The tent flap cracked open and Rourke's face filled the gap.
"Time's up," he said. "On your feet, Harper."
Cole stood, slinging the carrier and helmet under one arm. The wrap tugged at his neck like a leash.
Rourke didn't say anything else. He just turned and walked. Cole followed. The air outside was sharp with cordite and diesel. Rows of tents bled into one another, the ground churned with bootprints and mud. Somewhere far off, artillery rumbled like a storm pacing the horizon.
They stopped at another tent, canvas darker, sagging under the weight of humidity and smoke. Rourke pulled the flap aside and nodded in.
"Your new family," he muttered. Then louder, to the men inside.
"Hale! Got something for you. Try not to break this one before the week's out."
The tent air was thick with smoke and damp wool. A lantern swung from a hook, its glow painting shadows long and sharp across three figures inside.
One of them sat straight-backed at the far cot, uniform spotless, boots polished enough to catch the light. He didn't stand when Cole entered—just lifted his gaze, calm and precise.
"Another conscript," he said, voice low, too steady to be welcoming. "They keep getting younger."
Across from him, a woman in rolled sleeves was digging through a battered aid bag. She popped gum between her teeth, snapped it once, then gave Cole a slow up-and-down.
"Pale skin, dead eyes. Looks pre-rotted. I give him a week before we're dragging him out by the boots."
The third leaned forward on his bunk, restless energy rolling off him. A coin dangled between his fingers, bent nearly in half. He grinned too wide.
"Don't listen to her. You'll be fine. Long as you're not cursed." He held the coin up, squinting at it. "You're not cursed, right?"
Cole let the helmet hang in his hand. His voice came out flat, without a trace of doubt.
"If I was, this is exactly where they'd send me."
The kid barked a laugh too loud for the space. The woman smirked around her gum. The straight-backed one didn't smile, didn't blink. His stare cut into Cole like he was taking something apart in silence.
Finally he gestured to the empty cot.
"Sit. Keep it squared. This place eats the careless first."
Cole set the helmet down on the cot but didn't sit yet. The gum-chewer snapped another bubble, then jabbed a finger at him.
"You gonna stand there mute, or you got a name?"
"Cole," he said. "Harper."
She smirked. "Figures. You look like a Harper. I'm Varga. People around here just call me Doc. Not because I fix much—mostly because I keep you breathing long enough to get shot again."
The coin-flipper leaned in, hand out like they'd been friends for years. "Ezra Morales. Rifleman. Scout. Professional bad decision-maker. If you're smart, you'll stick close to me."
Varga snorted. "If he's smart, he'll do the opposite."
Morales ignored her and twirled the bent coin once between his fingers. "Don't worry, I'm lucky. This little bastard's saved me more than once."
Cole just stared at the coin until Morales shifted uncomfortably, then muttered, "Looks bent."
"Exactly," Morales said, grinning like it proved the point.
The straight-backed man finally spoke again, voice soft but cutting through the room like glass sliding across steel. "Corporal Mason Hale." He didn't offer a hand. "I'll know what to make of you soon enough."
Cole met his eyes. Said nothing.
Cole shoved his pack under the cot. His hand caught on something. He pulled it free.
A photograph.
Edges soft, creased from too much handling. Five soldiers crowded together, shoulders pressed tight, faces smeared with dirt and grins. The space he now filled had already been taken.
He turned it over. Just a date. Faded. No name. He slid it back beneath the cot, like putting something back in a grave.
Behind him, the restless one spoke too quickly. "That was Alvarez's. Picture never left his side. Swore it kept him safe." A beat, then quieter. "Guess it didn't."
The medic didn't look up. "Morales has this way of saying exactly the thing nobody asked to hear."
The cot creaked as Cole settled. The room held its breath a moment too long.
Then Morales leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "So, Harper… you any good at anything? Or you just here to make us look younger?"
Doc tore open a ration bar with her teeth. "Don't answer that. He's government-issued. Same as the boots, same as the rifle. Quality's inconsistent, but if it breaks you can't get a refund."
