The shuttle’s deceleration through the ship’s outer layers was so quick that Leigh barely had time to get a good look at them before they docked. All she saw in the seconds it took to traverse the five mostly empty kilometers that separated the ship’s outer-most layer from its innermost one, were streaks of colorful lights that jumped around at seemingly random intervals, strongly resembling a terrifyingly beautiful electrical storm.

At one point, she even thought they’d hit one, but then the ray of light, or whatever it was, just flowed around the shuttle like water on oil. Before she could process the event any further, the shuttle was suddenly upon the central layer, and Leigh’s breath once more caught in her throat at the magnificent sight before her. The layer consisted of a gargantuan sphere -of over 1km in diameter- made of some dull black substance. Even as large as it was, Leigh would have missed it entirely against the dark backdrop of space if the shuttle hadn’t slowed to a stop, her CHIP had alerted her to its presence or if she’d not seen the dull reflections of the colorful storm on its surface. Now, it loomed over her like some dark sentinel of doom.

[DOCKED. EXIT NOW.]

The shuttle’s wall rippled as it attached itself to the side of the massive sphere, ripping Leigh out of her musing. As the exit opened, Kyle’s message pinged again, insistently reminding her of its presence. Instead of opening it though, she filed it away for later perusal. Whatever he had to say to her could wait, he’d waited five years to say it so it couldn’t be that important. She was about to go through some kind of Evaluation and she didn’t need the distraction the message would surely present. The stacks were already stacked against her, she didn’t need to unnecessarily add another variable into the game.

At least, that’s what she told herself while giving the ship’s exterior one last look. The ship’s structure had something to do with the Academy’s curriculum, but until now Leigh had only ever been able to speculate. A little annoyed she’d missed out on the two other ship layers, whatever they were, Leigh got up and made her way out the shuttle after Aru’bal. Leigh hadn’t expected the ship to be enveloped by an electrical storm, but she was even more surprised by what she saw inside. She’d always imagined the ships’ interiors to be small and narrow, but the massive room they encountered they set foot aboard was anything but.

Leigh would have stopped in her tracks to ogle the sight before her, but Arthur was already ushering her forward.

“Move,” he said curtly in the physical world.

Leigh snorted.

“You know, if we weren’t such good friends… and if I didn’t already know you so well,” she said sarcastically, “I’d think you were rude.”

He shrugged and said, “Rudeness is, at its root, an arbitrary opinion based on arbitrary societal norms that are, in turn, based on what exactly?”

Leigh didn’t know how to answer that.

“Exactly,” he said as if he’d just debunked one of life’s mysteries.

She wasn’t quite as convinced of the point he’d made, but she didn’t have a chance to put it into words before she was knocked aside by an angry shoulder. Leigh didn’t need her CHIP to tell her whose bald head it was that blazed past her. She didn’t even need the back of the ostentatiously modified, completely glittering and white suit to know. Seriously, what was her deal? Rubbing at the pain in her shoulder, Leigh sighed.

“Now, that. That was rude.” Arthur stated simply.

She didn’t bother with an answer.

They were amongst the first out of the shuttle, but in seconds they were surrounded by the rest. Leigh tried to keep part of her concentration focused on the EMs and the Initiation Procedure, but it was challenging given the amazingly monstrous dome they’d walked into. It suggested that at least half of the main sphere was mostly hollow. She activated the CHIP schematics and the view before her changed immediately, suddenly overlaid with the blueprint grids of the ship. The new overlay came along with a small, rotating, three-dimensional icon of the sphere. On it, there was a small red dot, highlighting Leigh’s current position.

The sphere was parted in almost perfect halves and Leigh wondered about the other half. The extra 2.5m that prevented it from being an even split was particularly intriguing, but the schematics were blank. Frowning at the lack of information, Leigh turned her attention back to the domed room. It was monochromatic, the color of silvery dark metal. The only thing stopping it from being a plain, perfectly circular and empty metallic dome was the way its ceiling was layered like the steps to an upside down Colosseum.

