The harsh buzzer split the darkness at precisely 0430 hours, its metallic screech reverberating through the barracks like a saw blade on bone. The air tasted of recycled oxygen-stale and tinged with the alkaline bite of concrete dust. Within seconds, nine bodies sprang into motion with practiced efficiency-a symphony of rustling fabric, creaking bunks, and the rhythmic slap of bare feet on cold polymer flooring. In the tenth bunk, Fiona opened her eyes and stared at the concrete ceiling, its surface pockmarked with decades of mineral sweat and rust stains that spread like blood in water.
The underground Sinai installation hummed-not with the organic thrum of life, but the arrhythmic growl of aging generators. Condensation dripped from exposed pipes overhead, each drop hitting Fiona's forehead with the precision of a metronome. Outside, somewhere beyond concrete and steel, the ancient conflict between Palestine and Israel raged on as it had for over a century, its distant artillery fire muffled into a faint heartbeat by fifty meters of earth and reinforced titanium.
Fiona sat up slowly, her threadbare cotton undershirt clinging to her ribs-too thin for the installation's perpetual chill. The others were already halfway through their morning routines. Her fingers found the neatly folded uniform atop her blanket-standard-issue fatigues marked with a single stripe. Private. Everyone else wore the diagonal slash of Private First Class. The fabric felt alien against her palms, synthetic fibers too smooth compared to the sun-bleached burlap she'd hauled mangoes in for twenty years.
Nakamura paused mid-shave, his razor hovering above a cheek mapped with old scars. "First rule of hell, gaijin-you don't keep the demons waiting." His blade scraped downward, the sound like sandpaper on steel.
Montoya buffed his boots with a cloth torn from his old Colombian Army uniform. "This woman thinks she's still haggling at the market. Look at her-no polish, no pride."
"Pride?" Yoon snapped her comb shut, the click echoing like a pistol slide. "Pride is for officers. We're here to be tools. Sharp ones." Her gaze flicked to Fiona's unmade bed. "Hers is still dull."
Adeoye snorted, the sound sharpened by Lagos street-corner cadence. "Forty minutes late won't matter when the drones come. Dead is dead."
Fiona dressed with the deliberate slowness of someone rationing movement. Her hands paused at the uniform's Velcro straps-too loud, too modern. She missed buttons. When she bent to tie her boots, her spine cracked in three places, a relic of sleeping on concrete floors long before she met Sky.
She made the bed as she'd seen in films, tucking corners with fingers that remembered stitching torn fruit sacks by moonlight, next to a broken streetlamp. The others' whispers lapped at her like tide against a rotting pier:
"Think she'll last a week?" Davis asked, his Marine tattoo-an eagle clutching a skull-twitching as he stretched.
Hagen scrubbed his face beneath the sink's trickle, water sluicing through fingers thick as suspension cables. "Civilians break fast. But the quiet ones? They either shatter or cut you when you're not looking."
Fiona's jaw tightened. She'd learned young how to fold hunger into a hidden pocket, how to let blisters harden into armor. Now she stood, back straight as the rebar jutting from ruins, and walked toward the exit. Her shadow on the corridor wall wavered under flickering LEDs-a marionette with its strings cut.
In her pocket, the creased photo of Camilla rubbed against her thigh. She didn't need to look. The girl's face lived in her hands' topography-every callus a contour line.
The door hissed open, revealing a corridor lit by the sickly green of bioluminescent emergency strips. Fiona stepped into the gloom, her breath fogging in air that smelled of machine oil and forgotten promises.
Behind her, Nayak unzipped her duffel. "Cleaning kit's sealed. Toothpaste tube flat as a corpse."
"Animals leave traces," Singh said, adjusting his turkish color. "Ghosts don't."
Fiona leaned against the wall, its surface leaching cold through her shirt. Fifteen minutes until the instructors came. Fifteen minutes to remember Camilla's last words: "Everything is your fault. The eviction notice—the nights you disappeared into those damn video games—the way you shut us out."
