Kaden woke to the feeling that someone had poured concrete into his legs overnight.

  For a few seconds, in that grey space between sleep and awareness, he was back in the sim. Narrow corridor. Red icons. The crack of gunfire rolling like thunder. Then the ceiling above him resolved into plain off-white composite, the hum through the frame shifted into the steady vibration of the Valiant’s systems, and the smell of old metal replaced the bite of ozone.

  Right. Bunks. Ship. Not dead.

  He let out a slow breath and stared at the underside of the bunk above his for another heartbeat, taking inventory.

  Shoulders: sore. Back: sore. Thighs: very sore. Calves: considering a mutiny. Arms: not as bad as they had been after dragging dummies the first time. That was new.

  He blinked his HUD awake. The implant’s overlay slid into place, simple and restrained. No mission timer, no threat pings, just a few faint icons in the periphery.

  One of them pulsed softly.

  He focused on it and the text expanded.

  TRAINING LOAD: ACCEPTABLE

  MUSCLE RECOVERY: IN PROGRESS

  ADAPTIVE RESPONSE REGISTERED

  PHY PARAMETER: MINOR POSITIVE ADJUSTMENT APPLIED

  No numbers. Aurora wasn’t interested in telling him how many invisible notches had moved. Just that it had noticed.

  He flexed his hands. Nothing special there. But when he shifted, rolling onto his side to swing his legs down, there was a subtle difference. The soreness was still there, but it sat on top of something more solid. Less “barely hanging on,” more “worked hard yesterday and can probably do it again.”

  He could live with that.

  The barracks lights were still in low-cycle, a dim blue-white that made metal edges soft. He could hear someone’s slow breathing from the bunks beyond, the faint rustle of fabric.

  “Mercer,” Navarro’s voice mumbled from somewhere to his left. “Tell me we died and this is hell.”

  “Pretty sure hell has better beds,” Kaden said.

  She groaned.

  “Can’t move,” she said. “Legs are suing.”

  “That’s what you get for talking trash to the sled,” he said.

  She muttered something that sounded like a creative opinion about sleds in general.

  On the far side of the room, someone moved with more precision. Tanaka sat on his bunk, already halfway into his fatigues. He braced one foot on the edge of the frame and leaned into a slow hamstring stretch, then switched sides. His face barely changed.

  Vos was awake too, sitting cross-legged on his mattress with a small holo-slab propped against his knees. Its light painted his features in faint blue. Kaden caught a glimpse of scrolling text and schematic lines before Vos flicked it off.

  “You two sound alive,” Vos said. “That’s something.”

  “Debatable,” Navarro said.

  Kaden scrubbed a hand over his face and swung his feet to the floor. The deck was cold through the thin socks. He sat there for a second, letting his back adjust.

  “Anyone know the time?” Navarro asked.

  “Early,” Vos said. “Jax pinged us a schedule twenty minutes ago. You slept through it.”

  Navarro swore and blinked her HUD on. Kaden did the same.

  A non-urgent notification sat in the corner.

  SQUAD NOTICE – THETA-3

  MESS: OPTIONAL BEFORE 1ST BLOCK

  SIM DECK: 1ST BLOCK – STANDARD SQUAD RUN

  FURTHER TASKING: PENDING COMPANY BRIEF

  Standard run. That sounded almost relaxing, compared to what they had done the last couple of days.

  “See?” Kaden said. “We’re fine. Jax hasn’t scheduled us for ‘jump into live reactor core’ yet.”

  “Yet,” Navarro said. “Key word.”

  Tanaka finished his stretch and stood. Even with the stiffness in his movements, there was a steadiness there, like his body had long ago decided mornings were not negotiable.

  “Mess before sim?” he asked.

  “Jax says ‘optional,’” Navarro said. “What she means is ‘I’ll be disappointed if you pass out in my sim because you decided sleep was more important than eating.’”

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  Vos slid off his bunk and started pulling on his boots.

  “Sleep was more important,” he said. “Now food is.”

  Kaden got dressed. The simple act of standing and bending to grab his pants was enough to confirm what Aurora’s notification had suggested. His legs still protested, but they weren’t threatening to fold. His balance felt a hair more secure. Less like he was wearing someone else’s body.

  He tugged his shirt over his head, then the grey fatigue jacket. The Valiant’s patch sat on one shoulder, the Hegemony’s on the other. The Theta company tag and squad identifier were still new enough that he felt them every time the fabric settled.

  “Mercer,” Navarro said as she struggled into her own jacket. “How are your thighs not screaming?”

  “They are,” he said. “They’re just being polite about it.”

  “Mine are filing formal complaints,” she said.

  “You’ll be fine once you get moving,” Tanaka said. “Sitting still makes it worse.”

  “You would say that,” Navarro muttered.

  Kaden finished lacing his boots and stood up all the way. The room swayed for a heartbeat, then steadied. He rolled his shoulders, listening to the quiet pops.

  There was movement at the hatch, the soft hiss of it cycling open.

  Jax stepped in.

  She wore the same fatigues they did, sleeves rolled to her forearms. Without armor, she seemed smaller, but only in the way a coiled spring looks smaller than when it’s mid-snap. Her hair was pulled back tighter than yesterday. A mug of something that smelled marginally like coffee hung from her hand.

  Ten heads snapped up across the barracks. Theta-3’s, plus a few from adjacent bunks where other squad members were stirring.

  “At ease,” Jax said lightly. “If I wanted you at attention, I’d have come in louder.”

  They relaxed. Slightly.

  Her gaze moved over them, cataloguing.

