Some things never change, Kevin thought back.

  And some things change completely, AIDA countered. You're no longer just the soldier they think you are.

  Kevin released the president's hand, his face betraying none of the internal dialogue. He'd been a weapon for his country before. Now he would be a weapon for what remained of humanity. The difference seemed academic when the alternative was extinction.

  He caught Duncan watching him, her eyes shrewd. "Ready to meet your team?" she asked.

  Kevin nodded once, decision made, course set. Whatever he had become during those years of stasis, whatever AIDA had turned him into, it would serve this purpose. He would complete this mission, secure these horns, clear this facility. Not because Wilson commanded it or because he owed allegiance to a country that no longer existed, but because there were still people within those walls worth saving.

  And because saving people was what Kevin Moore had always done, even when it broke him.

  "Let's get to work," he said.

  Chapter five

  BACK TO THE BASICS

  Captain Duncan led Kevin down a narrow corridor lined with identical steel doors, each marked with a simple numeric designation. The hallway smelled of industrial cleaner and the faint, lingering odor of too many bodies packed into too small a space, a scent he recognized from every barracks he'd ever inhabited across time and continents. Some things never changed.

  "Standard officer quarters," Duncan explained, her boots clicking against the concrete floor. "Nothing fancy, but private. That's a luxury these days."

  She stopped at the door marked 307 and pressed her palm against a small scanner. The lock disengaged with a metallic click.

  "Your biometrics are already in the system," she said, pushing the door open. "Just touch the pad and you're in."

  The room that greeted Kevin was military minimalism distilled to its essence. A narrow bunk held neatly folded gray sheets. A desk was bolted to the wall. A footlocker sat at the bed's end. A tiny bathroom cubicle was visible through an open doorway. No windows existed, just recessed lighting that cast the space in the same amber glow that seemed to permeate the entire fortress.

  "Home sweet home," Kevin muttered, stepping inside.

  Duncan remained in the doorway, all business. "Shower and sink use are strictly rationed. Four minutes each per day. The system cuts off automatically, so make it count." She gestured to a small digital display above the sink. "Red means you're out of water for the day. Green means you've got time left."

  Kevin nodded, sweeping the room with a soldier's eye, already estimating space for movement, places to store gear, and defensive positions if the door were breached.

  "Mess hall is at the end of this corridor, right turn, then third door on the left," Duncan continued. "Dinner service is from 1630 to 1900 hours. Don't be late."

  "Got it," Kevin said, moving to the center of the room, feeling its dimensions. Small, but he'd had worse. Much worse.

  "We'll start training tomorrow at 0600, but we will have dinner together tonight. Get some rest before chow, Moore. You've had a long day." The ghost of a smile touched Duncan's lips. "Probably the longest anyone's ever had."

  Then she was gone, the door sliding shut behind her with a definitive click.

  Kevin stood motionless in the center of the room, listening to her footsteps fade down the corridor. For the first time since waking from the ice, he was completely alone. No soldiers watching him, no president evaluating his worth, no Cylopears trying to melt his face off. Just him and the humming silence of a fortress city built on the bones of a dead world.

  And AIDA, of course. Never truly alone with an AI hardwired into his brain.

  He stripped quickly, drilled efficiency taking over. The unfamiliar uniform came off easily enough, still designed with practicality in mind, despite the generations of design evolution. He folded everything methodically, old habits refusing to die, and placed the stack on the desk.

  The bathroom cubicle was barely large enough to turn around in. The shower stall was a metal tube with a drain and a showerhead. Above the sink, a green "4:00" displayed his daily water allotment.

  He stepped into the shower and pressed the activation button. Water sputtered from the showerhead. It was cold at first, then lukewarm at best. But it was water, real water, and as it hit his skin, Kevin closed his eyes and allowed himself one moment of pure sensation. It washed away the grime of the battle and the lingering chill of the stasis pod.

