The heavy steel blast doors ground open, sealing Assault Squad Three inside Sector Four's live-fire kill house.
Artificial smog pumped through the overhead vents. The air tasted of ozone and burnt copper.
Caleb stepped onto the broken asphalt. He held the surplus combat rifle tight against his chest. He tried to mimic the tactical crouch the quartermaster had demonstrated during the briefing, but his footing felt completely unnatural. He had spent five years walking through blood-slicked containment bays, not military warzones.
A priority camera drone zipped past his helmet, its lens whirring loudly.
Jaxson hovered near a concrete barrier a few yards away. The Tier-Four veteran wore custom-painted armor trimmed in neon corporate logos. He flashed a practiced, arrogant grin directly into his personal drone.
"Watch this run, chat," Jaxson projected his voice, hitting an exaggerated broadcast pitch. "Pushing for fifty thousand engagement points today. Drop those gift subscriptions. Highlight clips coming up."
Two other veterans flanked Jaxson. They ignored the center of the street entirely.
"Rookie, push forward," Jaxson ordered over the local comms, racking his plasma rifle. "Draw the initial aggro. Keep them in the open so my drone gets a clean angle on the execution."
Caleb walked out into the middle of the empty street.
The ninety-degree heat inside the armor stifled his breathing.
A hollow, agonizing cramp folded his stomach in half. The caloric deficit from healing his shattered ribs stripped his energy reserves. Unnatural heat radiated from behind his sternum, scraping against his empty gut and demanding massive amounts of fuel just to keep him upright.
A mechanical Yoju lunged from the rubble directly in front of him. Its steel mandibles snapped.
Jaxson ignited his suit thrusters. He vaulted off the concrete barrier, aiming a flashy aerial strike for the cameras. He fired a bright, expensive plasma round.
The shot hit the thickest part of the mechanical target's armored shoulder. It sparked uselessly, leaving a superficial scorch mark.
The beast ignored the plasma fire. It charged Caleb.
Caleb dropped the awkward surplus rifle. It clattered against the asphalt. He reached to his belt and drew his standard-issue combat knife.
A thin seam under the jaw. A loose joint on the left leg.
The Yoju leaped.
Caleb stepped inside its guard. The one-point-two percent kinetic amplification of the suit fibers kicked in. The marginal boost was not flashy, but it provided the exact snap of speed he needed.
He drove the combat knife directly into the exposed gap in the machine's knee. The joint shattered under the pressure. The mechanical target crashed onto the concrete. Caleb twisted the blade into the wiring and ripped it free.
Jaxson landed in the gravel nearby. "Hey! You ruined the combo multiplier! Stay out of my shot!"
The blue military HUD inside Caleb's cracked visor flickered.
The engagement metrics and wind trajectory lines dissolved into corrupted static. Vibrant, pulsing purple code flooded the glass, completely locking out the military grid.
[??? : They use you as a static prop. They do not appreciate what you are.]
Caleb locked his jaw. He wiped a streak of synthetic fluid off his visor.
[??? : This drill is incredibly boring. Let us make it entertaining.]
A deep, electronic siren shrieked through the kill house.
The yellow safety strobes lining the artificial buildings turned a stark, blinding crimson. The mechanical whines of the training targets shifted in pitch, winding up into a high-frequency scream.
"What is going on with the safety limiters?" one of the squad veterans yelled over the comms.
Jaxson slapped the side of his helmet. His confident broadcast pitch wavered. "The feed is dead. Guys, my drone just dropped offline." He took a hesitant step backward, his plasma rifle lowering. "Reset the network. Just... tell the proctors to reset it. This isn't funny."
[??? : I locked the facility doors. I shut down their little cameras. Now it is just you and me.]
The rubble at the end of the street exploded.
Six mechanical crawlers poured out of the ruins. Their optical sensors burned a bright, hostile purple. They scrambled over the brick walls with terrifying, lethal speed.
The crawlers swarmed the squad.
Jaxson panicked. He sprayed plasma fire wildly into the street. The superheated rounds bounced off the upgraded armor plating. A crawler lunged, slamming its steel mass directly into Jaxson's chest.
The veteran crashed into a rusted transport truck. The machine raised a serrated steel limb.
Jaxson threw his hands up over his face. A sharp, terrified sound escaped his throat. He completely forgot he was holding a weapon.
Caleb sprinted forward.
The one-point-two percent kinetic boost carried his momentum. He slid across the broken asphalt, driving his boots into the crawler's undercarriage to launch the heavy machine backward into the dirt.
The crawler rolled to its feet and hissed.
"Stop shooting the chest plates!" Caleb barked over the comms, dodging a lethal swipe from the machine's mandibles. "Hit the thin seams! The joints!"
"They're moving too fast!" the third veteran screamed, backpedaling toward the sealed blast doors.