She pressed a thumb to her palm, massaging the ridge of an invisible scar. No flashbacks-just the weight of years compressed into bone. Her poverty lived in the way she conserved water, in the way she'd hidden half her breakfast roll beneath her clothes.
When the others emerged, smelling of soap and discipline, Fiona's cheeks were dry. Tears will be for the dark, for the moments between drill rotations when the generators faltered and the walls seemed to breathe.
The corridor lights brightened to interrogation-room intensity. Somewhere above, a shell struck the desert floor-a lover's kiss to the installation's armored skull. Fiona closed her eyes.
Camilla's future hung in the black between stars, a CosmosX contract burning through the atmosphere like Icarus' wings. Fiona's present was this: concrete, silence, and the art of folding herself smaller.
Let them see a failed mother, she thought, her posture softening into the slouch of market-stall women waiting for trucks that never came. This mask will fit better.
The corridor lights stuttered like failing synapses, then blazed to full intensity. Boot heels struck titanium flooring-a military percussion approaching with metronomic precision. In that sudden glare, the barracks seemed less a shelter than an operating theater, every flaw and fatigue line exposed. Fiona's eyes fixed on a point in the middle distance, her posture neither defiant nor submissive: simply enduring, as stone endures the wind.
Sergeant Ashby and Corporal Crowe materialized from the sterile gloom, avatars of the institution's will. Ashby moved with the coiled efficiency of a predator, his frame compact but dense as neutron matter. His face-all acute angles and scar tissue-twisted into what might have been a smile on a less dangerous man.
"Good morning, maggots." He purred, voice smooth as polished obsidian. "I see our civilian decided to grace us with her presence."
Ashby circled Fiona, nostrils flaring as if scenting weakness. His eyes-one brown, one milky white from some forgotten battlefield-measured the Colombian woman from crown to heel.
"You smell like defeat, Private. Did you even wash? Or do you fancy yourself too good for basic hygiene?"
Behind her, Crowe's silhouette blocked the hallway light, expression impassive beneath a crop of steel-wool hair-an unmoved pillar in a world built on shifting sand.
Fiona stared through Ashby as though he were made of Bucaramanga's morning mist. Words like these had fallen on her since childhood-from corrupt policemen, from gangs, from the fathers of girls who wouldn't play with Camilla because her mother sold fruit with dirt-encrusted fingernails. She did not flinch. The art of survival is not in never being struck, but in learning how to remain oneself after the blow.
"Answer me, Private!" Ashby barked, his face centimeters from Fiona's cheek.
"Yes." Fiona replied, her accent thick but her words clear.
"Yes, what private!?"
A ripple of surprise moved through the lined-up recruits. They'd expected tears, stammering, perhaps even collapse. Instead, the civilian's eyes held the flat calm of deep water-a soul that had known the undertow and learned not to thrash.
"Yes, sergeant!" she answered, the syllables shaped by the memory of war flicks and the necessity of obedience.
Ashby's expression flickered-disappointment? Respect? Impossible to tell as he whirled toward the others.
"Three minutes to the training yard! Move!"
The corridor emptied in seconds, boots hammering polycomposite as nine bodies lunged into motion. Fiona matched their pace, neither leading nor trailing. When they erupted into the compound's central yard, dawn was still a theoretical concept fifty meters above their heads. Artificial sun lamps cast everything in clinical white, bleaching color from faces and uniforms alike.
The yard-circular, five hundred meters across-was ringed with obstacles of increasing complexity: walls, rope climbs, mud pits screened by razor wire. At its center waited Crowe, somehow having arrived before them despite his bulk.
"Circuit training." he announced, voice like gravel in a cement mixer. "Five kilometers of running interspersed with obstacle stations. Sergeant Ashby and I will demonstrate the standard."
