The brilliant blue text faded from the draft board.
Caleb left the formation before anyone could decide the vote had been a mistake.
Loose gravel crunched under his boots as he walked toward the deployment tunnels. Purple code crawled across the cracked edge of his visor, leaving territorial smears in his peripheral vision.
You belong to the Seventh now.
He ignored it.
The quartermaster's cage waited at the end of a long concrete corridor. Caleb unclasped the heavy surplus chest plate and let it drop onto the scratched counter. The cracked helmet followed with a dull metal thud.
The quartermaster scanned the damaged gear, made a face at the readout, and slid a small matte-black pin across the counter.
Seventh Division.
Caleb picked it up. The sharp edge bit into his thumb.
"Congratulations," the quartermaster said without meaning any part of the word.
Caleb slipped the pin into his pocket and pushed through the swinging doors of the deployment locker room.
The room was empty.
Rows of dented metal lockers stood under flickering lights. The place smelled of stale sweat, weapon oil, and ozone baked into concrete.
Caleb sat on the nearest bench and leaned his good shoulder against a locker. A grinding ache radiated beneath his sternum where bone had knitted faster than nature allowed. His body had healed enough to fool a room full of officers.
Now it wanted payment.
He reached behind his right ear and scraped a thumbnail under the adhesive of the matte-black comms chip.
The peel hurt. It came free with a sting that pulled at the small hairs along his scalp.
Static buzzed from the tiny speaker in his palm.
[???] Put it back, Caleb. I want to listen to the celebration.
Caleb frowned.
What celebration?
He shoved the chip deep into his jacket pocket and buried the speaker beneath thick canvas.
One night without the ghost.
He had his keys in hand and one foot angled toward the exit when the locker room doors swung open hard enough to hit the wall.
Kikaru Mitsurugi marched inside.
She had traded ruined prototype armor for the same gray academy uniform from the draft. Her carbon-fiber leg brace clicked against the tile with every step, turning her limp into something almost martial.
"There you are," Kikaru said.
She surveyed the locker room and wrinkled her nose.
"This room smells like damp concrete and despair."
Caleb rested his forearms on his knees. "Corporate suites are down the hall. You took a wrong turn."
"Hardly."
She stopped a few feet away and crossed her arms with careful control, favoring the bandaged ribs under her jacket.
"The Defense Force rented the Neon Serpent for the graduating class. Sponsored networking event. Attendance is effectively mandatory."
Caleb glanced at her crisp collar, polished shoes, and the brace strapped so tightly around her leg it had to be biting skin.
"You wore a dress uniform to a dive bar."
"It commands respect."
"It commands spilled beer."
Kikaru lifted her chin. "I am officially a First Division asset. I will not appear at a Captain-hosted function looking like a vagrant because my primary armor is in repair."
"Good policy."
"And since I will be climbing the command ladder rapidly, it is important to monitor Defense Force assets across division lines."
Her eyes moved over him once.
"Even the lackluster ones."
A short laugh escaped Caleb before he could stop it. It came out rusty and pulled at his mending ribs.
He put his keys back in his pocket and stood.
"Alright, Commander. Lead the way. Let us go monitor assets."
Kikaru sniffed, satisfied, and turned on her heel.
The brace clicked them out of the locker room.
-----
The underground rail dropped them at the edge of the entertainment district an hour later.
Kikaru spent the ride sitting perfectly upright with her hands folded in her lap. Neon from the passing city slid across her face in bands of red and electric blue. Caleb leaned his head against the vibrating glass and let the rhythm of the tracks shake loose some of the pressure in his spine.
Neither of them spoke much. They had both nearly died on asphalt, and small talk belonged to people with spare blood.
The Neon Serpent overflowed with survivors.
Heavy bass thumped through the floorboards. Cheap draft beer, spilled liquor, and roasted meat packed the air. Veterans mixed with rookies. The relief in the room had teeth. Everybody laughed too loudly because silence would leave space for memory.
Caleb pushed through the wooden doors.
Microphone feedback split the music.
Captain Ren Kade stood on a heavy oak table near the center of the tavern. The silver-haired Second Division Captain flanked him with a glass of dark liquor. Elara leaned at the bar in her First Division uniform, neat as a knife.
"Drinks are on the Defense Force tonight," Kade said over the speakers. "You survived the tutorial. You proved utility. Tomorrow morning, celebration ends."
The room quieted by degrees.
"At zero-eight-hundred, you pack your belongings and relocate to assigned Division housing sectors. Training wheels come off. You are entering active combat zones. Casualty rates climb from here."
His eyes moved through the crowd.
"Look at the people standing next to you. Memorize their faces. Not all of you reach year-end."
Kade handed the microphone to a bartender. For three seconds, the tavern stayed still. Then the cheering returned louder than before, less courage than a room full of people refusing to let fear hear itself.
Caleb had seen enough exhausted workers after a breach to recognize the shape of it. People cheered when the truth was too large to swallow whole. They raised glasses because both hands needed something to do. They laughed at bad jokes because a quiet room would make them count the empty seats.
Near the bar, Elara held an untouched glass. Her attention stayed anywhere but Caleb for now. First Division officers and polished recruits orbited around her, each conversation brief, political, and controlled. Her gaze moved through the room in quick assessments: injured assets, sponsor handlers, the silver-haired Second Division Captain, Kade's refusal to relax, Kikaru's limp, Caleb's water glass.
For half a second, her attention stopped on him.
Then it moved on.
Caleb understood the shape of it even while he hated the feeling. The room had sponsors in it, Captains with private feeds, clerks who turned glances into leverage. Elara had already left him one card with no private number because even a clean channel could become a rope around both their necks.
