PART 1

Chapter 1: The Heat and the Hate

The Arizona heat has a way of stripping a person down to their rawest components. Out here at Camp Sutter, on the jagged edge of the Mojave, the air doesn’t just sit; it shimmers, vibrating like a tuning fork struck against the scorching earth. It’s a dry, hateful heat that sucks the moisture right out of your eyes before you can even blink, turning your throat into sandpaper and your lungs into bellows pumping fire.

Most of the men were already broken by it. I could hear them wheezing around me, their boots dragging through the dust like they were shackled to invisible anchors. They were young, mostly—fresh out of basic, hungry, and desperate to prove they were elite. But right now, under the tyranny of the noon sun, they didn’t look elite. They looked like dying fish gasping on a dock.

I didn’t look at them. I didn’t look at anything but the iron bar resting on the squat rack in front of me.

“Focus,” I whispered to myself. The word was a trigger, a mental switch I had installed in my brain years ago, back when the stakes were higher than just a training exercise, back when a lack of focus meant a flag-draped coffin.

I stepped forward, my boots crunching into the gravel. I braced my feet, shoulder-width apart, and felt the familiar burn in my quads. I gripped the knurled steel. It was hot enough to blister skin, baking in the UV rays, but my calluses were thick—yellowed armor built over a decade of war, farming, and survival. I unracked the weight.

Down. Up. Down. Up.

My movements were surgical. Controlled. I wasn’t fighting the weight; I was negotiating with it. Sweat ran down my temples, stinging my eyes, tracing the sharp line of my jaw before dripping onto the dusty rubber mat. I wasn’t grunting. I wasn’t screaming like the boys in the corner doing curls. I was silent.

That silence seemed to bother them more than anything else.

“Jesus, look at it,” a voice sneered from the shade of the hydration tent. I knew the voice instantly. Private Matthews. A loudmouth from Jersey with a jawline softer than his ego. He thought a loud bark made up for a lack of discipline. “Hey, Lorne! Who are you trying to impress? The circus isn’t hiring until next month.”

I didn’t break rhythm. The bar touched my clavicle, paused for a distinct heartbeat, and rose again, defying gravity.

“That’s not natural,” another voice chimed in—Kramer, Matthews’ little shadow, a guy who followed the loudest voice in the room because he didn’t have one of his own. “Seriously, look at her delts. That’s gotta be juice. Or she’s a lab experiment gone wrong.”

“Hey, Hulkette!” Matthews shouted, his voice echoing across the training yard, ensuring everyone heard him. “How many cows did you bench press for breakfast? You forget to shave your back this morning?”

Laughter rippled through the group of resting recruits. It was that nervous, pack-animal laughter men use when they are intimidated but too proud to admit it. They looked at my arms—defined, vascular, capable—and they didn’t see hard work. They saw a threat to their masculinity. They needed to tear me down to build themselves up. It was simple biology, really. Weakness attacking strength to level the playing field.

I finished my set. Ten reps. Perfect form. I racked the bar with a metallic clang that cut through their laughter like a gunshot.

I stood up, turning slowly to face them. I was five-foot-ten, one hundred and seventy pounds of functional, corded muscle. I wiped the sweat from my forehead with the back of my hand, locking eyes with Matthews. He flinched. Just for a microsecond, but I saw it. His eyes darted to his shoes before bouncing back to my face with a forced smirk.

I didn’t say a word. I didn’t have to. My existence was the insult. A woman who could out-lift, out-run, and out-last them was a glitch in their worldview. They hated me because they couldn’t categorize me. I wasn’t a damsel, and I wasn’t one of the “bros.” I was something else entirely.

I grabbed my water bottle, the plastic warm against my palm, and walked past them toward the next station. As I passed, the whispers grew louder, emboldened by my refusal to engage.

“I heard she got kicked out of the Marines,” one whispered, cupping his hand. “Nah, I heard she was a cage fighter who killed a guy in the ring,” another muttered darkly. “Freak,” Matthews spat on the ground near my boot. The saliva sizzled on the hot rock. “Just a freak of nature.”

I paused. The dust swirled around my ankles. For a second, the memory flashed behind my eyes—the scream of incoming mortars, the smell of burning diesel and copper blood, the crushing weight of a body on my back that was far heavier than any barbell. The weight of a brother who wasn’t coming home unless I carried him.

If only you knew, I thought, the ghost of a tremor running through my hands. If only you knew what this ‘freak’ has carried. If only you knew why I train until my vision blurs.

But I kept walking. Let them talk. Let them laugh. The Crucible, Phase Three’s final exam, was starting in forty-eight hours. And out there in the deep desert, when the sun goes down and the demons come out, muscles don’t matter. Loud mouths don’t matter.

Only the soul matters. And I was about to show them exactly what kind of soul lived inside this “monster.”

