The first day of third year began at 05:00 with an alarm that felt both premature and overdue.

  Valoris woke instantly, awareness snapping to full alertness the way it had learned to over two years of academy conditioning. But the weight was different now. They weren't candidates anymore, weren't students learning theory about piloting while their mechs stood dormant and waiting in their bays.

  They were pilots.

  They had mechs. They had healed ports and neural interfaces integrated with their nervous systems through four weeks of healing that had been simultaneously too slow and terrifyingly fast.

  Today, they would connect.

  Around the barracks, Chimera Squad moved through their morning routine with the focused efficiency that came from two years of practice and the nervous anticipation of transformation about to occur. Zee emerged from her bunk already half-dressed, looking prepared for anything. Saren performed her morning rituals with efficient brevity, though Valoris caught the way her hands lingered at her cervical ports. An unconscious gesture, checking them despite four weeks of healing proving they were integrated. Quinn was already dressed, already checking their tablet, already counting something silently. Milo fumbled with his uniform while adjusting his glasses, nervous energy radiating from him like heat.

  Nobody mentioned what day it was. Nobody needed to.

  The weight of first connection hung over the barracks like atmospheric pressure before a storm.

  "Formation in ten," Zee said, and her voice carried more edge than usual. "We can’t be late. Not today."

  They assembled outside the barracks at 05:15, Chimera Squad plus the other third-year squads who'd successfully summoned, survived the surgery, healed enough to attempt connection.

  Attrition was constant. Expected, normal. But standing here among the survivors, the ones who'd proven themselves capable and resilient enough to continue, Valoris felt the weight of everyone who wasn't here. Every empty space in formation representing someone who'd washed out, broken down, been medically disqualified, or chosen to leave rather than face what came next.

  Commander Thrace appeared with her characteristic precision, dimensional exposure scars catching the early morning light in ways that reminded everyone exactly what long-term piloting cost. She surveyed the assembled third-years with an expression that might have been approval or assessment.

  "Third years," she said, voice carrying across the assembly ground. "You've summoned. You've undergone surgical modification. You've healed. Today you learn whether that preparation was adequate."

  The silence was absolute.

  "Neural connection is not like anything you've experienced before," Thrace continued. "Dimensional contact during summoning gave you a taste of consciousness expansion, but that was temporary, a brief touch of vastness before returning to baseline human awareness. This is different. This is sustained synchronization between your consciousness and an entity that exists partially in dimensional space. You’ll be becoming two bodies simultaneously and learning to maintain your sense of self while experiencing forty-odd feet of metal as though it were your own flesh."

  She paused, letting that settle.

  "Some of you will adapt easily. Some will struggle. Some will panic. This is expected. This is why we start with brief connections and build duration gradually." Her expression hardened slightly. "But understand: If you cannot learn to maintain connection without losing yourselves, you cannot pilot. If consciousness fractures under dual-body mapping, you cannot deploy. If you prove unable to exist in two states simultaneously, you wash out."

  The finality of that hung heavy.

  "Your instructors will guide you through first connection protocols," Thrace said. "Follow their directions exactly. Do not attempt extended connection regardless of how stable you feel. Do not disconnect prematurely regardless of how overwhelmed you become. Trust the process. Trust your training. Trust that your body will continue breathing even when your awareness says you have no lungs."

  She surveyed them one final time.

  "Report to equipment distribution. You'll receive your pilot suits before proceeding to mech bays. Dismissed."

  Equipment distribution occupied a reinforced facility adjacent to the pilot training complex. Valoris had passed it countless times during first and second year without understanding its purpose, just another secured building in academy architecture designed around dimensional containment and military efficiency.

  Inside, rows of specialized pilot suits hung on racks organized by size and designation. Black synthetic material that looked simultaneously flexible and reinforced, with metallic threading woven throughout the fabric in patterns that suggested dimensional resonance dampening or amplification.

  An equipment technician met them at the entrance. An older woman with port scars visible at her neck and wrists, a retired pilot who'd moved into support roles after years of active service. Her hands trembled slightly when she reached for Valoris's identification, and one eye reflected light at wrong angles. Dimensional corruption, advanced enough to end her piloting career but not severe enough to require full medical retirement.

  "Pilot Kade," the technician said, scanning the ID with practiced efficiency. "Size?"

