laugh responded.

When he desynched, his ARMOR lounge was empty. As usual.

Udo needed to sleep. Dried blood caked his lip. If he’d really pushed himself to the point of hallucination, he could suffer a blackout or worse. He needed to tell Laurent. Run a diagnostic for his synchro-gear. Instead, he slipped outside to his private elevator. Down, to the marble corridors carved with the names of the fallen, down behind the kitchens, down in the clattering filth of a cargo lift to where he knew his fellow cadets would be. He billowed out onto a dock jutting into open air. The wastes rumbled past, only the sight of Udo’s ARMOR unit slowly being drawn back up to its hanger by its cable indicating its vast distance below. This dock was the closest cadets could physically get to the ARMOR hanger—and therefore the most realistic simulation of conditions as they’d be on match day.

“What’re you doing here, Top Rank?” a sneer greeted him.

At the sight of Udo’s gold-trimmed uniform, the first-years leaped to their feet. The older cadets remained synched. Engrossed in practice. Ready, the second he lost a match, to dethrone him. They’d take his ARMOR unit’s custom exoskeleton, his lounge, his position as the spearhead of Bliss’s formation without a second thought. How could he have even considered coming down here? But he couldn’t leave. A certain weight crouched atop his synchro-gear, on the back of his neck.

“What do you know about the Virgin Bitch of the Resistance?” Udo asked them.

Four years of stony silence crashed against him. The unbeatable Udo Gehler had ascended the rankings fresh out of high school, within months of entering Bliss Academy. From the cushioned comfort of his personal ARMOR lounge, he’d never endured any privations. Never become close enough to any of them to suffer the disappearance of fallen friends.

“She’s a reaper,” a quiet voice finally answered. “Everyone she engages in direct combat with goes on their last dive. During the match or right after . . .”

She trailed off as the other cadets abruptly moved away from her. As if she might be contagious. She nursed a cup of what shone like diluted ARMOR lymph.

“Quiet,” her friend hissed, elbowing her. “Finish that. All your troubles ‘down there’ will be done for.”

“Why are you drinking that?” Udo demanded. “What ‘troubles’?”

The silence grew. The first-years stared at him, eyes wide. Udo didn’t know what the big deal was. If this cadet hadn’t wanted to become a surrogate, she simply shouldn’t have become pregnant. It was basic biology. They’d all been taught that in their classes. If she did, that meant that deep down she wanted to sacrifice herself for the Republic: her body in the birth of a cadet who’d take her place in the fight against the horde of the Free States, her soul to live on and protect as an epigenesis core . . .

“Who do you think she is?” she countered. “The Virgin Bitch of the Resistance.”

“An enemy of the Republic,” Udo said without hesitation. “A terrorist created by The Free States to destroy our generation of ARMOR pilots and cripple our proud military . . .”

“Why do you keep talking like that?” another cadet snickered.

“Like what?”

“Our proud military,” he mimicked. All of them were laughing now.

“It’s all in the name, isn’t it?” the lymph-drinking cadet said. She set down her cup and drew dangerously close. “She’s making herself out to be some kind of Joan of Arc figure.”

“He doesn’t know who that is. Poor kid’s been synched since he came out of the womb.”

“Just because I was excused from classes doesn’t mean I’m stupid,” Udo retorted.

“Then you’ll know she used to be a surrogate. Just a few years ago. She’s our age. A refugee the Republic picked up off the wastes and gave everything. But when she turned eighteen, she couldn’t do her duty. She ran off to the Free States instead.”

“She’s a good pilot,” one of the other fourth-years said, desynching. He unwrapped a protein cube and bit into it with relish. “I’ll give her that. She’ll make a good little epigenesis core when she’s recaptured. I hope I’m on the team that gets to implant her. You should see it, Udo, it’s always so satisfying when despite all the lies they tell themselves, their egg fertilizes and the baby grows. It always happens no matter how they try to resist. It’s what their bodies really want, after all . . .”

Funny, Udo thought, that this cadet should talk of her like that, with heme flavoring dripping down his chin. Refugee and Free State blood ran through most of them. Only here, the sacrifice of the surrogates made them full citizens of the Republic and effaced everything else they were.

“But who is she?” Udo insisted.

“A distraction.”

Udo felt the weight of a hand on his shoulder. The other cadets fell silent, the ones in Udo’s squad straightening into attention. Laurent had caught up with him.

“Don’t waste time thinking of her or her twisted goals.”

Back in the lounge, Udo promised to get some sleep, then, after Laurent left, tried synching again. But his day’s wanderings had done him no good. He floated for long minutes in the void, mouthing his pledge. The Republic For Which We Stand. The Republic For Which. We Stand. But the cadence was all wrong. All of a sudden, he couldn’t remember the way he’d said it, every morning, every class, every synch session of his life. Instead, a sensation crawled over the back of his neck. The sensation of, he didn’t know where—but somewhere else. The crowded laughter of a mess hall, corn husks strewn over a packed dirt floor. Lips curled into a pledge. We the People of the Free States. We the People.

“Who is this?”

“It’s your conscience, Udo Gehler. I heard you’ve been looking for me.”

