Thea managed to keep a somewhat clearer head this time around as she stared up at the imposing, black metal cube.
She was still completely enthralled by its sheer perfection, of course, but at least she stopped herself from mindlessly wandering toward its flawless exterior like some kind of tech-obsessed zombie.
“...Keys…” she muttered to no one in particular.
Realizing she was slipping again, she shook her head hard, trying to chase the intrusive thoughts away.
“Keys. Thomas! I need the keys to this thing, stat! I have to see how it works!” she called out toward the arcade manager, urgency bleeding into her voice.
A heavy chuckle answered her, making her spin around in frustration. “What’s so funny?! You know how much I love this stuff! This is new-tech, Thomas! New-tech! Do you have any idea how insane that is?!”
“Hey, hey—calm down,” Thomas said quickly, both hands raised in defense. “I’m not laughing at you, and I’m definitely not telling you what you can or can’t do. Learned that lesson years ago. But listen: I don’t have any keys.”
That made her pause.
“This thing was brought in last night by some people,” he continued. “I got very clear instructions on what to do with it, but maintenance or poking around inside it wasn’t on that list. And as much as I trust you—as a not-employee employee and a friend—I’m not eager to get on the bad side of people who can casually drop new-tech into some random mid-world undercity arcade… And yeah, I’m assuming you’re right on the new-tech part, you usually are.”
Her first instinct was to call him a liar.
What kind of arcade owner accepted some massive piece of unknown tech without even a basic inspection? For all they knew, it could’ve been a bomb.
But the thought didn’t hold up for long.
If someone had really wanted to hurt the arcade, they could’ve simply smashed the front windows through the night-lock bars or rigged the place’s doors with explosives overnight.
“So… what exactly are the instructions?” She probed Thomas after a moment. “Can you at least tell me that much? Like—what are we supposed to do with this thing now?”
Thomas frowned, clearly uncomfortable. “I… can’t. I’m sorry, Thea. I was told very clearly to keep the procedures to myself. The only thing I can say is that everything will make sense once the arcade opens. That’s when the cube is supposed to activate.”
Thea groaned and spun on her heel, stomping toward the front desk and snatching the keyring off the counter. “Great…! Guess I’ll go check the stupid machines, then. You really know how to grind my gears, Thomas!”
He just shook his head, half-amused, half-worried, and cast another glance at the black cube as Thea strode off further into the arcade…
While off-worlders would probably call the Golden Age Arcade rundown, it was far from it.
Thomas had spent countless hours keeping the place in good shape, despite the insane costs of doing so, both inside and out. He did everything he could to preserve the golden-age feeling the arcade had once had back in his great-grandfather’s time.
As Thea got to work on one of the machines Thomas had flagged for maintenance, she couldn’t help but appreciate just how much effort he poured into this place on a daily basis.
The entire arcade was bathed in warm, golden ceiling lights, shaped like miniature suns through an old but still surprisingly sophisticated holographic projection method. Paired with the deep crimson carpet covering the floor, it gave the whole place a strange sense of grandeur.
It often reminded Thea of the grand throne rooms from the fantasy novels she liked to read on her old datapad, those vast spaces meant to inspire awe the moment you stepped inside.
The walkways between the machines were wide—wider than they really needed to be—but that was part of the golden-age style. The big, open spaces had been meant to showcase the wealth and abundance of the owners at the time of construction.
These days, though, all that space mostly felt like dead weight to her and Thomas.
More ground to clean, more distance to cover for maintenance, and higher heating costs for an area most people barely thought about anymore.
Some machines were simple open-booth setups with neural-link interfaces and a place to sit or stand. Others were massive, intricate constructions that took up several square meters of floor space, not entirely unlike the black cube in the center of the arcade.
None of them came close to matching its size, but a few weren’t too horribly far off.
The largest attraction in the arcade was still the zero-gravity VR arena.
It was about fifteen meters long and wide, with a height of around six meters.
Players were strapped into harnesses so they wouldn’t slam into the walls, floor, or ceiling, but beyond that, it offered a level of freedom unlike almost anything else—short of actually going to space, of course.
‘Not that I’d know what that feels like…’
As her mind kept drifting back to that arena, Thea couldn’t help but snarl.