Morales grinned. "Nah, c'mon. Everyone's got a thing. Alvarez—God rest him—he could shotgun a can of peaches like it was a damn sport. Took pride in it. What about you? What's your trick?"
Hale's voice slipped in quiet, but it cut the noise flat. "Be careful, Morales. Tricks are for clowns. Soldiers need habits. Habits get you home."
All eyes shifted to Cole.
He leaned back against the cot's frame, arms resting on his knees. "Trained my whole life to be an MMA fighter."
That hung there. The medic paused mid-chew. Morales let out a sharp laugh, then stopped when nobody joined.
"You're screwing with us," Morales said.
Cole shook his head. "Nope. Started wrestling when I was six. Did jiu-jitsu, boxing, Muay Thai. Whole plan was pro circuit. Eat clean, train, fight. Rinse and repeat. Wasn't supposed to be here."
Doc tilted her head, smirking. "So Harper's a cage fighter. Great. Means when he gets killed, at least it'll be cinematic."
Morales perked up. "Wait, wait. So you're telling me if I swing on you right now, you'd—what—flip me upside down and choke me out?"
"Probably just push you," Cole said. "Save the chokehold for when it matters."
Doc snorted. "Practical. I like him already."
Morales leaned closer, grinning. "You ever kill a guy in the ring? Like, on accident?"
Cole looked at him a beat too long. "No. But I've put people to sleep. They wake up. Usually."
The grin faltered, but Morales forced it back. "That's creepy as hell, man."
The straight-backed soldier finally spoke again, quiet as a scalpel sliding free of its sheath. "Don't dismiss it. Grapplers live in the spaces between seconds. Most men panic up close. Fighters don't."
He looked at Cole, unblinking. "That discipline will be useful. Or it will get you killed. Depends on whether you've learned to unlearn."
Cole held the photo up, eyes flicking over the missing man's face. "Guess I'm not the first one to sleep here."
Doc's tone flattened. "You're not." She slipped the gum back in her mouth, jaw working slow. "He didn't make it to twenty-one. Most of us don't."
Morales rubbed the back of his neck. "Guy was fast, though. Always two steps ahead. Like he knew where the bullets were coming from before they even flew."
Hale spoke last, voice low but cutting through. "He hesitated once." His gaze shifted to Cole. "That was enough."
Cole tucked the photo under the cot again, like he was putting it back where it belonged. "Good to know the standards are realistic."
Doc barked a short laugh. Morales muttered something under his breath. Hale just kept watching, expression unreadable.
The flap shoved aside and he came in like he owned the canvas and the ground under it. Tall, broad, blond going gray. Eyes like someone who had already counted the bodies in the room.
Nobody spoke.
He didn't bother to sit.
"Tomorrow, zero six," he said. Voice clipped, but it carried like stone rolling down a hill. "You move to Arlington. Reinforce the eastern front."
The map under his arm cracked when he unfolded it across the crate. Blocks, bridges, lines of red ink like claw marks running through the streets. His finger pressed on the Potomac.
"Enemy's across the river. They'll test the crossings again by morning. If they break through here"—he tapped Rosslyn, then dragged down toward the Mall—"they cut Washington in half. Pentagon falls inside two days. White House inside three. That doesn't happen."
He let the silence breathe. Diesel generators thumped outside. Somewhere in the distance a mortar fell, far enough away to be abstract.
"You are Third Squad. You hold the line, no matter what comes across. Bradley platoon will anchor your flank. You'll have resupply at Crystal City, but don't count on it being pretty." His eyes moved over each man like a measuring tape. Stopped on Cole for a beat too long. "This is the last stop before the capital itself. You don't give ground."
Then he folded the map, tucked it back under his arm
No one answered. The silence sat heavy.
Keene studied the squad as if he had expected hesitation, maybe even protest. When none came, a small nod cut across his face. Approval, but stripped of warmth.
"Good," he said. "That's what I want to hear."
He folded the map, tucked it under his arm, and left. The flap snapped shut, and the hum of the generator seeped back in.
Morales broke it first.
