A few days later, Jack and Mingmei Lin returned to Jack’s house in Garipan. After all, Mingmei would be alone in the capital otherwise—better to have a home here.

  While Mingmei went out to buy groceries, Jack took advantage of the quiet and threw everything he’d ever treasured—high-power telescopes, miniature bugging devices, infrared viewers—into a pile and marched them straight to the trash.

  He tossed the items and muttered through tears, “Goodbye, Sarah—no more watching you wash your hair with that mint shampoo. Goodbye, Emily—your off-key singing will be missed. And you, Chloe—God made that crack in your bathroom window especially for me… goodbye, childhood… goodbye!”

  After he hurled the last piece, Jack sat down by the bin and stared at the heap that had once been his “treasures.”

  He thought of Meadow—how she’d saved him on the battlefield, the softness and steel in her eyes. “If she knew what kind of man I am…” he shook his head and snorted a self-mocking laugh. “She’d probably regret it.”

  But she had still saved him.

  And now she was gone.

  Jack pulled the faintly blue DNA capsule from his pocket—Mingmei had given it to him. It glinted in the sunlight like a tiny star. He pressed it to his chest over his heart and clenched his fist.

  “Meadow,” he whispered, “I don’t know where you are. But I’ll find you.”

  He stood, brushed the dust off his pants, took a deep breath, and said aloud, “Goodbye, old Jack.”

  Then he kicked the pile of “treasures” into the trash.

  After getting rid of his junk, Jack went back to the academy. At first, he thought he’d come to the wrong place.

  Freshman enrollment at the Garipan Military Academy was in full swing—everywhere, girls and families, laughter and chatter. Jack shuffled sheepishly through the crowd, a goofy grin on his face. For a moment, he regretted not staying in the academy dorms; the girls’ wing had always been a kind of paradise in his imagination.

  He finally wriggled free of the crowd and noticed a few pretty girls giving him cold looks; he decided not to push back through them and went to his dorm to pack.

  A bachelor doesn’t need much: one suitcase does the job. The only thing that gave him pause was the training simulator; in the end, he decided to leave it in Nova’s lab and use the gravity rig there for training.

  The simulator was foldable and feather-light—easy to carry. Jack lugged the case in one hand, the simulator in the other, and as he stepped out of the dorm, he saw wave after wave of girls dragging suitcases into the opposite hall.

  He felt a minor, ridiculous regret—he’d given up watching one girl bathe to miss watching a whole crowd bathe; what a loss.

  Groups of passing girls saw the leering, sweaty lump on the sidewalk and reacted—some stared, some whispered, some pulled their friends away, some giggled. Jack didn’t notice; he kept muttering numbers under his breath. “33, 36, 35—this one’s impressive—39—wow 42. I can’t take it…”

  A girl struggling with a heavy bag passed by, and Jack nearly bled from every pore.

  “Hey, you must be fifty, right?” she said, panting.

  “—I never weighed it, but that case is heavy,” she replied.

  Jack was relieved he hadn’t asked for a precise number.

  Sloane and her friends walked by laughing. This bright, clever girl was leaving home for the first time—everything outside felt new and free. Too much pampered privilege and endless balls had made her bored. Seeing a man ogling girls on the street didn’t upset her at first—until she drew near and realized the guy’s stare had never left her chest. She realized he’d been circling inside the girls’ crowd for twenty minutes during registration.

  Furious, Sloane decided to teach the leering fatso a lesson. A champion of modern combative sports, she confronted him; before she could so much as throw a move, Jack bolted. He had never seen someone so cowardly; Sloane and her friends exchanged amused looks and laughed.

  Back at his house, Mingmei had already tidied everything—suddenly, Jack felt like he had a home.

  They talked for a while and ate dinner together. Mingmei was a good cook: simple, warming dishes—golden tamagoyaki with a hint of sweetness, tender nikujaga stewed potatoes and beef, and a steaming bowl of miso soup.

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  Halfway through the meal, Mingmei put down her chopsticks and looked at Jack.

  “Jack,” she said softly, “did Meadow tell you anything before she left?”

  Jack froze and set down his bowl. “Auntie, she—” he hesitated, “she didn’t say much. But I know she’s brave.”

  Mingmei’s eyes went red. “She’s always been like that. She handles everything herself and never lets me worry. But I’m her mother—how can I not worry?”

  Jack looked into Mingmei’s face—the same face Meadow had—and took her hand. “Mrs. Lin, I promise I’ll find her.”

  Mingmei watched the sincerity in his eyes, and finally, the tears fell. She nodded hard. “I believe you,” she whispered. “Meadow chose to trust you, and I trust her choice.”

  That night, Jack lay awake, staring at the ceiling. He thought of Meadow, of Mingmei, of the little blue capsule. He didn’t know where Meadow was or whether she was safe, but one thing was clear:

  This time, he had to go find her.

