Chapter 10: After-Action Report
The electronic chime that echoed through the barracks hours an hour later was a different breed of sound. It wasn't the jarring alarm for PT or the bland summons for a meal; this one was colder, more clinical, a digital throat-clearing before a verdict. "All recruits who participated in Pod Simulation 7-Beta, report to the bay for individual after-action review. Immediately."
The feverish buzz from their record-breaking run had cooled into a low, persistent hum of anticipation, like the air before a storm. As Kaelan, Jax, and Elara made their way back to the pod bay, the atmosphere was thick with a new tension. This wasn't about celebration; it was about an autopsy.
The vast bay was quieter now, the pods standing dormant like silent, black tombstones. Instead of the weary technician, three instructors stood waiting, their faces set in neutral, professional masks, military-issue datapads glowing like malevolent jewels in their hands. The instructor waiting by Pod 23 was a man Kaelan hadn't seen before—tall, lean, with a receding hairline that gave his forehead a vast, intellectual expanse, and the profoundly tired eyes of a man who had reviewed ten thousand failures and found them all depressingly similar. The name tape on his chest read 'CROSS'.
"Walker," Instructor Cross said, his voice flat and devoid of any discernible heat. It was the tone of a clerk processing a particularly confusing tax return. He gestured with his datapad for Kaelan to stand before him. "Let's get this over with. The sooner we file this, the sooner I can get a headache powder."
Kaelan approached, falling into a loose parade rest as Jax and Elara were directed to their own instructors, their own private reckonings.
Cross tapped his datapad with a practiced, almost bored flick of his finger. A holographic replay of Kaelan's simulation sprang to life above it, the colors muted, the action fast-forwarding through key moments with the sterile efficiency of a medical scan. "Performance review for Recruit 79, Simulation 7-Beta," he recited, as if reading the side effects off a bottle. He paused the holo on a crystalline-clear frame of Kaelan's hand selecting the knife from the virtual armory. The knife icon was highlighted, pulsating with a gentle, accusing glow. "Loadout selection: combat knife, model K-B7. Registered as primary and sole weapon. No secondary. No sidearm." He looked up from the pad, his expression shifting from bored to one of pure, unadulterated bewilderment, as if Kaelan had just declared the sky was green. "Son, you need to walk me through the thought process here. I've reviewed the raw data. I see the metrics. My eyes don't deceive me. But I need to hear it from you before I sign off on this report and doom some poor analyst to a week of migraines. Why in God's name, in a prolonged survival simulation against automated hostiles with ranged energy weapons and proximity explosives, would your first, last, and only choice be a twelve-inch piece of sharpened steel?"
Kaelan kept his gaze fixed on a microscopic scratch on the pod's surface just past Cross's shoulder. "It was the tool I was most familiar with, Instructor."
Cross let out a long, slow breath that seemed to deflate him slightly. He pinched the bridge of his nose, his eyes squeezing shut for a moment. "Familiar," he repeated, the word tasting sour. "Right." The hologram jumped, the scene shifting to a moment where Kaelan was a fluid, predatory blur, closing the distance and dispatching a drone with silent, brutal efficiency. The system had overlaid data streams: reaction times in the 95th percentile, movement economy flagged as 'optimal', situational awareness 'high'. "See this?" Cross said, pointing with his stylus. "This is… confounding. Your Close Quarters Combat metrics are, and I'm not exaggerating for effect, off the charts. For the first ninety percent of this run, you're operating at a level I'd expect from a Tier-1 operator, not a recruit who tripped over his own feet during warm-up." The hologram then fast-forwarded with a sickening lurch to the end, to the inexplicable stumble on suddenly frictionless ground, the Buzzer that seemed to break the laws of physics to kill him, the final, pixelated explosion. "And then it all goes to hell in a handbasket. But that's not even my main concern. My main concern, Recruit, the thing that is giving me a genuine, throbbing headache right behind my eyes, is this." He tapped the pad again, zooming back in on the knife selection screen until it filled the holographic space between them. "This single, solitary, baffling choice negates all of that latent competence. It tells me you either have a profound, philosophical disregard for your own continued existence, or you possess a fundamental misunderstanding of modern combat so vast I could park a dropship in it. A knife. Against drones with blasters and flying bombs. It's not brave. It's not clever. It's… it's just architecturally stupid." He shook his head, a man confronted with a crossword puzzle written in an alien language. "I'm rating your performance as 'Marginally Acceptable.' You survived a remarkably long time against steep odds, and your underlying technical skill is noted for further review. But your tactical judgment, Walker, is being flagged as 'Severely Deficient.' It's the difference between being a good driver and choosing to do the Paris-Dakar rally in a golf cart. Do you understand the distinction?"
