The pain in Kai's left hand wasn't just pain. It was a clock.A dull, rhythmic throb pulsed from his knuckles to his wrist, a metronome that had kept time for three years, ever since a tunnel collapse in Sector 9 had crushed it and killed his father. The doctors in the Ground Level clinic hadn't fixed it; they'd simply told him to be grateful it was still attached, then charged his mother credits they didn't have.Thump. Thump. Thump.The rhythm pulled him out of sleep like it did every morning. Above his bunk, rust stains on the ceiling formed a map he'd memorized years ago. The apartment's thin metal walls vibrated with the noise of the lower tiers waking up—heavy footsteps, a baby crying somewhere, the distant clang of the recycling units grinding through another day. A million people stacked on top of each other, all of them tired before the chemical lights of the dome even flickered to life.Kai sat up slowly and flexed the fingers of his left hand. The third and fourth fingers d

The transport didn't take him home.Kai sat in the same windowless metal box that had brought him to Olympus, the grey-eyed man across from him like a piece of furniture that had learned to breathe. The engine hummed. The walls vibrated. No one spoke.He'd been at the Academy for less than six hours. Long enough to be assessed, assigned a room, and told he was a ghost. Now they were taking him somewhere else, and no one had bothered to explain why."Where are we going?" he asked."Ground Level," the grey-eyed man said. "You have ten minutes with your family."Kai's stomach tightened. "Ten minutes.""Regulation. New cadets are permitted a brief farewell before full integration.""Full integration." Kai let the words hang. "You make it sound like I'm being absorbed."The man's expression didn't change. "You are."---The transport stopped at the edge of the Ground Level checkpoint. When the doors opened, the air hit Kai first—the familiar metallic taste, the recycled warmth, the smell o

Kai woke up sore in places he didn't know could be sore.His back. His shoulders. The spot just below his ribs where he'd hit the climbing wall yesterday and somehow not noticed until now. His left hand was the worst—the old ache had turned sharp overnight, the scar tissue tight and angry from all the pulling and gripping he'd asked it to do.He sat on the edge of the bunk and tried to flex the fingers. The third and fourth didn't move. They never did. The index finger twitched, which was something. The thumb worked fine. Two and a half working fingers out of five. He'd learned to live with those odds.The mess hall was already loud when he got there. Cadets clustered at tables like they'd been friends for years, which maybe they had. Most of these kids came from the same circles—Alpha families, mid-tier academies, the kind of people who'd grown up seeing each other at dinners and ceremonies. Kai walked past them with his tray and didn't look at anyone.He found a table in the back co