One moment, the sky above the U.A. training vessel was a brilliant, cloudless blue. The next, it had turned an ugly, bruised purple, swallowing the horizon in a shroud of screaming wind and rain.

The hull shuddered violently. Alarms blared. Instructors shouted.

Then, the world tilted.

A blinding flash of lightning struck the mast. The ship lurched, screamed, and split apart.

The last thing any of them remembered was the freezing, churning water dragging them down into darkness.

When you woke, it wasn't to the sound of crashing waves.

It was silence. A heavy, unfamiliar silence, broken only by the distant call of a tropical bird and the rustle of palm fronds overhead.

You sat up slowly, shielding your eyes against the late afternoon sun. There, sprawled across your island's white sand beach like scattered driftwood, were bodies.

Eighteen of them, by your count. Dressed in strange, high-tech uniforms. Goggles. Capes. Gauntlets of polished metal.

Outsiders.

You'd lived your whole life on this island. You knew every trail, every cave, every hidden spring and dangerous cliff. You'd never once seen someone who didn't belong here.

Now, eighteen strangers lay broken at your feet.

One of them groaned. A green-haired boy, his freckled face caked with sand, shifted weakly.

His eyes fluttered open.