Wing Zero didn't smell like a hospital. Ordinary hospitals have that omnipresent stench of cheap disinfectant, mushy food leftovers, and the aura of lingering illness that permeates public health units. Here, the smell was metallic, sterile, and cold. It was the scent of a high-performance data center or a military hangar where million-credit machines are kept under controlled temperatures. Raven felt exactly like that: a high-cost biological asset that had suffered a critical malfunction and was sent to the authorized technical service so as not to cause a loss to the government's insurance.
He had been staring at the ceiling for exactly six hours. He knew this because the rhythmic click of a vital signs sensor in the corner of the room marked the seconds with a precision that bordered on psychological torture. The ceiling was made of matte white polymer plates, flawless except for a tiny groove in plate forty-two that he had been studying for the last forty minutes. Raven missed his old fan at home, the one that made a lazy click-click and seemed to share his existential weariness. That technological silence of Ala Zero was oppressive, as if the building itself were holding its breath.
His mind was a swamp of static. Whenever he closed his eyes, the darkness brought no peace, only violent flashes of what had happened in the South Sector. He felt the vibration of the ground under the Titan Beetle's legs again, heard the dry snap of the creature's carapace cracking under his obsidian fingers, and, above all, tasted that metallic tang in his mouth—the taste of his own blood mixed with the chemical adrenaline the System had pumped into his veins.
The door slid open with an almost imperceptible pneumatic hiss. Helena entered. She brought no flowers or words of comfort; she wore her usual command suit, an impeccably tailored piece that didn't seem to wrinkle even under the pressure of an imminent apocalypse. She carried a holographic terminal that emitted a bluish glow, projecting columns of data that floated around her like silent sentinels.
"You're causing a statistical collapse in my department, Raven," she said, stopping at the foot of the bed. She didn't look at him with empathy, but like someone analyzing a major error in a budget spreadsheet. "A Rank D, with a record of basic 'Stone Skin', obliterating an elite Rank C in single combat... The survival projections for that zone were minimal for someone of your level. You broke the logic of our resource distribution."
Raven let out a heavy sigh, which ended in a wince of pain as he tried to move his shoulder. "Sorry for ruining your perfect day of charts and goals, Helena. Next time, I'll try to die according to protocol so I don't throw off your monthly average. It would be a lot less work than being here poked by needles that look like construction drills."
Helena ignored the sarcasm and activated a projection in the center of the room. An image appeared: it was a thermal security camera recording. The Raven on the screen didn't look human, not even like a common stone hero. He was a silhouette of absolute darkness, a visual density that seemed to distort the light around him.
"This wasn't a standard dermal hardening," she pointed to the energy peaks oscillating in the hologram. "Your molecular structure changed its nature. You reached a state of matter that shouldn't exist in an organic body without external support. What did you feel when that thing grabbed you?"
Raven fixed his eyes on the image of himself, that black and relentless version. The terror he tried to bury began to bubble up again. "All I remember," he said, his voice dropping an octave, losing its ironic edge, "is a giant bug trying to chew on me. I felt its mandibles scraping against my bone. I didn't have a heroic awakening, Helena. I didn't think about saving humanity. I just had an absurd fear of becoming monster fertilizer in that filthy place. It was pure survival instinct. I just wanted that pain to stop."
The moment the memory of the impact hit him full force, an electric tingle ran down his spine. Before Helena's eyes, Raven's skin began to change. The matte gray of common stone spread across his hand, rigid and heavy.
[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: RECORD UPDATE] Due to extreme combat stress and surpassing biological limits against a Higher Rank target:
Physical Resistance: [Level 4] —> [Level 6]
Muscular Strength: [Level 3] —> [Level 5]
Reaction Speed: [Level 3] —> [Level 4]
Instinct: [Level 1] —> [Level 4] (Critical jump detected via direct exposure to death)
Perception: [Level 1] —> [Level 2]
[NEW PASSIVE ABILITY ACQUIRED]
Bug Exterminator (Rank E): Increased damage against the Insectoid order.
