Caleb's transit sedan died with a cough that sounded personal.
He left the key in the ignition because pulling it out made the engine complain twice, and he did not need the car judging him before a military exam.
The Defense Force testing facility stood ahead of him, all steel ribs and floodlights, cutting into the morning skyline like something built by people who wanted fear to have architecture. Recruits moved through the main gates in little packs. Three here. Four there. Nobody wanted to walk in alone if they could help it.
Caleb shut his door.
The hinge screamed.
A few recruits turned toward the sound, then toward the car, then toward the man getting out of it in a patched jacket and cheap medical tape around his hands.
He pulled the jacket tighter and pretended not to notice.
Cold air bit through the fabric. Somewhere beyond the walls, a stadium announcer tested a speaker and sent a burst of static rolling over the parking lot.
A teenager sat on the concrete barrier beside Caleb's bumper.
Oversized track jacket. Narrow shoulders. Knees bouncing fast enough to count as weather. He held a basic mechanical stopwatch and clicked it open and shut with the desperate rhythm of someone trying not to throw up in public.
"You will break the spring," Caleb said.
The kid fumbled the stopwatch, slapped both hands around it, and saved it an inch above the pavement.
"I know," he said. "Sorry. I mean not sorry to you, sorry to the watch. If I stop moving, my stomach starts making decisions."
He clicked it once more, then forced his thumb away from the button.
"Hiro Okuda. First time here?"
"Yeah." Caleb leaned back against the hood and felt the metal shift under him. "First time."
Hiro nodded too quickly.
"I memorized the entire Defense Force physical testing matrix," he said. "Not because I am insane. People say that, but it is a lazy diagnosis. The first gate requires a sprint velocity of eight meters per second. The obstacle course has three known configuration variants. I mapped optimal foot placement based on leaked structural blueprints and a very low-quality drone video from last year's trials."
"That sounds like being insane with paperwork."
"Paperwork keeps people alive."
Caleb flexed his taped fingers. The skin under the wrap still remembered Bay Nine.
"Sometimes."
Hiro glanced toward the gate.
"I heard the casualty rate in the physical bracket is pushing forty percent this year," he whispered, as if the facility might punish him for saying it out loud.
Caleb pushed off the hood.
"Let's go find out."
Hiro made a small sound that might have been agreement or a trapped breath.
The heavy steel doors ground open as they reached the line.
Inside, the testing field sprawled under floodlights bright enough to erase the sky. Stadium seats rose in black tiers around the dirt. Most were empty for the applicant phase, but camera mounts and guild viewing boxes were already awake. Little red lights blinked from the glass.
Racks of matte-black Runner suits hung along the perimeter on automated tracks.
The wind rattled empty armor plates against their frames. The sound ran down the line of recruits and took some of the talking with it.
"Find a bay and strap in," the head instructor's voice boomed over the PA. "If you need help tying your boots, withdraw now and disappoint your family from home."
Nobody laughed.
Caleb took the nearest open rack.
The label above it read G-X4552 SURPLUS, which was Defense Force language for old enough to hate you but not old enough to scrap.
The suit hung limp in front of him. Muscle fibers. Reinforced chest plates. Servo joints with old scoring around the bolts. A scratched metal tag near the collar read R. TORRES.
Caleb touched the tag with his thumb before he meant to.
"Hope you returned it in one piece," he muttered.
The suit did not answer.
He pulled the gauntlets over his taped knuckles. The plates closed with a series of hard snaps. The chest locked over his ribs, and the whole frame settled onto him with the weight of a second body that had never agreed to be friends.
A mechanical whir started at the base of his skull.
The inner lining deployed.
Thick biometric needles punched into the nerve clusters along his spine.
Caleb's breath vanished.
Heat erupted behind his ribs.
Whatever Bay Nine had left inside him threw itself against the new hardware. The suit tried to read his muscles. The thing in his chest tried to reject the suit. For three seconds Caleb stood between them, pinned upright by a machine that wanted obedience and something under his ribs that wanted ownership.
His fingers dug into the rack.
Bone scraped against bone somewhere it should not have been able to scrape.
"Applicant 4013?" a tech called.
Caleb could not answer.
The heat pulled back on its own schedule. Not mercy. Not control. Just withdrawal.
He sucked in air through his teeth as the military HUD booted across his visor.
"The suits are reading your muscular and neural limits," the instructor announced. "They will assign an Unleashed Combat Power percentage. High output means the suit can amplify you. Low output means you are a fragile human wearing expensive funeral equipment."
The stadium leaderboard came alive.
Names and percentages scrolled in clean white text.
Two bays down, Hiro's suit sealed with a hiss.
[Hiro Okuda - 14%]
Hiro stared at the number for a full second, then sagged like someone had told him his house was only partly on fire.
"Fourteen is survivable," he whispered to himself. "Fourteen is usable. Fourteen can clear Gate One if panic does not interfere with stride length."
