Military Calendar September 23, 2517, 2300 Hours
Epsilon Eridani System, Reach Military Stronghold, Reach
When Ethan woke from slipspace, his first sensation was cold.
Not the pleasant chill warmed by lingering sunlight like on Harvest, but a deep, bone-gnawing cold that felt as if it seeped from the very core of the planet.
The side effects of cryo-sleep left his limbs numb and his stomach churning.
He sat on a freezing metal bench and looked around.
The harsh white glare of the fluorescent lights made his eyes ache, and the gray metal walls resembled the maw of a leviathan that had swallowed them all whole.
Seventy-five children had been divided into five barracks.
Ethan’s barrack was at the far end of the corridor—a row of iron bunk beds, a concrete floor, and a humming vent fan in the corner.
This was home now.
Every single day from here on out, they would wake up here and fall down here.
Chief Petty Officer Mendez walked them through the layout of the base: training grounds, classrooms, medical bay, armory.
Every door was metal, every wall gray, and every corridor stretched endlessly long.
The white light of fluorescent bulbs was everywhere, cold and uniform, eradicating even the shadows.
Ethan walked in formation, silently recording every turn, every emergency exit, and every camera location.
This wasn’t a habit taught in training—it was an instinct forged in his past life, surviving in a crowded metropolis.
*Know your environment, and always know one more exit than your enemy.*
In the classroom, he met Deja for the first time.
She appeared as a holographic projection, barefoot in long robes, an aura of light dancing around her body, holding a clay tablet in her left hand.
Her voice was as warm and smooth as silk, yet possessed a presence that transcended humanity.
“My name is Deja,” she said, “and I am your teacher.” She told them the story of the Three Hundred at Thermopylae.
The holographic display transformed the classroom into an ancient Greek battlefield, sending the children walking through virtual mountains as they watched three hundred Spartan warriors hold off the massive Persian army.
John stared, spellbound.
Ethan watched too, but his mind was on something else: every single Spartan at Thermopylae had died in battle.
Was that the true meaning behind the name “Spartan”?
Cross-country training began before dawn.
Chief Petty Officer Mendez stood at the starting line, a silver shock baton swinging in his hand.
His dark eyes scanned every child like a pair of unblinking marbles.
“You are not children,” he said, his voice like grinding metal.
“You are soldiers. From this day forward, you have no names—only numbers.” His gaze settled on Ethan.
“007, do you hear me?”
“Clear, sir,” Ethan replied.
His voice was as steady as John’s, but carried a completely different meaning.
John’s steadiness came from innate courage; Ethan’s came from a sober awareness of the future.
A thirty-kilometer cross-country run was sheer hell for six-year-olds.
Muddy mountain trails, biting cold winds, ten kilograms of gear weighed heavily on their shoulders, and every step felt like treading on blades.
Some vomited halfway through, some fell three times, and some cried out, begging to give up.
But the instructors’ shock batons showed no mercy—lagging behind meant a jolt of current that sent full-body spasms, forcing them to keep running.
Ethan controlled his breathing rhythm, taking it one step at a time.
His body was screaming, but his mind calculated calmly: *Twelve kilometers left.
At the current pace, it’ll take roughly forty-five minutes.
Core temperature dropping—must keep moving.
Losing water, but can’t stop to drink.* He processed pain as data—not feelings, but information.
This ability to detach logic from emotion had been his greatest skill in his past life.
Seventy-five children.
Seventy-five bewildered faces.
Some were still rubbing their eyes, some sobbed softly, and others sat dazed in place, as if their souls were still trapped in the cryo-chambers.
Ethan spotted John—Number 117.
Sitting in the third row, his cobalt-blue eyes scanned his surroundings.
His face bore no fear, only an intense, curious focus.
Ethan lowered his head and looked at the white digits printed on his chest: 007.
*Number Seven.* He let out a bitter smile.
If this was supposed to be some secret agent designation, it was pretty ironic.
Dr. Halsey stood on the high platform, her white lab coat glaring under the spotlights.
She told the children they had been conscripted into service and could never return to their parents.
She kept her tone as gentle as possible, but every word fell heavily like a block of lead.
A few children stood up, only to be forced back into their seats by the instructors behind them.
Ethan didn’t stand up.
He just sat quietly, his fingernails digging into his palms.
He knew this was necessary.
He knew that in the grand timeline, the SPARTAN-II program was humanity’s sole hope for salvation.
