First Wave
The metal beneath their feet vibrated—subtle at first, then rising into a steady hum that coiled up their legs like electricity. A grid of blue lines ignited across the walls, crawling upward until the entire room glowed with hard-light circuitry.
Vex felt her Hex Core tighten instinctively, cataloguing threats she couldn't yet see.
Bul rolled his shoulders. "Feels like the room's breathing."
Alloy didn't answer. His skin rippled, steel sliding over muscle as if preparing itself.
Surge bounced on his toes, tiny shock pops bursting beneath each step. "C'mon, already. Hit us with something."
Stryke's voice cut in, sharp and calm. "Keep formation. Wait for the system to reveal intent."
The air changed.
Not wind—not magic—just a shift in pressure as the holograms solidified.
Light bent.
Shapes formed.
And the first wave appeared.
Humanoid constructs—Sentinel-sized, chrome-plated, blank-faced. Six of them, equidistant, arranged in a perfect ring around the hybrids.
Shade whispered, "Danger Room Models: Mark IX adaptive constructs. Military-grade. Non-lethal… usually."
"Non-lethal unless Magneto reprogrammed 'em," Surge muttered.
Magneto's voice echoed from the observation deck above, cold and absolute.
"Begin."
The constructs moved instantly.
Two lunged for Alloy.
He met them head-on.
His fists collided with metal torsos, shockwaves splitting the floor. The constructs skidded back but adapted immediately—one reshaping its arms into hooked blades, the other into a vibrating energy shield.
Stryke barked, "Alloy, rotate left, force their angle!"
Alloy obeyed without hesitation—and the strategy worked. His next strike hit the construct at a diagonal, sending it crashing into the wall hard enough to dent the plating.
Surge grinned. "Now we're talkin'—"
A construct blurred past him, nearly decapitating him with a spinning hard-light blade.
Surge vanished and reappeared ten feet away, a trail of micro-explosions marking his path.
"HA! Too slow, tin can!"
It tracked him.
Faster.
Its movements accelerated as it adapted to his speed.
"Uh—little help!" Surge shouted, backpedaling as the blade whirled inches from his face.
Elle swept her arm wide.
A burst of wind smashed into the construct, sending it staggering sideways.
"Stay focused, Surge! Move with your speed, not against it!"
He saluted sloppily. "Aye aye, boss lady!"
Shade didn't move into melee—she slid toward the wall panel, her hands glowing with Forge's instinctive energy. She pressed her palm to the interface.
Instant recognition.
The console bloomed open like a mechanical flower.
"I can reroute some of their predictive targeting," she said, fingers dancing across the holographic overlays. "They won't adapt as fast—"
The Danger Room fought her.
Panels flickered.
Counter-scripts appeared.
She gritted her teeth. "They've encoded anti-tamper tech. Someone upgraded this room."
From the deck above, Domino smiled faintly.
"Cable's idea."
Shade sighed. "Of course it was."
A construct lunged toward her.
Bul slammed into it from the side, hitting like a wrecking ball.
"You break my tech girl, I break you!" Bul roared as the construct skidded across the room.
Vex moved behind Elle, energy flaring bright and steady. Her Hex Core kept pulsing warnings.
"Six constructs active. Predictive targeting up by twenty percent. Alloy's pressure rising. Surge's kinetic signatures unstable. Elle—your wind pattern is triggering countercurrents—"
Elle finished the thought. "Meaning it'll adapt to environmental control soon. Got it."
"Guys?" Stryke snapped. "Focus. These are the testers. Not the final threat."
Vex inhaled sharply.
Her system flickered.
She saw a new warning:
[XIMERA CORE — HEX NODE]
Danger Room Environment Detected
Adaptive Threat Level Increasing
And below it:
Directive: Survive the First Wave.
Vex exhaled, magic swirling faintly around her hands.
"Okay," she whispered. "Let's survive."
The constructs converged all at once.
The fight truly began.
---
Adapt or Fall
The constructs came in fast.
Too fast.
The moment the team stabilized their formation, the Danger Room escalated. The six chrome figures synchronized movements, their limbs folding and unfolding with sharp mechanical precision. Their eyes flared white as they updated their threat assessment.
Stryke called it a half-second before it happened.
"They're changing formation—brace!"
Two constructs vaulted upward, magnetizing to the ceiling. One extended into a long-range cannon form. The other split its body into multi-jointed limbs that clung to the rafters like a spider.
Shade's eyes widened. "They're shifting into vertical assault patterns—"
A laser pulse blasted downward.
Shade dove aside, the beam carving a molten line where she'd stood. Surge zipped forward, scooping her up before the second blast cut through.
"Move your ass, tech girl!"
"I am!" Shade protested, but her fingers were already moving, recalibrating her improvised terminal. "Just stall them!"
"Stalling," Surge said, lunging toward the nearest construct with reckless joy. "I can do that!"
He hit the ground, burst forward, and then—
BOOM.
Tiny shockwaves exploded under each step, launching him in a zigzag blur around his target. The construct tracked him—barely—its adaptive systems snapping dimension lines around his predicted path.
