[0400]
Maintenance crews showed up, hauling folding cots and footlockers into Barracks 7 with a cold efficiency. By the time the siren hit, our fourteen-person tin can had been restructured to fit twenty-six. The distance between the bunks had shrunk considerably.
I lay on my bunk and watched them work.
The new recruits trickled in throughout the early morning. Kids from Barracks 4 and 12, carrying their kits, wearing the same grey fatigues. A week of the same grinder, just different instructors and different configurations.
My bunk gave me a front-row seat to the debacle. Most of the new faces blurred together—tired kids sizing up unfamiliar bunks and unfamiliar neighbours. A few from Barracks 4 moved in a tight cluster behind a tall kid who walked like he expected the room to rearrange itself around him. He picked his bunk without checking if it was taken.
Then I saw a familiar face, lanky, bags under his eyes, uniform slightly too small. Tomás spotted me at the same moment. A grin broke across his face.
"The bravest slash dumbest bastard in camp." He dropped his kit on a bunk three down from mine. "Still alive."
"Still here."
"I heard about the Gauntlet." He sat on the cot. "Heard the Rabbit drill got someone's leg broken."
"News travels fast," I said.
"In a place like this? Faster than a Seraph." He leaned forward, voice dropping. "Also heard your deviation came back Null."
The word still felt strange in someone else's mouth, like hearing your own name mispronounced.
"Firmware modularity on an F-Grade," he continued, shaking his head. "A shame."
"That's what Vance said." I shrugged.
"Vance is a smart man." Tomás paused, studying me. "Though— you don't look bothered."
"Should I be?"
He held my gaze for a moment, then shrugged. "Guess not. You've got that look."
"What look?" I chuckled.
"The one that says you know something nobody else does, or you've gone completely mental. Honestly, it could be either. That seems to be your thing, huh?"
A few of the Barracks 12 transfers had gathered near his bunk—three kids who clearly knew him. He waved them over.
"This is Marcus. The Rabbit I told you about."
"The F-Grade?" A stocky girl with cropped hair looked me over. Her name, I'd learn later, was Jin.
"The one and only."
"Thought you'd be bigger," Jin said.
"Sorry to disappoint." I tried with an awkward smile.
"She means it as a compliment," said a quiet boy behind her. Pale and slight, with glasses that looked like they'd survived the week through sheer stubbornness. "If you were big, the Rabbit thing wouldn't be impressive."
"That's Park," Tomás said. "He overthinks everything."
"And that's Tomás," Park replied. "He underthinks everything."
[0630]
The merged unit was assembled for the first time. Twenty-six bodies in tight formation. Vance stood at the front, flanked by a sergeant I didn't recognise—a compact woman with a shaved head.
"New faces. Sergeant Okafor will be co-instructing for the remainder of basic. Address her as Sergeant."
He ran us through the Gauntlet. Same rules—Rabbit runs, pack chases.
The first run was chaos. The new arrivals didn't know the course, hitting walls at wrong angles and bunching at the rope climb. But the real problem wasn't unfamiliarity—it was command. Miller started barking orders the way he had last week, splitting the pack into flanking groups. Thirty seconds in, the tall kid from Barracks 4 was shouting over him.
"Ignore that—two teams, pinch at the nets!"
"I said left flank, cut him off at—"
"Who the hell put you in charge?"
The pack stuttered. Half followed Miller. Half followed the Barracks 4 kid. The two groups collided at the cargo nets, tripping over each other while I sailed past beneath them. It would have been funny if the stakes weren't breakfast.
By the fourth run, they'd reached an uneasy truce—Miller commanding the veterans, the Barracks 4 kid handling his own people, both groups coordinating through a grudging necessity. Fingers brushed my collar at the cargo nets.
Close, but not close enough, heh.
"Everyone eats," Vance said. "Mess hall. Thirty minutes."
Miller's crew took their usual table; a few of the new transfers had already migrated. The Barracks 4 group clustered around their own leader, maintaining distance.