Without further preamble, Ashby launched into motion. He tore across the yard, his strides economical yet explosive. When he reached the first obstacle-a five-meter wall-he scaled it with spider-like efficiency, fingers finding invisible purchase. Crowe matched him movement for movement, his mass defying physics as he vaulted barriers and navigated razor wire with ballet precision.
"Now you." Crowe called, not even breathing hard. "And remember-last one to finish buys everyone's drinks with money you don't have."
The recruits bolted forward-all except Fiona, who began at a measured pace. Nakamura and Davis immediately took the lead, their military backgrounds evident in every disciplined movement. Behind them, the others formed a tight pack, bodies trained by years of drill and hardship.
"Already giving up, Private?" Ashby called as Fiona lagged behind. "I knew you'd break before breakfast."
But Fiona's pace remained steady. When she reached the wall, she didn't hesitate or analyze-she simply climbed, her movements lacking the technical precision of her peers but compensating with a raw economy of motion learned in sensei Leonardo's dojo. Her hands found holds where others saw only smooth surfaces, fingers strengthened by decades of carrying fruit crates and months of practicing sword forms under sensei Kishikawa's tutelage while she was recovering. Her body moved with the grace of necessity-poetry in muscle and scar.
Pain bloomed across her palms as old blisters reopened, but kyokushin had taught her that pain was merely information-neither good nor bad, simply data. She climbed, bled, and continued.
By the third kilometer, Davis had dropped back, his face contorted with the ghosts of old injuries. Montoya and Yoon maintained their lead, but their breath now came in measured gasps. Behind them, the pack had stretched into a line, fatigue separating the merely excellent from the exceptional.
And still Fiona ran, her pace unchanged, her expression vacant as though her mind inhabited some distant country where suffering held no jurisdiction.
"Look at Private Pathetic." Ashby shouted, suddenly appearing alongside Fiona, running backward to better observe her struggle. "Did you leave your spine in Colombia with your dignity?"
Fiona's eyes flickered toward the sergeant-the first real acknowledgment she'd offered. Her lips parted, not in gasping breath but in what might have been the ghost of a smile.
"In Bucaramanga, Sergeant," she said between controlled inhales, "men who shout like dogs are usually trying to sell rotten meat or lack the gut to back their words up."
Nakamura, close enough to overhear, nearly stumbled in shock. Ashby's face froze for a microsecond before splitting into a wolf's grin.
"Private, I will personally ensure you regret those words for what remains of your very short stay."
The sergeant accelerated away, his form perfect, while Crowe materialized on Fiona's other side. He studied her running form with professional detachment.
"Your stance is inefficient," he stated flatly. "Ten percent wasted energy. Correct it."
He demonstrated a minute adjustment to her posture before vanishing toward the front of the pack. Fiona made the correction without comment. Her kilometer times improved immediately.
When they reached the penultimate obstacle-a twenty-meter tower with handholds spaced just beyond comfortable reach-most recruits approached with tactical caution. Not Fiona. She began climbing with the mechanical certainty of someone who had measured the cost and accepted it in advance. Blood tracked down her forearms, mingling with sweat.
Nayak, hanging from a handhold two meters to her right, stared at the civilian with dawning comprehension.
"You're not trying to win," he said.
Fiona reached for the next grip, her shoulder muscles bunching beneath sweat-darkened fabric. She said nothing.
By the final kilometer, the pack had reshuffled. Nakamura and Singh led, but Montoya had fallen back to sixth position. And Fiona-She remained exactly where she'd been throughout, occupying the exact center of the group. Not pushing forward, not falling behind. Simply existing in the middle distance, her expression unchanged since the first step.
When they crossed the finish line, Ashby stood waiting, his uniform pristine despite having completed the course twice. Crowe loomed beside him, still as a sentinel drone.
"Disgraceful." Ashby pronounced, though his eyes lingered on Fiona longer than necessary. "Again."
They ran. Again and again, until the artificial lighting shifted to simulate morning. Until uniforms hung heavy with sweat and determination. Until even Nakamura's perfect form began to deteriorate.
