The worst part was that Vale hadn't been wrong. That was what she couldn't look at directly. The thing she kept turning away from every time it tried to surface.
She'd watched her squad die in slow motion over eight weeks. Charles broke formation on the second Tuesday of the semester and she said nothing. She should have. But he'd done it to cover her flank and the coverage felt right, felt solid, felt like someone was actually paying attention to where she was on the field. So when he did it again the following week, she stayed quiet. When he did it in the wolf simulation and completely destroyed Hikaru's trap setup, she told him he was sloppy. Which wasn't the same as ordering him to hold position. Which wasn't the same as fixing the problem.
Then he did it in a forest that shouldn't have existed, and a thing with no face and no eyes reached through his guard and tore him apart.
