Locked inside the four walls of the medical isolation unit, I was forced to spend hours grinding through Selina’s study materials so I would not fall behind the Corps curriculum. Personally, I did not see it as punishment or routine work. Analyzing the biology of alien lifeforms was fascinating in its own right, especially for someone used to digging all the way down to the core of things.
The only problem was that there was surprisingly little actual material.
The database listed only four alien races that had recently been opening portals on our territory while trying to escape their dying planets. The entire upcoming graduation exam was built around their anatomy, vulnerabilities, and technology.
Every other xenobiology file Selina had thoughtfully loaded onto this armored laptop for my general education concerned species that had visited Earth over the last forty years. By now, all of them had completely degenerated into extinction, which meant they were no longer included in the mandatory training program for recruits.
Only four living enemies... Suddenly, the Corps’ logic became crystal clear. That was exactly why the entire theoretical course fit so easily into thirty days. A few years from now, those races would be completely ground down in the gears of interplanetary war, and the next wave of cadets would be memorizing anatomical charts for entirely different enemies.
A familiar metallic clang echoed through the corridor, followed by the heavy hiss of the airlock decontamination cycle kicking in. I glanced at the lower corner of the screen. Right, lunchtime.
I lowered the heavy laptop lid just as the airtight door slid open and Selina stepped into the sterile zone in her usual white environmental suit. This time, her hands were not occupied with medical cases. Instead, she carefully carried a solid military container in her gloved hands.
"Well, damn," I said as I unclipped the plastic locks on the lunchbox. The thick, intoxicating smell of fried meat and melted grease instantly flooded the room. "Fries and a double burger? What’s the occasion, some kind of surprise holiday?"
"This’s more than a holiday, Tom. This’s a complete triumph of science," Selina said as she lowered herself into the chair across from me. Even through the bulky outline of the protective suit, her victorious posture was unmistakable. "Using your biomaterials, I’ve developed a formula for a new Dengue treatment complex. Based on my dry calculations, this serum’s three orders of magnitude more effective than anything modern medicine currently uses. The samples’ve already been sent to Central Hospital for expedited testing on a real patient. Pure formality and precaution. My [Engineer]’s never failed when the mathematical model in my head’s balanced perfectly."
"That’s definitely worth celebrating." I nodded, picked up a hot fry, dipped it into the thick ketchup, then paused halfway. "You won’t be bothered if I destroy all this right in front of you, will you?"
"Eat all you want. I’ve already grabbed something at the cafeteria," she replied with a careless wave of her massive glove. "Besides, I’m on a strict diet right now. No excess carbs or saturated fats."
I nodded knowingly and happily bit into the crispy fries. From my perspective, Selina’s figure was perfectly fine and did not need any adjustments whatsoever, but arguing with a woman about her weight or appearance was a fundamentally losing strategy with no rational upside. So I kept that conclusion to myself.
"How’re things around the perimeter?" I asked casually to fill the silence.
"Everything’s running normally," she replied in a bored tone while lazily staring at the ventilation grate in the ceiling. "The instructors’re turning recruits into soldiers, the cadets’re whining and failing to appreciate the effort. Business as usual."
"By the way, do people around base even remember I exist? Anybody asking questions?"
"Someone asked once out of obligation. I told them you’d been temporarily assigned to my laboratory block for a classified experiment, and nobody brought it up again," she said with the same indifference someone might use to read a weather report. "If I were you, Tom, I’d remove their opinions from the list of things worth caring about entirely."
I set the burger aside and looked directly at her. "Why’re you so categorical? My supervisor, Danny Kim, made a point during our first meeting that connections inside the unit and coordination with future partners’re essential for survival."
"Danny was reading you the standard indoctrination handbook for yesterday’s high schoolers. Did you actually take that melodrama at face value, Tom?" Mockery clearly slipped into her muted voice. "Cadet brotherhood only exists inside this fence. If the stars align and your entire class passes qualification on the same day, they might toss you into the first introductory portal together. Strictly under veteran supervision, just to watch real combat operations from a safe distance. After that, the daycare phase ends. Everybody receives full combat status, and the administrative machine distributes personnel across different sectors according to maximum skill efficiency."
