Caleb sprinted down the hospital corridor barefoot.
The green arrows painted on the floor became the only part of the building he trusted: left, straight, right past a supply closet, then another left where the wall camera tried to follow him and lagged half a second behind.
Voices shouted from somewhere back near the room. Boots hit tile. A guard yelled for him to stop with the kind of confidence people used when they had never actually made anyone stop.
There would be no third chance. Bay Nine had been the first. The private viewer, the stim, the thing under his ribs, all of that had been the second.
If medical dragged him into six months of neural rehab, the Defense Force would close the file, the Guild would replace him, and debt would finish what the Siege-breaker had started.
The double sliding doors at the end of the corridor opened as he reached them.
Cold air and arena dust hit him together.
Inside, the proctor from the first two rounds stood on the staging ground, yelling at the remaining applicants. The recruits were already back in combat suits. Rifles hung across their chests. Helmets on. Visors lit. Phase Two had not waited politely for Caleb's discharge paperwork.
The proctor turned. His mouth opened, then he actually registered Caleb: hospital briefs, stained canvas jacket, bare feet, one arm purple and half-useless. He coughed into his fist.
"Caleb Mercer, what in the world are you doing here? Medical pulled you an hour ago."
A Defense Force guard slammed into Caleb from behind and locked both arms around his ribs.
"Sorry about the disturbance, sir," the guard grunted, dragging him backward. "Removing him now."
The recruits turned.
A few laughed when they saw the hospital briefs.
The laughter died when Caleb planted his feet.
The guard tightened his grip.
Caleb threw his weight forward.
The move was ugly, more yard fight than combat technique, but the guard's balance was behind him and Caleb's new strength did not ask permission. The man flipped over his hip and landed flat on his back in the gravel.
The impact knocked the breath out of him.
Silence hit the staging ground.
Then the guard rolled.
His hand slapped a control plate at his belt.
A green light flared.
"Five percent output request," he muttered.
The guard's suit whined, and he came in fast.
Caleb saw the gloved palm moving toward his face and had no time to duck.
The strike caught his jaw.
He hit the dirt on his back. The guard dropped on him, full armored weight driving a knee into Caleb's shoulder.
Pain flashed white.
Two more officers rushed across the staging ground.
The proctor stepped down from his metal platform.
"Now, now," he said, voice carrying over the low hum of suits. "If he is as injured as medical claims, why are you being so rough with him?"
The guard stayed planted on Caleb.
He was panting.
"He's stronger than he should be, sir. I can barely hold him, even with suit assist."
Caleb forced his fingers to curl around the man's leg.
The injured arm barely worked.
The other one did.
He twisted and shoved while the guard was busy explaining himself.
The man tipped sideways into the dirt.
Two seconds of freedom.
Then the other officers hit Caleb from behind.
They drove him face-first into gravel and pinned both arms tight.
Too heavy, too many. His ribs held, which was new, but holding did not mean winning.
"Stand down."
The proctor's voice cut through the staging ground.
The armored knee stayed pressed into Caleb's back.
"I said off him," the proctor snapped. "Clearance just updated. Applicant 4013 is Black-class. Return to your posts."
Black-class. Caleb did not know what that meant. The officers did. Their weight lifted at once.
Cold air ran over Caleb's spine through the open jacket.
He pushed up to hands and knees. Bloody saliva fell into the gravel. His legs straightened on their own schedule, not his.
The proctor watched him over the glowing datapad.
"You have two minutes to gear up, 4013. One flinch on the firing line and medical carries you out. We test soldiers, not liabilities."
Caleb nodded.
"Move," the proctor said.
Caleb limped toward the surplus racks.
The recruits tracked him as he passed. Some were amused. Some were worried. Some had the clean, hungry expressions of people wondering whether the camera had caught all of that.
He grabbed the nearest standard-issue armor.
The skin-tight underlayer went on over hospital briefs because dignity had already left the building and taken the receipt. He locked the chest plates, knee guards, and thigh holsters. The right arm plate resisted around the swelling. He forced the latch shut anyway.
The helmet slid over his head.
Three biometric needles punched through the fabric into the skin along his spine.
His breath caught. The thing under his ribs stirred. Not rejection this time. Interest.
Caleb pulled a surplus rifle from the bin and racked the bolt.
The metal clack sounded louder than it should have.
Hiro stepped half a pace out of formation.
He was in a pristine infantry harness now, hands locked around his rifle, knuckles white through the gloves.
"You are insane," Hiro whispered. "They were going to break your arm. You do not fight security."
"I needed gear."
"That is not a normal explanation."
"It is the one I have."
Iharu Furuhashi leaned out from the second row.
Red-trimmed armor. Rust-colored hair visible under the open helmet seal. A personal drone hovered over his shoulder, already angled for his best side.
"Watch closely, chat," Iharu announced. "The scrubber broke out of the ICU to play soldier. Do not blink or you will miss the elimination."
Kikaru stood ten yards down the line.
Her right arm was braced under the prototype plating, but her posture made a legal argument against admitting injury. She cast one scathing glance at Caleb's bare ankles beneath the armor, then turned away like looking any longer would lower property values.
The digital board above the blast doors chimed.
Names and sync rates populated in yellow.
KIKARU MITSURUGI - 72%.
Her prototype suit answered with a smooth, expensive vibration.
