Noon had long passed when the students of the new class gathered in the main atrium. There were about a dozen of them, including Brando and Giordano. Everyone wore immaculate uniforms with gleaming emblems. Then there were Brando and Giordano. The first simply didn't have a uniform. The second wore one that was completely disheveled.

  A young woman in a white uniform was counting them with military precision. She couldn't have been more than twenty-five, but she had a stern demeanor that clashed with her age. Her uniform bore the rank of Lieutenant Junior Grade and a pin with the symbol of the instructor division.

  "Alright," she began, but stopped immediately. At the back of the group, a trio of students was already nudging each other and whispering. She was young, beautiful, and the white uniform of the Cold Soldiers looked so good on her that those idiots hadn't even lasted five seconds before making comments. They thought they were whispering, but everything could be heard clearly.

  "Hey, how old do you think she is?"

  "Who cares, did you see that a—"

  "Quiet," one of the group told him before he could say that word. "Maybe she can hear us..."

  "Something to share with the class?" she asked, cutting off the whispers at their source. "No? Then let me be clear. If you think you're on a school trip, I remind you that I am a Cold Soldier. I can freeze your tongues before you can even say 'sorry.'"

  That woman didn't have a very reassuring look, and the giggles transformed into embarrassed coughs. The trio straightened up as if someone had shoved a stick up their asses. The rest of the group held their breath as no one wanted to be the next to piss her off.

  "Very good. I am Lieutenant Junior Grade Michelotti, assistant to Lieutenant Esposito. I will be your guide this afternoon. The Vesuvius Academy is not a high school. It's a city within a city, and those who don't learn to navigate it in the first few days risk getting lost for weeks. So, order and composure."

  The group moved through corridors that seemed endless. The Academy was a labyrinth of white marble and volcanic stone, an architectural monster hundreds of yards wide that extended in every direction.

  "As you can see," Michelotti explained as they walked, "the building is divided into four main sections. The educational area, with classrooms and laboratories. The research area, where our scientists study the Cold Veins and conduct their experiments. The administrative area, which is forbidden to you unless you have special permits. And finally, the residential area, where the cafeteria and dormitories are located."

  "But why is it so big?" a student asked. "It seems excessive for a school."

  "Because it's not a school," Giordano replied before Michelotti could open her mouth. When everyone turned to look at him, he shrugged. "What? I've already been here. My brother studies here."

  "Mr. Volpe is correct," Michelotti said, and her tone suggested she would have preferred to eat nails rather than agree with him. "The Academy is the nerve center of the Cold Soldiers. Here we train Bearers, study powers, and manage the defense of Nea-Polis."

  Brando listened while looking around. His eyes wandered over his classmates, noticing the details that set him apart from the others. Apart from lacking a uniform, he saw how the others proudly wore the emblems on their chests. Their posture and the way they moved showed how these corridors were home to them. Brando felt like he was in a museum where every piece on display reminded him that he had nothing to do with this place. The building itself seemed to want to crush him with its grandeur, reminding him that he was an intruder.

  And then Giordano simply walked as if he were at a playground, deliberately ignoring the glances of others. His carefree attitude was like a slap in the face to all that pomposity.

  And Bianca... Brando paused for a moment, only then realizing her absence. It was strange. The other students seemed not to notice, too busy strutting in their marble corridors, but for some reason that absence disturbed him. There was something unsettling about the way that girl seemed able to ignore the rules that held up the entire Academy system.

  But he didn't have time to dwell on that thought. Michelotti's voice abruptly brought him back to the present, reminding him that he had more immediate problems to worry about.

  "In the first years after the Cooling Down," Michelotti began as the group crossed yet another monumental corridor, "Naples was just rubble. The constant conflicts with the Glacials had transformed the city into a battlefield as they multiplied within a few months."

  She stopped in front of a huge window that overlooked Vesuvius. "The first Bearers gathered here, around Vesuvius. There was nothing else, which at the time was little more than an abandoned government bunker. They transformed it into the first version of the Academy."

  "A bunker?" asked one of the students. "And how did we get to this?" He gestured toward the ceilings.

  "Gradually," Michelotti replied. "First we built the Academy, but then we did something that no one believed possible."

  She turned toward the volcano. From that window, Vesuvius dominated the horizon. And at the summit, a tower of crystal and metal could be seen sprouting directly from the mouth of the volcano.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  "That's the generator of the Great Dome," she said. "We positioned it directly in Vesuvius's mouth. From there comes the energy that powers the barrier protecting all of Nea-Polis."

  Brando couldn't take his eyes off that view. From Rione Sanità, the generator seemed just a bright dot, but from here, one could truly understand what it meant to keep an entire hostile world at bay.

  A murmur of amazement ran through the group.

  "A question that naturally arises," one from the group interjected, "why specifically inside the volcano?"

  "During the Cooling Down," Michelotti explained, "all the world's volcanoes automatically shut down. We don't know why, but it was one of the side effects of the nanospores. Our ancestors discovered that the mouth of an extinct volcano is the ideal point for generating an energy barrier. The shape of the crater, its altitude, and its position: everything contributes to expanding the energy uniformly in all directions. It's as if the volcano had been designed specifically for this purpose."