Udo turned. But all of a sudden, he couldn’t move. He couldn’t feel the ocean of the void anymore. Only a cold shore beneath him.

“Is this your first time hearing someone else in here? With you?”

“Here?”

With revulsion, he felt. Someone. Eye to eye—no, so close their eyeballs nearly touched. He recoiled. But they lunged forward.

“Stop. Don’t come any closer. Get away from me!”

Fingers curled around his throat without regard to his voice. He had a defense just for this. Didn’t he? The one who’d birthed him, who’d given her life to live on as his epigenesis core. She’d be watching over him. She would preserve this sacrosanct barrier between his innermost being and this presence. He cried out with the most animal of desires, to be defended, to be held—

Silence.

“Aw, trying to reach your epigenesis core? Trying to call mommy to protect you?”

Ten pinpricks of sharpness dug into his neck. He fell backwards into waves. He was sinking. He was sinking under that throbbing weight.

“Where’s your Aias Field? Where’s mommy? Where is she?”

The void turned to a hard table his body screamed against. Don’t give her anything. It’s not good for the baby. He almost remembered who he was in the ebbs, before the pain hit again, before his sobs disintegrated into animal shrieks. Stubborn bitch, isn’t she? We’ll be here all night if she keeps this up. His fingers clawed bloody rivulets against stainless steel, skin, against anything save for the agony between his legs that he longed to tear free, into pieces. Keep pushing, sweetie. All this, you’ll see, it’s helping form your maternal bond . . .

“Don’t feel bad, Udo,” the voice whispered in his ear. “The Republic’s epigenesis cores have been barren for a long time now. Go beyond Academy territory, and you’ll see. Men and boys just like you, crying. Crying out . . .”

Captain Laurent, Udo pleaded. Help me.

“Laurent? Captain Theo Laurent? Still a captain after all these years. Heh. In fact, the last time an Aias Field appeared was on the battlefield . . . the last time your Captain fought.”

The voice whispered in his ear, revelation after revelation, then drew away.

“Go, go to your captain. Ask him about Vologes. Ask him about everything.”

• • • •

“I’m a new bioengineering cadet. I’ve been sent down here to observe.”

Early the next morning, Udo stood in the suffocating heart of Bliss Academy. The rumble of its movement was almost imperceptible this deep within its interior. Instead of windows, walls of machinery breathed humidity over him. That gave him an excuse for sweating at least. He wasn’t sure if his lie would work, even with the uniform he’d swiped from the laundry. But he’d once had a roommate, the few months as a first year he’d been housed in the dorms. A bio major who’d been picked up from the wastes after the destruction of his original Academy by the Free States. Udo tried to summon even an ounce of that roommate’s expressionless demeanor.

“You’re late,” the instructor barked, gesturing at Udo to join the cluster of cadets behind him. He’d grown a mustache, but he was obviously a new graduate. “Disinfect your hands and put on your scrubs. Surrogates wait for no one.”

Despite that lecture, the instructor stopped to joke with the two campus police patrolling the corridor, taking a swig from one of their flasks. But even after girding himself like that, the room he led the cadets into was decently sized. Clean. Well-lit with bulbs that glowed more softly than the harsh desert sun. Udo felt himself relax. The instructor leaned over the only piece of furniture—a bed, bolted to the floor—pushing aside the forest of wires twining up from it to the ceiling. Udo tried to figure out the age of the person beneath the sheets. But his eyes kept wandering to the bulge of their belly.

“I can feel it,” a voice floated out of the machinery. “It’s kicking me.”

“That’s right. That’s your baby.”

“It’s inside me. It’s inside—”

Suddenly the surrogate was shrieking, struggling to a sitting position, throwing up. Immediately, the door slammed open and the two campus police rushed in. The last thing Udo saw as the instructor herded them out was the surrogate’s teeth sinking into one of their hands.

“They’ve been taught all sorts of things in the Free States,” the instructor explained once they’d gotten almost out of hearing distance, feeling around his white coat. “It gets better in the third trimester or so. They start forming their maternal bond . . . usually . . .”

“Who’s the father?” one of the cadets asked.

“Asking the important questions, eh?” The instructor retrieved a pill from his pocket, pointing finger guns at the cadet who’d spoken. “It’s a perk of the job, you could say. We have to give most of them to the ARMOR pilots, of course, but there’s always a certain kind they don’t want. For those, we like to have as many cadets try as possible to guarantee a successful pregnancy . . . Oh, Captain? To what do we owe the honor?”

Udo almost welcomed the hand on his shoulder. He was shivering as Laurent hurried him to the nearest elevator, with a cold that only settled into his bones as they began clanking painfully, slowly, upward. Or maybe it was lengthening silence. There had always been this silence between them, Udo realized now. Comforting as long as their words stayed within the confines of matches, ARMOR strategies, casualties, resources won. He could retreat into it like he always had. He could have, if it hadn’t been for that weight on the back of his neck.

“Udo,” Laurent finally said. “Why did you come down here?”

“I wanted to learn more about epigenesis cores.”

