Metal. Cold, hard metal. Hardened brown orbs stared up at the similarly constructed metal plates placed over his head. Even though the ceiling was more that a hundred feet above him, he could make out every hairline crack, even the tiniest screw along the edges of the tiles. Holding them together. A hushed gust of wind whistled past his ears rather cleanly; this was the clearest he had ever heard air before. He made an attempt to push himself up, but found his body unresponsive to the action as his wrists were bolted down with large metal cuffs. His fingertips could feel the chill of the icy metal table against his skin, sending shivers down his spine. The only light in the room shining down on him from that small pentagonal opening at the top, like he was an experiment waiting to happen. A soft murmur traveled on the wind and into his ears, once again realizing that he could hear everything rather clearly.

“I told you think was a bad idea, Adrian,” a girl whispered in what sounded like Chinese-accented Korean, even though he could hear everything she was saying, “I told you he wasn't ready yet,”

“But Ming, we need him,” someone replied in English

It was that same voice. That girl in his class, Arian or something. His nose wrinkled at that thought; there was something else he was missing. What had happened before he woke up strapped to the table? Think, Soonyoung, think. A rush of images went through his head as he remembered the video he was watching of his hero, Ryder, and his partner, Inferno. The chorus of girls' laughter flooded his ears as they giggled over the most popular figures of their century. Fast forward. What else? He remembered the whirring noise of his discs as his network shut off, leaving him in the darkness. But there was a name lingering on his lips. A name that wasn't far too familiar. A foreign name.

“I don't give a ,” the first voice said again, followed by the sound of the metal door creaking open. He heard footsteps approaching his right rather quickly. The sound of holographic projections and button tapping filled the room. The presence of the person in the room sent an intimidating aura towards him, making him swallow nervously. He still had no idea what was going on nor what they were going to do with him. Hell, he couldn't even see anything except for that stupid ceiling positioned above him. The clanking of the female's boots stopped right next to the table, her menacing voice strictly stating, “I'm shutting him down,”

“No wait! Stop, you can't do that!”

The appearance of a third person. Another female.

This time, the owner of the voice spoke in Chinese to the girl next to him; the fear in her voice heightening. Once again, footsteps approached the table he was laying on. It puzzled Soonyoung as to how and why he was able to understand what she was saying in Chinese. The only languages he could understand were English and Korean; nothing more, nothing less. Listening closely he paid attention to what the girl was rambling on about. She ratted out a few thing about him (Soonyoung), was her first successful experiment, and how he was the first one to ever respond positively to her enhancement program. All of the other test subjects had failed to process the new programs loaded into them. Soonyoung felt his muscles tensing at the thought of him being some sort of weird experiment for some wacko government program. The way she talked about him, it made him seem more like a thing rather than a person. And what did she say about the others before him? They 'failed'?

“I see you're awake now,” Ming observed his hardened state, hovering over him like he was the last piece of meat or something, “Tell me, how are you feeling?”

He could feel her dark brown eyes burning through his soul, inch by inch, deeper and deeper until there was nothing left of him to deteriorate. She looked like just about any Asian girl in his opinion: black hair as dark as newly pumped oil, eyes as narrow as sheet threads, and a face as round as buns. She peered over the rims of her glasses as they continued to slide down her nose. They took up a majority of her face, and the lenses were tinted a translucent light blue as if computer graphics were bring projected onto the glass. Soonyoung stared back at her while she shone a light into his eyes to see if everything was normal. After having done that, she pulled back and pressed a button at the edge of the table, releasing the restraints that were holding him down.

“Jinli, everything seems to be normal. Functionality stable,” she continued to list off a whole string of words which he had never heard before.

Turning around, she began walking towards the only door in the room, holding a hand to the side of her glasses; from behind, he could see the little blue figures on her glasses shifting around as she navigating through whatever she was doing. The taller girl in front of her, probably the one who had previously spoken Chinese, was grinning with joy like a kid opening presents on Christmas. She looked like she was about to explode with her happiness if she held it down any longer. Pushing himself up to sit, Soonyoung almost fell over at how light he was. Yes, he seemed a million times lighter before. Thankfully, that girl had caught him before he did, helping him adjust his position on the table. Looking up at her face that was merely centimeters away from his, he could see that her glasses, although they were a different shape, contained the same lens as that other girl.

