My Ultimate Sign-in System Made Me Invincible

Liam smiled when he saw Matt step forward, and there was something in that expression—a mixture of genuine fondness and anticipatory amusement—that immediately made the rest of the group wary on Matt’s behalf.

"Alright," Liam said, his voice carrying across the frozen expanse with perfect clarity despite the wind. "I’ll make you a deal, Matt. If you can last five minutes against me in direct combat, I’ll give you anything you ask for."

Matt’s eyes lit up immediately, the kind of instantaneous enthusiasm that suggested his brain had already skipped past the ’five minutes of getting destroyed’ part and jumped straight to ’what impossible thing should I request.’

The response came without even a heartbeat of hesitation. "I want a space shuttle. For myself. Personal use."

The entire group turned to stare at him.

"Matt," Harper said, his voice flat with disbelief. "He literally just offered you anything, and you didn’t even think about it for one second."

"Not even half a second," Kristopher added, shaking his head. "Just immediately ’I want a space shuttle.’ No consideration of literally any other option."

Stacy’s voice carried fond exasperation. "You could have asked for anything else and you went straight to ’personal space shuttle.’"

"It’s peak Matt energy," Kristy said, though there was laughter in her voice. "Give him unlimited options and he’ll pick the most absurd one possible without thinking twice."

Matt spread his hands defensively, though his grin suggested he wasn’t actually sorry. "Okay, but think about it. A space shuttle. My own space shuttle. I could go to space whenever I wanted. That’s objectively amazing and you all know it."

"We’re not saying it’s not amazing," Alex said carefully. "We’re saying that you didn’t even pause to consider whether there might be something better. You just heard ’anything’ and your brain immediately went ’SPACE SHUTTLE’ in all caps with exclamation points."

Lana was laughing openly now. "I bet he’s been thinking about this since the moment Liam mentioned having spacecraft. He’s probably been planning what he’d name it."

"The Titanium Eagle," Matt said immediately, which just made everyone laugh harder.

"You’ve already named it!" Elise shook her head. "You haven’t even lasted five seconds against Liam yet, let alone five minutes, and you’ve already named your hypothetical space shuttle."

Liam had been watching this exchange with visible amusement, letting them process Matt’s immediate request without interruption. When the laughter died down slightly, he spoke up.

"As long as you have a place to park it, then no problem."

Matt’s expression shifted instantly into calculation mode, his mind clearly running through logistical problems at high speed. "Can it be parked on the Lunar Base? But I can summon it to Earth whenever I want to use it?"

The specificity of the question suggested he’d been thinking about this for more than just the past thirty seconds. This was a fully formed fantasy he’d apparently been nurturing.

Liam considered the question with apparent seriousness. "Technically possible, yes. The shuttle could be stationed at Sanctuary and respond to remote summons. But you’d have to handle the geopolitical blowback from the scene of a space shuttle landing in your front yard. Or wherever you plan to board it."

Matt didn’t even hesitate. "Stealth mode solves that problem. The world only reacts to what they can see, right? And the shuttle has advanced AI. Probably. So it can’t crash into commercial aircraft or anything while descending or ascending. Plus, I have the exosuit." He gestured at his armored form. "The shuttle doesn’t even need to land. I just fly up into the sky and meet it at altitude. Which means no ground landing, no witnesses and no geopolitical incident."

The group’s collective sigh was audible even through their helmet speakers.

"He’s thought about this extensively," Kristopher said, his tone somewhere between impressed and concerned. "That’s not casual speculation. That’s a detailed operational plan."

"Of course he has," Harper muttered. "This is Matt we’re talking about. He probably has backup plans for his backup plans."

Stacy was shaking her head, but there was affection in the gesture. "The fact that you’ve already worked out the logistics of secretly operating a personal space shuttle means you’ve been fantasizing about this for a while."

"Since we visited the Lunar Base," Matt admitted cheerfully. "The moment I saw those ships, I knew I wanted one. I just needed the right opportunity to ask."

Alex looked at Liam. "Are you actually going to give him a space shuttle if he somehow survives five minutes?"

Liam’s smile widened at the logic Matt had presented, and he nodded with what appeared to be genuine approval. "I appreciate the thorough planning. And yes, I’ll give him the space shuttle. But only if he succeeds in lasting the full five minutes. Which means he needs to not just survive, but remain conscious and combat-capable for the entire duration."

He paused, letting that sink in. "Five minutes doesn’t sound like much. But five minutes of direct combat against someone who vastly outmatches you is an eternity. Your perception of time will stretch. Every second will feel like ten. And I won’t be holding back the way I did during the formation training."

Matt’s grin somehow managed to widen despite the ominous warning. "For a personal space shuttle with advanced AI, orbital capabilities, and remote summon functionality? I will absolutely endure five minutes of getting my ass kicked. That’s the easiest trade-off in history."

