The brace buckles cracked loud in the quiet clinic room.
Caleb pulled the thick straps loose one at a time and dropped the protective shell onto the metal tray.
The tray jumped under the weight.
His right arm was worse without the brace pretending to be hope. Purple bruising ran from shoulder to wrist. Ragged scar tissue marked the edge of his bicep where the suit had burned hot under the skin. He sent a command from his brain to his fingers.
The joints popped, and the forearm twitched. Useless for now, but alive enough to worry him.
The one-percent fibers of the combat suit hummed against his body. The old suit offered no real strength; it held him together like a cheap internal splint. Ribs, shoulder, hip. All of it pushed back against his own weight just enough to keep him moving.
He took his stained canvas disposal jacket from the chair, shoved his bad arm through the sleeve, and walked out.
The sloped concrete deployment tunnel opened into the underground staging bunker.
The ceiling vaulted three stories above a gravel floor. Eighty recruits remained from the first crush of applicants. They checked ammunition, tightened harness straps, and pretended they had not all done math on their odds.
Above them, hundreds of broadcast drones sat docked along the ceiling grate.
Their dark lenses pointed down like closed eyes.
Iharu Furuhashi leaned against a concrete pillar near the center of the room.
The redhead wiped sweat from his chin guard and gave Caleb the full inspection. Bare legs below the armor. Canvas jacket. Right arm out of the sling.
Iharu laughed.
"The scrubber lives. I thought medical scraped you into a bio-bag."
A few recruits snickered because snickering cost less than courage.
"Try not to bleed out in my sector, old man," Iharu called, tapping the barrel of his scatter-rifle. "The Captains want a clean show."
Caleb kept walking.
He reached the secondary weapon racks along the far wall. Heavy assault rifles. Tactical shotguns. Ammo packs that probably cost more than his car.
He bypassed them.
His hand closed around a standard-issue combat knife.
The iron grip sat cold in his palm.
He slid it into the canvas belt of his jacket.
Boots crunched behind him.
Hiro jogged over, oversized track jacket flapping over armor plates like his old life refused to be tucked away.
"You took the brace off."
"Looks that way."
"You cannot even hold a gun."
"Then I should not bring one."
Hiro's face went blank.
Then he pulled a datapad from his chest rig and started swiping like panic had a user interface.
"Phase Two is urban elimination. Mechanical targets are fast. If you close distance with a knife, they will tear through your chest plating."
Caleb checked the seal on his left gauntlet.
"I missed most of my shots on the firing line."
"You also passed."
"By twelve hits exactly. If I take a gun into the zone, I waste ammo and make noise."
Hiro turned the datapad toward him.
A schematic of the VIP viewing boxes hovered above the arena layout.
"Phase Two is the Captains' Draft," Hiro said. "The Division Commanders sit in those boxes and watch private feeds. Passing the exam and getting hired are not the same thing. If you reach extraction without showing utility, they dump you into sanitation corps."
Sanitation.
Thirty credits a cycle.
Caleb could almost hear the debt interest laughing.
"Captains bid huge salaries for high sync rates," Hiro continued, glancing toward Iharu. "They want weapons."
"Then I hunt differently than the weapons."
Hiro went stiff when Kikaru stopped exactly three feet away, close enough that his next joke died before it reached his mouth.
Her white-and-red armor still carried the scuffs from their fight. A sleek compression sleeve wrapped her right bicep under the prototype plating. She favored the arm by pretending not to favor it.
"Leave us," she said.
Hiro offered Caleb a quick look that meant I do not approve of any of your decisions, then retreated.
Kikaru's gaze moved from the knife at Caleb's hip to the white medical tape showing beneath his open jacket.
"You are a liability."
"Good morning to you too."
"Your sync rate is abysmal. Your right arm is compromised. You step into the urban zone with a knife, and the mechanicals will eviscerate you."
"That was the sales pitch?"
"The Captains' Draft is a utility assessment," she said. "A man with one-percent output has no tactical value unless he provides something else. Why are you doing this?"
Caleb rested one hand on the knife hilt.
For once, the joke stayed down.
"Debt. Disposal pays thirty credits a cycle. I go back there, I die slow. I walk through those doors, I get a chance at enough money to keep my family from drowning."
Kikaru's expression did not soften.