“I know you’ve been having issues bringing out your Aias Field,” Laurent sighed. “It’s perfectly normal at your age. But you’ve maintained top rank magnificently without it. You won’t need it to win this match either. After you graduate, when you’re on the battlefield proper, I have no doubt you’ll figure it out.”

Conversations weren’t all that different from ARMOR matches, Udo thought. You had to maintain control over their pace and movement. And you had to end them as quickly as possible.

“I just want to know. Was mine a cadet from the Republic? Or a captured surrogate.”

“It doesn’t matter. She volunteered.”

“Before or after the fact?”

“It doesn’t matter who those people thought they were before the Republic took them in,” Laurent said. “Once they gave birth, they became mothers. They formed an impregnable, biological bond with their offspring—that bond is your epigenesis core. That’s what separates us from those traitors in the Free States.”

The elevator jolted, flickering its lights. Udo tried another direction of attack:

“Do you remember what it was like? Having an Aias Field?”

“I never got to summon mine,” Laurent said. “The Free States destroyed my epigenesis core before I could. It was a cowardly, heinous attack—”

It’d been a battle a couple years before Udo had been born. Over a swath of border between the Republic and the Free States not governed by the Academy system. Udo knew fighting in those places was desperate. ARMORs attacked opposing roving cities directly, while survivors in makeshift stationary settlements were bombed into oblivion. Even engineers were expected to take up guns to defend their country. Thanks to the Virgin Bitch of the Resistance, Udo knew a lot of things. Like that Laurent’s synchro-gear had been forcibly extracted and fully functional at the time.

“How come you never had another synchro-gear installed?” he asked.

“I was deemed as mentally unsuitable.”

“Because of Vologes?”

Laurent looked down at him then, through the shadow of his peaked cap. Udo had ruptured that silence between them. Maybe it would never come back.

“Les Vologes was a friend. A dear friend. He took his last dive right in front of me.”

“You saw him fall,” Udo continued. “Your epigenesis core had been shattered. You couldn’t move like that. So you desynched and ran to him. You couldn’t believe he was gone. You climbed into his unit. And he was still there. He protected you.”

“It was a freak accident.”

“You formed an Aias Field, the two of you. Right?” Udo took a step toward him. He wasn’t sure why. “If that’s true, then there’s no need to continue like this. We don’t need to do this to the surrogates.”

“You’re young,” Laurent sighed. “You’re saying things you don’t understand. There are many reasons our country broke apart, but it all comes down to one difference: cities full of people that respect their biological roles and cities full of people that don’t. This is not just a war of resources or land, but a war of freedom, a war for the soul of the Republic . . .”

That was news to Udo.

“Epigenesis cores are the culmination of science,” Laurent continued. “They’re a divine gift. An irrefutable confirmation of the sacred nature of the maternal bond. If we desecrate this principle. If we become so desperate for victory we try to force them to form between anyone, we’ll become just like the cities we’re fighting. We’ll let those so-called Free States win.”

“So it’s worth enslaving people just for that . . .”

“Slaves?” Laurent snapped. He grabbed Udo by the shoulders. “Who have you been talking to? Huh? Who taught you that word?”

“I know what a slave is,” Udo said.

“It’s not about things like morals when it comes to the Free States,” Laurent shouted, shaking him. “They want to destroy our way of life. Do you understand that, Udo? They want to destroy us!”

Udo stared. Laurent’s peaked cap had fallen off. Who was this man, breathing heavily at him, pits in the whites of his eyes? Laurent had always protected him. Captain Laurent knew everything.

At least that’s what Udo had thought.

The elevator finally shuddered to a stop at the top level of Bliss Academy and Laurent shifted his grip to Udo’s upper arm, marching him back to the ARMOR lounge. Two other figures joined them. Campus police, Udo saw from the patches on their shoulders before Laurent shoved him inside. The door clicked shut behind him.

“Don’t allow him to leave without my permission,” Laurent said out in the hall. “Remove his elevator access.”

Way of life? Udo wondered, rubbing his bruised arm. What was that? A cushioned space that met his every need, as long as that need was piloting his ARMOR for the glory of the Republic? He crossed over to the window and looked down the sheer drop of the Academy’s outer wall, stained with birdshit. What was there left to destroy? They could remove his access to whatever they liked. He reached around to the back of his neck and switched on his synchro-gear.

“I’m sorry I didn’t believe you.”

The silence of the void buoyed him up and down.

“I know you’re here.”

He felt a prickle of fear. Now that he knew what it was like to share this void with someone—how could he bear being left alone again?

“Why do you let people call you that? It’s ridiculous.”

Finally, an answer. That soft, rasping laugh.

“On the contrary. It’s the most beautiful name in the world. Because of the word Resistance. No. The word before it. The ‘The’. The implication that we’re all in this together. The Resistance. Can you feel it, Udo Gehler?”

