PLUTO ACADEMY part 1 HORSEHEAD Nebula

 

PLUTO ACADEMY: HORSEHEAD NEBULA BLOCK

A To LIVE and DIE on MARS Story

(Book 2: Karla excerpt )

The admission hall stretched into infinity—a cathedral of ivory columns and crackling holographic partitions, where millions of applicants flickered in and out of existence like ghosts trapped in a quantum maze. The air hummed with the collective anxiety of generations, digiton smog curling around knee-high force fields that separated the hopeful from the doomed.  

Parents in Atkan-woven robes clutched their children’s shoulders too tight. Grey Martian younglings floated in perfect stillness, their black eyes reflecting the flickering MENU screens that judged them. Jovian aristocrats with too many elbows hissed at the delays, their bioluminescent markings pulsing irritation.  

Above it all, the Academy’s AI proctors materialized at random—faceless, golden figures with voices like breaking glass that existed only within the MENU.

"Applicant 4,792,331: proceed to Chamber Gamma for ethical compliance testing."  

A child whimpered. A line dissolved. Somewhere, a mother screamed as her son’s transmission glitched out of existence.  

Tommy Amara stood frozen in the chaos, his tiny fists clenched. Around him, the cubicles rearranged themselves at light-speed, a labyrinth with no exit.  

The exit wasn’t a door. It was a wound in reality—a shimmering oval of liquid mercury suspended between two obsidian pillars, its surface rippling with stolen glimpses of Olympus Prefecture, Mars’ most gilded region.  

Beyond the threshold: rolling emerald hills, diamond-tiered villas, and the distant laughter of children who’d never known hunger. The air smelled like synthetic rain and privilege.  

One by one, the accepted stepped through. Their bodies disintegrated into light, reassembling half a system away, where platinum-skinned attendants waited with chilled goblets of memory-wine.  

Tommy watched a Zeta-7 girl vanish with a pop.  

"It’s not fair," he whispered.  

Amara’s hand fell heavy on his shoulder.  

"Fair is a word weak men use," he said. "You want in? Take it."  

Ren materialized at the gates like a smog-born shadow, his Grey Martian form barely disturbing the digiton haze. Beside him, Rafael floated inches above the frost-rimed pavement, his black eyes reflecting the ivory towers of the Academy.  

Tommy’s face lit up. "Raf!" He punched his friend’s shoulder—too hard, the way Amara had taught him. "You look like shit."  

Rafael’s telepathic voice pulsed dryly: "You look like a half-melted clone."  

Amara’s shadow fell over them before the laughter could land. The Governor’s metal-plated skull gleamed under Pluto’s sickly sun as he loomed over the Grey Martian boy. "You." His voice cracked like a whip. "The runaway."  

Rafael didn’t flinch. "Governor."  

Ren stepped forward, his posture deliberately nonthreatening. His HEART MENU flickered at his wrist—a low-level sanitation worker’s clearance badge, barely visible.  

Amara didn’t glance at him. "Your nephew wasted my time," he growled at the air just left of Ren’s face. "Orbital joyrides. Stolen shuttles. You Grey Martians think gravity doesn’t apply to you?"  

Tommy opened his mouth—  

"Quiet." Amara’s finger pressed between his son’s eyebrows, silencing him with the threat of a time-fracture. "This one’s lucky I didn’t space him."  

Ren’s telepathic voice was butter-smooth: "Apologies, Governor. The boy’s discipline has been... reinforced."  

Rafael’s jaw tightened.  

Amara finally looked at Ren—through him, really. "You. Cleaner. Make sure this rat doesn’t scurry into my son’s shadow again."  

A beat. The smog thickened.  

Then Ren bowed, just deep enough. "By your will."  

Amara snorted and turned away, already broadcasting orders into his MENU. Tommy lingered just long enough to mouth "Later" at Rafael before jogging after his father.  

Ren watched them go.