But knowing and accepting were two different things.
He looked at the six-year-olds around him—they knew nothing.
They didn’t know what awaited them, didn’t know how many would die on the operating table, didn’t know they would spend the next thirty years trapped in endless war.
“Go get some rest,” Dr. Halsey said.
“We begin tomorrow.” Her voice was steady, but Ethan noticed her right hand trembling slightly.
Chief Petty Officer Mendez stepped forward.
“Dismissed!” His voice rasped like grinding metal—cold, dry, and unyielding.
***
The first night was harder than any training.
At 0300 hours, Mendez’s whistle blasted them awake from their cots.
Freezing showers, gray PT sweats, name tags stamped with their numbers—007.
Then came the run.
Not a leisurely jog around a track, but a thirty-kilometer night march through Reach’s rugged mountain terrain, with each child carrying ten kilograms of gear.
The moonlight was swallowed by cloud cover, leaving only the tactical lamps on their helmets to cut shaking beams through the darkness.
Most of the kids were crying, their sobs and ragged gasps mingling in the frigid night air with tragic sharpness.
Some had legs trembling uncontrollably; some fell, picked themselves up, and kept going; others simply sat down by the roadside, refusing to budge.
Ethan didn’t cry.
Adjusting his breathing, he used an adult’s willpower to control where every foot landed for this six-year-old body.
He calculated the distance silently: *Twelve kilometers done, eighteen to go.
At this pace, we can reach the finish line before dawn.
Provided no one gets left behind.*
He noticed John.
The boy wasn’t running at the front of the pack, but weaving back and forth through the middle—helping a girl who had fallen in the mud get up, giving a push to a straggler falling behind, then surging ahead to verify the route.
Mud splashed across his face and his breathing was heavy, but his pace never stopped.
That was John-117.
Even at six years old, he already demonstrated natural leadership—not through orders, but through action.
Ethan deliberately hung back at the rear, observing John’s movement patterns from an adult perspective.
He noticed that every time John helped someone, he first made sure he had enough energy reserved to handle the extra burden.
He wasn’t being blindly heroic; he was strategically allocating resources.
The realization brought Ethan a complex wave of emotion—admiration, relief, and a faint, almost imperceptible trace of vigilance.
The final ridge appeared ahead.
The moon broke through the clouds, illuminating a mountain path nearly concealed by dense brush—a shortcut that could shave at least twenty minutes off the journey.
Ethan saw the path.
Almost simultaneously, John saw it too.
Their eyes met under the moonlight, locking for less than a second.
No words were needed.
John gave a subtle nod, turned, and ran toward the small path.
Ethan followed close behind, watching the flanks to ensure no one lagged.
Like two alpha wolves, they seamlessly guided the entire squad onto the shortcut.
When the last child stumbled across the finish line, the sky was just turning light at the horizon.
Chief Petty Officer Mendez stood at the finish line, watching them expressionlessly, but Ethan noticed a tiny twitch at the corner of his mouth.
***
The conflict on the obstacle course happened on the third day.
It was an aerial maze made of twenty-foot wooden logs, cargo nets, and rope bridges.
The recruits needed to traverse all obstacles in the shortest time possible and ring the brass bell at the highest point.
Mendez stood in the dirt, the silver shock baton swinging idly in his hand.
Tak-047 was a boy from New Havana—lean, agile, with fierce eyes and “don’t mess with me” written all over him.
He intentionally shoved other kids during the obstacle course—not because he needed to, but because he enjoyed the sensation of dominating others.
He shoved Riley-111 down.
Riley was a frail boy with blonde hair and light blue eyes, his skin pale as though he had never seen the sun—which, in fact, he hadn’t much.
Coming from a wealthy family on Cygnus IV, he had spent most of his childhood in laboratories and study rooms.
When Tak pushed him into the mud, he didn’t even know how to hit back.
Tak burst into laughter.
“Rich little boy, your clothes got dirty! Go home and let your mommy wash them!” A few kids around them laughed along, but most remained silent—they didn’t dare speak up because Tak was the toughest kid in the group.
Ethan dropped down from a cargo net, landing firmly in the mud.
He walked up to Tak, face blank.
“Apologize,” he said.
His voice wasn’t loud, but every word came through clearly.
Tak tilted his head, sizing him up with a disdainful smirk.
“Who do you think you are?” he snorted, then threw a punch straight at Ethan’s face.
Ethan sidestepped, letting the fist graze past his ear.
