Kaden looked at his hand as he held it open.

  It hung in the air over the mat, palm down, fingers spread. Three flesh, two metal. The cybernetics caught the physio bay’s cold light and turned it into thin reflections along brushed alloy and matte black joints.

  “Again,” the physio tech said. “Same sequence. Slow.”

  Kaden took a breath and focused.

  Thumb to index. Thumb to middle. Thumb to ring—

  The chrome ring finger twitched, then snapped down too fast, tapping the pad with a muted click. The pinky lagged, then locked straight, half a beat late.

  “Aurora?” the tech asked.

  A line appeared at the edge of Kaden’s HUD.

  [AURORA//MOTOR ADAPTATION]

  Left Hand (Ring/Pinky): 43% pattern integration

  Tremor: Within expected variance

  “Within expected variance,” Kaden muttered. “Great.”

  The physio tech snorted softly. “Expected doesn’t mean pleasant,” she said. “Reset. We’ll run it again.”

  She was older than most of the marines he’d seen on the ship, hair buzzed close, uniform sleeves rolled to her elbows. No rank tabs visible beyond the medical caduceus patch. Her name tag said LIANG.

  Kaden flexed his right hand, felt the familiar pull of tendons and muscle. Then he looked back at the left.

  From the knuckles down, the fingers were Aurora-grade replacements. Artificial bone framework, synthetic tendons, narrow segments of composite plating under synth-skin. The micro servos under the skin-sim layer whirred at the edge of hearing when he moved too fast. Above the knuckles, his own skin puckered around surgical seams, faintly discolored.

  He tried again. Thumb to index. Thumb to middle. Thumb to ring, slower. Thumb to pinky.

  Better. No click.

  “Good,” Liang said. “Now pick them up.”

  She scattered a handful of plastic tabs across the low table between them. They skittered on the mat, catching the light. Thin, insubstantial.

  “With the left,” she added when he automatically reached right-handed.

  He let his right hand drop to his thigh. Took another breath. Focused.

  The first tab slid under chrome fingertips, but he squeezed too hard and it flexed backward, shooting out to the side. It landed on the deck with a faint tick.

  “Fine control,” Liang said. “Not strength. You can crush things later.”

  “I thought we were supposed to be aiming for combat-ready,” Kaden said.

  “You don’t get to combat if you can’t trust your hand not to drop a clamp inside someone’s chest,” she said. “Tabs now. Tourniquets later. Combat after that.”

  He grimaced but shifted his attention back down.

  He managed to pick up the second tab on the third try. It felt wrong, the lack of real sensation where his fingertips should be. The neural grafts piped in pressure and positional data, but his brain kept insisting there should be the drag of skin along plastic, a hint of warmth.

  His HUD ticked another small update.

  [AURORA//MOTOR ADAPTATION]

  Left Hand (Ring/Pinky): 45% pattern integration

  “Better,” Liang said. “Still a long way to go.”

  Kaden set the tab in the tray beside the table, then slowly spread his fingers again. As long as he didn’t look too closely, the cybernetics almost passed for normal. The coloring matched the rest of his hand. Only the perfect smoothness at the joints gave it away.

  The physio bay hummed quietly around them. Rows of rigs and tables, bands and weights, rehab machines. A few other patients worked through their cycles: a marine slowly rotating a rebuilt shoulder under a holo overlay, a deckhand trying to stand without wobbling on a printed knee. The air smelled of antiseptic and rubber.

  On the next station over, someone grunted.

  “Feel like you’re teaching a rock to dance yet?” Tanaka asked.

  Kaden glanced sideways.

  Tanaka sat strapped into a lower-body harness rig that held his hips and torso steady while he worked his leg through a guided resistance arc. Cables ran from the rig to the wall. Sensors dotted the skin of his thigh where it was visible between the physio shorts and the brace around his pelvis.

  Out of armor, the big man’s size was even more obvious. Dark bruises mottled his hip and thigh, wrapping up along his side. A faint spiderweb of surgical repair glimmered under the skin near the crest of his pelvis where grenade fragments had gone in during the cruiser op.

  “How’s the hip?” Kaden asked.

  Tanaka tightened his grip on the support bars. The rig whined quietly as his leg pushed against resistance and came back down.

  “Still there,” he said. “Hurts like hell if I pretend it’s not.”

  “Medical term for that?” Kaden asked. “Solid?”

  “Medical term is ‘you took a grenade’s worth of metal for your sergeant and your dumb ass is lucky you can still walk,’” Liang said before Tanaka could answer. “And your pain conditioning trait is not a license to sprint before the bone knits.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Tanaka said. He shifted his gaze back to Kaden. “How’s the hand?”

  Kaden looked at the metal fingers again. “Mostly attached,” he said.

  Tanaka huffed a low breath that might have been a laugh. “Always a good start.”

