The casualty’s blood was on his visor before Kaden realized he had moved.

  “Airway, airway,” he heard himself say. “Song, I need you on that femoral now.”

  The sim deck’s corridor flickered with emergency red. Three bodies on the floor. One groaning and kicking, one limp with a chest full of holes, one making that awful wet noise that said air was going somewhere it shouldn’t.

  Kaden dropped by the last one, gloved fingers already at the jawline.

  Aurora overlaid only the basics.

  TARGET: HUMAN – HP: 41/100

  INJURY CLUSTERS: THORACIC / CERVICAL (PROBABLE)

  No friendly green outlines. No helpful arrows. Just a faint softening on the most critical wounds and a timer ticking in the top right of his vision.

  02:12

  The cadet beneath him thrashed weakly.

  “Stay with me,” Kaden said. “You’re fine. Song!”

  “I’m on it!” Song shouted from farther up the corridor. “Leg’s pumping like a busted pipe!”

  Kaden forced his focus narrow. Chin lift. Check for obstructions. Blood. Too much blood.

  His HUD chimed, cold and neutral.

  MULTI-CAS PRIORITIZATION THRESHOLD MET

  [TRAINING LOAN] TRIAGE ASSIST – AVAILABLE (AP: 5/5)

  Kaden didn’t argue. He blinked the confirm.

  AP: 4/5

  TRIAGE ASSIST – LVL 1 – ACTIVE (08s)

  The world snapped sharper. Not brighter, not slower, just… clearer.

  The neck wound lit in a hotter tone. HP bar pulsed in his periphery with a discreet rhythm that matched the struggling heartbeat.

  His hands were already there. Sealant patch, thumb along the wound line, press and hold. He felt the cadet’s breath stutter against his wrist.

  “Song, status!” Kaden called.

  “Leg’s got a hole,” Song said. “I’ve got my whole arm on it. He’s pissed off, so that’s good, right?”

  The third “casualty” at the far end of the corridor was still moving, shouting something about their arm. Corin’s voice came from behind Kaden, dry and unimpressed.

  “That arm’s walking out on its own if you don’t screw this up, Mercer. Focus on the ones who won’t.”

  He ignored her. The cadet’s HP ticked.

  41 → 39 → 37

  Airway first. Patch in place, seal forming. His fingers moved to check the jaw again.

  “Try to breathe,” Kaden said. “Slow. In. Out.”

  The cadet dragged a breath past the patch. The horrible wet noise eased by a fraction.

  TRIAGE ASSIST – EXPIRED

  AP: 4/5

  The extra clarity washed out. He felt the loss like someone had yanked a map off the wall mid-briefing, but the important part was done. Priorities were set. He could follow through without the training wheels.

  “Song, how bad?” Kaden asked.

  “Not spurting anymore,” Song said. “He’s going to have my hand-shaped bruise there tomorrow, though.”

  “Good,” Kaden said. “Keep him talking. You’re fine, by the way, that’s simulated blood and you’re being dramatic.”

  “Screw you,” the leg cadet grunted.

  Kaden risked a glance at the chest case. HP in the twenties, breathing ragged, bubbles at the foam seal someone had slapped on earlier.

  “Pressure here,” he told the neck cadet, guiding their hand to the patch. “Don’t let go. If you feel lightheaded, that’s normal, but keep your hand there. If you pass out, your grip better stay on reflex.”

  He shifted down the body in a practiced kneel-slide that would have dumped him on his ass nine weeks ago. Foam canister in his hand, he peeled back the faulty chest seal and replaced it with a fresh one, pushing air out with the heel of his palm.

  HP flickered.

  22 → 26

  Better. Not good. But better.

  “Fifteen seconds,” Corin said somewhere over his shoulder. “You’ve still got one more voice begging you to look at them.”

  The arm-case at the end of the corridor was yelling about pain and unfairness. They had blood on their hand and a superficial graze that was bleeding a lot and killing them not at all.