But Fiona's pace never changed. She was neither first nor last-a ghost occupying the liminal space between failure and excellence. When others faltered on the climbing wall, she simply continued upward, her movements fueled by the simple mathematics of survival that had governed her existence since birth.
During the brief water break, Davis approached her, curiosity overriding military reserve.
"Where did you train before this?" he asked, voice lowered to avoid Ashby's attention. "Special forces?"
Fiona took a single measured sip from her canteen-conservation ingrained from childhood water shortages.
"I trained on concrete floors," she answered. "With mothers who sold their blood to feed their children. With men who worked twenty hours a day and still came home empty-handed."
She recapped her canteen before it was half-empty.
"Your kyokushin," Yoon interjected, her analytical gaze assessing Fiona's callused knuckles. "Three years minimum. And that sword grip adjustment on the ropes-niten ryu?"
Fiona's eyes flickered with something approaching recognition-the first genuine emotion she'd displayed.
"Yes. A friend invited me to train, so I trained. When life was hard, I trained. And when my daughter grew ashamed of me...I trained harder."
Before anyone could respond, Crowe's voice cut through the yard.
"Formation! Hand-to-hand assessment begins now!"
As they lined up, Montoya muttered to Singh, "She won't last through combat drills. Martial arts are toys compared to battlefield experience."
But when Ashby demonstrated the first takedown sequence-a brutal economy of leverage and pressure points-Fiona executed it with the mechanical precision of muscle memory honed through ten thousand repetitions. When Crowe called for partners, the others hesitated fractionally before choosing, leaving Fiona to pair with Ashby himself.
"Show me what Colombia taught you, Private." The sergeant said, his stance relaxed but ready.
Fiona assumed the position, her body reconfiguring into unfamiliar angles-hands neither fully open nor closed, weight distributed like mercury across shifting feet. For the first time, something like focus entered her gaze.
"Colombia taught me hunger, Sergeant," she replied, voice even. "Kyokushin taught me pain."
The exchange that followed happened too quickly for the others to fully track-Ashby's textbook attack, Fiona's response that was neither evasion nor counter but something between. They moved like opposing weather systems, violence and redirection, neither gaining advantage until Fiona's foot slipped on condensation-slick flooring.
Ashby had her pinned in milliseconds, the takedown perfect. Yet as they separated, something had changed in the sergeant's assessment.
"Again." Ashby ordered, but this time his voice carried none of its customary contempt.
By 0600 hours, when they finally broke for protein rations and electrolytes, the hierarchy had shifted imperceptibly. Fiona remained apart, eating her portion with the careful attention of someone who had known true hunger. But the others' glances held new calculation. The civilians with martial arts training-not unheard of, but strange. The economic efficiency of her movements-born not from military discipline but survival's brutal tutelage.
"She's still going to wash out." Davis insisted, but his tone lacked conviction.
Nakamura shook his head, chopsticks paused halfway to his mouth.
"No," he said simply. "She won't."
Ashby, observing from the instructors' platform, turned to Crowe with a raised eyebrow.
"Thoughts?"
The corporal's granite features shifted minutely.
"She's not trying to excel," he noted. "Just to endure. Dangerous mindset."
Ashby watched as Fiona carefully returned her tray, wasting not even a crumb of the protein cube.
"Or exactly what we need," he murmured, too quietly for anyone but Crowe to hear. "Someone who can't be broken because she was never whole to begin with."
From the raised platform, Captain Zara watched the recruits go into the weapons lab—some limping, some grinning, most silently recalibrating their limits.
But her gaze didn't follow them.
It stayed on Fiona.
The gauntlet on Fiona's hand shimmered once, silently syncing.
"I hope you're adapting," Zara murmured, almost too softly to hear.
The comm line opened without prompt. A single sentence flickered across her glasses.
[Uplink: Sky | Active]
Zara didn't smile.
She simply said,
"She is enduring but it remains to be seen how long she will last."
And the uplink closed.