Chương 134: 50. Expectation 50-3

Just before the extraction platform came into view, we hit one last absurd little moment. There was a half-scorched shrub by the path with a strip of torn cloth tied to one of its branches. Someone from another squad had scrawled across it in uneven letters: Whoever makes it out alive, eat two portions for me. Harvey stopped and stared for two seconds, his expression genuinely complicated.

"... I like this person." Jess snorted.

"Could just be someone who got hungry before dying."

"No," Harvey said with sudden reverence.

"That's spiritual inheritance." I stared at that ragged piece of cloth and actually felt the urge to smile. This place had ground people down to something barely human. And even then, barely human still remembered food. On some level, that was probably civilization's last surviving ember. I walked over, dug a nearly dead marker out of my pocket, and added a line beneath theirs: Sleep first. Jess saw it and burst out laughing.

"Captain, you genuinely sound like an old person."

"Shut up. Only people who understand the value of sleep are truly modern." D glanced at it and nodded.

"Correct."

"Don't agree with me at times like this. It makes everything weirder."

"I'm just agreeing."

"That makes it worse." Even Akari's mouth twitched—visibly. I realized then that this kind of chaotic, pointless conversation wasn't actually bad. Nobody was performing maturity. Nobody was pretending any of this had been glorious. We were just eight people who'd crawled out of a brutal, painful, completely unreasonable assessment, starting to discuss sleep schedules, barbecue reservations, four days off, and whether to be corpses first or functional humans when we got back. Deeply unglamorous.

But unglamorous in a way that felt like solid ground. When the extraction platform finally appeared, the light was already tilting toward evening. A cleared plateau with a few gray-white guide pylons, the school's field medical tents, and a data terminal. From a distance, it almost gave the illusion that civilization had never been far away. I knew better. Civilization hadn't left.

It had just stood at a comfortable distance, watching while we got ground down, burned, hunted, and forced to learn how not to get ourselves and each other killed. The moment I actually stepped onto the platform, my legs went soft. Not collapsing—just the delayed impact of being allowed to admit: I actually made it. D set his shield down. Harvey dropped straight onto his ass. Jess leaned back like standing one more second should be illegal.

Roy hugged his notebook, looking like he'd finally found somewhere appropriate to pass out. Linde bowed her head and let out a long breath. Kushima went straight to check the medical protocols. Akari stayed standing, sweeping the entire extraction zone first—refusing to fully stand down until the absolute last second.

I stood there watching the navigation line on my HUD—the same one that had dragged us from the bunker, through the burned rainforest, out of that rock shelter, through an assessment that had nearly been stepped flat by a Jäger (Hunter)—finally zero out at the center of the platform. And for the first time, very quietly, I smiled. Not because everything was fine. Not because any of it had suddenly become meaningful. Just because— We'd actually walked out. All eight of us.

Eight people who argued, bitched, complained, bit each other, booked barbecue places, left messages on trash cloth, got pushed into digging trenches—and still came out together. And what I wanted most right now was completely without dignity. Sleep. Sleep first. Figure out the rest after waking up. Decide whether to go to D's reservation after sleeping. Face whatever these two weeks had turned us into after sleeping. Four days off. Those four words felt more like salvation than any victory speech ever could.

The deck of the return transport was quieter than I'd expected. Not the cinematic kind of quiet—all glory and golden light. More like: a group of students who'd just audited a class held adjacent to hell, still dusted in ash and antiseptic and bandages and sleep deprivation, crammed into a cold white military transport and achieving collective system failure. I sat against the bulkhead.

The moment my back touched the metal seat, I felt something close to religious gratitude: So this is what chairs feel like when they don't have rocks growing out of them. My right shoulder still ached. My knees still throbbed. Jess's bite marks were still on my forearm. But that seat was a miracle. Harvey lay down the moment he boarded. Literally. He slid along the bench until horizontal, eyes vacant, voice carrying the energy of someone whose soul had disembarked early.

"If someone tells me this was actually Phase Two of a simulation, I will cry right here in front of everyone."

"Nobody's stopping you," Jess said from across the aisle, legs stretched out, expression impressively sour.

"The instructors might even log it as positive emotional expression."

"How is your mouth still this functional?"

"Because unlike some people, I didn't stake my entire self-worth on a trip-wire."

"That trip-wire saved your life."

"Which is the only reason I haven't thrown it and you into the ocean." Good. As long as those two could still go at each other, the ship had a pulse. D sat ahead of us. His shield was already in equipment storage, and without it he looked strangely incomplete—like a building that always had an armored vehicle out front and now suddenly didn't. Akari sat by the window, eyes closed, either resting or maintaining some very power-efficient form of continued vigilance. Linde drank water quietly.

Roy had started organizing his assessment notes, making me wonder if he planned to publish Forest Survival and Statistical Analysis: A Field Guide when we got back. Kushima sat next to me. First thing she did was readjust my shoulder brace, then fix me with a look that said: move again and I'll bolt you to this seat. Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

"Don't hunch."