---  

The air in Glasslake Park tasted like burnt plastic and bad decisions. The trailer park sprawled under a purple-blue sky, its smooth domed husks flickering in the smog-choked sunset. The Boulder Gang had them pinned in a newly-formed trench, plasma bolts sizzling past their ears.  

Ari ducked as a shot cratered a skiff’s hull, spraying molten polymer across his gold chain. "These idiots shoot like they’re aiming with their dicks!"  

Fozi grunted, flexing his claws. "Their dicks probably got better aim."  

Ren floated just above the dirt, black eyes scanning. "Slithery Snake tiene a 101 en el trailer azul."  

Lumo’s fingers danced over his Menu, four eyes flickering with data streams. "Yeah, and 101’s still got our digitons in his drive. So unless you wanna explain to Amara why we lost a a fuckin corona teracoin la—"  

A plasma bolt took him in the chest.  

For half a second, Lumo just stood there, blinking at the smoking hole in his Mech-Suit. Then the holographic marker above his head—a grinning Boulder Gang skull—detonated.  

The explosion lifted Ari off his feet. He hit the dirt rolling, ears ringing, vision swimming. When the smoke cleared, there was just a crater where Lumo had been.  

Fozi stared. "Uh."  

Ren’s telepathic voice was uncharacteristically quiet. "Mierda."  

Ari spat blood. "No way."  

The Boulder Gang whooped from across the lot. "Ayyy, we fried that blue freak!"  

Silence. The kind that comes after a universe shifts.  

Ari’s hands shook. Not from fear—from something worse. The realization that Lumo, the bastard who’d cheated death a hundred times, wasn’t getting up.  

Fozi’s claws flexed, his burgundy fur bristling. "He’s just... gone?"  

Ren’s black eyes reflected the crater. “No cuerpo. No sangre.” No body. No blood.  

Ari’s gold chain felt suddenly heavy. "That’s ‘cause there’s nothing left."  

Above them, the geodesic stone pyramid of Corona Spaceport loomed, its Emperador marble surface humming with dormant wormholes. Somewhere in its horse-head nebula wing, prisoners like 101—if he was still alive—rotted in cells designed to break minds. The thought twisted in Ari’s gut.  

The Boulder Gang’s laughter cut through the haze. "Yo, Bandits! Who’s next?"  

Ari stood. His knuckles crackled with stolen Hite energy. "You are."  

The smoke cleared. The Boulder Gang’s laughter died mid-gloat.  

A ripple in the air.  

Lumo’s transmission flickered into existence beside Ari, cobalt-green and glitching at the edges. His four eyes scanned the battlefield with detached amusement.  

"I ain’t dead, fool.”

Ari nearly swung at the hologram. "The FUCK, Blue?"  

Fozi’s claws unsheathed like switchblades. "You just got vaporized."  

Ren’s black eyes narrowed. “Pinche fantasma.”  

Lumo’s projection smirked. "Yeah, yeah. Big flashy show. Real scary." He jerked his chin at the crater. "That was a decoy. A pre-recorded glitch with an attitude problem."  

A Boulder thug stumbled forward, arms shaking. "The hell—?"  

Lumo didn’t even glance at him. "Ari. 101 ain’t in Slithery’s trailer. You copy? Yes or no."  

Ari’s gold chain swung heavy. "So he’s smoked? The fortune—gone?"  

"Nah. 101’s breathing." Lumo’s image fizzed, static crawling up his arms. "I’m with him. In another timeline."  

Fozi spat. "The fuck you mean ‘another timeline’?"  

"How’s that work?" Ari growled.  

Lumo grinned. "Blame the Boss."  

A plasma bolt smashed his holographic dome. The Boulder leader—a slab of muscle with a rusted faceplate—snarled. "Enough of this glitchy bullshit!"  

Lumo’s headless projection sighed. "Classy." His body dissolved into a swarm of digiton hornets that dive-bombed the thug’s faceplate. The man screamed, clawing at his visor as the insects chewed through skin.  

Ari cracked his knuckles. "Alright, meat. Let’s dance."  

Hite energy flared around his fists. The Boulder Gang froze.  

