Novels by Jonah Ofut

Isabella was one of the most popular cadets. It was not just due to her relation with the Global Security Council. Her grades were outstanding enough to place her among the top three, and her appearance was breathtaking and everyone wanted to associate with her.Trent had expressed his favor to Isabella on several occasions and she had turned him down repeatedly without even batting so much of an eyebrow at him. Like she was utterly disgusted only from the air of his presence. But there she was, sitting across from the worst fighter, Diego, eating her lunch.Isabella, sitting with him? Except for those who were just in the same session as Diego, a majority of the cadets glared fiercely in his direction.“I thought Vasquez had developed only two training methods. Base reset and stress spike. You mentioned the ‘null count’ earlier. It’s the first I’ve heard of it.”“Is that so?”However, the null count was also the most dangerous of the three methods. Diego cut a large piece of synthe

Showing his anger here would cost him more than it earned him. Diego was a student; Barrett held the grade book. If Barrett came down to his level in front of a full classroom, his own authority would be what took the hit, not Diego's. He smiled instead and brought his hands together in one slow, deliberate clap."Good, good. Some things 'are' more important than class. I'm sure you've got plenty to show for the time you spent away from my sessions.""Thank you," Diego said."In that case, let's not waste any more of the morning." Barrett opened his copy of 'Combat Doctrine and Institutional History' and let his eyes settle exactly where he'd already decided they would. "Campbell. A question for you."The room went still. Barrett's questions had a reputation that preceded every one of his sessions — never anything printed in bold at the chapter's end, always something buried in a footnote nobody bothered memorizing unless they were trying to catch someone out. That the first one of

"Ah, of course."Coach Barrett was a heavyset man somewhere in his fifties, his hairline having mostly conceded the fight years ago, leaving a shine of sweat across his scalp even in the morning chill. A hooked nose, a lower lip that sat in a permanent, faint pout, and a belly his tailored track jacket did nothing to disguise gave him the look of a man perpetually on the verge of a complaint rather than someone trusted to shape fighters."I'll be glad to step in," he said.Voss didn't roll her eyes, though it cost her something not to. "I appreciate you covering," she said, flat and businesslike, already shifting Vance's weight across her shoulders.Barrett let out a laugh loud enough to carry down the hall. "Don't you worry about a thing," he said. "Coach Voss 'herself' came and asked me *'personally' to bail her out this morning." He leaned hard on 'personally, savoring it. Voss hadn't bowed or begged anything — she'd stated a fact and waited for an answer — but correcting him w

"Vance!"Marcus dropped to his knees beside him, hands hovering uselessly over his friend's chest.He's out? Just like that?Vance's eyes had rolled back, his breathing shallow and wrong. Marcus's gaze snapped toward Diego, who had already sat back down, textbook open in front of him, reading like nothing in the room concerned him at all.From the timing, it has to be him.But that didn't track. This was Diego Campbell. Rank 1. The kid used every upper-rank as a warm-up round because he couldn't even manage clean footwork against a jab. There was no version of this where he'd dropped a Rank 4 without anyone in the room seeing it happen.Before Marcus could get another word out, the door opened and Coach Voss walked in for the morning session, her eyes already sweeping the room out of habit before she'd even fully stepped through it. She took in Marcus on the floor and Vance beside him in the space of a single stride."Marcus. What happened? Why is he down?""He just — he went down all

"Such a shame. The coward couldn't even go through with it properly."Trent Wexler said it loud enough to carry across the classroom, not bothering to lower his voice. Beside him, a thick-shouldered Rank 4 named Vance shook his head."Nah. One of the night cleaners saw him sitting on his bunk with a bottle of painkillers yesterday. Probably heard somewhere that if you take enough at once, it doesn't even hurt.""Then he lost his nerve," Trent said, grinning."I think so too," said the third one, a wiry kid named Marcus, already digging into his pocket. "Twenty meal tickets says he's still sulking in the infirmary.""I'll take that," Vance said. "Bet he never even opened the bottle.""Same," said Trent. "Make it ten each."They grinned at each other and shook on it. A few of the other students glanced over, their faces souring fast. Even at a school built entirely around toughness, betting meal tickets on whether a classmate had actually gone through with killing himself sat badly wit

Julius stepped outside and let the cold night air fill his lungs. It carried a rough edge to it — old grease drifting from the cafeteria vents, damp concrete, and underneath all of it, the sour tang of the dumpsters lined along the maintenance road. Diego's memory placed the location for him before he even had to think about it.The east yard.The worst patch of ground Ironclad had to offer. Wedged between the maintenance depot and the waste bins, a twenty-minute walk from the main dorms unless you cut through the loading road, which most students weren't cleared to use anyway. Gym time ran on a point-credit system tied straight to rank, and Rank 1 didn't buy much of it. So the east yard — empty, unwanted, forgotten — was the only stretch of concrete Diego had ever really been able to call his own.Julius looked the space over the way a man looks at a room he's just been handed the keys to.Not much. But it's quiet, and no one's watching. That's enough.He'd trained in worse. Consider