Morning Above Arcanum
The Arcanum Dome shimmered like dawn contained in glass. M.A.N.A. currents wove slow rivers of color across the upper panels while vapor rolled from vents in rhythmic bursts, each exhale timed to the facility's massive cooling cycles. The morning shift had just begun, technicians moving between stations with coffee in hand and diagnostic tablets under their arms.
Beneath that light stood the two most watched pilots of the academy: Dean Knicko Pineda and his younger sister, Jasmine. Their names carried rumor and reverence in equal measure. The calm strategist and the reckless storm. People whispered about them in the mess hall, debated their techniques in training sessions, and placed bets on who would make ace first.
Dean's Divine-Class Astra Nova stood behind him like a sentinel carved from light, silver-and-azure armor folded in regal symmetry, runes breathing softly along its shoulders and chest. The Frame stood almost fifteen meters tall, dwarfing its pilot, yet somehow their proportions felt perfectly matched. Across the deck, Jasmine's Arcane-Class Tempest Wing gleamed a deep violet-blue, its translucent fins vibrating with stored charge that made the air around it shimmer. When their Frames faced each other, the air itself seemed to tighten, holding its breath, as if the dome waited for the first note of a symphony.
"Still think you can outfly me?" Dean's tone was mild, almost conversational, but his eyes were sharp. He'd already run through the simulation parameters twice this morning.
Jasmine pulled her gloves tight, each finger flexing to check the fit. "Outfly? No. Outshine? Always."
"Predictable."
"Efficient."
Their exchange drew a ripple of quiet laughter from cadets watching nearby from the observation gallery. To them, the siblings were mythic, two forces destined to collide. The rivalry was legendary. Everyone had seen the footage of their last sparring match, when Jasmine had pushed her Frame past safety limits and Dean had been forced to intervene mid-flight. What no one suspected was that every word, every gesture, every carefully timed argument was choreography. The rivalry was their armor, a performance designed to test who admired them and who merely sought to stand in their reflected light.
Commander Varros's voice thundered from the control gantry, amplified through speakers that made the metal walls vibrate. "Pineda Team, Simulation Dome Three. You're up."
Jasmine leaned close as they walked toward their Frames, her voice dropping to a whisper only Dean could hear. "Let's make them think we hate each other again."
Dean almost smiled, the corner of his mouth twitching. "They never learn."
"That's what makes it fun."
The Sim Squad Trials
Below the main hangar, three levels down where the concrete walls were thicker and the temperature dropped ten degrees, the subterranean training wing thrummed with energy. Fluorescent lights cast everything in harsh white, making the shadows stark. Three other pilots prepared for their own scenario, moving through pre-flight checks with the practiced efficiency of people who'd done this a hundred times.
Allen Maniego, broad-shouldered and perpetually grinning, ran diagnostics on his Helion-Class Vanguard, the Frame's amber armor plates flickering as systems cycled through startup sequences. He was humming something under his breath, a habit that drove his maintenance crew crazy but seemed to settle his nerves.
Jade Ronquillo stood silent behind tinted lenses, his expression unreadable as always, calibrating the skeletal limbs of his Bio-Core Revenant. The Frame's red veins pulsed like exposed musculature, organic and unsettling. Jade preferred it that way. People kept their distance.
And Gene Armas stood within a half-lit synchronization chamber, separated from the others by reinforced glass, where the prototype Cross Zero Unit rested. Unfinished. Unstable. Magnificent.
Unlike the others, Gene's Frame had no fixed form yet. Its crystalline chassis hovered in magnetic suspension, held in place by invisible fields that hummed at frequencies just below hearing. Components reconfigured as engineers adjusted parameters from external terminals, the Frame's structure shifting like a puzzle solving itself. The core pulsed in multicolored resonance, cycling through spectrums that shouldn't exist in the same space, proof of the first All-Spectrum Reactor. Still experimental. Still dangerous.
Allen whistled low, watching through the observation window. "You sure that thing's safe to stand near?"
Gene didn't look up from the neural interface array he was reviewing. "Define safe."
Jade snorted, the sound sharp in the quiet. "Translation: no."
"Translation: different parameters." Gene finally glanced over, and for a moment Allen thought he saw colors reflecting in his eyes that weren't coming from any screen. "Safety assumes you know all the variables. We don't."
Commander Varros's assistant relayed orders through the intercom, her voice crackling with interference. "Squad C, mixed-environment simulation. Combat discharge limited to sixty percent. Proceed when ready."
Allen cracked his neck, rolling his shoulders to loosen the tension. "Time to remind the seniors we exist."
Jade replied without emotion, already moving toward his cockpit. "Or die trying."
"You're a real optimist, you know that?"