Chapter 2: The Spider and the Fly

The heat didn’t let up, even as the afternoon wore on. If anything, the sun seemed angry that we were still standing. The air was thick with the smell of ozone and stale Gatorade. I moved to the Obstacle Course, specifically the rope climb. It was a thirty-foot vertical ascent, a thick, fraying hemp rope dangling from a steel beam that looked like a gallows against the blue sky.

Most of the recruits hated the rope. By this time of day, hands were slick with sweat, and grip strength was a distant memory. I watched Recruit Holt, a decent kid but soft around the edges, try to scramble up. He made it ten feet before he slid back down, burning the skin off his palms. He cursed, kicking the dirt in frustration.

“Use your legs, Holt,” Sergeant Yarrow barked from the sidelines. Yarrow was an old warhorse, his face a roadmap of wrinkles and scars. He watched me with an unreadable expression. He never joined in the mockery, but he never stopped it either. In this world, you had to earn your defense.

Holt walked away, nursing his hands. “Impossible with this humidity,” he mumbled.

I stepped up. The rope was rough against my fingerprints. I didn’t jump; I just reached up, clamped down, and pulled.

My body left the ground. I wrapped the rope around my boot—the J-hook technique—and drove upward. My movements were rhythmic, almost hypnotic. Reach. Clamp. Squat. Stand. It wasn’t just strength; it was efficiency. I could feel the muscles in my back rippling, working in a perfect symphony. I wasn’t dragging myself up; I was flowing up.

“Look at that,” I heard Matthews again. He had followed me. Of course he had. “I bet she sleeps hanging upside down like a bat.”

“Probably has claws under those gloves,” Kramer laughed. “Hey Lorne, you going to lay eggs at the top?”

I reached the beam. I slapped it—twice, loud and clear—and controlled my descent. I didn’t slide; I lowered myself hand over hand, braking with my legs. When my boots hit the gravel, I turned to face the rope, ready for a second rep immediately.

“Why do you even bother?”

The question came from Holt. He wasn’t mocking me; he sounded genuinely baffled. He was staring at me, wiping grime from his face. “You crushed the time. Why go again?”

I looked at him. “Because the enemy doesn’t care if you’re tired, Holt. And the helicopter doesn’t wait because your hands hurt.”

Matthews snorted. “Listen to her. ‘The Enemy.’ You think you’re G.I. Jane? You’re a trainee, Lorne. A diversity hire. They only let you in here because the brass is scared of a lawsuit.”

I slowly unvelcroed my gloves. My hands were raw, but I felt nothing. I looked at Matthews, really looked at him. “You spend a lot of energy talking, Private. You might want to save some of that oxygen.”

“For what?” he challenged, stepping into my personal space. He was taller than me, looming, using his height as a weapon. “For the hike? I can ruck circles around you, sweetheart.”

The word hung in the air, heavy and toxic. Sweetheart. It was designed to diminish, to remind me that in his eyes, I was just a girl playing dress-up.

I didn’t blink. “We’ll see.”

Later that evening, the isolation became physical. In the chow hall, the noise was deafening—clinking trays, shouting voices, the roar of a hundred men releasing the day’s tension. But around my table, there was a distinct, circular void. A zone of exclusion.

I sat alone at the end of a long metal table. My tray held the standard slop—meatloaf, watery corn, a roll that could double as a weapon. I ate methodically. Fuel in, energy out. Every calorie had a purpose.

Two tables away, Matthews was holding court. He was reenacting my rope climb, exaggerating his movements, puffing out his chest and making gorilla noises. The table erupted in laughter. Even some of the quieter guys, the ones who usually kept their heads down, were chuckling. It was easier to laugh than to be the next target.

I chewed my food, staring at a scratch on the metal table. Someone had carved “MONSTER” into the wood of my bunk earlier that day. I hadn’t reported it. Reporting it was weakness.

It wasn’t the insults that hurt. I had been called worse things by better men. It was the assumption that I was doing this for vanity. That I built this body to show off. They didn’t understand that my body was a tool, forged in fire, specifically designed to ensure that I never, ever dropped anyone again.

They saw muscles. I saw redundancy systems. They saw a freak. I saw a survivor.

Lieutenant Brooks walked through the mess hall, his eyes scanning the room. He paused when he saw me sitting alone, surrounded by empty chairs. He looked like he wanted to come over, maybe say something, but he hesitated. He was an officer, but he was young. He didn’t know how to handle the “Lorne Situation” any better than the recruits did. He kept walking.

I finished my water, stood up, and took my tray to the scullery. As I walked past Matthews’ table, the laughter died down abruptly, replaced by a heavy, watching silence.

“Enjoy your sleep, Lorne,” Matthews called out, his voice dripping with false concern. “Big day Thursday. The Crucible. Wouldn’t want those big muscles to cramp up when the real work starts.”

I didn’t stop. I pushed through the double doors into the cooling desert night. The air was finally breathable. I looked up at the stars, vast and indifferent.