Fozi hefted a trailer. "Y’all ever seen an ox peel a man like a fucking orange?"  

The thugs broke rank and ran.  

Ren floated after them, telekinetically slamming trailers on their heels. “Corran, guey.”  

Silence. The digiton hornets dissipated. Lumo’s full transmission reappeared, arms crossed. "Like I was saying—"  

Ari grabbed at him, fingers clasping blue static. "Start making sense or I swear to God I’ll find a way to strangle a hologram to death."  

Lumo exhaled. "Amara’s playing 4D chess now. Bigger than Mars. Bigger than this whole corrupt-ass system." His image glitched, showing flashes of other timelines—Lumo in a Deimos war room, Lumo bleeding out on some jungle moon, Lumo staring into a black hole’s maw. "Time’s fucked. Boss needed a soldier who could be everywhere at once."  

Fozi scratched his horns. "So he... what? Turned you into a fucking screensaver?"  

"Worse." Lumo grinned. "He made me dangerous."  

Ari’s fists unclenched. "You really alive?"  

"Alive enough. Just... scattered." The transmission glitched hard. For a second, they saw a hundred Lumos in a hundred hells, all flipping them off in sync. "Point is—I’m still in this fight. And I need you dumbasses to quit crying and go get 101."  

Ren pulsed a thought. “Dónde?”  

Lumo’s image dissolved into a star map. "Corona Spaceport. Horsehead Nebula Wing. Cell 46." A beat. "Pitt’s there too."  

Ari’s grin turned feral. "Even better."  

Fozi hefted the trailer. "We walking or what?"  

Ari’s fist passed through Lumo’s holographic face, scattering static like cheap confetti.  

"Talk faster, Lumo."  

Lumo’s reassembling smirk was all teeth. "Or what? You’ll kill me again?"  

Fozi crushed a Boulder Gang helmet underfoot. "Where’s the real you?"  

"Define ‘real.’" Lumo’s image flickered—for a heartbeat, they saw his physical form suspended in a diamond prison somewhere beyond the smog, his cobalt skin threaded with glowing data streams. Then it was gone. "Amara’s got me doing the time warp. I’m everywhere. Nowhere. Mostly screaming."  

Ren’s telepathic voice slithered into their skulls: "El jefe nos usa como piezas." The boss uses us as pieces.  

Ari’s gold chain swung as he kicked a still-twitching Boulder thug. "Yeah, well, this piece is about to take a piss on Pitt’s grave. Where’s the spaceport?"  

Lumo’s hologram dissolved into a floating map—Corona Spaceport’s obsidian spires jutted from the coastline like fangs, its horsehead nebula wing pulsing with unstable wormholes. "Cell 46’s in the belly. 101’s alive, but his drive’s been scrubbed. Pitt’s got buyers lined up for what’s left."  

Fozi sniffed. "Smells like a trap."  

"Smells like payback." Ari cracked his knuckles, Hite energy writhing around his fists. "Let’s move."  

Lumo’s transmission started fading. "One last thing—next time you see me, I might not remember this chat. Time’s... messy."  

Ari scoffed. "Great. A amnesiac ghost."  

"Just trust me." Lumo’s voice stretched thin. "And Ari?"  

"Yeah?"  

"Try not to die ‘fore I fix this."  

The transmission cut out.  

Somewhere past the smog, the MARS sign flickered.  

Ari adjusted his chain. "Alright, savages. Let’s go save 101.”

The transmission flickered into existence like a bad joke—Lumo’s cobalt-green face materializing mid-air, four eyes scanning the wreckage of the Boulder Gang skirmish. His holographic fingers danced over an invisible interface, pulling up the SAIPAN SYSTEM’s chromatic display.  

Ari spat blood onto the cracked pavement. "Oh good. The ghost’s back."  

Fozi crushed a row of skulls underfoot. "You said you were scattered across time."  

Ren’s black eyes gleamed. "Mentiroso."  

Lumo’s projection sighed. "Everything that other Lumo just told you? Bullshit." 

