Chapter2

The desert sun was like a red-hot iron plate forged by a hammer, baking the entire Gobi into a giant oven. Heat waves rose from the ground, twisting the air into translucent ripples, making the distant dunes sway as if underwater. Kicked awake before dawn to assemble, everyone stood in two rows shouldering tactical backpacks. Butcher paced in front of the formation with a shotgun resting on his shoulder, inspecting gear one by one, poking a backpack strap with his barrel here, kicking a combat boot there. I was at the end of the line, head down, a crooked piece of medical tape I had stolen from the infirmary stuck across the bridge of my nose. No one gave me a second glance.

When my turn came, Butcher's boots stopped. He spat out his chewing gum and nudged my backpack on the ground with his toe. I bent down to lift it—the moment my fingertips touched the canvas, my muscle fibers fed back abnormal weight data. Wrong. The standard loadout was twenty kilograms, but this was stuffed with extras. High-density ballistic plates, at least two of them, pushing the total weight to forty kilograms. Military-grade encumbrance, equivalent to strapping a grown man to my back.

Just as I hoisted the pack, a combat boot kicked the aluminum canteen at my feet. A sharp metallic clank, the cap popped open, and lukewarm water rushed out, instantly swallowed by the boiling sand. It left only a dark wet stain, and then even that evaporated into the heat waves.

"Slipped." Butcher chewed on a fresh piece of gum, his goggles reflecting the glare so I couldn't see his eyes. "Old man, no water in the desert means death."

I stared at the last trace of moisture seeping into the ground, my Adam's apple bobbing. Forty kilograms, extreme heat, zero water—for a forty-two-year-old, this was basically murder. But my expression remained deadpan. I just silently slung the backpack over my shoulder. As the straps slammed into my back, I intentionally let my knees buckle sharply, stumbling half a step forward before steadying myself. Snickers broke out around me.

The starting gun fired. Dust kicked up as two dozen recruits charged into the wasteland like beasts out of a cage. Some roared profanities, others fought for the optimal path at the front, backpack straps digging deep into their shoulders. Viper ran in the first tier, his footwork solid. He glanced back at me, a smirk on his lips. That look said, Waiting to collect your corpse.

I was left far behind. The forty-kilogram weight forced me to hunch over. My boots filled with scalding sand, sinking half an inch with every step. From behind, my posture was utterly pathetic, like an old ox being dragged forward by a whip.

But in reality, this weight was nothing.

The Hindu Kush mountains. Altitude forty-three hundred meters, minus twenty degrees, standard loadout forty-five kilograms, infiltration distance forty-seven kilometers. The target was High-Value Target Number One's mountain stronghold—a five-story concrete bunker surrounded by three layers of defensive fire. That mission lasted seventy-two hours. No backup, no extraction route, just me and Miller. I was thirty-two that year. My bones, muscles, and cardiopulmonary system were all branded with those metrics; my rhomboids, lats, and quads—the memory of every muscle fiber was fused into my DNA. Carrying forty kilos of ballistic plates felt like a civilian wearing a daypack to me.

A faint buzzing came from above. A small quadcopter drone was hovering at low altitude. The fuselage lacked any markings, but I could recognize that aerodynamic profile with my eyes closed: the Pentagon's Predator lightweight recon variant, equipped with dual high-def and thermal imaging pods. Its lens tilted down, dead-locked onto my spine.

It was capturing my gait. Special Forces have a distinct trait during heavy-load ruck marches called the glide—the soles never fully leave the ground, sliding forward against the sand to reduce knee impact while keeping the core stable. It is an instinct ground out over tens of thousands of kilometers of loaded marches, more natural than blinking.

I immediately scrambled everything. My chest heaved violently and erratically. I forcefully suppressed deep pulmonary ventilation, taking in oxygen through extremely shallow, rapid breaths. The hypoxia quickly flushed my face purple-red, turned my lips pale, and made my eyelids droop heavily. With every step, my heels slammed hard into the sand, kicking up grit like a clumsy duck. My arms stopped swinging naturally, dangling limply instead, twitching occasionally to simulate muscle exhaustion.

Engine noise closed in from my rear blind spot. Butcher's off-road vehicle rolled over the dunes, the tires throwing sand right into the back of my head and neck. He steered one-handed, holding up a tactical recorder with the other, shoving the lens almost into my face. In the viewfinder, my face was beet red, sweat dripping from my chin.

"Heart rate must be hitting one-eighty by now, huh? How much longer can that heart hold out?" He laughed carelessly. "Relax, old Ray. I'll send a copy of this tape to your family as a keepsake."

If I went down, or begged for mercy, this recording would become the legal autopsy report for cardiogenic sudden death during recruit training. Black Steel had two or three sudden deaths a year. The families never even saw a bone fragment; they were all buried by the sandstorms.

I gasped with my mouth wide open like a fish tossed onto the shore, drool running from the corner of my mouth, mixing with sweat and hitting the sand. In reality, my core temperature remained well within safe thresholds. To fool the thermal probe, I used autonomic nervous regulation to force the sweat glands on my forehead, back, and armpits into overdrive, creating the illusion of hyperthermia. My combat uniform was quickly soaked through, clinging to my body as if I had just been fished out of the water.

I deliberately knocked my knees together as I stepped, faking the shivers of total physical exhaustion. My calf muscles wobbled irregularly over the sand, mimicking the precursors of severe cramping. Butcher watched for a dozen seconds, found no flaws, scoffed, and hit the gas. The front of his truck rolled over the dune ahead of me, blocking my path.

"Give it up, Ray," he shouted through the window. "Five kilometers left. No water, dehydration leads to organ failure. Die in this sand, and there won't even be anyone to collect your body."

