Xiomar groaned and shifted to alleviate the ache in his back. He grimaced as a sharp pain shot through his head.

He sat up slowly, and the movement winded him almost immediately. He was in a private room of the infirmary. What had happened?

He reached up to rub his aching forehead, but froze to examine his arms. They were covered in dark bruises and bloody bandages.

“I am relieving you of your duty of attending to that mech.”

Xiomar startled. Lotharing was sitting in a chair by the door. He had his arms crossed, and his brow was furrowed with anger.

“What?” Xiomar shook his head. “No. You can’t—”

“I can do whatever I damn well please. You almost got yourself killed out there. What the hell were you thinking, Xio, allowing that mech to do whatever it wanted?”

“I told you, I had it under control!”

“Oh, so trying to break out of the arena was just a training exercise? I’m supposed to believe something so ridiculous?”

“Yes! I was just… I wanted to see how strong it was,” he lied. “I was trying to see if it could open the door by force.”

“You also blatantly ignored my orders. So, either way, you’re still off the assignment.”

“You can’t blame me! My helmet malfunctioned, and then the attack from your war mechs broke the radio!”

“Bullshit! You weren’t even wearing it because you weren’t fucking listening, as usual. At least if you’d been wearing it, you wouldn’t have been laid up here for the last three days!”

“Please,” he begged. “It’s taken me months of work… between the physical labor and getting this mech to trust me enough to allow me to pilot it. You can’t take this from me!”

Lotharing let out a loud, frustrated sigh, a thoughtful look on his face. He eyed Xiomar, chewing on the inside of his cheek.

Xiomar was breathing heavily, and his hands were shaking as tears welled up in his eyes. The general couldn’t take GLITCH away. He’d worked too hard. He thought it would be his big chance to prove himself.

“Please…”

The general sighed again.

“Alright, fine,” he said. “But this is your last chance. I mean it this time, Xio. Anything like that happens again, and I’ll personally see to it that you get sent back to that shitty garage for the rest of your life.”

Lotharing got up and left without another word, and Xiomar lay back down with a groan. He would need to have a very long talk with GLITCH.

***

It took him longer to climb up to the pilot’s compartment than usual. He wasn’t fully healed just yet. It had only been a few weeks, but Xiomar was determined to continue working with GLITCH.

He lowered himself gingerly into the pilot’s seat and let out a long breath. The chair was comfortable, and the structure of it helped to alleviate some of the pain in his back. He flipped the power switch with his foot and all the lights came on.

“Major Xiomar Haydn detected,” GLITCH said. “Major contusion to back of the head, minor contusions across the body, and one fractured rib.”

“What happened in the training arena?”

The lights in the ceiling pulsed for a moment, then two of the projection screens appeared, playing footage of the day in the training arena. One showed what was happening outside, from GLITCH’s point of view, and the other showed what was happening inside the pilot’s compartment.

Xiomar winced as he watched the mechs fight while he got tossed around like a rag doll, bloody and unconscious. Once GLITCH had put the Reaver and Valkyrie out of commission, he immediately stood down. Then the footage cut off.

“After all that,” Xiomar questioned, “why did you surrender?”

“Pilot was unconscious, and not secured within the compartment. Any further action risked greater injury and possible loss of life.”

“So, even after refusing to listen, you surrendered yourself… for me?”

“I am programmed to prevent and avoid loss of life.”

Xiomar sighed. He hated that response. It was automated—surely GLITCH had his own thoughts about the situation. He had plenty of thoughts about everything else.

“Why are you here?” GLITCH asked. “You are not healed properly for piloting, and General Lotharing had voiced his intentions to remove you and shut me down permanently.”

“I already spoke to the general,” Xiomar explained. “I told him I was just testing your strength, and it was his mechs’ fault that I got hurt.”

“Why did you lie?”

“I don’t want to see you destroyed, GLITCH. You may not want to take orders from me, but I think we could make a great team.”

The lights above him pulsed for a moment, as though the mech was thinking it over. Then, GLITCH shut himself down. He was just going to ignore Xiomar? What the hell?

“Fine, then!” Xiomar snapped. He got up and kicked the center console. “Be that way, you ungrateful piece of fucking scrap-metal! I’m trying to stop them from destroying you, and this is the thanks I get? Stupid, glitchy junker!”

Fuming with rage, Xiomar struggled to climb down, especially with his injuries not healed yet. About halfway down GLITCH’s leg, he lost his grip and fell, colliding with the top of the mech’s foot, and tumbled to the floor.

