The second block of training moved from the obstacle course to a simulation room. The walls shifted on rails; the floor retextured itself from tile to tar to an uneven scatter of rock. Ren loaded a scenario; the lights dimmed; the city sprouted around them in wireframe and then in full render: a narrow alley smelling of wet cardboard and fryer grease, a second-story window left ajar, an echoing space beyond.
"Retrieve," Ahmar said. "No collateral. Two civilian avatars in play. Go."
They moved. Wisp went high, drone preceding her like a thought. Forge set an array at the mouth of the alley and made a fist—the air crisped, pressure shifting as the field sealed behind them, funneling sound and scent forward. Hana took point with the shield, absorbing the first simulated rounds with a grunt and a forward step that made the bullets feel embarrassed about existing. Aftan slid under her arm and took the left flank, eyes catching the detail that didn't belong—the slight overhang of the awning above the bodega door, perfect for a drop into the window's blind spot. He grazed it with fingertips and went up, a three-step run along the wall into a crouch that put him level with the glass.
Inside, wireframe civilians huddled beside a humming rectangle of a device that threw off a low, unpleasant song. The device was meant to simulate a rift seed, a prototype Forge had helped design; get close and your skin prickled like bad static.
"On me," Aftan said. Wisp dropped into the room an instant later. Their eyes met; she nodded once. He moved for the device. Wisp moved for the civilians. The thing pulsed, and Aftan felt the prickle along his spine turn into a line, then into a path, then into—he couldn't name it, but his hands knew what to do. He didn't touch it. He touched the air a breath above it, like smoothing a wrinkle without moving the cloth.
The hum softened.
"Nice," Forge said over comms, voice honestly impressed. "Who taught you that?"
"No one," Aftan said, and only realized afterward that he hadn't meant to say it out loud.
They extracted. The simulation bled away, the room returning to white.
Ahmar folded his arms. "Again," he said.
By the third run, Aftan felt like he knew where everyone would be before they were there. By the fifth, he was trusting it. Forge began calling him Compass over comms as a joke. Wisp didn't repeat it, but she looked at him the way a climber looks at a new handhold and decides it will hold.
They cooled down with stretches and a game Ren called "Blind Grid," which involved tossing soft cubes through a lattice projected on the ceiling while someone shouted mathematically improbable instructions. It was ridiculous and effective. Aftan was laughing by the end, the sound startling him with how long it had been since he'd heard it come out of his own mouth without effort.
"Not bad for a morning," Wisp said, bumping his shoulder with hers as they filed toward the locker room.
"Try not to get cocky," Hana added, but the corner of her mouth betrayed her.
They were almost to the door when another unit stepped onto the floor like a storm rolling in. Armor gleamed. Voices were louder by design. At their head walked a woman with scarlet hair pulled into a tight knot, a lollipop in one cheek and a gaze that counted exits without moving.
Kay Williams.
Aftan's breath stuttered. The world narrowed to the click of her boot, the white stick between her teeth, the way her eyes slid over him and away without recognition and with it at the same time.
Unit One formed up along the opposite wall, an efficient field of bodies. Behind them, a tall man in a plain jacket with no rank beyond the fact that he didn't need one stood watching the room take his measure. Cap'n Allen Sky. His presence pressed the noise into order as if someone had laid a hand on the world and calmed it.
Kay's gaze drifted back, found Aftan again, and lingered half a second longer. Her jaw worked the candy stick to the other side of her mouth. No words. Not yet. Something colder and more practical: acknowledgment, inventory, the promise of friction.
Ahmar's hand touched Aftan's shoulder—a small weight, like a guide rope in a cave. "That's Unit One," he said, though Aftan obviously knew. "We'll be doing joint drills tomorrow. Today, keep your feet under you."
"Yes, sir," Aftan said, forcing air into his lungs past the place where the name Nazrat liked to sit.
"Unit Three," Ahmar called. "Hit the lockers. Be back on the floor in ten. We're due in the atrium at nine for the 'Primer.' Try to look like the public would survive meeting you."
Ren groaned. "Can't we send cardboard cutouts?"
"Selene would still find a way to make them smile better than you," Wisp said.
