There are rooms in HQ that feel colder than their temperature. The elevator to the command tier was one of them: a narrow box of brushed metal and mirrored trim where voices went quiet and postures straightened without anyone saying a word.
Aftan stepped in last. The doors slid shut with a whisper that sounded like a book closing. For three floors they moved in silence—the soft thrum of the cable, the faint hiss of conditioned air—until he realized he was holding the tension the way you hold breath before a dive.
"Right foot."
Aftan glanced left. Allen Sky stood with one hand on the rail and his attention somewhere that wasn't the elevator, wasn't the mirrored panel, wasn't even here. The Unit 1 Captain wore a plain field jacket that could have belonged to a mechanic, a medic, or a ghost. His eyes were the color of river rock: patient, polished by years.
"Your right foot," Cap'n said, without looking up. "You're favoring the outside edge. It'll cost you a second on a pivot and a ligament on a bad day." He flicked his fingers once, a tiny gesture. "Breathe before you aim. We're not racing your heartbeat."
Aftan adjusted—pressure to the ball, knee loose, weight vertical. He hadn't known it was wrong until the wrongness changed shape in his body to match the words.
"Better," Cap'n said. His tone didn't move. "You're Aftan."
"Yes, sir."
"Ahmar's," he added, as if that were a category rather than a person. His eyes warmed by half a degree. "He teaches you to think around corners. I teach you to make corners disappear."
The elevator chimed. The doors parted to the command tier's quiet—no drills, no cadences, only the soft murmur of decision and delay. Cap'n stepped out. Aftan followed because the alternative was to stand in a box and pretend he belonged there.
They walked a corridor where the walls were glass on one side—Seattle laid out like a model—and opaque on the other—conference rooms and offices where walls knew more than people. Cap'n moved without hurry and without waste. People made room for him the way water parts for a boat: reflex, not deference.
At a junction, Ahmar leaned against a column, arms folded, watching the flow with a patience that was not passive. He and Cap'n exchanged a nod that belonged to men who had learned each other in the field, one slow, complicated job at a time.
"Borrowing my rookie?" Ahmar asked.
"Polishing him," Cap'n said.
Ahmar's mouth tilted. "Don't make him too shiny. Cameras start to like shiny."
"Selene likes shiny," Cap'n corrected. "Cameras like what Selene tells them to like." He looked to Aftan. "We're going to watch a room and not be in it."
They crossed into an observation bay where glass looked into a conference space below. Inside, the shape of a meeting had already taken form: Yosua at the head of the table, Kuro on his right, Shiro on his left, screens waking in orderly sequence. Ahmar stayed in the shadowed back row. Cap'n stood near the glass without touching it. Aftan took the place he'd learned to take—a step behind and to the side.
"Why am I here?" Aftan asked, because asking was sometimes a better way to learn than pretending you knew.
"Because watching a room teaches you how to survive it," Cap'n said.
"Because Unit 3 needs eyes that aren't only Ahmar's," Ahmar added. "You'll see things I don't, same as I see things you won't."
Below, the door opened. Unit 8's Selene Hart entered, jacket perfect, smile precise. She moved like a metronome set to assure. Aftan felt the room shift to a rhythm not entirely its own.
Yosua began. His voice came through the glass as a filtered murmur, but the shape of authority didn't need words; it lived in the arrangement of shoulders, the angle of a jaw, the way a hand flattened once on the table to cut a digression. Data spun on the screens—maps, incident logs, energy signatures marked in pale blue. Aftan's skin prickled at the sight of those signatures even at this remove, like the air had remembered a storm.
"Point to learn," Cap'n said quietly. "Watch who looks at who, and when."
Kuro spoke; Shiro didn't interrupt but tilted her head, a listening that was also a disagreement. Selene took notes she probably didn't need as notes. Ahmar reached up once and traced an absent line in the air as if drawing a map no one else could see. Cap'n didn't move at all.
Minutes passed. Patterns accreted. Aftan began to see the shape inside the motions, the way the room turned around the center of something that wasn't the Grandmaster so much as the idea of continuity. When Ahmar finally went below and took his seat, he brought a different gravity with him. Not louder. Denser.
Aftan lost the thread of the policy-speak and found the thread of the people-speak. It was all the same lesson, really, just different uniforms.
The meeting broke an hour later. People filed out in an order that wasn't rank but might as well have been. Ahmar returned to the bay. Cap'n didn't sigh; he had the practiced stillness of a man who had learned that sighs advertise where the cracks are.
"Thoughts," Cap'n said, to Aftan.
Aftan sorted the words he could have said—about signatures and patrols and whatever Selene had called "narrative alignment"—and let them go. "Shiro watches Kuro while he talks to check if he's saying both of their thoughts or just his," he said. "Selene writes when she wants someone to stop looking at her, and she speaks when she wants them to start. Yosua calls on Ahmar when he needs the room to stop pretending it's not about the field."
Ahmar's eyebrow rose a fraction. Cap'n's mouth almost smiled.
"And you?" Cap'n asked.
"What about me, sir?"
"What do you do when a room turns toward you?"