"You say that now," Liam said, his tone carrying amusement mixed with something darker. "Let’s see if you still feel that way at the three-minute mark."

Matt rolled his shoulders, the exosuit responding to the gesture with perfect synchronization, and dropped into what he probably thought was a combat stance. "I’m ready. Bring it on."

Liam’s smile shifted into something more predatory. "I hope you are. Because I meant what I said—I won’t be holding back."

The rest of the group instinctively backed away, creating a clear perimeter around the two combatants. Their HUD systems automatically tracked the distance, maintaining what they apparently felt was a safe observation range, though whether any range was truly safe when Liam was about to demonstrate his actual combat capabilities was debatable.

"Five minutes starts now," Liam said.

And then he vanished.

The movement was so fast that it didn’t register as motion at all. One moment Liam was standing thirty meters away, the next moment he was simply gone, and the space where he’d been standing exploded with displaced air that created a pressure wave strong enough to send everyone else stumbling backward despite their exosuits’ stabilization systems.

The cold Antarctic wind, drawn into the vacuum his movement had created, hit them like a physical wall. Temperature warnings flashed across their HUD displays as the ambient air temperature dropped by twenty degrees in an instant, the sudden influx of frigid air rushing to fill the space Liam had just occupied.

Matt’s enhanced perception caught the movement just barely. His brain registered a blur of motion approaching from his left at a speed that made their earlier supersonic flight feel sluggish by comparison. His body tried to respond, the exosuit’s systems engaging to execute a defensive maneuver, his arms coming up to guard, his stance shifting to brace for impact.

But thinking about defending and actually executing the defense before the attack arrived were entirely different problems.

Liam appeared directly in front of Matt, having crossed thirty meters in what could generously be called a fraction of a second. His fist was already in motion, a simple straight punch aimed at Matt’s stomach with no wasted movement, no telegraphing, just pure efficient violence.

The impact was thunderous.

Even holding back—and Liam was absolutely holding back, because if he hadn’t been, the force would have liquefied Matt’s internal organs regardless of the exosuit’s protection—the blow carried enough power to send Matt flying backward through the air like he’d been fired from a cannon.

The exosuit’s damage indicators lit up immediately, showing stress on the torso section where the impact had occurred. The suit had absorbed the majority of the force, distributing it across its frame, preventing Matt from experiencing the full horror of what a direct hit from Liam actually meant. But even with that absorption, even with the advanced protection systems engaging at full capacity, Matt felt the impact as a massive compression of his entire torso, as though he’d been struck by a car moving at highway speeds.

He tumbled through the air, his flight systems offline or unresponsive, his vision blurred, his orientation completely lost. The world spun around him in a dizzying cascade of white ice and pale blue sky, and somewhere in the distance, he could hear his friends’ voices calling out through the communication system, their words indistinct through the ringing in his ears.

Matt hit the ice perhaps sixty meters from where he’d started, the impact creating a crater in the frozen surface and sending up a spray of ice fragments that glittered in the Antarctic sunlight like diamonds. He lay there for a moment, his exosuit’s systems running diagnostics, his own body trying to remember how breathing worked.

"That’s five seconds," Liam’s voice came through the communication system, perfectly calm, as though he’d just completed a light warmup rather than sending someone flying sixty meters with a single punch. "Four minutes and fifty-five seconds to go. I suggest you get up. Staying down won’t make the time pass faster."

Matt groaned, the sound more frustrated than pained, and forced himself to his feet. His exosuit confirmed that despite the dramatic impact, he wasn’t actually injured—the suit had done its job, protecting him from what should have been a lethal blow. But his pride had taken significant damage, and the realization of just how vast the power gap between them truly was had settled over him like a cold weight.

"Okay," Matt said, his voice slightly breathless. "Okay. That was... that was really hard. Like, way harder than I thought it would be."

Liam stood where he’d thrown the punch, watching Matt with an expression that might have been sympathetic if it weren’t for the slight smile at the corners of his mouth. "And that was me holding back significantly. If I’d used even a quarter of my actual strength, the exosuit wouldn’t have mattered. You’d have exploded on impact."

The casual way he said ’exploded’ made everyone flinch.

"Four minutes and forty-five seconds remaining," Liam continued, his tone almost conversational. "The question now is whether you can survive four more exchanges like that one. Because I promise you, Matt—each one is going to hurt just as much as the first. The only difference is whether you can stay conscious through all of them."

Matt took a shaky breath, squared his shoulders as much as his battered pride would allow, and raised his fists again.

"For a space shuttle?" he said, his voice carrying a stubborn determination that overrode the very reasonable fear his body was experiencing. "Absolutely. Hit me again."

Liam’s smile widened.

"As you wish."