  Elated, he reported back to Room Six and moved the simulator into the lab. When Dr. Thorn saw him, he tossed Jack a schedule: “Training starts in a few days—a three-month military course. The academy assigned you as a mech repair instructor for the recruits. They’re new students in mech design and fabrication—don’t embarrass me.”

  Jack muttered to himself: “That old bastard’s just using me as free labor.” But it was his trade—mechanical repair—so teaching recruits shouldn’t be a problem. He didn’t want Thorn assigning him any odd jobs, so he slipped away quickly.

  Ever since Jack had pinned the blame on Leo at the command post, Cyril had really gone to see Leo. After asking a few questions about simulation data, the famed Imperial general admired Leo’s robust theoretical grounding. In the end, he decided to take Leo as a protégé.

  Cyril was also waiting for Jack’s return.

  After a few days’ rest, Jack had come to his senses. Colonel Parker had been right—relying on a single person made the future hard to predict. Learning from a strategist like Cyril might be a kind of security. Jack wasn’t afraid to run again if he had to, but he wanted to learn real skills—at least to know when to run and when not to.

  After much inner wrangling, Jack arranged a video call with Cyril and told him he wanted to study real war planning.

  One day, Jack and Leo visited Cyril. Cyril was staring at a virtual map, hands clasped behind his back. He waved them in and cut off the formalities: “Look at this simulation.”

  They crowded over the display. The map showed an amphibious landing scenario neither of them had seen before. The red side attacked, the blue side defended; paradoxically, the defenders had the numerical edge and a dense defense across the beachhead.

  “Can you find the blue side’s weakness?” Cyril asked. “If you were the red commander, how would you take that shore?”

  Leo called up the data and raced through the analysis. “Sir, given force ratios and depth of defenses, a frontal assault would be catastrophic. Blue’s fire is overlapping—however…” He pointed. “Between these two heights is a platform of equal elevation with no garrison. If you air-drop troops there to sever the left and right defenses, you could tear the defense apart.”

  “That’s a trap,” Jack said suddenly.

  Leo paused.

  Jack pointed at the high ground. “There is no armored force shown there—either in data or on the map. If the flanks hide artillery, an infantry air-drop becomes suicide. It’s a carefully laid trap designed to entice commanders with an apparent opportunity.”

  Leo recalculated, pale. “…Yes. If hidden units are accounted for, the failure probability for an assault swells to 98%.”

  Jack studied the map long and hard, then shook his head. “No way. The red side can’t win here.”

  Cyril’s face was a complicated mix of pride and disappointment.

  “But—” Jack continued, and suddenly looked at Cyril, “if you tell me that taking that patch of ground is the hinge of the entire campaign—that if red fails to seize it the red main force will be annihilated—then I’d assault it.”

  His finger still hovered over that high ground.

  Jack stopped mid-thought. He remembered the lowland jungle, the POWs he’d dragged out, and Nya. He remembered running away thirteen times.

  Every time he’d chosen not to fight because the cost wasn’t worth it, because people would die, because he’d been afraid.

  But this once, he hadn’t run.

  Not because he’d become brave, but because it had to be fought.

  Jack looked at the high ground as if it were the younger version of himself.

  “General,” he lifted his eyes, a complicated expression in them, “I know many will die. I know it’s a trap. But if we don’t fight, more will die.”

  “I don’t want to fight,” Jack said calmly, “but I will.”

  Cyril regarded him, and a look of approval passed across his face.

  “Then start classes tomorrow,” Cyril said with a smile. “Tomorrow we begin.”

  Outside the door, a man named Kane watched Jack and Leo walk away. He shrugged in confusion: “General, one says don’t attack and the other says attack—aren’t those opposite answers?”

  Cyril shook his head. “No. They reached the same conclusion by different paths. I don’t want an answer—I want to see how they decide.”

  He looked up from the map. “Leo’s data and logic are a perfect skeleton. Jack’s intuition and cunning are the soul. Together… they’re terrifying. If Jack wants it, he could become a better strategist than I am.”

  Kane bowed.

  Cyril gazed out the window and murmured, “What their tactical style will look like—waiting to see, it’s torture.”

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  That night, Jack stood at the window watching Garipan’s stars. He had Meadow’s DNA capsule in his pocket and Cyril’s course schedule in his hand. The twin suns blinked through the clouds.

  He thought about the simulation, about the high ground, about his own answer.

  He knew he hadn’t changed. When a fight could be lost, he would still run. “If you can’t win, run” had been his survival philosophy, and it had kept him alive.

  But he also knew some fights you couldn’t flee.

  Like in the lowland jungle.

  Like finding Meadow.

  Like protecting Mrs. Lin.

  “If you can beat them, fight; if you can’t, run,” Jack muttered. “But sometimes… You have to strike first.”

  He smiled, remembering Cyril’s words: the coward’s right answer.

  “Yeah,” Jack said, feeling the capsule in his pocket. “A coward can be right—so long as he knows when to run and when not to.”

  He inhaled, closed the window, and whispered, “Good night, Meadow. Wait for me.”