Kaelan gave a single, sharp nod, his face a placid lake. "Yes, Instructor."
"Somehow, I doubt that. Dismissed."
Nearby, Kaelan could catch the edges of the other post-mortems.
Jax's instructor, a woman with a bun so tight it looked painful, was speaking in a voice that could etch glass. "...your aggressive fire suppression is noted, Recruit. Reckless, bordering on suicidal, but somehow effective in this specific, chaotic context. Your ability to maintain team cohesion and even thrive with an... unconventional tactical strategy is logged. Rating: Satisfactory, with significant reservations. Now, about your post-mission conduct and the veritable hurricane of unverified information you've been spreading through the ranks..."
Elara's review was a quiet, technical exchange, the sound of two computers comparing notes. Her instructor, a man with the calm demeanor of a bomb disposal expert, was nodding slowly. "...flawless tactical analysis and positioning, Recruit 56. Your overwatch provided the critical strategic anchor that allowed your team's… experimentation… to continue. Your performance is rated: High Proficiency. The system anomalies registered in your pod's local instance are being investigated separately by the tech division. They do not reflect on your score."
Instructor Shale observed the reviews from the sterile quiet of her observation booth, the one-way glass rendering her a ghost in the machine, a disembodied intelligence watching the ants scurry. On her own, far more advanced datapad—a sleek, black thing that looked like a shard of obsidian—she wasn't looking at Cross's exasperated summary or the sanitized performance ratings. She was scrolling through the raw, unfiltered, chaotic data streams from Pod 23, her expression one of detached, almost lazy interest.
She watched Cross's frustration with a faint sense of amusement, like a botanist watching a bee struggle with a particularly complex flower. He was a competent instructor, thorough and by-the-book. The problem was, the book had no chapter for a subject like Kaelan Walker. His confusion was, in fact, the only rational response. Any other reaction would have indicated a failure of intellect.
The knife choice hadn't even made her blink. When the initial report had flashed onto her screen, she'd merely arched one perfectly shaped eyebrow. It was a predictable outlier, a piece of the pattern clicking neatly into place. Of course he would choose the most direct, most personal, most honest tool. It fit the emerging profile of a man who had been fighting the world hand-to-hand, tooth-and-nail, his entire life. Rifles were for soldiers who trusted the system, who believed in supply lines and air support and a universe that followed rules. Walker clearly believed in no such thing. He believed in the sharpness of the edge in his hand.
Her focus was on the data strings flagged in angry, pulsating red. The minute, localized gravitational variance under his left foot at the 1:47:08 mark—a fluctuation so small it was deemed background noise by the filters. The quantum state collapse in the Buzzer's targeting matrix milliseconds before it veered—written off as a random bit-flip. They were tiny, insignificant errors, the kind that were automatically scrubbed from any official, presentable report. But to Shale, they were more significant, more beautiful, than the entire rest of the simulation. They were a pattern. A signature. The system's immune response trying and failing to reject a foreign body.
She felt none of the frenetic, predatory energy from their first encounter in her office. That had been the thrill of the hunt, the sharp scent of unique prey. Now, she was a scientist observing a fascinating specimen in a controlled environment, noting its reactions with a calm, professional curiosity. The initial hypothesis was confirmed: the subject exerted a localized, corrupting influence on causal probability. The universe, or at least the simulation's model of it, literally bent in his presence to ensure failure. The next step was methodical, not manic. She needed to measure the limits. How much pressure could the anomaly withstand? What were its breaking points?
