Sorting through Diego's memories left a sharp ache behind Julius's eyes, a slow throb that beat against his skull like something trying to get out. Every memory he touched felt like pressing a thumb into a bruise that hadn't finished forming.Diego Campbell. Born into a world where worth was measured in a number chalked on a board — Rank 1 through Rank 9 — and where the only currency that mattered besides that number was whose name your family carried. It made no difference to Julius whether the body he was wearing had come from money or from nothing. A body was a vessel. A tool to be sharpened. What mattered was what it could do.The problem was that this one couldn't do much.His reflexes are wrong.Not slow, exactly — Julius had felt slow bodies before, weak ones, untrained ones, and they could all be fixed with enough hours on a mat. This was different. There was a lag buried somewhere between Diego's eyes and his hands, a half-second of static every time a strike came at him, li

"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

"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

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