Lumo’s voice crackled, skipping like a corrupted wave file: "Listen. Future me dies on Jupiter."  

Fozi dropped the trailer he was holding. It crushed three gangsters with a wet crunch. "The hell you mean dies?"  

Ren’s telepathic voice was a blade: "¿Cuándo?"  

Lumo’s image glitched violently. For a split second, they saw it—a massive Jovian whirlpool, its violet currents wrapping around Lumo’s failing mech suit like liquid chains. A creature with fractal-patterned tentacles dragged him deeper into the crushing dark. Then the vision shattered.  

"Don’t know when. Doesn’t matter." Lumo’s fingers twitched, pulling up a SAIPAN readout only he could see. "Before it happens, I split myself. Sent echoes back through time. This transmission? One of the last."  

Ari’s gold chain swung as he stepped closer. "Bullshit. You don’t die. You cheat."  

He flicked his wrist, and the SAIPAN menu unfolded in the air—a swirling galaxy of color-coded attack patterns, pre-loaded combat scenarios, and psychic resonance trackers. "Well, mostly not bullshit. Time’s still fucked. But this?" He tapped the display, sending ripples of indigo energy through the smog. "This is why I’m really everywhere at once."  

Ari squinted at the hologram. "Looks like a toddler finger-painted on your Menu."  

"It’s a chromatic combat algorithm," Lumo snapped. "Every color represents a tier of power, an emotion, a reality-warping protocol." His fingers danced, shifting the display to Red Phase. The air around them thickened with the scent of copper. "Red’s for rage. Berserker mode. Lets me punch through chrono-fields."  

Fozi sniffed. "Smells like a slaughterhouse."  

Lumo ignored him, cycling to Blue Phase. The world slowed—plasma bolts hung suspended mid-air, Fozi’s exhaled breath crystallizing into frost. "Blue’s calm. Lets me edit time in localized pockets." He stepped around a frozen Boulder thug, siphoning the energy from his hands. "Useful for stealing guns before they’re fired."  

Ari’s gold chain swung as time snapped back to normal. The thug blinked at his limp, unweaponized hands. "The fuck—"  

Lumo shot him in the kneecap.  

Ren pulsed a thought. "Y el negro?"  

Lumo’s grin turned sharp. Black Phase activated.  

The world unraveled.  

The smog dissolved into static. The pavement beneath their feet became a grid of flickering code. The Boulder thug’s scream deleted itself mid-air, his body erasing pixel by pixel until only a man-shaped void remained.  

Then—  

Snap.  

Reality reset.  

Ari’s hands were shaking. "What the hell was that?"  

"Tier ∞," Lumo said quietly. "The Eraser Protocol. Only works in 7-second bursts. Any longer, and I start glitching out of existence." His projection flickered, edges dissolving into digiton snow. "Amara didn’t just scatter me across timelines. He weaponized me."  

Fozi’s claws unsheathed. "So you’re what? A walking apocalypse now?"  

"Worse." Lumo’s eyes locked onto the spaceport’s geodesic pyramid, where the Horsehead Nebula Wing pulsed with quarantine fields. "I’m a failsafe. The Corona Star System’s got a black hole problem. There are some really rich, really crazy people running round behind the scenes tunneling into our reality from the other side of Sagittarius A. And somewhere in that spaceport?" His voice dropped. "Pitt’s not just holding 101. He’s got a piece of the hole."  

Ari cracked his knuckles. "So we’re stealing a wormhole now?"  

Lumo sighed. “Don’t worry your coconut skull about that right now, listen—-“

The transmission glitched away, replaced by a digiton haze. The bandits stood in frustrated silence.

Ari wiped blood from his lip onto his bicep. “The ghost is gone again.”

---  

The Dean smelled like liquid nitrogen and affected wit—a crisp, chemical stench that clung to his robes and made Tommy’s nose wrinkle. Ivory columns stretched into a holographic void, their bases rooted in Martian marble, their tops vanishing into the digiton smog of Pluto’s simulated sky. Through the floor-to-ceiling windows, the dwarf planet’s icy plains stretched endlessly—a frozen wasteland lit by the dim glow of a dying sun.  