"I'm a realist."
Gene simply closed his eyes, letting his breathing slow. Somewhere beyond the walls, beyond the meters of reinforced concrete and steel, he could feel faint harmonics. The after-echo of the Pinedas powering their own Frames three levels above. Two clear frequencies spiraling together in the spectrum, silver and violet, distinct but intertwined. His core reacted subtly, colors bending toward that harmony like iron filings toward a magnet. He whispered to no one, barely a breath, "Resonance is listening."
Allen paused halfway into his cockpit. "What?"
"Nothing." Gene opened his eyes, the colors fading. "Just talking to myself."
But his hand was pressed against the chamber glass, and beneath his palm, the Cross Zero's core pulsed once in response.
Dual Flight
Inside Simulation Dome Three, light unfolded into sky. The transformation was seamless, one moment sterile white walls, the next moment infinite blue. Digital clouds formed from nothing, fractal winds carried scents of ozone and rain, simulated gravity adjusted to match flight conditions. Every detail perfect. Every sensation real enough to fool the body into believing.
Dean launched first, Astra Nova rising with deliberate grace. The Frame's movements were precise, each adjustment calculated, wings extending in measured arcs that caught the artificial thermals. He'd already mapped the optimal flight path based on the environmental parameters. Three routes, each with contingencies.
Jasmine followed in a blur of violet, her Frame slicing through contrails like lightning through silk. Where Dean calculated, she felt. Tempest Wing responded to instinct, her neural link feeding impulses faster than conscious thought. She didn't plan her path. She became it.
"Formation Delta," Dean ordered over the comm, his voice steady.
"Formation Freedom," Jasmine countered, immediately spinning upward into a climb that put her thirty degrees off his suggested vector.
Their banter echoed across open channels while telemetry spiked on every monitoring station. In the control room, technicians leaned forward, watching the data streams. Dean's crystalline wings projected clean vectors of thrust, energy distribution perfectly balanced. Jasmine's fins flared unpredictably, channeling Astral turbulence in ways that should have destabilized her Frame but instead amplified her maneuverability.
Onlookers at the control deck gasped as the pair threaded through one another's wake, missing collision by meters, then by centimeters, a duet of discipline and chaos that looked like suicide and flew like art.
"You'll lose lift in that draft," Dean warned, his sensors already tracking the turbulence she was diving into.
"Maybe I want to fall."
"Then I guess I'll catch you again." There was something in his tone, not quite annoyance, not quite affection. The voice of someone who'd done this before.
Jasmine pulled a vertical climb, plasma contrails painting arcs of violet fire across the simulated sky. Her Frame's reactor was running hot, ninety-two percent output, and sensors warned of oversynchronization. The neural feedback was intense, her heartbeat accelerating to match the Frame's energy cycle. But she pressed on, chasing the edge where control became surrender. Tempest Wing responded instinctively, its runes expanding, reshaping, the early pulse of evolution that marked a pilot and Frame becoming something more than their separate parts.
Dean matched altitude, Astra Nova's azure feathers scattering radiant motes that steadied the turbulence around her. He could feel the air pressure shifting, see the way her trajectory was destabilizing. His hands moved across the controls, not to intercept, but to create pockets of stable air in her path. Supporting without interfering. Protecting without restraining.
For a heartbeat, they flew parallel. Fifteen meters apart, perfectly matched in speed and heading. The dome's AI recorded their shared frequency: two distinct cores beating in precise unison, their resonance patterns overlapping in ways the algorithm had never seen. Then Jasmine rolled, diving through simulated lightning, her laughter crackling through comms, wild and free.
Below, cadets cheered, voices echoing through the observation galleries. Above, the stars programmed into the sky seemed to flicker. Not a digital glitch. The engineers would check the logs later and find no errors. But the faint interference of living resonance was unmistakable.
The Mask Behind Rivalry
When the simulation ended, the dome returned to neutral light. The sky dissolved back into white walls, the clouds evaporating like morning mist. Applause echoed through corridors, cadets talking excitedly about the maneuvers they'd witnessed, already planning how to replicate them in their own training.
Jasmine exited her cockpit first, dropping the three meters to the deck with practiced ease, landing in a crouch before standing. She made a show of stretching, pretending nonchalance, as if the flight hadn't pushed her to her limits. Dean followed, already reviewing flight data on his wrist display, his expression neutral. Commander Varros met them at the debrief platform, his weathered face unreadable.
"Exceptional control," he said, his voice carrying the weight of thirty years in Frames. "Too exceptional. You're syncing beyond projected limits."
"Guess we're just compatible," Jasmine teased, but there was a wariness in her eyes. She knew what he was really saying.
