Zero eight hundred hit like a sledgehammer.
Caleb sat in the back row of Briefing Room 7. Eleven other new recruits occupied the rusted metal desks around him. The underground chamber smelled of burnt coffee and gun oil. Fluorescent bulbs buzzed overhead. The harsh light exposed every scuff on the concrete floor. There were no windows. There were no corporate banners. A dented steel podium stood at the front of the room next to a cracked digital board.
Vice Captain Iris Calder walked into the room.
She carried a chipped ceramic mug of black coffee. Her dark gray Seventh Division uniform sleeves were rolled high. Thick raised scar tissue crawled up both of her forearms like frozen lightning. She took a slow sip. She swallowed hard and set the mug on the podium.
Dark circles bruised the skin under her eyes. She looked like a frontline worker who simply survived longer than anyone else.
"Welcome to the meat grinder," Iris said. Her voice carried a raspy edge. "You signed the death forms last night. Now you learn what you actually agreed to."
She tapped the digital board. A sterile chart illuminated the room.
STREAM ECONOMICS
Base Salary 50,000 credits per month.
Viewership Bonus Public engagement points and direct viewer gifts convert to credits.
Guild Tax 22 percent deduction applied to all viewership bonuses and gifts.
Highlight Clips Sold to corporate sponsors for a bonus multiplier based on Danger Class.
Executive Private Feeds Public chat disabled. No secondary sponsor bids. One viewer owns you.
Caleb stared at the numbers. The brutal reality settled heavy in his gut. The fifty thousand base pay kept the collection agencies away from his family. It covered the interest. To actually survive and pay off the principal, he needed the viewership bonuses and the highlight multipliers.
He swallowed the nausea and forced his posture to stay rigid.
Iris tapped the digital board again. The economic chart vanished.
A jagged pyramid replaced it. The text appeared in a harsh font.
"The First and Third Divisions use sanitized corporate ladders," Iris explained. She rested her forearms against the metal podium. "We operate on the Schlacht ranking. The slaughterhouse rules. A hybrid of the old world."
She slapped the bottom block of the digital pyramid. A gray bar highlighted on the cracked screen.
"Rank F," Iris said. "The Draugr. The walking dead. That is every single one of you. You are ghosts. You have zero public presence. You get the base fifty grand and whatever scraps the Guild leaves behind in the disposal bays."
She moved her finger up the pyramid to a glowing blue tier.
"You want out of the graveyard? You need ten confirmed Danger Class harvests and a minimum of one hundred thousand viewer engagement points. Hit those metrics, and you evolve into Rank C. The Jaeger. The hunters."
Iris tapped her chipped mug against the metal podium.
"As a Jaeger, your base pay doubles. You earn access to the public ad revenue pool. You get premium surplus gear. You stop starving."
She pointed to the crimson section near the top.
"Survive a year as a Jaeger, pull a million viewers, and you join my elite assault squad. Rank A. The Shinigami. The death gods. You get corporate sponsorships, custom armor, and your face painted across the neon billboards in the upper sectors."
She looked up at the very tip of the pyramid. The block glowed gold.
"And the top seats? Captain Kade and myself?" Her razor sharp grin returned. "Rank S. The Aesir. The gods of this meat grinder. We take thirty percent of the entire division gross profit. If you want our seats, you have to kill us for them."
She looked above the gold block. A final tier hovered separate from the rest. It pulsed with a dark red light.
"Then there is Rank SSS," Iris murmured. The room went completely silent. You do not ask about them. You do not aim for them. They operate above the military grid and answer only to the Guild executives. If you see a SSS operator on the field, you run the other way."
Caleb evaluated the requirements. Ten confirmed harvests were manageable. A hundred thousand viewer engagement points were mathematically impossible with a locked feed. He had exactly one viewer. To reach Rank C and secure the untaxed bonus pay, his anonymous hacker had to dump hundreds of thousands of credits into his private stream purely for her own entertainment.
He was completely dependent on the ghost. He gripped the edge of the rusted desk. The aching void in his stomach twisted viciously.
"Class dismissed," Iris announced. She picked up her coffee mug. "Grab your datapads. Get your barracks assignments squared away. We run practical drills in the staging yard at thirteen hundred hours."