Tomás dropped his tray across from me. Jin sat beside him, and Park appeared a moment later.
"So," Tomás said between mouthfuls. "Your unit's been doing Kael's combat rotations, yeah? System-designated patterns for skill XP?"
"Not yet, actually, I think they were waiting for everyone to awaken first. How about your group?"
"Yeah, since the start. We've been working on more defensive rotations. They've been drilling the patterns nonstop." He took another bite. "My Close Combat hit Level 3 yesterday."
Level 3. In a week? That's actually really good for a D-Grade.
"What about you?" he asked with the careful casualness of someone who already suspected the answer.
"It doesn't seem to work for me. The skill XP, I mean. Nothing registers."
"Nothing? As in—"
"As in nothing, Tomás."
He studied me for a beat. I could see him deciding not to ask the obvious follow-up.
"Huh." He resumed eating. "So how do you keep up?"
"Prep-academy training mainly, and a healthy amount of stubbornness." I gave a forced smile.
"That's going to have a shelf life, Marcus."
"I know."
Jin looked between us, reading the temperature. Park adjusted his glasses and studied his paste with sudden intensity.
Movement caught my eye. Ren, crossing the mess hall with his tray, scanned for a seat. He passed Miller's table without slowing. Passed the Barracks 4 group. Passed three open spots closer to the door. Then he set his tray down at the far end of our table.
Nobody commented. Ren ate in silence, but he was there.
Tomás glanced at me, and I gave the smallest shake of my head.
[10:00]
Kael stood at the front of the training yard. Twenty-six of us in a wide semicircle.
"For those joining from other barracks—I'm Instructor Kael. I teach cultivation and combat integration." His voice carried without effort. "What I'm about to explain will formalise what the veterans have been practising and introduce the new arrivals to the foundation of everything that follows."
He stepped up to a training dummy and threw three strikes. Left hook, right cross, rising knee. Each impact landed with a precision that made it look effortless, but something about the way he moved between strikes caught my attention. A fluidity that didn't match the rigid pattern he was demonstrating.
"That sequence is Rotation One. A System-designated combat pattern optimised for skill experience gain. Execute it correctly, and the System rewards you."
He looked across the semicircle.
"Pair up. Twenty repetitions each. Begin."
The yard filled with motion. Recruits squaring up to dummies, settling into stances, throwing combinations. Within seconds, I could see interfaces activating across the group—that subtle flicker in the eyes, the micro-expression of satisfaction as notifications landed.
I paired with Tomás. We took a dummy at the edge of the yard.
He went first. Left hook, right cross, rising knee. Good form—not great, but clean enough. His eyes flickered.
"Two XP," he said. "Like clockwork."
My turn.
I settled into a stance. The same combination I'd been drilling since I was nine years old. Left hook, right cross, rising knee. My form was better than his. Tighter rotation through the hips, sharper weight transfer, crisper retraction. The prep academy had spent years refining these movements into something approaching art.
The dummy's sensors registered clean impacts, though I received nothing.
The absence wasn't new. I'd known since the first week that the True-Noosphere consumed everything. But knowing it and experiencing it first-hand were entirely different.
I held out hope that that would change once I got access to my levels and XP.
I threw the combination again with perfect form.
"Marcus." Tomás's voice was low. "You're white-knuckling."
I looked down. My fists were clenched so tight the knuckles had gone bloodless. I forced them open.
"I'm fine."
"You're not. And that's okay." He stepped closer, voice dropping further. "Hit the dummy again."
I threw the rotation.
"Now watch Miller."
I looked across the yard. Miller was three dummies down, drilling with Briggs. His form was powerful—heavy hooks, devastating knees—but now that Tomás had pointed it out, I could see it clearly.
"Left hook drops his guard for almost a full second," Tomás said. "Right cross telegraphs from the shoulder. The knee comes at the same angle every single time. He's thrown it sixteen times, and each one is a carbon copy."