The first step was exactly 147.5 meters above them. It in turn was exactly 100 meters wide and circled the entire dome. 100 meters above it, there was another step that was also 100m wide, above which there was the same thing. The layers continued in the same circular upside-down-step fashion with 100 meter dimensions until the very top where it finally ended with a dome of 300m in diameter.

By the time Leigh finished her study of the room, most people had already migrated away from the entrance. Looking back, Leigh blinked when she saw the place on the metallic wall where the connection to the shuttle had been; it was gone.

“Sorta creepy, eh?” Arthur said sporting a big smile on his face. He didn’t bother using virtual chat since most people were out of hearing range.

Leigh nodded in response, not knowing how to react to his cheery smile. Why he should feel excited about the disappearance of their only possible escape from forceful confinement of indeterminate length with another 99 teenagers, was beyond her.

“They’ve made energy matter so stable now that the new ships don’t need the docking mechanisms anymore,” Arthur informed her.

“I was more thinking along the lines of… I don’t see an escape… or even doors, for that matter,” Leigh rebutted.

“You want to go out into a vacuum?” Arthur asked with a truly perplexed look on his face, “Why?”

Leigh glanced at him, waiting for the joking smile, but when it didn’t come, she realized he was being serious. All he saw was the science. Leigh frowned, trying to figure the boy out. Sometimes it seemed like he couldn’t understand subtext at all, but other times he went out of his way to make sure she wasn’t uncomfortable. Arthur was one of the strangest people she’d ever met and she wasn’t able to get an accurate read on him at all. The fact that she couldn’t do it even with all of his stats visible was all the more infuriating; he had the vitals of an emotionless android.

She’d peg him eventually, but until then, she wanted to find out what exactly was up with the strange dome they were in. Going by the speculative murmur picking up around them, she wasn’t the only one. One minute stretched into two, then three, then five and the murmurs grew accordingly until the Selects had all broken down into groups, examining the room and exchanging ideas about the blueprint.

“It’s a Class III Explorer constructed just last year,” Arthur said with excitement.

“An exploration vessel?” Leigh asked, somewhat surprised. She wasn’t exactly sure what she’d been expecting, but it was something more along the lines of warships and frigates, not exploration vessels.

“Yep,” Arthur said excitedly, oblivious to her internal speculation, “Other than the test flight to Jupiter and back, this is its first flight.”

“I don’t know if that’s reassuring or not,” Nathan Kies said, suddenly a part of their little group.

“It should be,” Arthur said, seemingly unperturbed by the first rank’s unannounced appearance. “It’s one of the first new ships with the ability to spread TRACK particles. This will be a historic voyage, do you have any idea how many more systems we’ll be able to access now? How much faster faster-than-light travel will be because of this? The discovery of—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Leigh said, cutting him off, “we get it.”

Arthur raised an eyebrow, or would have, if he still had it. The appearance of his distorted brow paired with the milky white eyes was still discomforting, but Leigh didn’t want the conversation to go down the path it was taking. The TRACK particle spreader was one of her parents’ invention, and although the connection between her and them was already circulating, she didn’t need to call more attention to it than necessary. As it was, there were already too many people who resented her presence as a ‘fraud’, the last thing she needed was more talk about favoritism. Arthur was still looking at her suspiciously, but Leigh just smiled and pretended nothing was amiss.

“So, what’s up with this place?” Leigh asked, changing the subject.

Luckily, Nathan picked up the conversation, no one commented on her exceptional rudeness, and they went on discussing the possibilities of the dome. None of them had access to the curriculum yet, so they could only guess what was expected of them. The other Selects were going through the same process, approaching the walls and patting them down manually after the CHIP blueprints failed to indicate the location of any exits.

“I’m sorry about what happened,” Nathan suddenly said to her in private, not giving any outer indication that he was speaking to her.

Perplexed, she answered, “About?”

He looked slightly embarrassed in physical when he said, “Back on the shuttle…”

“You mean about the… fight?” Leigh asked, she refused to call it by the stupid title the attention-whore had given it.