Grabbing Tak’s extended arm, he leveraged adult combat experience and center-of-gravity control, executing a fluid hip throw that slammed Tak flat into the mud.
The movement was clean, sharp, and seamless.
Tak’s back slammed hard into the muddy water, sending a spray half a meter into the air.
His eyes widened—growing up on the streets, no one had ever thrown him like that before.
Rage surged through him, and he scrambled up immediately, lunging at Ethan again.
*TWEEEEEET!*
The whistle blew.
Chief Petty Officer Mendez’s shock baton carved a silver arc in the air.
“Training continues! You two, back of the line!” His voice lacked any inflection, as if he had seen everything that transpired yet didn’t care in the slightest.
***
After training, Ethan was drying his hair in the barracks.
Tak walked over, still caked in mud, but the arrogant look on his face was gone, replaced by a sense of curiosity.
“You can fight,” Tak said.
“Hang with me from now on.” His tone still carried the roughness of the streets, but the hostility was gone.
Ethan raised his head and looked at him.
Then he smiled—a warm, genuine smile.
“You hang with *me*,” he said.
Tak froze for a second, then broke into a grin as well.
After lights-out, the barracks became another world.
In the dark, dozens of kids squeezed onto iron cots, while the faint glow of fluorescent lights cast pale shadows across the ceiling.
Someone was crying softly, stifling their sobs into a pillow.
Someone else was shivering, not from the cold—Reach’s subterranean climate control held a steady twenty degrees Celsius—but from fear.
Tak lay on the bunk below Ethan, hands cradling the back of his head, staring up at the iron frame.
“I never lost a street fight back home,” he muttered softly.
“You’re the first guy to throw me.” There was no resentment in his voice, only a hint of respect.
“Fighting isn’t about brute force. It’s about using your brain,” Ethan said.
From the top bunk came Riley’s faint, thin voice: “Thank you guys… for today…” He seemed to want to say more, but his voice choked off.
“Stop crying,” Tak rolled over.
“What good does crying do? You still gotta train tomorrow.” His words were rough, but Ethan heard the underlying intent—Tak just didn’t know how else to comfort someone, expressing concern in the only language he knew.
After a moment of silence, Ethan said quietly, “From now on, we’re brothers.” His voice was soft, but in the silence of the barracks, every word landed as firmly as a nail driven into the wall.
Tak didn’t say anything, but his breathing leveled out.
Above them, Riley grew quiet as well.
A short distance away, on another cot, Cohen-099 rolled over, pulling his blanket tighter.
The boy from the Paradise Falls colony didn’t say a single word, but in the dark, his hand clenched tightly around the corner of his sheet.
He had heard the word “brothers.”
This was their first night on Reach.
Outside the window stretched an eternal starry sky, cold as a razor’s edge.
But inside this tiny barrack, the fates of four boys had quietly bound together.
***
Deja’s classroom was Ethan’s favorite place.
Not because of the curriculum—he had learned all of it in his past life—but because of her teaching style.
She didn’t just lecture; she turned knowledge into an immersive experience.
When she described a wolf pack hunting a moose, the classroom transformed into a grassy plain, letting the children watch seven wolves coordinate seamlessly so that no matter which way the moose ran, it met an attack.
When John swiped Kelly’s crackers, Dèjà merely smiled faintly, as if acknowledging: *That is human nature.*
Ethan always kept a low profile in class.
He never raised his hand to answer questions unless called upon.
He never displayed insights beyond his apparent age during discussions unless left with no choice.
Like an experienced actor, he carefully played the role of “smart, but not a genius.” Yet sometimes, when Dèjà covered certain historical events, his eyes would involuntarily turn deep and distant—because he knew how those histories ended, while his classmates did not.
“007,” Deja called out to him after class one day.
“What are your thoughts on the Battle of Thermopylae?” Her voice was smooth as silk, but her holographic eyes possessed a piercing clarity, as though peering through his outer shell to look at something far deeper.
“Three hundred against tens of thousands,” Ethan said, carefully measuring his words.
“Strategically, it was a failure. But spiritually, it was a victory. Sometimes, a failure carries more weight than a victory.”
Deja was silent for a moment.
“That does not sound like the insight of a seven-year-old, 007.”
“I read a lot of books, Teacher,” Ethan said, ducking his head slightly.
Deja didn’t press further.
But the light of her holographic projection brightened subtly for a few seconds—Ethan couldn’t tell if that meant anything or not.