Udo dove down to his ARMOR. He didn’t know where else to go. Here, on the battleground of the wastes, everything was as it should be. Here his sparring partner, a second-year he’d never met, fell under barrage after barrage of needle tornados. Udo didn’t wait for them to get up before striding over and kicking their sensors until they shattered. It didn’t matter if he broke this other unit. Nothing he did mattered, as long as he did the same to his opponent, as long as he won. As he ground the other ARMOR’s head into a mess beneath his heel, the cable connecting him to the hanger shook him to the bone. Bliss Academy halted above them, driving its leg anchors into the ground. Across the craters dotting the distance, the opposing Academy came into view. The bit he could see of it, at least. Half its legs dragging uselessly; its tower rusted, despite its freshly-painted stars. Was it really possible? Udo wondered. That she was there?

Udo, Laurent’s voice floated down from the lounge. Desynch for your psych eval.

“I’ll do it later.”

No. You’ll do it now.

Udo kicked back to the surface of the void. Typically, these interviews were formalities, a way for the top-ranked to crack somewhere not in the middle of a pivotal match. But this time, in addition to Laurent and the usual psychologist, the two campus police had come in too.

“We’re worried about you, Udo,” the psychologist began, pulling up Udo’s profile on his screen device. “Captain Laurent has informed me about your recent strange behavior. We’re concerned you may have experienced battlefield trauma—”

“I’m not traumatized. I’m just like this.”

Udo paused. He’d passed this interview dozens of times before. He knew what the right answers were from here on out. I’m just in a high-stress environment. Having the fate of Bliss Academy on my shoulders. By extension, the fate of the Republic. So many lives depend on me winning these matches and ending these battles quickly. I’ve been lashing out. But a weight on the back of his neck, a soft, rasping laugh drowned out anything he might’ve wanted to say.

“Or maybe I’m constantly being traumatized,” he heard himself go on. The psychologist’s finger froze on his screen. “I was born in trauma. I grew up in it. Every day, more trauma happened around me. The adults tried to keep it together. But they couldn’t handle it. During high school, I used to escape through my synchro-gear. To another body, another world. Then instead of virtugames, they put me in an ARMOR. They transferred me to a military Academy. Then instead of escaping—”

The doors to the lounge slid open. A being Udo had only seen from a distance swept in. Her light step drowning out the snap of salutes. A member of the general staff who commanded Bliss Academy from bunkers even deeper within than the epigenesis labs. Three stripes blazed across the shoulder of her uniform. She didn’t have a synchro-gear. Now Udo could see by the lack of marks on the back of her neck that she’d never had one. Of course. The ones who led the Academies came from strongholds far from the battlefield of the border between the Republic and Free States, from behind impenetrable walls.

“It’s so wonderful to meet you, Udo Gehler. At ease.”

“Why are you here, ma’am?” Laurent asked.

“We just want to make sure the match tomorrow goes smoothly.”

“We have it under control.”

“No. You don’t, Captain.” Her medals flashed like bared teeth. “You don’t even have control over your protégé.” She turned back to Udo. “To be frank, we know you’ve been talking to your opponent through your synchro-gear.”

“Through the synchro-gear?” Laurent echoed, his salute faltering.

“Clearly, it was a mistake to put you under the care of one who has perverted the epigenesis system before,” Three Stripes continued, cupping Udo’s face in her hand. “It was a mistake to believe he’d learned anything since then.”

“It’s not his fault,” Udo protested.

But despite himself, he glanced at Laurent. There must’ve been a plea in his eyes, because the campus police surged forward. His captain had gone completely white. He didn’t even struggle as they dragged him outside.

“Stop!” Udo cried. “Where are you taking him?”

“Sit down, Udo.” Three Stripes already had. “We’re not in the Free States. We’re not going to ask you to repress your natural, male urges. Far from it. If you win this match, you can have her. She can be yours and yours alone. You crush her ARMOR, render it unable to move, and in an hour or so we’ll have her extracted and bring her up here—”

“I don’t want that!”

“Of course not.” Three Stripes leaped to her feet, pacing over to the window. “You think you love her. She’s wormed her way into your head.”

Love? Udo thought with revulsion. That’s what they thought this was? They thought that was excuse enough to do something like that?

“She’s like me,” he said.

I can’t love anybody, he wanted to say.

“I can’t love someone like me,” he said.

“Is that so? All the better then.” Three Stripes turned from the window, her medals catching the last beam of afternoon sun. “You just have to win this match like all your previous ones. Then everything will go back as it was. As it should be.”

• • • •

A couple of pills and a dreamless night later, Udo stood on the loading dock, waiting to board his transport. In combat gear, he looked identical to every other ARMOR cadet in his squad. Hexapod units oversaw the preceding vehicle as it dropped down to the wastes and accelerated, disappearing in a cloud of sand. The ARMOR units synched to its occupants launched from the hanger soon after. Academy conventions, agreed upon by both the Republic and Free States, dictated that all cadets had to be deployed to the battlefield during the matches. In exchange, Academies engaged in combat would not be targeted directly by ground or by air. Complying with those rules, Republic cadets stayed safe in these armored transports. Udo’s “disguise” would further protect him from being identified. At least that’s how the general staff had always described the strategy.

“Udo.”

