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The climbing rig snapped before anyone else heard it.
Keira's head jerked up. Thirty feet above the training yard, Rian Cole's left anchor gave way with a sound like a gunshot muffled under a pillow. The cable whipped free. His right hand scrambled for purchase on the synthetic rock face, fingers scraping, boots kicking.
No one else was looking. The rest of the cohort stood in a loose formation near the obstacle course, listening to some Valkan drill sergeant bark about core strength and failure rates. Rian was off to the side, doing extra conditioning because he'd fallen behind on yesterday's ruck march. Punishment climb. Solo.
Keira's throat tightened. She knew what came next. She'd seen this exact scenario play out in three different training environments across two star systems. Rian would fall. He'd try to catch himself on the secondary line, but his body weight and the angle were wrong. He'd hit the ground in about four seconds. Fractured spine if he was lucky. Snapped neck if he wasn't.
She should stay still. She should let it happen.
Ghost Seven didn't climb training towers to save washouts.
But Keira Morris wasn't supposed to be Ghost Seven anymore.
Rian's boot slipped. His right hand lost the hold. He dropped.
Keira moved.
She didn't think. Didn't plan. Her legs just ate the distance between her position and the base of the tower, her hands already reaching for the emergency brake lever mounted on the support beam. She slammed it down. The backup belay system engaged with a hydraulic hiss, and Rian jerked to a stop eight feet above the dirt, swinging like a corpse on a chain.
Silence dropped over the yard.
Keira's pulse hammered in her ears. She forced her hand off the lever, made herself step back, slow, like she'd just gotten lucky. Like she hadn't calculated his trajectory and fall speed in the half-second before she moved. Like she hadn't moved with the kind of efficiency that only came from live combat drops and extraction zones under fire.
Rian dangled there, chest heaving, face pale. He stared down at her.
She stared back.
Don't say anything. Don't thank me. Don't make this worse.
"What the hell are you doing, Morris?"
That voice. Cold and precise. Keira turned.
Instructor Taren Vex stood ten feet away, arms crossed, dark eyes locked on her like targeting lasers. He wasn't Valkan—he was something else, something older, with the kind of face that didn't give anything away and the kind of posture that said he'd killed people and slept fine after.
Keira's mouth went dry. "The anchor snapped. I hit the brake."
"You were thirty meters from your assigned position."
"I heard it snap."
"No one else did."
"I have good ears."
Vex's jaw tightened. He didn't blink. "You moved faster than your last three fitness evaluations suggested you could."
She shrugged. Tried to make it casual. "Adrenaline."
"Adrenaline doesn't teach you which lever to pull."
Damn it.
She should've hesitated. Should've fumbled. Should've looked confused, scanned the panel, wasted two seconds. But her hand had gone straight to the emergency brake like it had been doing this for years.
Because it had.
"I saw the label," Keira said. Her voice came out flat. She hated how flat it sounded. "It's in Standard. Not hard."
Vex took a step closer. "You didn't look at the label."
She held his stare. Didn't flinch. If she flinched now, she was done. "Yeah, I did."
"I was watching you."
"Then you saw me look."
His mouth curved, but it wasn't a smile. It was the expression of someone who'd just confirmed a suspicion and didn't like what it meant. He glanced up at Rian, who was still hanging there, wide-eyed and silent. Then back at Keira.
"Get him down," Vex said. "Both of you report to medical for clearance. Then you're back here for afternoon drills."
Keira nodded. Kept her face blank.
Vex turned and walked toward the rest of the cohort. She watched him go, watched the way his shoulders didn't relax, the way his head tilted slightly like he was filing this away for later.
She was so screwed.
---
Rian didn't say anything until they were halfway to the medical wing.
The academy corridors were narrow and gray, lit by cold overhead panels that made everything look like a morgue. Keira walked with her hands in her pockets, eyes forward, trying to look like she didn't care. Rian kept pace beside her, boots scuffing the floor, breath still uneven.
Finally, he spoke.
"You didn't have to do that."
Keira didn't look at him. "I know."
"I mean it. You just made yourself a target."
"I'm already a target. We both are."
"Yeah, but now Vex thinks you're hiding something."
She almost laughed. "He thought that yesterday."
Rian grabbed her arm.
She stopped. Looked down at his hand, then up at his face. He was younger than her by maybe two years, with the kind of pale, narrow features that said he'd grown up somewhere cold and sparse. His eyes were too sharp for someone who was supposed to be just another prisoner exchange washout.
"Let go," Keira said.
He didn't. "Who are you?"
Her pulse kicked up again. She kept her voice level. "You read my file. Keira Morris. Human. Prisoner transfer. Just like you."
"Bullshit."
"Let go, Cole."
"No one moves like that. No one reacts like that unless they've done it before."
She jerked her arm free, hard enough that he stumbled back a step. Her hand ached where his fingers had pressed. She wanted to grab him by the collar and slam him into the wall and tell him to shut his mouth before he got them both killed.
But that would just prove his point.
So instead, she stepped back, put her hands up, made herself look tired. Annoyed. Human.
"I got lucky," she said. "That's it. Don't make it into something it's not."
Rian's jaw worked. He looked like he wanted to argue. Like he wanted to push.
But he didn't.
He just nodded, slow, and turned toward the medical wing.
Keira watched him go. Her hands were shaking. She shoved them back in her pockets and made herself breathe.
She hated that saving him still felt automatic. Hated that five years of being dead hadn't killed the part of her that moved before she thought. That was how Ghost Seven had died. That was how Keira Morris was going to die too, if she didn't get her shit together.
---
Afternoon drills were worse.
Vex put her through every conditioning circuit in the book. Sprints. Carries. Rope climbs. Wall vaults. He stood there with a timer and a datapad, recording everything, his face unreadable.
Keira made herself slow down. Made herself stumble on the third rope climb. Let her form go sloppy on the dummy carries. She finished every drill, but she finished poorly, and she made sure it looked like effort.
Vex didn't say a word.
When the session ended, the rest of the cohort filtered out, and Keira bent over with her hands on her knees, pretending to catch her breath. She wasn't even winded. That was the problem.
Footsteps approached.
She looked up.
Vex stood over her, datapad tucked under one arm. He didn't look angry. He looked patient. That was worse.
"Morris," he said.
She straightened. "Sir."
"Tomorrow. Oh-six-hundred. Private evaluation."
Her stomach dropped. "Sir, I—"
"That wasn't a request."
He smiled. It didn't reach his eyes.
"Dismissed."
Keira nodded. Walked away. Didn't let herself look back.
Behind her, she heard him tap something into his datapad. She didn't need to see the screen to know what he was pulling up.
Her file.
The fake one.
And maybe, if he looked hard enough, the real one underneath.