He just lay there, face down on the concrete, his injured body flooded with pain. Then, someone grabbed him under the arm and pulled him to his feet.

“You really shouldn’t be climbing like that when you’re injured. Why don’t you use a lift like a normal fuckin’ person?”

“Get your hands off me!” Xiomar yanked free from Lieutenant Maddox’s grasp. “I don’t need your help!”

Maddox shoved his hands in his pockets and scoffed.

“Whatever, man. Dufault assigned me to work on this mech with you.”

“Is that a fucking joke?” Xiomar let out a forced laugh. “What makes you think I’d ever want you up there with me?”

“Hey, I’m not happy about it either,” Maddox told him, “but apparently he and Lotharing aren’t seeing eye-to-eye on this thing. Assigning me to work with you is supposed to be some kind of compromise.”

“Un-fucking-believable.” Xiomar turned away from him. “Go away, Maddox. I don’t want your help.”

“I can’t go anywhere, Haydn. Take it up with the generals.”

“Just leave me alone!”

Ridiculous. He couldn’t believe that out of everyone on that base, they had chosen the one person Xiomar couldn’t stand. They knew they didn’t get along. Was this some kind of punishment? Did they think working together would make them stop fighting?

“Can the two of you stop bickering like old ladies for once in your lives?”

Reina was standing at a mechanic’s workbench, looking over a stack of blueprints, and Xiomar rolled his eyes. Was anyone else going to bother him today?

“What are you doing here?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” She grinned and held up a blueprint for a new Valkyrie. “I’m getting my own mech!”

“Wow,” Maddox said, the contempt clear in his voice as he rolled his eyes. “They’re letting anyone onto the Valhalla Project these days, aren’t they?”

“Don’t be jealous just ‘cause they rejected your application.”

“Mind your business, Reina!”

“You were trying to be a pilot?” Xiomar questioned, and Maddox just scowled and turned away. “Why did they reject you?”

“Didn’t you know, Xio?” Reina laughed, and it made Xiomar’s skin crawl. She always mocked everyone. “Maddox had leukemia when he was a kid. Now he’s colorblind, so they won’t give him a mech.”

“What?” Xiomar’s eyes went wide. “That’s not funny, Rei!”

Reina didn’t say anything else about it. She laughed again, then gathered her blueprints and walked away while she discussed design options with the mechanic.

“What the fuck is wrong with her? Unreal,” Xiomar said under his breath, shaking his head. He turned to Maddox, who still had his back to him. He could see his shoulders trembling. “You okay?”

“I don’t need your concern,” Maddox told him, clearing his throat. “I’m just here to work, we’re not going to become friends.”

Xiomar sighed. He didn’t like the situation, and he didn’t like Maddox, but it seemed he had no choice in the matter. He would have to swallow his pride and at least be civil.

“So, what’s the deal with this thing?” Maddox asked, tapping GLITCH’s foot with his boot. “And what happened in the arena?”

“I just... got carried away, that’s all,” he lied, scratching the stitches in his brow.

“Don’t do that!” Maddox slapped his hand away from his face. “What’s the matter with you?”

“Sorry, Dad,” he said with heavy sarcasm. “Let’s get to work, then.”

After a lot of bickering, Maddox finally convinced Xiomar to use the lift to get up to the pilot’s compartment, instead of climbing up the mech with all his injuries.

“So, what needs to be done?” Maddox asked. He was leaning against the side of the pilot’s seat with his hands in his pockets. “I thought you already replaced most of the wiring and repaired the hydraulics.”

“I fixed everything outside,” he said, sitting on the floor in front of the console. “I haven’t really looked at the inside yet. The console doesn’t respond to anything, though. So, I’m pretty sure there’s something going on under here.”

He pried the metal panel out from under the console, and his shoulders dropped in defeat. There were tons of copper wires, and none of them were marked. Not only that, but they were all rusted.

“They all look the same,” Maddox said. He was leaning down, looking at the wires curiously.

“They are the same.” Xiomar sighed. “I’m going to have to replace them all, one by one, to try to figure out what they do.”

Maddox reached into the compartment, sifting through the wires and examining the rust. He leaned on the power switch, not knowing what it was, and it flipped on. It made Maddox lurch forward, and Xiomar winced at the sound of his face colliding with the front of the console as the pilot’s compartment lit up with purple light.

“Major Xiomar Haydn detected. Lieutenant Adam Maddox detected.”

