[Tactical Mode Activated]
The world froze in sepia once again, but this time the pause made me tense up. I swept through the standard threat sectors. Nothing. That left me mentally circling my own body, meticulously inspecting every cubic yard of space around me.
At last, I spotted it. Coming from below and aimed squarely at the left heel of my armor was a compressed S-Power projectile. Catching something like that in real time was nearly impossible. The shot was semi-transparent and no larger than the tip of a pinky finger. Nothing like my energy rounds, which were about the size of a boxing glove. Sam had compressed the energy with surgical precision and flicked it straight from his fingertip. An effective trick.
I smoothly shifted my body aside, pulling my leg off the projectile's path, calculated its reverse trajectory, and in the same instant trained both barrels on the point of origin.
Time resumed.
"Ungh..." Sam let out a muffled grunt, and that sound told me more than any hit marker ever could. Both shots had landed.
For a brief moment, a clear corridor opened within the dense gray haze, revealing the instructor's shaved head. Without wasting a second, I activated [Enemy Analysis] and continued methodically pumping rounds into the opening.
S-Power: 8300/19840
Not good. I had managed to burn through only half of his starting pool. Stripped of wishful thinking, that meant only one thing: I had lost this match.
Naturally, I had calculated the entire fight from the opening second to the last, and my main trump card had always been [Tactical Mode]. It was the perfect shield against hidden and unconventional attacks, and this master had enough of those in his arsenal to fill three textbooks. The plan had been simple: completely drain Sam's reserve before my ability hit its limit.
It had not worked.
Sam was no fool. He instantly broke the distance and slipped out of my firing lane. A fraction of a second later, he was already in front of me, surging forward with a whistling high kick.
I reflexively banked to the side, but the master was faster. His heavy heel slammed directly into my helmet with a low, resonant boom. Two force fields collided with the distinctive crackle of an electrical discharge. I felt no physical pain. The suit absorbed all the damage. The impact carried enough mass, however, to shove my multi-hundred-pound frame off course. A broad, triumphant grin spread across Sam's face. From the nature of the contact alone, he instantly understood that my signature ability had gone into cooldown.
The moment he smelled blood, the martial arts fanatic entered a full-blown frenzy. A storm of tight, professionally executed combinations crashed down on me: double jabs, low kicks, elbows. I decided not to waste the last of my fuel on a hopeless attempt to create distance and accepted the close-quarters fight.
After barely a minute of that scuffle, I found myself once again reminded why traditional hand-to-hand combat was considered a deeply secondary discipline within the Corps. Yes, my strength and speed stats currently exceeded Sam's, but the dense energy cocoons enveloping our bodies turned all that aggression into little more than a simulation. I could not apply a proper submission hold, dislocate a joint, or even knock the wind out of him. It felt like I was beating on a concrete wall with everything I had. The only advantage I could squeeze out of the situation was catching him off-balance, executing a hard hip throw with full amplitude, and then unloading my pistols into his airborne body, shaving another couple hundred points off his balance.
I broke the clinch and calmly raised my open hands.
"Stop. I'm out."
Sam froze, blinking in confusion as though I had suddenly addressed him in some dead Navajo dialect.
"What?" He shook his head, breathing heavily. "Tom, did I hear that right? You're surrendering?"
"I'm empty." I turned my wrist, showing him the blinking red sector on the armor regulator. "You won, Master."
Without waiting for questions or a postmortem analysis, I began making my way back to solid ground one step at a time.
The armor containers were not completely dry. If I wanted to, I could have kept dancing that defensive dance for another two minutes. More than that, I still had a Hollywood-style ace up my sleeve: pull the emergency release ring, dump the now-useless exoskeleton, and continue the fight using my own S-Power reserve. In that scenario, our odds would have been roughly fifty-fifty.
I had seriously considered that option before the battle even began, but rationality won out, and I shoved my ego aside.
First, crippling an expensive suit of armor with an emergency release just for a demonstration was the height of stupidity. I did not care that Sam had promised to cover every repair bill out of his own pocket.