He turned with relief at Laurent’s voice. But his captain wasn’t in uniform. Instead, stubble shadowed his face. His only decorations were a bruise, starting to purple his left eye. Udo stiffened. Even more so when his campus police handlers let Udo stop in front of him, and Laurent suddenly swept him up in a hug.

“I’m—proud of you. Promise me you’ll come back, Udo. Promise me.”

“Why did you?”

Give me a reason, Udo begged silently. His hands frozen at his sides, but twitching at the contact, which reminded him of coming up after long hours of practice. At the faint whiff of sweat, which reminded him of falling asleep on a transport as a child, of being able to sleep because Laurent was sitting beside him. Give me the reason.

“Why didn’t you take your last dive with him? Why did you come back?”

“I realized I still had things to do. I had a duty to my country.”

Udo broke away.

“What do you want me to tell you?” Laurent said, his voice breaking.

“The truth.”

Lift this weight, Udo silently pled.

He waited for a moment. Then he turned away from Laurent and entered the transport. He picked his way past the other members of his squad and tried to make himself comfortable on his cold, randomly-assigned seat. He looked down at the harness securing him. Then he reached around to the back of his neck and turned on his synchro-gear.

• • • •

Wired into her ARMOR, she couldn’t speak. Physically. The filaments surgically threaded through her limbs, making the metal frame an extension of her own nervous system, branched down her throat too. The board of directors that ran the Academies of the Free States refused to install synchro-gears into their cadets, insisting it was too expensive, insisting when pressed that every technological advance of the Republic was morally corrupted by association. Resistance was using the synchro-gear in her brain stem, even so. With this device, ARMOR units could be piloted remotely with the same reaction speed as a physically-wired cadet. Using synchro-gear and wiring together slashed that connection time, giving her a sliver of a millisecond’s edge.

Resistance was huddling on a refugee caravan, just like the one she’d been born on. Allowing herself, at each processing center, to be herded away from the crowd. Replaying her trauma to a rapt immigration officer: I was only sixteen. The Republic told me my body had chosen the baby, that it was ready for the sacrifice. I barely escaped. Resistance was surviving the command of holo-projections who’d never set physical foot on an Academy city, though their billions of dollars of drones often hovered overhead. Telling them: I’m so grateful to be a citizen of the Free States. So grateful for their crumbling living quarters, the food the cadets had to coax out of the soil themselves. So grateful for the fraction of a vote they’d given her—only to be made whole after five years of service, according to law passed by eighty percent of the people of the Free States. Five years which only a percent of her comrades survived. Anything that would get her back into an ARMOR. Anything to get her dropped back onto the front where they’d deemed she belonged.

Everywhere and nowhere at once, a fear, a force of nature.

She felt a familiar rush as the cord tethering her to her hanger disconnected, snapping through the arid, blue sky. The meager contingent of units that had accompanied her had already started burrowing, knowing that if she fell, an ambush was their only chance. The rumble of the approaching enemy reverberated through her ARMOR, sending the keepsakes she’d hung up in her cockpit swinging. Shards of epigenesis cores, each hand-carved with a name. Resistance was hearing every single one of their voices, every single day. Why you and not us? Why’d you survive and not us? Take us with you. We want to see the place you reach, the place where all this ends . . .

“Hello?” a voice floated through the void. “Hello?”

She crouched her ARMOR unit down, letting the sensation of her wires fade, letting the burning sands sink into her palms, letting each of its sensations become her own. Within the cockpit, she could still move just enough. She reached around to the back of her neck and switched on her synchro-gear.

• • • •

“It’s your conscience, Udo Gehler.”

Cresting the lip of a crater, his ARMOR unit flinched. Everyone in his squad noticed. But according to Academy conventions, the match between the opposing top-ranked cadets was theirs alone. Only when one of them triumphed would the fighting proper start.

“I’m here to describe your future death by firing squad.”

A beast erupted out of the sand. Only when it slammed into him did he realize it was an ARMOR—one without an epigenesis core, leaving the sun glaring through the gaping hole in its chest. The pilot was housed in a cockpit beneath its jaws, giving the unit’s head an elongated, muzzle-like appearance. He didn’t even have time to fire his needles.

“It happens a few years after you’ve won this match and graduated from Bliss Academy and shipped out to the front lines proper.”

He staggered. Her weight wasn’t enough to knock him over. The muscles of ARMOR units without cores wasted away, leaving only their skeletal, bioengineered scaffold. Then her hands were at his throat. They felt like hands. Through the tatters of her ARMOR’s exoskeleton, they felt like fingers.

“They say that the epigenesis system saves pilot lives. That mothers will always protect their child so it would be morally indefensible not to use them. But in your first days, you see ARMOR after ARMOR equipped with them fall to forces they have no right to fall to.”

He. Could not. Fall. The memory of Udo’s first ARMOR lessons seared into him. The tons of muscle birthed by the epigenesis core made it difficult, if not impossible, to get back up. He threw himself into a stance on the slope, pulling his arm back. His claws swung only through empty space. She flipped away so lightly that she skidded through the sands when she landed, her cockpit carefully kept almost level with the ground.

“It takes at least six hours to wire someone into an ARMOR, you know.”