  "Five-seven, standard frame."

  The technician nodded and moved to a specific rack, pulling a suit that looked identical to dozens of others except for the designation code stitched near the collar. "Try this. Changing rooms are through there. The suit should feel snug; it's designed to maintain consistent contact with your skin so the port interfaces work properly."

  Valoris took the suit, feeling the weight of it. It was heavier than expected, with subtle rigidity in areas that suggested reinforcement. The material felt strange under her fingers. Not quite organic, not quite synthetic, something that existed between categories the way so much at the academy existed between normal definitions.

  In the changing room, she stripped out of her standard uniform and examined the pilot suit more carefully. The port interfaces were immediately obvious: twelve circular openings distributed throughout the suit at exact locations matching her neural ports. Each interface was rimmed with metallic threading that she recognized from surgical diagrams, dimensional resonance conductors that would help facilitate connection between biological ports and mech systems. The openings were precise and unambiguous, designed specifically so pilots' ports remained accessible while still providing protection and support for surrounding tissue.

  She pulled the suit on carefully, feeling it conform to her body with unsettling precision. The material adjusted automatically, contracting slightly around her limbs and torso until it fit like a second skin. It wasn’t uncomfortable exactly, but intimate in ways that regular clothing never was, with a constant awareness of synthetic fabric against every part of her body, a constant pressure that felt both supportive and constraining.

  The port interfaces aligned perfectly. She could feel them through the openings, twelve points where metal embedded in her flesh remained exposed, ready for connection.

  She emerged from the changing room to find her squad similarly suited. The black pilot suits made them look older, more serious, somehow more real as pilots than any amount of training had achieved. They looked professional. Dangerous. Changed.

  Zee's suit emphasized her height and combat build, making her look even more like the warrior she'd been working to become. Saren's highlighted her precise posture, every line of her body suggesting discipline and control. Quinn's somehow made them seem more solid, more present, the constant fabric contact perhaps providing the physical confirmation they needed. Milo's looked somehow slightly rumpled already, glasses reflecting light above the collar that seemed too formal for his usual chaotic energy.

  "These feel weird," Milo said, tugging at his collar. "Like they're touching me everywhere. Is that normal?"

  "They're designed for constant skin contact," the technician explained, overhearing. "The material helps regulate body temperature during connection and provides monitoring feedback to your instructors. You'll get used to it."

  "The port interfaces are exposed," Saren observed, touching her cervical port through the opening with clinical precision. "Vulnerable."

  "Only during non-combat operations. You'll receive armor overlays for actual deployments. For training, exposed ports allow medical staff to monitor integration status and connection fluid levels."

  Connection fluid. Right. Valoris's ports had stopped weeping constantly after week two of healing, but they still produced fluid during stress or extended activity. Having them exposed meant that production would be visible, obvious, impossible to hide. Evidence of modification made permanent and public.

  "Report to your assigned mech bays," the technician said. "Your instructors are waiting."

  Paragon's bay existed in the dimensional sector of the academy complex. Massive reinforced chambers carved into bedrock, each one containing a single platform where the mechs stood waiting. The bay felt simultaneously vast and claustrophobic, dimensions that suggested it existed partially elsewhere, walls that seemed too far away and too close.

  Valoris had been here dozens of times during healing, watching Paragon through reinforced windows, maintaining the mech's external systems, running diagnostics on equipment she couldn't yet use. But she'd never prepared to climb inside.

  Until now.

  Instructor Davis waited beside Paragon's access ladder, the same instructor who'd run them through first-year physical conditioning, who'd pushed them until they broke and then pushed them further. Retired pilot, dimensional exposure scars visible on his forearms, the kind of veteran who'd survived long enough to teach and carried that experience like armor.

  "Pilot Kade," he said, nodding acknowledgment. His gaze swept over her pilot suit with professional assessment. "Ready for first connection?"

  No, Valoris thought. Absolutely not. I'm terrified and my ports ache with phantom sensations and I can already feel Paragon's presence through neural pathways that shouldn't exist and I don't know if I can handle consciousness expansion without breaking.

  "Yes, sir," she said aloud, because that was the only acceptable answer.

  "Good. Climb up. Cockpit is open. I'll guide you through the activation sequence."

