Today's Tomorrow Episode Four

By Odette C. Bell

Connie and Makar are home. But it’s hell. The Academy is on the brink of destruction, and only a raggedy group of cadets remains.
Connie will have to learn why the simulation picked her to be its champion, and she’ll have to fight right until the end. But there’s no point in fighting unless you know what’s really there. Together with Makar, they’ll need to find out the truth behind the greatest mystery the Coalition has ever seen. But to do that, they’ll need to find – and fight – the real shadows.
So what’s really been hiding in the dark?
....
Today’s Tomorrow follows an ace cadet and a clumsy recruit fighting to save the Coalition from a simulated universe. If you love your space operas with action, heart, and a splash of romance, grab Today’s Tomorrow Episode Four today and soar free with an Odette C. Bell series.
Today’s Tomorrow is the 20th Galactic Coalition Academy series. A sprawling, epic, and exciting sci-fi world where cadets become heroes and hearts are always won, each series can be read separately, so plunge in today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Odette C. Bell
• Release date: Feb 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9781005806668

Book preview

Chapter 1

Connie Wilkinson

The Academy wasn’t just under attack. The Academy was crumbling down around our ears.

Right across from us was the accommodation block. I’d lost track of time, but what felt like less than a day ago, I’d been up there in my apartment, talking to Tom for the first time. Now my apartment became nothing more than dust and destruction caught on the wind. And speaking of the wind, it chaotically raged around the Academy grounds. Nothing could stop it, and nothing could stop the future soldier bullets zipping along it.

One whizzed past my ear now, but fortunately Makar was there to yank me to the side. I could tell he was breathless, tell he could barely think. This was our home. And while we’d been blithely running around the simulation and trying to save it, our home had been crumbling down.

And it was much too late now.

This is… he tried.

It was my turn to grab his arm and yank on it.

I needed armor. Something or anything would be better than my exposed flesh.

Instinctively I tried to throw a hand to the side and grasp up the strands of reality. But I wasn’t in the simulation anymore. I couldn’t interact with the base-level matter of this universe. I was a sitting duck.

Or at least I was standing and running for now.

Makar, regardless of how distracted he looked, knew precisely how vulnerable I was. He grabbed me up. It was only as we jumped across a cavern forming beneath our feet.

I thought it was just a cave-in. It was a future soldier mech. It punched up from underneath us and tried to grab Makar’s ankle. He leapt right over the head of it, landed down beyond, kept a hold of me, then dropped me in a swift motion. There was an abandoned gun to his side. He grasped it up. Before he did, I watched his fingers try to interact with reality just as mine had tried to do so only a few minutes before.

Dammit. It’s going to take my head time to wrap itself around the fact we’re back in the real world, he grunted. Then he added something I didn’t want to hear. If it lasts. The Academy—

The accommodation tower wasn’t the only one to crumble. From beside us, the teaching tower gave out a great groan. I watched explosions rip out of the side of it. If it was some great creature, it would be like its belly trying to rip its way out of its own body.

I gasped. Then it struck me all at once – how many people must be in that tower? How many people must be dying unnecessarily? All for what? All for some stupid AI’s future dream? It wasn’t even a dream worth having.

This wasn’t fair. It wasn’t freaking fair. But it was still happening, and the more time I wasted thinking about that, the less time I had to save myself.

Fortunately Makar had no intention of letting me go. He yanked me over another part of the crumbling ground beneath us. I glimpsed down into a basement. I’d vaguely heard that there were basement levels to the Academy. I’d assumed there were one or two.

I’d seen more when falling into the cube cavern the first time. Now I saw so many, it just looked like they went on and on.

Makar saw them too. Crap, he spat when he jumped to a safe part of the lawn and spun. He tilted his head down, and I could tell he was using his armor to scan. It looks like the fight is taking its way all the way down into the true basements. That’s where the Coalition keeps some of its most important secrets.

We have to… I began, about to tell him that we had to do something. But you tell me this. What exactly was there to do? What could we do to change the tide of a battle that had already been lost?

At that exact moment, the teaching building gave up. There was a shake from its foundations that powered right up the side of it. It was accompanied by a fiendish vibration I didn’t feel anything could survive. And sure enough, the tower came crumbling down a few seconds later.

Makar knocked into me, pulling me back. We were thankfully far enough away that we were not squashed flat by the crumbling tower. Other things were, though. The Academy had deployed some of its own mechs. They couldn’t get out of the way fast enough, and they succumbed. They would presumably be driven down into the basement levels by the force of the fall.

And there would be yet fewer resources for the Academy to call on in its worst moment.

We need to get to someone who knows what the hell is going on, Makar concluded.

Good luck with that, I wanted to scream at him. We’d passed only a few soldiers. Either the Academy had fortunately gotten rid of most of its staff and students before the attack – transporting them away, as per protocols during a disaster – or they were dead.

It was… the latter, wasn’t it? I’d fought the future soldiers enough to know precisely how they thought and operated.

I tried to breathe. I couldn’t. My lungs weren’t damaged, though my throat was pretty raw. This was just my body giving up. What was the point of continuing on when we faced this much wanton destruction?