“Sorry about that. I forgot that I haven't told you about the components of my beautiful program,” she said, taking a step back, “But before I bore you to death about things that can be found in your built-in guide, I'll introduce myself. Kestrel Pilot 25, Zai Jinli. Junior K-ombatant and proud driver of the Austere Amarok,”

As she continued speaking, there was this weird phenomenon going on in his head. Even without the use of discs or any electronic attachments, a light blue film covered the surface of his eyes just like what Jinli had on her glasses. A white circle locked onto Jinli, and beside her, a box appeared beside her, quickly displaying all of her information. His eyes scrolled through her profile, or at least, what was available for him to see. Other than her basic information like her name, age, date of birth, position, machine piloted, and favorite color, her personal information such as likes and dislikes, and background was blocked off for 'Friends Only'. Zai Jinli. Thirteen years old. Hacking and Program Development. Rank 4. His eyes grew wide as they darted to the next person, the girls behind the glass, quickly identifying them as Kestrel Pilot 45 Adrian Allen and Kestrel Pilot 10 Yoo Hwanmyeong. Only, unlike Jinli's full sidebar profile, Soonyoung could only make out the white bolded names hovering above their heads like those gamertags. Man, it was a long time since he had seen that old Xbox kind of style. Most avatars hid their names until they were approached – that's when their name would start circling around their avatar. They were staring at him with concerned looks on their faces, analyzing his every reaction. For some reason, he thought that one of them was monitoring his statuses or whatever that Hwanmyeong girl had mentioned earlier. With all the information entering in his mind, he could feel his temples heating up. It was burning up faster than the discs ever had before whenever he played an intense game on the weekends. A stinging sensation hit the back of his head, making him cringe. Closing his eyes, he brought his hands to his face. In the back of his head, there was a tiny click as his processor whirred off.

“Oh my gosh, Soonyoung, are you okay?” Jinli ran up to him, placing a hand on his shoulder, “Take deep breaths. It'll slow down your neural processor,”

What the was a neural processor?

“Basically, it's a billion dollar microchip that we've installed into your head that directly interacts with your brain,” she responded as if she had read his mind, “Think of it as a mini-computer inside of you,”

“What?” that simple word escaped his lips with much poison, “I didn't ask for this !”

“Think of it this way. Without it, you can't become a Kestrel plebe,” she started, “And without being a Kestrel plebe first, you can't become a K-adet,”

K-adet? Hold on. Was she talking about the Kestrel Cadets? Like Ryder? Or Inferno? Cracking open one eye, he could feel a little pinch on the back of his neck as his processor turned back on, but this time, without all the fancy blue circles, lines and arrows. It was just as if he were seeing clearly. The first thing he laid eyes on was Jinli, but he immediately averted his eyes in fear that it would do that weird profiling thing again. Giggling, she explained that she already switched the profiling function off for now until he got used to operating his processor after his classes. Straightening his back to face her again, he opened his mouth to say something, but for some reason, no words came out. This time, a red box appeared in front of him with a message that said, “I've muted you. - Hwanmyeong.” He glanced over at Hwanmyeong and went to flip her off, but this time, his arms felt like they were sacks filled with lead. Another message appeared, but this time, a light green box appeared with, “Oh yeah, I've paused you too. - Yuki.” Well .

The two girls snickered behind the tinted glass, even though he could see right through the dark grey tint. Damn, whoever had created this demon device sure knew what they were doing. Jinli moved in front of him and began explaining to him what exactly was going on, and if he had any questions, he was to ask that once her speech was over. And so it began: “As you know, and as cheesy as it sounds, our planet is involved in a galactic war with the Weigyeins. I'm sure your school has taught you that our military is bravely fighting these evil aliens. Well that's where they're wrong. The adults in our military have gone down, and we're running out of available and able men on Earth to send to space. Most of the able-bodied males of our planet are not compatible with the neural processors. Let's put it this way, what we kids have, and what adults have is neural elasticity. Our brains are adaptable to new hardware as we're still young and growing. An adult's brain, as it's old and aged, they just can't adjust,”

Jinli stopped short in her speech when a bright blue box started blinking in front of her that said, “But why do we need these neural processor things if we're using giant machines to fight off the Weigyeins?”

