On the congested course designed to simulate the chaos of urban combat, dread clawed at her when it came time to engage. The instructors’ voices, usually so easy to follow, became a jumble of noise that left her paralyzed. Each drill, once routine and familiar, now became a battlefield, not of tactics, but of terror. With every failure, Mara’s peers whispered and laughed at what they perceived to be her inadequacies; their comments dripped with derision. “Dead weight,” they labeled her, their words sharp and stinging, little jabs aimed at her confidence.

Yet, unbeknownst to them all, behind the façade of failure and hesitation, Master Chief Reigns had been watching vigilantly. He discerned nuances in her movements, glimpses of a skill honed through years of experience, dormant, but not lost. Mara surveyed her surroundings with an urgency that belied her circumstances. In moments unobserved, she practiced weapon manipulations with fluidity despite the hesitations that abounded during drills.

Days turned to weeks, and the weight of scrutiny transformed from youthful disbelief to an unsettling discomfort amongst her peers. Whispers about mental fitness surfaced, questioning her presence in the program. As the obstacle course approached, tension reached a boiling point—an experience designed to test physical limits and mental resilience. It was here that an explosion of sound and light, the flashbang simulator, rendered her immobile, transforming her into a statue as memories cascaded in—darker places, moments of real danger where the stakes were life and death.