I thought Makar would pull me to my feet, metaphorically at least considering I was already standing, but he was just as full of despair as I was. This was always the plan, wasn’t it? I was a damn idiot. I thought the AI would destroy the simulation then live in the ruins, trapped there forever. It told me it wanted to move through the multiverse, finding other simulations. I didn’t think it would actually do that – didn’t think it could. That’s what it’s doing now, he said tonelessly. It’s just using the Academy as the first hurdle.

I turned and looked at him in the few seconds we had before another mech attacked us. What I wanted to tell him was this – the shadow AI wasn’t here. Only a small section of its forces were. Meanwhile, it was back in the simulation, taking whatever it could.

It was fighting on two fronts simultaneously, while we couldn’t even fight on one front.

But a battle as wild as this one won’t let you sit still for long. Something suddenly hurtled out of the rubble to my side. I prepared myself, thinking it would be a future soldier, but I recognized the face behind a shimmering blue shield visor.

And fortunately, she recognized me too before she could deploy the strange weapon in her hands.

Layla, I spat.

I had no idea what she was wearing. It was armor, but it started to phase in and out of existence. It would blink away for two seconds, then three, then four.

As for the weapon she held… it was real, but it wasn’t real. It hung around for longer than the armor but occasionally would disappear entirely before coming back in random spurts.

What the hell are you holding? Is that some kind of phase gun? Makar spat, more impressed by the gun than the fact that my best friend was still alive.

Kid, where have you been? Layla spat.

She insisted on calling me kid even though she was older than me by a single day.

It’s a long story, I said. The Academy, what the hell is happening to the Academy? I demanded as fast as I could.

She just looked at me with the kind of sad eyes you would when everything you knew had crumbled before your eyes.

Before she could answer, Makar grunted, Future soldiers are on their way. Quick. He grasped my arm firmly but tenderly and hauled me to the side. I could tell he intended to take me on the once beautiful path that led around the teaching building. It wound through manicured gardens, and it even had a koi pond. In the past. Now it was just so much rubble.

Before he could venture that way, Layla grabbed us. Come on.

She only had the hand to grab me, but because Makar would not let his fingers drop from me, it was the equivalent of grasping us both up.

What have you got planned? Makar spat.

Layla was the kind of person to answer any question leveled at her. She either didn’t have the breath or the brains right now.

The latter was far more terrifying than the former. My friend had been the smartest cadet in the Academy and she’d never been pushed to an extreme that had dulled her wit. Now she grunted monosyllabically, then added, It’s the only place they haven’t found yet.

She pulled us headfirst through the rubble.

I had to remind myself I was back in the real world. Yeah, less than five minutes ago, I’d been busy running through glitching walls. But it wasn’t actually that hard to remind myself that I couldn’t interact with matter that seamlessly anymore. It was simply instinctive back in the real world. It wasn’t that it didn’t have the same impression of solidity. It was that there weren’t constant glitches there to remind you that maybe the floor wasn’t as solid as you thought.

But this rubble sure did look like the real thing. Yet, sliding her finger down her gun, Layla managed to pull us through it. It was not a seamless, perfect experience. By far. It was bone shakingly terrifying, in fact. Every second I was pulled through the rubble, my brain screamed at me that this was wrong. I was violating the very rules of matter, and if you did that, if you tried to slap reality in the face, it would only hit you harder until you lost all of your teeth and every neuron in your brain.

Come on. They’ve already infiltrated most of the levels of the basement. We’ve only got a couple left. There’s nothing that can stop them. But at least we found a way to slow them down.

Cadet, Makar grunted when we reached the other side of the rubble only to see a completely trashed basement level, where is everyone? I need to get to Lieutenant Lai or Admiral Forest. Someone who’s in charge. We have valuable, critical information to share.

Admiral Forest has been taken, she said in a cold voice.

What do you mean? Makar demanded. His voice sounded strong, but considering he was still holding me, I could tell how much that concept made him shake.

She was one of the first ones to go, Layla whispered.

I looked around at Makar, all wild-eyed as I tried to figure out if that thought what I meant it did. You don’t think… they are going to make her into a future soldier, do you? I hissed wildly.

Makar considered the concept for half a second then shook his head hard. She might be efficient, but trust me, out of every admiral I’ve ever seen, she’s got a heart. They’ve taken her for another reason. But what about Lieutenant Lai? Makar demanded.

The cube took her, Layla said with a shake.

You mean she’s been imprisoned by the cube?

No, I mean… she was one of the first ones the cube took…. It was clear that Layla couldn’t get her words out. Another sign to be worried about.

Layla always knew how to discuss even the most complex of topics. Maybe she hadn’t had much to do with something. But that would be irrelevant. She’d figure out a way to break it down until it made sense. Now she just shook, her shoulders rattling as if somebody had replaced the bones with tin cans.

Layla, I began in a careful, tender voice – or as much as one could manage in a heated war like this. Regardless of the fact we’d technically entered the first basement level, we sure as heck hadn’t left the danger behind.

There was a great big pile of rubble behind us – the same pile we had run through. In front of us, several future soldiers appeared. More worryingly than that, they appeared through gates.

Both Makar and I jolted as we saw the portals circumscribe themselves through the air, their burning light