The days in the office dragged on longer than any tunnel Jack had ever crawled through.

  Most of his shift was spent staring at a wall of meaningless data feeds. The only thing keeping him sane was logging back into The Crucible—that beautiful, vicious war simulation powered by the Janus quantum core, fed in real time by a planet-spanning network of micro-sensor “digital twins.”

  And lately, the infamous pervert-god of the battlefield—Loki—was back online.

  Outside his small, dusty corner of the war machine, the entire Terran Federation was buzzing. The military had just approved a civilian release of The Crucible. The corporate-pumped, sanitized-for-public-consumption edition had a name: Crucible: Infinite War.

  The official story? To ease wartime budget strain, the Federation licensed the simulation’s unmatched physics engine—and carefully scrubbed, non-classified datasets—to Vector Dynamics for public gaming. All the classified toys were gone: no actual AMS specs, no mention of the Thor or Beast mechs. Instead, it featured a roster of custom rigs you could actually buy if you had the credits.

  But the physics stayed. Every shot. Every explosion. Every gut-wrenching metal-on-metal collision was real.

  It was, without question, the most authentic combat simulator humanity had ever built—and people were losing their minds. Corporate sharks smelled blood. Overnight, holo-billboards of burning cities and marching mechs filled the busiest streets on every human world.

  Jack knew the truth. This wasn’t a game. It was a recruiting tool. A weapon.

  The leaderboard? The biggest military talent database in the galaxy.

  Every patch update? A live beta for new weapons.

  Every story arc? Precision-engineered propaganda.

  And every player is bleeding for glory and prize money? Another cog in the Federation’s war machine.

  Jack didn’t mind. Hell, he loved it. As the “Number Two” of Seventh Lab—at least on paper—he’d pulled strings with Vector Dynamics to get his own GM-access pod, complete with god-tier privileges.

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  He was mid-daydream about sneaking home early when the office door slammed open hard enough to rattle the ferrocrete frame.

  A lieutenant colonel stormed in, crisp uniform, murder in his eyes. Behind him, a small flock of curious staff officers followed like vultures.

  He slammed a datapad onto Jack’s desk. “Do you have any idea what the hell you just did?”

  Jack frowned, picking it up. It was a defense plan for Nova City—forwarded from the Second Research Bureau. His job had been simple: run simulations and flag risks.

  He scrolled through the report. Numbers looked right. The conclusions matched the math.

  Then he saw the problem.

  “Lieutenant,” the colonel’s voice rose, “why is my plan flagged in your report as ‘High Risk, Low Feasibility’?”

  Ah. That explained the steam coming out of the man’s ears.

  Jack studied Curran—academy haircut, spotless service record, and probably believed every word of the doctrine manual. He sighed.

  “Sir, your plan is perfect… on paper. Textbook troop movement, textbook fire coverage, textbook logistics.”

  Curran’s chest swelled.

  “But…” Jack let it hang.

  The colonel narrowed his eyes. “But what?”

  “It assumes our troops are robots and the enemy’s a bunch of idiots.” Jack leaned back in his chair, Crucible’s ghost-HUD still flickering faintly in his mind. “You want our people to do a fifteen-minute unshielded flank run under peak enemy artillery. In the field, that’s not a tactic. That’s a mass suicide note.”

  Gasps from the peanut gallery. A major jabbed a finger at Jack’s face. “You’re a grease monkey who never went to an academy—how dare you call a lieutenant colonel’s plan garbage!”

  Jack didn’t even glance at him. He kept his eyes on Curran. “I didn’t say it’s garbage, sir. I said it’ll get everyone following it killed.”

  That was it. Curran’s face flushed crimson. He grabbed Jack by the collar and yanked him halfway across the desk.

  Jack’s expression went flat—Loki mode. No fear, no anger, just that cold, dead look he got before something irreversible happened. He didn’t resist. His voice was low.

  “Out there, a mistake like yours gets an entire company wiped out. In here? It just makes you look bad. You should be grateful.”

  Those words hit harder than a punch. Curran’s temper snapped. He swung.

  But his fist stopped mid-air—caught in one fat, deceptively strong hand.

  Jack’s grip was a steel clamp. “So what is this? Can’t win the argument, so you throw a punch?”

  A sharp twist—pure special forces joint lock. Curran’s arm folded up behind his back, pain forcing him down until he was bent over Jack’s desk like a broken-winged bird.

  And the room went dead silent.

  On the datapad still glowing on the desk, the simulation report blinked a single anomalous line before self-clearing:

  [Variance Log // Pattern flagged: Doctrine ≠ Reality. Outcome divergence stored.]

  No one else noticed. Jack didn’t either. But something—somewhere—had recorded the choice.