Without even thinking about it, her eyes found the culprit in question, surrounded by a little group, a couple of dozen meters away. His skin’s metallic sheen was undulating at his command. Leigh didn’t need to check the IP rates on social to know he’d already progressed more. She was already falling behind, and only found another reason to hate the guy. She frowned, once more resenting the asshole for what he’d done. Why did he have to go out of his way to make her own Initiation miserable?! They didn’t even know each other!

“Yes, that too,” Nathan said, answering her question about the fight, “but mostly for calling attention to you, I guess. I hadn’t realized that would happen and later I saw that you just wanted to be left alone.”

“And… so why are you here talking to me now?” Leigh asked, glancing around and already finding herself becoming a talking point again.

As if her worries had summoned it, a conversation channel pinged her in social as its focus. People were now discussing her possible relation with Nathan.

“I bet she knows him because of Kyle,” one person said.

“Told you she’s only here because of favoritism.”

“Pays to have friends in high places.”

“And here I thought we lived in a meritocracy.”

“Nathan’s just with her because of her brother.”

“Wait, you think they’re actually a… thing?”

“Fake Rank. That’s for sure. I wonder if she’d even had made it to Third without her family.”

Leigh felt a death glare to her right, both dreading and knowing what she would find if she looked that way. She fought the urge to, and didn’t… Well, at least not physically. Using her CHIP she saw that, as expected, Shi’estna was back at the glaring game. Leigh contained a sigh. She’d hoped that slamming into her earlier had given the girl enough satisfaction to plug her unexplained resentment for a while. Leigh had been wrong. She still couldn’t understand how the girl could hate her so much when they didn’t even know each other. She was about to glance away again when she caught a look the girl shot at Nathan. Leigh wondered if she’d imagined, but there it was again. She frowned, that couldn’t be it, could it? A question for another time.

Leigh sighed, “Look,” she continued to Nathan in private while Arthur still went on about his ship and curriculum theories aloud, “maybe it’s best if we don’t interact with each other. I’m already getting enough negative attention as is…”

She was looking straight at Arthur, her body turned away from Nathan, hoping he would catch on. Pretending to be oblivious to the commotion revolving around her in social, she still scanned the crowd trying to single out those who had it out for her specifically. A couple heads were turned her way with anger or disgust, but more often than not those most vocal on social were simply enjoying the entertainment of trash-talking her. A surprising exception was Charlie Delta; he was glaring at her.

Leigh couldn’t help herself and turned to face him, glaring right back. What had she ever done to him? She was supposed to have all the glaring rights in their relationship. Annoyed at all the attention that was once more being dumped on her, Leigh was more than relieved when the next announcement popped up.

[FIRST ACADEMY SHIP 7, YEAR 2992 NOW LEAVING EARTH’S GRAVITY WELL. 11.89 HOURS UNTIL SOL SYSTEM’S NO-FTL ZONE IS CLEARED.]

The message stilled the Selects for a moment, but the real development happened a moment later when dozens of streams of black liquid oozed out of the ceiling. In seconds enough liquid had oozed out of each stream to form dozens of ten meter wide orbs. Her CHIP told her there were fifty of them in total, ten on each Colosseum step layer, placed at even intervals. The closest one was over 150 meters over their heads, but their sudden appearance was all the Selects could talk about and she was once more forgotten. Immediately flinging herself upon the chance to move away from the spotlight, she looked around, only to find Nathan already gone. She felt a little bad.

“I’m sorry about that,” she told him in private, walking away from where she’d been seen with him. “I didn’t mean to be quite so curt.”

He took a moment to reply, but when he did he said, “Don’t worry about it. I am the one who is sorry. I shouldn’t have approached you directly.”

She completely agreed with him, he shouldn’t have.

“So why did you then?” she heard herself ask before she could stop herself.

Leigh had started walking without a word, and Arthur had trailed along beside her as if it were the most natural thing in the world. The scientific genius was still voicing his theories about the ship and its curriculum, and the appearance of the strange black balls only had him more excited.

“Seeing as there are one hundred of us, but only fifty of them,” he said excitedly, pointing at the fifty orbs above their heads, “there is a high probability of this being a one-on-one combat simulation.”