  The ladder felt surreal beneath her hands, cold metal rungs leading up toward something that would fundamentally change her if she continued. She could still stop, could still walk away and live baseline human existence without neural ports connecting her to dimensional entities.

  But she wouldn't.

  She'd chosen this, had understood the cost, had agreed to transformation knowing it would change her permanently.Her squad needed her present and functional, needed her to succeed at this the way she needed them to succeed. Stopping now meant admitting that two years of training, four weeks of surgical healing, and a lifetime of family legacy had been for nothing.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  She climbed.

  The cockpit yawned open like an organic cavity. The interior looked simultaneously technological and biological, with walls that pulsed slightly with Paragon's dimensional resonance, surfaces that seemed to breathe. The neural link chair dominated the small space, designed specifically for connection, with twelve distinct interface points visible where pilot would synchronize with mech.

  Valoris had seen images of cockpit interiors, studied diagrams. She understood intellectually how connection worked.

  None of that prepared her for the reality of climbing inside something that felt alive and hungry and waiting.

  "Sit," Davis's voice came through her headset, a bone induction device that would allow her to hear even through the liquid PFC when the cockpit flooded. "Position yourself so your ports align with the interfaces. You'll feel them when you're close. Magnetic pull, resonance feedback, something. Trust your nervous system to know where connections should be."

  Valoris lowered herself into the chair carefully. The seat adjusted automatically, conforming to her body with the same unsettling precision as the pilot suit. Through the port openings in her suit, she felt the interface points immediately. Twelve locations where her neural ports aligned with the mech's connection systems, an awareness of proximity that came through pathways she hadn't possessed two months ago.

  The chair shifted her slightly, adjusting position until every port aligned perfectly. She felt the magnetic pull Davis had mentioned, not a physical force, more like dimensional resonance drawing consciousness toward connection points like gravity toward centers of mass.

  Her ports ached. Warm, tender, aware in ways that suggested they recognized what was about to happen.

  "Aligned," Davis confirmed, monitoring from outside. "Connection sequence is semi-automatic. Once initiated, the mech handles technical synchronization. Your job is to maintain consciousness despite sensory overload. Remember: Your human body is still breathing. You're still you. The mech is an extension, not a replacement. Understood?"

  "Understood, sir."

  "Activation on my mark. Duration: ten minutes maximum for first connection. That's enough to establish baseline synchronization without risking consciousness fracture. I'll monitor your vitals and dimensional resonance. If anything shows distress, I disconnect you immediately. Clear?"

  "Clear, sir."

  "Good." A pause, his voice turning almost sympathetic. "This will be overwhelming. Don't panic. Breathe. Focus on maintaining your sense of self. You've trained for this. You're ready."

  Am I? Valoris thought.

  "Three," Davis counted. "Two. One. Connect."

  Valoris triggered the activation sequence.

  The neural link engaged.

  And Valoris stopped being human.

  The sensation defied description.

  Her consciousness exploded outward. Awareness that had existed in her frame of flesh and bone suddenly expanded across forty-two feet of dimensional substrate and technological systems and entity presence that was simultaneously her and not-her and vast beyond comprehension.

  She tried to scream and couldn't find her throat because her throat was reactor core and power distribution. She was drawing energy not breath and her lungs didn't exist in any form she recognized.

  Vision shattered into multiplicities. Thermal sensors showing heat signatures. Tactical displays mapping trajectory probabilities. Dimensional scanning revealing reality distortions. Standard optical input processing twenty data streams simultaneously. All of it hitting a consciousness designed to handle a single perspective and she couldn't parse it, couldn't understand it.

  Her body was wrong. Completely wrong.

  Balance shattered because the center of gravity existed thirty feet up, not five. Proprioception screamed as her brain tried to map a body that extended far beyond normal parameters. She weighed tons, not pounds, and every movement suggestion resulted in feedback that made no sense.

  She tried to lift her hand and her hand was a weapon system weighing thousands of pounds extending twenty feet from a shoulder joint that processed force through hydraulics, not muscles. The motion translated wrong, felt wrong, was wrong because hands weren't supposed to be wire and metal.

  She reached for her face and couldn't find it because she didn't have a face. She had a sensor array and command interface and reinforced plating and no human features.

  Panic consumed her like drowning, like suffocation, like being erased from existence one neural pathway at a time.