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  The rig beeped. Tanaka’s HUD flashed; Kaden saw the faint glow reflected in his eyes.

  [AURORA//TRAIT – PAIN CONDITIONING]

  Warning: Overuse increases risk of delayed collapse

  “Overuse,” Tanaka muttered. “Sure.”

  “You nearly blacked out in my bay after insisting you could ‘just walk it off,’” Liang said. “Take the warning.”

  Tanaka flexed his toes inside the rig’s boot cradle. “I walked,” he said. “Then I fell over.”

  “And now you’re here,” Liang said. “Lucky me.”

  She moved around Kaden’s table, checked a few readings on the panel linked to his neural grafts, then flicked something on her own wrist display. “All right,” she said. “Mercer, we’re moving up. Bandage drill.”

  A tray slid into place beside his elbow. Sterile pads, rolls of gauze, adhesive strips. No blood, no screaming. Just the tools.

  “Left hand only,” she said. “Wrap the dummy limb, secure it. No dropping, no over-tightening.”

  The dummy limb was a carbon cylinder with a foam sleeve shaped loosely like an arm. Kaden reached for the gauze with his left hand and felt the faint resistance of the roll against alloy fingers. He pulled, too sharp at first, then corrected.

  “If you crush the gauze, the patient doesn’t care,” Liang said. “If you crush a vein, they do.”

  “I remember,” Kaden said.

  He remembered a lot. The Opp cruiser’s corridors. Tanaka shoving Jax out of a grenade’s path and taking the blast in his own hip. Perkins on the deck at the boarding breach, hands clamped over his gut while blood soaked through his plates until Kaden got there and forced the bleeding to stop. Song’s name burning into the Valiant’s memorial wall.

  He wrapped the gauze around the limb. His metal fingers looked clumsy around it no matter how carefully he moved.

  He finished the wrap. It wasn’t pretty, but it held.

  [AURORA//MOTOR ADAPTION]

  Micro-adjustment: Manual execution improved under altered motor profile

  Progression: +1%

  “At least someone’s impressed,” he said.

  Liang glanced at his HUD via her tablet and raised a brow. “Aurora’s easily pleased,” she said. “I’m not. Again.”

  He started another wrap.

  “You’re quiet,” Tanaka said after a moment. “You were more talkative when it was just needles and drugs.”

  “Needles don’t care if my fingers twitch,” Kaden said. He worked the gauze around, focused on tension. “These do.”

  “Fingers will come,” Tanaka said. “Pain took longer.”

  Kaden gave him a sidelong look. “You weren’t exactly chatty that day either,” he said.

  “Didn’t want to bite you,” Tanaka said. “Seemed rude.”

  Liang snorted. “You tried,” she said. “Twice.”

  Tanaka shrugged as much as the hip harness allowed. “Selective memory,” he said.

  Kaden finished the second wrap. Better. Less uneven.

  Liang nodded once. “Again,” she said. “I want fifteen in a row before I sign off today.”

  “Fifteen,” Kaden repeated.

  “You going to complain?” she asked.

  “No,” Kaden said. “Just counting.”

  Liang moved off to check on another patient.

  Tanaka watched Kaden’s hands move. “You keep looking at it like it’s going to go somewhere,” he said.

  “It’s not supposed to be there,” Kaden said. “Brain’s still catching up.”

  “It will,” Tanaka said. “Aurora likes you.”

  “Does it?” Kaden asked.

  “Gave you an aura that makes people bleed slower when you stand near them,” Tanaka said. “Sounds like affection.”

  Kaden snorted. “Feels like paperwork,” he said. “Every ping is just another reminder someone is close to dying.”

  Tanaka was quiet for a few seconds. When he spoke again, his voice was softer.

  “People die, Kaden. Better a reminder someone almost died than a name on a wall,” he said.

  Kaden wrapped gauze and pretended his fingers didn’t shake.

  The physio bay door hissed open.

  The shift in air and the change in noise made him glance up. Sergeant Jax stepped through, helmet clipped at her hip, uniform sleeves rolled, datapad tucked under her arm.

  She paused just inside, taking in the room with a quick scan. Her gaze passed over other patients, rigs, machines. Then it landed on them.

  “Knew I’d find you in the expensive wing,” she said.

  Liang straightened as she approached. “Sergeant,” she said. “They’re where they’re supposed to be.”

  “That would be a first,” Jax said. She stopped at the foot of Kaden’s table and looked at his hand. “How’s the new hardware, Mercer?”

  “Still attached,” Kaden said.

  “Liang says he’s working on ‘not crushing things he shouldn’t,’” Tanaka added.

  Jax’s mouth twitched. “Good priority,” she said. “I saw the weekly report. You’re cleared for progressive load?”

  “In controlled settings,” Liang said. “No recoil work yet. No heavy carry. He can shoot, but not like he’s used to.”

