Jack’s boots balanced on the lip of the cracked steel grate.
Before him, the superheated steam geyser screamed from a jagged split in the bedrock, a column of blinding white that hammered upward and dissolved into the collapsing ceiling.
The heat was a physical blow, dry and blistering, smelling of sulfur and boiled copper.
Ryker’s dead weight sagged against his harness, the larger recruit’s helmeted head lolling heavily against Jack’s shoulder.
His own rifle was gone, abandoned miles back under tons of shattered basalt.
A familiar, blood-chilling quiet spread from his chest, threading through his tendons and settling into his fingers.
His heart rate slowed.
His vision sharpened, translating the turbulent white mist into a legible cadence.
The geyser was not constant.
Driven by some ruptured geothermal main below, the pressure ebbed and surged in a rhythmic cycle.
Jack watched the column, counting the pulse in his head.
Two seconds of killing heat.
Then a brief, three-second drop where the steam thinned to a transparent haze.
“Three seconds,” Jack said, his voice flat, drained of fear.
He did not look away from the fissure.
“I need you both across first.”
Vance stepped forward, his rifle light cutting a dusty cone through the mist.
“What are you talking about? That thing will boil us alive.”
“It drops,” Jack said, shifting Ryker’s weight higher on his shoulders, feeling the pinch of the straps against his bruised collarbone.
“For three seconds. That is our window. Go. Now.”
Vance stared at the column, his jaw working as his boots slipped on the wet metal.
He took three paces back, braced his heels, and waited.
“Now,” Jack commanded.
With a desperate lunging stride, Vance leaped.
His boots cleared the gap, landing hard on the far grate.
He scrambled to his knees, turned, and swept his rifle light back across.
“Clear! Get over here!”
“Kayla,” Jack said.
She did not argue.
She took her stance, her eyes fixed on the white column.
Jack watched the rhythm of the steam.
The white column flared, shrieked, and then died back into a thin whisper.
“Now!”
Kayla dove.
Her body cleared the dark drop cleanly, her boots skidding on the rusted metal of the far side.
She rolled to her feet beside Vance, her face pale under the glare of his rifle light.
The geyser flared again, a wall of white heat filling the gap.
Jack waited.
He counted the seconds as the chill inside him pulsed in rhythm with his slowed heart.
One.
Two.
The steam thinned.
The dark gap became visible.
He bent his knees, Ryker’s armor grinding into his shoulder blades.
Pushing off the slick, rough metal of the grate, he launched himself forward.
For a single, suspended heartbeat, he hung above the black crevice.
Heat licked at his boots; moisture hissed off his legs.
He hit the far grate hard.
His knees buckled instantly under the double weight.
The momentum drove him forward, his face pitching toward the hard iron floor.
Hands caught his harness.
Vance and Kayla grabbed the webbing on his shoulders, hauling him forward, dragging both him and Ryker away from the edge just as the geyser erupted behind them.
A high shriek of steam cooked the air where his boots had been a second before.
Jack stumbled, caught his balance, and kept moving.
The bypass tunnel narrowed ahead.
“Gate!” Vance shouted, his voice cracking with panic.
He slammed his palms against a massive iron barrier blocking the bypass tunnel.
“Manual bypass. It is sealed.”
Vance’s rifle light swept over the mechanism.
A heavy iron wheel, its spokes choked with orange corrosion, sat mounted on a gearbox near the wall.
It looked like it had not turned in decades.
Vance threw his weight against the wheel, his boots sliding on the wet stone.
The gears did not budge.
“We need leverage,” Jack said.
The world was beginning to spin.
The cold was receding, and the full bill of his physical exertion was arriving.
His calves cramped, and his raw palms felt on fire inside his torn gloves.
He had to set Ryker down.
He knelt, sliding Ryker’s locked, heavy frame against the basalt wall.
The armor scraped against the stone, leaving a dark smear of hydraulic fluid.
Ryker’s head lolled forward, his breathing a shallow, rattling gasp behind his cracked visor.
Jack straightened, his joints screaming.
He stepped to the gearbox.
He ran his bare fingers over the metal, ignoring the bite of the rust.
His fingers caught on something wrong.