Her hand went to the storage compartment on her thigh rig.
She pulled out a silver medical patch and tossed it at his chest.
Caleb caught it against the jacket.
High-grade coagulant seal. Corporate logo. Expensive enough that the package looked offended by his fingers.
"Put that over your stitches," Kikaru muttered.
Color touched her cheeks.
"If you bleed to death in the first three minutes, the Captains will question the integrity of the screening process. I refuse to let my evaluation be tainted by your incompetence."
Caleb slipped the patch into his pocket.
"Thanks."
"Do not misunderstand me."
"I will try to misunderstand you only a little."
She ignored that.
"The mechanical Yoju replicate real attack patterns. They flank. They test blind spots. Your right side is exposed. Keep your back to concrete walls."
Then she turned and marched away, one hand close to her custom rifle.
Caleb watched her go.
Static snapped behind his right ear.
The blue HUD inside his visor flickered. Lines of code broke into deep purple.
[??? : She circles you like she is afraid you will disappear.]
Caleb locked his jaw and tightened the left gauntlet strap.
[??? : Touching.]
[??? : Focus on the hunt, Caleb.]
[??? : Do not let the princess distract you.]
[??? : You belong to me today.]
The purple dissolved as the ceiling lights changed from white to green and broadcast drones detached from the grate.
Two hundred metallic bodies dropped into the air, lenses waking one after another. The room filled with the soft mechanical whir of people preparing to watch other people bleed.
The head proctor stepped onto the raised platform in front of the blast doors.
"Phase Two. Urban Survival and Target Elimination."
The bunker quieted.
"One hundred mechanical Yoju have been released into Sector B. Destroy targets for score. Reach extraction to survive. If your suit registers critical damage, it locks your joints and you fail."
He let the recruits hear the next part.
"Lethal force is authorized."
Nobody laughed now.
"You have one hour. Gates open."
The heavy steel doors ground apart, and thick artificial smog spilled into the tunnel.
Iharu sprinted first, his drone chasing him like a loyal insect.
Kikaru ignited her thrusters and shot past the boundary line.
Hiro gave Caleb a quick wave before jogging into the gray.
Caleb stepped over the painted white line.
The ash swallowed the stadium lights.
The artificial ruins were supposed to mimic disaster zones.
They did too good a job.
Collapsed storefronts. Broken signage. Slagged cars. Concrete dust in the air. Caleb had scrubbed places like this for a living after the real heroes left.
He kept his right side angled away from the open street and pressed close to a brick wall. The knife came out in his left hand.
The street was quiet. No crawler whines. No servos. No mechanical targets skittering through rubble. The air pressure felt heavy.
A static charge lifted the hairs along Caleb's arms.
Then a low vibration rolled through the soles of his boots.
The pitch of the stadium sirens changed. The electronic shriek cut off, and a deeper blast hit the sector.
HROOOOM.
The second impact followed before the first finished rolling.
Red strobes lit the artificial buildings.
The proctor's voice broke across the PA system, no longer theatrical.
"Halt the exam. All applicants evacuate Sector B immediately. This is not a drill. Seismic activity detected. Honju-class signature. Defense Force personnel, engage lethal protocols."
The ground exploded.
A serrated claw the size of a building punched through the asphalt.
Toxic black vapor geysered from the fissure.
Recruits broke formation instantly. Some ran toward the blast doors. Some froze. One dropped his rifle and stared at the claw like the exam had become too large for his brain to hold.
Kikaru reversed course and landed hard near the collapsing street.
Iharu stopped beside her with his weapon lowered.
Caleb held his ground, every practical nerve in him screaming that this was not courage. His body had recognized a carcass before the rest of the sector recognized a monster.
The beast dragged itself out of the earth.
Chitin plates. Acid mandibles. Core glow beneath the chest. Thick armor. Cartilage gaps. Weight distribution in the forelegs. Thin scaling near the cervical spine.
He had dismantled versions of this anatomy a thousand times after the killing was done.
Nobody had ever asked what a butcher saw before the thing died.
The knife sat small in his hand, and the encrypted chip warmed behind his ear.
[??? : Oh, wonderful.]
The smooth voice carried vicious delight.
[??? : The main event begins.]
[??? : They are running like frightened sheep.]
[??? : Show the Captains how a butcher works, Caleb.]