  Interesting that they prioritize individual hygiene despite resource constraints, AIDA's voice materialized in his mind. Rational decision. Disease control is essential in high-density population centers.

  Kevin's eyes snapped open. "Jesus. You could warn a guy before chatting him up in the shower."

  My apologies, AIDA replied, not sounding particularly sorry. I've been monitoring your vital signs and neural activity continuously. Your cortisol levels have decreased by 18% since entering this room. You're finally relaxing.

  "As much as anyone can relax with a voice in their head," Kevin muttered, running his hands through his hair. The timer on the wall showed 3:15 remaining. "So what's the deal with the upgrades?"

  Ah, yes. Your enhancements. AIDA's tone shifted slightly, becoming more formal. The Redz40 in your system has been integrated at the cellular level. Your physical attributes, strength, speed, reflexes, cognitive processing, have all been optimized to approximately 300% of the human baseline. You experienced this during the engagement with the Cylopear.

  Kevin snorted. "Super strength? Really? What is this, trillionaire AI tech or a comic book?"

  Scoff if you like, AIDA replied, with a hint of offense in her synthetic voice. But the integration goes beyond simple physical enhancement.

  As if on cue, a translucent red bar appeared in the upper right corner of Kevin's vision. It was a heads-up display overlaid on reality itself.

  "What the hell is that?" he asked, blinking rapidly. The bar remained.

  That's your Redz40 saturation level, AIDA explained. You can absorb particles from the ambient atmosphere. The higher your saturation, the more you can access advanced capabilities like Red Time Dilation, or RTD for short.

  "Red Time Dilation," Kevin repeated flatly, rinsing soap from his arms as the timer counted down. "You mean the slow-motion stuff? Come on."

  It's a substantial acceleration of your neural processing and physical response systems, creating the perception of slowed time. But Kevin, AIDA’s voice dropped, turning serious. You must be careful.

  "Careful of what?"

  You already displayed significant physical enhancement in the field today. They accepted it because they are desperate. But if you reveal the advanced capabilities, like RTD or rapid metabolic healing, they will stop seeing a soldier and start seeing a specimen.

  The water shut off with an abrupt clank, leaving Kevin dripping and thoughtful. He grabbed a thin towel from a hook beside the shower.

  "You think they'd lock me up," he said. It wasn't a question.

  They would certainly attempt to weaponize you more aggressively, AIDA confirmed. Or dissect you to see how it works. We need to keep the true extent of your abilities classified. Let them think you are just... efficient.

  Kevin stepped out of the bathroom, towel wrapped around his waist. He moved to the footlocker and found it contained basic supplies: gray jumpsuits, brown combat boots, underwear, socks. Standard issue for a world with limited resources.

  "They already want to weaponize me," he pointed out, sitting on the bed to pull on the boots. "Operation Siren."

  A relatively straightforward military operation, AIDA countered. Manageable. But do not give them a reason to look deeper.

  Kevin stood fully dressed in the standard UAC uniform. He rolled his shoulders, twisted his torso, testing the feel of the clothing and, more importantly, the body beneath it. His movements were fluid and exact, more so than they had any right to be.

  "Fine," he said finally. "We keep the ace up our sleeve. But my enhanced strength and speed aren't exactly subtle."

  Those aspects can be attributed to standard Redz40 mutation. Just... try not to catch any bullets with your teeth.

  Kevin dropped to the floor and began a set of push-ups, testing his limits. Twenty, thirty, fifty. His muscles barely registered the effort. He switched to one-handed, then to fingertips. Still no strain.

  "This is going to take some getting used to," he admitted, standing again without even a hint of elevated heart rate.

  We have time, AIDA assured him. We can train in private, refining your control. I don’t detect any recording systems active inside this room. For now, simply being faster and stronger than the average human will be advantage enough.

  Kevin nodded, running a hand through his damp hair. Generations asleep, and he'd awakened to find himself something other than human. The Green Beret in him recognized the tactical advantage. The man in him wasn't so sure.

