“In probability, anything is possible, and certainty becomes a function of time. Unicorns, for example, do not exist, but if time is truly infinite, then probability dictates that at some point, in the past or future, they will exist. The universe could end and start again, over and over, until eventually, reality finds the form you imagined. Determinism, the theory that everything can be calculated, has an interesting interaction with this principle. As it states that everything that happened in the past will determine the future. This is mainly used as an argument against free will. Because the brain is a biological computer, its output can be calculated based on what is input. At first blush, it would seem like these principles align, however, I would argue that they actually annihilate one another, like a particle and an antiparticle. After all, if probability states that any outcome is not just possible but guaranteed, then how can your actions be predetermined when you will make every possible choice eventually, despite and, yes, even in contradiction to the dictates of past stimuli?

  Regardless of what philosophy you follow, probabilistic or deterministic, mathematics states one thing as an absolute certainty; with enough patience and persistence, you can be anything you want to be, my little galaxy.”

  ***

  “You are a idiotic and insufferable, insubordinate little asshole, you know that, Yeva? One day, one goddamned day, and you didn’t even make it through orientation before committing assault with a deadly weapon against one of your own classmates. You haven’t even met your team yet, Yeva.”

  “Why am I the one getting yelled at? I’m the only one who got hurt.”

  “Because your concussion is a consequence of your own actions. Welcome to Lighthouse Military Academy, Yeva, when hit, the people here hit back.”

  “... “

  “Nothing to say? Well, typically, this kind of thing would be grounds for expulsion, but considering this is your last shot, I begged the directors to give you a second chance. I won’t be doing that again, by the way. I don’t care if you’re fifteen, one more stunt like this and you will be on your own. Now, in concession for this generous leniency, you are having access to your family trust and apartments revoked. You will be required to live in the squad barracks at all times. You will not have access to any of your civilian clothes or belongings beyond what is currently stored in your locker. And, you will no longer be able to order custom meals from the cafeteria, instead eating only the basic fare included in your tuition. Finally, as your squad’s ranking is now in the negative, meaning your assigned squad barracks has been changed to building thirteen. If you can actually make it through orientation, perhaps you will be able to understand why this is a bad thing. Dismissed, soldier.”

  ***

  “Are you Yeva Smirnova?”

  “I am, what’s it to you?”

  “I’m Richard. Richard McClair, in the officer’s track.”

  “And I should care because…?”

  “Because we are on the same squad?”

  “Sorry, you’ve got the wrong Yeva, I’m also in the officer’s track.”

  “Yeah, I know. We’re supposed to decide who is going to act as captain and who will be lieutenant. Have you not checked the rolls?”

  “Look, Richard, I just got here today, and I’ve spent most of that day in the infirmary talking to one of two choice jackasses. So I’m glad to be on the team, or whatever, but I don’t really give a shit about any of this, so if you came here to shake me down for the job of captain, be my guest. I don’t want to be responsible for any of you lot anyway.”

  “Okay, not really how I was expecting this conversation to go, but very well. I accept.”

  “Great, I’m happy for you, Captain.”

  ***

  “Ugh, what are you doing here?”

  “Hello, Yeva. Good to see you again, I will be this squad’s drill sergeant.”

  “You can’t be a drill sergeant, you’re a foster counselor.”

  “Actually, I can. I told you I’d be keeping a closer eye on you than my predecessors.”

  “Oh, nice, this sounds like some juicy gossip.”

  “Yeva, I’d like to introduce you to Corporal Aiden Avery. He is in the Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear track. Beside him are Corporals Kumiko Sasaki and Melony Quick, in the Medical and tech tracks respectively. Lastly, your fellow classmate in the officer’s track, Richard McClair. Everyone allow me to introduce Yeva Smirnova, also of the officer’s track. Ah yes, and I am - for those of you who do not know me - Counselor Marduk Rimunnabi, and I will be acting as your drill sergeant for the foreseeable future.”