Thursday. The Crucible. Forty-eight hours of hell. No sleep. Forced marches. Simulated combat. It was designed to break people. It was designed to find the cracks in your psyche and pry them open until you shattered.

Matthews thought I would break. He thought my strength was cosmetic, a gym-bro trick. He had no idea that I had already been through the real Crucible, years ago, in a valley far from here. He didn’t know that I had walked through fire and come out the other side, not whole, but hardened.

I wasn’t afraid of the pain. I welcomed it. Pain was honest. Pain didn’t lie to you or talk behind your back.

I walked back to the barracks, the sound of their laughter fading behind me. Let them laugh for two more days. Because when the sun rose on Thursday, the laughing would stop. And the dying—simulated or not—would begin.

PART 2

Chapter 3: The Long Walk into Hell

The Crucible began not with a bang, but with a scream.

It was 0200 hours. Pitch black. The kind of darkness that feels heavy, like a wool blanket draped over your face. We were in the staging area, a desolate patch of scrub brush five miles outside the main gate.

“Gear check! Two minutes!” Sergeant Yarrow’s voice cut through the night like a rusted saw blade.

Around me, the sound of Velcro ripping and buckles snapping filled the air. The nervous energy was palpable, vibrating off the men like static electricity. This was it. The culmination of weeks of suffering. The gatekeeper to the rest of our careers.

I knelt in the dirt, checking my ruck for the third time. Eighty pounds of gear, water, ammo, and radio batteries. It was a crushing weight, designed to compress your spine and grind the cartilage in your knees to dust.

“Light work, boys,” I heard Matthews whisper to Kramer. “Just a long walk in the park. We’ll be back drinking beers by Saturday night.”

He was bouncing on the balls of his feet, trying to look amped. But I saw the way his hands fumbled with his hydration tube. He was scared. They all were. They just didn’t know how to process fear without turning it into noise.

“Fall in!”

We lined up. Thirty recruits. Thirty shadows standing in the gloom.

The instructors—the Cadre—walked the line, their red-lens flashlights painting our faces in demonic crimson streaks. They were looking for loose straps, un-taped noises, fear.

Lieutenant Brooks stood at the front. “The objective is simple,” he said, his voice oddly calm. “Survive. Complete the mission parameters. Don’t quit. The desert is going to try to kill you. The exhaustion is going to try to kill you. Your own mind is going to try to kill you. Do not let them.”

He paused, his eyes lingering on the group.

“Step off.”

We moved out.

The first hour was easy. Adrenaline does that. It masks the weight of the pack, tricks you into thinking your legs are springs. The squad moved at a fast clip, eager to eat up the miles. Matthews was near the front, setting a pace that was too aggressive.

I stayed in the middle of the formation, my eyes scanning the ground. Pacing, I thought. It’s not a sprint. It’s a slow bleed.

By hour four, the adrenaline had evaporated.

The sun began to bleed over the horizon, turning the sky a bruised purple. With the light came the reality of the terrain. We weren’t walking on flat ground; we were traversing a wash—a dried-up riverbed filled with loose, shifting sand. Every step forward cost two steps of energy. Your boot would sink, slide, and you’d have to engage your calves just to stay upright.

The chatter died. The jokes about my muscles died. The only sounds were the heavy, wet breathing of thirty men and the shuck-shuck-shuck of boots dragging through sand.

I focused on my breathing. In for four steps. Out for four steps.

My shoulders were already screaming. The straps of the rucksack dug into the bundle of nerves near my collarbone, sending stinging electric shocks down my arms. I welcomed it. The pain was a tachometer, telling me exactly how hard my engine was running.

“Pick it up, Lorne!” Kramer wheezed from behind me. He sounded ragged. “Don’t… don’t slow the squad down.”

I wasn’t slowing anyone down. In fact, I had to shorten my stride to keep from running into the man in front of me. But they needed a scapegoat. Even now, drowning in their own sweat, they needed me to be the weak link.

I didn’t respond. I just shifted the weight of my rifle and kept walking.

By hour eight, the sun was fully up. A white hammer pounding against the back of our necks. The temperature spiked to ninety-five degrees. The heat waves started to shimmer off the rocks, making the distance look like a watery hallucination.

That’s when the first man fell.

It wasn’t me.

It was a kid named Torres. He simply folded. One second he was walking, the next his knees buckled and he went face-first into the dirt, his eighty-pound ruck pinning him like a beetle.

“Man down!” someone shouted.

The squad halted. Groans of frustration rippled through the line. Stopping was dangerous. Stopping meant your muscles would seize up.

A corpsman rushed over, squirting water into Torres’s mouth. The kid was pale, eyes rolling back. Heat exhaustion.

Matthews walked over, hands on his hips, sweat pouring off his nose. “Weak,” he muttered, loud enough for everyone to hear. “We’re dragging dead weight.”

He looked at me when he said it.

I looked at Torres, then at Matthews. “Check your own water, Matthews,” I said, my voice raspy but steady. “You’ve stopped sweating. That’s a bad sign.”