Chairs scraped loudly against the concrete floor. The tension in the room broke. The other eleven recruits grabbed their gear. They hurried toward the heavy steel doors to escape the Vice Captain.
Caleb grabbed his canvas duffel bag. He pushed himself up from the desk.
"Mercer," Iris called out. Her gravelly voice cut through the shuffling boots. "Stay in your seat."
Caleb stopped. He lowered his bag to the concrete.
The last recruit hurried out into the corridor. He pulled the heavy steel door shut behind him. The heavy latch clicked into place. The room sealed.
Iris walked slowly down the center aisle. Up close, the sheer density of her scars commanded absolute attention. She stopped a few feet from his desk. She studied his cheap canvas jacket and the heavy bruising extending up his neck.
"You hold the only Executive Private lock in this cycle," Iris stated. Her tone dropped into a cold clip. "Your entire feed is blacked out. No public gifts. No sponsor bids. One anonymous whale owns every second of your life on camera."
She tilted her head. "I read your file. You scrubbed bone marrow for five years. Care to explain how a disposal yard casualty pulled an exclusive million credit patronage?"
Caleb kept his posture relaxed. His muscles coiled tight. He was a thirty one year old man carrying secrets that could get him executed by a firing squad. He offered only the minimum truth required to survive the conversation.
"I was bleeding out in a disposal zone," Caleb said. "A capsule dropped. I accepted the help."
Iris studied him for two full seconds. She searched his face for a lie. She searched for the pampered entitlement of a corporate plant. She found only the exhausted calculated restraint of a cornered survivor.
"A convenient guardian angel," Iris murmured. She held out her scarred hand. "And the encrypted comms chip currently buried under your hairline?"
Caleb paused. Getting washed out on day one was not an option. He reached up and peeled the adhesive off his skin. He dropped the tiny matte black device into her palm.
Iris did not put the chip in her pocket. She held it up between her scarred thumb and index finger. She brought the tiny microphone directly to her mouth. She stared right at Caleb. Her words were meant entirely for the ghost on the other end of the line.
"Listen close, whale," Iris whispered. "The Seventh Division is a warzone. He is my soldier now. You lock his feed, you cut his resources. You cut his resources, he dies. You want a private show? Fine. But do not handicap my assault squad. Stay out of the way, or I will throw him in a signal dead bunker and you will never watch him bleed again."
The hum of the fluorescent lights filled the empty room.
The cracked digital board at the front of the room glitched.
The sterile white pyramid dissolved. A wave of corrupted static washed over the glass. Vibrant pulsing purple code replaced the military data. The text crawled across the massive screen. It dominated the dark briefing room.
[???] He belongs to me. I own exclusive rights to his suffering. You just use him for bait.
Iris did not flinch. She did not reach for a weapon. She took another slow sip of her black coffee. She read the purple text lighting up the concrete walls.
"I use him to kill Danger Class threats," Iris answered. She spoke clearly into the earpiece. "That is the job. Keep your wallet open if you want him to survive long enough to entertain you. I do not carry dead weight. I do not take orders from civilians."
She tossed the comms chip back onto Caleb's rusted desk. It hit the metal with a sharp clatter.
"Put it away," Iris ordered. She turned her back on him and walked toward the podium. "At least you do not lie about your baggage."
She slapped the side of the digital board. The military grid fought the hack. The system purged the purple text and replaced it with the blank Defense Force seal.
Caleb picked up the matte black chip. He shoved it deep into his canvas pocket. He stood up. His bruised right arm hung heavily by his side. The sheer physical toll of his healing ribs made every movement drag.
Iris leaned against the podium. She watched him pack his bag. Her dark eyes tracked the slight exhausted hunch in his shoulders.
"Get some calories, Mercer," Iris said quietly. The harsh edge left her voice entirely. "You look terrible."
Caleb grabbed his duffel bag. The heavy canvas strap bit into his bruised shoulder. He walked up the center aisle toward the heavy steel doors. The hum of the fluorescent bulbs followed him out into the concrete corridor.