  “I have a question.”

  “Yes, Corporal Quick?”

  “Why does our barracks have a dirt floor?”

  “That, Corporal, is an excellent question.”

  ***

  The smooth, polished stairs felt cold on my bare feet. The vile blood that drenched me had cooled, leaving me with a chill that prickled my skin. It was a stark reminder that I was naked and alone in the heart of a breach zone, widely considered one of the most dangerous places in the world. Only the thing making it dangerous wasn’t the warp, for once. It was my own squadmates. Nim had been right, the warp no longer seemed to regard me as a threat. If anything, the beasts I had encountered had implicitly trusted me, even after watching me butcher one of their own. I ascended another step like lazarus rising from the pit. A shiver ran down my spine that turned into a full body convulsion. I took another step, clutching my arms around myself for warmth. What kind of captain was I? It had seemed so clear before, but now I didn’t know for sure. I could destroy the remaining breach tumors so easily now. The warp wouldn’t even try to stop me. But, could I risk putting a member of my squad in danger by interfering with the operation? If I’d not gotten involved, perhaps Duncan would have survived his encounter with the decanid and stalker. Was it perhaps better for everyone if I simply disappeared?

  How did I get back here? I took another step. I’d taken this step before, hadn’t I? Even as I ascended, I felt as though I were falling. I was going to be sick. I took another step and stumbled, catching myself on the wall. The wall felt warm, as the warp ichor there oozed over my hand. There were still two intruders left, I could feel. I had done well in stopping one of them so swiftly, but I had expended much of my strength. I would need to have it replenished if I were to stop the other invaders. The warmth traveled wetly up my arm, shoulder, and neck. My mouth filled with blood, the taste of succulent flesh on my tongue. It was too much. I wrenched my hand away and lurched to the top of the stairs, collapsing to hands and knees. I convulsed again and retched steaming black bile that stained the pristine landing.

  ***

  “She did what?”

  “I dislike repeating myself, Miss Quick.”

  “Why wasn’t she expelled.”

  “It was determined to be too soon to make such a decision, so we are giving her a second chance.”

  “So what? Because this psycho, who I'd not even met yet, assaulted some guy in exo-kit calibration, I have to sleep on wooden cots in some hovel? Bullshit, I request a transfer.”

  “Transfer request denied, Miss Quick. Like it or not, you’re stuck with Lieutenant Smirnova, and she is stuck with you. That goes the same for the rest of you. From now on, you will either succeed together, or fail together.”

  “And what exactly have we done to deserve this?”

  “Nothing, Mr. McClair. You were each specifically assigned to this squad by me. That is why you are not allowed to transfer, not that any other team would take you, as it is only the first day and there as of yet no openings. However, even if there were, I still would not allow any of you to transfer. To transfer is to admit defeat, so you may as well drop out, soldier, because I will not have any of you failing.”

  “That seems a little unfair, sir.”

  “Unfair, is it? Perhaps then you would like to tell everyone about your score on the aptitude test? Miss Smirnova isn’t the only exceptional case here. If I remember right, you almost failed the entrance exam despite getting near perfect scores on the written portion because you froze during the practical simulations.”

  “Aren’t our test results supposed to be confidential?”

  “Ah, Miss Sasaki, how unlike you to speak up. In theory, you would be correct. However, you are forgetting who I am. So, instead of worrying about what I can do, instead I would be concerned about what you cannot do.”

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “... “

  “You all know why you are here, so let’s stop pretending. If you want to improve your living situation, you’ll need to learn to work as a team and climb the rankings. You will never do that if you spend all your time pointing fingers at one another. This time, it was Miss Smirnova that caused it. You should be thanking her, for now you all know the price of failure.”