He wiped his forehead, realized it was dry, and a flicker of panic crossed his face. He chugged from his tube aggressively, trying to mask the mistake.

Torres was pulled from the line. He was out. Twenty-nine left.

“Move out!” Yarrow barked.

As we started walking again, the mood had shifted. The arrogance was gone, replaced by a grim, silent suffering. The desert had taken its first bite. And we still had forty hours to go.

Chapter 4: The Breaking Point

Nightfall brought no relief, only a different kind of torture. The temperature plummeted, dropping forty degrees in two hours. Sweat-soaked uniforms turned into freezing shrouds. Teeth chattered in the darkness.

We had been moving for eighteen hours.

My feet were hamburger meat. I could feel a blister on my left heel pop, the warm fluid filling my sock, followed by the sharp sting of raw skin rubbing against wool. I clamped my jaw and kept stepping.

Pain is information, I told myself. It’s just data.

We were navigating a canyon network now, steep walls of rock blocking out the moon. Navigation was a nightmare. The GPS was jammed—part of the exercise—forcing us to use maps and compasses.

Matthews was on point. He had insisted on it. “I was a Scout,” he’d bragged. “I can find my way through a closet with the lights off.”

But we had been walking in a circle for forty minutes. I knew it. I recognized a distinct twisted juniper tree we had passed three times.

The men were grumbling. Morale was cratering. Every extra step was a dagger in their resolve.

“Matthews,” I said, breaking radio silence. “We’re circling. The checkpoint is North-North-East. You’re drifting West.”

Matthews spun around, his eyes wild in the dim red light of his tactical lamp. He looked like a ghost. His lips were cracked, his face sunken. “Shut up, Lorne! I know where I’m going. Don’t tell me how to read a map, you… you civilian.”

“Look at the ridge,” I said calmly, pointing to a silhouette against the stars. “That’s Camelback Ridge. It should be on our right flank. It’s on our left. We’re walking back toward the start point.”

“Bullshit!” Matthews shouted. His composure was gone. The exhaustion had stripped away his filter.

Lieutenant Brooks stepped in from the shadows. He had been observing, silent as a wraith. “Problem, gentlemen?”

“No sir,” Matthews snapped. “Lorne is just confused. I’m leading us to—”

“Lorne is right,” Brooks said, his voice cold. “You’ve led your squad two clicks off course. You’re walking into a simulated minefield. You’re all dead.”

Silence. The kind of silence that screams.

Matthews stood there, mouth open, the map trembling in his hands. The humiliation was absolute.

“Lorne,” Brooks said, turning to me. “Take point.”

I didn’t smile. I didn’t gloat. I just stepped forward. “Aye, sir.”

I took the map from Matthews. He didn’t resist. He looked broken, his shoulders slumped under the weight of his pack and his failure.

“Follow me,” I said to the squad. “Single file. Watch your spacing.”

I led them out of the canyon. I set a pace that was grueling but sustainable. I didn’t stop to check if they were following; I knew they were. They were desperate for someone who knew the way.

By hour twenty-four, the hallucinations started.

We were trekking across a flat salt pan. The moonlight played tricks on the eyes. Shadows looked like enemy combatants. Bushes looked like dogs.

I heard Holt mumbling behind me. “Mom? Yeah, I put the dishes away.”

Sleep deprivation was setting in. The brain was starting to eat itself.

I felt it too. The edges of my vision were blurring. I saw movement in my peripheral that wasn’t there. But I had a trick. I started reciting the Periodic Table of Elements in my head. Hydrogen. Helium. Lithium. Beryllium. It kept the cognitive functions of my brain engaged, forcing away the dream state.

Suddenly, a flare popped overhead. A blinding white magnesium star hissing in the sky.

“CONTACT FRONT!” I screamed, dropping to a knee and raising my rifle.

It was an ambush. The Cadre, dressed as opposing forces, opened up with blank fire. The pop-pop-pop of rifles echoed across the salt pan.

Chaos erupted. The recruits, zombie-like from exhaustion, stumbled. Some just stood there, staring at the pretty light.

“Get down! Return fire!” I yelled, grabbing Kramer by his vest and dragging him behind a rock just as a simulated grenade (a flashbang) went off where he had been standing.

“Move! Bounding overwatch! suppressing fire!”

My voice was the only thing holding the line together. I wasn’t thinking about being a woman, or being mocked, or being tired. I was back in the mode. The Atlas mode.

I saw Matthews frozen in the open, his weapon jammed. An instructor was walking toward him, a “kill card” in hand to tap him out of the exercise.

I didn’t think. I sprinted.

I hit Matthews with a shoulder check that sent him flying behind cover, just as the instructor’s “bullet” would have hit him. I rolled, came up on one knee, and fired two controlled bursts at the enemy position.

“Clear your weapon, Matthews!” I roared at him. “Get your head in the fight or go home!”