“If it was a simulation,” Leigh countered amicably, “why would they need to put us in together? We could each have our own… just like at home with the SIM modules.”

“I don’t… Oh!” he said, “their properties just showed up on my CHIP.”

Leigh checked her own and saw what he meant, but all it said was: CIM: Complete Immersion Module. What was the difference between CIM and SIM? Was there one?

“If it’s complete instead of just a simulation,” Arthur mused, “does that mean we will actually be fighting each other in those?”

They looked up at the large 10m diameter orbs. Everyone seemed to have the same question in mind and social filled up with the noise of their questions and guesses. Even Arthur got involved in social, where he posted theory after theory on the subject of the fifty orbs.

“Honestly?” Nathan asked in private, still continuing their conversation, “I’m not really sure why I approached you. Just… I saw the way that girl, SaTafan, banged into you on the way out of the shuttle and I thought… I don’t know, I thought maybe you just needed a show of people on your side…”

“That obviously didn’t work out,” Leigh said, belatedly realizing her unnecessary snarkyness. The guy was just trying to be nice, but in the back of her head she still couldn’t get rid of the one-sided rivalry she’d started with him so many months ago.

“Obviously,” he said jokingly and Leigh heaved a sigh of relief; he hadn’t taken it personally.

“Well,” she said, finally letting reason take over, “thanks for looking out for me. I really appreciate it, but it really wasn’t your fault and had nothing to do with you. I’m really not your responsibility.”

“No problem,” he said, “it just wasn’t right. Especially what happened after…”

“Yeah…” Leigh said offhandedly, really not wanting to get into the discussion about the Initial Evaluation competition between her and Shi’estna.

“If it makes you feel any better,” he said, “I put all my bets on you.”

Leigh cringed. No. It didn’t make it any better, but she wasn’t going to tell him that. She was being stupid to turn away the first rank’s friendship. For some reason he felt indebted to her and if she was strategic enough, she could use that in the future. By continuing to snap at him, she’d be unnecessarily burning a bridge. It was time for her to stop being impulsive and reactive, she had never been before, and start being proactive and predictive again.

She didn’t quite know why she was acting the way she was toward Nathan Kies. Maybe it was because it was him. Leigh glanced in Nathan’s direction, across the dome. He was the guy whose progress she had monitored as closely as her own in the last six months. The guy who had usurped her brother, but ultimately, the guy whose sudden performance boost had her busting her butt to make it into First after she’d almost given up.

He was why she was in First, and she couldn’t help but resent him just a little bit for having that impact on her. She should have been strong enough to keep trying without him, and being reminded of her childish motivations the day after the attack, had her ashamed. Perhaps the other Selects weren’t so wrong in what they said about her. Needing to reaffirm her right to be there, Leigh grudgingly checked her IP rate in comparison to the others.

Nathan led at 0.00008%.

Charlie was close behind at 0.00007%.

A select few were at 0.00006%, Shi’estna and Arthur were amongst them. Leigh didn’t know how Arthur managed to keep working on his Integration when all he did was post his speculations about the spheres on social.

Most of the others trailed at 0.00005%.

Leigh was amongst the few others at 0.00004%.

And any of the ones she’d seen at 0.00003% had unpublicized their rates as soon as they realized how far behind they were falling. Either way, Leigh was just scraping by mediocrity. It was what everyone, but herself, expected from her. She needed to break that preconceived notion before it was too late. First opinions mattered, and as it stood, their first opinion of her was rotten. It pained her to admit it, but she’d have to devote herself to crushing Shi’estna in the Eval. Leigh had hoped to ingratiate herself amongst their ranks with an exemplary IP rate, but she just couldn’t get past the nanite recycling issue. The harder she tried to force her progress, the more it stalled. She could work nanites and EMs together, but had a hard time figuring them out individually.

Arthur still droned on with his theories and the others had now spread all over the dome, still inspecting the dome here and there. Some had even made their ways to the walls to see if they could climb or program them in some way. If it was energy-matter they should be able to mold it to their will, at least that’s how it had always been back on Earth, but going by the disgruntled comments, no one had made any progress on that front. Leigh ignored them for the most part, focusing on her own nanite problem.

