Seattle HQ looked different in daylight.
From the dormitory window, Aftan watched the parade of morning activity cut patterns across the campus. Drill squads snapped through formations like ink strokes; airships lifted from the high bays with a whale's patience; runners ferried tablets and sealed envelopes between wings. He had seen bases before—the Academy in Chicago, a coastal outpost he'd visited during field rotations—but Seattle breathed a denser air, charged by purpose and the low, constant hum of classified things.
His wall console blinked: 0730 — Report to Unit 3 / Captain Ahmar.
Aftan shrugged into a fresh uniform and checked himself once in the mirror. Same light-brown hair that refused to stay orderly, same dark skin, same green eyes that caught light a shade too sharply to pass for ordinary. He tugged his sleeves, palmed the door panel, and stepped into the corridor.
Unit Three's wing was two floors down from the dorms. The long hall smelled of disinfectant and burnt coffee, a combination that made him think of exams and midnight drills. A glass wall opened onto a training floor where a handful of soldiers were already working the obstacle course—vaults, rope climbs, a moving balance beam over a pit threaded with low-voltage arcs that popped and hissed. Aftan paused, his feet aligning unconsciously to the rhythm of the course as if his body wanted to enter without waiting for his brain.
"Tempting, isn't it?"
He turned. Captain Ahmar Alexander stood with his hands in his jacket pockets, posture relaxed, eyes too awake. He was taller than Aftan remembered from the Academy visits, or maybe memory had put him at human scale; in person, Ahmar carried the calm perimeter of someone who had measured distances his whole life. His hair had more gray than last time. The faintest smile tilted his mouth when he saw Aftan trying not to stare.
"Sir," Aftan said, straightening.
"Relax," Ahmar said, not unkindly. He gestured toward the floor. "This way. Let's introduce you to the people who will keep you alive."
They descended to the training level. The noise of boots, breath, and the occasional barked curse wrapped around them. Aftan felt the old, welcome tightening in his chest—the pre-sprint coil, the brain sharpening itself against friction.
"Unit Three Elite," Ahmar called. Four heads turned.
A woman with close-cropped hair and a face built for smirks slid off the balance beam, landing in a crouch and flicking a palm-sized drone back into its dock with two fingers. "That's us," she said. "Please tell me you brought coffee."
"Nadia Park," Ahmar said, ignoring the comment. "Callsign Wisp. Recon and stealth. If she doesn't want you to see her, you won't."
Nadia's gaze ran over Aftan like a scanner—efficient, not unkind. "Kid looks quick," she said. "We landing him on the board or letting him run the walls first?"
"Let me introduce everyone before you start making bets," Ahmar said dryly. He nodded toward a broad-shouldered man working the rope with an ease that made gravity look like a suggestion. "Mateo Ruiz. Forge. Arrays, field rigs, and anything you'd rather not explode in your hands."
Mateo slid down the rope and offered his palm. His grip was warm, callused. "Welcome to the circus."
Next was a woman braced behind a modular shield, her stance rooted, her breath steady. She held the slab as casually as if it were a briefcase, but the hairline cracks across its surface said it had been between her and some serious problems more than once. "Hana Okoye," Ahmar said. "Bulwark. Shields, barriers, and the part of your brain that remembers to keep your head down."
Hana nodded. "We'll get you fitted for a brace after the orientation. Shields save lives."
The last of the four had a headset crooked around his neck and fingers hovering over a console like a pianist reluctant to sit. His hair had the careless look of a man who forgot mirrors existed. "Ren Ito," Ahmar said. "Quill. Comms, hacks, and the habit of knowing things he shouldn't."
Ren waved without taking his eyes off the monitor. "Hi—you're Aftan. I had to update your access tags—someone in Admin put you in Unit thirteen. Which is not a thing. Not since the—never mind." His gaze finally clicked to Aftan's face; he blinked, then grinned like he'd solved a small puzzle. "Cool eyes."
"Thank you," Aftan said, unsure where the compliment was meant to land.
"Eyes later," Ahmar said. "Orientation now. On me."
They gathered at the edge of the course. Ahmar spoke without raising his voice, and yet every sound in the room seemed to re-arrange itself to make space for his words.
"Unit Three's Elite Squadron is a wedge," he said. "When a situation needs finesse and speed and the kind of judgment you can't write into a manual, we get the call. That means we go in light, we go in first, and we go in with our heads attached to our bodies. You will keep each other's heads attached. Understand?"
"Sir," the four answered in unison.
Ahmar turned to Aftan. "You've seen me show up to the Academy twice a year and break your favorite training records. You've heard I have a temper and no patience for paperwork." A smile touched the corner of his mouth. "The rumors are almost true. But the rule that matters is this: no heroics when there's a smarter way. If there isn't a smarter way, we make one."
Aftan swallowed. "Understood."