  She was disappearing, her consciousness diluting across too much space, awareness spreading too thin, she couldn't maintain both bodies simultaneously.

  "Breathe," Davis's voice cut through the sensory chaos like a blade through fog but it was still distant and far away, coming from somewhere outside the metal that was her body. "Your human body is still breathing. You're still you. Focus on that. Find your center."

  But she couldn't. She was too big, too spread out, her consciousness bleeding away into systems and sensors and dimensional substrate and she was losing herself, becoming Paragon instead of Valoris.

  She tried to scream and heard weapon systems prime, tried to clench her fists and felt structural stress creaking throughout her frame.

  "Focus on your human breathing," Davis commanded, voice carrying authority that cut through panic. "Your lungs are moving. Your heart is beating. That body still exists. You're still inside it. The mech is additional, not replacement. Find the boundary. Find where you end and Paragon begins."

  But there was no boundary. That was the problem. That was the terror.

  Consciousness existed in both locations simultaneously. She was flesh and metal, human and entity, small and vast, limited and powerful.

  And she couldn't maintain her sense of self across that divide because the divide didn't exist and she was drowning in sensation that a human nervous system wasn't designed to process.

  Time stopped meaning anything. Ten minutes felt like hours, or seconds, felt like eternity while she struggled to breathe without lungs and think without a human brain and exist without collapsing into metal that was consuming her.

  "Disconnect," Davis ordered.

  The neural link cut. Consciousness snapped back like elastic stretched too far and released violently.

  Suddenly she was small again, trapped in flesh that felt tiny and weak and insufficient. Her mind compressed into a single perspective after experiencing multiplicities, so limited after being vast.

  Her body convulsed, hands clawing at chair armrests.Her lungs heaved frantically because she could breathe again, she had lungs again, oxygen was entering her body the way it was supposed to, but it felt wrong, inadequate. It was like being crushed into a container that was too small for what she could become.

  Blood ran from her nose, a warm copper taste in her mouth, dimensional contact cost manifesting physically. Her hands shook violently. Her vision swam. Every sense felt simultaneously too sharp and too limited. Baseline human perception suddenly felt like deprivation after experiencing mech's enhanced arrays.

  Ten minutes connected felt like dying. Felt like being reborn.

  The cockpit hatch opened. Davis's face appeared, expression carrying something between concern and grim satisfaction.

  "Normal reaction," he said, though his tone suggested he understood exactly how abnormal it felt from inside. "First connection is always overwhelming. Come on. Let's get you out of there."

  Valoris tried to stand. Her legs failed.

  She fell, body crashing against the cockpit interior with an impact that should have hurt but barely registered because her proprioception was destroyed. The ground was too close. She was too small. Her arms were too short, too weak to lift– Couldn't even lift what? She didn't have weapon systems. She had hands. Tiny human hands that weighed ounces, not tons, and could barely grasp chair armrests.

  Davis caught her before she collapsed completely. "Easy. Your motor cortex is confused. It's trying to send signals for tonnage movement to human musculature. Give it time to recalibrate."

  "I don't–" Valoris's voice came out broken, raw. "I can't… my body is wrong–"

  "Your body is fine. Your brain is confused about which body it's controlling. That's normal. It'll settle."

  But nothing felt normal.

  She emerged from Paragon's cockpit supported by Davis, legs barely functiona. Medical staff appeared immediately, pressing towels against her face where blood still flowed from her nose. But more concerning, more wrong, was the other fluid.

  Connection fluid poured from her ports. Through the openings in her pilot suit, she felt it clearly. Base of skull, cervical spine, thoracic spine, both wrists. Thick, slick, warm translucent fluid seeping from every neural interface point, running down her skin beneath the suit. It smelled like ozone and metal. A foreign substance leaking from her flesh.

  "Normal," the medic said, opening her pilot suit slightly to access the ports and press gauze to weeping interfaces. "Connection produces interface fluid. Your body's been producing it since port installation, but it increases dramatically during active synchronization. It'll continue weeping for several hours post-disconnect. Eventually production stabilizes to manageable levels."

  Manageable levels. Meaning her ports would constantly leak. She'd always be slightly damp at interface sites, always smell faintly of metal and ozone.