Once the message disappeared, a smirking Soonyoung came into view as if he were saying, “Killed it.” Letting out a deep breath, Jinli corssed her arms and leaned on her right leg before continuing, “You learn quickly, rookie. That's another reason why we decided to choose you – but more on that later. As for your question, if you had waited, I was actually going to talk about that next. The purpose of these neural processors is that the average teenager's brain is neither strong enough, nor does it have the sufficient memory space available to operate the Kestrels, as huge as they are. We've tried before, and it let's just say it was ugly. To become a K-adet, or a K-ombatant in your case, you needed to cross some of that distance between computers and humans,”

“So all of the trainees here – and all the other lunchbox K-adets like Inferno – they're all superhumans?” Soonyoung found himself able to speak when he saw the little lock symbol in the right corner of his sight area disappear, “Even Ryder Jang?”

“That's right, all of us have one,” Yuki entered the room with Hwanmyeong following behind her, “Even Doyoon,”

With the new arrival of the two plebes, that light blue plane shielded his eyes once again. Two rings targeted both of their faces, locking on and doing a quick search in the directory. Now their sidebars appeared. A small smiled appeared on his lips; this was possibly the coolest thing – even the discs couldn't hold candles to this mircochip thing in his head. Soonyoung found out that Yuki was her alias/preferred name, while Adrian was her Kestrel K-odename. She was fifteen years old, Rank 3, and unlike Jinli who was a K-ombatant, she was a K-ontriever. He had no idea what that was but it sounded cool nonetheless. He found out that she was originally from the United States – location set to private, and her specialties included Electrical and Computer Engineering. Moving on to Hwanmyeong, he found out that she was a fourteen year old Rank 3 Junior K-ombatant from Zhengzhou, China, and her real name was Yao Daoming. Hwanmyeong was just her K-odename. She was specialized in Nuclear Handling and Radioactive Construction. Her hobbies included archery and virtual gaming. Man, profiling was amazing. The only backfire to it was that it killed all possible conversation starters.

“This is top secret information that Jinli is currently feeding you,” Hwanmyeong explained to him when he flinched at the windows suddenly opening in front of him, “Every plebe has them loaded into their processor so that the asking of questions can be reduced and more attention can be directed to training and learning. I suggest you read that before you go to sleep tonight,”

Soonyoung scrolled through the longest PDF file he had ever seen, also skimming the longest words that he had ever seen in his life. On top of that, they were all in English so that was pretty much a bummer. From what he could understand, this was a textbook of the history of the Kestrel Academy, and even an interactive map of the place. There were even fancy shmancy buttons he could press that took him to different references online and other pages to further his reading. One green button he pressed took him to another section of the book entitled 'Weigyeins'. There he could read all about the known information about who they were, where they came from, and whatever else the government knew about them. There was even an in-depth analysis of what the trainees of Kestrel Academy underwent in their training. Too bad he could barely understand a word of it.

“Your microchip is preloaded with 10 of the most used languages in the Academy,' Jinli explained, taking control of his monitor to show him where the settings were, “Right now, your system is set up to display text in Korean, but you can change it to English, Mandarin, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, German, French, Spanish, and Hindu. If you'd like to add other languages, you can always go to the DLC market to download it. But you'll find out how to do that in your classes,”

His ears perked up at the word 'classes'. No way in hell was he going to school! He had always been told that the life of a Kestrel plebe was the greatest! They were always outside doing some hardcore training or out fighting the grunts that the Weigyeins would send to Earth. He had never of heard of anything like sitting around in a desk, listening to a teacher lecture on and on. He'd already had enough of that with Ms. Crabapple! Jinli disconnected from his group, and linked back again with Yuki and Hwanmyeong. Once she did that, the colored patches on her uniform changed to pink just like the other two's. Raising an eyebrow he asked, “Um how did you do that?”

“Oh this?” Hwanmyeong gestured to a pink patch on her right thigh, “It means we're in a party. This is basicaly how we can chat with each other during classes when it's really boring,”

“Can I join?”

“No,”

Well then.