The exhaust kicked up from the tailpipe choked my windpipe. I seized the opportunity to erupt into a violent fit of dry coughing, bending over with my hands on my knees, my back arched like a cooked shrimp. But outside of Butcher's line of sight, my pupils locked precisely onto the red flag marking the finish line. That little red dot swayed in the heat waves four kilometers away.

My footwork looked chaotic, but in truth, the stride length of every step was exactly seventy-three centimeters, with a margin of error under two centimeters. Using the rolling dunes as cover, my forward speed stabilized at one point five meters per second. Five kilometers. Four kilometers. Three kilometers. Fallen recruits began appearing along the route. Some sat vomiting in the sand, others lay motionless and were dragged away on stretchers by medics. The sun climbed higher, pushing the air temperature to forty-three degrees Celsius. The surface of the sand was burning to the touch.

Two kilometers. Butcher's off-road vehicle shadowed me relentlessly. He honked periodically, the short, shrill blasts piercing through the empty desert. "One kilometer left! I'll bet you a pack of smokes you don't make it!"

My vision was narrowing—classic early signs of dehydration. My lips cracked and bled, my swollen tongue pressing against the roof of my mouth. But my internal chronograph was still running with pinpoint accuracy: pacing, wind speed, sand density, core temp, distance remaining. At my current speed, I would cross the passing line with fifteen seconds to spare. One kilometer. The red line at the finish twisted in the heat. The numbers on my mental timer ticked down; fifty-eight seconds left to the cutoff. Viper had arrived ages ago. He was sitting in the shade, unscrewing his canteen and pouring water over his head. A few early finishers lay paralyzed on the ground, panting, heads turned my way, waiting for the joke to unfold.

The drone dropped lower, its lens almost brushing the top of my head. Butcher's truck parked right before the red line. He even pulled a body bag out of the trunk, spreading the glaring white plastic across the hood.

Fifty seconds. I was twenty meters from the line. With normal stamina, this final stretch would require a sprint, but an exhausted middle-aged man couldn't pull off a sprint. My left foot tripped over my right, throwing my body forward. My knees slammed into the sand, but at the instant of impact, I engaged my core to execute a clumsy roll, maintaining forward momentum. Forty seconds. Fingers clawing into the blistering sand, grit packing under my nails, I crawled on all fours. It was an ugly sight. My chin scraped the ground, ripping open an old wound at the corner of my mouth. Blood dripped into the sand and vaporized instantly.

"He's done." Viper stood up and walked to the edge of the red line, looking down from his high horse. "Bet he can't crawl it. A pack of smokes."

Thirty seconds. I bit my lip, letting more blood flow. A hoarse wheezing rasped in my throat, my legs dragging behind me like they were filled with lead. Twenty seconds. The AI indicator light overhead blinked rapidly, scanning vital signs: heart rate, body temp, respiratory rate, pupillary response. Ten seconds. I had timed its scanning cycle perfectly—four point three seconds per rotation, with a two-second window before the next sweep. The red light flashed, went dark, and in the gap before the next flash—I lunged forward blindly. The edge of my combat boot scraped across the red line.

The timer hit zero. Beep—

I crashed into the sand past the finish line, backpack straps biting into my shoulders, my cheek pressed against the scorching surface, limbs sprawled, completely motionless. The drone's red light flashed twice, logging the data, then pulled up and flew off—Target physical condition extremely poor, no tactical threat, recommend continued observation.

The truck door slammed shut. The veins on the back of Butcher's hand bulged as he gripped the body bag. He walked over and kicked my limp arm with the toe of his boot. I gave no reaction. My arm flopped twice like a torn rag and fell back lifelessly. "Lucky bastard, old man." He hurled the body bag back onto the hood, turned around, and got in. The tires ground against the sand as he sped off in a cloud of dust.

I lay there, maintaining my comatose posture. In the three seconds where the dust obscured all visibility, I slowly exhaled a breath of stale air. My heart rate dropped steadily from the faked one-eighty back down to sixty. Acid began to churn in my stomach, the body's signal for extreme dehydration. I turned my head slightly, using the tip of my tongue to lick the blood beading on my lips. That tiny bit of moisture dissolved on my tongue. Salty.

Viper walked over in a pair of brand-new tactical boots and squatted in front of me. He pinched my jaw, lifting my face, and used his other hand to slowly pour the remaining half-canteen of water over my head. The ice-cold water ran down my burning scalp and into the sand, instantly sucked dry by the parched earth. Not a single drop touched my mouth. He patted my cheek, my blood still smeared on his fingers. "You're tough to kill, I see that. Let's see how tough you are in the next round." He stood up, turned, and walked away, leaving two deep pits in the sand from his boot soles.

I kept my eyes closed. The fizzing sound of the sand drinking the water was right by my ear. Every drop of moisture in my body was screaming, but I ruthlessly crushed the urge to drink that sand. No abnormal movements whatsoever, not even licking a mouthful of wet dirt. The cameras were still rolling. They had only zoomed out, but the AI's telephoto lens could capture micro-expressions on my lips from five hundred meters away.

I lay there, letting the sun bake away the last bit of moisture on my body. Physically, I was like a wrung-out rag, but my mind was racing. When is the next training? Tomorrow. What subject? Marksmanship. Four-hundred-meter targets. The ammo in the armory are brass reloads; I have already figured out their recoil patterns. And I have observed Viper's maintenance habits on that M4A1 of his—after the twentieth round, his barrel always overheats, causing the trajectory to drift right.

These pieces of information locked together like gears. But I showed absolutely none of it. I lay flat on the sand like a genuine piece of useless rock, waiting for the whistle to blow for the next round.