A seized safety pin, driven deep into a locking notch on the primary gear, welded in place by decades of neglect.
“There,” Jack said, tapping the pin.
“That is what is holding it.”
Vance looked at the pin, then at Jack.
“How do we get that out?”
Jack looked around the debris-strewn tunnel.
A few feet away, a discarded iron support strut lay half-buried in loose gravel.
The strut was about three feet long, heavy, one end slightly curved, the other flat.
“Get that,” Jack said, pointing.
Vance grabbed the strut and carried it back.
Jack took it from him.
The weight was solid, reassuring.
He jammed the flat end of the strut deep into the gear teeth, positioning it against the base of the seized pin.
“Kayla,” Jack said.
“Steady the base.”
She dropped to one knee, her fingers finding the base of the strut.
She gripped it with both hands.
“Vance,” Jack said, “On my count. I push down. You push up against the wheel.”
Vance positioned himself at the edge of the wheel, his hands gripping the spokes.
He nodded.
Jack bent his knees, the strut braced in his palms.
The metal bit into his raw skin.
“One,” Jack said.
A fine tremor ran through the strut.
“Two.”
The inner chill stirred again, descending from his chest to lock his muscles into a state of absolute tension.
His vision narrowed to a single point: the base of the seized pin.
“Three.”
He threw his entire weight onto the strut.
Vance pushed up against the wheel.
Kayla held the base steady.
The strut groaned, its metal flexing under the strain.
The pin sheared with a sharp, metallic crack that echoed through the tunnel.
The gear teeth ground forward.
Vance moved instantly, spinning the heavy iron wheel with his full strength.
The wheel turned, its rusty spokes groaning as the gate began to rise.
The gate rose to two feet.
Three feet.
Behind them, the ceiling of the bypass tunnel began to collapse.
A shower of basalt fragments rained down on Ryker.
A slab the size of a chest crashed into the floor where Kayla had been kneeling a second earlier.
“Ryker,” Jack rasped, grabbing the larger boy by the shoulder straps of his armor and hauling him toward the opening.
Kayla, already on the far side of the gate, reached back, grabbing Ryker’s wrists.
With Jack shoving the dead weight from behind and Kayla pulling from the far side, Ryker’s heavy, armored body scraped across the stone, his boots clearing the rising gate.
Vance abandoned the wheel and dove under the gate, his shoulder plates scraping the rising metal.
“Jack!” Vance screamed.
“Now!”
Jack threw himself flat.
He slid under the gate, the massive iron edge passing inches above his face.
The basalt ceiling collapsed behind him, a violent roar of falling stone that shook the ground and filled the air with thick, suffocating dust.
The gate buckled under the impact, the iron screeching as the weight of the collapsed tunnel pressed against it.
The world went quiet.
A high, ringing silence filled Jack’s ears, the taste of sulfur and stone dust heavy on his tongue.
The dry, searing heat of the bypass tunnel was gone, replaced by the sudden, shocking coolness of clean air.
Jack lay on his back on the concrete floor of the staging area, his chest heaving, his lungs burning as they rejected the sterile air.
The dust settled around him like snow.
The yellow emergency lights of the tunnel had been replaced by the clean, white glow of the decontamination chamber.
Vance rolled onto his back beside him, ripping his helmet off with trembling hands.
He took a long, shuddering breath, his face streaked with sweat and soot.
He did not speak, staring at the ceiling with wide, bloodshot eyes.
Kayla was on her knees near Ryker, her hands slowly releasing his wrists.
Her shoulders slumped with exhaustion.
Jack pushed himself up onto his elbows.
The room was small, concrete-walled, with a row of decontamination nozzles mounted on the ceiling like dead eyes.
Three white, spherical drones descended from a hidden panel, their cheap, institutional casings humming as their red laser scanners swept across the squad.
One drone hovered over Ryker, its scanner tracing the cracks in his armor.
Another passed over Vance, who did not even flinch.
The third stopped in front of Jack, its scanner flickering.
He kept his face angled away, more instinct than strategy.
Soot would not fool a medical scanner, but it might keep the drone from catching whatever was happening behind his eyes.
