Iron Pulse

The door clanged shut behind him like the closing of a vault.

Unit-9, Outer Residential Band, Level C.

No windows. Just exposed synthcrete walls, faded government warnings, and the low hum of backup power. West dropped his duffel beside the cot — the only piece of furniture not bolted to the floor. His knuckles were swollen from the fight, but he didn't bother with bandages. Pain was familiar.

He didn't sit.

Instead, he walked past the shattered mirror, past the dry-water dispenser that hadn't worked in two years, and stood before the rig — his personal gym, if it could be called that. It was a patchwork of rusted iron bars, drone struts, and salvaged weight plates. The pull-up bar creaked when he grabbed it, but it held.

Twenty reps.Forty.Sixty.

Each breath burned. Each motion carved.

When he dropped down, the sweat on his back evaporated instantly in the cold, dry air. He moved to the sandbag next, throwing low hooks, rotating from the core, steady as a piston. He didn't need music. He didn't need inspiration.

He needed rhythm. He needed control.

Then he paused.

There — a whisper in the air. The faintest change in current. A footstep. Someone outside his door.

No alarms. Whoever it was, they had bypassed the retinal lock. That meant resources. Training. Intent.

West wiped his hands and reached under his cot.

A steel pipe. Balanced. Dense. Familiar.

Then — a knock.

Clean. Precise. Not desperate. Not hostile.

He approached the door slowly, one hand on the pipe.

"…W-13?" a voice called. Smooth. Male. Modulated.

West opened the door halfway.

Standing there was a tall figure in a long coat of filtered fabric, the kind used in active war zones. The man's face was obscured by a matte-gray respirator mask with dual voice ports and thin LED readouts across the lenses. A relic from older military intel units.

He held nothing. But West didn't relax.

"I'm not here to sell you purification tablets or offer you a loan," the man said. "And I'm not here to fight. I came to ask you a question."

West's eyes narrowed.

"Then ask."

The man tilted his head slightly.

"Why did the best close-quarters officer from the Dustline Theater disappear into the undercity after refusing high command's final directive?"

West didn't answer. Not immediately.

The man stepped closer, uninvited, but not aggressive. He studied the room — the weights, the cracks in the wall, the ancient military tag still hanging by the sink.

"This is how you live now?" he asked, voice still neutral. "After what you led. After what you survived?"

"Surviving's not the same as winning," West replied. His voice was low, calm, with the weight of someone who'd been both.

The man nodded once.

"You disobeyed a retreat order. Saved two thousand civilians. The Accord labeled it insubordination. Buried your name. Expunged your record. Now they stream your gym fights on blackfeeds like you're just another broken ex-soldier with a high pain tolerance."

West said nothing.

"Thing is," the visitor continued, "I don't believe in coincidences. Especially not when that same ex-soldier just happened to defeat a Class-B cybered enforcer with no augmentations."

He reached into his coat and pulled out a black obsidian disk, no larger than a palm. With a soft click, it projected a hologram: a subterranean schematic, deep and sprawling, blinking red at its center.

"Grid-Zero," he said. "You remember it?"

West's jaw tensed. Just slightly.

"Half your old squad is flagged again. The Accord reactivated their designations. You're the only one not on their list — because they think you're still dead. I suggest you stay that way."

The man tapped the projection once, zooming in. What looked like a chamber appeared — glass vats, suspended spines, and a name West hadn't heard in nearly a decade:

PULSE CORE V-7

West's voice dropped into gravel.

"You have no clearance to talk about that."

"I have enough clearance to know they never shut it down. Just rebranded it. Hid it beneath public-sector hospitals and mining zones."

The man retracted the disk. The hologram vanished.

"I'll come back in 48 hours. With or without your agreement, things are moving. If you want to pretend the war's over, I won't stop you. But your name's waking ghosts, West. People are remembering. Some want you gone. Others… want you back."

He turned and walked away, disappearing into the smog without a sound.

West stood alone in the silence, pipe still in hand.

Behind him, the mirror — cracked and dusty — reflected a soldier no one had officially acknowledged in nine years.

He looked down at his scarred hands.

Then he returned to the bar.

No words. No doubts.

Just another rep.

Because the only way to be ready for a world like this… was never to stop.