Title: Chapter 4
Tags: Mature, Mecha, mystery, adventure, Action
Description: The boy out of time

Consciousness came back in pieces.

The first thing the boy registered was the light: pale green, humming, cold against his skin. The second was the figure leaning over him — dark hair, a soft jaw, fine features, a gray-and-white servant's dress. A girl, about his age. Even through the heavy fog behind his eyes, she was the first real thing he'd seen in what felt like forever. And he didn't know anything else.

He tried to sit up, and the world sloshed sideways.

His limbs had the tensile strength of wet bread. He pitched forward, flailed, and grabbed the only thing within reach to stop himself from eating the floor.

Which turned out to be the girl's chest.

Soft. Warm. Decidedly breast-shaped.

He pulled his hand back as if it had been burned. "I — I'm sorry. I didn't mean — I was falling —"

"It's fine. Are you all right?"

The voice that answered him was not a girl's voice.

The boy blinked up at the lips that had just moved. The face was feminine. The dress was feminine. And the voice coming out of it was unmistakably a boy's — which somehow made more sense than the rest of the picture, and he was too foggy to question it.

Another figure stepped into his vision, taller and harder-edged, with cropped dark hair and a commander's uniform. "Pinnacle Station," she said. "The Spire. And right now, you're in the part of it that doesn't officially exist."

"Fleur," the servant girl said. "Careful."

"Careful left about three minutes ago." Fleur knelt and tilted the boy's chin into the light. "Who are you?"

The boy tried to find an answer. There was nothing but static. A smooth, polished emptiness where his past should have been. Underneath it, the afterimage of a voice. A girl's voice, calling something out across a dark room. He couldn't catch the words.

"I don't know." The words scraped his throat coming out. "I don't remember."

"Anything at all?"

He shook his head. Then, because the stasis tank still loomed behind them, humming its cold secret, he added: "The tank called me U-07."

"U-07." Fleur's eyes sharpened. "Project Ultor."

"What does that mean?"

"Guns, mysteries, and one very loud alarm," she said. "We'll sort the rest out later."

The alarm arrived on …