"I'm just shifting position."

"Every time you shift, you declare war on your shoulder."

"Have you always enjoyed describing me as some kind of low-IQ medical disaster?"

"Always?" She turned to look at me.

"You have a very optimistic view of your own case history."... Right. My mistake for expecting any statute of limitations on her vocabulary. About fifteen minutes after liftoff, the cabin intercom crackled on. Every student looked up simultaneously. Nobody pretended to sleep anymore. Because everyone knew: announcements at times like this aren't comfort. They're procedure.

"The current Forest Survival Assessment has officially concluded." The instructor's voice came through flat, clear, emotionless—like reading administrative paperwork that had nothing to do with the past two weeks of our lives.

"Final count: fourteen squads completed extraction and achieved passing grades. Total of fifty-six cadets." The cabin held its breath for one second. Then a low stir—not cheering, not gasping—slowly spread through the space. Fourteen squads. Fifty-six people. I stared at the seatback ahead and couldn't immediately connect that number to the entire year. Until Harvey slowly sat up, voice scraped dry.

"... Wait." He looked at me, then Jess, then the others, expression like someone who'd just finished a very hostile math problem.

"How many squads did we start with?" Nobody answered right away. We all knew. We just didn't want to say it. The instructor helpfully eliminated our avoidance.

"Remaining squads are assessed as not qualified under assessment parameters. Your ability to endure this high-pressure live-survival test demonstrates exceptional performance in endurance, judgment, coordination, and survival resilience. The Academic Division will issue formal commendations to the fourteen surviving, qualified squads." Commendations. When that word landed, the first thing in my mind wasn't honor. It was the rainforest, blackened by firestorm. The bunker door sealing shut.

The Jäger (Hunter) on the ridge, watching us. The shelter we'd carved under that rock. So surviving all of that translated to formal commendations in official terminology. The Federation had truly elevated understatement to an art form. Jess pressed her tongue against her cheek and let out a cold laugh.

"Commendations." Harvey laughed too—the laugh of someone too exhausted to do anything but mount one final act of spiritual rebellion.

"Great. We survived our way onto a plaque. Do I need to go home and ceremonially thank myself for not dying on schedule?" D didn't laugh. He just said quietly: "Fourteen squads is too few." I knew what he meant. Not that we shouldn't have survived. Just that the number was so low it made "qualified" sound less like achievement and more like a footnote at the end of an incident report. Then the intercom kept going. When I heard the next sentence, I nearly launched out of my seat.

"Cadets who did not pass this assessment may apply, per regulations, for written make-up examinations and simulation re-evaluations to fulfill required semester credits." I froze for two seconds. Then all the blood went straight to my head.

"—What?!" It just came out. No self-control. Every grievance from being burned, hunted, grabbed by plants, scraped raw by trenches—all of it detonating at once. I snapped upright, nearly tearing my shoulder, face twisting with pain, but couldn't kill the urge to flip the entire cabin.

"There's a written and sim make-up?! Why the fuck didn't anyone say that from the start?!" Harvey, half-dead thirty seconds ago, suddenly revived.

"Exactly! If I'd known there was a nice safe exam, I would've surrendered the second I saw the first carnivorous plant!" Jess was more direct.

"Are you fucking kidding me. Who needed to spend two weeks playing trust exercises with Jäger (Hunter) units in that forest?" Roy looked stunned, pen nearly hitting the floor.

"M-make-up testing...?" Even Linde's brow furrowed—clearly she hadn't seen this coming either. D lifted his head with an expression that clearly read: this arrangement is fucked. Even Akari opened her eyes and looked toward the speaker, gaze cold enough to dismantle the hardware. I was genuinely close to losing it. The if an instructor were standing here I'd engage them in extremely uncivilized dialogue kind of close.

"If there was a fallback like this they should've said so upfront!" I ground out, voice low but sharp.

"If I'd known I could patch it up with written tests and sims, I would've folded week one. Why spend two weeks proving to a forest and Jäger (Hunter) units how much torture I can absorb?!" Harvey nodded frantically.

"Right! I can take exams! I'm excellent at exams! I'd write long-form essays voluntarily!"

"Sure you would," Jess said coldly.

"You miss pages copying regular notes."

"That's because normal classes don't come with mortal-peril enhancement!" I was about to go another round when Kushima spoke. She didn't raise her voice. Her expression barely changed. But when she started talking, I knew she'd already seen further than the rest of us.

"It's a trap." Our entire row went quiet. I turned to her.

"... What do you mean?" Kushima set her hands in her lap, eyes calm like someone reading an answer key she'd memorized.

"The make-up tests were never meant for people on the same track." Harvey blinked.

"What?"

"You think the written exams and simulations are remediation," she said steadily.

"They're not. They're separation." She paused, tone dropping even flatter.

