I didn't sleep.
Not because I wasn't allowed to—Cager had pointed to a narrow cot in the corner and told me to "collapse if I needed to." I didn't because every sound felt like a test. Every drip of water, every distant shout from the alley above, every scrape of metal made my muscles tense.
Survive the night, she'd said.
She hadn't explained what that meant.
The knife stayed in my hand.
Hours passed in fragments. The bulbs hummed overhead, casting long, twitching shadows across the walls of steel. At some point, I realized the room wasn't just a workshop. It was a bunker. No windows. One reinforced door. No obvious exits. Cager hadn't locked me in with her tools.
She'd locked me in with myself.
Just before dawn, the lights cut out.
Complete darkness.
My breath caught. Instinct screamed. I pressed my back to the wall, knife up, listening. Footsteps moved somewhere in the room—slow, deliberate. Not hiding. Testing me.
"You freeze," Cager's voice said from the dark, "you're dead."
I shifted my stance, widening it the way she'd shown me earlier, even though she'd barely shown me anything. The footsteps circled.
"Rule one," she continued. "Your eyes will lie to you. Trust your ears."
Something whistled past my face.
I moved without thinking, ducking, slashing blindly. Metal hit metal. Sparks flared briefly, light enough for me to see her silhouette—relaxed, controlled, terrifyingly precise.
"Too wild," she said, disarming me in one smooth motion. My knife clattered to the floor.
Her blade stopped an inch from my throat.
"Dead."
The lights snapped back on.
I sucked in air like I'd been underwater. Cager stepped back and sheathed her knife, unimpressed.
"Get up," she said.
My legs shook, but I stood.
"That was mercy," she went on. "You don't earn another."
She paced, circling me like before, but this time it felt different. Less like inspection. More like calibration.
"You're not useless," she admitted. "Just loud. Emotional. Predictable."
"Working on it," I muttered.
She stopped in front of a table and laid out three knives. Different sizes. Different weights.
"Pick one."
I hesitated, then chose the smallest.
She nodded once. "Smart. Big blades make promises they can't keep."
She tossed me a rag. "Clean it."
I did, copying how I'd seen her do it earlier—slow, deliberate, respectful. When I looked up, she was watching closely.
"You don't hate knives," she said. "That's good."
"I don't trust them," I replied.
"That's better."
A distant rumble echoed above us. Not thunder. Engines.
Cager stiffened.
She crossed the room and flipped a switch. A grainy feed blinked to life on a small monitor—alley cameras. Shapes moved outside. Too organized. Too calm.
The Creepers were standing down.
That was the first bad sign.
"Saints?" I asked quietly.
She didn't answer immediately.
Then: "Scouts."
My stomach dropped. "Already?"
"You came in loud," she said flatly. "Territory shifted the moment you said their name."
She turned to me, eyes sharp. "This is where most people break. They beg me to hide them. Or they run."
I tightened my grip on the knife. "I'm done running."
A slow smile spread across her face.
"Good," she said. "Because tonight wasn't your trial."
She reached into a locker and tossed me a dark jacket—reinforced, heavy.
"This was orientation."
The engines outside grew louder.
"Welcome to the real lesson," Cager said, opening the door.