She dodged every barrage of needles he fired at her. Bobbing, weaving, loping on all fours. He had a hard time thinking of his opponent in words like unit and pilot. Nothing had prepared him for this. ARMORs weren’t supposed to move like this. They were supposed to attack each other from a distance, strategically, and most of all in silent concentration . . .

“It’s just as strenuous, delicate work to unwire them. The Republic doesn’t care about that. You’ll learn to pick through the battlefield, scanning the contents of fallen ARMORs. As long as someone’s still moving inside, as long as their important parts are intact, they’re ripped out. It doesn’t matter if they’re still conscious. It doesn’t matter if they lose a few limbs. You’ll get used to the dirty work. You always do.”

He crossed the space between them with ground-shaking strides. She reared up, the frame of her unit screaming under the strain as her fingers intertwined with his claws. He couldn’t quite see her behind the clouded glass of the canopy. Only two glints of green. Like the mountains he’d glimpsed in the distance once or twice from his ARMOR lounge. Like the few blades of life struggling to sprout through the wastes at their feet.

“But one day, you wrench a cockpit open and see a surrogate, her arm bleeding with the force of tearing it free herself. She’s two month’s pregnant, your scan tells you. A microcosm of the insanity and bestiality of the Free States, that they’d put the most valuable resource of all on the front line like that. Your orders in this case are clear. But at the pivotal moment, you hesitate. She pulls out a sidearm. But she doesn’t turn it against you.”

Suddenly the head of her unit twisted. The space where its sensors would’ve been screeched open to jagged teeth—one of many vestigial structures in an ARMOR’s frame normally hidden by its exoskeleton. She bit down on his arm. Back in the transport, Udo jerked against his harness. It wasn’t his arm, he reminded himself. It was his ARMOR’s. By momentarily desynching into his own body, he could convince himself this didn’t hurt.

“So you committed the worst crime of them all. You let her escape. And when your superior asks you why, you tell him. Exactly what you think about surrogates. About the epigenesis core system. They rip out your synchro-gear immediately.”

Udo punched her with all his strength. Once. Twice. The way her head was turned prevented him from hitting the cockpit directly, but with the third blow to her jaw, a handful of her ARMOR’s teeth finally came loose. She stumbled away. Udo had to use his free arm to catch himself before he fell face down the slope, into the crater’s mouth.

“Maybe there’s a show. A military tribunal livestreamed so the entire Republic can see what happens to a traitor. Maybe the judge, some gray-haired colonel, gets up and goes on and on about how he’s conflicted because it’s every American’s duty to stand up and protest and do what they think is right, so it’s admirable, he admires you—but he’s got to do his patriotic duty too. So, death penalty. Twenty-one bullets for you, Udo Gehler.”

Udo rested on one knee. He thought of Laurent with sadness. All those times he’d come out onto the dock to check on Udo when he’d been a first year, draping a blanket over him as he’d synched far into the night. The time when he’d found Udo as a second year, by the disposal chute where the other cadets had left him covered with bruises and boot prints. A superior officer didn’t need to do that. He really didn’t need to do all that. That’s why Udo needed to get up. Muscle memory took over. He launched himself into the air, spinning in a tornado of needles once, twice, three times—a quadruple combo.

“You imagine being backed against a wall—then blackness.”

The dust cleared, and her unit was still standing. Its gangly arms, peppered with needles, crossed in front of its cockpit. One had pierced the canopy. But her unit still straightened. With shuddering movements, it stepped toward him.

“But the day comes and you’re herded out of your cell with a group of other prisoners. So you’re not even unique in your pointless resistance. You’re loaded into a transport. Hexapods are stacking coffins into a shipping container beside you.”

Why did she keep coming for him like this? Arms scraping the sands, blood-mingled lymph dripping from her cockpit wound. She couldn’t win. It was impossible. Impossible for her. She pulled out the needle from her canopy and plunged it into his damaged arm.

“You go down to the wastes. It’s a blazing, blue day. There are four poles and more of you. But you’re in the second round, lucky you. The officer’s got these red stickers. After everyone’s tied, he goes down the line, sticking the bright, red circles onto the chests of the condemned. I know, right? It seems your comrades can be trusted to hit a target. But not to know the exact location of the human heart.”

His forearm came apart from its joint. In the transport, pain whiplashed through Udo. It wasn’t his arm, he reminded himself again. It was his ARMOR’s. Crunching, sickeningly, between her jaws. She spat it aside and turned to his torso.

“Ready! The officer barks. The firing squad raises their guns. Aim. Did you know? At times like these, the Republic and the Free States reunite. Because the condemned always insist on singing The Star Spangled Banner. Except it’s quite a slow build and also pretty difficult to belt out, so most of them give up and start shouting something like, ‘Live free! Live free!’ The officer is used to it. Fire!”

A crack split the blue. His exoskeleton breaking under her jagged teeth. He fired needles from his unit’s functioning arm into her side, point blank. Her ARMOR shuddered with each impact. But she wouldn’t. Let. Go.

“That wasn’t so bad, you think. Then the officer pulls out his sidearm and starts going down the line. Bang! Headshot. You’d cover your ears if you weren’t handcuffed. Bang! Surely there’s no reason to do that, you think. You are not zombies, after all.”