  “And the leg?” Jax asked, turning to Tanaka.

  Tanaka flexed his foot against the rig’s resistance. “It’s still there,” he said. “Apparently that’s progress.”

  “Aurora says you’re not allowed to use your trait as an excuse to be stupid,” Liang said.

  Jax’s brows went up. “Aurora said that?” she asked.

  “Interpreting the subtext,” Liang said.

  Jax shifted her weight, datapad ticking gently against her thigh. Up close, Kaden could see the fresh stress lines at the corners of her eyes, the way she hid a wince when she adjusted her stance. She’d taken her share of hits on that cruiser too.

  “How’s the Valiant?” Kaden asked.

  Jax’s eyes flicked to his. “Uglier, scorch marks here and there,” she said. “Still flying.”

  “Repairs?” Tanaka asked.

  “DC’s been welding patches over plating since we left the battlespace,” Jax said. “Gaunt and Okafor are glued to the command feeds. Shenzhou keeps sending us little love notes about Opp movement in the corridor.”

  “Love notes,” Kaden asked.

  “‘Increased patrol density.’ ‘Possible staging.’” Jax shrugged. “Opp didn’t like us cutting up one of their cruisers. They’re not going to pretend we didn’t.”

  Liang gave her a look. “You’re not here to raise their blood pressure, Sergeant.”

  “Just giving them context,” Jax said. She focused back on Kaden. “You’re on track for full combat re-cert?”

  “As long as I don’t drop too many fake arms,” he said.

  Liang checked her tablet. “Another couple sessions at this level,” she said. “Then we start recoil work. All things considered it’s been a solid week of recovery. I’ll sign off when he can clear and reload a live weapon without Aurora flagging his motor control as a hazard.”

  “Good,” Jax said. “Because Command isn’t talking about rotation. Task Force Harrow’s staying in the corridor. Opp are adapting. We don’t get to be less ready just because we’re tired.”

  “Always inspirational,” Tanaka said.

  “You want inspirational?” Jax asked. “Your last squad didn’t get a second run.”

  Tanaka’s jaw flexed. “I remember,” he said.

  Jax looked at both of them, and for a moment the hard edge eased.

  “You did good work on that cruiser,” she said. “All of you. Gaunt knows it. Okafor knows it. The wall knows it. Opp know it too now.”

  Her gaze flicked to Kaden’s hand.

  “They’re not going to stop testing us because we bled for it once,” she said. “So we get faster. We get meaner. We keep each other alive.”

  “Working on the faster part,” Kaden said, lifting the chrome fingers a little.

  “Work harder,” Jax said. “Opp aren’t going to slow down so you can adjust your grip.”

  Liang cleared her throat. “If you’re done terrifying my patients, I need Mercer to finish another thirteen wraps,” she said. “Then we graduate him to clamps.”

  “Don’t let him near clamps unless you’re sure,” Jax said. “Last thing I need is him dropping one inside Tanaka the next time he’s elbow-deep in his thigh.”

  Tanaka made a face. “Appreciate the image,” he said.

  “You’ll live,” Jax said. She turned back toward the door, then hesitated. “Oh. And there’s an all-hands in the auditorium on third watch.”

  Liang frowned. “Orders?”

  “Gaunt wants to talk about Harrow’s next steps,” Jax said. “I’m sure it’ll be very uplifting. Try not to schedule any major limb detachment during it.”

  “I’ll pencil it in,” Liang said.

  Jax’s gaze landed on Kaden one more time. “Be ready to sit in armor again soon,” she said. “This ship’s not done going into places where we can afford vacations.”

  “Yes, Sergeant,” Kaden said.

  “And Mercer?” Jax added.

  “Yeah?” he asked.

  She nodded at his left hand. “You did the job before you had that,” she said. “You’ll do the job with it. Don’t let the metal talk you out of it.”

  Then she was gone, boots thudding lightly on the bay floor as the door hissed shut behind her.

  Kaden looked down at his hand.

  Three flesh fingers. Two merely flesh colored. Tremor within expected variance.

  He picked up another roll of gauze. The metal fingers still felt clumsy, but the wrap went a little smoother this time.

  [AURORA//MOTOR ADAPTATION]

  Left Hand (Ring/Pinky): 49% pattern integration

  Recommendation: Continue task repetition under supervision

  He exhaled slowly.

  “Again,” Liang said.

  He wrapped. Tanaka worked his leg against the resistance. The physio bay hummed. Somewhere deeper in the ship, something rumbled. A change in reactor load, or a weapon mount cycling, or just Valiant reminding them she was still awake.

  Kaden kept his eyes on the gauze.

  Whatever Gaunt wanted to say in the auditorium, whatever Opp were reshuffling in the dark beyond the hull, whatever Harrow did next; none of it would matter if his hand failed the next time someone started bleeding in front of him.

  “Again,” he said quietly, and his fingers moved.