He looked at me. For the first time, there was no sneer. No judgment. Just pure, unadulterated shock. He looked at me like he had never seen me before.

Because he hadn’t. He had seen the caricature he built in his head. Now, with dirt on my face and fire in my eyes, he was seeing the soldier.

The ambush ended as quickly as it began. The “enemy” retreated.

“Cease fire,” Brooks called out. “Endex.”

We lay there in the dirt, chests heaving. The silence returned, but it felt different now.

I stood up, dusting off my knees. I offered a hand to Matthews, who was still sitting on the ground.

He hesitated. Then, slowly, he took it. His grip was weak, trembling. I pulled him up effortlessly.

He didn’t say thank you. He didn’t apologize. He just nodded, a small, sharp jerk of his chin.

But as we formed up to continue the march, I noticed something.

Matthews fell in behind me.

Not next to me to compete. Not behind me to whisper. He fell in behind me, in the slot where you put the person you trust to lead you through a minefield.

The dynamic had shifted. The hierarchy of the loudmouths was crumbling, dissolved by the acid of the desert.

But we weren’t done. The hardest part—the Casualty Extraction—was still to come. And that was where the real weight would be measured.

PART 3

Chapter 5: The Dead Weight of Survival

Hour thirty-six.

We weren’t men anymore. We were barely biological organisms. We were just boots and pain, shuffling through a landscape that looked like the surface of Mars.

The sun had returned with a vengeance, rising to punish us for surviving the night. My lips were cracked so deep they bled every time I took a sip of warm water. The salt sweat had dried into a white crust on my face, stinging my eyes like acid.

Ahead of us lay the final objective marker: Point Bravo.

“Secure the package,” Lieutenant Brooks ordered. His voice was raspy, lacking the sharp edge it held yesterday. Even the instructors were feeling the drag of the desert. “Transport package five miles to Extraction Point Alpha. Time limit: two hours. If you miss the window, the ‘patient’ bleeds out. You fail. You all fail.”

We crested a dune and saw it. The “package.”

It was a rescue dummy. A weighted, rubberized monstrosity filled with sand and lead shot. It weighed one hundred and eighty pounds. It had no handles. It was dead weight in the truest sense of the word.

The squad stared at it.

“Who’s carrying it?” Holt croaked. He was swaying on his feet, his face grey.

“Rotate,” Matthews whispered. He looked like a corpse walking. “Two men. Switch every ten minutes.”

It was a sound plan on paper. In reality, it was a disaster.

Two recruits, Biggs and Davis, grabbed the dummy first. They lifted it, took ten steps, and stumbled. The sand shifted under their feet. The dummy’s arm flopped loose, throwing off their center of gravity. They dropped it.

“That’s your patient’s head hitting a rock,” an instructor noted dryly, scribbling in a notebook. “He’s now got a traumatic brain injury. Keep moving.”

They picked it up again. Fifty yards later, Davis collapsed. His legs just quit. He sat in the sand, gasping, unable to stand.

“Next two!” I yelled.

Matthews and Kramer stepped up. They were the strongest men left besides me. They hoisted the dummy, grunting with effort. They managed a quarter mile. I watched the muscles in Matthews’ neck cord like steel cables. He was fighting, I’ll give him that. But he was running on fumes.

“Switch!” Matthews gasped, dropping the dummy with a thud. He bent over, hands on his knees, dry-heaving.

We had four miles to go. At this pace, we would miss the window by an hour. We would fail The Crucible.

Panic began to set in. I could smell it—a sharp, metallic scent coming off the men. They looked at the dummy like it was a tombstone. They looked at the horizon, shimmering with heat, and they saw defeat.

“We can’t do it,” someone whispered. “It’s too heavy. We’re cooked.”

I looked at the dummy. Then I looked at my watch.

I didn’t think about the pain in my shoulders. I didn’t think about the blisters on my feet that felt like burning coals. I thought about the farm. I thought about the time the tractor axle broke in the middle of a blizzard, and I had to carry three bales of hay at a time to the starving cattle because the machinery wouldn’t start.

I unclipped my rifle and handed it to Holt. “Take my weapon.”

“What?” Holt stared at me, confused.

“Take my weapon,” I repeated, my voice low and dangerous. “And take my pack.”

“Lorne, you can’t—”

I stripped off my ruck. I felt eighty pounds leave my spine, and for a second, I felt like I could fly. But I wasn’t looking to fly. I was looking to anchor.

I walked over to the dummy.

“Get it on my back,” I commanded.

Matthews looked up, sweat dripping from his nose. “You’re crazy. It’s nearly two hundred pounds. You’ll break your back.”

“Get. It. On. My. Back.”

Matthews and Kramer hesitated, then grabbed the dummy. They hoisted it up. I crouched, bending at the waist, positioning the dummy’s midsection across my shoulders in a fireman’s carry.

“Drop it,” I said.

They let go.

The weight hit me like a collapsing building. My knees buckled, dropping three inches before I caught myself. My spine compressed. The breath was driven out of my lungs in a sharp hiss.

