But Kaelen stood up. He walked past Marcus and faced the agents. "Stand down," he said. His voice carried the weight of a man who had walked through a star and lived. "This man is under my protection. And I'm filing a formal petition to reinstate his credentials. With testimony from a Class-A pilot."
The screen in Marcus’s neural-link flickered, displaying the cold, official seal of the Federal Bio-Augmentation Bureau.
Marcus wasn’t just any XPT—Extreme Psycho-Physical Trainer. He was a legend. His signature protocol, "The Labyrinth," could rebuild a human psyche from the ashes of total neural collapse. He’d trained the pilots who flew through asteroid storms without flinching. He’d fixed the memory-fractured spies who couldn’t remember their own names. The Bureau called him an asset. His trainees called him "The Last Wall." xpt trainer
Illegal. Dangerous. If the Bureau caught him running an unauthorized XPT session, it wasn't just revocation—it was neural-prison. They’d lock his consciousness in a one-second loop for a decade. But Marcus had never been able to walk away from a broken mind.
The shard looked up, shocked. No one had ever said that. Everyone had whispered, "It's not your fault. You did your best." But Kaelen stood up
Now, he was just a man in a rain-slicked alley, watching his life's work dissolve into data-static.
His apartment was already stripped. The Bureau was efficient. Only one thing remained: a single, outdated physical letter on his magnetic table. No sender ID. Just a name: Kaelen Voss. His voice carried the weight of a man
The lead agent hesitated. Kaelen Voss wasn't just a pilot. His family owned the largest private neural-net on Mars.
The best trainer doesn't build perfect minds. He walks into the fire and shows you that you're allowed to burn—and still come out the other side.