She felt a calm, deep-seated professional satisfaction, the kind a sculptor feels upon finding the perfect block of marble, flaws and all. The real work, the delicate work of finding the figure inside the stone, was just beginning.
Later, in a dimly lit conference room buried deep within the administrative wing, the air was stale, smelling of old coffee, ozone, and the faint, metallic tang of recycled fear. A large, expensive holoscreen dominated one wall, its cool light the only illumination, replaying the highlights—and more importantly, the lowlights—of the trio's pod run on a continuous, silent loop.
Davis, the more solidly built of the two men who had first collected Kaelan from his old life, leaned far back in his chair, the leather creaking in protest. A small, clear shot of amber liquid, the good stuff he kept for special occasions, was held loosely between his thick fingers. He took a slow, contemplative sip, his eyes, baggy with perpetual exhaustion, fixed on the screen as it showed, for the fourth time, Kaelan's final, glitch-induced digital death.
Miller, lanky and sharp-faced, a human razorblade, stood with his arms crossed, leaning against the wall next to the glowing screen, his silhouette etched in the blue light. He'd been silent for ten minutes, just watching.
"Well?" Davis grunted finally, the sound rumbling in his chest as he swirled the liquor in his glass, watching the legs slide down the side.
On the screen, the replay reset to the very beginning, focusing in on Kaelan's hand as it hovered over the weapon icons before decisively selecting the knife.
Miller let out a soft, dry chuckle that held no humor. "He's an interesting one, I'll give him that. I'll give Vance that much." He gestured at the screen with his chin. "Look at that. Just picks it up. No hesitation. No second-guessing. Like he was choosing a spoon for his breakfast cereal, not a tool for his own potential vivisection."
"Interesting isn't a word we use around here, Miller," Davis replied, his voice a low, gravelly rumble. He took another sip. "We use words like 'effective.' 'Reliable.' 'Predictable.' 'Stable.' Those are the words that let you sleep at night."
"Then we're fresh out of suitable words for this kid," Miller said, pushing off the wall and pacing a slow, tight circle in the dark room. "Cross's report is a masterpiece of confusion. The techs are scratching their heads raw. Shale is... well, she's Shale. She's got that look. The one that says she just found a new petri dish and can't wait to see what grows in it." He stopped and pointed a long finger at the screen, which now showed Kaelan moving with that unnerving, predatorial grace, a shadow among the rust and ruin. "But you see that, right? Under all the… the whatever-the-hell-this-is… the raw skill is there. It's buried under a mountain of catastrophic luck and questionable choices, but it's there. It's real."
Davis finally dragged his gaze away from Kaelan's pixelated corpse and turned his weary eyes to his partner. "His problem, Miller, is that the universe itself seems to have a personal vendetta against him. And we, through the divine wisdom of our Commander, are now standing in the middle of the crossfire." He leaned forward, the chair groaning, and placed his empty glass on the polished table with a definitive click. "Vance," he said, the name hanging in the air between them, heavy with unspoken history and present frustration. "The man's a ghost ninety percent of the time, running his shadow wars. Then he pops up, drops this... this walking statistical nightmare in our laps, and vanishes back into the aether. No briefing. No psych eval. No proper file. Just two words: 'Process him.'"
Miller nodded, a grim, tight smile stretching his lips. "Yeah. That about sums it up. Vance done went and got us tangled in some high-grade, premium bullshit this time. This sort of bad luck is discomforting."
"I don't believe in luck, Miller," Davis said, his voice flat and hard. "I believe in cause and effect. I believe in physics. And whatever is causing the effects swirling around Recruit Walker is a variable we do not understand, cannot predict, and therefore cannot control." He stood up, his large frame blocking the light from the screen for a moment. "And that makes him the most dangerous man in this facility. Not because of his knife. Not because of whatever latent skill Shale is drooling over. But because we have no idea what he's truly capable of, or what, and who he'll inevitably drag down with him when he finally falls."
He walked to the door, pausing with his hand on the knob, his back to Miller and the glowing screen with its repeating tale of genius and catastrophe. "So keep watching him, Miller. Closer than you've ever watched anyone. And pray to whatever god, principle, or orbital cannon you believe in that our esteemed Commander actually knows what the hell he's doing."