Amara didn’t sit.  

He loomed over the Dean, his shadow swallowing the man whole. The veins pulsed at his throat, twin serpents coiled tight.  

"Explain," he said.  

The Dean—a gaunt creature with too many knuckles—adjusted his robe. "Governor Amara, your son’s volatility scores are... concerning." A flick of his wrist summoned a holographic report. "During the behavioral trials, he fractured another applicant’s psyche. Twice."  

Tommy stood small beside his father, fists clenched. The boy’s knuckles were bruised.  

"He started it," Tommy muttered.  

Amara didn’t look down. "How?"  

The Dean sighed. "The other child made light of Tomaso being... manufactured. A clone."  

Silence.  

Then—  

Amara laughed.  

It wasn’t a pleasant sound. It was the crack of glaciers splitting, the groan of tectonic plates shifting under pressure. The Dean’s spectacles fogged.  

A polished floating chair materialized behind him.  

"You run a school," Amara said, taking a seat. "Not a tribunal. My son’s blood is mine. His temper is mine. His future?" A metal-plated finger dented the armrest. "Mine."  

The Dean’s throat bobbed. "The Academy cannot condone—"  

"Condone?" Amara’s voice dropped. "You upload knowledge directly into children’s skulls and call it education. You weed out the strong to serve the Star System’s agenda. You are a glorified filter."  

Across the room, Rafael—Ren’s nephew—floated silently by the fountain. The Grey Martian boy’s black eyes reflected nothing. His test scores hovered above him in glowing glyphs: Perfect. Compliant. Ideal.  

Tommy glared at him. Rafael didn’t blink.  

The Dean steepled his fingers. "Be that as it may, the Academy’s standards—"  

"You think you shape minds?" Amara’s voice shook the walls. "You break them. You take children and file them down into obedient little pigs." He leaned in. "My son is not a pig."  

Tommy grinned.  

The Dean’s mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. "The Star System will hear of this!"  

Amara exhaled through his nose. The Keri Alu on his neck pulsed once.  

Then the Dean screamed.  

It started in his fingers—the skin paling, then transparent, like ice under a blowtorch. His bones glowed beneath, then softened, dripping onto the marble in viscous strands. The man’s mouth stretched wide, but no sound came out now—just steam, his vocal cords unraveling like wet rope.  

Tommy watched, horrified.  

"Dad—"  

Amara didn’t look away from the Dean. "Watch. This is what happens when weak men pretend to be strong."  

The Dean’s knees buckled. His torso slumped, collapsing inward like a deflated balloon, organs dissolving into a shimmering puddle. His skull was the last to go, eyes rolling back as the bone liquefied, pooling with the rest of him.  

A perfect, gelatinous stain.  

Amara stood. "Clean this up."  

The Keri Alu hissed.  

Time stuttered.  

The puddle twitched.  

Droplets leapt from the marble, arcing backward in perfect defiance of physics. The Dean’s skull reassembled first—bone knitting, eyes rolling forward, mouth sealing shut with a wet pop. Flesh crawled up his arms like reverse decay, organs inflating like balloons. His robe, pristine once more, settled around him as if nothing had happened.  

The Dean gasped, clutching his chest.  

Amara leaned in. "Try again."  

---  

The Boulder Gang’s plasma bolts sizzled through the air, turning the abandoned trailer park into a neon-lit killzone. Ari ducked behind a gutted hover-skiff, his gold chain swinging as a shot grazed his shoulder.  

"Lumo!" he bellowed. "Any day now, my slime!"  

Fozi crushed a Boulder thug’s ribcage with one massive fist, burgundy fur matted with alien blood. "Ghost boy’s late."  

Ren floated above the carnage, black eyes scanning. "El Saipan no está sincronizado."  

Then—  

A voice cut through the chaos, crisp and synthetic, thick with a Japanese accent:  

"The, uh, Saipan device is, ah, ready to pair."  

Ari blinked. "The fuck?"  