He navigated the underground complex. The painted yellow arrows on the linoleum directed the recruits toward the mess hall.
His boots felt like lead. The adrenaline from the confrontation with Iris drained away. The parasite coiled under his ribs intensified its demands. A severe cramp folded his stomach in half. He caught himself against the cinderblock wall with his left hand. The rough texture of the painted concrete scraped against his palm. He dragged thin streams of oxygen through his nose.
He forced himself to keep walking.
The Seventh Division mess hall was a cavern of dented steel tables and bolted chairs. The smell of boiled synthetic protein and industrial cleaner hung thick in the air. A dozen veterans sat scattered across the room. They wore the faded scuffed gray uniforms of Rank F. Nobody spoke. They chewed their food with the mechanical efficiency of people who ate only to survive another shift.
Caleb approached the serving line. A bored attendant in a white apron stood behind a thick glass partition.
"Identification," the attendant grunted.
Caleb pulled his temporary access card from his pocket. He tapped it against the scanner.
The screen flashed red.
"Rank F," the attendant said. He scooped a gray dense block of synthetic protein onto a plastic tray. He dropped a foil packet of dry nutrient paste next to it. He slid the tray under the glass partition. "Standard ration."
Caleb stared at the gray block. It contained barely enough calories to sustain a normal human through a training drill. It would not even begin to satisfy the monster knitting his bones together.
"I need a double portion," Caleb said.
The attendant crossed his arms. "Double portions are for Rank C and above. You want more food, go kill something and rank up. Move along."
Caleb gripped the edge of the metal counter. The hunger burned straight through the cold void in his stomach. He could reach across the glass and take the entire tray of protein blocks. The urge spiked violently in his brain. His right hand twitched.
He locked his jaw. He grabbed the plastic tray with his left hand and walked away.
He found an empty table in the far corner of the room. He sat down heavily on the bolted steel chair. The metal groaned under his weight. He tore the foil packet open with his teeth. He squeezed the dry nutrient paste directly into his mouth. It tasted like chalk and sulfur. He swallowed it dry.
Heat flared in his chest.
The food hit his stomach and vanished. The parasite consumed it instantly. The burn sharpened. It settled deep in his marrow. It left him hollow again.
He picked up the gray protein block. He forced himself to take slow methodical bites. The food provided zero relief. A deep itching warmth crawled under his skin. The heavy burning fatigue bleeding from his joints refused to evaporate.
Footsteps approached his table.
A woman with chopped dark hair and a faded gray uniform dropped her tray onto the steel surface opposite him. She sat down. She chewed on a piece of dried fruit. Her eyes held the blank exhausted stare of a two year veteran stuck at the bottom of the slaughterhouse hierarchy.
"You are the new guy with the locked feed," she said. Her voice was completely flat. "I am Rina. Welcome to the graveyard."
Caleb leaned his elbows on the table. He kept his bruised right arm tucked close to his ribs. "Caleb."
"Two years I have been stuck in this division," Rina muttered. She swallowed the dried fruit. "I came in wanting to climb the tiers and pull a massive stream following. Now I just stay in the back of the formation and collect the base pay so I can eat. The military math is rigged."
She pointed a plastic fork at his bruised arm.
"You do not have the sync rate to survive the front line," Rina said. "The quartermaster uploaded your training regimen to the public board. A one-point-two percent kinetic amplification gives you zero margin for error. The suit will barely boost your speed and strikes, so you have to build raw physical mass just to survive the impact forces."
Caleb finished the protein block. The hunger remained an absolute physical agony.
"I survived the disposal yards," Caleb said. He kept his voice flat. "I know how to fight with minimal assistance."
Rina studied him. She picked up her tray. "Drills start at thirteen hundred. Try not to die. It ruins the morale."
She walked away.
Caleb sat alone in the mess hall. He stared at the empty plastic tray. The path to Rank C required a hundred thousand engagement points. He had zero public visibility. He had a starving body. He had an unpowered surplus suit.
He reached into his pocket. His calloused thumb brushed the sharp edges of the matte black Seventh Division pin. He felt the cold outline of the comms chip resting right beside it.
He had one viewer. He would have to give her a bloodbath.