Second, I had a pathological dislike of cheap showboating, especially when there was no audience worth impressing. Put on a spectacle for Colonel Simpson and the staff officers? Their opinion carried exactly zero weight. Show off in front of a bunch of teenagers? I was too old to seek validation that way. For Selina? That was even more ridiculous. Professor Langstrom openly referred to hand-to-hand combat as "barbaric entertainment."
There was also a third reason, and it was the most important one.
I did not want to publicly rub Sam's face in the dirt.
If the base instructor got steamrolled in front of all his subordinates by a former office clerk who had joined only yesterday, the stain on his reputation would never wash away. The man was honestly doing his job, and stripping him of his authority for the sake of a few seconds of selfish pride would have been a genuinely rotten thing to do.
While I was worrying about his social standing, the moment we landed on the training field it became painful to look at him. He resembled a child whose favorite toy had been taken away halfway through a holiday celebration.
"Come on, Tom. Seriously?" he exhaled in disappointment, slipping his hands into the pockets of his gi. "I was only just getting warmed up. You had a phenomenal start, Tom. You genuinely surprised me. Then you just fizzled out in a second. Like a mayfly."
"Sorry for ruining the finale." I answered with complete seriousness, not a trace of irony in my voice. "Next time, I promise I'll give it one hundred percent. On one condition. We lock ourselves in the gym with no unnecessary spectators."
Sam froze for a second, then his face split into its usual grin again.
"Oh, so you're planning a rematch?" he perked up visibly. "I'm holding you to that. I'll be looking forward to it."
We exchanged brief bows in perfect accordance with every rule of Eastern etiquette.
By the time I headed toward the stands, the adult spectators had already dispersed. The Colonel and Selina had been the first to leave the field. All I could do now was speculate about what conclusions they had drawn from the performance they had just witnessed.
I unclipped the helmet latches, intending to finally make my way to the storage bay and turn in the gear, but I never got the chance. The cadets swarmed me from all sides, forming a tight ring and bombarding me with excited comments.
"That's incredible!" Louise was so overwhelmed she slipped back into her native language, her eyes shining feverishly. "You slammed him into the ground five times, and he didn't even scratch your paint!"
"You totally wrecked him!" Ted threw his hands behind his head, grinning triumphantly as if he'd been the one dominating the airspace moments ago. "You just ran a little short on energy. Why can't they make those tanks hold more power?"
"Your aerodynamics... that was something else," Nick murmured quietly, pushing his glasses back up his nose with a nervous gesture. "Everything was so smooth. You moved better than our instructor. I wish I could learn to balance like that..."
"I would've beaten the Master," Mary cut in bluntly. She usually kept to herself, but this time she clearly couldn't resist throwing in her two cents. "My energy reserve is bigger. I'd have finished him off."
"He would've blown you away with the wind from a single kick, shrimp!" Ted fired back immediately.
"I simply wouldn't have let him get within striking range, you walking plasma leak," the girl replied in an icy tone. "Unlike some people, I know how to maintain distance."
"I don't need to. One touch from me and his shield melts!"
While the younger crowd enthusiastically divided up the hide of a bear nobody had actually killed, I merely watched their argument in silence. Naturally, I did not mention that if I had used [Special Command], Sam would not have had the slightest chance of winning. Still, getting the last word in a teenage argument was a questionable achievement for an adult.
I made my way to the hangar, returned the armor to its personal storage bay, locked it up, and finally felt like a completely free man. The official part of camp life was over. According to regulations, I could grab my travel bag and head straight for the checkpoint, but simple arithmetic showed that I would end up sitting there for about three hours waiting for military transport.
Mary, who had spent the entire month deliberately surrounding herself with a wall of isolation, did exactly that. She packed up and headed for the exit alone. I understood her reasoning perfectly. The age gap and difference in background made interacting with the local crowd painfully uncomfortable. Still, unlike her, I had somehow managed to build at least a few social connections during my time here.
"Hi, Selina," I said as I stepped across the threshold of her room.
