A new voice crackled over the city-wide speakers, different from the first—younger, tinged with a manic glee.
“Oh, and a fun little addendum! You will also be graded on the number of drones you destroy! So remember: your Ward needs to survive to pass… but your score depends on how many of our lovely little hazards you turn into scrap! Good luck, kiddos!”
The voice dissolved into unsettling, echoing laughter.
A second, older and exasperated voice cut in on the same channel. “You are supposed to be a professional evaluator. You are embarrassing the entire institution.”
The first voice snapped back to a tone of mock formality. “Oh, my sincere apologies. Do carry on.”
Theo’s blood ran cold. The goalposts had just moved. It wasn’t just survival anymore; it was a competition with a thousand desperate participants.
Before the thought could fully form, the gleeful voice returned, now dripping with faux sympathy. “I also seem to have forgotten to mention… we only have fifty slots available at dear old Turboland this year. Only the top fifty scores will be accepted. Toodles!”
The second voice erupted, muffled as if someone was grabbing the microphone. “You were supposed to disclose that from the beginning! This is a compliance nightmare—”
The transmission cut off with a sharp squeal of feedback.
“Only fifty?” Theo whispered, the words tasting like ash.
A low buzzing filled his ears. One of the four-armed hazard drones dropped from a balcony above, its metallic limbs poised to grab. Theo lunged sideways, the Ward clutched to his chest. The drone’s claw scraped across his shoulder, tearing his shirt and drawing a line of fire across his skin.
“Aw! Damn it!” He stumbled, putting his body between the machine and the Ward. The drone advanced, its arm whirring back for another strike.
He couldn’t outrun it while carrying the Ward. He couldn’t fight it without his power. Think, Theo. Stupendous didn’t train your fists. He trained your mind.
He dodged another swipe, his back hitting a brick wall. Cornered. The drone closed in.
An idea, desperate and simple, formed. He couldn’t destroy it without turbo, but he didn’t need to destroy it to survive. He just needed to move.
In one fluid motion, he tore the remains of his shirt off, bundled the Ward against his back, and used the fabric to tie it securely in place. The Ward chirped in alarmed confusion.
Theo closed his eyes, blocking out the advancing whir of the drone. He forced his breathing to slow. Focus, Theodore. This isn’t about unleashing power. It’s about control. The lightest touch. Like easing a car out of park.
He focused on the hum in his chest, the sleeping star. He didn’t try to wake it. He imagined applying the gentlest pressure, not to the accelerator, but to the clutch. Just enough to connect the engine to the wheels.
On his wrist, the watch’s warning number began to plummet.
100… 75… 50… 25… 10…
A calm, synthetic voice spoke from the device, audible only to him. “Output stable. Safe limit met.”
Theo opened his eyes. The world hadn’t changed, but he had. A network of faint, golden lines, like circuitry woven under his skin, glowed briefly along his arms and legs before fading. He didn’t feel explosive power. He felt… potential. Harnessed. Ready.
The yelloq lights on his hands are not glowing randomly and not decorative. They behave like a controlled system coming online.
They appear first at the base of his palms, just beneath the skin, as thin golden filaments—soft at first, like light seen through frosted glass. From there, the lines branch outward along natural anatomical paths, tracing tendons, knuckles, and the backs of his fingers with precise geometry.
The drone lunged.
Theo moved.
He didn’t vanish in a blur. He simply wasn’t where the drone struck. He was three meters away, having stepped aside with impossible, effortless grace. Speed wasn’t a burst; it was a new fact of his existence.
He looked at the drone, now turning clumsily to find him. For the first time in the exam, a fierce, determined smile touched his lips.
“Now,” he said, his voice steady. “We’re talking.”
He shifted his weight, and the world became a slow-moving tableau. He crossed the distance in the space of a heartbeat. He didn’t swing wildly. He planted his feet, rotated his hips, and drove his fist forward in a perfect, controlled strike.