"Well," he said, dragging the word out like he was trying to buy time. "Arlington. Can't wait to explain to the folks back home I died next to a Metro stop."
Doc let out a short laugh, the kind meant to wound. "Don't worry. I'll make sure the record states your cause of death as acute dumbassery. Much more dignified."
Morales grinned like he'd expected that. "Perfect. Put it on the headstone: Ezra 'Acute Dumbassery' Morales. Rolls right off the tongue."
Across the tent, Hale didn't even glance up from the knife he was turning slow between his fingers. "Your ring will be dog tags."
The grin faltered.
Cole stayed quiet on the cot, helmet under one arm, the picture under the other. Tomorrow meant Arlington. There wasn't anything else worth saying.
Dawn crawled in gray through the seams of the tent. The squad moved like machinery coming back to life—boots scraping, rifles checked, gear clattering in half-sleep rhythm. Outside, engines coughed diesel into the air, a reminder of where they were headed.
Cole knelt by the cot, pulling his pack into the light. He started stuffing the basics in: spare socks, rations, a half-empty canteen. The wrap on his neck itched but he ignored it.
A shadow fell across him. Hale. He crouched without a word and reached into the pile. He pulled out the canteen, tested the weight, then shoved it back in harder. Adjusted the straps until they bit clean across the pack's frame. His movements were exact, surgical.
"You'll lose half your water the way you had it," he said. Not unkind, not kind either. Just flat fact.
Cole didn't argue.
Hale shifted the rifle sling so it wouldn't saw into his shoulder when he walked. "Magazine pouches forward. Quick draw. Don't bury them."
Morales looked over from lacing his boots. "Mother hen routine comes free of charge with the corporal title, huh?"
Doc smirked, packing medical tape like it was gold. "More like obsessive-compulsive disorder dressed up as leadership."
Hale ignored both of them. Buckled the last strap on Cole's pack, gave it one sharp tug, and set it upright beside the cot. "Now it'll carry."
Cole met his eyes but said nothing. Hale rose, dusted off his hands like he'd finished tuning an instrument, and walked out into the morning.
The camp was already moving when they stepped out. Humvees lined in rows, engines growling, exhaust pooling low in the cold air. Pallets of ammo crates sat stacked and waiting, their stenciled letters black against olive green. Soldiers hurried between vehicles, their voices clipped with call signs and numbers Cole didn't know yet.
An MP with a clipboard barked names at each unit, checking them off like cattle at auction. Hale answered for them, calm, sharp. Cole just fell in with the rest, helmet under his arm, pack snug against his back the way Hale had rigged it.
Radio chatter leaked from an open truck door. Fragments of call signs—"Raven Two, grid ref confirmed"—broken by static and the whine of generators.
One by one, men and gear were swallowed up into the steel boxes that would take them east. Arlington. Just across the river but it may as well have been another world.
Cole caught sight of Keene in the distance, standing tall beside the command jeep. Blond hair silvered at the edges, eyes scanning the flow of bodies like he was already seeing past them, to the fight itself.
Engines coughed to life one after another, diesel fumes rolling low across the lot. The line of vehicles stretched crooked through the mud—Humvees patched with mismatched doors, trucks hunched under the weight of rucks and crates, a pair of Bradleys squatting at the center like old dogs still baring teeth.
Cole followed Hale to their Humvee, gear cutting into his shoulders. The vehicle sat heavy in the mud, paint dulled, turret ring manned by a private chewing on nerves. Hale knelt by the rear hatch, checking straps and shifting packs with the precision of a man folding a blade back into its sheath.
"Pack it tight," Hale said without looking at him. "If we hit rough ground and your kit comes loose, it's not your kit that gets broken. It's the man next to it."
Cole shoved his ruck into the gap under the bench, boots pressing against someone else's helmet. Morales clambered in after, muttering about the smell of the seats. Doc lit a stick of gum with the same care others lit cigarettes.
The convoy lurched forward in starts and stops, brakes squealing like animals being worked too hard. Soldiers clung to the beds of trucks, helmets tilted back, eyes sunk deep. The noise of engines and rattle of metal swallowed up the quiet of the morning.