‘The tech is impressive, sure—but it’s a massive pain in my ass to maintain…’
The zero-gravity emitters broke down constantly and needed repairs she never had the proper parts for, and every single match left behind layers of grime—sweat, spit, sometimes even blood—that ate away at the few components still hanging on.
More often than not, she had to strong-arm the players into cleaning up their own mess just to keep the arena usable for another couple of months.
It fully breaking down was only a matter of time.
The machine she was working on right now was one of the open-booth setups, however.
A software update had fried an old capacitor after pulling too much power at once.
That part, at least, was an easy fix.
She jury-rigged a replacement from leftover scraps and swapped it in.
It wasn’t perfect, but it was the best she could do, as neither she nor Thomas had any way to get real replacement parts.
Not here. Not in the undercity.
Over the years, she had gotten frighteningly good at jury-rigging solutions—so good that, more often than not, her fixes actually outperformed the ancient original parts still inside the machines.
She was, after all, a bit of a fanatic when it came to technology.
She wasn’t entirely sure where that obsession had started, but the reason didn’t really matter to her. What she did know was that it had always been there.
Ever since Old Man James had found her shortly after her fourth birthday, she had hounded him for information about anything even remotely technical, at every possible opportunity.
And, much to his credit, he had met that obsession head-on and given her an education that easily rivaled the best the undercity had to offer.
‘Might even beat most of what Lumiosia as a whole could provide… Not that I could ever prove or really compare, of course.’
Over the years, she had built up a massive collection of tech manuals, theory texts, and books covering everything from old-tech machines to rare fragments of new-tech.
Those, in particular, were her favorites.
Even incomplete, she read them over and over before bed, memorizing fragments and diagrams, marveling at the kind of thinking it took to even attempt building something like that.
Which was probably why the matte-black cube wouldn’t leave her alone.
As she moved on to the next set of machines, she kept catching herself glancing back toward the center of the arcade.
Again.
And again.
The cube looked like it had stepped straight out of one of those manuals—clean, perfect, and far beyond anything that should exist down here.It felt like a missing page from every new-tech text she owned, standing right in front of her; yet she couldn’t figure out what it was all about.
The thought made her grit her teeth.
Clicking her tongue in irritation, Thea forced herself to focus and finished up the last repairs.
Once she was done, she trudged back to the front desk, shoulders slumping.
“All done,” she said, rubbing the back of her neck. “Mostly fried capacitors. But two machines are goners. Sorry, Thomas. They’re missing parts I just can’t fake without real replacements… Tried to cannibalize one for the other, but they just don’t share enough working parts to make work,” She sighed, eyes drifting—again—toward the cube.
Thomas waved it off with a chuckle, placing a cup of water in front of her and urging her to drink. “Don’t worry about it. If it weren’t for you, half this place would’ve died years ago. You’re doing the Emperor’s work, kid. Seriously—your hands are basically magic.”
He followed her gaze and snorted. “And stop staring at that damned cube already. Just wait, like, twenty more minutes. We’ll open soon, and it’s not going anywhere. Go take a break in the employee room—you could use some distance from that thing.”
“Yeah… yeah, that’s probably smart,” Thea muttered, glass at her lips, though her eyes lingered a second longer than she meant them to.
It took a conscious effort to turn away, but she finally did, dragging herself toward the backrooms and the employee room as she chugged the glass, only then realizing how thirsty she had truly been from the morning’s work…
Exactly eighteen minutes later, Thea walked back toward the front desk.
After clearing her head and pulling herself away from the cube’s pull, she felt refreshed and ready to go.
Whatever that thing was, she’d find out in just a few more minutes.
“Well now, don’t you look a lot more like yourself,” Thomas said with a teasing grin. “Guess the break did its job. Good, good. And don’t forget—today’s reset day. Can’t have you dropping all those high scores and comp matches just because you’re distracted. You’ve become quite the attraction for my little arcade, after all.”
He wasn’t wrong.
Over the past few years—and especially in the last couple of months—Thea had become a familiar and popular sight around the arcade. Not only did her tech skills impress the regulars, but her absurd level of skill across nearly every game had earned her a reputation all of its own.
She was particularly well known for her dominance in the fighting game “Ashes of Centuries.”
It was massively popular across the galaxy and had been one of the first games to use a new, galaxy-wide netcode that completely removed latency, no matter the distance between players.
‘Well… “new” is relative, I guess,’ Thea thought. ‘It’s been around for a few hundred years by now.’