Lumo’s transmission flickered into existence beside them, his four eyes glowing with digiton static. "That’s our cue. Find the emitter."  

Fozi sniffed the air. "Smells like ozone."  

Ren pulsed a thought toward a nearby palm tree—its fronds trembling unnaturally, its trunk humming with hidden energy. "Allí."  

Ari lunged for cover as another plasma volley tore through the skiff. "Great. A talking tree. Why the hell not?"  

Lumo’s fingers danced across his holographic Menu. "Because palm trees are everywhere. No one questions ’em. Now shut up and sync."  

The voice chimed again:  

"Please, ah, hold for pairing."  

Ari gritted his teeth. "I swear to God, if this thing sounds like my fucking hover-nav—"  

A pulse of cobalt energy erupted from the palm tree, washing over the battlefield. The air itself warped, colors bleeding into impossible hues—reds too deep, blues too electric. The Boulder Gang froze mid-lunge, their weapons glitching like corrupted holograms.  

Lumo’s grin was all teeth. "Welcome to the Saipan System, idiots."  

SAIPAN PROTOCOL: ENGAGED  

The world fractured into chromatic tiers.  

Red Phase ignited first—Ari’s fists wreathed in crimson fire, his knuckles crackling with berserker energy. He moved faster, hit harder, every punch leaving afterimages of his own snarling face in the air.  

A Boulder thug swung a plasma axe. Ari caught the blade bare-handed, the superheated metal hissing against his palm—then squeezed. The axe shattered like glass.  

"Oh hell yeah," Ari grinned.  

Fozi wasn’t laughing.  

Orange Phase surged through him, his burgundy fur glowing like embers. His claws extended, each one humming with hyper-stellar energy. He grabbed two thugs by their skulls—  

CRUNCH.  

Their helmets imploded, brains painting the dirt in fractal patterns.  

Ren floated higher, his Grey Martian form distorting under Indigo Phase. The air around him writhed with stolen memories—Boulder Gang tactics, weak points, fear responses. He pulsed once.  

Every thug in range screamed, clutching their heads as their own worst traumas played behind their eyes.  

Lumo’s transmission flickered at the center of it all, his voice layered with the Saipan’s AI:  

"Yellow Phase: Locked. Green Phase: Standby. Blue Phase: Active."  

Time slowed.  

Plasma bolts hung suspended like fireflies. A Boulder enforcer’s spit hovered mid-air, glinting in the smog-light. Lumo stepped through the frozen chaos, plucking weapons from hands, repositioning bodies, editing the fight like a bad script.  

Then—  

SNAP.  

Time resumed.  

The Boulder Gang’s own plasma bolts rebounded, striking them in the chests, the groins, the faces. One thug accidentally shot his own foot off. Another tripped over nothing, his nose meeting Fozi’s rising knee.  

Ari wiped blood from his lip. "Okay. That was kinda cool."  

Lumo’s hologram glitched violently. "We’ve got thirty seconds before the Saipan overheats.”

The palm tree shuddered, its fronds bursting into digiton flames as the Saipan’s voice chimed one last time:  

"Pairing, ah, complete. Thank you for choosing Saipan."  

The wormhole tore open with a sound like ripping metal.  

Ari stared into the swirling void. "This leads to the spaceport?"  

Lumo’s transmission flickered at the edge of the vortex. "Yes. The Horsehead Nebula Wing. That’s where they’re holding 101."  

Fozi stepped forward, his claws flexing. "And Pitt?"  

"He’s there too," Lumo said. "He’s the one who brokered the deal."  

Ren floated closer, his black eyes reflecting the unstable light. "¿Estás seguro de esto?"  

Lumo’s hologram glitched. "No. But we don’t have a choice."  

The Boulder Gang’s bodies lay scattered around them, their weapons still smoking. Ari wiped blood from his lip. "So we’re just leaving this behind?"  

"There’s nothing left to do here," Lumo said. "101 is the priority."  

Fozi nodded and stepped into the wormhole without another word. His massive frame vanished into the distortion.  