Every single plate protecting his epigenesis core gave way.

“Bang!”

Lymph splattered across her canopy.

“Bang! Right, well now it’s your turn, Udo Gehler—”

“Shut up!”

Everyone around Udo turned to look at him. He was in his ARMOR unit and he sat, harnessed into his seat on the transport. Only then, from the rasp in his throat, did he realize he’d screamed. With his real voice. A rookie mistake—he’d synched and desynched too many times in a row, and now his mind oscillated uncontrollably between his unit and real body. But he couldn’t stop.

“Shut up.” He swung at her unit, his needles spraying everywhere. He thrashed in the transport, ripping off his helmet, punching a cadet who leaned over him. “Shut up.” He dug his fingers into his scalp. “Get out! Get out of my fucking head!”

That split moment of distraction was all she needed. He felt the core, deep inside his ARMOR, shattering. He felt himself stiffen in the transport, collapsing against his harness. He swam through the void. Invisible tendrils curled around his ankle. The other cadets in his squad shook him, shouting. He just had to reach his body. He just had to reach it—

He was sinking.

• • • •

“Where are we?”

No longer treading the surface. Nor falling. But underwater.

“Just—”

“How can you expect me to—”

He breathed. The void flooded his lungs, drowned him; he breathed in that drowning.

“Where are we?”

What a stupid question. Yet he wanted to call out.

“To what? Have you ever felt anything in here? A maternal bond? A soul that stayed behind to protect you and only you?”

“No.”

He’d never know his surrogate. The Republic had taken that person from him. Irrevocably. He thought, with a pang, of Captain Laurent. But even Laurent had sent him alone into the void, in the end.

“I only feel you.”

He was different inside his ARMOR.The world was different inside her ARMOR. Just as restrictive, but not a cage. He could be someone different in his ARMOR. Those kids who’d pinned him down in the hall, who’d smacked her hard-won tin of peaches out of her hands, splattering it over the ground—she, he could destroy.

“Why you?”

Christmas morning. Five years old. Even that young, she could sense the tension in their little corner of the refugee caravan, about to crack. He marveled at the decorations draped across the sterile, white halls. Her family hadn’t eaten for days. He didn’t have a single possession that he didn’t have to share with the other kids in the orphanage. A five minute operation to install the synchro-gear. That was it, and he had an entire world of his own. She had a warm meal and all the games she could play. Courtesy of the Defense Force of the Republic. There’d been a fighting sim, using the synchro-gear to connect to virtual robots. She had chosen a unit shaped like a rabbit. He chose a unit with sharp ears that could leap over buildings. It was almost like flying. He carved out a self for himself, winning match after online match. She didn’t think of what she was training for, as she played the morning and afternoon and evening away . . .

“Why—why the fuck are we fighting?”

Their first synchs to ARMORs proper: they, alone out of their high school classes, had dived unhesitatingly into the void. Had experienced the same pure joy as they’d found themselves towering over the wastes down below, flexing massive fists. They’d both wondered if they could start running, with titanic strides, and reach the horizon before anyone caught up . . .

“Why is it so important that you win?”

People had paid attention to him when he’d started winning. Captain Laurent, from Bliss Academy, had come to his high school to watch all his matches. Her teachers pretended she didn’t exist. When he’d risen to the top of the cadet class, Laurent had spent afternoons teaching him a giddy infinity of new combos. Deafening silence accompanied every single one of her victories. When the blood test she had to take every week came back positive, she’d been confused at the relief on their faces. She couldn’t pilot anymore—so wasn’t it a tragedy? You’ll be such a good mother, they told her. Such a good epigenesis core. Leading her by the hand into the bowels of the Academy. Replacing her lounge with a sterile room. Her ARMOR matches with timed walks on a treadmill, a windowless space that kept all pollutants out. Not even the boy she’d done it with came to visit her. Now it makes sense, their smiles said. It all makes sense. She wasn’t meant to win. Only to be the raw materials of someone else’s victory.

“It’s not a game.”

All he had to do was win. As soon as his opponent’s ARMOR stopped moving, he could desynch. He’d return to his transport, to Laurent, to the comfort of his lounge. She’d peer through skeletal struts of fallen ARMORs to see if there might be a pilot, still quivering inside. More often than not they’d plead with her to end it now . . .

“The only difference between us is that I realized that a long time ago.”

Still, Udo protested:

“It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t ask to be born!”

“But you didn’t ask why either, did you?”

You deserve this. The warmth of that certainty still swaddled him. This glory, this joy. This sacrifice. This lullaby. This debt. He’d always had to wake up eventually. And there had been chances. Countless classmates. The lulls in that conversation with the lymph-drinking cadet. It’d been so easy to sneak into the epigenesis lab. He could’ve come down from his lounge any day—any second—before now. The void of that realization crushed around him, like the massive claws of an ARMOR.

“You’re not special, are you Udo Gehler?” she breathed through broken teeth that stank of antiseptic, squalling hospital rooms and clotted blood. “So certain until you crack. You’re all so fucking fragile. I’ll relive all this over again and again, if it means sending all of you to meet your cores . . .”