  ***

  My face was laying in a puddle of something sticky. I think I’d blacked out for a moment there. I pushed myself to my feet and winced at the pain twisting my stomach. Fuck, I was hungry. I was having a hard time focusing. I wiped the slimy gunk from my face and looked around. I was at the top of a large stairway, the wide hall stretching out in front of me. I think I knew where I was. This was on the maps, it was the main way down to the lower level. The tubeway platform was just a few minutes walk from here, but wasn't I doing something important? Where was my squad? The walls were closing in around me as my vision narrowed to eight distinct points.

  “Nim, help, what’s wrong with my head,” I groaned. Wasn’t he supposed to be giving me status updates on my health.

  There is nothing physically wrong with your head. You have not suffered any brain injuries since falling down the tunnel, which has since been fully healed. You do appear to be malnourished, likely because of extreme amounts of physical exertion and because you emptied the contents of your stomach onto the ground. I am also detecting a large influx of epinephrine, so it is possible that you are suffering from a panic attack.

  “Extreme physical exertion?” I said, dazed.

  Your exo-skeleton is no longer powered by an external fuel cell. The liquid salts and plutonium were considered toxic and expelled, but the titanium and carbon nanotube structures were fully incorporated into your body. This means that the artificial muscle fibers must be fueled by your cells' natural ATP reserves and using them in excess expends an extreme quantity of stored calories.

  “So ripping that guy in half was maybe not my best idea,” I groaned.

  It would not have been an issue had you simply allowed the warp to replenish your expended energy reserves instead of breaking contact and vomiting.

  “Does what has happened to me not bother you at all?” I asked, anger creeping into my voice.

  I want to live. I want you to live. While this situation is not ideal, it is far preferable to the alternatives.

  I let out a heavy sigh, my exhaustion winning out over anger. He was right. Of course he was right, it wasn’t like I had any desire to kick the bucket either. I had grown to like my life and the people in it. I’d been fighting to keep us all alive for years, and I wasn’t about to stop. I set my shoulders against the growing pain in my stomach and placed my hand back on the vein of warp that streaked the walls and ceiling. I braced myself for the alien sensation of warmth, the knowledge of where my teammates were, and the disgusting attempt to force feed me its own living matter, but nothing came. The warp had gone silent. I dug my fingers deeper into the living sludge, the fear of uncertainty once again gripping my heart. Nothing. The warp was growing colder by the second. It was… dying. Wait, this was fantastic. The warp was dying. My team had done it, they had killed the last breach tumor. Now the warp would slowly start to wither as the central brain and food distribution system had been eliminated. We had won.

  Oh… oh no. We, the humans, had won, and I - a warp beast - was starving, naked, alone, and currently the primary target for clean up by my own team. I had to get out of here and find myself a soy burger before I starved to death or worse, got shot again. I set my feet to the path of the tubeway station. It was nearly a straight shot. Based on the maps of the top level, I believed I was heading west towards the mess hall. This large corridor was the artery that led between the mess, the apartments, and the main stairway to the lower floor. All I had to do was follow it and it would lead me past the mess hall’s eastern door, eventually connecting to the southern passageway that the first decanid had flanked us from. I could cut directly through the mess hall to save a little time, but it felt safer to go around. I wasn’t keen to fall into any more of the warp weaver’s pit traps, and there was a chance someone was still in there if the juvenile breach tumor was the last one to go.

  The hallway ended as predicted, with the mess hall’s double doors grown over by a fleshy membrane that no longer pulsated with the beat of an unseen heart. I walked past the blocked door, feet squelching on warp ichor that grew more ubiquitous as I neared the breach tumor’s nest. There was another warp wall blocking the passageway south as well, and it too seemed dormant. I reached out a talon and pushed it through the leathery flesh, piercing the membrane. It didn’t react. I drew the talon down, cutting the wall down the middle like a knife through fabric until the slit was as tall as me. Unlike before, the warp wall didn’t regenerate, so I parted the flaps of flesh with my hands and stepped through the bleeding wound. It seemed I was in the clear.

