By the seventh day, the bruises no longer surprised them.
They were just another part of the morning routine, like being yanked from sleep by the clang of steel and the fluorescent lights stabbing their eyes.
Nola moved automatically now. Suit up. Fall in line. Brace for impact.
And still, they failed.
Every time.
The training chamber, the glass-walled arena where they were struck down again and again felt colder each day. Like the room itself was disappointed in them.
They were faster now. Sharper. Muscles learned. Reflexes adjusted.
But it wasn't enough. Caldre moved like physics bent for her convenience. Her strikes came from angles that shouldn't exist, and even when they almost dodged, the sensor chimes still echoed off the walls. Red flashes. Three hits. Reset.
Tris and Vera were leading the group now. Tris, surprisingly, had turned his quick feet and jokester's looseness into slippery evasions. He could roll, duck, weave under a flying elbow like a trickster spirit. Vera was pure calculation and grit, stiff and brutal, and her focus never cracked.
Nola and Ari followed close behind. Nola had begun to anticipate Caldre's motion with her will's instincts, half-second flinches that bought her space. Ari's sharp eyes tracked movement well, and when her sleepiness wore off, she danced like she was drawing lines between moments.
And then there was Felix.
Always just a breath too slow.
He dodged when he should have ducked. Flinched too hard. Moved without decision. He ended every session on the ground, red lights blinking across his suit like a scoreboard that hated him.
But no one mocked him. Not now. They were too tired. Too raw.
Tris, hands on his knees after a particularly harsh session, panted out, "I feel like she gets faster when we improve. That's cheating."
Vera, lying flat on her back, just closed her eyes. "She doesn't. We're just still slow."
Ari sat with her head against the wall. "Maybe we should just accept we're not built for this. We're just... not good enough."
Nola didn't speak. She stared at the reflection in the floor: her suit, bruises blooming beneath, the sheen of sweat on her skin. Her hands curled into fists. She didn't believe that. Couldn't.
From the control booth above the chamber, Instructor Caldre watched in silence.
Her arms were folded, gaze sharp as ever. She'd seen thousands of initiates break under the first month. These five hadn't broken, but they hadn't adapted, either. And that was worse.
"Better speed," she muttered. "Better timing. Still thinking like five separate targets."
She leaned slightly forward, watching them reset for the next round.
Vera's footwork was tight, military precision. Tris had that dangerous fluidity. Nola was getting close to a predictive reflex. Ari, too, in bursts. And even Felix. Twitchy, scared Felix was starting to move with actual awareness instead of panic.
But they were still failing. Because they hadn't stopped thinking like students.
Caldre exhaled, slow and silent.
They're not reading each other yet. Still surviving as individuals. Still chasing their own solutions. No coordination. No cover. No instinct to protect the gaps.
Her gaze drifted toward Felix.
He was breathing hard, sitting against the wall, face in his hands. The boy had a library of knowledge in his head, she could tell.
He memorized movement patterns. He predicted feints. He knew. But he couldn't move his body to match what he saw. His mind was a blade. His nerves were a leash.
And the others hadn't seen it yet.
Because he was the slowest. The weakest. The last to rise.
They didn't realize they needed him.
Caldre did.
She tapped a code into her datapad. The screen blinked.
Time to fix that.
The next morning, something changed.
They assembled as usual. Sleep-starved. Suits zipped. Silence heavy.
But the room was different.
Instead of standing alone, Caldre waited at the center of the chamber with five mirrored figures behind her, dressed in identical stealth suits, faces masked, body types matched one-for-one with the squad.
She didn't give a speech.
Just looked at them and said:
"Today you fight yourselves."
The mirrored doubles stepped forward.
Ari whispered, "Oh hell."
Vera raised her chin. "Are they… copies of us?"
Nola could feel it. Each double moved like them. Held themselves like them. Watched with the same eyes.
Felix murmured, "No. They're based on our patterns. Caldre's been recording us all week."
Tris blinked at him. "Wait, what?"
"She's using our own flaws against us," Felix said, voice steadier than usual. "These copies will make the same mistakes we do, but faster. Sharper. Because they learn."
They looked at him, truly looked for the first time. Ari tilted her head slightly.
Caldre raised her hand. "You survive, or you fail. Your copies will coordinate. Will you?"
The simulation began.
The doubles attacked as one. Nola's counterpart rushed her with the same feint she'd used on day three, back then it worked. Now, it was bait. She dodged it, barely.
But Tris was already cornered by his own mirror, every dodge met by a mirrored evasion. Every escape mirrored and countered.
Ari's double wasn't faster, but it was colder. Calculated. Like it had stripped her hesitation away.
Felix was already down once, gasping from a hit to the side.
Nola shouted, "Group up! Don't split!"
But they were already scattered.
Two more chimes. Ari and Tris.
Caldre crossed her arms. Still not learning.
Then something shifted.
Felix, breath ragged, stopped moving. Just crouched behind one of the central pillars. Eyes wide. Watching.
Not his own double. Not even his teammates.
All of them.
He tracked the movements. The overlaps. The blind spots.
And then, quietly, he said into his comms:
"Nola, your copy leads with her left shoulder before a sweep. Use it to bait her. Ari, yours always circles clockwise. Back into Vera's zone and trap it."
There was a pause.
Then Nola obeyed.
She stepped in, turned at the last second and her double missed. Ari pivoted and ran right into Vera's support arc. Vera struck not to hit the double, but to block its escape. The double faltered.
Chimes rang, but this time, not red.
Yellow.
A successful redirection.
Caldre's eyebrow rose. Finally.
Felix spoke again, faster now. "Tris, back roll to the left, not right. Yours mirrors too precisely. Break the rhythm."
Tris grunted and did it, rolled hard left, ducked low, and finally got space.
The five of them started moving like limbs of the same body.
Nola covered Felix's left side without being told. Ari stepped behind Vera when her leg buckled. Tris switched from evasion to bait. Felix kept calling moves.
They didn't win.
But for the first time, they lasted.
Four minutes and twenty-one seconds.
When the final chime rang out, only Nola and Felix had taken three hits. The others stood panting but upright.
Caldre stepped forward.
No applause. No smile.
Just a nod.
"You survived longer. Not because you were faster. Or stronger. But because you finally acted like a unit."
She looked at Felix.
"And because one of you started playing chess instead of dodgeball."
Felix blinked. "I, I just thought-"
"You observed. You planned. You led."
The others turned to look at him again, this time not as the weakest.
As something else.
Felix looked down at his hands. "I just didn't want us to fail again."
Caldre nodded once. "Good. Then make sure you don't."
She turned and walked out.
But this time, the silence they left behind wasn't shame.
It was something new.
The beginning of belief.