Locker Room
The locker room smelled like antiseptic and damp metal.
Steam rolled low across the tiled floor from the communal showers. Med-drones hovered in tight patterns, dispensing sealant gel and auto-stitch patches before retreating to recharge docks along the wall.
David sat on the edge of a bench, shirt off, back turned slightly as a drone finished sealing the deeper laceration across his shoulder.
The gel burned.
He didn't react.
Nyra sat across from him; her forearm wrapped in a transparent compression sleeve that glowed faintly where bone stress had been detected.
Castiel leaned against a locker with his thigh re-bonded and sealed, but still stiff.
"You're bleeding through the patch," Nyra said.
"I'm not," David replied.
She stood, crossed the short distance between them, and pressed two fingers lightly near the sealed cut.
David sucked in a breath.
"You are," she said calmly.
Castiel shook his head. "He thinks if he ignores it, it doesn't exist."
"I don't think that."
"You absolutely do."
David reached for his shirt.
Nyra grabbed it first.
"You're not putting that back on yet."
He looked at her.
She didn't look away.
"You took two direct canopy hits," she said. "You weren't even the primary target."
"They adjusted."
"You adjusted too slow."
Castiel pushed off the locker and stepped closer.
"Why did you bodycheck the third one?" he asked.
"It was lined up on you."
"So?"
David blinked. "So?"
Castiel's expression shifted — not angry, but frustrated.
"You don't have to absorb every mistake the rest of us make."
"It wasn't a mistake."
"It would've been my leg, D," Castiel said. "Not my throat."
Nyra folded her arms.
"You don't get to decide who takes the hit," she added quietly.
The room felt smaller for a moment.
David looked between them.
"I didn't think," he admitted.
"That's the problem," Nyra replied.
The words weren't harsh.
They were honest.
He let that sit.
Around them, other squads were louder — arguing about positioning errors, laughing through adrenaline crashes, comparing bruises like trophies.
But in their small circle, the air stayed heavy.
Castiel broke it first.
"Well," he said, easing back against the locker again, "if you insist on being reckless, at least coordinate it."
Nyra smirked faintly. "We'll draft a schedule. Tuesday and Thursday, David sacrifices himself."
David shook his head despite himself.
"You two are insufferable."
"Correct," Castiel replied.
The med-drone beeped softly and withdrew.
system:
Wound Stabilized
Recovery Rate Increased
I am:
Protection is instinct.
Control must follow.
David pulled his shirt on slowly this time.
He didn't argue again.
Nyra returned to her bench.
"You move well," she said after a moment.
"So do you."
She nodded once.
Castiel stretched his injured leg carefully.
"Next time we tighten formation earlier," he said. "Forest canopy punishes distance."
"Agreed," Nyra replied.
David looked at them both.
For the first time since stepping into the academy, he felt something stabilizing.
Not safety.
Alignment.
They weren't just assigned together.
They were adjusting to each other.
Observation Room — Commander Vance
The training fields were quiet now.
Commander Elara Vance stood alone in the upper observation chamber, replaying telemetry across a wide holo-display.
Three separate feeds hovered before her.
Wyn.
Vale.
Nightvale.
She rewound the canopy engagement.
Paused at the moment David stepped into impact range.
Zoomed.
His movement wasn't efficient.
It wasn't optimized.
It was instinctual.
She played it again.
And again.
The timing window before he moved was almost nonexistent.
Not strategic.
Protective.
She shifted to his aptitude crystal reading.
The spike.
The fracture pattern.
The brief blackout in the crystal matrix.
She slowed the frame.
The internal surge was not consistent with Level 1 output.
She folded her arms.
"Crystal malfunction," one of the tech officers had written in the official report.
She didn't believe that.
She pulled up his file.
David Wyn.
No family crest.
Parents: Independent explorers.
No registered bloodline amplification markers.
She leaned closer to the projection.
"Basic forms do not produce that timing," she murmured to herself.
Her eyes shifted to the telemetry during his secondary evaluation.
Strike three.
He stepped inside range before the construct committed.
Anticipation without predictive algorithm training.
That was learned.
Or inherited.
She tapped a command into her tablet.
Flag Cadet Wyn — Passive Observation Status.
Not investigation.
Not escalation.
Observation.
She turned off the projection.
Through the glass wall of the observation chamber, she could see Dorm Building 1 in the distance.
"He absorbs damage," she said quietly.
"That's either leadership."
Her gaze hardened slightly.
"Or a flaw."
She turned and left the chamber.
The academy would test which.