  “Song,” Kaden called. “Can you spare a hand for a pressure wrap in the next ten?”

  “Got it,” Song said. “Leg’s stable enough to yell at me.”

  Kaden stayed on the chest casualty until he was sure the seal held through three full cycles. Neck’s HP ticked upward in tiny increments. Leg held steady in the sixties.

  The node’s tone cut across the corridor like a blade.

  SIM COMPLETE

  The lights came back up to standard white. The three “casualties” went still, then sat up as Aurora stripped the pain feeds and disconnected them from the scenario. Blood faded from the deck plates like it had never been there.

  Kaden rocked back onto his heels, breathing harder than he wanted to admit. His gloves were clean when he looked down at them. His brain still thought they should be slick.

  Corin walked into his field of view, hands behind her back. She swept a look down at the three cadets he had “treated,” then back at him.

  “Acceptable,” she said. “You’re less of a hazard to yourself than you were last month.”

  Kaden managed something that almost counted as a nod.

  Song peeled himself up from the leg casualty and flopped back against the wall, chest rising and falling.

  “Mercer went full machine on that neck,” he said. “Didn’t even yell at me once.”

  “I didn’t have time to yell at you,” Kaden said.

  “Even better,” Song muttered.

  Corin’s gaze unfocused for a moment as she checked the sim logs in her HUD.

  “Here’s the breakdown,” she said. “Neck first with skill, chest second, leg delegated, arm ignored. That matches protocol under these conditions. You cut it close on the chest, but still inside the window where a real set of lungs would have thanked you instead of cursing you. Song’s leg work was sloppy but functional. Arm-case gets a lecture about not screaming over a graze.”

  The arm cadet grumbled something under their breath. Corin ignored it.

  “Mercer,” she said, attention snapping back to him. “You notice anything different that time?”

  He thought about lying. About saying no.

  “I didn’t have to think as hard about the order,” he said instead. “It… came faster.”

  Corin’s mouth twitched.

  “Good,” she said. “That’s called training. You do it enough and your brain starts doing the right thing before you have time to come up with something stupid.”

  Kaden opened his mouth to answer, but Aurora stepped in first.

  A notification bloomed at the edge of his vision, highlighted in a muted gold he hadn’t seen before.

  TRAIT MILESTONE REACHED

  TRAUMA RESPONSE – LVL 1 (100%)

  The trait bar under the label, the one that had been sitting at thirty-six percent nine weeks ago, sat full now. No sliver. No empty gray.

  Aurora expanded the entry.

  TRAUMA RESPONSE – LVL 1

  EFFECT:

  – Minor reduction in tremor under acute stress.

  – Minor reduction in tunnel vision and auditory exclusion under acute stress.

  – Improved recall of trained procedures when exposed to combat-equivalent stimuli.

  He felt nothing dramatic. No rush. No halo. Just the quiet knowledge that the System had decided he shook a little less, listened a little better, remembered his lessons a little more reliably when the screaming started.

  “Something in your HUD you want to share with the class, Mercer?” Corin asked.

  He hesitated.

  “Trauma Response just capped, ma’am,” he said.

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  Corin gave a short nod, unsurprised.

  “Took it long enough,” she said. “Well earned. Don’t get cocky. Level one means you’re marginally less of a wreck under stress, not a stone idol.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Kaden said.

  “Rest of you, you hear that?” Corin said, raising her voice. “That’s how Aurora pays you. Not with hero music. With slightly less shaking when your friend’s HP bar is in the red. If you don’t like that trade, you’re in the wrong track.”

  A few cadets laughed, thin and shaky.

  Corin turned away.

  “Reset the deck,” she told the node. “Next group. Mercer, Song, you’re out. Hit the showers or go stare at a wall. You’ve done enough damage for the afternoon.”

  The corridor bled back to neutral gray as the environment reset. Kaden unclipped his helmet and felt air that wasn’t recycled through a filter hit his face.