It was also one of the few games that still supported controller input, letting her keep using her prized controller for non-competitive play, even after most players had switched to neural-link controls. For competitive play, the neural-link’s advantages were simply too much to give up, even for her.
Her main—and easily her best character—was Freya: A fierce warrior wielding a single war-axe, inspired by old Terran shieldmaidens and valkyries.
Thea had taken to her almost immediately.
Freya’s balanced stats, tight timing windows, and fast combo chains suited her perfectly, and over time, Thea had turned that fit into something truly terrifying; even winning some major tournaments in recent years.
Nowadays, some of her competitive matches with Freya had become real crowd-drawers for the arcade. Whenever she got challenged by a fairly well-ranked player on the galactic net—and especially if they were from an inner- or core-world—dozens of undercity denizens would gather to watch the match play out on the arcade’s holo screens.
Thomas loved it, of course.
More people meant more business, and Thea had quickly become one of the arcade’s biggest attractions.
She, however, barely even cared. The praise was nice and all, and she appreciated that people respected her skill, but fame itself meant very little to her.
‘Just want to push myself against tough opponents… Everything else is just noise…’
Lost in those thoughts, Thea suddenly realized how much time had passed.
She blinked and looked up.
Thomas was already gone from behind the front desk, heading toward the front doors to let the waiting crowd inside.
“Hey,” he called back with a smug grin, running his hand through his scruffed hair, “you coming or what? Time to open up—and activate that cube.”
Her heart skipped.
She hurried over to his side, a wide, almost feral grin spreading across her face as barely contained excitement surged through her.
Whatever that cube was, she was finally about to find out…!
Only a few minutes passed before all the waiting patrons had made their way inside the arcade.
The reaction to the cube—impossible to miss as the towering monolith it was—was immediate and unanimous: Shock and awe.
On most reset days, the arcade was at its loudest, buzzing with excitement over new high scores, prizes, and monthly drawings.
Today, though, there was nothing but stunned silence.
People stepped just a few paces inside before stopping dead, their eyes locked on the flawless, matte-black surface of the cube.
Thomas and Thea had to gently urge them further in so the rest of the crowd could enter.
Once everyone was inside, the two of them moved to stand in front of the massive cube, facing the gathered crowd of wide-eyed spectators.
“So… uh… first off—hello, everyone,” Thomas began awkwardly. “I’m Thomas. But, uh, I guess you all know that already… Ehh… and this is Thea,” he added, gesturing toward her.
“Which… yeah, you probably know too.”
Thea resisted the urge to facepalm.
How Thomas managed to run a successful arcade while being this bad at public speaking was still a mystery to her—though she couldn’t really fault him for it, since she absolutely did not want to be holding a speech in front of this many people herself either.
But, then again, she’d never need to.
She was the mechanic, not the one meant to talk to crowds.
“Anyway,” he continued, clearing his throat. “As you can all see, our little arcade has a new attraction. I can’t say where it came from, who made it, or what it really is. All I know is that Thea here says it’s new-tech—so that’s pretty exciting, I guess.”
A collective gasp rippled through the crowd at that, followed by fresh murmurs of disbelief as eyes snapped back to the cube.
“R-right. Let me just… open this file,” Thomas said, fumbling with his datapad.
He cleared his throat again.
“This was given to me with instructions to only reveal it once the arcade opened, so… here goes nothing,” he muttered, before activating the script.
Suddenly, the side of the cube facing the crowd lit up in a silvery hue, projecting the face of a middle-aged woman.
She had long, flowing black hair, sharp green eyes, and skin that could only be described as immaculate. Many citizens of Lumiosia would likely do unspeakable things to possess even a fraction of the woman’s poise and commanding presence.
The sleek, grey coat draped over her shoulders was marked with unmistakable insignias of the United Human Federation’s military, clearly identifying her as a Major-rank official.
For many in the arcade, however—Thea included—the woman’s face was instantly recognizable as someone else entirely though: Proprietor Zephyr Quinn, the overseer and owner of the Kuigon Star Sector by order of the O-13 Council, which Lumiosia was little more than a footnote of.
“Greetings, citizens of Lumiosia,” the projection began.
“Inside the Cube, you will find a Challenge. One unlike anything you have ever experienced—or are likely to experience again.
