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The week passed faster than I expected.
Mostly I just ate and slept. The cafeteria food was bland as hell but there was a lot of it, and after three months of dumpster diving I wasn't about to complain. I ate until I felt sick. Then I ate more.
My body started filling out a little. Not much... a week wasn't gonna undo months of starvation... but enough that I didn't look like a skeleton anymore.
The rest of the time I stayed in my room and tried to figure out the eyes.
Couldn't turn them off. That much was clear. The lines were always there no matter what I did. Closing my eyes, covering them, nothing worked. I could still feel them somehow.
But I could... adjust. Like unfocusing your vision. If I concentrated I could push the lines to the background, make them less intense. It was exhausting and I couldn't hold it for long, but it was something.
I practiced on cockroaches. The building had plenty of them.
Focused on one until its lines got bright and sharp. Touched a line with my finger. Watched it fall apart.
Did it again. And again. Trying to understand.
By the end of the week I'd figured out a few things. Distance mattered, I had to be close, almost touching, for it to work. Pressure mattered too. A light trace did less damage than a firm press. And intent... intent seemed to matter most of all.
When I really wanted something dead, the lines responded.
Useful to know. Also kind of terrifying.
Training Facility B looked like a place where people died.
Concrete bunker at the edge of the compound. Scorch marks on the walls. Gouges in the floor that nobody had fixed. The lights flickered like they were having seizures.
There were eleven other recruits waiting when I got there. Mix of ages and types. Some looked as rough as I probably did... hollow eyes, too-thin frames, the look of people who'd been through shit. Others looked almost eager.
Those ones wouldn't last. I was pretty sure of that.
I found a wall and leaned against it. Tried to ignore the lines on everything.
A girl walked over. Short hair, athletic build, scar running down her left cheek. She moved like someone who knew how to fight.
"You're the alley kid right? The one who took off the yakuza's leg?"
Great. I was famous.
"Yeah," I said.
"I'm Yuki." She didn't offer a hand to shake. "What's your deal? Contract?"
"Something like that. I don't really understand it yet."
She studied me for a second. "Fair enough. Good luck today. First day's supposed to be brutal."
She walked off before I could respond. Probably for the best. I wasn't sure what I would've said anyway.
The instructor showed up at exactly 0600.
Big guy. Huge actually. Built like someone had stacked two refrigerators on top of each other and taught them to walk. Shaved head, face covered in old scars. He looked at us like we were already dead and just didn't know it yet.
The lines on him were dense. Concentrated around his vitals like armor. This was someone who'd survived a lot of things that should've killed him.
"I'm Instructor Yamamoto," he said. Voice like gravel. "For the next three months you belong to me. You eat when I say. Sleep when I say. Shit when I say. Understood?"
A chorus of "Yes sir" from the recruits. Weak. Scattered.
"I can't hear you."
"YES SIR."
He didn't look impressed.
"Listen up. Half of you are gonna wash out before the first month ends. Another quarter will quit or die during field exercises. If four of you actually graduate and become devil hunters, I'll consider this batch a success."
He let that sink in.
Four out of twelve. Thirty-three percent. And that was the good outcome.
"Public Safety doesn't need warm bodies," Yamamoto continued. "We need killers. People who can face a real devil and not freeze. People who can watch their squad die and keep fighting." He cracked his knuckles. "Today we find out what you're made of."
First test was simple.
Survive.
They put us in a room one at a time with a devil. Low-tier threat, Yamamoto said. Some kind of insect thing about the size of a large dog, too many legs, mandibles that wouldn't stop clicking.
Rules were simple. Last ten minutes. Don't kill the devil... they needed it for the other recruits. Ring the emergency bell if you wanted out. Anyone who rang the bell was disqualified.
First guy in was Hayashi. Nervous looking kid, maybe my age.
He lasted forty-three seconds.
Tried to fight it, I'll give him that. Threw punches as the thing skittered toward him. But he was slow and untrained and the devil got inside his guard and took a chunk out of his arm.
The screaming was bad. He slammed the bell so hard I thought he'd break it.
Medical dragged him out. Blood everywhere.
"Pathetic," Yamamoto said. "Next."
One by one the recruits went in.
Yuki did good. She was fast, really fast, some kind of ability maybe, and spent the whole ten minutes running circles around the thing. Never got touched.
A guy with fire powers lasted eight minutes before he panicked and almost set himself on fire. Idiot.
A woman who could harden her skin tanked hits for the full ten but came out looking like she'd been through a meat grinder.
Then Yamamoto pointed at me.
"Alley kid. Let's see what you got."
The room was smaller than I expected.
Concrete walls. Reinforced door. The devil crouched in the corner, mandibles clicking, compound eyes fixed on me.
The lines on it were bright. Really bright. I could see exactly where to cut. Every joint, every weak point, every way to make it stop existing.
The door closed behind me.
Ten minutes. Just had to survive ten minutes.
The devil moved first.
Fast. Way faster than I expected. I threw myself sideways and hit the ground hard. Rolled. Came up with my back against the wall.
It came again. I dodged. Barely. One of its legs scraped my arm and I felt the sleeve tear, felt the sting of broken skin.
Shit. Shit shit shit.
I kept moving. Kept dodging. My lungs were burning and I had no idea how much time had passed. The devil was getting frustrated. Attacks coming faster now. More aggressive.