The question wanted to show him his own edges. He reached for a joke and set it down. "I hope I don't waste the turn," he said.
"Good," Cap'n said. "Now let's give you something to aim at when it does."
They left Ahmar to the aftermath and took a long route down past the range tiers, past a viewing gallery where Unit 7's naval operators ran drills with weighted suits on simulated docks, past a door marked RELIC HANDLING — AUTHORIZED ONLY that breathed out the smell of ozone and old stone.
In the range, Cap'n handed Aftan a training pistol so plain it felt like a denial. "No smart aim," he said. "No feedback. Just you, the sight, and the thing that needs holes."
Aftan set his feet, as corrected, and breathed the way his body preferred: in through the nose, out through the mouth, a count that felt like an old song.
"Grip," Cap'n said. "Front sight focus. Slow press. If the shot surprises you, you did it right."
They worked in quiet. Brass accumulated in a small gleaming hill. Aftan's first tight cluster opened, then tightened again as the corrections took. Cap'n made a small sound, approval that wasn't applause.
"You're strong enough to bully your way through motions," Cap'n said, reloading with the smoothness of a gesture practiced to invisibility. "Don't. Finesse buys you more future than force."
Aftan nodded. He had learned to move fast because he had been small in rooms that wanted big boys. He had learned to be quiet because quiet meant food. He could learn this.
"Again," Cap'n said.
They took a break when the box was empty and the range smelled like brass and smoke. Cap'n poured water from a stainless bottle into a lid and drank as if those were the only two things left in the world to do.
"Unit One will run a live extract simulation with Unit Three at fifteen hundred," he said. "Ahmar will lead. I'll observe. You'll pair with Kay."
Aftan looked down into the water he hadn't yet drunk, as if it might tell him whether that was a test or a trap.
"It's both," Cap'n said, because he made a career of reading the thing you didn't say. "She's good. Very. She also carries weight. Don't try to take it from her. Help her carry it."
"What weight?"
"The kind that makes you count the people you didn't save twice," Cap'n said. He capped the bottle. "Fifteen hundred. Don't be late."
The simulation bay was a city folded into a box. Streets reconfigured with a hum. Windows grew and vanished. Doors remembered where they had been and forgot again.
"Two civilians," Ahmar said, voice clipped just enough to cut cleanly. "Device at grid L-12. Hostile avatars in the maze. Rules of engagement: non-lethal unless your life depends on changing the rules." His eyes cut to Aftan. "You will stay on comms and on plan."
"Yes, sir," Aftan and four others chorused.
Unit One slid into their slots with the unshowy speed of people who practiced more than they posted. Kay checked her mag, then her partner's, then flicked her eyes to Aftan and away. "Stay left," she said. "I drift when I push."
"I'll anchor," he said.
The city woke.
They went in on a wedge, Hana's shield catching the first pop of sim-rounds with a muffled whap. Wisp disappeared up a fire escape like smoke deciding to have legs. Forge's array blinked alive with a ring of glyphs Ren fed counter-strings to without looking up from his pad. Kay moved like she had made a map of the floor and set the furniture herself.
"Contact front," Hana said, and pushed. Aftan slid with her, left of Kay, knees loose, breath slow. A hostile avatar leaned out with a rifle and then leaned back in faster than he had planned because Kay put three rounds through the wall where his shoulder had been. Non-lethal, paint and sensors instead of holes, but the lesson translated.
"Clear," Kay said, and was already moving through the door frame. Aftan followed, kept left as promised, anchored her drift when she surged for an angle that exposed her flank.
"Device humming," Forge said over comms. "Feels like last gen. Ren?"
"Talking to it." Ren's voice had the zen of a man doing twelve things right. "It speaks a dialect of stupid. I'll translate."
Aftan felt the prickle along his arms—a simulation, yes, but built from models that had been near real devices, near real rifts. His skin had learned to listen. The hum threaded between his ribs and got lost there.
"Civilians two floors up," Wisp said from the ceiling. "One adult, one child. Adult trying to be brave and failing in ordinary, admirable ways."
"Unit One up," Cap'n's voice came over a separate channel Aftan hadn't known he had access to. "Unit Three hold."
"Copy," Ahmar said. "Kay, Aftan, with me. Hana, Forge, Ren—device."
Stairs were a funnel for bad decisions. Kay took them like a checklist—angle, foot, angle, foot—pausing one beat to listen for the sound of a breath that didn't belong to them. Aftan felt her drift, anchored it with a shoulder flick that set her weight where it needed to be to pivot and not tumble. She didn't say thanks. He didn't need her to. The room didn't care about politeness.
Second floor. Door closed. Wisp's drone chirped once, a warning. "Two behind. Adult between child and door."
"On you," Ahmar said, and Kay moved.
Hana wasn't here with the shield; Kay became her own shield, body a wedge, muzzle a metronome. Aftan slid after, caught the man's arm before he did the stupid thing every sim adult tried—grabbing for the barrel—and turned the momentum into a pink-wrist lock that introduced the floor to the back of the man's hand without breaking it.
