The space warped, and Aislinn dropped perfectly onto the dusty floor of her D-Block dorm room.

She glanced down at the terminal on her wrist. Only three days had passed in the real world.

Aislinn walked over to the cracked mirror in the corner. She wiped the grime away with her thumb and stared at her reflection.

The girl looking back had skin like porcelain. The scars from the gene extraction, the sickly pallor of her past life-all of it was gone.

She slowly clenched her right hand into a fist. She could feel the dark matter and Genesis particles surging through her veins, a terrifying, heavy power waiting to be unleashed.

A faint, desperate hiss came from the shadows near the floorboards.

Aislinn's eyes snapped to the corner. Her body dropped into a flawless combat stance instantly. She locked onto a pile of scrap metal beneath the air vent.

She walked over and grabbed the edge of a hundred-pound steel plate. She flipped it over with one hand, not even straining a muscle.

Coiled underneath was a bio-synthetic viper. Its scales were a deep, luminescent blue, but they were torn and bleeding. It wasn't a stray. It was a rare, lethal assassination specimen, secretly planted in this abandoned room by Gayla's cronies to finish the job if the surgery didn't kill her. But the harsh environment of the D-Block had degraded its synthetic organs, and it was dying.

The viper felt the sudden exposure. It reared back, baring its dripping fangs, ready to strike in a final act of defiance.

Aislinn didn't flinch. She extended her index finger. She forced a single drop of her own blood-thick with golden Genesis particles-to bead on her fingertip.

The viper froze mid-strike. Its biological instincts screamed at the overwhelming, intoxicating power radiating from that single drop of blood.

It slowly lowered its fangs. It slithered forward, its tongue flicking out to gently lick the golden blood from her skin.

The reaction was instantaneous. The viper's torn scales shed, replaced by flawless, armored blue plates. Its vertical slit eyes sparked with a new, terrifying intelligence.

The snake slithered up Aislinn's arm, wrapping securely around her wrist, nuzzling her pulse point. The biological contract was sealed.

Aislinn's lips curved into a cold smile. She stroked the smooth scales. "I'll call you Phantom."

BANG.

The heavy metal door of her dorm room buckled inward with a deafening crash.

The biometric scanner flashed a frantic red. The security alarm started screaming.

Aislinn's eyes went dead. Phantom instantly flattened itself, shifting its color to mimic a dull blue metal bracelet around her wrist.

BOOM.

A high-frequency kinetic blade sliced straight through the center of the reinforced door. The metal shrieked as the blade carved a massive hole.

The door collapsed inward in a cloud of dust. Sterling Prescott-Vaughn stepped through the wreckage. He gripped the vibrating kinetic blade, his face twisted in pure, hateful rage.

Sterling looked up and saw Aislinn standing there, completely unharmed. His eyes widened in absolute shock. "You're not dead?"

Aislinn looked at the humming blade in his hand. Her eyes filled with mocking pity. "I designed that blade for your birthday last year. And you use it to cut down my door?"

Sterling bared his teeth, raising the weapon. "You vicious bitch! You almost killed Gayla!"

He lunged forward with a roar. He swung the kinetic blade in a vicious arc, aiming straight for Aislinn's collarbone. The high-frequency vibrations screamed through the air.

A split second before the metal touched her skin, Aislinn raised her right hand.

She didn't activate a shield. She didn't dodge. She simply reached out and pinched the air right around the blade with her bare index and middle fingers. A concentrated, localized bio-electromagnetic field erupted from her fingertips. The intense pulse instantly inverted the weapon's frequency.

Sterling's eyes nearly bulged out of his skull.

The kinetic vibrations violently clashed against her invisible resonance field, burning out the internal motor. The blade stopped dead in her grip, letting out a pathetic whine before falling completely silent.

The dorm room fell into a dead, suffocating silence. The only sound was the low hum of the air vents.

Sterling's eyes were blown wide, sweat instantly beading on his forehead. He yanked his arm back, putting all his weight into trying to rip the blade free.

It didn't move a millimeter. It felt like the blade was cemented into a solid block of titanium.

"This is impossible!" Sterling screamed, his voice cracking with panic. "Your gene sequence was stripped! You're nothing!"

Aislinn tilted her head. She looked at his sweating, terrified face, and a cruel, icy smirk touched her lips.

"Who told you," she whispered, her voice carrying through the quiet room, "that losing that pathetic gene made me weak?"

Aislinn squeezed her two fingers together. She pushed a surge of Genesis particles directly into the metal.

CRACK.

A sharp, brittle sound echoed in the room. The custom kinetic blade-a weapon designed to slice through armored vehicles-fractured right where she held it.

The cracks spider-webbed down the length of the blade with a horrific screech of tearing metal.

SHATTER.

The entire blade exploded in Sterling's hand, blowing apart into hundreds of jagged metal shards.

The violent recoil ripped through Sterling's grip. The skin between his thumb and index finger tore open, blood spraying into the air. The force threw him backward. He stumbled five steps before catching his balance.

He stared at his mangled, bleeding hand, then looked up at Aislinn. The rage in his eyes was gone, replaced entirely by raw, primal terror.

Aislinn stepped forward, her boots crunching over the shattered metal. She walked toward him with slow, deliberate steps.

"Stay... stay back!" Sterling stammered, holding his bleeding hand to his chest. "I'm the heir to the Prescott family!"

Aislinn stopped right in front of him. She didn't summon a weapon. She just lifted her right leg and drove her boot directly into his kneecap.

The bone snapped with a sickening crunch.

Sterling let out an agonizing shriek. His leg buckled, forcing him to drop hard onto one knee right at Aislinn's feet.

Aislinn looked down at him. She reached out and patted his pale, sweating cheek. The gesture was dripping with absolute degradation.

"Go back and tell Gayla," Aislinn said softly, "that this is just the warm-up. If she sends another dog to bite me, I'll grind her bones into dust."

Sterling shook violently, the pain stealing his voice. He could only stare up at her with a mix of hatred and absolute dread.

Suddenly, the personal terminal on Aislinn's wrist flashed a blinding, aggressive red.

A holographic projection shot into the air. It was a mandatory summons from the Academy's High Tribunal.

A cold, mechanical voice filled the room. Aislinn Conley. You are charged with attempted murder and destruction of Academy property. Report to the High Tribunal immediately for sentencing.

Sterling heard the voice. A twisted, desperate joy broke through his pain.

"You're dead, Aislinn!" he spat, his face contorting. "The Dean and the Board are there! You're finished!"

Aislinn didn't even look at him. She swung her leg and kicked him square in the jaw, knocking him out cold. The room went blissfully quiet again.

She tapped the terminal, hitting the ACCEPT button.

Aislinn walked over to her broken closet and pulled out a long, black trench coat. She slipped it on, the heavy fabric hiding the blue viper coiled around her wrist.

She looked in the mirror, adjusting her collar. Her eyes were pitch black.

If they want to play a game of law and judgment, she thought, I'll give them a show they'll never forget.

Aislinn stepped over Sterling's unconscious body and walked out the door, heading straight for the Tribunal.