  "But..." Giordano raised his hand. "What if the volcano wakes up?"

  "It won't," Michelotti shut him down. "Those who designed the Great Dome had already done their calculations well. From here, we expanded the barrier gradually until it covered what is now Nea-Polis. Everything started from here, from this Academy. And now..."

  Michelotti stopped in front of a large metal door. "The last stop on the tour. Here's the observatory room."

  She opened it. The observatory was a circular environment with windows that went from floor to ceiling. A glass dome completed the structure, giving the impression of being suspended in the void. The students were immediately drawn to what they saw outside, and Brando hung back. From Rione Sanità, he had always hated the sight of that thing, and now that he was so close, the hatred mingled more with a feeling of discomfort that twisted in his gut.

  "The Alien Artifact," Michelotti began, "appeared in September 2005. It didn't generate any explosion or crater. It just appeared out of nowhere from one day to the next."

  "But how is that possible?" asked one of the students. "Something like that should have devastated the area for miles."

  "Indeed. It's one of the many mysteries surrounding it." Michelotti approached the window. "We don't know where it came from and we don't know what it is. We only know that it changed the world forever."

  "Is it true they tried to move it?" asked a girl from the front row.

  "Yes," Michelotti replied. "In the first months after its appearance, before the nanospores made the situation unsustainable. They tried with cranes, explosives, even trying to dig beneath it. There was no way. It's stuck there, for some strange reason. The strongest Cold Soldiers across generations have tried together, and it hasn't moved a millimeter. It's an object that transcends the very laws of physics."

  The black sphere dominated the horizon, perfectly still. Its surface was so glossy that it seemed to eat the light. It was just a mass of perfectly spherical darkness floating a few inches from the ground.

  "The nanospores started being released the very day it appeared," Michelotti continued. "At first, no one understood what those black particles floating in the air were. Then the first Glacials emerged, and right after that, the first Bearers."

  Brando was listening absentmindedly to Michelotti. His ribs still hurt and his head was pounding. Perhaps that's why at first he thought he had imagined it.

  But it was there.

  On the perfectly smooth surface of the Artifact, right in the center, something wasn't right. It was an instinctive feeling, like when you know someone is staring at you. Brando blinked.

  He saw a gigantic human eye that occupied the entirety of the sphere's surface. The iris was such an intense red that it seemed infused with blood. It didn't blink and didn't move, and it simply stared at him unnaturally, as if it were looking through him.

  Brando blinked again, feeling his heart accelerate in his chest.

  The eye had disappeared, and the surface of the Artifact had returned to being perfectly smooth and black.

  "Did you... did you see that?" he whispered to Giordano with his mouth suddenly dry.

  "See what?" Giordano looked at him perplexed.

  Brando went back to staring at the point where the eye had appeared. He saw only the usual impenetrable surface. Yet, a moment before, it had seemed so real. He passed a hand over his face, feeling drops of sweat on his forehead. Who could he talk to about this? He was already the laughingstock of the class.

  "Hey," Giordano had noticed that something was wrong. "Are you okay? You're as pale as a sheet."

  "I'm fine," Brando lied. But he wasn't fine. The puppy in his backpack was trembling uncontrollably, and this meant that he hadn't been the only one to see something. He might be beat up but he wasn't crazy yet. There was definitely something strange about that sphere. Something that, perhaps, had just decided to look at him.

  "This concludes our tour of the Academy," Michelotti said. "Tomorrow, the real courses will begin. One hundred and fifty thousand lives depend on each single Cold Soldier defending Nea-Polis, so I expect maximum seriousness." She addressed the class, enunciating the last words clearly: "Don't be late."

  The students poured toward the exit of the observatory room, talking excitedly about the Artifact. Brando heard fragments of conversation as he headed for the door.

  "Incredible that no one still knows what it is."

  "My aunt works in the research section and says they actually continue to study it in secret."

  "If only we could get closer..."

  Brando walked distractedly. The image of that red eye continued to swirl in his head. It had lasted a fraction of a second, yet it had been so vivid and real. How was it possible that no one else had noticed it? The puppy in his backpack still hadn't stopped trembling. Outside the windows, the sunset had now given way to the shadows of evening.

  "Hey," Giordano joined him as they exited into the corridor. He looked concerned. "Sure you're okay?"

  "Yes," Brando lied, trying to assume a normal tone. "I'm just hungry. Let's go get dinner."

  As they moved away from the observatory room, Brando couldn't help but glimpse the Alien Artifact through the Academy windows. It still dominated the horizon, motionless and silent as always. Only now it no longer seemed just a sphere to him. It was as if that thing, whatever it was, had noticed his existence.

  "Come on," Giordano called from ahead of him. "If we don't hurry, they'll take all the good spots in the cafeteria."

  Brando came back to his senses and followed him, trying to shake that feeling from his head, aware that he wouldn't succeed. Not after what he had seen.

  And the puppy continued to tremble.