"It's okay," Kay said to the child, voice a sudden, practiced softness. "We're boring. You'll go home and complain about dinner."
The child's eyes were wide and wet. They nodded because nodding was the shape adults wanted.
"Device?" Ahmar asked.
"Nearly friendly," Ren said. "Forge is bribing it with math."
"Hostiles collapsing from grid K-10," Wisp said. "Looks like a drill corridor. Expect dumb courage."
"Exfil now," Ahmar said. "Unit One covers. Unit Three—"
"—stays on plan," Aftan finished under his breath.
They moved.
The corridor narrowed as if the room had taken the order personally. Paint rounds slapped walls near ears. Kay's rhythm was a balm against panic. Left. Right. Pause. Breathe. Aftan found himself matching her cadence without trying, the way your feet match a friend's when you walk a long way without talking.
"Down!" someone shouted, and they went down. A sim charge popped a window into glitter. Cold air knifed under armor. The city outside wore a different face every time you looked; that was the point of a sim. It taught you not to make friends with maps.
They crossed the gap to a fire escape that had not existed when they entered the building. Wisp's drone bobbed in front of the child like a cartoon bird. The kid reached for it and missed; the drone dodged with a mercy that looked like play.
On the street, Hana's shield met them with a thunk that felt like relief. Forge's array winked out. Ren exhaled the way a diver surfaces—quietly, like he didn't want to disturb the water.
"Time," Ahmar said.
"Eleven fifty-three," Ren answered. "Selene's median for public-friendly ops is twelve flat. We are thirty-seven seconds better than reassuring."
"Public-friendly is not the metric," Cap'n said over the supervisor channel. "Alive is the metric."
"Alive," Ahmar agreed. He looked at Kay, then at Aftan. "Good anchor."
"Thank you, sir," Aftan said.
Kay flicked him a glance. "You kept me from scraping my left on the door. I was fast by half an inch."
"I drift when I push," he repeated.
Her mouth almost smiled. It didn't, and somehow that felt better—like a promissory note, not a currency you spend in the first hour.
Debrief was brief. Ahmar believed in learning the thing while it was still warm. He pointed at the map, not the mistake. He let the people who had to keep breathing talk first.
"Blind spot at the second stair," Aftan said. "We cleared it with speed instead of certainty. That's fine for sim, not for real."
"Noted," Kay said. She didn't bristle. She just ticked a box in her head where boxes were kept by the thousands.
"Good pull on the device, Quill," Ahmar said.
"Forge did the heavy lift," Ren said.
"Forge does many heavy lifts," Forge said, deadpan. "It is my curse."
They were scattering when Cap'n brushed Aftan's elbow. "Walk."
They took a service corridor that smelled like oil and old rain toward a door that let onto a rooftop with a view of the city's ribs. The Space Needle stabbed the sky on the horizon, its crown still shrouded. The wind off the bay made words feel cleaner.
"You did what I asked," Cap'n said.
"I anchored."
"You didn't try to take her weight," Cap'n added. "Remember that lesson. The fastest way to get people killed is to try to carry them without their permission."
Aftan leaned his forearms on the parapet. Cars stitched white lines below. "Sir," he said, and stopped because the word had to carry too much. "How do you know the difference between helping and… replacing?"
Cap'n considered the sky as if he were trying to decide whether it had earned the column inches it took up. "You ask yourself, 'Am I making them safer or am I making myself necessary?' Then you answer honestly and pick the harder path."
Aftan let that sit. The wind teased sweat dry at his nape. Somewhere far off, a ferry horn spoke and was answered.
"You're quick," Cap'n said. "Quicker than is comfortable for rooms that move slow. Make people comfortable without making them soft. You can do both if you remember to breathe before you aim."
Aftan nodded. The words he carried thudded once in his chest, the shape of Found you turning over like a fish in deep water.
"Permission to ask a question?" he said.
"Granted."
"Why do you… do it this way?" Aftan asked. "Quiet. Not the speeches. Not the—" He gestured vaguely at the city, the emblem, the cameras tucked everywhere like cautious birds. "You could be louder."
Cap'n's laugh was a slow exhale. "Loud earns headlines," he said. "Quiet earns funerals with fewer names." He straightened. "Don't mistake quiet for weak. It's only that I prefer the kind of strength that leaves people standing."
A shadow crossed them; Aftan glanced up, heart tripping, but it was only an airship banking toward a high dock, the sun sliding off its flank.
"Go eat," Cap'n said. "Then sleep. Then do this again until it's boring and you resent me for making you better."
"I don't think I'll resent you," Aftan said.
"Then you're not paying attention yet." Cap'n's mouth did the thing that might have been a smile if you'd known him long enough to put the word to it. "We'll fix that."
They headed back inside. Near the door, Cap'n paused. "One more correction," he said.
Aftan stilled.
"Your right foot," Cap'n said again, and tapped the outside of Aftan's boot with the toe of his own. "When you get tired, you'll roll. Breathe first. It will remind your body who's in charge."
Aftan adjusted. It felt like a small truth finding its place.
"Good," Cap'n said. "Now go carry your own weight. We'll add more tomorrow."