“The Challenge takes the form of a Deep-Dive Simulation. Many of you may not know what that entails, but worry not. A tutorial will be provided once you are inside.
“While I will not disclose what, exactly, awaits you within the challenge itself, I will explain what awaits those who succeed.
“If any one of you reaches the Top 500 on the leaderboards, you will be granted an opportunity unlike anything you could ever expect to find on Lumiosia—or any mid-world, for that matter.
“Additionally, should this goal be achieved, the entire local district will be rewarded with a substantial amount of Imperial Credits. As such, I encourage each and every one you to invite others you believe capable of meeting this Challenge. Even if you cannot reach those heights yourself, you may still benefit from another’s success.
“Make no mistake, however: This is not a gift. It is a Challenge.
“The creators do not expect anyone on a mid-world to reach the Top 500—much less from one of the few remaining golden-age arcades in the undercities around the capitol.
“Lastly, if nothing else, do try to enjoy yourselves. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Whatever the outcome, savor it.
“May the Emperor’s light guide you, and may humanity continue to prosper among the stars.”
With that, the silvery projection began to fade.
The Major delivered a crisp UHF salute, fist striking her chest—and at last, the cube began to open as her image winked out entirely.
The massive metal wall facing the crowd—Thomas and Thea included—simply vanished before their eyes, without a sound or even the slightest ripple of air.
For the first time, they could see the inside of the cube.
The interior was sleek, clean, and brightly lit.
Every inch looked as if it had been meticulously polished just moments ago.
A soft golden glow seemed to emanate from every surface, giving the space a regal feel without overpowering the rest of the design.
Thirteen crystal-like cylinders were lined up along the inner walls, with each of them being roughly three meters wide and stretching all the way up to the ceiling.
They weren’t fully transparent, but it was still obvious that they were empty as there were no shadows or shapes visible within them.
Aside from the cylinders, every surface inside the cube was perfectly angular.
The whole structure looked as if it had been carved from a single piece, cut by some impossibly precise laser. There were no seams, no bolts, no visible joins—nothing to suggest it had ever been anything other than the one perfect shape in front of them.
The last—and strangely most shocking—thing they all noticed was the air flowing out of the cube.
It was fresh.
Not “fresh” like an open window—there was nothing fresh about undercity air—but fresh in a deeper way.
It carried a quiet energy with it; cool without being cold, warm without being heavy.
It filled the lungs without effort, as if this was the kind of air people had always been meant to breathe.
Bathed in the golden light and breathing in that impossible air, everyone stood perfectly still.
It felt like a once-in-a-lifetime moment, and every single person there knew it. No one dared to speak, as if even a single word might shatter the fragile illusion before them.
Minutes passed before Thea finally managed to rein in her racing thoughts.
Too many things had been revealed all at once for her to properly process and not only was the cube unmistakably new-tech, it even housed a Deep-Dive Simulation of all things.
That alone was absurd on a mid-world, and especially in an undercity.
But what truly shook her was the appearance of the UHF Major herself.
It was common knowledge that the UHF did not recruit from mid-worlds.
In fact, there had been almost no interaction with the UHF at all in recent decades.
Ever since the border wars escalated and the Faction shifted most of its forces to more strategically important worlds, the mid-worlds had largely been left to fend for themselves. It had been long before Thea’s birth since the UHF had even acknowledged they existed, let alone sent a direct missive.
And yet, the message embedded in the cube made it clear that this was anything but an isolated event. This was very clearly UHF-sanctioned—and it was happening across multiple mid-worlds, even down in their undercities.
The implications were enormous.
Far too big for Thea to untangle right now.
What mattered to her, more than anything else, was the challenge itself.
‘The UHF has issued a challenge… Whatever the reward is, it’s going to be absolutely insane. Anything UHF-backed always is. It has to be. I need to tell the Old Man about this when I get home later today,’ she thought.
Pulling herself out of her frozen state, Thea stepped forward, the first to approach the open cube.
Her hands drifted across the impossibly smooth metal, the crystal-like cylinders, every surface her fingers could reach.
It felt unreal. Like a dream.
This was heaven for her tech-obsessed heart.
She swore she’d absorb every inch of this marvelous structure’s design into her very core, never to let go of it again—
“Hey— Uhh—can you stop doing that now? You’ve been at it for, like, half an hour,” a voice suddenly spoke up beside Thea, making her jump.