Varros's gaze lingered on Dean. The elder sibling, the responsible one, the pilot who should know better. "Compatibility can become dependency. Be careful."
The word hung in the air between them. Dependency. The thing every pilot feared. When you couldn't fly without your partner's presence, when the resonance became a chain instead of a link. They'd all heard the stories of paired pilots who'd lost themselves in the synchronization, who couldn't remember where one consciousness ended and another began.
When the others dispersed, still discussing the flight, the siblings slipped away. They moved through the crowded corridors with practiced efficiency, avoiding the clusters of cadets who would want to talk, to analyze, to ask questions. They took the maintenance stairs, the ones most people forgot existed, and found their way to the observation lounge above the hangar. A quiet alcove wrapped in glass, overlooking hundreds of dormant Frames in their cradles. The noise below faded to a distant hum, like ocean waves through thick walls.
"You held back," Jasmine said, her voice quiet now, stripped of the performance edge.
"So did you."
"Because if I didn't, I'd lose control again." She pressed her palm against the cool glass, staring down at Tempest Wing three levels below. "Like last time."
"And if I didn't, I'd stop you." Dean stood beside her, their reflections overlapping in the glass. "Like last time."
Silence stretched between them, filled only by the low thrum of reactors far beneath, the heartbeat of the facility. Dean leaned against the railing, his eyes on the glimmering horizon beyond the Dome where the city sprawled in metallic splendor. "Our act's working. Half the cadets think we're enemies."
"Good. Let them waste time choosing sides."
"While we watch who moves between them." He smiled faintly. "Who tries to play peacemaker. Who tries to exploit the division. Who actually doesn't care."
She turned to look at him, studying his profile. "That's my brother. Weaponizing gossip."
"Intelligence gathering," he corrected, but there was warmth in his tone now.
Their laughter broke softly through the quiet, genuine for the first time all day. In that fragile moment, their masks fell, revealing what few would ever know: that rivalry was their shield, and loyalty their true weapon. That every argument was scripted, every conflict staged, every moment of tension a carefully constructed test of everyone around them.
"Think anyone suspects?" Jasmine asked.
"Gene might." Dean's expression grew thoughtful. "He sees patterns differently. Feels them."
"The resonance thing?"
"Something like that."
Cross Currents
In the lower levels, Gene's chamber vibrated with sudden light. It started as a tremor in the walls, a shift in air pressure that made his ears pop. Then the Cross Zero Unit awakened of its own accord, systems powering on without command input. Data cascaded across the monitors in streams too fast for human eyes to follow. Jade blinked at the readings, his usual stoicism cracking into confusion.
"This frequency..." He pulled up a comparison analysis, his fingers moving quickly across the touchscreen. "It's identical to the Pinedas' sync pattern."
Allen frowned, stepping closer to read over his shoulder. "They're in another dome. Three levels up and half a kilometer away."
Gene's eyes opened, and for a moment they reflected colors that weren't in the room. Multicolored patterns dancing across his irises like oil on water. "Resonance doesn't care about walls."
He stepped closer to the suspended Frame, drawn by something he couldn't explain. The crystalline core spun faster, its rotation accelerating, projecting thin filaments of light that stretched across the chamber like spider silk. They brushed the other mechs in the bay, touching Revenant's red veins, caressing Vanguard's amber plating. For an instant, every pilot felt something impossible: a synchronized heartbeat inside their chests that wasn't their own.
Jade whispered, his voice barely audible, "He's linking us..."
Allen grinned despite the unease crawling up his spine, despite the way his hands were shaking slightly. "Then let's ride the wave."
They entered their cockpits, strapping in with trembling fingers. The simulation field erupted in a kaleidoscope of motion, each Frame moving with micro-instincts not its own. Allen found himself executing aerial maneuvers he'd never practiced, borrowed fragments of Jasmine's wild flight patterns flowing through his neural link. Jade's movements gained Dean's calculated precision, his usual aggressive style tempered with tactical awareness.
Energy output climbed dangerously, reactors pushing toward redlines, heat warnings flashing across every console. Then something shifted. An unseen hand on the controls, moderating the flow, balancing the surge. The numbers stabilized just below critical thresholds, holding steady in a way that shouldn't have been possible without direct intervention.
On the surface level, three floors above, both Dean and Jasmine paused mid-debrief. The conversation around them continued, Commander Varros discussing flight patterns, but they weren't listening anymore. The hair on their arms lifted, standing on end as static electricity built in the air around them. Their Frames' cores pulsed once without input, a sympathetic reaction to something far below.
A faint sound reached them, like a second heartbeat, thrumming through the hangar's metal bones.
"Did you feel that?" Jasmine asked, her voice tight.