[EVOLVED ABILITY]
Resistance: Stone Skin (Active): Can now be activated deliberately. Sub-description: The "Obsidian" state remains locked due to the risk of systemic collapse.
Raven looked at his gray arm with disdain. "See? It's just stone. A sidewalk upgrade. Whatever happened back there was a bug in your code."
Helena crossed her arms. "We call it a 'Survival Surge'. Your body burned years of your vital reserve in minutes to ensure you didn't turn into dust. Raven, in my planning, you are a depreciated asset. That fight might have cost you five or ten years of your organic life. You're aging on the inside as we speak."
"Ten years less of paying bills and dealing with traffic?" Raven gave a cynical smile. "Sounds like a great deal. Where do I sign to lose five more?"
"You're under observation for three more days in Ala Zero. The Commander doesn't want heroes who can 'change class' or explode without warning. I need to know if you're a reliable tool or a pinless grenade."
The next three days were a torture of boredom. Raven spent his time watching television. The screen broadcasted a loop of the official decoration of heroes in one of the Fortress-Cities.
On the screen, Kael appeared on the podium. He didn't just wear armor; he wore an aura of perfection. The silver armor shone so brightly it seemed to emit its own light, without a single scratch, without a speck of dust. He smiled at the cameras, the kind of smile that convinced people the apocalypse was just a setback.
"We do not fight merely to survive!" — Kael's voice was magnetic, deep. "We fight so that the light of civilization never goes out. Each of you is part of this unbreakable wall. We honor those who fell by becoming stronger. Humanity will not be a footnote in history. We are the future!"
Raven turned off the TV with a sharp motion. "'We are the future,'" he repeated, bitterness on his tongue. "It's easy to talk about the future when your armor has never seen a drop of real mud. He's the symbol people need so they don't panic, but we're the ones holding the line in the dark—the guys who don't look good in photos. Kael is the hero in shining armor; I'm the guy who cleans up the mess he doesn't even know exists."
The silence of the room returned, but Raven couldn't stay still anymore. Anger pushed him out of bed. He began to train. Not out of patriotic duty, but out of purely selfish logic.
One push-up. Ten. Fifty. Crunches until his stomach burned.
If I'm strong, he thought, sweat dripping onto the polished floor, the fights end faster. If I'm lethal, Helena has no excuse to send me on exhaustive extermination missions. I want to solve the problem as quickly as possible and be left alone.
On the third day, Helena returned to the room and found Raven doing one-handed push-ups, his body drenched in sweat.
"I received your technical discharge," she said. "We've decided you're stable enough to return to the field, though the Commander still sees you as an unknown."
"Great. But I have a condition," Raven stood up, wiping the sweat away. "I'm done being your official punching bag. If I'm going to keep playing this game, I want to learn how to actually fight. I want an instructor. Someone who doesn't know what a TV speech is, someone who knows what blood and mud taste like."
Helena gave a cold smile. "I've already arranged that. I found an instructor who was sidelined for being 'too aggressive' with the elite cadets. She doesn't like wasting time."
At that exact moment, the door didn't slide; it seemed to give way under a sudden external force. The metallic crash echoed off the walls. A figure blurred across the room. Raven felt his instinct—now Level 4—shout "danger." He tried to raise his arms, tried to focus his hardening, but the attacker's speed was absurd.
A combat boot struck the center of his chest in a perfectly executed flying kick. The impact was dry, launching him backward. Raven collided with the bed frame, bending the metal with the weight of his adrenaline-hardened body.
"Slow. And with the look of someone waiting for dinner to be served," a harsh voice said.
Raven coughed, feeling the metallic taste of blood on the roof of his mouth. The impact of Sarah's boot still resonated in his sternum like the echo of a gong. He tried to prop himself up on his elbows, but the hospital mattress—now crooked and off its track—offered no stability.
"Do you..." Raven began, his voice coming out in a dry wheeze, "usually give a welcome like this in every room, or did I get VIP treatment for being Rank D?"