It caught me with a glancing blow. Sent me stumbling.
My hand shot out and grabbed one of its legs.
Instinct. Panic. Just like the alley.
I traced the line.
The leg came off.
The devil shrieked this horrible high pitched sound that rattled my skull... and stumbled backward. Greenish ichor sprayed everywhere.
I scrambled away. Heart pounding so hard I could barely think.
Okay. Okay. I'd hurt it. It was backing off now. Wary. One leg down out of... however many it had.
How much time? How much time left?
The devil circled me. Keeping its distance. Smart bug. It had learned that touching me was a bad idea.
But it was still hungry. Still a devil. And I was bleeding which meant I smelled like food.
It charged again.
I sidestepped. Grabbed for another leg, missed, caught a mandible instead. Traced the line.
The mandible fell off.
More shrieking. The devil crashed into the wall and went down.
I stood there breathing hard. Covered in bug juice and my own blood. Shaking.
The door opened.
"Time," Yamamoto said.
I walked out on legs that barely held me up. The medical team grabbed my arm, started bandaging the cuts.
"You took off pieces," Yamamoto said, watching. "Twice."
"Got lucky," I managed. "Just grabbed and it happened. Same as the alley."
He stared at me for a long moment. Couldn't read his expression.
"Lucky," he repeated. "We'll see. Get patched up. Back in line when you're done."
After the devil test we ran.
And ran.
And kept fucking running.
Around the facility. Up and down stairs. Through obstacle courses. Yamamoto pushed us until people were puking, until the strongest recruits were on their hands and knees gasping.
I was not one of the strong recruits.
Laurent's body was still recovering. The week of food had helped but it hadn't rebuilt muscle or stamina. By hour two I was running on pure spite.
Three people quit that first day. Just stopped. Said they couldn't do it anymore. Walked out.
I didn't blame them. I wanted to quit too.
But quitting meant going back to the streets. Back to starving. Back to waiting for something to kill me.
So I kept running.
When they finally let us stop it was almost midnight. I could barely walk. Everything hurt in ways I didn't know things could hurt.
Stumbled back to my room. Collapsed on the bed. Didn't even take off my shoes.
That became the pattern.
Wake up. Train. Get destroyed. Sleep. Repeat.
Days blurred together. Physical conditioning in the mornings running, weights, combat drills. Ability training in the afternoons and figuring out how to use whatever fucked up power you had without killing yourself. Lectures in the evenings... devil types, weak points, how not to die.
I learned things.
Learned how to throw a punch without breaking my hand. How to take a hit and keep moving. How to identify a devil's threat level from how dense its lines were.
That last one I kept to myself.
The other recruits started forming groups. Making friends. Yuki fell in with a few of the ability users. Some of the normal humans bonded over shared trauma.
I stayed on the edges.
So I trained. Ate. Slept. Did it again.
Yuki tried to talk to me a few more times. I gave her one-word answers until she stopped trying.
Felt kind of bad about that honestly. She seemed cool. The kind of person I might've been friends with back in my old life.
But this wasn't my old life. And I couldn't shake the feeling that getting close to people here was just setting myself up to watch them die.
One month passed.
The class had shrunk from twelve to eight. Three quit. One died during a field exercise—devil got him before anyone could help.
I didn't even know his name.
Yamamoto didn't give us time to mourn. Just kept pushing. Kept grinding us down.
But somewhere in there I started to feel it. The training taking hold. My body getting stronger. The eyes getting easier to control.
I could focus on specific targets now. Make the lines on one thing sharp while everything else faded to background noise. It still gave me headaches but I could hold it longer.
Small progress. But progress.
Two months in and I could spar without embarrassing myself. Could run the obstacle course without wanting to die. Could look at a devil and see its weak points in seconds.
Not strong. Not yet. But getting there.
The nightmares didn't stop though. Scarface's leg hitting the ground. The screaming. The blood spreading across concrete.
I woke up sweating most nights. Hands shaking. Lines pulsing bright in the darkness.
But I got up anyway. Kept going.
What else was I gonna do?
Week ten. Yamamoto pulled me aside after combat drills.
"You're improving," he said. Not a compliment. Just a fact.
"Thanks."
"Your ability. You've been holding back."
I didn't say anything. Heart suddenly pounding.
"The assessment said inconsistent. Unreliable. But I've been watching you." His eyes were flat. Unreadable. "You know exactly what you're doing."
Shit.
"I—"
"I don't care." He cut me off. "Everyone who comes through here has secrets. Things they hide. Long as you perform when it matters, I don't give a shit what you're holding in reserve."
I let out a breath.
"But I'm telling you now." He stepped closer. Voice dropping. "Whatever you're hiding, you better be ready to use it. Because the shit you're gonna face out there doesn't care about your plans. Doesn't care about your secrets. It just wants to kill you."
"I understand."
"Do you?" He studied me for a long moment. "You've got potential kid. Don't waste it by being too clever."
He walked away before I could respond.
I stood there for a while after. Thinking.
He was right. I knew he was right.
But I also knew what happened to people who stood out in this organization.
The strong ones died. The special ones got used up and thrown away.
Maybe holding back was a mistake. Maybe it would get me killed.
But showing everything felt like a different kind of death.
I didn't have an answer. Didn't know what the right call was.
So I just kept training. Kept getting stronger. Kept waiting to see what happened next.
Two more weeks until graduation.
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