His knuckles connected with the drone’s central chassis not with a superheroic crash, but with a sharp, definitive CRUNCH of compacting metal and shattering circuitry. The drone imploded, sparks fizzling from its seams, and clattered to the ground as inert junk.
Theo stood over it, his fist stinging, the Ward secure on his back. The watch on his wrist now glowed with a steady, safe green.
Score: 1.
One down. A city full of drones to go. And forty-nine slots left to win.
The metallic taste of the destroyed drone hung in the air. One point. Theo’s mind, honed by months of Stupendous’s brutal logic drills, immediately shifted gears. Survival was no longer the only parameter. He was in a competition with a thousand others for one of fifty golden tickets. He needed a strategy, not just reflexes.
He became a ghost in the machine of the exam.
He didn’t blaze through streets. He moved in controlled, startling bursts—a flicker from the shadow of a bus to the ledge of a low roof, the Ward secured silently on his back. From the vantage point, he scanned. His eyes, sharpened by adrenaline and the latent energy within him, tracked patterns in the chaos.
There. A cluster of three hazard drones patrolled a narrow alley below, having cornered a candidate whose power seemed to be generating harmless soap bubbles. The candidate was panicking, shielding their Ward.
Theo dropped behind the drones. As the bubble-maker drew their attention, Theo moved. Not with a punch, but with three precise, piston-fast stomps to their central sensors. Crunch-crunch-crunch. Three metallic heaps joined the first.
Score: 4. Rank: 212.
He was a scavenger, a predator of opportunity. He let a girl with vibrating sonic shrieks draw a swarm, then darted through the disoriented drones like a wasp, his knuckles finding their weak points with surgical efficiency.
Score: 9. Rank: 145.
---
Across the sector, other scores were climbing in spectacular, violent fashion.
Edgar Rodigar had abandoned his static defense. He stood in a wide intersection, a conductor of chaos. With a contemptuous flick of his wrist, he unleashed a Pulse. The invisible shockwave radiated outwards, not just deflecting, but crushing seven drones against the surrounding buildings in a single, devastating chord of crumpling metal. He didn’t break a sweat. His watch, no doubt, flashed a formidable number.
This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.
Score: 31. Rank: 12.
Vance “Wrath” Kruger was a walking inferno. A torrent of plasma-like fire roared from his hands, engulfing a maintenance drone in a mockery of an oil silo. It melted into a glowing puddle. His laugh was a wild, hungry thing. But his face was already sheened with sweat, his eyes hollow. The feast of flames was devouring him from the inside.
Score: 28. Rank: 17.
Lily Cinclare presented the most chilling tableau. She stood perfectly still in the middle of a street, her Ward beside her. A drone streaked toward her, claws extended. It reached her. And then it was simply… in pieces, as if it had spontaneously disassembled mid-flight. It had committed the crime of intended harm within her sphere of influence, and the sentence had been instantaneous, silent oblivion. She hadn't moved a muscle. Her score ticked upward with serene, effortless lethality.
Score: 22. Rank: 29.
Theo saw it all in flashes between his own strikes. The scoreboard was a living thing, and he was far down its list.
His watch vibrated. Not a warning, but a notification he hadn’t seen before. “Cumulative Strain: 18%. Monitor Bio-Feedback.” A cold trickle of fear cut through his focus. The energy had a cost, and he was paying it incrementally with every precise, controlled burst.
He needed more points, faster. He ducked into a shattered storefront for a breath, checking his status.
Score: 14. Rank: 82.
Not enough. The clock was bleeding minutes. He had to risk a more active hunting ground.
He emerged near a central plaza. And froze.
The plaza was a graveyard of drones, littered with sparking wreckage. In the center, standing triumphantly over a freshly smashed quadrupedal sentry, was Mara Kova—Shard. Crystalline shards jutted from her forearms like jagged blades, dripping with something that wasn’t blood. Her eyes, hard and calculating, locked onto Theo the moment he appeared.