For a second, I thought I would fold. The world went black around the edges.

Not today, I snarled internally. Not today, you son of a bitch.

I drove my heels into the sand. I engaged my glutes, my quads, the thick bands of muscle in my lower back that the men had laughed at two days ago.

I stood up.

A silence fell over the squad. It was absolute. Even the instructors stopped writing.

I took a step. Then another.

“Let’s move,” I gritted out through clenched teeth. “Double time.”

I started walking.

I wasn’t fast. But I was relentless.

Chapter 6: The Mountain and the Myth

The first mile was agony. The second mile was transcendence.

When you carry that kind of weight for that long, your body stops sending pain signals because the switchboard gets overloaded. You enter a state of pure, animal existence.

Left foot. Right foot. Breathe. Left foot. Right foot. Breathe.

The squad fell in around me. They didn’t speak. They didn’t complain about their own packs anymore. Seeing me—the “girl,” the “freak,” the outsider—carrying the burden of the entire platoon shamed them into silence. It also gave them something else: Hope.

If I could do this, they could surely just walk.

“Drink,” Holt appeared at my side, shoving a hydration tube into my mouth. I sucked down the warm water without breaking stride.

“Good,” I gasped. “Check the… rear.”

“Rear is clear,” Holt said. He stayed close, his hand hovering near the dummy, ready to catch it if I fell.

But I didn’t fall.

We hit the base of “The Grinder”—a steep, rocky incline leading up to the plateau where the base gates were located. It was a three-hundred-foot climb over loose shale.

This was the breaking point.

I started up. The loose rocks shifted under my boots. I slipped, my knee slamming into a jagged stone. A bolt of white-hot pain shot up my leg. I grunted, stumbling forward. The weight of the dummy threatened to pull me backward, to roll me down the hill like a boulder.

“I got you!”

It wasn’t Holt.

It was Matthews.

He was there, his hand slamming into the small of my back, pushing. He jammed his shoulder under the dummy’s dangling leg, taking twenty, maybe thirty pounds of the weight.

“Drive, Lorne!” he screamed, his voice cracking. “Drive your legs!”

“I’m… moving!” I yelled back.

“On your left!” Kramer shouted, appearing on my other side. He grabbed the dummy’s arm, lifting.

It wasn’t just me anymore. It was a phalanx. I was the engine, but they were the chassis. We moved up the hill as a single, multi-limbed organism.

“Heave!” Matthews yelled.

We took a step.

“Heave!”

Another step.

My vision was tunneling. All I could see was the dirt in front of my boots. My heart was hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird, fluttering so fast I couldn’t count the beats. I could taste copper in my mouth.

Just one more, I told myself. Just one more step.

We crested the ridge.

The ground leveled out. The sudden lack of resistance almost made me pitch forward. Matthews and Kramer held me steady.

And there it was.

Down below, about a mile away, the lights of Camp Sutter twinkled in the twilight. The American flag whipped in the wind above the command post.

We had made it.

I tried to adjust the dummy, but my arms were locked in a spasm. I couldn’t feel my fingers.

“We’re there,” Matthews whispered, staring at the lights. He looked at me. His face was streaked with dirt and tears he hadn’t wiped away. “Jesus, Lorne. You… you’re a machine.”

“No,” I wheezed, forcing my head up to look him in the eye. “I’m a Marine.”

He swallowed hard. “Yeah. Yeah, you are.”

We started the descent toward the gates. The pace picked up. The men sensed the end. They started to shuffle-run, the energy returning to their broken bodies.

I didn’t run. I couldn’t. I marched. Every step was a victory. Every step was a middle finger to every whisper, every insult, every doubt.

We hit the pavement of the main road. The guards at the gate watched us approach, their faces stoic.

We crossed the finish line—a line of orange cones set up near the barracks—with four minutes to spare.

“Time!” Lieutenant Brooks yelled, checking his stopwatch.

I stopped.

“Drop the package,” Brooks ordered.

My body didn’t want to let go. My muscles had seized in that position. Matthews and Kramer had to physically pry the dummy off my shoulders.

As the weight left me, I felt a strange sensation. Lightness. Dizzying, terrifying lightness.

My legs, finally released from the crushing load, turned to jelly. I sank to my knees, then forward onto my hands. The asphalt was still warm. I pressed my forehead against it, gasping for air, my lungs burning as if I’d inhaled fire.

I heard the men cheering. High-fiving. Collapsing onto the grass. They had survived.

But then, the noise stopped.

It didn’t taper off. It was cut. Instantly.

I lifted my head, blinking through the sweat stinging my eyes.

The door to the Command Building had opened.

It wasn’t the Drill Instructors coming out. It wasn’t the medical team.

It was a full detail of officers. And at the center, walking with a cane but standing tall as a redwood, was a man with two stars on his collar.

Rear Admiral Rowan Pierce.