“Wha—! What?! What’s happening? Why did you stop me?” she blurted out, flustered.
“Thea, you’ve been caressing the inside of the cube for like thirty minutes,” Thomas said, giving her a stern look. “People are starting to get worried. Seriously, you look like a complete lunatic right now. I know you’re into new-tech and all, but please… Try to calm down a little. The cube isn’t going anywhere. It’ll be here for a while.”
She finally looked around and snapped out of it.
About half a dozen patrons were watching her with concerned expressions, glancing her way every few seconds. The rest had spread out inside the cube, cautiously inspecting the crystal cylinders and taking in the strange new-tech surroundings. A few small groups were already arguing about who should go first, but none of the cylinders were in use yet.
“Ah… yeah. You’re probably right. Sorry, Thomas. I got a little too excited,” she said meekly.
Then, almost immediately, her eyes lit up again. “Sooo… about that challenge. How do we start?!”
“Haaa… I swear you’re going to be the death of me someday,” Thomas sighed, motioning for her to follow him as he walked toward one of the crystal cylinders, raising the datapad in his hands back up to check the instructions.
“To start the full-dive simulation, you’ll need to enter one of these, apparently,” he explained. “There are datapads hidden in the walls next to each cylinder that let you open them. Should be around here somewhere… Aha! Look.”
He reached toward a slightly concealed datapad beside the cylinder.
Without a sound, the crystal rotated, opening a roughly three-meter-tall gap in front of them.
The inside of the cylinder was, much to Thea’s disappointment, completely empty—smooth, clean, and utterly lacking any obvious features.
No cables. No seams. Not even a hint of exposed tech at first glance.
“So… What, I just walk in there and it… magics me away or something?” she asked, brow creasing. “How does this thing even work?”
“Uh… yeah. I mean, that’s what it says here,” Thomas muttered, rereading the instructions on his datapad. “You just… go inside, have someone close the cylinder, and there should be a datapad on the inside. That lets you start the simulation or open it back up. Doesn’t say much more than that, unfortunately…”
“Well then, close me in, Bossman!” Thea replied cheerfully—already stepping inside while Thomas was still squinting at the text.
“Wha—when did you—? You mean, like, right now?” he spluttered. “You don’t want someone else to try first? Or maybe gather some info on the challenge before—?”
“Huh? Why would I do that?” Thea shot back, eyes bright. “This is the very first time I get to be the first at anything, Thomas! Well—at least in our little undercity. Still! I’m not giving that up. I need to do this!”
The fervor in her gaze shut down any further argument.
With a heavy sigh, Thomas tapped the datapad and closed the tube, sealing her inside.
“Good luck,” he called out. “Show ’em we’re not just gutter trash, Thea!”
The cylinder shut without a sound.
Inside, the silence was instant and absolute.
It pressed in on her ears, loud enough that she could hear her own heartbeat—and the rush of blood in her veins—as her pulse picked up just a little.
She watched as the datapad Thomas had mentioned seemed to grow straight out of the crystal in front of her.
It was simple—two large buttons.
One read “Start.” The other read “Abort & Open.”
Taking a few deep, steadying breaths, Thea focused her mind on the challenge ahead.
‘I’m going to crush this thing, no matter what it turns out to be… Just like Thomas said—I’ve gotta prove to the galaxy that us mid-worlders aren’t the useless dead weight the inner and core worlds like to paint us as.’
As she pressed the “Start” button, a thought slammed into her like a grav-train hitting a reinforced rockcrete wall.
“Absolutely go for the high score. Don’t be happy with mediocrity. Get the #1 spot.”
It was the promise Old Man James had asked her to make that very morning.
Had his strange behavior been because of the cube?
Maybe he had known something was coming.
He was ex-UHF, after all. The idea wasn’t that far-fetched.
But if he did… Why hadn’t he told her?
‘There’s no way to figure it out now, stuck inside this thing… but I swear I’ll get my answer once this is over. The Old Man better not have kept this from me…’
A knot of unease tightened in her chest as the questions piled up. She tried to calm herself with the breathing techniques the Old Man had drilled into her over the years.
Normally, they always worked.
This time, they barely helped.
‘Maybe the promise itself was the clue he wanted me to catch…? Maybe the Top 1 spot really does come with a regard big enough to justify that kind of urgency. Unless—’
Before she could finish the thought, everything went dark…