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The shuttle smells like disinfectant and fear.
Keira keeps her eyes on the floor, counting the scuff marks on the metal grating. Thirty-two. Thirty-three. Don't look at the other prisoners. Don't let them see you counting exits. Don't let anyone notice you're the only one not fidgeting.
The shackles are too loose. Coalition issue, standard prisoner transport grade. She could slip them in under a minute if she dislocated her thumb. She's not going to. Keira Morris wouldn't know how.
"All right, meat." The Valkan guard's voice cuts through the shuttle hum. He's got the standard two-meter frame, gray skin, those unsettling triple-pupil eyes. "Welcome to your new home. You survive the academy, you earn your ticket out. You wash out, you go back to whatever hole we pulled you from. Most of you won't make it past week three."
Someone behind her is crying. Quiet, choked little sounds.
Keira keeps her face blank. She's been Keira Morris for seventy-two hours. Before that she was Elena Voss for nine months, Sara Kincaid for fourteen, and a dozen other names that don't matter anymore. Five years ago she was Ghost Seven, and Ghost Seven died in a black site on Tereus Station when the mission went sideways and her entire squad got burned.
She's still trying to figure out who gave the order.
The shuttle drops hard. Her stomach lurches but she doesn't react. Three seats down, a skinny kid with bad teeth throws up into his lap. The Valkan guard doesn't even glance over.
"On your feet."
The line shuffles forward. Twenty-three human prisoners, all of them part of the latest exchange agreement between the Terran Confederacy and the Valkan Coalition. Keira did her homework. The Confederacy wanted their pilots back. The Coalition wanted bodies to fill training slots and prove they're not speciesist. Everybody wins. Except the bodies.
She moves with the group, shoulders hunched, steps a little too slow. Keira Morris is tired. Keira Morris is scared. Keira Morris has never held a gun in her life.
The academy landing bay is all gunmetal and floodlights. Cold air hits her face when the shuttle ramp drops. She takes it in with peripheral vision—six exits, three guard stations, overhead catwalks, automated turrets in the corners. Don't stare. Don't map it. Keira Morris wouldn't know what she's looking at.
They herd the prisoners into a processing line. Retinal scan, blood draw, fingerprints. Keira's pulse stays steady through all of it. The fake ID is good. She paid enough for it. Keira Morris, age twenty-four, low-level cargo runner, arrested on smuggling charges six months ago. No military record. No flags. Nobody.
The tech running her prints is Valkan, bored, not even looking at the screen.
Then the screen flickers.
Keira sees it. Just for a second. A string of numbers in the corner, red text, error code format. But it's not an error code.
It's a black-file reference number.
Hers.
Her heart doesn't speed up. She learned that trick a long time ago. But every nerve in her body goes live.
The screen flickers again and it's gone. Just her fake name, her fake record, her fake little life.
The tech waves her through.
She moves. Doesn't run. Doesn't hesitate. Just moves.
Someone knows.
Or something in the system knows. Or the ID wasn't as clean as she thought. Or she just got unlucky and some automated cross-check pinged a file that's supposed to be dead and buried.
She can't run. There's nowhere to run to. She's on a Coalition military station surrounded by armed guards and she's supposed to be a nobody.
So she keeps being a nobody.
They funnel the group into a briefing hall. Rows of metal benches, no windows, one exit. Keira takes a seat near the back, next to a redheaded girl who won't stop shaking. The girl glances at her. Keira doesn't look back.
"Eyes front."
The voice comes from the platform at the front of the hall. Keira looks up.
Instructor Taren Vex.
She knows him. Not personally. But she's seen his file. Everyone in her old unit had seen his file. Valkan Coalition, decorated officer, survived the Tereus front, taught advanced combat tactics before they moved him to the academy. He's got the look—scarred jaw, shoulders like a freight loader, eyes that don't blink enough.
He's also the one who led the Coalition strike team that извлекed the hostages from Tereus Station.
The same station where Ghost Seven died.
"You're here because your government thought you were worth trading," Vex says. His voice is flat, no anger, no warmth. "I don't care what you did before. I don't care what you think you deserve. You're in my academy now. You follow orders, you might survive. You don't, you wash out. Simple."
He starts walking down the line, boots heavy on the metal floor.
"Most of you are soft. You're weak. You've never seen real combat and you think this is some kind of second-chance program. It's not. This is a filter. We're here to find the ones who can actually fight. The rest of you are just numbers."
He stops in front of the redheaded girl next to Keira. The girl is still shaking.
"What's your name?"
"L-Lina. Lina Bress."
"You scared, Lina Bress?"
"Yes, sir."
"Good. Fear keeps you alive."
He moves on. Three more steps.
He stops in front of Keira.
She keeps her eyes down. Keira Morris wouldn't hold eye contact with an instructor. Keira Morris is small and scared and trying not to cry.
"Name."
"Keira Morris, sir."
"Look at me."
She looks up. Slow. Hesitant.
His eyes are pale gray, almost silver. He's scanning her face like he's reading a dossier.
"You military, Morris?"
"No, sir."
"You look military."
Her throat goes dry. "I'm not, sir."
"We'll see."
He moves on.
Keira doesn't let herself breathe out. Doesn't let her shoulders drop. Keira Morris would still be tense. Keira Morris would be terrified.
She is terrified. Just not for the reasons he thinks.
The briefing goes another twenty minutes. Rules. Schedules. Threat assessments. Keira catalogs it all, but her brain is still stuck on that screen. The black-file number. The flicker.
If the system flagged her, someone's going to check. If someone checks, they're going to find discrepancies. If they find discrepancies, she's dead.
Or worse.
They dismiss the group in shifts. Keira's group gets sent to the barracks on the north end of the complex. Narrow bunks, no privacy, communal showers. She takes the bunk furthest from the door, closest to the emergency vent. Old habit.
Lina Bress takes the bunk across from her.
"Hey," Lina whispers. "You okay?"
Keira nods. Doesn't say anything.
"I'm freaking out," Lina says. "I don't know why I'm here. I didn't even do anything. They just grabbed me and said I was part of the exchange."
Keira keeps unpacking her assigned gear. Uniform. Boots. Tablet with the academy network access.
"Do you think we'll actually make it?" Lina asks.
"I don't know," Keira says. It's the truth.
Lina laughs, bitter. "Yeah. Me neither."
The lights drop to half at 2200 hours. Keira lies on her bunk, staring at the ceiling. She's thinking about the screen. The file. The way Vex looked at her.
She's thinking about Tereus Station. The smell of burning metal. The sound of her squad lead screaming into the comms before the line went dead.
She's thinking about the person who sold them out.
She's going to find them. She's going to make them pay.
But first she has to survive week one.
Somewhere in the complex, an alarm blips once. A door hisses open and closed.
Keira's eyes don't close.
In his office three levels up, Instructor Taren Vex pulls up the personnel files for the new intake. He scrolls through the list, stops on one name.
Keira Morris.
He opens the file. Standard prisoner record. Smuggling charges. No flags. No priors.
He opens a second screen. Pulls the biometric scan from processing.
Bone density: 1.87 g/cm³.
He stares at the number.
Civilian average is 1.2. Military baseline is 1.4. Combat operatives who've spent years in high-G training and augmentation protocols hit 1.6 on a good day.
1.87 is elite spec-ops.
Vex leans back in his chair.
"Who the hell are you, Morris?"