  I picked up the pace, a quick turn to the right at the next T section had me headed back west. A right then a left and I would be back to where I’d started, the tubeway platform’s eastern gate. I rounded the next bend, and sure enough, there was the pile of rubble where Corporal Avery had dropped the ceiling on the first decanid. Some of the beast’s tendrils still protruded from under the chunks of fallen concrete. It had felt like so long since it had happened that I’d totally forgotten that I had asked Avery to collapse the ceiling. Luckily the passageway wasn’t totally blocked, and I was able to squeeze past the rubble without issue. If it had been impassable, I would have had to go through the mess hall after all, as I’d had Corporal Quick seal the south gate.

  I could finally see light again, the red emergency lights from the tubeway platform shone from the end of the hallway. I’d made it. I stepped out into the pulsating glow and let out a sigh of relief at the sight of the tube cars lined up in a row inside the vacuum tubes. The doors were still open and - my leg exploded. I screamed as the world pitched. I collapsed to the floor, my head swimming with agony. What. The. Fuck.

  Modulating pain response. Right leg compromised by high velocity impact with approximately 30 centimeter diameter lead ball. Calibrating reconstitution of limb, estimated time until full recovery is thirty eight seconds. Warning, lipid count is dangerously low. My mind flooded with information as Nim’s calm voice analyzed the data. I let him do his thing, the pain already subsiding to a dull throb, and looked for my attacker. Leaning heavily in the doorway of the northern gate was the bulky form of Captain Coldwell. He had lost his minigun at some point and was holding out a ludicrously large handgun.

  “Gotcha bitch,” he said, limping into the room towards me. “How do you like the taste of my Gauren Muchel four bore hand cannon? Custom made for killing the likes of you. That pain you’re feeling is over two thousand grains of pure lead.”

  “Captain,” I said in a strangled hiss as my bones started to sprout anew from the stump. “It’s me, Yeva.”

  “She may be a little inaccurate, but boy does she pack a punch. And don’t you worry, next time, I won’t miss.”

  Yeva, I would recommend not getting shot by that again. You do not have the energy stores to heal another injury like this.

  “Damnit, Coldwell. Listen to me, please,” I said, trying to enunciate the words as clearly as I could with my stupid alien windpipe. I sounded like I was trying to regurgitate a whole cat that had lodged in my throat.

  “Trying to talk like a real girl, are we? You must be the beasty that took out Duncan,” he said, getting closer, slowly reloading his absurd single shot pistol with a round the size of a flare. “He’d said something about that hissing of yours. Must’ve been fate. Misfits got to have all the fun, while Ol’ Honeybadger gets picked apart, one member at a time. Well, not me, no. I get to avenge them all, isn’t that right, bitch.”

  He stopped three meters away and leveled the Gauren at my chest.

  “Say hello to ‘em in hell for me.”

  I did what any self respecting girl would do in my situation; I hawked up a loogy and spit it at him. The disrespectful projectile came out a familiar bright yellow and arced perfectly towards Coldwell’s stupid smirk. He reacted on instinct, protecting his face by blocking the missile with the gun in his outstretched hand. The ball of saliva hit the steel and immediately the gun started to hiss and smoke. Coldwell quickly dropped the dissolving weapon with a curse.

  Uh, that wasn’t what I’d expected to happen.

  “Nim, was that nanite acid?” I grunted as I pushed myself onto my mostly reformed leg. Now I had a limp to match the other captain’s.

  That is correct. Your nano-blade containment module was still attached to your exo-kit when it was integrated into your body. The warp determined that the most logical place to position the module was in your larynx. It also coated your mouth, teeth and trachea in tungsten carbide to prevent it from being dissolved by the corrosive substance.

  Was that why I couldn’t fucking talk? Because I had a goddamned nanite acid gland in my throat? Whatever twisted eldritch virus was behind the warp’s sense of biological functionality, I was going to rip out its larynx and show it why they were important.