The Base Commander. The man who ran Special Warfare Group Four. He was a legend. He didn’t come to trainee graduations. He certainly didn’t come to the finish line of a field exercise.

But he was here.

He walked past Lieutenant Brooks. He walked past the instructors who had snapped to attention. He walked straight toward the group of filthy, stinking recruits.

The men scrambled to stand at attention, swaying on their feet.

I tried to stand. My legs screamed, but I forced them to lock. I stood up, swaying slightly.

Admiral Pierce stopped. He wasn’t looking at the platoon. He was looking at me.

The silence was louder than the wind.

“At ease,” Pierce said. His voice was quiet, but it carried.

He looked me up and down—at the sweat-soaked uniform, the blood on my knees, the raw skin on my neck where the dummy had rubbed me raw.

“I was told,” Pierce began, “that we had a problem in this platoon. A disruption.”

Matthews went pale. He looked like he was about to vomit.

“I was told,” Pierce continued, “that there was a candidate who didn’t fit the mold.”

He stepped closer to me. He was close enough that I could smell his cologne, a sharp contrast to the stench of the desert.

“Staff Sergeant Lorne,” he said.

The title hit the air like a thunderclap. Staff Sergeant. Not Recruit. Not Trainee.

“Sir,” I croaked.

“It seems my instructors forgot to read your file to the class,” Pierce said, turning slightly to address the stunned men. “They forgot to mention why you were here. Why a Silver Star recipient was repeating basic selection.”

Silver Star.

I heard a gasp from behind me. I think it was Holt.

“They forgot to mention,” Pierce’s voice hardened, “that you aren’t here to learn how to be a soldier. You’re here to relearn how to walk.”

He looked back at me, his eyes softening just a fraction.

“Two years of rehab, Lorne. Doctors said you’d never carry a pack again. Said your spine was fused.” He gestured to the dummy lying on the asphalt. “I watched the drone feed. You just carried a hundred and eighty pounds for four miles.”

He extended his hand.

“Welcome back to the fight, Ava.”

I took his hand. “Thank you, sir.”

Matthews stepped forward. He looked like his world had just flipped upside down.

“Silver Star?” he whispered. “You… you were already…”

“She was Recon,” Pierce said, cutting him off. “Before your balls dropped, son, she was pulling men out of burning Humvees in Fallujah.”

Matthews looked at me. The mockery, the arrogance, the “freak” comments—they all evaporated, leaving only a naked, terrified realization of how wrong he had been.

But the story wasn’t over. Because what happened next wasn’t about medals or rank. It was about what happens when the mask finally comes off.

PART 4 

Chapter 7: The Silence After the Storm

The Admiral didn’t stay long. Men like that don’t. They drop bombs—literal or metaphorical—and then they vanish back into the air-conditioned ether of command. He gave me one last nod, a silent transfer of authority, and walked back into the headquarters building, his staff trailing him like a flock of nervous birds.

The door clicked shut.

The sound was final.

We were left standing on the blacktop. The wind had died down, leaving the air heavy and still. The orange cones of the finish line looked ridiculous now, like party favors at a funeral.

I stood there, swaying slightly. My body was beginning to cool down, and with the drop in temperature came the return of the pain. My back seized up in a spasm so violent it nearly knocked the wind out of me. I gritted my teeth, refusing to grab my spine in front of them.

Matthews was the first to move.

He walked toward me. His gait was stiff, his boots dragging. He stopped three feet away. He looked at the Silver Star ribbon on my rack—which wasn’t there, because we were in field gear—but he was looking at the spot where it would be on my dress blues.

“Recon?” he said. It wasn’t a question. It was a recalibration of his entire reality.

I looked at him. “Does it matter, Private?”

“You…” He struggled for the words, his hands twitching at his sides. “You let us… You let me call you a freak. You let me say you were juicing. You let me treat you like garbage.”

“I didn’t ‘let’ you do anything, Matthews,” I said softly. “You showed me exactly who you were. I didn’t need to correct you. You were doing a fine job of embarrassing yourself.”

Kramer stepped up behind him. He looked terrified. “The injury… the Admiral said your spine was fused? Is that… is that why you lift like that? The slow reps? The control?”

I sighed, finally letting my shoulders drop. “I took a piece of shrapnel to the L4 and L5 vertebrae three years ago. Doctors rebuilt my back with titanium and cadaver bone. I had to learn to walk again. Then run. Then carry.”

I looked down at my hands, still trembling from the exertion.

“The muscle isn’t for show, boys. It’s armor. If I don’t keep the muscle around my spine strong enough to crush coal, I can’t walk. I don’t lift to look good in a t-shirt. I lift so I don’t end up in a wheelchair.”

The silence that followed was heavy enough to crush a tank.

Matthews looked at the ground. He kicked a loose pebble. I saw his throat bob. He was fighting a war inside his own head—ego versus honor.

Honor won.

He looked up. His eyes were wet. “I… I thought I was the hotshot here. I thought I was the alpha.”

