Nic had only seen the surface world five times in his life. On four occasions, his class had taken field trips to the planetary surface, leaving the Paradigm Prep underground city for guided tours around agridomes or new habs under construction. It looked different each time he visited—new structures, more people in airsuits hustling here and there, more greenery, bluer skies, more smokestacks pumping terraforming gases into the fledgling atmosphere. The first time he saw the surface, he was seven years old and very sick. A school nurse escorted him to a ground-level medhab for two days. He slept for the lion’s share of that trip.

But today was his sixth time seeing the colony proper. Ayrus—or, according to its formal designation, Colony 228. Numerous viewscreens in the elevator displayed live video feeds of a partially terraformed exoplanet that would likely be fully habitable in just a few short years. The lift whirred dutifully as it ascended on its track.

“I can tell your Final Exam means a lot to you,” said Magister Dana. She wore a tight white lab coat with her red hair pulled back in a crisp bun. “You’re nervous, aren’t you?”

Nic nodded. He took a deep breath. “It does. And... I am.”

“Don’t be. I’m sure you did well on your exit exams. Just remember the material you reviewed there—oh, and your sims—and you’ll do fine!”

“My sims.” He wondered what VR games had to do with passing his Final Exam. Then again, he and his classmates were forced to play them five days a week, and they were all part of the exit exams, so Paradigm Prep must have had its reasons. “I can’t tell if you’re serious or not.”

She smiled coyly and shook her head. “I really shouldn’t have told you that. Forget I said anything.” A notification chimed on the tablet she held pressed against her chest. “Oh! Your exit exam results are in. Would you like to see them?”

“Yes,” he answered fearfully. Magister Dana handed over the tablet to him with an excited grin. Nic had spent all 18 of his years at Paradigm, and for four of those years, he'd known Magister Dana as a teacher, an authority figure, a font of knowledge—despite the fact that she was merely a woman in her 30s. Now that he was an adult about to leave Paradigm Preparatory Institute forever, she seemed so much more humanized, so much more like a peer.

He swiped the tablet to navigate to his test scores. His name appeared at the top of the screen, Nicolas Siegfried (Student #12-107), next to his PPI student profile pic. His own face stared back up at him, his piercing green eyes, his sparse constellation of freckles, his swirl of chestnut hair... the scar on his chin.

He’d acquired that scar at age 5 playing King of the Hill. Nic had always excelled in his daily PE classes, and King of the Hill was his favorite PE game. On that particular day, he fought off nine other students to remain on the platform, and when one knocked him off the padded play area and onto the hard floor, he got right back up there, shoving, pulling, and tackling the other kids while bleeding all over the place. He had to be dragged kicking and screaming from the gym to the nurse’s office. Reportedly, he refused to cooperate with treatment until the nurse told him if he’d won the game—and with that delay, the scar could not be stopped from forming.

“No,” Nic gasped at the sight of his results.

“What’s wrong?” Magister Dana asked. She accepted the tablet from him when he returned it. “98.5%? You had me worried! This is a fantastic score, Nic. You should be proud.”

“I know others had to have gotten 100.”

She offered a consolatory smile. “Nic, you know I can’t—”

“You don’t have to tell me who. Just tell me if someone else got 100. Or even 99. You can tell me that much.”

“There was only one. But I’m telling you, Nic, you can’t be so hard on yourself. A 98.5% is exceptional! You’ve been a star student here at PPI.”

I could have done better, he thought. I should have done better. Someone else did... The Final will be different. It has to be.

The elevator door hissed open as it connected with the Final Exam hab. He knew of this hab’s existence, but it was only used once a year, only by the graduating class for the Final Exam. The contents and nature of the test were top secret; he had no idea what it consisted of, but he was about to find out.

“Well, this is it,” said Magister Dana. “I’m gonna miss you, kiddo.” He accepted a back-cracking hug from her. She smelled like flowers—he’d only ever smelled them on field trips, in the agridomes, but scents were hard to forget. “Don’t sweat the Final too much. I know you’ll pass.”

He smiled. “I’m sure you did, too, so that’s some high praise.”

She arched an eyebrow. “Actually, I didn’t. But I’m happy where I ended up all the same.” She tapped at a few items on her tablet screen and smiled at him one last time, albeit distractedly. “Goodbye, Nic. And good luck.”

He waved as the elevator door slowly hissed shut. “Goodbye.”

She was his last tether to the PPI underground city, which he’d never see again. Well, probably not, anyway. He knew that the Final Exam was what determined his career placement in the expansive colonial job market—but he had no idea how. If Magister Dana had failed her Final Exam and still ended up as a teacher at PPI, he couldn’t help but wonder what happened to those who passed.

The Final Exam hab consisted of a long hallway hugging the outer walls of a huge rectangular structure with rounded corners. The room he entered was just an atrium for student intake; he was the only one present. A scrolling digital ticker on the wall instructed him: “PROCEED TO YOUR DESIGNATED BUNK AND PUT ON YOUR ASSIGNED SIMSUIT.”

He did as he was told, marching down the long, narrow corridor past dozens of other rooms with their own digital tickers bearing their student numbers. They weren’t arranged in numerical order—must have been based on which student finished when, he reasoned. His was near the end of the hallway, as he was a notoriously slow test-taker. “STUDENT 12-107” read the ticker above the tiny room. He entered, donned his SimSuit, and pressed the tightener on the back of his neck. With a swish sound, the rubbery material shrank taut against his skin. All that was left to do was put on his helmet and see what happened next.

When he did so, he expected a menu screen to pop up, but he was greeted instead by a green holographic avatar. It stood in an expansive enclosure with anchor gray metal walls and a natural floor made of genuine Ayrus surface rock. Nic quickly deduced that he was seeing the interior of the Final Exam hab’s main structure.

“Welcome to your Final Exam!” said the hologram in an androgynous, cheery voice. “My name is RTIFIS.”

“Artifice,” Nic echoed. “Interesting.”

“I am your Real Time Integrated Fighting Improvement System. I’ll be your AI guide to what happens next! Your Final Exam is a competition against your fellow classmates for career placement purposes. As residents of Colony 228, you know that the future of humanity depends on finding new worlds to terraform and set up shop! We’ve only just begun to tap the vast resources of our galaxy. As such, the top 100 scorers in the Final Exam will be selected for the exciting, crucial task of fighting to claim new, terraformable exoplanets! The best soldiers for the job will be selected in a simple, free-for-all competition: a fight to the death.”