Her maw loomed around him, rendering everything he’d lived up until now—nothing. What had he accomplished to justify his, this being? What could he offer in exchange? Nothing. He couldn’t hear anything. He couldn’t see anything. It would be so easy to let the enormity of that nothing swallow him whole. The easiest thing in the world. But he didn’t deserve easy, did he? So he flailed with all his strength. He screamed with absent lungs, absent words against the void, until he had something—a hand. He threw out his hand.

“How can you expect me to just lie down and die? To disappear after that?”

His fingertips brushed something. Hers.

“After everything you showed me.”

A glimmer pierced the void. For a split second, then she lunged again. Her fingers plunged into his throat. He welcomed the contact, the weight, because even that was something.

“Let me—”

“—tear you apart—”

“—join you.”

He wanted to believe that he was nothing special. That across the country, hundreds were talking like this. She wanted to believe thousands. Thousands were watching their ARMORs locked in combat. His epigenesis core shattered. Her unit unable to move. Another minute and if neither stirred, the full forces of both Academies would clash to decide the victor. An all-out conflict that would leave only a handful of survivors, scattered across the wastes. Little by little, her grip loosened. Leaving them face-to-face in the light. There was light. This was the first time they’d seen anything in this liminal space.

Her face. His face. Tumbling end over end over, hurtling deeper and deeper. Limpid, clouded, green-dark eyes. Swirling skin. Dotted with vitiligo and freckles. Hair, buzzed down until he didn’t even remember the blond it’d been, a jet-black hurricane running riotous, free.

“Do you think this is—”

“No one has ever understood what an Aias Field is. Not even its discoverers.”

“But that hasn’t stopped us from trying to weaponize them.”

“That hasn’t stopped the mere concept from tearing a country apart.”

“The worst part wasn’t the tearing. It was the tears that didn’t heal, that didn’t come back together in fault lines, but solidified around little pieces.”

Their thoughts flowed freely, one into another.

“I think I know one thing about an Aias Field.”

“Me too.”

“It always starts like this.”

“What is ‘this’?”

She had a hand. She held out her hand. He reached, trembling.

“A conversation.”

• • • •

Udo Gehler and the Virgin Bitch of the Resistance dragged themselves, handgrip by bloody grip, up the sheer wall of Bliss Academy. In a broken trail behind them scattered ARMORs of both the Republic and the Free States. The synched pilots felled by the scream that had rent the void. The wired pilots frozen in shock by the shore that scream had transported them to. The scream of two people. The fringe of frothing waves of consciousness. Each of them knew this ocean well, but now, in the prismatic rays of that Aias Field clawing higher and higher, they could see they weren’t—they’d never been—alone. Udo Gehler and the Virgin Bitch of the Resistance pulled themselves over the edge of the Academy wall and swiped at the glass face of its main tower. All along their spine, arced feathers of light. They glimmered in the setting sun, deflecting every bullet, projectile, and anti-air missile the Republic forces launched at them, every drone of the Free States that zoomed in on them, then looped back into themselves again.

All through the void, the same scene repeated itself. A cadet hesitantly stepped to the edge of the shore—and dove in. Kicking toward one of the drowning. All across the former battlefield, the same scene repeated itself. An ARMOR unit staggering over to another, unhinging skeletal jaws. Plunging. Coming up with a shattered epigenesis core. A column of light blooming from the unit’s back, metamorphosizing their silhouette against the explosion-spangled sky. Udo didn’t ask, how many do you think there’ll be? He didn’t ask softly, how long do you think it’ll last?

What he asked was: “How did you get your name?”

“How did you get yours?”

“I don’t know.”

“When you got your synchro-gear, you had the chance to choose a gamer tag.”

“I didn’t want to.”

“Me neither. Some names you choose. Some names you get given.”

Where had he gone? Udo wondered. He floated, free from synchro-gear and wire. Yet the unit’s arm moved with him. He could see her curled in what had once been its cockpit, an iris under the membrane that had once been the canopy. He was the lounge they clawed through. He was the rubble of the bridge that had once directed the engines of Bliss Academy. He was the hand reaching for the general staff that had once commanded from the safety of this bunker and now ran from them, only to be crushed like so many garish ants.

“It was my first act of resistance. Though I didn’t know it at the time.”

It’d been a night just like this one. Their mistake had been not removing her synchro-gear. They’d thought they’d buried her too deep to connect, that she was too far along besides. And, it was true, she’d drifted in bed for weeks on end, feeling nothing. Until a fellow surrogate had been rolled close to her. One extracted from an ARMOR, wires trailing from her wrists. As soon as their attendant had left, the other surrogate had seized one of them, jerking it out, inch by painful inch. Bent the filament into a curve, a possibility. And given it to her. Then, the spark. She found the void. She found what she needed to do. The fist of her ARMOR had smashed through that Academy until it’d reached her. She’d stood up, shakily, and stepped out onto its hand. Blood staining her bedsheets.

“What did you do?”

“Isn’t it obvious? I refused.”