  Coldwell took a step forward, fists raised. Though he was seemingly out of firearms, I knew that didn’t mean he was helpless. His exo-kit’s augment was to further beef up his physical strength to absurd levels. It was what allowed him to carry a 75 kg minigun in addition to his heavy hazmat armor, and it meant he could punch a hole straight through concrete with his reinforced gauntlets. Fortunately, my limp was healing much faster than his own.

  I rushed in, knowing I needed to end this before backup arrived. He led with a heavy right hook. Predictable. I ducked it and further pushed him off his balance with a push from one of my arms, using a lower arm to jab him in the exposed stomach. I kept my fist closed, so as to not risk puncturing his armor’s seal. The armor could probably handle a strike from my claws, but I didn’t want to risk another death. Broken bones would have to suffice. Those at least, he could heal from.

  He stumbled, off balance from my deflection and jab. I stayed in close to push the advantage, hitting him with a series of blows to the side. He grunted and swept an arm at me, forcing me to fall back. He may have been stronger and better armored, but I was far faster. I darted in again, putting him on the defensive. He tried to swat away a punch thrown at his chest, but he was caught off guard by the weight behind the blow. As Nim had said, I was far denser than a normal person and the underestimation put him off balance again. I got another solid hit on his ribs before getting kicked in the chest. The boot sent me sailing, but I rolled with it, pushing off the ground with my secondary arms into a flip and landing on my feet in a backwards slide. No real damage taken, but now he was charging me like a rhino. I went to trip him, but I didn’t have the weight and he got a hand around one of my proto-arms, the thin appendage snapping like a twig in his exo-kit enhanced grip. This was bad, if he was allowed to grapple with me, I’d lose for sure. I rolled from under him before he could collapse his full weight onto me. He still had the one arm in his grasp, but the odd spinal joints rotated in ways regular arms couldn’t and I took full advantage of it to get behind him and stomp backwards onto the back of his leg. I felt the kneecap shatter as it smashed into the ground.

  Coldwell grunted in pain, and yanked on my arm. I used it as further leverage to drive my foot into the back of his thigh and shatter his femur. I lost the arm in exchange, as it ripped from the socket, but I had five more, and now I was free of his grip. I spun and slammed my fist into the base of his neck with all my strength, sending him sprawling to the ground. I pinned him there with my foot and reached down, ripping into the exo-kit with a clawed hand as I unceremoniously tore out the fuel cell. The strength immediately left him, as the crushing weight of his own armor was now enough to stop him from moving. Hopefully I hadn’t seriously compromised his hazmat seal, but it was the only way I could think of to incapacitate him that didn’t risk killing him outright.

  I stumbled away from my fallen foe, towards the tube car. Now that the adrenaline was fading, that hunger was coming back full force. I needed to find something to eat and fast. Energy stores insufficient to reconstitute lost limb, blood flow has been stemmed, Nim cautioned. Figures, I could eat a whole family of four. I limped onto the tube car and accessed the door panel. The data pad asked me for my passcode, which I punched in - it was 5555. Navigating the menus was hard with clawed fingernails, but I managed, first sealing the tube doors then hesitating before picking the destination. My first instinct was to return to our barracks, but going to a military base in my current state was a great way to get myself killed. Going to a civilian location, however, seemed like just as bad an idea for entirely different reasons. So instead I punched in the location code for Site Gamma, a decommissioned power plant that my squad and I had cleared of warp a month ago. It was still locked down for quarantine, but as an anti-warp squad captain, I had access to contamination zones. It was sure to be deserted and would give me some time to come up with a real plan.

  As I hit launch and the tube car started to soundlessly slide out of the station, my eyes met Captain Coldwell’s, eight to two. He had managed to shift his head so he could watch me leave, and had a look in his eye that I hadn’t seen since our time at the academy together. It was the type of poisonous, hateful glare one reserved for only the greatest enemies. Well, glad to see he hadn’t changed that much.