  "One problem at a time," he murmured to himself, an old combat mantra from another life. "One problem at a time."

  A bell rang through the barracks corridor, three short bursts that triggered an immediate response from the surrounding rooms. Doors slid open, and soldiers emerged in a disciplined stream. Not quite rushing, but moving with the intent of people who had learned that wasted time meant wasted resources. Kevin stepped into the current, following the gray uniforms toward what could only be the mess hall.

  The first thing that struck him was the demographic reality of this new world. Women outnumbered men by what looked like three to one. He'd noticed it earlier, of course, with Duncan's squad, the president's staff, and the children's training group. But here in the barracks population, the imbalance was stark and unmistakable. The faces that passed him carried the subtle mutations Duncan had mentioned, such as eyes with vertical pupils, skin with faint blue undertones, and a woman whose ears tapered to slight points. Humanity adapting to survive.

  The mess hall itself was a vast, open space that might once have been a warehouse. The ceiling towered twenty feet overhead, crisscrossed with exposed pipes and ventilation ducts. Long metal tables filled the space in orderly rows, each already filling with soldiers in gray jumpsuits identical to his own. The walls were bare concrete, unadorned except for massive UAC flags and digital displays showing what appeared to be duty rosters and announcements.

  A line formed at the far end where servers in white coverings doled out portions from large steel containers. The smell hit Kevin with unexpected force. It was real food, not synthetic protein or nutrient paste. He spotted something that might be actual meat, vegetables grown in hydroponics, bread baked from real grain. Not a luxury by pre-war standards, but in this world, a feast.

  "Moore!"

  Kevin spotted Captain Duncan at a table near the center of the room. She sat with several other officers, their jumpsuits distinguished by subtle rank insignia on the collars. She waved him over; her face set in its usual neutral expression.

  He started toward her, navigating between the crowded tables. The acoustics of the space created a steady roar of conversation punctuated by occasional laughter or the clatter of metal utensils against trays. People glanced at him as he passed. He was the newcomer, the stranger, the man out of time. Some looks lingered longer than others, curiosity mixed with assessment.

  He was halfway to Duncan's table when the collision happened.

  A tall figure stepped directly into his path, deliberately, from the way she angled her approach. She towered over most of the other soldiers, a good six-foot-four of solid muscle. Her skin had a distinct reddish hue, not the sickly boiled-red of the Redz, but a deep crimson that suggested significant mutation. Where her fingernails should have been, tapered claws extended nearly an inch from each fingertip.

  The impact sent his tray clattering to the floor, food splattering across the concrete.

  "Watch it, relic," she snapped, her voice carrying over the surrounding conversations. The three soldiers flanking her, all similarly tall, all with the same reddish skin tone, snickered in unison.

  The mess hall quieted, attention shifting toward the confrontation. Kevin felt dozens of eyes on him, evaluating his response. The woman stared down at him with open contempt, clawed hands resting on her hips, lips curled in a smirk that showed teeth just slightly too sharp to be fully human.

  Behind her, Kevin could see Duncan half-rising from her seat, tension evident in her posture.

  "You walked into me deliberately," Kevin said, voice calm and measured. "I think an apology would be appropriate, officer or not."

  The woman's eyes widened, genuine surprise flickering across her face before hardening into anger. "An apology? To fresh meat?" She leaned closer, the smell something like copper and ozone filling his nostrils. "You don't even know who I am, do you? Lieutenant Vex, Third Battalion. I've killed more Redz than you've had hot meals."

  Her friends laughed again, on cue, like this was a performance they'd seen before.

  "I'm sure your kill count is very impressive," Kevin replied, not backing down an inch. "Doesn't change the fact that you owe me an apology."

  Lieutenant Vex's face darkened, the red in her skin deepening to something closer to burgundy. "What I owe you is a lesson in respect," she growled.

  Her fist came up in a blur. It was faster than a normal human could move, a product of whatever mutation gave her that crimson skin. It was a textbook strike, aimed directly at his solar plexus, designed to drop him without causing permanent damage.

