Nova Helix Star Sector — Fringe District Sick-Nine
Scrap smoke coiled into the pale morning as neon lights blinked dimly in protest against the rising sun. The street hummed with malfunctioning ad drones and the grumble of hungover scavengers making early trades. In this forgotten stretch of galactic decay, a boy with unkempt black hair knelt inside a collapsed terminal station, his fingers deep in the guts of a dead interface node.
Zai Ren, aged fifteen but weathered by life far beyond his years, nudged a pair of rusted conduits apart with practiced ease. He didn't need tools anymore. His hands moved like machines—calculated, efficient, and far too fast for someone without implants.
"You're fighting me again," he muttered, voice low, almost intimate. The machine gave a high-pitched whine in protest.
He tapped the core node. "Then let's dance."
A flicker. The dormant core coughed once—then shuddered awake. Blue light pulsed erratically.
"Yes," Zai whispered. He disconnected a small chip-sized shard—its edges crystalline, unnaturally cold. Not regular tech. Not even black market. This was ancient.
He slipped it into his satchel next to a worn-out ration card and a brass academy pin scratched almost beyond recognition.
Zai sold the shard for three synth credits and a meal pack to a twitchy trader named Grell who dealt tech out of a hover-cart rigged with stolen security protocols. Grell never asked questions; Zai never gave answers.
As he waited for his credits to process, a nearby holo-board flickered to life. The face of a proud, golden-haired student smirked beneath a rotating banner:
"NOVA HELIX INTERSTELLAR ACADEMY—HOME OF THE NEXUS TOURNAMENT CHAMPIONS."
Zai turned his head, but not before catching his own reflection—dirty, hollow-eyed, and older than fifteen.
Home was a capsule-flat stacked between rusted towers and plasma vents. The door recognized his DNA and hissed open.
Inside, his grandmother, barely over five feet and wrapped in a knit shawl patched a dozen times, looked up from boiling synth-porridge.
"Zai," she said softly, worry already lining her voice.
He kissed her forehead and handed her the meal pack.
"You shouldn't stay out so late. The enforcers came through again. One boy didn't come back."
Zai smiled faintly, exhausted. "I'm not most boys."
She placed a hand on his cheek. "You're still my boy. The brightest star the Academy ever saw."
Zai didn't answer. He moved to the far corner where a faded photo stood on a shelf—two parents in Navy Core uniforms, standing proud. He touched the frame.
"I'm close," he whispered. "Just one breakthrough. I promise."
That night, he couldn't sleep. The shard from the terminal pulsed faintly in his satchel. Against better judgment, he placed it into his hacked interface port.
The world convulsed.
Time rippled. Static warped his vision. For a breathless second, it felt like his mind split across ten layers of consciousness.
Then—
"System Online. VEX-9 Protocol initializing… Welcome, Zai Ren."
The voice was ancient, cultured, and almost amused. A HUD bloomed before his eyes:
[ SYSTEM MENU ]
Quantum Dojo
Sync Calibration
Archive Logs
Instructor VEX-9: Online
Zai's eyes widened. This wasn't military. It wasn't even human.
The shard had unlocked something not meant for this century.
Then the world snapped back. The interface disappeared. Only his comm-band glowed, faintly blue, whispering with dormant power.
Zai leaned back against the wall, heart pounding. "What... did I just wake up?"
At dawn, Sick-Nine stirred with the sounds of trade skiffs and water-line sirens. Zai packed his bag and slipped outside, mind racing. The system menu hadn't returned, but the voice—it lingered, like a whisper behind his thoughts.
He passed a cracked junction wall displaying a flickering Wanted scan. His name wasn't on it. Not yet.
He stepped onto the mag-rail platform. A sputtering rail-cart glided in, its doors barely operational.
As he boarded, an ad drone overhead sparked and fizzed, eyes glowing bright red for a moment.
Then it said in a garbled voice: "Anomaly 017... located."
Zai froze. A beat later, the voice corrected: "Error. Transmission fault."
Nobody else noticed.
Zai clenched the handle rail. The system… it had changed him already.
By the time he returned to Grell's hover-cart, the sky above Sick-Nine had turned orange with the rising sun. He slipped the now-empty shard case into Grell's bin and asked, "You ever hear of VEX protocols?"
Grell's smile vanished. "Where'd you hear that name?"
"Found it etched on some scrap. Maybe Navy?"
Grell leaned in, whispering. "That's not Navy. That's Pre-Rift. AI war tech. Deadly. Illegal to even speak of in Core Sectors."
Zai nodded slowly. "Good to know."
As he walked away, a whisper returned in his ear:
"Zai Ren, sync calibration incomplete. Initiating sleep mode until optimal environment is secured. Train well."
Then silence.
He glanced at the sky. For the first time in months, he felt something like clarity.
Not hope.
Purpose.
He didn't need the Academy. Or permission.
They'd tried to bury him.
But Zai Ren wasn't done.
He was just beginning.