They both saw the last functional drone in the plaza—a sleek hover-sentinel skirting the edge of the rubble.
It was an unspoken duel. A test.
Theo’s muscles coiled, the familiar hum in his chest rising in response to the threat. He could beat her to it. He had the speed.
But the watch on his wrist pulsed a soft, urgent amber. Strain: 21%. Conflict was a luxury. Energy spent fighting her was energy not spent climbing the ranks.
Mara’s crystal blades gleamed. She was ready for a fight.
Theo made a decision. He met her eyes, gave a single, sharp shake of his head, and took a deliberate step back, melting into the shadow of a collapsed awning. He ceded the point.
Mara stared for a second, then smirked, turning to obliterate the hover-sentinel with a vicious crystalline lash.
Theo didn’t wait. He was already moving in the opposite direction, toward the denser, more dangerous downtown sector where the turret fire was thickest. Where others might hesitate. Where points would be plentiful for someone who could navigate the storm.
It was a gamble. A calculated one. He was trading a single, contested point for the chance at a dozen more. The strategist in him, forged by Stupendous, overruled the prideful fighter. He ran, the fateful clock in his mind ticking down alongside the rising strain in his veins. The top 50 hovered just out of reach, and the path to it was through the heart of the fire.
---
A final, resonant chime echoed across the ruined city sector. The turrets powered down. The remaining drones fell from the air, deactivated. The sudden silence was deafening, broken only by the ragged gasps of the survivors and the faint crackle of broken machinery.
Massive screens, previously dark, flickered to life atop the perimeter walls. A stark, scrolling list appeared.
TURBOLAND ACADEMY - ENTRANCE EXAM RANKINGS
1. Vance Kruger - 203 pts
2. Frederick Houser - 199 pts
3. Lily Cinclare - 187 pts
4. Keba Dunlop - 160 pts
5. Chloe Vance - 150 pts
6. Aarav Kumar - 148 pts
The list scrolled down, name after name, a brutal ledger of performance. Theo’s heart hammered against his ribs. He found himself holding his breath.
7... 8... 9... 10...
44. Theodore Griffin - 67 pts
There it was. Forty-fourth. A number that felt both impossible and, in the marrow-deep exhaustion of his bones, earned. He had done it. He was in.
Around him, the reaction was a wave of disparate emotions. A triumphant roar from Vance, who pounded his chest, sending a shower of embers into the air. A cool, satisfied nod from Lily, as if the result was a foregone conclusion. Edgar, who had landed at 9th place, was not looking at the board. He was staring directly at Theo, his expression a complex mask of shock, suspicion, and something that might have been begrudging respect. His gaze flicked to Theo’s torn shirt, the faint, fading gold lines just visible on his skin, then back to his face. He said nothing.
From the speakers, the original, professional voice returned, sterile and final.
“The examination is concluded. Candidates, please proceed with your Wards to the designated extraction points. Your ranking is now official. The top fifty candidates listed will proceed to the final orientation and dormitory assignment. All others, you have our thanks for your participation. Transportation home has been arranged.”
The finality of the words settled over the plaza. Cheers from the victors mixed with the choked sobs and angry curses of those below the fiftieth line. The divide was instant and absolute.
Theo slowly untied the Ward from his back. The little drone looked up at him, its sensor eyes blinking slowly. It gave one final, soft chirp—a sound that was almost grateful—before its lights powered down, its purpose fulfilled.
He had passed. He was in the top fifty. He was going to Turboland.
But as he looked around at the faces of the elite he would now walk among—the incendiary pride of Wrath, the glacial calm of Glacier, the untouchable poise of Null, and the sharp, assessing eyes of Edgar—Theo understood. The exam was over. The real competition, the one for survival within the System’s gilded walls, had just begun. He stood at eleventh place, a powerless boy from a quiet apartment, now holding a spot he had taken from a thousand others.
To Be Continued...