  “Good,” she said. “You’re upright. That’s a promising start.”

  “We’re functional,” Navarro said. “That’s about it.”

  “Functional is what I asked for,” Jax said. She took a sip from the mug. “You have a light day. Do not squander it by proving you can injure yourselves without my help.”

  Vos raised a brow.

  “Define ‘light,’” he said.

  “One squad sim block this morning,” Jax said. “Standard scenario. No extra complications, no special targets. Clean runs to check yesterday’s adjustments stuck. After that, you’re off my grid until the company brief.”

  “The company brief being…?” Kaden asked.

  “Big room, many officers, Gaunt pretending he wishes he were somewhere else,” Jax said. “You will learn about something called a ‘joint evaluation’ and you will not fall asleep while he explains its importance.”

  Navarro groaned.

  “So the rumors are real,” she said.

  “Some of them,” Jax said. “You’ll get official details later. For now, your concerns are breakfast and not tripping over your own boots before you reach the sim deck.”

  She took another sip.

  “Mess is open,” she added. “Anyone who shows up to my sim without food in them gets to be the example in the lecture about preventable failures. Understood?”

  “Yes, Staff Sergeant,” Kaden said.

  The others echoed it.

  Jax nodded once.

  “Good,” she said. “You’ve got twenty minutes. Try not to spend all of them arguing about whose legs hurt more.”

  She turned and stepped back out, the hatch sliding shut behind her.

  Navarro exhaled.

  “This is what passes for mercy,” she said. “A single sim and food.”

  “You wanted equal suffering,” Vos reminded her. “You’re getting it. Just in measured doses.”

  Kaden checked his HUD one more time. The PHY line that represented his physical parameter had nudged just slightly farther along its bar compared to the last time he’d paid attention. Tiny difference. If he hadn’t had the message, he might not even have noticed.

  He flexed his hands, then his arms. He could feel it more in his legs, though. A sense that when he told them to move, they would, and might complain less about it.

  Navarro caught him looking.

  “Did you get a love letter from Aurora too?” she asked.

  “Minor adjustment,” he said. “Adaptive response, it says.”

  “Show-off,” she said automatically, then frowned. “I didn’t get one.”

  “Maybe you were already there,” Vos said. “You did drag most of that dummy run before Mercer took over.”

  Navarro tilted her head, then shrugged.

  “Guess that’s fair,” she said.

  Tanaka stood, adjusting the cuffs of his jacket.

  “You’ll get your messages,” he said. “Aurora likes patterns. Keep doing the work, it will notice.”

  “That’s comforting,” Navarro said. “Our invisible alien system overlord approves of our squats.”

  “Better than it disapproving,” Vos said.

  Kaden smiled and headed for the hatch.

  The passage outside was starting to fill as other marines woke up and drifted toward the mess or their first blocks. The Valiant felt slightly different in this hour: less rush, more background pulse. He fell into step with the others, legs loosening as they walked.

  Navarro limped a little at first, then eased into a more normal stride.

  “See?” Kaden said.

  “Shut up, Mercer,” she replied. “I’m still filing complaints.”

  “You can file them with Jax,” he said. “She’ll treasure them.”

  Navarro snorted.

  “Pretty sure she uses complaints as fuel,” she said.

  Tanaka moved on his left, solid presence. Vos walked just ahead, already scanning ship signage, as if mapping routes even now.

  The mess hall smell hit them as they rounded the last corner: coffee, heating trays, something frying in too much oil. They joined the line, grabbed trays, let the servers slop food into compartments.

  Kaden’s stomach growled. Apparently his body had voted for eating over moping.

  They found a table. This early, it wasn’t hard. Naval crew clustered in one corner, a few engineers hunched over mugs, one other marine squad already halfway through their food.

  Navarro sat with a sigh that sounded half relief, half pain.

  “I’m not moving for at least five minutes,” she said.

  “You have ten,” Vos said. “After that, Jax will come find us.”

  “She won’t,” Kaden said. “She’ll just send a message reminding us of the definition of ‘optional.’”

  “Optional in Hegemony-speak means ‘do it unless you want trouble,’” Navarro said. “We learned that in civics.”

  They ate. Kaden didn’t bother with conversation at first. His body wanted fuel and was very clear about it. Spoon, bite, swallow, repeat.

  After a few mouthfuls, Navarro looked a little less like she wanted to die.

  “So,” she said. “Sim this morning. You think she meant it when she said ‘standard’?”

  “Probably,” Vos said. “They need a baseline run before they throw us into whatever this joint thing is. The big war game won’t mean much if everyone’s performance is based on yesterday’s chaos.”

  Tanaka nodded.

  “Standard runs show you what stuck,” he said. “Not what you got lucky on.”

  Kaden rolled his shoulders.

  “I’ll take a standard run,” he said. “Something without hostages or exploding junctions for once.”

  “You say that now,” Navarro said. “Then she adds something awful halfway through.”

  “Let me have my illusions for five minutes,” he said.

  They finished eating. When Kaden stood, his legs complained, but less angrily. The soreness felt…organized. Like his muscles had rearranged themselves to handle the load better.

  As they dropped their trays at the return slot, he glanced at his HUD again. The PHY bar gleamed faintly. Aurora didn’t care if he noticed. It had logged what it needed to.

  Heading for the sim deck, he fell into step with the others. Navarro on one side, complaining but moving. Tanaka on the other, steady as always. Vos ahead, already half in mission mode.

  Standard run or not, it would be another mark in Aurora’s log. Another line on whatever quiet ledger the System kept on all of them.

  Kaden intended to make sure the next adjustment went where he wanted it to.