"I know. Danny already explained the system to me," I answered calmly, stepping in defense of my supervisor’s common sense. "But you can’t deny the basic statistical probability that Corps bureaucracy could eventually place me in the same line with someone from this batch."
"For the average cadet? Yeah, the probability’s high. But in your specific case, Tom, it approaches absolute zero," Selina cut in with complete confidence. "Your current attributes and hidden potential simply have no overlap with anyone else in this class. And I’m saying that as the specialist who personally handled and thoroughly studied every single profile here."
"So what’s your verdict?" I tossed another couple fries into my mouth, deliberately projecting mild skepticism. "Enlighten me. What kind of future do you predict for my fellow inmates? As far as I know from Danny, the final assignment structure’s approved at the very top personally by General Crowley, and nobody can influence his decisions."
"And whose analytical reports do you think the old man relies on when he signs those orders?" Her glasses flashed slyly beneath the helmet visor. "Naturally, the conclusions of one exceptionally competent employee from the research division."
"No idea who you could possibly mean." I kept my expression completely unreadable as I watched a faint crack appear in her smug self-satisfaction. "But you still haven’t explained the actual placements. Maybe all this confidence’s just a good poker face, and you don’t know the details yourself."
The tactic was painfully primitive, but every time Selina started acting overly important, I felt an irresistible urge to knock her down a peg.
"Don’t try playing on my vanity, Tom. It’s far too obvious," she snorted arrogantly inside the suit. "Yeah, the final word belongs to Crowley, but I’ve worked in this system for ten years. I know all the standard assignment templates perfectly well. Drake’s unquestionably headed for the first-wave assault vanguard. His energy projectiles rip alien S-shields apart like tin cans, and people like that’re worth their weight in gold on the front lines. Summers’ll end up in the assault units too. On top of that, she’ll almost certainly be offered a civilian security contract. Her gravity control’s ideal for stabilizing tectonic shifts, dealing with hurricane aftermaths, or clearing orbital debris. The remaining two have a slightly broader range of possibilities, but all of it pales in comparison to you, Tom."
"I’m listening," I replied, tossing the last fry into my mouth and neatly crumpling the grease-stained napkin.
"You’re unlikely to land a direct combat contract with the assault wing," Selina said in the flat, dry tone of a seasoned personnel officer. "Sure, your S-Armor piloting markers’re impressive, no argument there, but the Corps isn’t exactly suffering from a shortage of cannon fodder capable of running on command and pulling a trigger. With your current stress tolerance and physical baseline, they’ll most likely place you as an internal training instructor. You’ll spend your days running fresh recruits through obstacle courses instead of the regular sergeants. On top of that, there’s a high probability headquarters’ll saddle you with special assignments, like whipping our athletes into shape before the Olympic Games."
I picked up the can of cola and took a long, deep drink, using the pause for the sole purpose of hiding the dull wave of disgust rising in my throat. The prospect of dealing with children and teenagers triggered immediate mental rejection in me. I had never dreamed of working as an entertainer, babysitter, or pediatrician. Even during the harshest crisis years, becoming a schoolteacher had never crossed my mind. Spending every day cushioning someone else’s hormonal tantrums and mood swings? To survive that kind of routine without losing my sanity, I would have needed my nervous system surgically removed.
"But personally, I think that scenario’s complete nonsense and a waste of a valuable resource," Selina interrupted herself sharply. "That’s why I’ve already signed off on an official expert recommendation and attached it to your personnel archive. My firm recommendation to headquarters is to transfer you into the scientific and technical division as my personal lab assistant."
I froze with the can still in my hand, mentally double-checking whether I had heard her correctly. "As what? A lab assistant? Selina, the last time I touched laboratory glassware was during high school chemistry labs."
