I woke up to someone stepping on my hand. "Sorry," a voice mumbled. It didn’t sound sorry at all.

  My eyes opened to gray tent canvas and the smell of eight people who hadn't showered in two days. Someone was snoring. Someone else was breathing through their mouth like a dying accordion. My back felt like it had been used as a cutting board.

  "What time is it?" I croaked.

  "5:47," Murin's voice came from somewhere to my left. "Thirteen minutes until mandatory consciousness."

  "I want to die."

  "Get in line."

  I sat up slowly. Every muscle in my body filed a formal complaint. My shoulders ached from carrying Zaid yesterday. My legs ached from the hike. My one socked foot from yesterday had blisters on the blisters.

  The borrowed boots Dr. Cross had given me were sitting next to my sleeping bag like two dead animals. I stared at them with genuine hatred.

  "You know what's funny?" Akki's voice came from across the tent. He was already awake, doing sit-ups at 5:47 in the morning.

  "Nothing is funny," someone groaned.

  "What's funny," Akki continued, ignoring them, "is that yesterday I saved a man's life with my jacket, and Prisha still didn't look at me once during dinner."

  "Maybe she's not interested," Priella said from her sleeping bag.

  "Impossible. I have excellent bone structure."

  "Your bone structure is irrelevant if your personality is terrible."

  "My personality is charming."

  "Your personality is exhausting."

  Akki stopped mid-sit-up. "Exhausting can be charming. It's a thin line."

  "It's not."

  I pulled on the borrowed boots without enthusiasm. My feet slid around inside them like fish in a bucket. I'd stuffed them with extra socks last night but it hadn't helped much.

  Outside, the morning was cold, mist hung between the trees. The fire pit had been relit, someone had actually woken up early enough to do that, which seemed like a crime against humanity. Dr. Cross was already there, holding a clipboard and a coffee cup. She looked disturbingly awake.

  "Good morning!" she called out as students emerged from tents like zombies. "I hope everyone slept well. Today we have exciting team-building activities planned!"

  A collective groan rippled through the camp.

  "Enthusiasm! I love it!" Dr. Cross's smile was predatory. "First activity starts in thirty minutes. Breakfast is oatmeal. Get it yourself."

  The oatmeal was in a large pot over the fire, thick and gray and deeply unappealing. I scooped some into a bowl anyway because my stomach was eating itself. Murin appeared next to me, looking like death. "I think my spine compressed overnight. I'm definitely shorter."

  "You look the same height."

  "That's just perspective. Internally, I've lost two inches."

  "That's not how spines work."

  "It's exactly how spines work. I read a study."

  Akki joined us, his bowl of oatmeal somehow arranged to look aesthetically pleasing. How did he do that? It was gray sludge. There was no aesthetic.

  "So," he said, sitting down on a log. "Strategy for today. I need to engineer a situation where Prisha and I are partnered for an activity."

  "Why?" I asked.

  "Because proximity creates attraction. It's science. If I'm near her long enough, she'll start noticing my positive qualities."

  "Like what?" Priella appeared, her own bowl in hand. "Your humility?"

  "Like my reliability. My strength. My excellent crisis management skills. Yesterday I helped save a life."

  "We all helped save a life."

  "Yes, but I looked good doing it."

  Murin was eating his oatmeal mechanically, staring into the middle distance. "You know what's interesting about proximity?"

  "Don't," I warned.

  "In surgical settings, prolonged proximity to the same people in high-stress situations can actually create trauma bonds that mimic attraction but are really just shared cortisol responses."

  Akki stopped eating. "Are you saying attraction is just... stress?"

  "I'm saying your brain might be confusing stress hormones with romantic interest. It's a documented phenomenon."

  "That's the most depressing thing I've ever heard."

  "Science doesn't care about your feelings."

  "Science is a bitch."

  Dr. Cross's whistle blew. "Everyone to the fire pit! First activity begins now!"

  We shuffled over, bowls still in hand. Dr. Cross was standing next to a setup that looked like a medieval torture device—a wooden frame between two trees with ropes hanging from it in a web pattern.

