Chapter 1

The first thing I noticed about the combatives room at Fort Grafton wasn’t the shouting. It was the smell.
Rubber mats warmed by overhead lights have their own kind of breath—like a tire shop mixed with old sweat and
disinfectant that never fully wins. The air tasted sharp, metallic at the back of my throat, like I’d been chewing on
pennies. Fans shoved the heat around without cooling anything, and every time someone hit the mat, dust puffed
up from the seams like the floor was exhaling.
I’d been standing along the cinderblock wall with the other “extras,” the ones who weren’t here to impress anyone.
I was the transfer. The late paperwork. The quiet specialist who’d gotten pushed from Supply to Security Forces
because somebody up the chain said, We need bodies.My uniform still had creases like it didn’t belong to me yet. The sleeves swallowed my hands. I kept tugging them
down like that could hide my pulse.
“Next!”
The instructor’s voice cracked across the room. Staff Sergeant Lowell—flat nose, cauliflower ear, a whistle on a
lanyard he never used—jabbed a finger at the line. People stepped forward in pairs, tried to look mean, tried to
look ready. Some did okay. Some got folded and pretended their ribs didn’t hurt. Every time someone went down,
a few onlookers laughed too loud, like laughter could keep their own fear from leaking out.
Lowell’s finger landed on me.
My stomach dropped so hard I swear I felt it in my ankles.
I stepped onto the mat and the room’s noise thinned, like everyone decided my turn was worth paying attention to.
It wasn’t admiration. It was that particular curiosity people have when they’re about to watch something fragile
break.
Across from me, someone moved with the lazy confidence of a man who thought the world was already his.
Sergeant Brock Vance. I’d only been on base three weeks and his name had already worked its way into every
conversation like a bad song you couldn’t stop hearing.
Six foot something, shoulders like stacked cinder blocks, hair buzzed tight enough to show the pale scar along his
scalp. He rolled his neck, cracked his knuckles, and looked me up and down with a grin that didn’t touch his eyes.
“Oh,” he said, loud enough for the back row. “They really are scraping the bottom of the barrel now.”
A few people snickered. Somebody made a coughing noise that suspiciously sounded like “princess.”
I didn’t respond. I kept my eyes on Vance’s chest instead of his face, because staring at someone’s face can turn
into a challenge, and staring at the floor can turn into surrender. Chest was neutral. Chest was safe.
Lowell blew his pointless whistle anyway. “Touch gloves. Light contact.”
Vance didn’t touch gloves. He circled me with exaggerated slowness, like he was on a stage. His boots squeaked
at the edge of the mat where someone had stepped off in a hurry earlier and left a smear of sweat. He leanedclose enough that I caught the smell of his breath—wintergreen dip and coffee.
“You sure you’re in the right place, Lee?” he asked, using my last name like it tasted funny. “This isn’t yoga.”
The laughter hit again, a little louder. My face stayed still, but my ears burned.
My goal was simple: get through the evaluation without making myself a story.
The conflict was obvious: Vance wanted me to be a story.
He lifted his hands in a sloppy guard, like he was mocking the whole exercise. His eyes flicked to the crowd,
checking for reaction. He wanted an audience. He wanted witnesses.
Lowell’s voice cut in. “Vance. Light.”
“Light,” Vance echoed, and then his mouth twisted. “Sure.”
He threw a kick.
Not a real one. Not one meant to break anything. The kind of lazy, sneering tap you use to let someone know you
could have hurt them if you’d bothered. His boot swung toward my midsection with the casual cruelty of a guy
nudging a stray dog off a porch.
The boot didn’t land where he thought it would.
My body moved before my mind finished naming what was happening. I stepped off-line, just a half turn, like I was
avoiding a puddle. His kick slid past empty air. His balance shifted—small mistake, but it was there.
The boot slid past empty air. His balance shifted—small mistake,