Dean nodded slowly, his eyes distant, tracking something invisible. "Gene."
In the engineering bay, Liwayway Cruz glanced up from her monitors, coffee cup halfway to her lips. She'd been reviewing energy distribution patterns, trying to optimize reactor efficiency, when the readings spiked. She recognized the spectral signature immediately, the pattern she'd spent years studying. What she once called runic resonance, before the FDB had classified the research and locked it away.
The network of machines across Arcanum hummed together for precisely three seconds. Every Frame in every hangar, every reactor in every sublevel, every piece of M.A.N.A.-powered equipment in the entire facility vibrating at the same frequency. Then silence. An electrical calm that felt like the moment after a choir holds its final note, the air thick with fading resonance that felt almost like reverence.
Cruz set down her coffee slowly, her hand not quite steady. "What are you becoming?" she whispered, staring at the data streams that made no sense according to any model she knew.
The Unspoken Pact
Night descended on the academy, the transition gradual, the dome's panels adjusting to filter evening light into softer hues. The domes glowed with auroral color, bands of green and violet and gold shifting across the sky. The city beyond pulsed like a living organism breathing through steel, a million lights marking a million lives lived in the shadow of these machines.
On the outer terrace, the one reserved for senior pilots and usually empty this time of evening, the Pineda siblings stood beneath open sky. Helmets under their arms, uniforms unzipped at the collar to let the cool air in, letting their skin breathe after hours sealed in flight suits. The temperature had dropped twenty degrees with sunset, and Jasmine shivered slightly.
"You think it was him?" she asked, staring at the horizon where the last light bled away.
Dean nodded toward the city lights, the distant glow of other facilities, other domes. "His Frame's still unfinished, but the resonance doesn't wait for permission. Never has."
"Feels like..." She searched for words, watching the M.A.N.A. currents dance overhead. "Like we're all being tuned toward something. Like instruments in an orchestra finding the same key."
He watched the spectral currents shimmer overhead, bands of green, silver, violet weaving together in patterns that reminded him of rivers merging, of separate streams becoming one flow. "Not destiny," he said carefully, choosing his words. "Just a pattern we don't see yet. The full shape of it."
Jasmine smiled, faint but sure, the expression softening her usually sharp features. "Call it whatever you want. Philosophy, science, fate. It feels alive."
Below them, three levels down in the main hangar, Astra Nova and Tempest Wing rested side by side in their cradles. Their cores pulsed in slow unison, azure and violet threads intertwining like breathing stars. Maintenance crews working the late shift paused in their routines, tools going still in their hands. They swore later, though no one believed them, that they heard faint harmonic tones rising from the machines. Like singing, if singing could exist without voices. As if the Frames were whispering to one another in a language older than code, older than words.
High above, in orbit's edge where satellites tracked every energy fluctuation across the planet's surface, sensors registered a minor anomaly. Two converging streams of resonance that curved around Earth's magnetic field, following the lines of force, before parting again. The pattern lasted seventeen seconds. No one on the surface saw it, no alarms triggered, but every pilot sensitive to M.A.N.A. felt something. A soft pull behind the heart, like the tug of tide. A reminder of connection.
Dean exhaled, his breath visible in the cold air. "Let them think we compete."
Jasmine chuckled, the sound quiet and warm. "Let them. When the real fight comes, they'll know why."
"Why we trained this way."
"Why we pushed each other."
"Why we never actually fought."
They stood together in the gathering dark, the air shimmering faintly around them like heat haze in reverse. Far below, Gene's chamber lights dimmed at last, the Cross Zero core settling into a low, steady pulse. Waiting. Patient. As though it knew its moment would come, and there was no need to rush what was already inevitable.
For now, Arcanum slept. The Frames dreamed in their cradles, or something like dreaming, their cores pulsing in rhythms that matched no human sleep cycle. Auroras drifted across the glass sky like slow rivers of light. And two siblings watched in silence, storm and sun in perfect orbit, guardians of a harmony the world had yet to understand.
Dean's wrist display flickered, showing a message notification. He glanced at it, then dismissed it. "Gene sent a log entry."
"What's it say?"
"'The current shifts toward harmony.'" Dean looked at his sister, and something passed between them. Understanding. Recognition. "He feels it too."
"Then we're not alone in this."
"No," Dean agreed quietly. "We never were."
The stars above, real stars beyond the dome's filtering panels, burned with steady light. And somewhere in that vast dark, something watched. Something waited. Something that had seen patterns like this before, in other times, on other worlds, and knew what they meant.
The age of isolated pilots was ending. The age of resonance, of connection, of something larger than any single consciousness, was beginning.
And in the morning, they would all pretend nothing had changed.