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  "Spider Web exercise!" she announced. "Rules are simple. Each team gets all members through the web without touching ropes. Each opening can only be used once. Touch a rope, start over. One hour time limit."

  We'd been divided into teams of eight. I ended up with Murin, Akki, Priella, and four others—two guys named Rafe and Dmitri, and two girls named Jenna and Kaya.

  Akki's face fell when he realized Prisha was in a different group. "This is rigged."

  "It's random," Priella said.

  "Nothing is random. Dr. Cross knows that I need to be near Prisha for proximity science."

  "You need to be near therapy," Murin muttered.

  Our group approached our assigned web. The rope pattern was irregular, openings ranging from barely head-sized to maybe three feet across, at heights from ankle to overhead.

  "So," Rafe said, immediately taking charge because he was that type. "Strategy. We send small people through high openings first—"

  "That's stupid," Jenna interrupted. "Small people can't pull anyone through. We need strong people first."

  "You're both wrong," Dmitri said. "We need to map openings to people before moving anyone."

  I was studying the web, trying to ignore their arguing. The System flickered helpfully which was unexpected.

  "We should measure first," I said. "Figure out who fits where."

  "How do we measure without touching the ropes?" Kaya asked.

  "We estimate. Look..." I pointed to a low opening. "That's maybe two feet wide, one foot tall. Someone flexible like... Priella or Jenna."

  Priella studied it. "I could probably fit through that if I went sideways and exhaled."

  "Great. That's opening one." I pointed to another. "That one's higher but wider. Could fit someone bigger."

  We spent ten minutes mapping people to openings. Murin pulled out a small notebook and actually started sketching a diagram.

  "You brought a notebook?" Dmitri asked.

  "I bring notebooks everywhere."

  "Why?"

  "What if I need to document something?"

  "Like what? Tree species?"

  "Trees are medically relevant. Digitalis comes from foxglove. That's a plant."

  "Foxglove isn't a tree."

  "The principle remains."

  Finally we had a plan. Smallest through first: Priella and Kaya. Then Jenna and me. Then Murin, Akki, Rafe, and Dmitri.

  "Ready?" Rafe asked.

  We were not ready. Priella approached her opening; chest height, roughly rectangular. She turned sideways and started threading through. Her shoulder brushed a rope. Barely.

  From across the field, Dr. Venn's voice: "Team Three! Reset!"

  "Fuck," Priella hissed, pulling back.

  "Careful this time," Rafe said.

  "Thank you for that incredibly helpful advice," Priella said flatly.

  She tried again. This time she made it through, landing on the other side with a grunt.

  Kaya went next, through a higher opening. She got her head and shoulders through, then stuck at the hips.

  "I can't—I'm wedged—"

  "Suck it in!" Jenna called.

  "I am sucking it in!"

  Priella grabbed Kaya's arms from the other side and pulled. Kaya's hips scraped through with maybe a millimeter clearance. She tumbled forward, landing hard.

  "Are you okay?" Priella asked.

  "My dignity is dead but my body is fine."

  Jenna went through a lower opening, moving slow and deliberate. Made it clean.

  My turn. I'd chosen an opening about five feet up, just wide enough for my shoulders. The problem was getting up to it with boots two sizes too big.

  "Boost me," I said to Rafe.

  He made a stirrup with his hands. I stepped in and he lifted. I grabbed the structural ropes on either side of the opening and pulled myself up. Head through. Shoulders. This was working. Then my left boot, that oversized canoe, caught on the bottom rope. I hung there, half through the web, boot stuck.

  "Don't move!" Murin shouted.

  "I'm not moving! My foot is stuck!"

  From the other side, Priella and Jenna grabbed my arms. Rafe pushed from behind. My boot scraped against the rope but didn't touch it, just dragged above it, and then I was through, tumbling onto the ground.

  "That was graceful," Priella said.

  "Shut up."