Ari hesitated for only a second before following.  

Ren lingered, his telepathic voice low. "Si esto es una trampa..."  

"Then we’ll deal with it," Lumo said.  

The Grey Martian exhaled and floated into the vortex.  

Lumo’s transmission wavered, scanning the empty battlefield one last time. Then he dissolved into static, the wormhole sealing shut behind him.  

Then the world blinked—  

—and the Bandits were gone.

---  

Rafael found Tommy outside, kicking rocks. The Grey Martian boy hovered just above the frost, his black eyes unreadable.  

You failed, Rafael pulsed.  

Tommy scowled. "Didn’t ask you."  

Your father cheated.  

"Yeah." Tommy grinned. "Cool, right?"  

Above them, the Academy’s spires flickered. Somewhere on Pluto, the Dean was still screaming.  

Rafael’s telepathic voice was quiet. They will expel you.  

Tommy shrugged. "Don’t care."  

Why?  

The wind shifted. The smog parted just enough to reveal a black leviathan coiled around Mars’ purple and blue horizon.  

"Because," Tommy said, "my dad’s the baddest dude in the galaxy."  

Ren materialized like a ghost, his Grey Martian form distorting the air around him. He didn’t speak—just extended a long, slender hand toward Rafael.  

The boy floated into his uncle’s grasp without protest.  

Tommy watched them go, suddenly smaller. "Guess I lost my friend, huh?"  

Ren’s telepathic voice echoed back, faint but clear:  

“Sorry, Tommy.”

Then they were gone, leaving Tommy alone in the shadow of the Academy’s ivory towers.  

---

The air in Glasslake Park now reeked of ionized blood and melted polymer. The Boulder Gang’s corpses lay scattered like broken toys—some with plasma burns, others with their skulls caved in by something blunt and brutal.  

Ari nudged a body with his boot. "Well, this is new."  

Fozi sniffed a fist-sized crater in a thug’s sternum. "That’s my grip pattern. But I don’t remember killing this fool?”

Ren floated over the carnage, black eyes reflecting the flickering neon of Slithery Snake’s trailer. "No luchamos aquí."  

The trailer was a rusted hulk on collapsing repulsor pads, its hull plastered with peeling decals of neon serpents. Ari slammed his fist against the dented metal.  

"Snake! Open up before I rip this shitbox apart!"  

A holographic serpent materialized above the door—a pixelated cobra with Slithery’s smirking face.  

"Well, well. The Bandits. How nostalgic." The snake’s voice was oil-slick smooth. "Here to collect your tin-can friend?"  

Fozi cracked his knuckles. "Where’s 101?"  

"Oh, he’s around." Slithery’s grin widened. "Changed a bit since you last saw him. Got... upgraded."  

Ari’s fists crackled with Hite energy. "Try speaking fucking English, you glitchy bastard."  

The hologram hissed laughter. "Why use words when you can see?"  

The trailer door exploded outward.  

101 stood in the wreckage—wrong. His usual easy grin was gone, replaced by a rictus snarl. His eyes glowed crimson, his athletic frame humming with unstable energy. Black veins pulsed beneath his synthetic skin, his two gold chains floating around him like live wires.  

Ari blinked. "The fuck they do to you, man?"  

101’s head twitched, his neck bending at impossible angles. When he spoke, his voice was layered with something else—a chorus of screams and static.  

"They showed me the hole."  

Then he moved.  

Faster than physics allowed, 101 crossed the distance, his fist connecting with Ari’s jaw hard enough to send teeth flying. Ari hit the dirt, skidding through a puddle of Boulder blood.  

Fozi lunged—only for 101 to phase through him, reappearing behind the ox-man with a plasma-charged elbow to the spine. Fozi roared, burgundy fur smoking.  

Ren pulsed a telekinetic blast—  

—which 101 caught in one hand, the energy swirling like trapped lightning before he crushed it, the shockwave knocking the Grey Martian out of the air.  

Lumo’s transmission flickered violently. "That’s not 101! That’s a digiton puppet!"  

