Forty pounds of kinetic resistance tore at Caleb’s right shoulder.

Gritting his teeth, he forced the heavy iron bar upward along the hydraulic track. The dark canvas of the Break-Tab Harness dug into his collarbone. He held the apex of the lift, forcing his rebuilt muscle tissue to bear the load without the suit’s artificial assistance.

A mechanical click resonated from his chest plate. 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

The Power Isolation Shunt engaged. Tali’s custom wiring intercepted the massive biometric heat spike bleeding out of his healing ribs, snapping a firewall down to protect the suit’s lithium core.

The iron sled trembled in his grip. Fighting the anomaly’s power draw, the suit’s battery dipped four percent in three seconds. Caleb exhaled a ragged breath and released the tension.

The track clattered loudly against the rubber floor mats of the empty Seventh Division recovery gym.

Sitting up on the sweat-stained bench, Caleb pulled his cheap spiral notebook from his canvas bag. He clicked his black pen.

Break-Tab Harness: mobility holds under load. Power Isolation Shunt: engaged twice. Battery dip: 6 percent. Hunger: constant.

Tracing the last word with the tip of his pen, he grounded the impossible reality of the anomaly into practical metrics. Starvation coiled tightly beneath his sternum. It wasn’t an empty stomach. It was a biological void scraping against his bones, demanding raw fuel to maintain the repaired muscle tissue in his neck. He closed the notebook, shoving it into his bag.

He needed calories.

Wiping his forehead, he moved back to the sled and racked the resistance up to sixty pounds.

Planting his boots, he shoved the handles forward. The torn muscle along his neck screamed. The shunt clicked instantly.

The battery meter on his visor plummeted. Eight percent. Eleven percent.

A hollow cramp folded his stomach in half. The caloric deficit stripped his energy reserves down to zero in a matter of seconds.

His arms buckled. The hydraulic sled slammed backward into its housing with a deafening crash.

Caleb gasped, dropping to one knee on the rubber mat.

A blue notification chimed on his visor glass.

[MESSAGE: KIKARU MITSURUGI] [Your compliance logs are incomplete. Adjust your left-flank rotation during the push to compensate for the armor shift.]

Another chime followed immediately.

[You are ignoring proper cooldown protocol. Acknowledge.]

Swiping the screen dead, Caleb killed the text. Academy compliance logs meant nothing to him. The starving heat in his chest threatened to cannibalize his own muscle mass if he didn’t feed it immediately. Finding calories was no longer a scheduled break. It was an absolute biological necessity.

Hauling himself off the mats, he grabbed his bag and pushed through the swinging doors into the adjacent cafeteria alcove.

The scent of crushed orchids and ozone hit him. It completely overpowered the smell of stale coffee and floor wax.

Caleb stopped in the doorway.

A woman sat at a bolted plastic table in the far corner. She wore a corseted dress. A shifting mass of static pixels obscured her face. The optical scrambler blurred her features into a constant digital smear, hiding her identity from the naked eye. A single strand of neon-green hair escaped the distortion, resting against her pale neck.

She held a foil packet of synthetic salt-wafers. Snapping a piece off, she ate it. It was the exact cheap brand Caleb used to buy from the rusted vending machines outside the Sector Four disposal yards.

Dropping his canvas bag, Caleb let his taped fingers twitch. If she shows up again, grab her.

"Did the mechanic hurt you?" she asked.

The voice lacked any digital modulation. It carried an intimate purr that filled the sterile alcove. She offered another wafer to the pixelated blur of her mouth.

"You were wincing on the sled," she murmured, ignoring his defensive posture entirely. "Did she set the right strap too high? It looks like it pinches your collarbone."

Caleb walked to the table. Resting his good hand on the plastic surface, he held his ground. "You are eating my food."

"You used to eat these by the handful after hauling marrow," she teased, resting her elbows on the cheap table. "Are you sleeping at all, Caleb? You look entirely exhausted. Try one."

She pushed the foil packet across the table.

Caleb stared at the wafers. The biological void behind his ribs thrashed, screaming for the calories. The urge to snatch the packet burned through his exhausted muscles. Locking his jaw until his teeth ground together, he forced his hand to remain absolutely flat on the plastic table. He rejected the offering while she sat there.

"What is your name," Caleb demanded, keeping his tone flat.

Tilting her head, the static pixels shifted under the fluorescent light. "Names are just data. Data gets people killed. You can just call me yours."

"Take the scrambler off your face."

"I spent a fortune on this tech," she replied casually. "It ruins every security camera in a five-mile radius. Besides, you aren’t ready to see me yet."