Footsteps echoed from the entrance.
Drill Sergeant Kovac stood in the doorway, his arms crossed over his chest, his campaign hat pulled low over his cold, unreadable eyes. This chapter is updated first at g.com.
Two medics pushed past him, rolling a gurney.
They moved to Ryker, their hands working quickly as they stripped away the cracked chest plate, securing his broken frame.
Kovac did not speak.
He did not offer comfort.
He simply stood at the entrance, his gaze taking in the ruined bypass gate, the dust-covered recruits, the blood on the floor.
Jack looked at Kovac, expecting judgment but finding only silence.
He wondered if Kovac saw their delay as a failure of speed or a choice of survival.
He refused to look for approval.
Ryker lay semi-upright on the gurney, his cracked chest plate removed, white emergency seal-wrap crossing his torso.
His pale, blood-flecked face was turned toward Jack.
His eyes were wide.
The usual arrogant sneer was gone, replaced by a heavy, uncomfortable silence.
Jack saw him staring, but he looked away, unable to meet the gaze of the boy who had just cost him everything.
If he looked at Ryker, the fragility of his own control would shatter.
Jack stood.
His boots felt like they were filled with lead, and his raw palms burned.
He walked to the wall where an amber digital scoreboard glowed.
It was updating in real time, the final scores of the graduation trial scrolling across its surface with indifferent precision, staining the dust with an amber glare.
The emergency had not stopped the scoring system.
The mountain had cracked open around them, and the Bastion had kept counting.
His conscription ID appeared.
The numbers beside it arranged themselves in a cold, final ranking.
Fourth place.
Jack stared at the glowing amber text.
He did not blink.
His hand slipped into his pocket, his raw fingers brushing the cold, heavy brass of Nolan’s solder-lighter.
He squeezed it, the metal biting into his raw palm, but the weight offered no comfort.
His gaze drifted to the right side of the display, to the column labeled “Archive Access.” A glowing folder icon sat next to his ID.
It flickered once.
Then it turned grey.
A dull, dead grey.
A small lock icon appeared beside it.
Locked.
No.
Not fourth.
Not after all of this.
The files that might contain Nolan’s name, the incident reports and casualty routing buried in the colonial archives, were gone.
The system had deducted the points for the delay.
The hope that had kept him moving through the steam and the collapse crumbled into ash.
Kayla’s hand touched his shoulder, warm and steady.
“You got us through,” she said in a low, exhausted whisper.
“That has to count for something.”
Jack could not answer.
His throat was closed, his jaw locked.
Vance leaned his back against the wall, shaking his head slowly.
“The system doesn’t care about what got you out. It only cares about the numbers.”
Across the room, Ryker watched from his gurney.
He was silent, his jaw clenched so tight the muscles in his neck stood out like cords.
He looked at Jack’s collapsed shoulders, at his dead stare fixed on the locked icon.
There was a raw, heavy realization in his face, but Jack did not want to name it.
He did not care what Ryker understood.
Jack lifted his gaze.
Not to the scoreboard, which still glowed with its indifferent light.
Not to Kovac, who still stood at the entrance.
He looked past them, at the dark, soot-streaked screen of a deactivated terminal mounted on the far wall.
His own reflection stared back at him.
His face was covered in grime, his cheeks hollow with exhaustion, his training suit torn and stained.
His eyes were wide, bloodshot, the whites shot through with red veins.
And deep within his dark pupils, something flickered.
A faint ring of light.
Golden.
Luminescent.
It appeared for a split second, pulsed once, and vanished into the black of his iris.
Jack froze.
He leaned closer to the dark screen, his breath fogging the glass.
His hands gripped the edges of the terminal, his knuckles white beneath the soot and grime.
The golden ring did not reappear.
The room’s emergency strobes flashed, casting brief pulses of yellow light across the concrete walls.
He touched his neck, feeling for the cold vibration, but it was gone.
The cold presence had retreated, leaving him empty, but he knew with a certainty that settled into his bones like ice water that it was not gone.
It was not a trick of the flashing strobes or the grime on his face.
He looked at his reflection one more time, but a medic stepped between him and the terminal, blocking his view.
What was he becoming?