She couldn’t recycle, not in the way the instructions asked her to. She tried, over and over, but some point she got frustrated enough to simply reattach the nanites to the EMs. Maybe if she restarted the process and took it apart with more care, she’d be able to recycle the nanites as was required of her. The first nanite re-attachment didn’t go at all as she’d expected. It was as if the EMs refused to be bound again now that it was free. When it didn’t work one on one like it was supposed to, Leigh just imagined the nanites ganging up on a single EM particle. It helped to cement the slippery EM in place and the nanite was successfully reattached. The moment she did so, her % jumped up to 0.00006% and her eyes widened. That hadn’t been the result she was expecting, she hadn’t followed the instructions at all, but she was rewarded for her progress nonetheless. It meant that progress did not have to be linear and that it did not have to follow the mold the EM-CHIP set out for her.

Relieved she’d managed to re-attach the nanite, but still worried about where to go from there, Leigh suddenly realized she’d just skipped a step. By re-attaching the nanite directly after unattaching it, she was recycling it, she’d just not broken it down to its atomic state beforehand. And suddenly, an idea came to her. She’d managed to force the nanite onto the EMs because of ganging them up on each other, couldn’t the same work for the nanites themselves? Leigh tried it out by thinking of compressing all of the nanites into a cube. She tried repeatedly, from all different angles. It didn’t work, at least not how it had with the EMs. She thought she might have to change her approach, but before she did that, she tried another image. Instead of a box, she tried thinking of forcing all of the nanites into a single point in space, like threading nanites through a needle that only fit an atom at a time. The first one, as always, was the hardest and it felt like she was forcing an elephant down the drain, but after that one, it was just chimpanzees.

She climbed to 0.00007%, but by then, Nathan was already at 0.00009%.

The question of what they were supposed to do inside the dome only got more urgent as time passed. They hadn’t even been on the ship for five minutes, but the uncertainty of what was going on, made time stretch indeterminately. Were they supposed to be doing something? Climbing the walls to get access to the black orbs Leigh had her own theories, she just hoped her worse fear -that they had to wait the 11.87 hours until they left their system’s NO-FTL zone- didn’t come true. If the Selects were given that much time to wander around, the subject of Leigh McMann was bound to come up again. She needed for that not to happen, at least until she had a chance to prove herself and give them a different take on her than the one Shi’estna had offered on social. A little frantic to get things moving, Leigh looked around, as if she’d be able to spot something the other 99 hadn’t managed to. Leigh gritted her teeth in growing irritation.

The UEF loved instructions, where were they?

Where was their teacher for that matter?

Leigh monitored the theories on social as well, but didn’t add anything to the discussion. Staying in the shadows was her new goal. She was one of the very few that stayed out of social, and she wasn’t surprised to see Jade Unita and Monique Lakur amongst the other few. The perfectionist probably didn’t see the speculations as worthwhile, Monique was probably using this ‘free time’ to progress her rate steadily, but Leigh had no way of knowing since the girl also kept her rate private.

Jade, on the other hand, Leigh had already completely forgotten about. Looking around, she was surprised to spot the girl simply sitting in the exact middle of the room. You’d expect that the position would make her stand out, but somehow, she was the most overlooked person in the dome. As if sensing her gaze, Jade turned to look at Leigh who immediately flinched and looked away. Leigh didn’t know why she’d done it, but it was too late to look back and the way the girl could always feel her gaze was uncanny.

As time ticked by, Leigh also began to suspect that it was their responsibility to find out what to do next. Since the room wasn’t giving anything away, the blueprints weren’t showing anything and the mysterious black ‘CIM’s were unreachable, Leigh brought out the entire ship’s icon. Perhaps they had been going about it the wrong way, and the answer was outside, instead of inside. The small rotating ship icon showed a large central sphere, what Leigh hadn’t noticed though, was that it also showed ten smaller orbs circling it randomly. Leigh was about to start looking into it with more detail, when a woman appeared as if out of thin air. Apparently, the answer wasn’t outside after all, at least not anymore. Who knows where the woman had come from.