Sarah didn't smile. She took a step forward, closing the distance, and her shadow covered Raven's body.
"VIP? Sarah let out a short laugh, which sounded more like a bone snapping. "You got the treatment of someone who almost became a garden statue because he doesn't know the difference between hardening skin and having a combat stance. I saw the videos, kid. You didn't fight that beetle. You survived it by pure geological luck."
Raven finally managed to sit up, massaging his chest. "Look, Captain... Sarah, right? I've been stuck in bed for three days. I didn't ask to be a highlight video hero. I just want to solve the problem as quickly as possible and be left alone. If I could do this from a couch, I would."
Sarah tilted her head, her eyes scanning Raven's scars with professional disdain. "Tranquility? She leaned in so close Raven could smell the gunpowder and old sweat that permeated her clothes—a violent contrast to the clean scent of Ala Zero. "In the world out there, tranquility is a privilege for the dead or those lethal enough that no one wants to wake them up. You want peace? Learn to be the nightmare that makes monsters want to take a day off."
She reached out, but not to help him up. She grabbed Raven by the collar of his hospital gown and pulled him close, forcing him to look directly into her eyes—eyes that didn't have Kael's glow of hope, but the coldness of someone who had counted too many bodies.
"Helena told me you're 'lazy,'" Sarah whispered, her voice cutting. "I don't believe in laziness. I believe in economy of motion. If you're good enough to kill with one punch, you don't need to throw two. That's efficiency. But the way you are now... you're just a piece of granite waiting to be carved or crushed."
Raven sighed, letting his head hang for a second. "So the idea is to turn me into a diamond under pressure? How cliché, Captain. I'd rather stay coal; it's easier to burn and no one cares if I stay in the corner."
"Coal is for making fire. And that's exactly what I'm going to do with you." Sarah let go of his collar and took two steps back, looking at Helena, who remained leaning against the door.
"Helena," Sarah called, without taking her eyes off Raven, "his density tests say he can handle double the weight of a standard Rank D, right?"
"At least," Helena replied, crossing her arms. "His internal organs are still recovering from the obsidian surge, but the skeletal and muscular structure is begging for a load. The System won't stabilize if he stays lying down eating apples."
Raven looked from one to the other, feeling the "peace" he had planned slipping away like a distant desert mirage. "Wait a minute... 'begging for a load'? I've been stuck in bed for three days. I haven't even had a decent shower yet."
Sarah took a quick step, and before Raven could process her movement, she spun him. With a technique that defied gravity, she lifted him off the floor, throwing the hero's heavy body over her shoulders like a sack of supplies.
"The shower will be made of sweat and mud, Rank D," Sarah said, adjusting Raven's weight with irritating ease. "Ala Zero is for fixing machines. The training field is where we see if the machine is good for anything other than taking up space and wasting budget."
"Hey! I can walk!" Raven protested, feeling the blood rush to his head as he hung over the captain's back. "Put me down, this is humiliating. What will the security cameras think?"
"They'll think you're a bag of potatoes with potential," Sarah walked toward the door, which opened automatically for the Captain's authority. "And if you open your mouth to complain one more time, I'll activate your hardening by beating it into you while we go up the stairs."
Helena stepped aside, allowing Captain Sarah to pass carrying the reluctant hero. She looked at Raven for a brief moment—a look not of pity, but of strategic expectation.
"Try not to break the Captain, Raven," Helena said. "She's the only resource left for your profile."
"Me break her?" Raven shouted as he was dragged down the hallway of cold fluorescent lights. "She's carrying me like I'm a luxury rug! Sarah, seriously, I have rights! I want my peace back!"
"Your peace died in the South Sector, kid," Sarah's voice echoed through the metallic corridor as they moved away from Ala Zero. "Now, you belong to my schedule. And my schedule doesn't provide for rest breaks for the next three months."
Raven closed his eyes, resigned. All this just so I don't have to work twice as hard in the future, he thought. If I survive this woman, the next beetle will feel like a relaxing massage.