He took a breath, shaky and ragged.

“I’m sorry, Staff Sergeant. I was… I was wrong. About everything.”

It’s rare to hear a grown man apologize. Truly apologize. It’s even rarer in the military, where weakness is a cardinal sin. But this wasn’t weakness. This was the hardest lift he’d done all week.

I looked at him. I didn’t smile. I didn’t pat him on the back. That would have been cheap.

“Apology noted, Matthews,” I said. “Now, are we going to stand here and cry about it, or are we going to clean our gear? Because if I find rust on my weapon tomorrow, I’m going to smoke you until your eyes bleed.”

A flicker of a smile crossed his face. A real one. “Aye, Staff Sergeant.”

“Go,” I ordered. “Hit the showers. Get chow. We train at 0500.”

They scrambled. But it was different. They didn’t run away to gossip. They moved with purpose. They moved like a squad that finally had a leader they believed in.

I watched them go. Only when the last recruit disappeared around the corner of the barracks did I finally allow myself to collapse. I sat on the curb, put my head in my hands, and let the tears of exhaustion come.

It wasn’t over. The Crucible was done, but the war—the war against my own body, against the doubt, against the past—that war never ends.

But for the first time in a long time, I knew I wasn’t fighting it alone.

Chapter 8: The Weight of a Leader

Two days later.

The gym was crowded. The morning rush. The air smelled of iron and sweat.

I walked in.

Usually, when I walked in, the noise level would dip. Eyes would roll. Whispers would start behind hands. There she is. The She-Hulk. The freak.

Today, the noise didn’t dip. It stopped.

Total silence.

I walked past the dumbbell rack. A group of guys from another platoon were standing there. One of them, a big guy I didn’t know, opened his mouth.

“Check it out,” he started to sneer. “Here comes—”

“Shut your mouth,” a voice cut him off.

It was Matthews.

He was on the bench press. He sat up, glaring at the big guy. “You finish that sentence, and you and I are going to have a conversation in the parking lot.”

The big guy blinked, confused. “What? I was just saying—”

“She’s a Staff Sergeant,” Kramer’s voice rang out from the pull-up bar. “And she’s stacked more bodies than you’ve eaten hot meals. So show some respect.”

The big guy looked around. He saw the look in Matthews’ eyes. He saw the look in Kramer’s eyes. He saw the way Holt and the rest of my squad were standing up, abandoning their weights, forming a subtle, protective perimeter.

He shut his mouth. He looked down at his feet. “My bad,” he mumbled.

I didn’t acknowledge the defense. I didn’t need to. But I felt it. It was a warm current in a cold ocean.

I walked to the squat rack. I loaded the bar. Two plates. Three plates.

I stepped under the iron.

The pain was there. It always was. The titanium in my spine hummed a low, dull ache. But as I lifted the weight, as I felt the heavy steel settle across my traps, it felt lighter than before.

Because I wasn’t carrying it alone anymore.

I did my set. Perfect form. Controlled chaos.

When I racked the weight, I turned around.

My squad was watching. Not staring—watching. They were studying my foot placement. They were analyzing my breathing. They were learning.

I wiped my face with a towel and looked at Matthews.

“You’re flaring your elbows on the bench, Matthews,” I said casually. “You’ll tear a rotator cuff like that.”

He looked at me, startled. Then he grinned. “Show me how to fix it, Staff Sergeant?”

I walked over. “Scoot over.”

I spent the next hour coaching them. Not yelling. Teaching. I showed them how to use leverage instead of brute force. I showed them how to find the balance point where the weight becomes part of you.

I showed them that strength isn’t about how much you can lift. It’s about how much you can bear without breaking.

Camp Sutter didn’t change overnight. There were still whispers from other platoons. There were still stares. But inside my platoon, the dynamic had shifted tectonically.

They stopped calling me “Freak.” They stopped calling me “Hulkette.”

They started calling me “Atlas.”

At first, I hated it. It felt like another label. But then Yarrow explained it to me one night over weak coffee in the mess hall.

“Atlas didn’t carry the world because he wanted to, Ava,” the old Sergeant said. “He carried it because he was the only one strong enough to keep the sky from falling on everyone else.”

I looked out the window at the desert, the same desert that had tried to kill us, the same desert where I had found my team.

I realized then that I had come here to prove something to myself—that I wasn’t broken. That I was still useful.

But I had done something more. I had taken a group of boys who thought strength was about noise and ego, and I had turned them into men who understood that strength is silent, service is heavy, and the strongest muscle in the human body isn’t the bicep.

It’s the heart.

“All right, Yarrow,” I said, finishing my coffee. “Atlas. I can live with that.”

I stood up, grabbed my cover, and walked out into the Arizona sun.

The heat hit me, brutal and familiar. But I didn’t flinch. I squared my shoulders, adjusted my uniform, and walked toward the training field.

My squad was waiting. And we had work to do.