But Surge was unpredictable. Untamed.
He shot under the construct, around it, past it, back again, movements jagged and chaotic like a firecracker spun loose.
"You can't hit—what you—can't—SEE!"
He darted upward, heels sparking—
BOOM.
A shockburst kicked him upward, letting him drive a kinetic-infused kick into the construct's chest. The blow dented the metal, sending it flying.
But the Danger Room compensated.
A construct behind him swung a blade-arm toward his spine.
"Alloy!" Stryke barked.
Alloy moved with impossible speed for something made of metal—one giant arm shooting out to catch the blade before it reached Surge.
Metal screeched against living steel.
Alloy growled low. A tremor ran through his arms—rage or exertion, no one could tell.
He crushed the blade between his hands until it snapped like brittle wire.
Surge blinked. "Okay… teamwork's kinda awesome."
Alloy didn't smile. "Stay focused."
Across the room, Bul was in his element—charging through two constructs at once, forcing them back with sheer mass. He roared and slammed one into the wall so hard the room shuddered.
"They ain't so tough!" Bul yelled with a grin.
"Don't get cocky—" Elle began.
A construct behind Bul shifted.
Its form elongated.
Its fingers thinned into needles.
It stabbed.
Elle's winds screamed as she deflected the strike with a cyclone blast, throwing both Bul and the construct apart before impact.
Bul skidded across the floor. "Okay—THAT one was faster."
"That one adapted," Vex corrected, voice steady even as her heart raced. "All of them are."
Her magic circled her fingertips, sensing the rhythm of the room, the predicted attacks, the adaptive patterns changing second by second.
She saw a new warning:
[XIMERA CORE – HEX NODE]
Threat Level Escalation Detected
Adaptive Constructs: Evolutionary Pattern 1.3
Projected Lethality: Increasing
Vex lifted her hands and fired a hex-bolt—pure, precise, stabilizing energy. The bolt hit a construct mid-shift, briefly scrambling its update cycle.
Stryke didn't waste the opening.
He dashed forward, sliding low under a sweeping blade-arm, and slammed his fist—charged with a pinpoint optic energy pulse from his Cyclops genes—into the construct's knee joint.
The leg buckled.
It fell.
Stryke stood over it, breath steady. "Target down."
Cable's voice echoed from the observation deck.
"Good. But don't get comfortable. This was only the warm-up."
Shade shouted from her console, "They're starting phase two!"
Surge groaned. "There was a phase one?!"
The floor panels shifted.
Walls retracted.
Lights dimmed.
A new set of constructs emerged—sleeker, faster, with glowing crimson cores.
The Danger Room was done testing.
Now it wanted evolution.
---
Synchronize or Break
The room changed all at once.
The walls peeled back like mechanical petals. The ceiling rose. The floor split into shifting platforms, rising and falling like metal waves. Hard-light screens flickered in and out, projecting false openings, false enemies, false safety.
But the new constructs weren't false.
They stepped forward with scarlet cores pulsing behind their chests, their limbs slimmer, their movements more fluid. Their shapes were humanoid but flickered at the edges—as if they were thinking faster than their physical forms could keep up.
Shade inhaled sharply.
"Those aren't standard Danger Room bots… those are combat-synthesis models."
"English, please," Bul said.
"They learn while they fight," she translated. "Fast."
"Faster than me?" Surge grinned.
The closest construct snapped its head toward him—then burst forward in a blur that nearly matched his speed.
Surge yelped. "Okay! Okay! Maybe not faster, but—WHOA!"
He dodged sideways just as the construct sliced through where he'd been. The blade cut the air so cleanly it left a vacuum hiss behind.
"Surge, stick to erratic patterns!" Stryke shouted. "Don't let it predict—"
"It already IS predicting!" Surge shouted back, ducking another slash. "This thing hates me personally!"
"Then lead it!" Elle called, wind swirling around her as she lifted off the floor. "Pull it toward me!"
Surge didn't answer with words—he just rocketed toward her, a trail of miniature blast-shocks erupting under his feet.
Vex raised a barrier just in time as a second crimson construct split into three holographic decoys, weaving between hard-light projections.
"They're using illusion tech," Vex warned. "Some of these aren't real!"
A decoy launched itself at her—and passed through her, dissolving into static. The real one lunged from the right.
Elle's winds blasted it sideways, but it recovered instantly, folding its limbs backward to catch the wall and spring off again.
Elle gritted her teeth. "These things don't stop!"
"Alloy!" Stryke barked, "front pivot!"
Alloy turned just as the construct aimed for Vex. Its blade hit his chest with a metallic clang that echoed through the chamber. Alloy didn't budge. He drove his knee upward and his palm down simultaneously, breaking the construct's arm at the joint.
But the broken limb reformed, liquid metal snapping back into shape.
Alloy's eyes darkened. Something inside him flickered—something old, inherited, volatile.
Stryke moved fast, stepping in front of him. "Don't lose control. We need clarity, not rage."
Alloy's breathing steadied. Barely.