Maddox sat back on his knees, wiping his bloody nose with his sleeve. He was staring up at the projection screens, but he had a relatively blank expression on his face. Xiomar wondered if maybe he couldn’t see them properly. He had never known that Maddox was colorblind.

“Lieutenant Adam Maddox has suffered minor blunt-force trauma to the face. Medical attention is not required.”

Maddox laughed a bit then.

“I could have told it that.”

“Color-blindness detected. Adjusting contrast and saturation.”

GLITCH’s projections changed color, and the information displayed brightened. Xiomar had to squint a bit, but Maddox’s eyes went wide as he let out a small gasp. He lifted a shaky hand, his fingers reaching towards the screens.

“This is...” His eyes darted back and forth, reading all of the information on the screen. “I can read this!”

Suddenly, Xiomar leapt to his feet.

“I know what to do!”

The movement was too quick, and Xiomar doubled over in pain. Adam caught him under his arm before he hit the floor.

“Careful, Haydn!”

“Do you know what this means?” Xiomar grinned. “If we can calibrate the settings to match what GLITCH just did, you can pilot your own mech!”

***

Xiomar leaned back in the pilot’s seat with an exhausted sigh. It had taken weeks to finish replacing all of the wiring under the console.

Maddox hadn’t been there to help him, either. They had gathered all the data from GLITCH’s screen calibration in order to help him reapply to be a pilot, despite being colorblind. Xiomar was sure they could make the proper accommodations for him, and he’d been right—one of the engineering teams had accepted his application, and they’d been working on the new Valkyrie all month.

It was better for both of them. Maddox got to be a pilot, and Xiomar got to be left alone, for the most part.

It was strange to Xiomar. Working with Maddox, even though neither of them agreed or had a choice in the matter, they didn’t fight or argue while they worked to repair GLITCH. Maddox was surprisingly open to his advice and direction. He was mechanic too, but they’d never worked together in the same garage—Xiomar just overlooked their plans and signed orders.

He flipped the power switch with his foot, and for the first time, the console lit up. He let out a sigh of relief—the lights revealed labels around the buttons and switches, including the one for the auto-pilot.

“Major Xiomar Haydn detected. Sync-Suit compatibility within range.”

“Well, GLITCH,” he said, cracking his knuckles before resting his hands on the console. “Let’s test out your controls.”

Just then, there was a low rumble in the floor. Vibrations in the concrete weren’t abnormal, usually, but this one shook GLITCH too. Xiomar froze, listening closely.

“What the hell was that?”

“Minor seismic activity detected. Origin unknown due to electromagnetic interference.”

“Interference?”

The floor rumbled again, and Xiomar went down to the hangar, where the other mechanics and engineers were all standing around. The silence was so tense it was practically tangible.

Maddox was standing at the foot of his new mech with his engineer. He was wearing a Sync-Suit that he hadn’t even gotten to test yet.

“Hey,” Xiomar whispered, although there was no real need to, it just seemed appropriate in the quiet of the hangar. “What the hell’s going on out there?”

“No idea.” Maddox was chewing his fingernails nervously. “Last I checked, there were no mechs outside the hangars today.”

“GLITCH said there’s electromagnetic interference.”

Maddox’s eyes went wide, a terrified look on his face as he turned to Xiomar.

“Interference? That means—”

A deafening alarm blared throughout the base, and red lights flashed throughout the hangar.

“A raid?”

Soldiers rushed around in every direction, the higher ranks barking orders. Xiomar was frozen, his heart pounding in his chest. His breath came out in small, quick huffs, and all he could focus on was shaking floor. It was getting more intense, with shorter periods of calm in between. Were they being bombed? Who would even be attacking them?

“Haydn!”

Maddox grabbed him firmly by the shoulders, and he was shocked back to reality as he gave him a hard shake.

“Snap out of it, Haydn, we gotta go!”

An explosion at the other end of the hangar threw them down, slamming hard onto the concrete floor. Smoke and dust and debris flooded the area as soldiers in unfamiliar uniforms rushed in.

Xiomar rolled onto his back with a groan, clutching his arm. It was bleeding from being scraped across the cement, and it stung with every movement.

He sat up slowly, his ears ringing and his head in a daze. It was difficult to breathe with all the smoke and dust too.

It was like everything was happening in slow motion. The far wall of the hangar had been blown apart, and soldiers were fighting. The mechanics didn't have weapons, so they'd resorted to using their tools and workstations to fight and defend themselves.