Huh. Twenty-four plebes. More boys than girls. Significantly more boys than girls. All of them wore the skin tight space uniform they were provided with and were required to live in for the rest of their student lives. They were made of black lightweight flexible material with with slight padding at the joints. On their feet they wore the classic black military boots, all shiny and new since they had just been taken out of the boxes. Fingerless gloves covered their hands and a silver ring around their wrist. Soonyoung had no idea what the silver ring was for, but he couldn't take it off so it was probably there for a reason. They all had a black belt around their waists that emitted the same blue glow that the gloves at the VG rooms used to have.

They were in a room that looked a lot like the interior of an airplane hangar – only slightly downsized to fit about fifty students. There was a large stage in the front of the room with what looked like a teacher's desk and a giant screen on the back wall. The desks were at least ten feet apart from each other probably to prevent students from messing around with each other. The student were all lined up in the back, one arm length away from each other, with their hands folded in front.

“Hey, what's up? My name is Lee Seokmin,” the boy standing next to Soonyoung whispered loudly. He had this creepy smile plastered on his face, that made his eyes disappear when he did. At least he had some nice teeth though. Soonyoung still had those ugly braces in his mouth. He felt a nudge in his side, “What's your name?”

Soonyoung side-eyed the boy, not daring to move his head since he didn't want to get in trouble on the first day, “Can't you see for yourself?

“Well yeah, I can see your profile but I'm not going to have that stop me from asking you what your name is,” the boy persisted, “Talk to me, dude,”

“Rank 6 Kestrel Plebe Kwon Soonyoung. Rookie K-ombatant. Seventeen years old from Gyeonggi-do, South Korea,” he bluntly answered, “Specialties unknown. Hobbies include virtual gaming,”

“Why do you have to be so serious, man? Stop the life out of everything. Even though you've got a computer in ya', you're still human,” Seokmin rolled his eyes and turned back to the stage, “I'm Lee Seokmin, future comedian, and proud owner of his own little joke shop in Gyeonggi-do, South Korea. But in the field, you could say I'm pretty amazing for being a DarkNet Black Market trader,”

Holy . Soonyoung's eyes widened at the mention of 'DarkNet'. The DarkNet was literally the deep part of the web, the part where unless you were FBI or any other government affiliated association, you probably shouldn't be there. Soonyoung had only heard of stories about the dark web, but if this Seokmin guy was being serious, then Seokmin was probably some sort of maniacal genius. On top of that, if he was actually involved in black market trading, he was someone he probably shouldn't mess around with. Before Soonyoung could even ask what kinds of trading Seokmin was involved in, the door to his right slammed open, revealing none other than Umbrage 'Junghan' Yoon himself. A dark aura loomed over the students, silencing those who were talking prior to his arrival. The students turned their heads and shivered when their blue screens came up and loaded Junghan's profile: Rank 1 Kestrel K-aptain. Pilot Number 66 of the Stygian Phantom. Nineteen years old. Location unknown. Specialized in all types of Impalement Arts.

“Listen up Plebes,” Junghan's surprisingly deep voice boomed off the walls of the hangar, “I am Umbrage, and this is Impalement Arts. Here, I will be teaching all of you in the basic disciplines of knife throwing, and archery. If I find that some of you perform exceptionally well in this preliminary class, I will move you up to the Advanced IA class,”

There was a girl to the very right who held her head up high; Li Yinzhi, or as she had entered as her alias - Bullet. She had been accepted into the academy for her outstanding marksmanship skills. After doing a quick web search on her, Soonyoung found that she was a fourteen year old killing machine from Florida; and she had all the accolades to prove that she could probably kill him on the spot. Closing all his windows, Hwanmyeong and Junghan once again came into view. The younger girl, although a superior in rank in skill, was staring at him square in the eye. Had she caught him not paying attention? Uh oh. He was asking for it. Clearing his throat once more, Junghan slowly paced back and forth on the stage, eyeing each and every one of the students. His shadowy eyes sent chills down the students' spines, as he sized them up. His gaze almost seemed as if he could already sort out who was going to do well in his class and who wasn't.

“Who would like to do the honors of demonstrating any form of IA?” Junghan's hawk-eyes glazed over the students on the farthest left. This made Soonyoung breathe a little sigh of relief as he was more towards the right.

“Rookie Kwon Soonyoung,” Hwanmyeong's voice broke the silence, “You wouldn't mind demonstrating for the class now, would you?”

you, Hwanmyeong.