  Song bumped his shoulder on their way out.

  “Look at that,” Song said. “Our boy’s officially traumatized. Aurora says so.”

  “Shut up, Song,” Kaden said.

  Song grinned and did not shut up all the way down the corridor.

  The next nine weeks did not pass quickly. They just passed.

  Mornings started with PT that blurred into a single long ache: runs along the spinning habitat ring, resistance drills in the gym, weighted carries up and down the same stairs until Kaden could feel the pattern of the treads through his boots.

  History and policy classes followed. Navarro endured Rhein’s lectures on the Advent, the Aurora Wars, the first Andromeda incursions, and returned to the barracks each day with new curses for old admirals.

  Aurora mechanics split into tracks. Kaden sat through deeper dives on medic-adjacent skills and traits, on how healing thresholds worked, on what constituted “stabilized” in System terms. Other cadets peeled off to learn about munitions optimization, ship HUD interfaces, piloting overlays.

  The medic annex became his second home. Sims escalated.

  Single-casualty drills turned into two, then three. Static scenes gave way to moving ones, where the corridor was never quite secure and cover never quite adequate. Node overlays grew sparser as the instructors throttled assists.

  “Your implant is what you get in Andromeda,” Corin said more than once. “If you can’t do it with that, you can’t do it.”

  Trauma Response ticked up in little jumps he barely noticed at the time.

  36% → 51% → 58% → 71% → 84% → 93% → 100%

  Sometimes the notifications came after sims where he’d done well. Sometimes they came on days he felt like he’d failed.

  In one scenario he chose a casualty that the node’s weighting said had lower survival odds and lost both that one and the next. Aurora hit him with a quiet penalty.

  PERFORMANCE: SUB-OPTIMAL – TRAIT PROGRESSION: HALTED (1 SIM)

  Corin made him talk through the decision on the holo tank three times until he could explain why his choice had felt right and why, in that context, it hadn’t been.

  “Being able to justify yourself doesn’t always make you right,” she said. “But if you can’t even do that, Aurora is going to eat you alive.”

  Navarro’s training diverged from his, but their days still intersected. She came back from breaching sims with bruises and stories about instructors who thought the best way to teach wall-clearing was to throw flashbang equivalents at nineteen-year-olds until they stopped flinching.

  They compared notes over mess trays and in the barracks. Navarro adopted “brain and nerves” as her favorite way to describe him. Kaden called her “reckless with delusions of subtlety.” Song encouraged both of them.

  Level stayed locked at two. AP stayed at five. His stats did not shift on the sheet. But the numbers felt… truer. PHY six stopped being an abstraction and became the certainty that he could drag someone heavier than him the length of a corridor without his arms giving out. RES six settled into his bones as the knowledge that, yes, his hands would still shake, but they would do it after the wrap went on, not before.

  Aurora kept watching. The Academy node kept throttling. The days stacked.

  Then, without much fanfare at all, the schedule tags in his HUD started changing.

  WEEK 9/9 – TERM BLOCK: FINAL

  NOTICE: GRADUATION – 10 DAYS

  And, underneath it, one more line.

  NOTICE: FINAL INTEGRATED COMBAT ASSESSMENT – 72 HOURS

  Scope lines appeared a heartbeat later.

  SCOPE: MULTI-SQUAD BOARDING SIM / LIVE-FIRE ELEMENTS

  NOTE: PERFORMANCE WILL INFORM INITIAL POSTINGS

  Kaden stared at that last sentence longer than he meant to.

  “Welcome to the deep end,” Song said when he showed him. “Hope you brought your floaties.”

  “Medics don’t get floaties,” Kaden said.

  “Right, right,” Song said. “Just trauma.”

  The mess hall felt crowded that evening.

  It wasn’t, not really. The Academy ship’s population was a fixed number, and the trays and tables were set with military precision. But the air hummed in a way it hadn’t a month ago. Cadets ate a little faster. Conversations ran a little louder and then dropped abruptly when someone’s HUD pinged with a fresh notice about logistics, assessments, or graduation parade rehearsals.