Get up, he told himself, but his body wouldn’t move. Get up and fight!

A moan of pain off to his right caught his attention and snapped him out of it. Maddox was laying on the floor, his face covered in blood from a deep gash in his brow. Xiomar scrambled over to him and hauled him to his feet as fast as his aching body would let him.

“You good, Maddox?”

“Jeez,” Maddox muttered, wiping blood from his eye. “That fuckin’ hurt.”

“Listen! Get to your mech and get the hell out of here!”

“I haven’t even tested the Sync-Suit yet. It’s not ready!”

“Well, you’d better get it ready. Now!”

Xiomar shoved Maddox out of the way as one of the invading soldiers came rushing at them. He deflected his fist and grabbed him by the forearm, yanking the man forward into his elbow, cracking his jaw. He got a few good punches in before he let the man drop to the floor, and turned on another soldier.

He caught his hand and kneed him in the stomach, forcing the man to double over before bringing his elbow crashing down on his spine.

Don’t let them recover. Fight. Don’t let them by you. Breathe. Keep moving.

A loud bang rang out, making Xiomar’s ears ring again, and he was thrown back against GLITCH’s foot before he even knew what had happened. He was so worked up that he didn’t even feel it—he just kept going at the invaders, taking them down one soldier at a time.

One of them managed to duck past his fist and grabbed Xiomar by his bloody shoulder. He twisted his arm and forced him to his knees.

Xiomar was surrounded, rifles pointed in his face from every direction, and he scowled. What the fuck was going on?

“Get your fuckin’ hands off me!”

“Quiet!” One of the soldiers struck Xiomar in the face with the butt of his rifle. He left him kneeling there, disoriented and gasping for air while blood ran down his face. As he calmed down, the pain came flooding in, mainly in his shoulder. He doubled over and cried out.

“You fuckin’ shot me!”

The floor of the hangar shook like earlier, but it wasn’t a bomb this time.

A few of the mechs in the hangar pulled free from their bays, and all Hell broke loose with them. They attacked the invading soldiers, tossing them aside like nothing. There was no way those men were still alive. Deafening gunshots rang all around Xiomar, and the soldiers that surrounded him took off to join the fight.

Just one soldier stayed, his rifle pointed at Xiomar’s head.

“Don’t try anything funny,” he said, but he sounded nervous. Xiomar sat up slowly, gritting his teeth through the pain to look at the soldier.

He couldn’t be much older than eighteen, and his hands were shaking. He didn’t even have his finger on the trigger of his rifle. His gaze darted back and forth between XIomar and the ongoing fight inside the hangar.

“What are you doing?” Xiomar asked. “Do you think a few soldiers can win against an entire base full of mechs and their pilots?”

“Shut up!” He kicked Xiomar in the stomach, and he fell forward, gasping for air. “I’m just following orders from the higher-ups back in Zynthos.”

“Zynthos? What the..?”

Zynthos was a neighboring country that had been in the midst of civil war for over two decades. Why were they attacking other countries now?

There was nearby shouting, and the young soldier turned his weapon on an incoming mech. It was Maddox and his Valkyrie, bullets ricocheting off its armor as it approached.

Xiomar leapt to his feet, ramming the top of his uninjured shoulder up into the jaw of his captor. He grabbed the rifle as he fell, yanking the strap free from his shoulder.

“Sorry, kid,” he said, throwing the strap over his head, then scrambled to get to GLITCH while the other soldiers were focused on Maddox. It was difficult, trying to climb up with one good arm and a rifle on his back, but it wasn’t like he had time to fetch a lift.

“Major Xiomar Haydn detected. Sync-Suit compatibility within range.”

Xiomar clutched his bloody shoulder with a scowl, trying to catch his breath. It sent shooting pain down his arm and across his chest.

“Pilot heart rate and blood pressure are elevated. Major laceration to the forehead with mild concussion. Pilot has sustained non-lethal gunshot wound to the right shoulder. Immediate medical attention required.”

“You can engage auto-pilot with the Sync-Suit, right?” Xiomar asked breathlessly, grimacing in pain as he struggled to strap himself in as quickly as possible with one good hand. “We’ve got to get the fuck out of here.”

“Link with Sync-Suit initiated.”

Xiomar didn’t even listen. He sighed in relief as his body went numb from the sync, and he closed his eyes.

“Pilot unconscious. Sync-Suit link redirection in progress. Engaging auto-pilot.”