The medical brace dug into Caleb's ribs every time he breathed wrong.
The doctors had already left.
They took their diagnostic tablets, their low voices, and the last chance that one of them might say something useful. The pneumatic door clicked shut behind them, leaving Caleb alone under fluorescent lights that made the room feel scrubbed clean of mercy.
One percent sync rate. Surplus armor. Right arm locked in a rigid sling, heavy as dead weight.
The fantasy was over.
Caleb kept his eyes shut because opening them meant seeing the brace, the monitor, the neat white ceiling, and the stupid little curtain around the bed like a stage had been built for his failure.
Any second the door would open again.
Elara would come in furious and scared, which was worse than just furious. Or Vance would throw a stained disposal uniform onto the cot and tell him graveyard shift started at twenty-two hundred.
Back to the bay, back to blood on concrete, back to pretending a life counted as stable because the debt collectors knew where to send the letters.
The door slid open. Precise footsteps entered. Not Elara's combat boots. Not Vance's dragging heel and cigarette cough. A frustrated exhale cut through the room.
"Stupid. Absolute idiot."
Caleb kept his eyes shut.
The medical cocktail had slowed his brain enough that curiosity needed to fill out paperwork before moving.
"You look pathetic," the girl said.
Kikaru.
She kicked the metal bed frame.
The brace bit into Caleb's side. He still did not open his eyes.
"I only came down here to make sure you did not expire and ruin my exam record," she said. "You took my best hit and walked it off. You do not get to die from a little internal bleeding."
Her boots resumed pacing.
Hard step. Hard step. Turn.
She was walking like someone trying to stomp a feeling into the floor before it crawled up her legs.
"Hitting me like that," she muttered. "You bruised me. I have never been hit like that in my life. Not by instructors. Not by combat simulations. Certainly not by some out-of-shape garbage sweeper in a relic suit."
Caleb thought: I'm not dying.
Then a wet sniff broke the rhythm of her steps.
Wait.
Am I?
Caleb bolted upright.
The brace carved into his ribs and turned the movement into a bad idea halfway through, but panic had already signed the order.
"Wait, what? I'm dying?"
Kikaru shrieked.
The sound had none of the Mitsurugi polish in it, only a full, startled human crack that bounced off the medical cabinets.
She scrambled backward. Her heel caught the IV stand. A tray went over with a metallic crash that scattered tools across the linoleum.
She hit the wall with her back. Color climbed her neck.
"You are supposed to be in a coma!" she yelled. "Were you eavesdropping on me this entire time?"
Caleb blinked through the morphine fog.
"If I was in a coma, how would I eavesdrop?"
"That is not the point."
"Also, I was trying to sleep."
Her hands balled into fists.
"I was not talking to you," she said. "I was conducting a verbal stress test. If a trauma patient fails to react to loud external stimulus, it can imply neurological collapse."
Caleb checked the overturned tray.
"By complaining about a bruise?"
The flush reached her ears, and he slumped back onto the pillow.
"Sorry about the bruise, by the way."
Kikaru froze.
Her mouth opened.
No sound came out for a second, which Caleb would have enjoyed more if his ribs were not trying to file a complaint.
"It did not hurt," she snapped.
She marched right back to the bed and pointed one shaking finger at the bandages.
"I wear a multi-million-credit prototype. You wear garbage. You did not hurt me. Do not pity me, you out-of-shape loser."
"Okay."
"Do not okay me."
"I am in a medical bed. My debate options are limited."
Her expression flickered.
For half a second she almost looked like she might laugh, and then pride found the emergency brake.
She kicked the IV tubing away from her boot and stormed out.
The pneumatic door sealed shut.
It opened again.
A nurse stepped inside with a datapad tucked against her chest. She stopped at the sight of the overturned tray, the scattered surgical tools, and Caleb sitting half-upright with one arm locked to his body.
"What happened in here?"
Caleb settled back carefully.
"A friend came to say hi and lost a fight with loose wire."
The lie had nothing to do with forgiveness.