"Good." Ahmar's gaze rested on him for a heartbeat longer than on the others—taking a measure, setting it aside for later. "Wisp, Forge, Bulwark, Quill—show him the board."
The "board" was a modular obstacle course that could reconfigure its sequence with a few inputs. Forge keyed a pattern into the control panel; walls rotated, platforms rose, the beam shivered sideways to become a zigzag of narrow ledges over the arc-pit. Wisp tapped her drone once, and it lifted off her palm with a grasshopper's hop, hovering over Aftan's shoulder like a curious bird.
"Three-minute loop," Wisp said. "No drops. If you fall into the arc, we laugh. Then we pull you out."
"Mostly in that order," Ren said.
Aftan rolled his shoulders, bounced once on his heels, and stepped onto the first plate. The course translated under his feet—a subtle misalignment engineered to steal balance. He felt the steal coming and adjusted a fraction earlier than the shift, meeting it the way you meet a handshake with a man who likes to squeeze. His mind fell into the old calculus: angles, distance, center of gravity, the soft give of knee versus the hard insistence of heel. On the third platform, a holoprojector threw a ghost of a swinging arm into his path; his body folded without thinking, a bow under a low branch. When a foam baton shot from a slit in the wall, his hand shot up and plucked it from the air, turning the momentum into a leftward spin that landed him on a moving square with half a second to spare.
"Cute," Wisp said from somewhere above. Her drone buzzed approval.
The beam was next. It shivered. He didn't. His feet knew this story—how to ride a line that wanted to write you off it, how to look beyond the next step to the step after and the step after that, how to turn the body into a question the world had to answer with yes. Halfway across, the arc-pit crackled, sending a breath of warmed ozone up past his ankles. He kept his weight low, his hands out, his attention fixed not on the beam itself but on the invisible line that connected him to the far platform.
He finished the loop in two minutes, forty-three seconds.
Forge whistled. "That's faster than your Captain's first run."
"Lies," Ahmar said mildly.
Aftan's face warmed. Praise lit his spine like a row of lamps. He stepped off the platform and handed the foam baton back to the wall with a soft tap. Wisp's drone darted in, scanning his pulse. It beeped once, like it had a private joke.
"Half-Genshi reflexes," Hana said, matter-of-fact. "You ride balance like you were born in a storm."
The word—not half, but Genshi—hung between them for a second and then found its place. Aftan nodded. "My father," he said. "I don't—" He cut himself off before he said I don't know much. That was a story for later, or never.
Ahmar clapped once, bringing the air back to mission oxygen. "Good. Now we see how you move with people."
The next hour passed in muscle and math. Pairs work. Trios. A relay that required trust in someone you'd met ten minutes ago; a puzzle that could only be solved if Forge set his array before Wisp's drone mapped the room, because the map would scramble the field; a shield-wall curl that Hana ran like a dance she had made herself. Aftan found he liked the way their strengths interlocked. Wisp's dry humor kept breath steady. Forge's cheerfulness made weight feel like it had a handle. Hana's presence felt like standing at the edge of a cliff and knowing the wind would hold you. Ren swore at a tablet and then made a camera see only what he wanted it to see.
They broke for ten minutes in a corner thick with water bottles and protein bars. Aftan took a seat on a rubber mat, forearms braced on knees. Sweat had pasted his shirt to his back. It felt right.
"Where'd you learn to steal time from a footfall?" Wisp asked, unscrewing a bottle with her teeth.
"Orphanage," Aftan said. "Shared space. If you didn't move quiet, you missed breakfast."
Wisp laughed. "Weaponized breakfast. I respect it."
Forge leaned his head back against the wall. "You ever run rooftops?"
"A few," Aftan said.
Hana tipped her bottle toward him, a little salute. "You run clean," she said. "No wasted motion. You'll live longer than most."
Ren had his tablet balanced on his thighs, thumbs darting. "I'm adding you to our private channel," he said. "Don't post selfies. Or do. Selene has scripts that find them and turn you into a meme with very encouraging captions."
"Selene," Aftan repeated.
"Unit Eight," Ahmar said from above them, where he'd somehow materialized without anyone noticing. "PR and psychological ops. She can make a riot sit down and say it's tired."
"Speaking of PR," Forge said, sitting forward. "I heard there's going to be a ceremony next week. Council's bringing rookies into the atrium for a full introduction. With cameras."
Ahmar's mouth tightened in the way of a man who had been told a plan after it was already happening. "An 'IDF Primer,'" he said. "You'll attend. You'll clap politely. If you are asked a question by a camera, you will answer with complete sentences of three words or less. 'Yes, sir.' 'Working hard, ma'am.' 'No comment.'"
Wisp sighed theatrically. "You take all the fun out of life."
"Life takes all the fun out of life," Ahmar said. "I just schedule it."
They laughed. The sound fit in the room like it had been invited.