The brace came off with a crack.
Caleb dropped the plastic shell onto the medical tray and flexed his right hand. The fingers moved, but the arm still felt bruised from shoulder to wrist. The parasite had repaired the ribs first. Everything else waited its turn.
He pulled on his canvas jacket and walked back into the staging bunker.
Fewer than eighty recruits stood beneath rows of docked camera drones, checking rifles and tightening harnesses. The people cut by the targeting screen were already gone. Their abandoned rifles filled one end of the rack.
Taichi saw Caleb first.
"The scrubber lives," he called. "Try not to bleed on my camera."
Caleb kept walking. His cracked-stock rifle stayed on its sling while he passed over the replacements and took a combat knife from the rack.
Kei caught up with him. "You cannot take a knife into a mechanical target zone."
"I missed most of my shots."
"The rifle is still better than a knife."
"Only if I hit something with it."
Kei opened a map on his tablet. He followed the narrow route through Sector B's false streets and broken storefronts to the extraction gate. "Phase Two is urban survival and target elimination. The Captains watch the arena feeds and draft whoever looks useful. Crossing the finish line does not get you a contract."
"What happens if nobody drafts me?"
"Sanitation placement, if they have a slot." Kei glanced at Caleb's knife. "You would be back around the carcasses, only in a uniform."
"How much does a contract pay?"
"Fifty thousand credits a month at the bottom. More if a Captain wants you."
Caleb thought of the rent notice under his television and the oxygen his brother still needed. He had come to the trials for money he could use, not another way to scrape a body off concrete.
He slid the knife into his belt. "Then I need to give them a reason to draft me."
"You need to look alive."
Suzu stopped beside them. Scuffs marked the white plates of her prototype suit, and a compression sleeve covered her injured arm. She had a red-marked trauma pouch clipped to her left thigh rig, below the spare ammunition. Her gaze went first to Caleb's bare right hand, then to the knife.
"Both of you are wrong," she said. "He needs to do something the other recruits cannot."
Kei backed away. Caleb stayed where he was.
Suzu pointed at the knife. "The mechanical Yoju have the same joints as the live models. They protect the center mass and expose the neck when they turn. If your right side fails, keep your back against a wall."
She opened the trauma pouch and threw a silver medical patch at him.
Caleb caught it. "What is this?"
"A coagulant seal. Put it over your ribs."
"You are worried about my health?"
"I am worried about the integrity of the trial. If you die in the first three minutes, the result tells me nothing."
Caleb turned the patch over. The label said it would seal a shallow wound and slow bleeding; it would not mend a rib. He pressed it over the torn skin near his brace line. It cooled the area without doing much for the ache underneath.
"Thanks."
Suzu looked away. "Do not make me regret it."
The comms chip warmed behind Caleb's ear.
[PRIVATE FEED: ACTIVE]
[SHE BROUGHT YOU A PATCH. I GOT YOU BACK THROUGH THE DOOR.]
The message vanished. Caleb touched the knife instead of answering.
Overhead, the camera drones woke in their racks. Public arena-feed lights moved across the stadium board. The purple icon in Caleb's visor stayed at one, a separate channel that followed his own suit. He looked away from it before the sponsor could send another line.
The head proctor climbed onto the platform.
"Phase Two. One hundred mechanical Yoju in Sector B. Destroy targets for points and reach extraction before the hour ends. The Captains are watching your public feeds. Critical suit damage locks your joints and ends your run. The targets are armed for lethal force."
The blast doors rolled open. Smog poured across the floor.
Taichi ran first. Suzu's thrusters ignited behind him. Kei raised a hand to Caleb and entered the artificial street.
Caleb crossed the line.
The ruins had been built to resemble the lower-sector disaster zones. The broken walls, narrow alleys, and tilted streets looked like places he had cleaned for years. A grate in the gutter was clogged with dust, just as the real ones clogged with black runoff.
He kept his right shoulder against a brick wall and held the knife in his left hand.
He listened for the little motor whine the training crawlers made before they turned. Nothing moved. Kei waited near a false storefront across the street; Suzu and Taichi had gone ahead toward extraction.
No mechanical targets moved.
The floor began to shake.
Caleb felt the vibration through the soles of his boots. It was too deep for the training machines. The siren changed pitch. Red lights snapped on above the false buildings.
"Stop the exam," the proctor shouted through the public speakers. "Honju signature in Sector B. Evacuate."
Above the false buildings, he hauled a long weapon case to the observation-platform rail and threw its latches open. The exit was below that platform. Recruits were already streaming through the street between him and the breach.
The street split.
A claw punched through the asphalt. Black vapor rose from the fissure. Recruits ran for the blast doors, shoving past each other. One fell on the ramp and three more stumbled over him. Caleb pulled a dazed recruit clear of their boots before the crowd pressed on. Across the street, Taichi stopped running and raised his rifle.
Caleb watched a second set of shapes climb out after the claw. Crawlers spilled over the broken street and gathered around a larger shell.
The Honju pulled itself from the ground.
Its core glowed beneath overlapping chest plates. Acid ran from its mouth and hissed against the road. The front plates covered the same soft structures Caleb had separated from carcasses with a pry bar. On a live animal they moved too fast for him to touch. He watched the weight settle on one foreleg, then the other.
Suzu turned back toward the swarm. Taichi raised his rifle. Kei froze beside a ruined wall.
Caleb tightened his left-hand grip on the knife.
A crawler broke from the swarm and rushed a recruit near the doors. The recruit fired until the rifle clicked empty. The crawler kept coming.
Suzu cut across the street and drove the butt of her rifle into its jaw. The impact spun the creature aside. She finished it with one shot through the soft seam beneath its skull.
"Move," she shouted at the recruit.
The recruit ran. Suzu stayed at the gap he had left, rifle lifted, while another pair of crawlers snapped at her boots. She could have reached the exit ahead of them. Instead she gave the people behind her room to move.
Taichi fired over Suzu's shoulder. His rounds punched sparks from the Honju's front plates. The beast turned toward him and lifted one claw.
"Left!" Caleb called.
Taichi threw himself behind a concrete barrier. The claw struck the barrier and split it down the middle.
Caleb watched the Honju lift its right claw. The left foreleg took the load, just as a hoist cable took it when a dead beast rolled on the disposal table. The joint plate slid back for an instant.
He tightened his grip on the knife and stepped away from the wall. Kei was still in the open street with his rifle pointed at the beast's chest. Caleb called his name.