"People who couldn't hold through live assessment—even if they patch their scores back up on paper, their path is already written. The transcript looks fine. The simulation performance can be polished. But failing live survival assessment means this system will never flag you as frontline command material. No matter how high you push your grades afterward, you're mostly getting routed toward junior NCO tracks, technical support roles, logistics fills." Roy's face changed.

"Wait—the school never actually said that..."

"Of course not," Akari said without inflection.

"If they said it out loud, it wouldn't work." I understood instantly. And got even angrier. Because Kushima was right. Right in a way that made you want to hit something. This was never about is there a make-up exam. The school had designed this as a sieve from day one. You could fall through and patch your way back with paper and simulations and face-saving—but the fact of having fallen was already written where you'd never see it. Your exam papers could be perfect.

But once that little box was checked insufficient under live operational pressure, the entire system would read you differently. Forever. I sat there feeling the sudden urge to laugh. Not from happiness. From the sheer audacity. Surface level: don't worry, there's a second chance. Reality: it's fine, you still have options. They just don't look the same anymore. Civilized. Forward-thinking. Very Federation. Jess was quiet for two seconds before muttering:"... These people are genuinely sick."

"Not sick," Harvey said, sagging back with the hollow expression of someone freshly educated by institutional reality.

"That's premium-grade sick." D spoke again.

"So surviving wasn't just passing."

"No," Kushima said.

"It was classification." Roy slowly lowered his notebook, looking like someone punched awake from a dream where make-up exams were fair. Linde said nothing, but the cool edge in her eyes said she'd understood every word. I leaned back and closed my eyes. The earlier if I'd known I would've surrendered anger didn't go away. It just changed shape. Into something more exhausting. More real. Because looking back, the thing that burned wasn't even how hard the assessment was.

It was that none of this had ever been just a test. It was sorting. Labeling. Letting you think you were fighting for your life while they'd already filed you into categories behind the scenes. Very sophisticated. Sophisticated enough I almost wanted to applaud.

"Captain," Harvey said, turning toward me.

"That whole if I'd known I would've surrendered thing—does it still stand?" I opened my eyes, stared down the aisle for two seconds. Then answered honestly.

"... Half."

"Half?"

"In terms of process, I still think these two weeks were complete shit," I said.

"But if I'd actually folded in week one, sitting here now, I'd probably be even angrier." Jess raised an eyebrow.

"How so?"

"Because what I hate most is other people deciding what kind of person I am." I looked at them, then at D and Akari ahead.

"Whether I stay on the front line, whether I end up in command tracks, whether I get stuck carrying worse shit than this—that's for later. But at least this time, they didn't get to cut the road off for me first." Half a beat of silence. Harvey let out a drawn-out "Ooh"—face extremely punchable.

"Captain just said something that sounds like a protagonist speech."

"Shut up."

"No, I'm genuinely complimenting you."

"That makes it worse. Shut up." Jess snorted and let her head fall back.

"Alright. That one wasn't bad." D turned, looked at me for two beats, then nodded.

"Yeah." Akari didn't say correct or right. She just looked at me once, then let her gaze slide away. But somehow I knew—she'd heard me. Kushima was more direct.

"Good. Means you're impulsive but not brain-dead."

"Is that a compliment?"

"I've been very generous today." I almost laughed. These people were so insufferable. And because they were so insufferable, there was something strangely solid about it. We were still here. All of us. With enough left to roll our eyes at the system, drag each other, and plan barbecue and sleep like complete degenerates. The announcement kept running—post-assessment procedures, make-up registration, medical reviews, four-day class suspension. I wasn't really listening.

Not because it didn't matter, but because my brain had narrowed down to a handful of priorities. Bed. Hot water. Food. Sleep. And—whether these eight people would still cluster together this messily once we got off the ship. Harvey spoke up again.

"But seriously—if everyone taking make-ups gets shunted toward junior NCO tracks, half of them probably won't even realize they got sorted in round one, right?"

"They won't," Akari said.

"That's so fucked."

"Systems don't run on kindness," Kushima said. I propped my chin on my hand and watched the white lines where clouds split against the hull outside, suddenly very tired. Not physically. The kind of tired you get when you finally see how the world packages choices as opportunities and calls culling fairness. Ugly. And very real. But I thought about it and eventually let out a slow breath. Fine. At least this time, we'd walked out on our own legs.

Even if the process was garbage, the rules crooked, the make-up system a trap, and commendation sounded like a pretty ribbon on an accident report— Those were all things we could keep cursing later. Right now, the old rule still applied. Sleep first. Figure out the rest after.

And after waking up—if D's barbecue place was still standing, if Jess hadn't driven anyone away, if Harvey didn't bring his trip-wire collection to the table, if Roy didn't show up with spreadsheets to order from, if Kushima stopped treating us like rehab patients for one evening, and if Akari actually decided to show— I'd probably still go. Because being alive long enough to attend a completely ordinary, completely unglamorous barbecue might just be the best possible revenge on this entire shitty assessment.