  We kept going. Murin contorted himself through an opening that seemed physically impossible for his spine. Akki barely fit through his opening and had to exhale completely to get his chest through. "I think I cracked a rib," he wheezed from the other side.

  "You didn't crack a rib," Murin said.

  "How do you know?"

  "Because you're still talking. If you'd cracked a rib, breathing would hurt too much to complain."

  Rafe and Dmitri were left. Two big guys, two small openings.

  Dmitri stared at his assigned opening, eighteen inches wide. "This is physically impossible."

  "It has to be possible," Rafe said. "We're not starting over again."

  Dmitri went headfirst. Got his head through. Shoulders, by turning them diagonal. Then stuck completely at his chest.

  "Can't breathe," he gasped.

  "Pull your arms through!" Murin called.

  Dmitri pulled his arms through, making himself narrower. He scraped through like toothpaste from a tube and collapsed on the other side, gasping.

  Just Rafe left. One opening, upper right corner, smaller than Dmitri's had been. Rafe looked at it. Looked at his body. He was maybe six-two, broad shoulders, athletic.

  "I'm not fitting through that."

  "You have to," Kaya said.

  "Physics says otherwise."

  "Try anyway."

  Rafe tried. Got his head through. One shoulder, by turning sideways. The other shoulder wouldn't go. He was wedged in the opening, unable to move forward or back.

  "Pull!" Akki yelled.

  Four of us grabbed Rafe's arms and pulled. He didn't budge.

  "Push!" Priella yelled back to the starting side.

  Dmitri pushed Rafe's legs. Nothing.

  "I'm actually stuck," Rafe said, his voice muffled. "This is how I die. Wedged in a rope web."

  "You're not dying," I said. "We just need more force."

  "More force will rip my shoulders off."

  "You have redundant shoulders."

  "I don't have redundant shoulders! I need both of them!"

  We pulled harder. Rafe's shirt rode up, his skin scraping against the ropes. His elbow touched a rope. Just grazed it.

  "Team Three! Reset!"

  The groan that came out of Rafe was existential. We had to pull him back through.

  We reset seven times. By attempt four, everyone was making mistakes we hadn't made initially. Kaya got stuck again and panicked, grabbing a rope for stability. I made it through but Murin didn't and we had to start over.

  Attempt six was going perfectly until Akki's phone fell out of his pocket. He grabbed for it reflexively and hit three ropes.

  "ARE YOU KIDDING ME?" Priella shouted. "YOU BROUGHT YOUR PHONE?"

  "I forgot it was in my pocket!"

  "How do you forget you have a PHONE?"

  "It happens!"

  "No it doesn't! Phones don't just teleport into pockets!"

  "This one did apparently!"

  "You're sabotaging us for Prisha's attention!"

  "That doesn't even make sense!"

  "Nothing about you makes sense!"

  We reset. On attempt nine, we finally got everyone through. All eight of us on the far side, exhausted, sweaty, furious with each other.

  "Time!" Dr. Venn called. "Team Three, fifty-six minutes! Acceptable!"

  We collapsed on the ground. Across the field, I could see Akki staring at Prisha's group, who'd finished in forty minutes and were now sitting around looking smug.

  "She still hasn't looked at me," Akki said sadly.

  "Maybe that's a sign," Priella said. "That you should stop."

  "Stopping is for quitters."

  Next exercise was worse.

  "Partner carry!" Dr. Cross announced. "You'll be paired randomly. One person is injured and cannot walk. The other must carry them two hundred meters up the trail and back. Then you switch."

  She started calling out pairs from her clipboard.

  "Murin and Ashrahan. Dmitri and Rafe. Jenna and Kaya..."

  Akki was practically vibrating with anticipation.

  "Akki and... Dev."

  Akki's face fell. Dev was a guy from Orthopedics rotation, not Prisha.

  I got into position with Murin, fireman's carry, most efficient weight distribution. Got him positioned across my shoulders, stood using my legs.

  "This is undignified," Murin said from his position.

  "You're welcome to walk."

  "I'm paralyzed. Hypothetically."

  "Then enjoy the ride."