The dull crack of the back of a head hitting the mat rang through the gym in a short, heavy echo. The rookie from Bravo Unit lay there with his mouth hanging open, trying to drag in air Lexa had knocked out of him with one sharp knee to the solar plexus.
“Get up.” Graves’s voice held no emotion at all. It wasn’t anger. It was cold, absolute emptiness. “Nobody in a real fight is going to wait for your diaphragm to remember how to work. Get up or go write tickets for illegal parking.”
The kid wheezed, his fingers clawing convulsively at the vinyl flooring. A few yards away, Lexa’s main team kept working. Sonny and Henley were drilling holds, Tom and Mike were on the machines, but all their attention was fixed on the center of the room.
“She’s going to destroy them today,” Mike muttered, wiping his face with a towel. “Fourth one in forty minutes. Rover’s going to curse our names.”
“She’s not destroying them.” Sonny gave the slightest shake of her head without breaking rhythm. “She’s burning herself out.”
Lexa stepped toward the rookie, who had finally managed to get up on all fours. Her tank top was soaked through with sweat, her hair stuck to her temples, and her knuckles were already split open before the session had even started—she had obviously worked the heavy bag alone first.
“Zero reaction time. Zero balance.” Lexa circled him like a shark. “You think a tactical uniform makes you safe? You’re a target. And if you don’t learn how to feel the space around you, you won’t just get yourself killed. You’ll get your whole team killed.”
“I... I’m trying, Sergeant,” the kid forced out, staggering upright.
“People try in kindergarten,” Lexa cut in.
She didn’t let him reset—a sharp feint, a false left, then a brutal right to the body.
He flew backward again, rolling over one shoulder this time. He didn’t even get a block up.
Collins, standing by the entrance with his arms crossed over his chest, had been watching the slaughter for the last ten minutes. He had seen Henley and Tom exchanging glances, both of them feeling the tension climb. This was not training. It was an execution. Lexa was pouring everything into these miserable recruits.
The second she grabbed the kid by the front of his shirt, setting up for a vicious hip throw that would almost certainly end with cracked ribs, Collins pushed off from the wall.
He moved fast and quietly. Just as Lexa twisted her body into the throw, Jack caught her forearm. His grip was iron.
“That’s enough,” he said quietly, but with absolute force.
Lexa jerked, and for one second something close to madness flashed in her eyes before she focused on Jack. She tried to rip her arm free, but Collins only tightened his hold, folding her into a rough clinch that from the outside looked like an ordinary conversation.
“Let go, Jack,” she hissed, breathing hard.
“You’re done.” Collins jerked his chin at the rookies, who, not daring to believe their luck, started scrambling fast toward the exit. “Sonny, take them. Get them down to the range.”
When the team and the battered recruits disappeared through the door, Collins turned Lexa toward him without releasing her arm. He backed her into the wall beside the mats—not roughly, but enough to stop her from continuing the dance of death.
“Graves, have you completely lost your fucking mind?” he asked in a low voice, and there was no sympathy in it, only cold discipline. “Rover asked you to run drills with his group, not turn them into ground meat. He is not going to be pleased when he sees his people bruised to hell and barely able to lift their arms. You’re undercutting another sergeant’s authority, Lexa.”
“I don’t give a shit about Rover.” She finally tore her arm free and shoved him back, stepping out to the middle of the mat. “They’re weak. They’ll die on first contact. If I don’t break them here, the field will.”
“No.” Collins stepped after her, closing the gap again. “This isn’t about them. It isn’t even about Rover. It’s about you losing control. You’re pissed because that peacock surgeon shoved his way into your space. You’re pissed because Clarke’s falling apart. But taking it out on kids who only got their badges yesterday? That’s weakness, Graves. Not professionalism.”
Lexa went still. Her shoulders were trembling in tiny, restless spasms from adrenaline with nowhere to go. She looked down at her bloodied hands, and for one second her face shifted, exposing the blunt, searing fury eating her alive from the inside—a fury aimed at a situation she couldn’t force into submission.
“Ten days, Jack.” Lexa’s voice dropped so low it was nearly unrecognizable. “Julia’s deadline runs out in ten days. The vote is right on top of us. If Griffin doesn’t sign those papers, the next step won’t be another photo of the kid in a clean room. They’ll send something more... tangible.”
She lifted her eyes to him, and there was a dry, frightening resolve in them.
“And that idiot Andrew is setting Clarke up for fresh hits. He’s making noise where we need silence. While he plays perfect fiancé, time is slipping through our fingers. And I’m...” Her mouth twisted. “I’m stuck inside these goddamn protocols and this waiting game, checking the sugar in her tea and watching the ring close. I’m supposed to act, Jack. If I don’t find something, we lose.”
Collins exhaled. His tone softened a fraction, but the firmness stayed exactly where it was. He understood that her rage wasn’t hysteria. It was the compressed force of a fighter whose hands had been tied by bureaucracy.
“We’re all at the limit. But I’m telling you again—if you blow now, you’re useless. And you know it.”
He stepped back, giving her room.
“Rivers is here already. He’s got information. So go shower, get yourself together, and turn your brain back on. We need you working, not writing explanations to Rover about why his people are pissing blood. We need your head cold.”
Lexa shut her eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath. The berserker state went out of her by slow degrees, leaving behind only a hollow buzz in her muscles and a poisonous clarity in her thoughts.
“I’m fine,” she said, opening her eyes again.
The steel was back in them now—but working steel, controlled, tactical.
“Tell Rivers I’ll be there in fifteen.”
Collins nodded, holding her in his stare for another second, checking whether she was about to snap again. Once he was sure the storm had passed, he turned and left the gym.
Lexa stayed behind alone in the empty, echoing room. She walked to the bench, grabbed a water bottle, and poured half of it over her head, washing away sweat and what remained of the blind fury. The water was ice-cold. It helped.
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