Lance’s legs burned from shattering the world record in the hundred-meter sprint plus all those strength tests as he trudged through muddy grass beneath grey clouds, each puddle mirroring the gloomy sky above as he made his way to what the instructors called “the Paperclip.”

  All the sensations circled his system like raw data: freezing skin, shaking muscles, stiff joints. His body was falling apart from the lifts and sprints, but Pain Nullification timed-out every signal before it could become physical suffering. A cosmic barrier between his body and brain, it kept his body’s alarms from reaching his mind—the cost of keeping his thoughts safe from anyone trying to get in.

  Just like that other barrier, he thought bitterly, the one that was supposed to keep Earth safe from arma until it cracked like cheap glass one month ago and fucked everything up. The only difference was that his worked—though according to that Chinese-Russian astronomer’s detection logs online, the cosmic shield had been weakening for nearly a year before it finally gave out.

  But whatever—there were more pressing matters at hand. The score between him and Diego was tied at two-two. The Beast might have those enhanced legs, but Lance would be damned if he didn’t make Diego earn that tiebreaker with everything he had.

  “Listen up, recruits, and listen good because I’m not repeating myself! This is your final physical baseline test. Everyone runs at the same time.” She paced in front of the assembled members of Papa Cell, boots squelching in the mud. “The course is marked with flags every hundred meters. You miss even one marker, you’re done—not just for today, but for good. And trust me, we got eyes everywhere, so don’t miss markers and don’t get lost. I’m not wasting my whole damn day running makeups for people who can’t follow simple instructions. Any questions?”

  “How long is it?” asked Thad, their roommate with the glowing tattoos, after raising an arm that vibrated like an antique game controller.

  Lance surveyed the track stretching out before them. The name made sense now—it was shaped like a colossal paperclip, a long oval with a smaller loop attached at one end. Even with his enhanced vision, the far edges of the course disappeared into the misty distance.

  Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point’s combat training facilities bordered the western edge of the Paperclip, a collection of weathered buildings and obstacle courses that had seen countless Marines before the Enhanced Corps arrived. To the east, a dense tree line marked where base property met North Carolina coastal forest, while the Neuse River curved past the northeastern corner, its brackish waters dark and swollen from the recent rain. The whole setup was deliberate, if someone lost control of their abilities out here, they’d only endanger trees and mud.

  “Ten miles.”

  A collective groan rose from Papa Cell’s now ten members.

  He’d been looking forward to racing Daisy. Remington had assured them she’d recover, but the sound of that break during squats—worse than the shoplifter’s arm or his friend’s leg snapping against his Morphoplasm. He shoved the memory aside. Diego had been right, her lower limbs looked more cheetah than human, and that anatomy couldn’t handle squats. If she weren’t an arma user, that leg would’ve been beyond repair.

  But we’re different now, he thought. Odds are she’ll come back running faster than ever and…

  Heck, after yesterday’s hundred-and-sixty-mile run, ten miles sounded like a warmup lap.

  Remington’s gaze swept over the group. “Anything else?”

  Only chattering teeth answered her.

  “Good.” She checked her watch. “On my mark...”

  Lance glanced at Diego, whose face had switched into tournament mode. After the strength tests, The Beast was itching to prove himself. Lance couldn’t blame him—he felt the same way.

  “Set...”

  The entire cell tensed, ready to spring forward.

  “GO!”

  The pack surged past the starting line. Lance and Diego naturally took the lead. Everyone else spread out as different running styles and abilities came into play.

  Lance spent the first minute considering if he should try sprinting the whole distance. However, after not sleeping enough last night, not being fully recovered from yesterday’s run, and going all out on the earlier exercises, his nice new diagnostic system told him that wasn’t very smart.

  Energy Circulation kept his arma reserves steady, but if he continued performing at his maximum for much longer, he wouldn’t last the whole day.

  He took a good look at Diego, who seemed to simply be reacting to his pace.

  The jerk’s probably saving arma to explode during the last mile.

  Perhaps the most surprising thing was that based on what he’d seen all morning, he’d expected their cellmates to be left behind within thirty seconds. However, they were close behind. Way too close behind.