  But to Kevin, it might as well have been moving through amber.

  The world around him suddenly shifted, sound stretching into a low, distorted rumble. The mess hall froze into a tableau of shocked faces and half-raised utensils. Lieutenant Vex's fist hung in the air, advancing toward his chest at a fraction of its original speed, the air around her knuckles visibly displacing in slow-motion ripples.

  What the hell?

  The red bar that AIDA had shown him earlier flared in his vision, pulsing with internal light, a portion of it draining away as he watched.

  RTD active, AIDA's voice explained, calm and clinical in his mind. Your nervous system detected the threat and automatically triggered the response. This is normal.

  Time hadn't stopped, but his perception and ability to react had accelerated dramatically. Kevin could see individual dust motes hovering in the air, caught in the beams of overhead lights. He could track the slow blinks of a soldier three tables away. Every detail of the room stood out in hyper-focus. He saw the weave of the uniforms, the texture of the concrete floor, and the pattern of food splatter from his dropped tray.

  Lieutenant Vex's punch continued its glacial approach. Kevin had all the time in the world to analyze her stance, the weight distribution on her feet, the vulnerability of her balance. With deliberate care, he shifted his weight, stepping slightly to the side of her strike. He could see her eyes beginning to register confusion, pupils slowly dilating as they tried to track his movement that, to her perception, must have seemed impossibly fast.

  He placed his hand on her extended wrist, feeling the tendons and bones beneath the skin with unprecedented clarity. His other hand found the perfect position on her hip. The physics of the throw presented themselves to his enhanced mind as equations made flesh, with leverage, momentum, and gravity all working in concert.

  He pivoted, using her own forward motion against her. In this stretched moment, he could feel the exact instant when her center of gravity shifted beyond recovery. He guided her trajectory with mathematical certainty, ensuring she would land hard enough to make his point but not so hard as to cause serious injury.

  Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the RTD effect faded. The world snapped back to normal speed.

  The mess hall erupted in shocked gasps as Vex slammed into the concrete floor with a meaty thud that echoed off the high ceiling. She lay on her back, red-skinned face frozen in an almost comical expression of disbelief, the wind thoroughly knocked out of her lungs.

  Complete silence fell over the room. Every face turned toward Kevin, eyes wide with shock or newfound assessment. He could practically hear the thoughts running behind those stares, reevaluating his threat level, recalibrating their understanding of the hierarchy.

  "What the actual fuck," someone whispered from three tables away.

  Before Vex could recover, Captain Duncan materialized at Kevin's side, fingers closing firmly around his elbow. Her face revealed nothing, but her grip conveyed urgency.

  "Time to go," she muttered under her breath, already steering him away from the fallen officer and toward her table.

  "She started it," Kevin said, feeling absurdly like a schoolboy caught in a playground fight.

  "I know. That's why she's on the floor and you're still standing." Duncan's voice was tightly controlled. "But we need to move before this escalates."

  As she pulled him through the now-silent mess hall, Kevin glanced at the RTD bar in his vision. It had depleted to nearly empty, a thin red line pulsing weakly at the bottom of the display. But even as he watched, it began to refill, drawing energy from the Redz40 particles in the air around him.

  "That was impressive," Duncan said quietly when they reached her table. "Though possibly not the most diplomatic first impression."

  "She threw the first punch," Kevin pointed out.

  "True." Something like respect flickered across Duncan's face. "But I've never seen anyone move that fast. Not even the most heavily mutated soldiers we have." Her eyes narrowed slightly. "You're full of surprises, Moore."

  Behind them, Lieutenant Vex was being helped to her feet by her friends, her face contorted in a mask of humiliation and rage. She pointed a clawed finger at Kevin, mouth opening to deliver some threat or promise of retribution.

  "We can discuss your capabilities later," Duncan said, gesturing for Kevin to sit. "Right now, let's get some food in you and let things cool down."