Apex Five: Mech Elite novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: Four Years of Titles

Hob did not talk until dawn.

He sat at the kitchen table with my blade core in front of him and a cable plugged into the side of it, and he ran every match log it had ever recorded.

Four years of Apex Five.

It was a lot of numbers.

I made coffee nobody drank.

Ronan stood at the window with a bandage on his temple and his arms folded.

I had not looked at him since the yard.

He had not looked at me either.

We were both very bad at it.

"Wyn," Hob said at last. "Come here."

I came.

He turned the screen toward me.

It showed the first Apex match I ever flew, four years ago, a qualifier against a team from the north docks.

Five frames lined up in a row.

Next to each frame a small blue line ran off the side of the screen.

Five lines.

Hob tapped a key and the lines folded back into a single bright thread.

"Every frame on your old team ran off one link," he said. "That's yours."

"Dane's and Mira's frames had their own link. They flew perfectly."

"They had a link to you."

I stared at the thread.

"That isn't possible," I said.

"It's a log, kid. It doesn't lie, it just counts." He scrolled to another match, and another. "Year one, the scout's link ID is yours. Year two, the heavy's. Year three, the Pryce Dynamics logo gets stamped on a module they all bolted in. Same link. Same pulse. Always you."

"They said the module did it."

"The module is a box with a light on it." Hob's voice had turned rough. "There's no sync in it. I tore the one from your old command frame apart in the yard last night."

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