  Movement in his peripheral vision drew Lance’s attention—Nowak, staying right on their heels with a fluid, almost predatory grace. He was pretty sure he’d heard another recruit call her Tesia during the bench press. She had the lean build of a rock climber, though the scar across her cheek made her look more soldier than athlete.

  They hit the first turn, splashing through unavoidable puddles. Lance let Energy Circulation optimize his muscle efficiency while Saltatorial gave his stride that extra spring. Beside him, Diego’s legs periodically morphed and adapted, testing different configurations for maximum speed. His calves ballooned to massive size before shrinking to a leaner marathon-runner build. His thighs followed the same pattern, bulging until the fabric stretched tight, then adjusting to something more streamlined but just as powerful.

  Behind them, all hell broke loose.

  “FUCK!” someone snapped.

  “Sorry! My bad!” Cairo yelled from somewhere back in the chaos, followed by the thuds of bodies hitting the ground. Lance risked a glance back to see several recruits sliding across an unexpectedly frozen section of track. Cairo’s dreadlocks bounced as he jogged through his own chaos, hands raised apologetically. “Still working on the precision!”

  “Watch the ice!” Thad called out, nimbly sidestepping the growing patch of frost. His eyes went unfocused while he muttered: “Thirty-seven percent chance of—never mind, make that sixty-two percent—” He dove left as another recruit went skating past.

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  Through his Energy Classification, Lance could sense the various arma signatures of his cellmates—each unique, each pulsing with different rhythms and intensities. Diego’s Enhancer pattern stayed strong beside him, while Tesia’s signature felt... strange. Like it was constantly shifting, never settling into a fixed form. Which made total sense given her class.

  [Human Shifter (1st Evolution)]

  They completed the first mile in just under three minutes. A pace they couldn’t have maintained even two days ago. But Lance was tired of measuring progress in miles per hour. He was tired of running. His other stats needed work, too.

  “You good?” Diego asked between controlled breaths.

  “Never better,” Lance lied through quads that were close to unresponsive. He turned his attention back to his own run.

  The light drizzle disappeared and sunlight finally overwhelmed the sky, and his growling stomach made him think it must be close to noon—but no, they’d been up since 4 AM, a time he hadn’t experienced since birth, so it couldn’t be later than—

  A distinct chemical smell drifted forward on the wind. Lance peeked over his shoulder and spotted a trail of eerily blue sweat dropped from the lanky guy’s body, creating an unnatural streak across the track.

  “This is bullshit!” the sweating recruit shouted. “Some of us got actual useful powers, while I’m stuck being a human chemistry set!”

  A stream of French curses cut through the air, dissolving into gagging. That had to be Bessette—the compact French-Canadian who’d refused to join them for deadlifts earlier. “Tabarnac... sacrement... Dante, you absolute imbécile, what is this shit?”

  The track curved ahead like a giant metal fastener dropped by some cosmic office worker, forcing the pack to bunch up at the first major turn—though Beaumont, an olive-skinned woman with her dark hair in a perfect bun, solved this particular traffic problem by simply phasing through several people rather than going around them, earning a chorus of startled yelps.

  “Would you stop doing that?” a recruit yelped.

  “Sorry!” said Beaumont as the front of Carter’s silver chest bulged outward until she stepped through completely. “It’s just more efficient!”

  Mile four. Mile five. The pack had spread out considerably now, with Lance, Diego, and Tesia maintaining their lead group. With Energy Classification, he detected a surge of chaotic energy from the middle pack.

  [Human Enhancer (1st Evolution)]

  “Something’s wrong back there,” he said between breaths.

  Diego risked a look back. “That Ronan guy’s losing it.”

  Lance sensed it, too. Ronan—he’d heard him mention being an ex-Marine during in-processing—his arma was erratic, wild, his movements turning feral as some kind of survival instinct took over. Shouts of alarm rang out as he began sprinting, bulldozing through the pack. Dante hit a puddle face-first, coming up dripping like a swamp creature with just his wide eyes showing through the mud.

  “Mierda,” Diego whispered. “Glad we’re up here and not back in that mess.”

  He’s an enhancer which... meant that one of his physical attributes was being enhanced past superhuman. But in his case, it was his entire fight-or-flight system—that primitive part of the brain that took over when you were being chased by a tiger. No wonder he couldn’t control it.