She kept her distance, and he left it alone because that was safer. The distance still landed.
Caleb carried a heavy glass mug of ice water through the crowd. Alcohol and cracked ribs had never been friends. He slid into a cracked leather booth in the back corner.
Hiro arrived with two wooden platters of grilled skewers and the expression of a man who had not decided whether to laugh or throw up.
"I still can't believe it," Hiro said, dropping into the booth. "We made it. They handed me a Third Division badge at the exit gate. A real one."
Iharu Furuhashi slid in opposite them wearing an expensive civilian jacket and a scowl that had survived both a broken nose and success.
"Do not get comfortable, scrubber." He stole a skewer off Hiro's platter. "Seventh Division is a meat grinder. They drafted you because somebody had to fill the casualty column."
Hiro pulled out his datapad and started tapping.
"I am setting up a cross-division tactical thread," he said. "Schedules, training loads, emergency pings, location check-ins."
"That sounds like a support group," Iharu said.
"Add him," Caleb said. "He needs notifications so he knows exactly how far behind us he is."
Iharu stopped chewing.
For one beautiful second, his face forgot how to choose between rage and vanity.
Then he snatched out his datapad and punched in his personal frequency code.
"I am only joining this garbage thread to track your combat scores," Iharu said, shoving the device toward Hiro. "And to keep tabs on the princess. Once my sync rate hits thirty percent, I am leaving all of you behind."
"Sure," Hiro said, beaming as he accepted the invite. "That is exactly what group coordination means."
Hiro and Iharu started arguing over thread permissions.
Caleb watched condensation slide down his water glass.
Next to him, Kikaru swirled amber liquor in her cup. The top button of her academy collar had come undone. The loosened fabric made the bruising along her throat easier to see.
"My prototype cracked," she said.
Her voice barely carried over the music.
Caleb turned toward her, but Kikaru kept her attention inside the drink.
"Mitsurugi core plating is rated for building-collapse compression. That Honju pierced it in seconds. I could not breathe. I could not move."
Her fingers tightened around the glass.
"My father demands perfection. A Mitsurugi does not bleed in the tutorial phase."
Caleb ran his thumb over a gouge in the wooden table.
The words landed strangely in him.
Not because he understood her father. Caleb had no patience for rich men who turned children into family machinery and called the outcome discipline.
But he understood fear dressed as competence.
He understood what it meant to stand upright because falling once gave other people permission to decide you were finished.
"Before today, I spent five years scraping rotting marrow out of disposal channels," he said. "I stepped in because if you died in my sector, the Guild would dock my pay for losing a high-value asset."
Kikaru finally faced him.
"You are a terrible liar, Caleb Mercer."
He smiled into his water.
Kikaru shifted closer on the leather bench. Lavender soap cut through the stink of beer and grilled meat. She reached toward his throat, stopped half an inch short, then grabbed the frayed collar of his disposal jacket and folded the fabric down.
Her knuckles brushed the medical tape around his collarbone.
Caleb stopped moving.
"One percent output," she said quietly. "No pedigree. No sponsors. No augmented strength. And still you fought like the ground itself owed you something."
Caleb's attention dropped to her fingers on his collar.
The old part of him wanted to make a joke. The poorer, meaner part wanted to remind her that people with family names could afford dramatic questions.
Instead, he told a smaller truth.
"Everything I lose gets billed to someone who cannot pay it."
Kikaru's expression changed.
Not softened.
Sharpened.
Like she had expected deflection and received a weapon diagram.
"Touching rookies already, Princess?"
The voice broke the moment clean in half.
A woman leaned over their table. Vivid red hair fell in an asymmetrical cut around her face. The dark-gray Seventh Division uniform hung on her like she had slept in it, fought in it, and won the argument. Scar tissue wound up both forearms.
Vice Captain Iris Calder smiled like a blade finding light.
Kikaru's hand left Caleb's collar.
Iris slid into the empty edge of the booth without invitation.
"Iris Calder," she said. "I run spearhead for the Seventh. And you must be the charity case."
Kikaru's spine straightened. "He is not a charity case."
"Sure he is," a heavy voice said behind Iris.
Captain Kade stepped up to the booth.
The nearby recruits made room without being asked.
Kade stood over Caleb with no drink in his hand and no celebration in his face.
"You are here because First Division manipulated a vote," Kade said. "I accepted the transfer because Seventh Division requires bodies. Do not confuse that with reward. We handle the highest concentration of Danger Class breaches on the grid. Our casualty rate reflects the workload."
He set both hands on the table and leaned in.
"Tomorrow morning, you deploy to the front. Survive and earn your keep. Fail and we leave you in the rubble."
Kikaru's hands curled in her lap.
"Respectfully, Captain," she said, each word measured. "He survived a Danger Class Six Honju with zero augmented output. He has high-level tactical processing and unusual pain tolerance. Treating him as disposable wastes a tactical asset."
Kade's heavy gaze moved to her, and the table went quiet.
"We will see what he is tomorrow, Mitsurugi."
The correction carried its own insult.
Kade chose neither princess nor kid. He used the family name, clean and exact, and made it clear he knew exactly which dynasty had almost lost a daughter in the tutorial.
Kikaru heard it too.
Her anger folded inward, becoming colder and more useful.
He turned away.
Iris gave Caleb a two-finger salute before following her commander into the crowd.
Caleb watched the dark-gray uniforms disappear.
Then he slid out of the booth.
Kikaru lifted her chin, jaw still tight.
Caleb reached into his pocket. His thumb brushed the Seventh Division pin and the hidden comms chip buried beside it.
He tossed a few crumpled credit chits onto the table next to his half-empty water.
"I need to pack."
Then he left the neon noise behind and stepped into the freezing night.