"About time." She spun around and shot me an irritated look before unbuttoning her blouse with an annoyed tug. "I was just about ready to order the sergeants to drag you here under armed escort."
"And what would've been the official charge?" I asked cautiously.
By then, the only thing she still had on was a lace bra.
"For a therapy session, obviously." Selina sprawled across the table on her stomach, resting her chin on folded hands. "My neck's killing me. And for the record, that's entirely your fault."
"What do I have to do with your muscle tension?"
"Who was the genius that put on that aerial acrobatics show? I had to sit there with my head tilted back the entire time. So now you get to take responsibility and pay for the damages."
"Fair point." I started rolling up my sleeves methodically. "Actually, I stopped by to wrap things up, say goodbye, and clear up one thing. Are we going to see each other before my first portal assignment?"
"I'll come to your house whenever I need a proper massage," she purred, blissfully closing her eyes the moment my fingers dug into the tight muscles in her neck. "Don't even think you're getting rid of me that easily, Tom."
With things settled with Selina, I headed for the barracks and my bunk. Packing took no more than three minutes. Over the course of the month, my belongings had not accumulated any extra junk. Just a standard military duffel containing a few packs of cookies, a bottle of water, and two books.
After changing into civilian clothes, jeans and a jacket, I headed toward the administrative wing to report to the base commandant, just as the instructions required.
A quick knock later, I stepped into a standard, dreary office. Behind a desk buried beneath administrative clutter sat an unfamiliar middle-aged officer in a neatly pressed uniform.
"Have a seat, Cadet Ross." The man casually waved toward an empty chair without even looking away from his monitor. "Although I guess you're not really a cadet anymore. Second lieutenant Ross."
I sat down, momentarily stunned by what I had heard.
"Excuse me? I got promoted?"
"That's right." The bureaucrat yawned lazily while reaching into a deep desk drawer in search of the proper folder. "Official wording: successful completion of training, outstanding personal initiative, and possession of a higher education degree. Leadership decided to reward you."
A strange feeling stirred inside me, part satisfaction, part confusion. It was a sharp jump up the ladder. Then again, considering the research Selina and I had conducted in tropical pathology and global medicine, the Corps was probably just advancing payment on future services. Nothing personal. Pure business.
"What about Mary? Did she get promoted too?"
"Who? That little girl who came in before you?" The crease between his brows disappeared when I nodded. "Yeah. She's Staff Sergeant Summers now."
"For what?"
"For completing training and maintaining discipline. Though if you ask me, it's complete bullshit. Command's just sucking up to her mom."
I nodded silently, accepting the explanation. I had never heard of the notoriously stingy Corps handing out promotions solely for good behavior either.
At last, he pulled a sealed envelope from the depths of the desk. Inside I found a plane ticket to Los Angeles in my name and a crisp hundred-dollar bill.
"Travel expenses," the commandant explained, sliding an open ledger toward me. "Sign here and here."
I quickly signed the appropriate lines. A hundred bucks was a perfectly reasonable budget for a taxi, a lousy motel, and a decent burger. More than enough for the next twenty-four hours, provided I didn't start ordering whiskey to my room.
Once the paperwork was complete, I left the secured perimeter of the camp under the watchful eye of the duty soldier and stopped by the roadside to wait for transportation. Mary was already sitting on the concrete curb, her chin resting on her fists. We had no common topics to discuss, and neither of us made any effort to find one. Fortunately, my timing estimate proved accurate. We endured only about fifteen minutes of awkward silence before a gray military bus appeared around the bend.
Inside the bus, we instinctively chose seats at opposite ends. Each of us stared out a different window, studying the same dull, repetitive landscape.
The vehicle finally pulled up in front of the massive recruitment office building in Washington. This was where my journey into the Corps had begun a month ago. The circle was complete. All that remained was getting home, unpacking my things, and waiting for official notification once the analysts found a suitable portal assignment for someone with my profile.
Mary was the first to jump off the bus. The gloomy mask she always wore vanished instantly, and she suddenly shouted in a bright, childlike voice, throwing up a hand.
"Mom!"
Megan was standing in the parking lot by the curb.