  Kaden and Navarro managed to claim a corner table. Song dumped his tray down next to them a moment later, almost slopping synth stew onto Navarro’s sleeve.

  “Careful,” she said. “Some of us are attached to our uniforms.”

  “Some of us should not have done extra laps after PT,” Song said, dropping into his seat. “Corin says she wants medics who can drag people, not have aneurysms about step counts.”

  “You did extra laps?” Navarro asked.

  “I made the mistake of saying the words ‘how hard can it be’ within her hearing,” Song said. “Learn from my pain.”

  Navarro smirked and turned to Kaden.

  “So,” she said. “Advanced Aurora block. Did they flip the switch and make you into a real healer yet, or are you still just tape and foam?”

  “Still tape and foam,” Kaden said. “Plus improved recall of trained procedures under combat-equivalent stressors, according to Aurora.”

  Navarro blinked.

  “Did you just quote your trait description at me?” she asked.

  He shrugged, shoveling food in.

  “It popped up today,” he said. “Trauma Response capped.”

  Navarro’s expression softened for half a heartbeat.

  “Congrats,” she said. “You’re officially less of a disaster when people are dying.”

  “Exactly what Corin said,” Kaden replied.

  “Guess you’re both right, then,” Navarro said.

  Song raised his plastic cup in a mock toast.

  “To Mercer’s ascending trauma,” he said.

  They clinked cups. The moment was about as close to celebratory as the room got.

  Above the serving stations, a row of screens cycled through the usual feed: supply metrics, training stats, propaganda reels of ships sliding through aurora-bright corridors, Opp silhouettes in red with neutral, dispassionate numbers under them.

  Then, mid-forkful, every screen flickered.

  The metrics vanished. The looping footage cut. A single Hegemony crest snapped into place, white on black. Conversations faltered around the room.

  “Something’s happening,” Navarro murmured.

  The crest faded to a live feed. A woman in dress blacks appeared behind a console, Hegemony insignia crisp on her shoulder, hair pulled tight enough to hurt just looking at it. The ticker at the bottom identified her as some logistics or fleet liaison. Kaden didn’t recognize the name.

  The audio came up a second later, overriding the low mess-hall murmur.

  “—fleet command has released an update regarding ongoing operations in the Erebus Corridor,” the woman was saying. “Following sustained engagements over the last quarter, the offensive posture has been reevaluated.”

  Navarro’s fork hung halfway between tray and mouth.

  “Erebus,” she said quietly. “That’s one of the midline pushes, right?”

  “Yeah,” Kaden said. He remembered Rhein’s holographic map, the glowing lines of human-controlled corridors fading out into Opp-claimed territory. Erebus had been one of the bright points. A spear.

  It did not sound like a spear now.

  “The Hegemony Interstellar Navy confirms that forward elements have been ordered to withdraw to pre-offensive positions,” the woman continued. Her tone never shifted. “This strategic redeployment follows enemy counteractions that have rendered current gains unsustainable.”

  That was a word that covered a lot of bruises.

  “Furthermore,” she went on, “Erebus Sector Command and associated task forces will undergo comprehensive restructuring. Surviving units are being consolidated and reassigned. Command elements are under review. Additional reinforcements from Earth, Luna, and the Belt will be prioritized for the sector once reorganization is complete.”

  Song muttered something under his breath that might have been a prayer or a curse.

  The woman kept talking. Support for our brave marines, commitment to the line, temporary setbacks, long war. No numbers. No ship names.

  No list of who wasn’t coming back.

  “Kaden,” Navarro said softly.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “What does ‘comprehensive restructuring’ actually mean?” she asked.

  He watched the woman’s mouth move without really seeing her.

  “Means whatever was there didn’t walk away in one piece,” Kaden said. “Squads gone. Ships damaged. Command deciding the table needs to be flipped and the pieces set back down in new places.”