Forgiveness would have required energy, and Caleb was using his to keep his ribs still. Saying Kikaru Mitsurugi had stormed his room, kicked over equipment, and nearly made him tear his brace loose would put her family lawyers in his medical file before dinner. It would put his name in a report written by people who knew the price of every recruit except him.
The report would not fix his arm. It would only teach her family where to press.
He could hate her later. Right now, silence was cheaper.
The nurse checked his monitor, then his face.
"Am I dying?" he asked. "There was yelling."
She checked the bio-monitor beside the bed. "No. You will live."
"That's inconvenient for some people."
"Try not to make a hobby out of it." She tapped the IV controls. "I increased your morphine. It should pull you under eventually."
She took the remote from the side pocket of her uniform and aimed it at the wall.
The flat screen flickered on.
The Runner Trials broadcast filled the room.
Aerial drone footage swept over the testing stadium. Dirt clouds. Broken rings. Recruits in armor moving through the chaos in lanes that made sense to the officials and nobody else.
"If your pressure stabilizes, we can discharge you for home recovery," the nurse said. "Even making it past the opening bracket is more than most freelance applicants manage."
"I did not make it past anything."
"You made people watch."
She said it like that meant something, then left him with the door shut and his eyes on the empty doorway.
The morphine began working harder at the edges of his thoughts. A small detail tried to follow the nurse out of the room.
Her uniform had discolored shoulder pads.
A tiny red light had blinked near the seam at her collarbone.
Camera lens. The thought mattered. He knew it mattered. Then the broadcast audio spiked.
"Applicant Okuda under pressure in Ring Six."
Caleb's attention dragged back to the screen.
Hiro was backpedaling across a cracked section of arena floor. His opponent rushed him in red-trimmed armor, laughing loud enough for the broadcast microphones to love him.
Same rust-haired recruit who had mocked Caleb's single viewer.
"Stop running, coward!" the redhead shouted. "You're making this boring."
He drove a powered fist forward.
Hiro ducked.
The gauntlet missed his shoulder and smashed into the ground. The impact tore a trench through the dirt and sprayed gravel across the camera drone lens.
Hiro tripped over a slab of broken concrete.
He rolled an instant before the recruit's boot came down where his head had been.
Caleb tried to sit up more and failed because the brace hated ambition.
"Move," he muttered.
The redhead stepped forward with his guard low.
Hiro drew his standard-issue pistol. Not at the recruit. At the dirt between his boots. He fired three times.
Compression rounds shattered against the foundation. Freezing vapor burst outward. Ice climbed the attacker's calves and locked the armor joints to the floor.
"What the..."
The redhead yanked one leg. The ice held.
Hiro got up.
His fourteen-percent sync flared hard enough for the suit fibers to show under the armor plates.
He sprinted ten feet, jumped, tucked his chin, and launched himself into a two-footed dropkick with the reckless commitment of someone who had never looked cool by accident before and wanted witnesses.
Both boots hit the recruit's chest.
The crack rolled through the hospital speaker.
The redhead flew backward, skidded across gravel, and tumbled out of the ring.
The elimination buzzer blared.
Caleb exhaled.
"Good," he said, though nobody was there to hear it.
On screen, Hiro walked to the edge of the ring. He kicked the broken ice off his opponent's boots and offered a hand.
The red-haired recruit glared at the hand.
Then he took it.
Hiro hauled him upright with effort and an expression that said he was already regretting how heavy enemies were after a win.
An announcer drone drifted into frame.
"Match concluded. Winner: Hiro Okuda. Eliminated: Iharu Furuhashi."
So that was the loudmouth's name: Iharu.
A yellow graphic flashed along the bottom of the screen, tallying live viewers for Ring Six.
23,540.
Caleb watched the number until it doubled in the morphine haze.
Twenty-three thousand. Hiro was not just surviving. People were watching him survive. Caleb's head sank into the pillow. The screen blurred.
He fell asleep smiling a little, because one of them had made it look possible.