IHARU FURUHASHI - 15%.
Iharu bounced on his heels and winked at his drone.
HIRO OKUDA - 18%.
Hiro bent his knees once, testing the release in the suit fibers, then exhaled like a man trying to convince math to remain friendly.
A dull beep sounded inside Caleb's helmet. CALEB MERCER - 1.2%. The old suit twitched around him, useless for strength but loud enough to remind him it existed. Static popped in his right ear.
The comms chip behind his ear warmed against the skin.
Blue military HUD lines shivered, broke, and reformed in deep purple.
[??? : Look at you.]
[??? : Covered in dirt and still standing.]
Caleb checked the rifle's safety and tried not to react.
[??? : The prodigies can keep their expensive toys.]
[??? : I want the cornered one.]
[??? : Keep fighting for me.]
The purple vanished, and the standard targeting reticle snapped back into place. The proctor climbed onto a metal crate.
"Baseline calibration," he announced. "We check targeting, weapon handling, and recoil tolerance. Your visors track distance. Your suits act as biological batteries, storing and releasing power to compensate for recoil. Clear your targets."
The heavy steel blast doors opened.
A smog-choked firing range stretched beyond them. Ruined concrete walls. Rusted car shells. Painted mechanical targets hidden in the shadows like cheap monsters in a government training budget.
"Line up."
Caleb jogged to the painted white line. The starting siren shrieked. Mechanical whines bounced across the range. Crawler targets popped from the rubble. Iharu fired first.
His custom rifle barked in clean three-round bursts. His suit ate the recoil. Four targets dropped in three seconds, and his laugh went straight into the drone microphone.
Kikaru moved differently. Not flashy. Worse. Efficient.
The rifle came up in one smooth arc. Blue visor glow. Trigger pull. Dead center. She shifted her hips, let the suit carry the motion, and fired again.
Another target shattered. Caleb raised his surplus rifle. The HUD flooded his vision. Wind velocity. Distance counters. Trajectory lines. Target priority. Recoil forecast.
Too much. All of it moving. All of it blinking like the helmet wanted him to fail in as many colors as possible.
A target snapped up behind a concrete pillar fifty yards out.
Caleb swung right and squeezed the trigger.
The rifle kicked like a mule with a personal grudge.
The stock slammed into his shoulder. The barrel jerked high. The round blew a chunk off the concrete wall ten feet above the target.
Red text flashed.
MISS.
Iharu snorted from the next lane. "Did he just shoot the sky?"
Kikaru reloaded without turning her helmet.
Hiro leaned just enough for his voice to carry.
"Caleb."
Caleb lowered the smoking barrel. "Busy embarrassing myself."
"The HUD is too much. Ignore the side numbers. Find the green dot in the center."
"The side numbers are yelling at me."
"Let them yell."
Another target sprang from behind a rusted car hood.
Caleb brought the rifle up.
"Do not brace for the shot," Hiro said.
"If I do not brace, it breaks my jaw."
"The fibers catch it. Trust the tissue."
"I met the tissue five minutes ago."
"Trust it anyway."
Caleb inhaled, and cold smog burned his throat.
The numbers scrolled. He ignored them badly at first, then less badly.
The green dot hovered. He placed it over the painted chest. His shoulders loosened. He pulled the trigger. The rifle exploded backward.
Just before the stock smashed into bone, the suit fibers hardened just enough to keep his arm attached, though nothing about it felt good.
The round punched through the smog and shattered the target.
Green text blinked.
HIT.
Caleb almost laughed, but the recoil had stolen the breath for it.
The proctor's whistle cut through the range minutes later.
"Cease fire. Safeties on."
Targets dropped.
The recruits lowered their rifles.
"This was baseline screening," the proctor said, pacing the line. "Defense Force does not carry dead weight. Minimum score to advance is twelve confirmed hits. Look at the board."
The digital screen above the blast doors changed.
Sync rates vanished. Scores loaded in descending order. Kikaru Mitsurugi sat at the top. 114 Hits. Perfect Accuracy. Iharu Furuhashi followed close behind. 98 Hits. Names scrolled. Red lines cut through the failures.
Two hundred applicants became less than eighty in the time it took some people to realize their dream had been reduced to a display font.
Caleb searched the bottom. His chest heaved. The scroll slowed. Then stopped.
One name hovered just above the elimination line.
Caleb Mercer. 12 Hits. Exactly twelve. His jaw locked. Iharu froze on the number, then laughed.
"Are you kidding me? Twelve? The guy shot the ceiling."
He leaned against his rifle and pointed at Caleb like the drone needed help finding the joke.
"Try not to die in the next phase, scrubber. I want to watch you wash out live."
Kikaru ejected her spent magazine.
It hit the asphalt near her boot.
Her eyes flicked to the bottom of the board.
"He wasted eighty percent of his ammunition fighting his own armor," she said. "A statistical anomaly. If he survives the next hour, it will be a miracle."
She marched toward the inner staging doors.
Hiro came over with sweat shining under his helmet and a smile he was trying not to make too large.
"Twelve," he said.
"Barely."
"Barely passed still passed."
Caleb adjusted his grip on the rifle. His right arm throbbed, and the chip behind his ear warmed once, then cooled.
"Yeah," Caleb said.
The next doors began to open.
"Still in."