  “Survivors consolidated and reassigned,” Navarro said, quoting the feed.

  “Yeah,” Kaden said again.

  Navarro’s jaw flexed. Her eyes went distant, seeing something in a corridor he hadn’t walked yet.

  The feed shifted to stock footage. Bulwark and other ships fired into the dark. Marines in full armor charged down some long-ago passageway. The usual.

  “Command assures all citizens that Erebus remains a priority theater,” the voiceover said. “The Hegemony stands firm along the Andromeda front. Aurora watches. We endure.”

  The crest returned. Then the mess hall screens quietly reverted to their usual cycle, as if nothing had happened.

  Conversation took a long moment to start again. When it did, it flowed in uneven patches. Some cadets spoke louder than necessary, as if volume could push the news away. Others ate in silence.

  “Guess the rumors about postings being weird this cycle were right,” Song said at last.

  Navarro stabbed a piece of protein that had offended her.

  “All that ‘performance will inform initial postings’ crap,” she said. “Think that’s tied to this?”

  Kaden thought of the notice in his HUD. Final integrated combat assessment. Multi-squad boarding. Live-fire elements. And somewhere, in Erebus, squads being broken down and glued onto others to see if the mix held.

  “Probably,” he said.

  Navarro sighed.

  “Great,” she said. “So we get to graduate into a fleet that just got its teeth kicked in.”

  “That’s one way to put it,” Song said.

  “How would you put it?” she asked.

  Song thought about it.

  “I’d say,” he said slowly, “that whatever we thought we were heading into, the board just got flipped. And Aurora’s watching to see who lands face-down and who lands ready to move.”

  Navarro looked at Kaden.

  “Doc?” she said.

  He almost corrected her to “medic cadet.” The word caught on his tongue and stayed there.

  “I’d say it means someone’s going to need replacements,” he said. “Soon. And that whatever we do in that final assessment, Command’s going to be looking for people they can plug into broken places without the whole structure coming down.”

  Navarro made a face.

  “Love being a spare part,” she said.

  “Could be worse,” Song said. “You could be on the front end of the kick instead of the backfill.”

  “Comforting, Song,” Navarro said.

  “Always,” he said.

  They finished their food.

  Lights-out hit on schedule. It felt stranger than it had the week before, like someone had turned off the lights on a stage instead of a barracks.

  Kaden lay on his bunk and pulled up his sheet out of habit.

  NAME: MERCER, KADEN

  AGE: 19

  TIER: 1

  LEVEL: 2 (CAP – ACADEMY NODE)

  CLASS: COMBAT MEDIC CADET (TRACK)

  PHY: 6

  AGI: 4

  COG: 7

  RES: 6

  AP: 5

  TRAITS:

  – TRAUMA RESPONSE – LVL 1 (100%)

  The full bar sat there, serene, as if it had always been that way.

  Trauma Response. Level one. Aurora’s way of saying, You don’t fall apart quite as fast as you used to. Good. Keep going.

  Outside, in some corridor called Erebus, people whose sheets he would never see had just been folded into new boxes or deleted from the System entirely.

  In here, on a ship full of almost-marines and almost-medics, the board was being set for whatever came next.

  NOTICE: FINAL INTEGRATED COMBAT ASSESSMENT – 71:52:09

  The countdown ticked in the corner of his HUD.

  Kaden dismissed the sheet and stared into the dark, feeling the full trait bar like a weight and a promise.

  Aurora had watched him for nine weeks in safe corridors and controlled nodes. In three days, it would see him in something closer to the real thing.

  And after that, if he did well enough, it would send him to where the lines had buckled and the structures had been broken and put back together again.

  He closed his eyes and tried to picture it. Not the glory footage. Not Bulwark’s highlight reels. Just a nameless corridor, Opp fire biting at armor, and someone’s HP bar dropping faster than it should.

  In that imagined hallway, his hands still shook.

  They just shook a little less.