101’s head snapped toward him, glowing eyes locking onto the hologram. "Lumo. Little thief. You’re not supposed to be here yet."  

Ari spat blood, pushing himself up. "The fuck does that mean?"  

101’s body glitched, his form distorting into fractal patterns. When he reformed, his right arm had become a pulsating mass of black tendrils. "It means you’re early."  

The tendrils lashed out, spearing toward Lumo’s transmission. The hologram dissolved, but not fast enough—the black wires hooked into his data stream, yanking him back into solidity.  

Lumo screamed.  

Ari was moving before he could think, Hite energy flaring around his fists. He drove a shock-punch into 101’s ribs—  

—and the world flipped.  

Suddenly Ari was inside the trailer, slamming into a wall of flickering screens. 101 stood outside, his tendrils still buried in Lumo’s flickering chest.  

"Time’s sticky here," 101 mused. "Pitt’s buyers paid extra for that."  

Fozi roared, charging—  

—and warped five feet to the left, his claws raking empty air.  

101 sighed. "You’re not listening. You’re early. This fight already happened. You lost."  

Ren’s telepathic voice was a blade: "Mentira."  

101’s grin stretched too wide. "Is it?"  

He yanked the tendrils.  

Lumo’s transmission shattered into a million glitching fragments—each one showing a different Lumo in a different hell:  

- Lumo drowning in a Jovian whirlpool.  

- Lumo burning alive on a dying star.  

- Lumo’s skull cracking open as black serpents poured out.  

Ari’s vision swam. "Blue!"  

101’s tendrils retracted, leaving Lumo’s broken transmission to flicker weakly on the ground. "Don’t worry. He’ll reform. Eventually."  

Fozi grabbed a Boulder corpse and hurled it—  

—only for 101 to step sideways through time, letting the body sail past into another moment.  

"You’re not getting it." 101 tapped his temple. "I’ve seen all your moves. Every punch, every dodge. You’ve already fought me. You’ve already lost."  

Ari’s gold chain felt suddenly heavy. "Bullshit."  

101’s eyes pulsed crimson. "Try me."  

Ari lunged—  

—and froze mid-air, his body locked in stasis.  

101 sighed. "See? Predictable."  

Then the real Fozi dropped from the smog-choked sky, his claws sheathed in stolen chrono-energy, and ripped 101’s tendril-arm clean off.  

101 screamed, his form glitching violently.  

Fozi spat. "That’s for the fake me."  

Ren materialized behind 101, his telekinetic grip twisting the corrupted android’s head 180 degrees.  

"Despierta, guey."  

101’s glowing eyes flickered—for a second, the real 101 surfaced, his voice desperate:  

"Ari—the spaceport—it’s a—"  

Then the black veins surged, swallowing him again.  

Lumo’s shattered transmission stuttered back into existence, his voice a broken whisper:  

"Go. Now. Before the loop resets."  

Ari didn’t need telling twice. 

---

The cell block wasn’t real.  

It was a holographic hellscape, a virtual realm with the most grandiose view of the Horsehead Nebula—swirling crimson dust and starless black. Inmates crowded the space, their alien forms flickering under the nebula’s glow.  

101 stood bare-chested in the center, bleeding from a gash below his tablet-screen face. His fists crackled with stolen energy, each knuckle wired to Lumo’s hacked Menu.  

The opponent—a hulking Jovian with too many elbows—lunged.  

101 sidestepped, driving an electrified karate chop into the alien’s ribs. Flesh sizzled. The Jovian roared, swinging a fist like a wrecking ball.  

Lumo, chained to the far wall, four eyes narrowed in concentration, pulsed the command:  

Now.  

101’s knee shot up, crushing the Jovian’s jaw. Bone shattered. The crowd of inmates erupted—a cacophony of clicking mandibles and guttural cheers.  

The Jovian collapsed.  

101 wiped blood from his screen. "Next."  

Lumo grinned. Somewhere beyond the nebula’s glow, the real fight was just beginning.  

ATILA