I scanned the yard. He was right. Priya—same timing on every rep. Torres—same weight transfer. Briggs—same setup. Even Jin, at a dummy near the edge, was falling into the same rhythm, her movements already smoothing into the pattern the System rewarded. Park stood beside her, watching rather than drilling, his brow furrowed behind those glasses as though he was cataloguing the same thing Tomás was describing.
"Predictive modelling." Tomás tapped his temple. " I can map where every strike is going to land before it's thrown. Every single one of them."
"And me?"
He paused. "Your prep-academy training uses different fundamentals. Your hook comes from a different origin point. Your weight shifts at a different phase. My model keeps having to readjust." A crooked smile. "It's actually kind of annoying."
"So I'm annoying. Great." I said flatly.
"You're unpredictable. To a guy whose entire deviation is prediction, that's worth noting." He said with a smile.
"Being unaccountable isn't the same as being strong, Tomás."
"No. But it might be the same as being alive, six months from now, when the Buggers have learned every rotation the System teaches."
"Free sparring!" Kael's voice cut across the yard. "Three-minute rounds."
The yard reshuffled. Miller paired with Briggs, their enhanced physiques making every exchange look faster than a week ago. Jin found a Barracks 7 veteran and squared up without hesitation—whatever else she was, she wasn't shy.
A tap on my shoulder. Hsu again, she jerked her head toward open space.
We squared up.
"Begin!"
Hsu closed the distance with her burst acceleration—terrifying speed that ate the space between us in a blink. Then Rotation One. Left hook, right cross, rising knee. Exactly what Kael had taught thirty minutes ago.
I slipped the hook, parried the cross, stepped past the knee. She hadn't expected the counter because the System hadn't taught one for Rotation One yet.
I didn't strike back.
She came again. Same rotation, augmented by a feint before the hook—her natural aggression improvising on the skeleton.
I read it, moved around it, tapped her shoulder as I passed.
"Point, Tiernan," Kael called.
Hsu stared at me.
"How?" she asked.
"How what?"
"How did you know where I was going?"
Because the System told you where to go.
"Footwork," I said instead. "You favour your right side on the approach."
We reset. This time, Hsu did something I didn't expect—she abandoned the rotation entirely. No left hook, no right cross. Just raw aggression.
She tagged me twice, two clean hits that I didn't see coming.
The round ended, both of us breathing hard.
"That was better," I said.
"Shut up." She remarked, a smile threatening her tight lips.
[21:00]
The barracks settled into their new shape. Twenty-six bodies found their rhythms, claimed their territories, and established the unspoken boundaries.
Miller's Corner had grown. Briggs, two Barracks 4 transfers, and a kid from 12 who'd watched Miller spar, they talked in low voices, building their hierarchy brick by brick.
Tomás was three bunks down, telling Jin and Park some elaborate story about his father's cargo runs. His voice was a low, steady murmur—the kind of background noise that made the barracks feel like a place where people lived rather than a place where people survived.
My thoughts were filled with the day's interactions, the training field and the predictability of it all. It reminded me of the Aegis-Assist, the Prep-academy training wheels. If everyone thought and fought the same, then I could take advantage.
I wonder if the Buggers are the same. The System is universal after all.
I called up the interface.
[CONNECTION: 0.058%]
The biggest single-day jump yet.
[PERCEPTION: 8]
Up from seven. On a day when I'd read Hsu's rotation in sparring, noticed Ren's deliberate table choice, watched Kael's fluidity contradict his own demonstration, and mapped the social restructuring of a merged barracks in real time.
For the first time, a stat point almost made sense. Almost. I wasn't ready to trust the pattern yet.
[CONNECTION: 0.058%] [THRESHOLD: 5.000%]
I closed the interface and stared at the ceiling.
Twenty-six people breathed in the dark around me. Some of them were getting stronger. Some of them were getting predictable.
Most of them were both.