They scattered. Aftan's locker was new enough to squeak. He stowed his sweat, scrubbed his face at the sink, and looked up into the mirror at a boy whose eyes looked older today than yesterday. He wasn't sure if that was good.
Outside the locker room, the corridor funneled them toward the atrium. More units joined the flow—Unit Two's twins, Shiro and Kuro, in conversation that looked like a single sentence cut into two bodies; Unit Seven's naval specialists smelling faintly of brine; Unit Ten's medical team, their calm contagious. The atrium itself was a gallery of glass and light. A dais had been erected at the far end with the Council's emblem suspended above it. Cameras perched like black birds along the balcony.
"Smile with your eyes," Ren muttered. "Or don't. Selene says brooding tests well with the 18–25 demo."
"Quiet," Hana said, but she was hiding a smile.
They found their place among Unit Three's ranks. Ahmar moved to the front, the line of his shoulders a geometry that promised competence without show. Aftan scanned the dais. Grandmaster Yosua was already there, flanked by captains who wore their authority like weather. Ahmar's place on the stage sat empty for now; he preferred to stand with his people until required to perform being a captain. Cap'n took his spot with the same quiet that made men stop talking mid-sentence without resenting him for it.
A hush rolled the room.
Yosua stepped forward, and the sound system gave him its voice. "Good morning," he said, the words exact as a drill. "We are the International Defense Force. We keep the peace you live in. Today, we welcome new transfers and recognize the units whose work keeps us strong."
He spoke of history without naming wars. He spoke of unity without naming the cost. Aftan felt the speech travel through him like a weather front—cool pressure against skin, the promise of rain without the cloud. He saw cameras frame faces into a story someone else would write.
Ahmar's name was called. He took the stage, nodded once, said the bare minimum, and stepped back. Cap'n spoke a single sentence: "We do the job; we go home." The room, oddly, seemed to breathe out.
Selene Hart from Unit Eight introduced a video—highlights of rescues and operations stitched into a narrative that made risk look like choreography. The crowd of rookies and transfers made the appropriate noises. Aftan watched himself in the reflection of a screen and thought of a humming rectangle in a simulated room and the way his hands knew what air to touch.
When it ended, the atrium dissolved into smaller conversations in the way of large meetings everywhere. Aftan turned to find Kay three feet away, the crowd having swirled them close without permission.
"Unit Three," she said. No lollipop now. Her eyes were a gray you only noticed once you were too close to pretend you hadn't.
"Aftan," he said, because names were a way to say I see you and also to say don't push me without hands.
"You run clean," she said. Same words Hana had used, delivered like a line item rather than praise. "Don't confuse that for being invincible."
"I won't," he said. He waited and then added, because the truth was petty and therefore honest: "You shouldn't either."
A muscle in her cheek flexed. She nodded once and stepped back into Unit One's orbit without looking away, and then she was gone.
Wisp materialized at his elbow like a thought you'd been about to have anyway. "Well," she murmured. "That'll be a fun chapter title someday."
"Keep your voice down," Hana said, though she didn't sound like she meant it.
Ahmar reappeared long enough to tap his wrist screen. "Lunch. Then debrief at fourteen hundred. Forge, you're on array maintenance. Wisp, update our city overlays. Hana, drill with Unit Ten—shield-and-evac integration. Ren—stop trying to hack the atrium cameras mid-ceremony."
Ren looked offended. "I would never—"
Ahmar raised an eyebrow.
"—be caught," Ren finished under his breath.
Aftan lingered a moment longer in the atrium's bright hollow. The Council emblem spun slowly above, catching light in polished edges. He thought of the word that had ghosted his mind on the roof of the Needle two weeks before he arrived, a word he hadn't heard himself but that had braided itself into his thoughts anyway, like a seed in a shoe you can't shake out.
Found you.
He didn't know if the dragons had meant him, or something through him, or something he carried without knowing how to put down. He only knew that the air in Seattle tasted like the first second before a storm breaks.
"Compass," Wisp called from the doorway. "You coming, or do we leave you here to brood for the demo?"
Aftan exhaled and let the breath set his shoulders. "Coming," he said, and followed his team into the bright, busy day.