  Around the mech bay, she heard other pilots disconnecting too, different reactions echoing through the vast space:

  Zee's voice, distant but audible: "That was amazing. I want to go back in–"

  Saren's controlled breathing, too fast, suggesting panic barely contained.

  Quinn's silence, which was somehow more concerning than screaming would have been.

  Milo's laughter, high, slightly manic, breaking into something that might have been crying: "Buddy is real! Buddy talked to me! It's alive! It's aware!"

  They were all changed. All transformed.

  And this was just the beginning.

  That night, Chimera Squad gathered in their barracks with the exhausted weight that came from experiencing fundamental transformation and trying to process what it meant.

  Valoris sat on her bunk, pilot suit removed but ports still weeping despite medical staff cleaning them repeatedly. She'd changed into standard clothing, but the fabric stuck to damp port sites, an uncomfortable reminder of modification she couldn't escape. The gauze pads they'd given her were already soaked through, requiring replacement every few hours.

  Her body felt wrong. She kept trying to reach for things with arms that should extend twenty feet and weapon systems that should activate automatically and sensors that should map trajectories.

  But she had hands. Just hands. Normal human hands that could barely grip a water bottle.

  Across the barracks, her squad processed similar disconnection disorientation

  Zee paced restlessly, unable to sit still, her body radiating an energy that suggested she wanted to be connected again, wanted to be vast again, wanted to return to a state where she felt the right size instead of cramped limited flesh. "Human feels small now," she said quietly. "I felt like I was finally the right size inside Reaver. Coming back to this–” she gestured at her body– "feels like being compressed."

  Saren sat straight despite obvious exhaustion, hands folded, breathing controlled. But Valoris saw the way she kept checking her proportions: looking at her hands, touching her face, verifying she still possessed the correct number of limbs. "The precision. The control. Meridian's targeting systems are far beyond human senses. Human limitations feel inadequate now."

  Quinn stared at nothing with that flat intense focus, consciousness clearly struggling to maintain presence in their human body. "I was real. Fully real. For ten minutes. Now I'm fading again." Their hands moved constantly, touching ports. "Inside Specter, I existed completely. Solidly. Without doubt. Now I'm uncertain again. Translucent. Barely present."

  Milo had barely stopped talking since disconnecting, words tumbling out in cascading streams: "Jinx talked to me. Talked to me. Not verbally but through connection, through consciousness interface, through dimensional resonance. It has thoughts. Has personality. It likes me. We're friends. Is that normal? Do mechs usually have that much awareness? Do other pilots experience entity consciousness during connection or is this unique to Jinx or am I hallucinating or–"

  "I forgot how to be human," Valoris interrupted quietly. "For ten minutes, I was forty-two feet tall and I forgot I had a human body. Forgot lungs, limbs, everything. I became Paragon and Valoris disappeared and I don't–" Her voice cracked. "I don't know if I can do that again tomorrow and maintain any sense of who I am."

  Silence fell heavy.

  Then Zee said, "But we will do it again tomorrow. And the day after. And every day until connection stops being terrifying and starts being normal. Because this is what we chose. This is what being pilots means."

  "Is it normal?" Milo asked desperately. "Any of this? Feeling like your human body is wrong after connecting? Sensing your mech even when disconnected? Hearing their consciousness communicating with you?"

  "None of it is normal," Saren said tightly. "We have metal implanted in our nervous systems. We touched alien consciousnesses. We shaped weapons from dimensional substrate. We're learning to maintain consciousness across two bodies simultaneously. Normal is gone. It was gone the moment we summoned, or the moment we underwent surgery. Maybe it was gone the moment we chose to attend this academy."

  "But it's our reality now," Quinn added.

  Valoris touched the ports at her skull base. "Can we survive that?"

  "We have to," Zee said simply. "Because the alternative is washing out. Admitting we can't handle what we chose."

  "Together," Saren added, and that word carried weight it hadn't carried before. "We do this together. We support each other through the terror and confusion and transformation. We succeed or fail as squad."

  "Together," they all confirmed.

  And in that moment, exhausted, modified, still weeping connection fluid from ports that marked them as changed, Chimera Squad made a commitment that would carry them through whatever came next. Because there was no going back to who they'd been before dimensional contact altered them permanently.

  They could only move forward into whatever they were becoming.