The hollow ache in his chest twisted. She sat in a secure military base acting like they were sharing coffee in a private penthouse. She carried a domestic familiarity that felt profoundly unsettling. He pushed past the softness in her voice.

"Give me the stream rights back," Caleb said.

Sighing, she brushed a crumb from her sleeve. "The public feeds are toxic. They just want to watch you bleed for energy drink commercials. I am curating your growth. I authorized the shunt payment, didn’t I?"

"What is your arrangement with the SSS operator."

"We help each other," she answered sideways, breaking another wafer. "He provides access. I provide vision."

"Why were you watching a scrubber haul bone marrow five years ago," Caleb asked.

Her fingers stopped moving. The playful, doting energy evaporated. The air in the alcove cooled.

The cafeteria doors swung open.

Kikaru marched inside. Her carbon-fiber leg brace clicked a demanding rhythm against the linoleum. Gripping a silver datapad, she kept her academy uniform perfectly ironed.

"Mercer, you are blatantly ignoring my compliance updates—"

Kikaru froze.

She stared at the woman at the bolted table. Her dark eyes tracked the optical scramble blurring the stranger’s face. The heiress lowered her datapad.

"What the hell is wrong with your face?" Kikaru asked.

The woman did not move. "The princess."

Stepping fully into the room, Kikaru abandoned her professional mask. Insulted fury took its place.

"You bypassed the military security grid," Kikaru stated, her voice dropping into a dangerous clip. "You hold unauthorized stream rights to a Defense Force asset. You refuse accountability." Closing the distance to the table, her hands balled into fists. "What if I punch it until the distortion turns off?"

The physical threat did not even register.

Kikaru didn’t wait for a reaction. Falling back on academy training, she tapped a rapid command into her silver datapad to trigger base security. The local surveillance feed popped onto her screen. It showed the cafeteria completely empty, running on a three-second loop.

Kikaru lowered the pad, realizing the room was already compromised.

She lunged.

Her gloved hand shot forward, aiming directly for the pixelated blur.

Space bent inches from the woman’s face. A thin distortion field swallowed the kinetic impact completely. Kikaru’s wrist jerked to a dead halt. Her carbon-fiber leg brace sparked, the internal servos locking out for a split second.

A gold tag flashed across Caleb’s visor interface, overriding the local network completely.

[SSS-AUTHORIZATION: PROTECTED ASSET] [PHYSICAL INTERFERENCE PROHIBITED]

Kikaru stumbled backward, clutching her wrist.

The woman tilted her head. "You were going to hit me over the face thing?"

"Yes," Kikaru hissed.

"That is fair," the woman said, picking up another salt-wafer. "The Divisions leave the door unlocked for me. Engineers panic when their sensor models disagree. I make them disagree less."

Kikaru halted, rubbing her joint. "You expect me to believe command relies on a civilian to map rupture drift?"

"They map rupture drift using outdated acoustic models," the woman explained, her tone entirely conversational. "I clean the data. I suppress the dangerous broadcast feeds before the public sees the casualty rates. I open black-ops routing for the people who actually kill the threats."

She brushed a speck of dust off her corset.

"The military command tolerates me because I identify Kaiju emergence patterns months before their official systems even register a tremor."

The static blur shifted back toward Caleb.

"Caleb is one of the patterns," she whispered.

Caleb leaned his weight against the table. "Out of thousands of scavengers in the yards. Why me before the stream?"

The static shifted. She leaned closer, the scent of crushed orchids overwhelming the sterile room.

"Because you heard them before anyone taught you to listen," she murmured.

The air near the vending machines hummed.

A physical distortion rippled the space beside the trash receptacle. The air tore open, revealing the jagged edge of a phase-rift. A gold [SSS-AUTHORIZATION] tag flashed across Caleb’s visor interface again.

"Asset. Time."

The mechanical voice bled through the rift.

The woman rolled her shoulders, clearly annoyed by the interruption rather than scared.

Rising, she slid the half-empty foil packet across the plastic table toward Caleb.

"Eat," she commanded, stepping into the phase-rift before anyone could reach her.

The spatial tear snapped shut, leaving the alcove completely empty except for the lingering smell of ozone.

The hum of the vending machine compressor filled the silence.

Kikaru stared at the empty space near the wall. Her jaw locked tight. Her hands remained curled into rigid fists at her sides.

"Next time, I am hitting her," Kikaru breathed.

Caleb picked up the foil packet. He ripped the plastic wider, finally letting the starvation win.

"Get in line," Caleb said.