Shade finally yelled, "I need twenty more seconds!"
"For what?" Bul shouted while grappling two constructs at once.
"To override the room's adaptive subcore! If I can't, these constructs will keep evolving!"
"We don't HAVE twenty seconds!" Surge yelled, running for his life again.
"Yes," Elle said, hovering higher, "we do."
Wind exploded downward, slamming two constructs off-balance. As they recovered, Stryke slid in beneath their guard, letting his tactical instincts guide him. Optic energy hummed against his fingertips.
A quick pulse.
Then another.
Then one perfectly angled shot ricocheted off a falling panel, struck a wall, then hit a construct from behind, destabilizing its core.
"Nice shot," Domino murmured from above.
Shade's eyes flicked up.
"Ten seconds!"
Bul roared, tearing one construct off the ground and spiking it into the floor.
"Tell me when something explodes!"
Stryke lifted an eyebrow. "Something always explodes when Surge is here."
"HEY!" Surge shouted as he sprinted past them. "Rude!"
The construct chasing Surge nearly took his arm off with a clean, adaptive strike—
—and Alloy dove forward, grabbing the construct by the head and slamming it into the floor so hard the plating cracked.
Surge blinked. "Dude. You're my favorite rock."
Alloy didn't respond, but something like amusement flickered in his steel eyes.
Vex ducked under another strike, firing hex-bolts that disrupted targeting optics. Her Hex Core flickered warnings faster than she could read them.
"Three constructs left! No—four! One just uncloaked!"
Stryke's eyes darted around the room.
"We need final formation. NOW."
"Five seconds!" Shade shouted.
"FORM UP!" Stryke commanded.
It was instinct.
It was training—they'd never had.
And still, they moved.
Alloy anchored the center, steel plating thickening across his frame. Bul planted himself at his right, fists raised. Elle floated above them, winds spiraling outward in a protective cyclone field. Stryke stood at the front, calculating angles, preparing counterattacks. Surge sprinted the perimeter, creating chaotic misdirection. Shade knelt at the console, fingers flying across the interface. Vex remained behind Alloy, eyes blazing violet, her magic synchronizing with the team's rhythm.
The constructs rushed them all at once.
Shade slammed her palm into the console.
"I'VE GOT IT!"
The metal grid beneath the constructs lit up—blue, then white—overriding their adaptive protocol.
Their movements froze.
Just for a heartbeat.
"VEX!" Stryke barked.
She already knew.
She unleashed everything.
A wave of hex-energy erupted from her palms—clean, precise, controlled—crashing into the frozen constructs. The hex surge destabilized their holographic cores. Elle sent a cyclone blast to follow, smashing the constructs backward. Alloy and Bul charged forward, delivering the finishing blows.
The constructs shattered into shimmering fragments.
Silence.
Real, fragile silence.
The Danger Room dimmed, the platforms returning to normal height, the walls sliding back into place. The holograms dropped. The hum quieted.
Surge flopped onto the floor. "Please say that was the end."
From the observation deck above, Magneto's voice echoed across the chamber.
"…Acceptable."
Cable added, "For recruits."
Domino snorted. "And they didn't even die. Impressive."
Elle smiled—tired but proud.
"We did it."
Vex stared at her hands, still glowing faintly.
"For the first time," she whispered, "my magic felt… like it belonged."
Stryke nodded. "We'll get stronger. Together."
Alloy exhaled, metal skin shimmering.
"Agreed."
Bul cracked his knuckles. "Round two?"
"NO," everyone said.
The Danger Room lights shut off.
The trial was over.
---
The chamber fell quiet as the last construct dissolved.
Sweat cooled. Heartbeats steadied.
And from deep within each hybrid, a soft resonance answered—
the Ximera Cores awakening to record the trial.
A pulse rippled through the team.
---
TEAM STATUS — POST TRAINING LOG
(Auto-generated through Ximera Network)
[TEAM LINK // SYNCHRONIZATION: 17%-22%]
ATLANTIS TRUST LEVEL: +4%
COMBAT AWARENESS (Group): +6%
No new skill trees unlocked.
---
Elle – Elemental Node
Status: Stable
Note: Multi-target control improved.
Stryke – Tactical Node
Status: Stable
Note: Strategy cohesion rising.
Alloy – Magnetic Node
Status: Stable
Note: Reaction stability improved.
Surge – Kinetic Node
Status: Stable
Note: Burst-step control stabilizing.
Bul – Titan Node
Status: Stable
Note: Defensive structure consistent.
Shade – Stealth Node
Status: Stable
Note: Environmental scanning refined.
---
Vex – HEX NODE
Skill Tree Unlocked: ARCANE
Evolution Level: 1.21
Genetic Stability: 83%
Soulsword: Bound
Arcane Veins: Active
Memory Fractures: Suppressed
ACTIVE QUEST:
[SOUL PATH — STAGE 1]
Objective: Seek the next locus of arcane resonance.
Progress: 3%
---
NEXT OBJECTIVE:
Proceed to the Resistance Briefing.