"And you won’t have to touch it again. Do you think I’m short on people to wash beakers?" A dry chuckle slipped into her voice. "Tom, think pragmatically. Think bigger. The synergy between your adaptability and my analytical skills is already the foundation for a scientific revolution."
"What about the mandatory combat requirements and portal deployments?"
"That’s a headache for the assault troops and field infantry," she said with a dismissive wave of her thick glove. "Do you seriously think I crawl through trenches on the other side in these shoes? Personnel with high scientific research value’re automatically exempt from combat operations."
Without a word, I stood up from the table, walked over to the sink, and methodically washed the grease and ketchup from my fingers. Pure logic suggested that Selina’s proposal came with enormous advantages. Why risk my head under alien artillery fire and catch random shrapnel when I could convert my abilities into stable, secure capital inside a high-tech research block? The prospect looked flawless. Only one detail bothered me: that fanatical, almost feverish gleam in her eyes that neither her lenses nor the heavy visor could conceal.
Selina left the isolation unit immediately after lunch, while I remained sitting in front of the laptop. I no longer felt like reading training manuals. Instead, I sat motionless, staring at the system clock in the taskbar. The minutes dragged by like molten lead. Finally, the numbers switched to 13:00.
[Attention! S-Power restriction removed]
[All blocked functions and abilities restored]
The instant the familiar dense wave of energy surged through my cells, I immediately understood that Sam had just started practical training on the field outside. I had missed the session today, but I had no intention of regretting it. On the contrary, the forced isolation worked entirely in my favor.
To be honest, all my previous training sessions under Sam’s supervision had been catastrophically inefficient from a time-management perspective. I would dump my entire energy reserve into peak output within a few seconds, then spend the remaining fifty-nine minutes leaning against a wall waiting for class to end. That level of efficiency was completely unacceptable to me.
For a while now, I had been developing a working hypothesis on how to radically optimize the process. But the rigid one-hour limit on S-Power usage, combined with the constant presence of instructors and curious cadets watching my every move, forced me to deliberately suppress my own development. I had no interest in putting on a free circus show.
Now, however, the conditions were perfect. I was alone. And controlled solitude had always produced my best results.
My new approach rested on two hard principles. The first came from Sam during sparring practice: reserves only grew during extreme transitions from total depletion to full recharge. The second came from Selina: during deep sleep, our cells entered a hypercompensation state, absorbing external energy like dry sponges. The math lined up perfectly. I simply needed to move the training cycle directly into the sleep phase.
At one point, Sam had rambled about how his idol, Bruce Lee, supposedly possessed such perfect body control that he could practice striking techniques on wooden dummies even while unconscious. Most likely just another story for gullible listeners, but as a trigger for an idea, it worked beautifully.
I slid off the chair, stretched out across the hard polymer floor of the isolation unit, and closed my eyes while clearing my mind of unnecessary thoughts.
[Special command: while asleep, continuously perform full cycles of instantaneous S-Power discharge followed by recharge. Maintain maximum intensity until restriction protocol’s restored.]
My consciousness instantly cut out, plunging into dense, silent darkness. The last thing my senses registered before shutdown was an extremely dense, energy-heavy shield expanding around my body, immediately collapsing from critical energy depletion, and then restarting the entire sequence a fraction of a second later. Over the course of the allotted hour, the cycle repeated countless times.
By the time my eyelids finally opened again, the restriction had predictably reactivated, returning the familiar lightness to my body. I sat up against the wall and pulled up my current reserve parameters.
S-Power: 118/118
An involuntary gasp escaped my throat. By how much? One hundred extra units added to my total reserve capacity in a single carefully calibrated session. Of course, compared to someone like Mary and her natural reserves, it was still a drop in the ocean. But the key difference was the growth rate. I could scale this method and repeat it every single day. Or go even further and lock myself into that cycle for a full twenty-four hours. What kind of numbers would I reach then?
For the first time since arriving here, I caught myself genuinely wanting to finish this training program as quickly as possible and get back outside. Selina had been completely right in her cynical predictions: away from the childish noise of the cadet crowd, my personal progress was growing exponentially.