Heavy boot steps crossed the gravel.
The recruits near the far rack shifted aside before anybody told them to.
A girl walked past the surplus suits entirely.
Her armor was white and dark red, fitted clean to her body with none of the exposed cable bulk the rest of them had. Prototype work. Private money. Every plate looked polished because people had been paid to care whether it looked polished.
The board flashed gold.
[Kikaru Mitsurugi - 72%]
The field reacted in pieces.
A gasp from the left.
Two whistles near the rear.
Somebody said her family name under their breath like it had opened a door.
Kikaru adjusted one gauntlet and let the attention pass around her without catching on anything. If she was nervous, her body had either been trained out of showing it or was too expensive to admit it.
Caleb's suit pinged.
His number arrived with a dull beep that felt apologetic.
[Caleb Mercer - 1.2%]
The bay beside him went quiet.
Then someone laughed.
The laugh spread badly. Not loud at first. A few sharp bursts. Then more, until it moved across the field the way smoke moved under a door.
A recruit in red-trimmed armor pointed at the board.
"One percent? The fibers are barely awake."
Caleb flexed his fingers inside the gauntlets.
The suit hummed. That was all. It held the plates up and kept him from collapsing under the bulk. No kick in the joints. No strength in the arms. No friendly push from the boots.
He was not a Runner in armor.
He was a tired disposal worker wearing somebody else's coffin.
"Sync complete," the instructor called. "Broadcast feeds are live. Guild scouts and public investors are watching. Applicants will break into one-on-one evaluation brackets."
Camera drones detached from the canopy.
A dozen metallic spheres swarmed toward Kikaru at once, lenses adjusting, stabilizers whispering as they fought each other for clean angles.
One battered drone lowered in front of Caleb.
It had a dent across the casing and a repair sticker peeling off one side.
His viewer count appeared in the corner of his visor.
Five.
Three.
One.
The red-trimmed recruit jogged past and glanced at the lonely drone.
"One viewer?" he said. "Your mom tuning in?"
Caleb shifted the shoulder plate before it dug into his neck.
"Something like that."
The military interface shivered.
Blue code broke apart across his visor. The clean Defense Force HUD dissolved into corrupted static, and deep purple text pushed through the damage like it had been waiting inside the machine.
[SYSTEM UPDATE]
[BROADCAST RIGHTS PURCHASED BY USER ???]
[PUBLIC CHAT DISABLED.]
[MODE LOCKED.]
Then the private chat appeared.
[??? : Look at her.]
[??? : All that money, and she still picked up a sword.]
Caleb kept his face still.
[??? : Hurt her where the cameras can see.]
[??? : I will reward you accordingly.]
The text held in front of him long enough to make refusing it feel like a public act even though nobody else could see it.
Caleb breathed once.
Then Kikaru walked straight past the assigned sparring circles.
"I request an Evaluation Duel."
The camera drones parted for her.
She stopped ten feet from Caleb and lifted one gauntlet.
The proctor frowned at his data-pad. "Applicant Mitsurugi, you are assigned to Bracket Four."
"My grandfather requires live-combat data on how the prototype handles unpredictable targets," Kikaru said. Her eyes stayed on Caleb. "A perfect written score demands physical verification. I challenge Applicant 4013."
Hiro's head snapped toward Caleb.
Caleb did not love how quickly the universe had learned his number.
The proctor glanced at the gold insignia etched into Kikaru's shoulder plate. He touched two fingers to his comm unit, listened, and became less brave by the second.
"Bracket altered. Clear a twenty-meter ring."
The recruits scrambled back.
Hiro retreated with them but left his fear behind on his face.
"Do not let her drive you clockwise," he called, voice cracking. "Prototype balance favors right-side engagement."
"I will add that to my detailed plan," Caleb said.
"You have a plan?"
"No."
The circle cleared.
Caleb stood in the dirt with the surplus suit dragging against his shoulders.
Kikaru drew a training blade from her back rig. Dull steel, kinetic edge, expensive hum. The weapon sounded cleaner than Caleb's entire apartment.
"You read a lot of books," Kikaru said.
Her polarized visor snapped down, hiding her face.
"Let's see if documentaries taught you how to take a hit."
Caleb unclipped the tactical baton from his thigh rack. The steel extended with a sharp clack. The grip sat heavy in his palm, too heavy for the suit to make kind.
"Find a better target," he said. "My suit is barely carrying itself."
"Afraid of ruining your perfect written score?"
Purple text flared again.
[??? : Do not make me wait.]
Caleb stared through the glow.
"A physical loss does not retroactively alter a test grade," he said. "Did the tutors skip basic logic?"
Kikaru lowered her stance.
For the first time, something like irritation reached her shoulders.
"Begin," the proctor called.
Kikaru's thrusters ignited.
She crossed the dirt in a rush of heat and exhaust.