  “Someone stop him!” a voice called out.

  “I can do it! Move!” The buzz-cut woman’s warning preceded another crash and several creative curses in multiple languages. “Move!”

  “Sasha, no!” someone shouted, but she was already in motion.

  “Ronan! Focus on my voice! I need to—got it!”

  Lance heard the impact of bodies colliding, followed by a strange pulse of arma energy. Whatever she’d done, it worked. Ronan’s feral growls subsided into confused grunts, the aggression bleeding out of him. It was like watching someone switch off a circuit breaker.

  The interruption had cost them time. Tesia was still right behind them, gasping for air but somehow keeping pace. Lance tried to analyze her running form, but something about it seemed to shift every time he looked directly at it, like trying to focus on a mirage.

  Mile seven brought them past the main training facilities. A warning flashed across his vision about dangerous arma expenditure levels—and it wasn’t even noon yet.

  I can’t keep this up. He eased back slightly, but Diego immediately surged ahead.

  Fuck it. Lance matched his pace again. Only way to get stronger.

  They passed the eight-mile marker. Tesia’s face had gone from focused to ghost-white. Each stride now looked like it sapped a week’s worth of energy. Her arms were all over the place, and she could barely stay upright. She was drenched in sweat, fighting just to keep them in sight.

  “Getting tired, old man?” Diego managed between breaths.

  “You wish,” Lance shot back, but the words cost him precious oxygen.

  Mile nine.

  Diego seemed to have the same idea, his legs morphing into increasingly aggressive configurations as they pushed each other faster and faster.

  The end of the Paperclip came into view around the final turn. Lance drew two purposeful breaths, sped up Energy Circulation, and gathered himself for one last sprint—

  ‘CRACK-BOOM!’

  An almost invisible force nearly knocked him off his feet as something shot between him and Diego. The pressure wave sent them both staggering as Tesia Nowak exploded past, her legs a blur of grotesquely enlarged muscle and realigned bone.

  “What the f—” Diego’s curse was lost in the wind of her passage.

  The duo recovered quickly. They pushed harder. Tried to catch up. It was too late. They crossed the finish line together at 30:15, a full twenty seconds behind Tesia.

  She lay sprawled in the grass off to the side, chest heaving as her legs slowly reconstructed themselves. The muscle fibers visibly writhed beneath her skin, twitching and contracting as they returned to their normal configuration. But despite her obvious exhaustion, she wore a satisfied smirk as she watched Lance and Diego trying to process what had just happened.

  “How...” Diego started.

  “The hell...” Lance finished.

  Sergeant Remington walked among them, recording times and checking conditions. When she reached Tesia, who had managed to sit up but wasn’t yet ready to stand, she paused.

  “On your feet, Nowak.” Remington stood over Tesia. “If a ten-mile sprint leaves you useless, you’re no good to the Enhanced Corps. Out there, you don’t get recovery time.”

  “Yes... Sergeant,” Tesia replied, still smirking, but she didn’t stand. She couldn’t.

  Fuck. She’d literally rebuilt herself for a single purpose, accepting the pain and recovery time as fair trade for victory.

  As the remaining members of Papa Cell staggered across the finish line in various states of disarray, Lance moved through his cool-down stretches while watching Diego stare at Tesia with an expression that said both ‘holy shit’ and ‘game on.’

  “Don’t even think about it,” Lance warned.

  “Think about what?”

  “Trying to adapt your legs to do... that.” He gestured at Tesia.

  “That’s not what I was thinking.”

  “Mmm,” Lance’s tone turned sly. “About that whole ‘student becoming the master’ thing...”

  “Don’t.”

  “What? Not so fun when—”

  “I will end you.”

  Lance grinned, then winced as his legs protested even that small movement. “After a shower. And food. Lots of food.”

  “Ah, that sounds like a dream.”

  Behind them, Sergeant Remington’s whistle cut through the chaos. “Papa Cell, fall in! This isn’t nap time!”

  Lance helped Tesia to her feet and, as she rose, gave her a respectful nod.

  She’d earned it.

  “Nice race,” she said with that same knowing smirk. “Maybe next time you’ll actually make me work for it.”