Chapter One: The World's Only Piece of Junk

[FIRST WARNING.] The battlefield returned. All five enemies had crossed the river. The stands thundered with rhythmic chants of “Iron Veil.” It did not sound prerecorded. It sounded like tens of thousands of real feet striking the floor beneath a real night sky. “How long?” Shen Yan asked. “The core has forty seconds at most,” Lu Yao said. “Our fastest respawn is twenty-seven. When East Three loses power, the hospitals go dark first.” The detail was too specific for a prank. Shen Yan opened the tactical interface. Alien information flooded him: suspension rails, warp wells, weather pulses, destructible terrain. His old instincts felt like a rusted knife. From the back of his mind came the voice from that final three years ago.