The agonizing heat in Caleb's chest flared. Sweat soaked his undershirt. His body demanded fuel to sustain the rapid movements. He forced oxygen through his nose, compartmentalizing the pain.
A crawler flanked him on the right.
Caleb pivoted off his back foot. The suit fibers hummed. He slammed his armored elbow into the side of the machine's foreleg. The steel buckled. He drove his combat knife straight down through the exposed optical sensor, pinning the machine to the street.
[??? : Beautiful. You do not panic. You just break them.]
Two more crawlers dropped from the ceiling rafters.
Caleb ripped his knife free. He crossed the street in three long strides. He grabbed the nearest crawler by its rear strut. The one-point-two percent amplification fueled his grip. He hauled the machine backward and drove the blade up into the gap beneath its jaw.
Sparking fluid sprayed across his boots.
Jaxson scrambled away from the wreckage. He stared at Caleb in absolute shock. The arrogant streamer was gone, replaced by a teenager trembling in dented armor.
The final crawler lunged at Caleb's blind spot.
Caleb dropped his center of gravity. He let the machine's momentum carry it over his shoulder. He drove the blade upward, carving a deep trench through the soft underbelly. The machine crashed into a brick wall and went still.
Caleb stood in the middle of the artificial street. His chest heaved in ragged gasps. The starvation hollowed him out. A severe cramp twisted his left leg. He leaned his weight against a concrete pillar, keeping his knife raised.
The heavy containment doors at the far end of the street ground open.
A simulated Danger Class-5 target stepped out of the dark. Thick, overlapping steel plates covered its entire body. It stood twelve feet tall, dragging a massive hydraulic wrecking mace attached to its right arm.
"A Class-5?" Jaxson choked out. He retreated until his back hit the sealed blast doors. "In a Tier-Four drill? No. No, we can't fight that."
[??? : I uploaded this one just for you. If you beg me, I will shut it down.]
Caleb wiped the sweat from his chin guard.
He tightened his grip on the combat knife. The blade was chipped and dull from the previous kills. He did not type a response. He simply stepped away from the concrete pillar and walked back out into the open street.
[??? : You are so stubborn.]
The brute charged.
The ground shook. It swung the hydraulic mace in a devastating horizontal arc.
Caleb used the suit's kinetic boost to dive under the swing. The mace smashed into the concrete pillar behind him, shattering the structure into a cloud of shrapnel.
Caleb rolled through the dust. The heat in his chest reached a boiling point. The caloric deficit ripped the remaining energy from his muscles.
A hot exhaust vent glowed at the base of the machine's spine.
The brute pivoted. It raised the mace high above its head for a crushing downward strike.
Caleb sprinted directly at the machine.
The mace plummeted. Caleb stepped hard off his left boot. The kinetic amplification snapped him sideways just as the weapon cratered the asphalt. The impact threw dirt and ash into the air.
Caleb stepped onto the embedded head of the mace. He used it as a springboard.
He launched himself upward, grabbing the thick cabling around the machine's neck to swing around to its back.
Mid-air, the starvation crashed over him.
His vision went completely black.
His human muscles locked. The suit's one-point-two percent boost stuttered against his dead weight. His grip slipped on the thick cables. Gravity ripped at his legs, dragging him downward toward the spinning gears of the machine's shoulder joint.
Raw, burning heat surged from his sternum, a desperate biological reaction fighting the blackout.
His vision cleared just a fraction. The hot exhaust vent passed his visor.
Falling backward, Caleb drove the chipped knife blindly into the glowing slot.
He shoved his entire failing body weight onto the hilt. The blade punched through the hot vent, grinding deep into the inner mechanisms.
He ripped the knife downward, severing the cables, and plummeted to the asphalt.
A high-pitched mechanical squeal erupted from the brute. Blinding white light vented from its shattered spine. The massive machine seized violently, took two staggering steps, and collapsed face-first into the street.
Caleb lay on his back in the ash. He couldn't lift his arms. His lungs burned. The unnatural heat scraped the bottom of his empty reserves.
The crimson safety strobes abruptly cut out.
The standard yellow facility lights flickered back on. The electronic siren died.
Jaxson and the other veterans stood frozen near the blast doors. They stared at the smoking wreckage of the Class-5 brute, and then at the exhausted rookie in the dirt.
The purple code on Caleb's visor slowly dissolved. A final message typed itself neatly across the center of the glass.
[??? : You almost died just to prove a point. I love that about you.]
The text paused. A new line appeared, lingering directly in his line of sight.
[??? : I know what is knitting your ribs together, Caleb. I know what you are hiding under that suit. We are going to have so much fun.]
The text vanished. The standard military HUD rebooted, displaying a perfect stream of pristine, untouched drill data.