The common room was no longer a common room. It had turned into a place to wait. A place where shame and fear were supposed to settle before they fermented. John Corvini's history lesson still clung to the walls, and James's violence lingered in the air like an aftershock. The recruits sat apart from one another, scattered and silent, their flaws freshly exposed. Nobody spoke. Nobody relaxed. They all knew what was coming.
The Seven were finished with speeches. Cleanup was done. Now came the evaluations.
Arpika was summoned first.
Sam received her in his office at the compound, a space that felt more like a throne room than a workplace. He sat behind the desk with his leg elevated in its cast, pale from recovery but clearly enjoying himself. Pain had not dulled him. If anything, it had sharpened his mood.
The task sounded simple when he said it out loud. She was to get close to Mancini, an aging mob boss who managed legacy investments in the historical district. He was careful, sentimental, and dangerously intelligent. He also had a weakness for young women who knew how to make him feel important.
Sam explained it the way someone might describe a dinner plan. Mancini liked beauty. He liked nostalgia. Arpika would be both, right up until the moment she ended him.
She listened without interrupting. She asked questions about access points and schedules. She kept her expression calm and professional, the way she always did. This was familiar territory. Manipulation was her language. But when she turned to leave, something slipped. Just for a second. A flicker of calculation mixed with revulsion. Fear, too. And something darker beneath it. She understood what was being demanded of her.
She was being asked to turn the skill that defined her into a weapon. To live a lie so perfectly that it would end a life. If she failed, she wouldn't be forgiven. She would simply be discarded, another pretty mistake.
Gautham's turn came without ceremony.
Kevin cornered him in the drug lab. The place smelled of chemicals and disinfectant, harsh and clinical. The lighting was unforgiving. Kevin looked almost at home there, which only made Gautham's chest tighten faster.
There was no target. No mission briefing. Kevin handed him a sheet of paper covered in symbols and equations. The formula was dense and cruelly complex, layered with proprietary notation. It outlined the synthesis of a neurotoxin designed to leave no trace.
Kevin told him to decode it. To explain how it worked, where it could fail, and how it could be countered. He gave him twelve hours and called it homework.
Gautham knew exactly what it was. A trap. The formula wasn't just difficult. It was engineered to overwhelm. Kevin wanted him to crack. Panic crept up his throat, familiar and suffocating. He knew Kevin wanted him to fail. Kevin knew that he knew. That was the point.
His hands shook as he held the paper. If he failed, Kevin would get what he wanted. Proof that Gautham was inferior. If he succeeded, he would be accepting the architecture of something designed purely to kill. Either way, the test demanded a piece of him.
Sanvi received her assignment from Vikram.
There were no speeches. Just coordinates and an objective. She was to plan an assault on a fortified drug den run by a gang that had stopped paying protection. Vikram showed her satellite images, pointed out security positions, noted possible entrances. Then he left.
The moment the responsibility landed fully on her, something in Sanvi changed.
The anger she had carried since the court hearing sharpened into focus. This wasn't street violence. This wasn't chaos. This was something she could structure. Something she could control.
She started sketching routes immediately. Entry angles. Lines of fire. Casualty estimates. Her pencil moved fast, almost eagerly. The smile on her face was unsettling, not because it was cruel, but because it was honest. She wasn't chasing blood for pleasure. She wanted precision. She wanted force applied perfectly.
The work absorbed her completely.
Time fractured into sharp cuts. Arpika refining a lie that could pass for love. Gautham drowning in symbols, fighting panic with logic. Sanvi mapping destruction like an engineer designing a bridge.
Each of them was being pushed toward the core of who they were, whether they wanted to see it or not.
And somewhere beyond them, another assignment waited. One reserved for the recruit who believed he understood leadership. The one who trusted structure. The one who thought influence could protect him.
The room emptied. The tests moved forward. And the promise of something worse settled quietly into place.