Chapter 143. Welcome to My Barracks

[Tactical mode activated.]

In that exact nanosecond, my consciousness silently detached from my physical body. My perception of time slowed to an absolute crawl, my neocortex kicked into overdrive, and the world around me literally froze, turning into a static three-dimensional hologram. Perfect conditions for a cold-blooded analysis of the situation.

The barracks lay deep in the shadows of night. My wristwatch showed exactly 1:00 a.m. Ted was snoring peacefully and loudly on the upper bunk, completely oblivious to the world. Six figures were silently creeping across the floor toward my corner bunk. The five poker players from earlier and, much to my profound displeasure, Corporal Lee. Earlier that day, I had briefly suspected that if the instructor was in the same age bracket as this bunch of scum, their thinking was probably similar, too. Still, somewhere deep down, I had hoped for better. My mistake. This base was rotten from top to bottom, without exception.

All six carried short, heavy steel pipes that glinted faintly in the darkness. They had hastily torn them from the frames of unused bunks at the far end of the room. Classic scenario: a group beating meant to crush a newcomer’s will and teach him “his rightful place” in the local hierarchy.

And in this situation, the blame was entirely mine. No, not because I had openly picked a fight with them during the day. Because I had allowed these lowlifes to even entertain the thought that they had the slightest chance of pulling this off. In my eagerness to absorb new, unexplored skills, I had skipped the afternoon hand-to-hand combat session and gone to the training grounds to practice riding a motorcycle. If I had shown up at the dojo, demonstrating my black belt and peak physical condition would have shut down this little nighttime operation before the idea had even taken shape. What was done was done. It would make a good lesson for the future: never, under any circumstances, pass up an opportunity to demonstrate superior force before trouble starts. Weakness invites violence. A clear display of overwhelming force prevents it.

I felt no fear of the inevitable confrontation. My new nervous system had essentially blocked that emotion, and a bunch of losers carrying scrap metal certainly was not going to tip my internal scales. Something else concerned me: the legal and administrative consequences of whatever I did next. Everyone has probably had one of those situations where legally justified retaliation against a bully somehow comes back to bite you: you hit the schoolyard jerk who started it, and somehow you both get detention; you step in on the street to defend a crying girl, only to find out the guy threatening her is her brother, and now the two of them are cussing you out together.

Before turning their bones to powder, I needed to calculate the exact amount of force required. There was no question that I needed to hit hard enough to put them down. The only question was how far I could take the damage.

Officially, Corps regulations imposed severe penalties for any fighting inside a military facility. But my nighttime visitors with the pipes knew an old military secret that I had already read about in barracks survival manuals: internal bruising and fractures could be written off as training injuries as long as everyone involved agreed to keep quiet. A qualified trauma specialist could easily tell the difference during an examination between an injury from falling on an obstacle course and the precise impact of a steel pipe. But who in this dump cared about forensic examinations? Certainly not First Lieutenant Dillon. That irresponsible drunk probably dreamed every night of the entire personnel roster disappearing into thin air and leaving him alone with a bottle of bourbon and a poker game.

All things considered, with the base's brass displaying such complete indifference, I had a free hand. The realization that I could act with absolute impunity settled over me with a pleasant, solid sense of certainty.

[Special command: Inflict maximum pain shock on the attackers without causing critical damage to internal organs. Inflict mechanical injuries to the extremities that will reliably incapacitate the subjects for 30 calendar days.]

The pain was necessary for long-term memory, so the prison-yard instincts of these bastards would permanently shut down any thought of trying this again. The temporary disability was purely aesthetic. I had no desire to see their smug faces in the barracks for the next month. Performing such delicate anatomical calibration manually with my strength was too risky. One millimeter too far, and a man could end up crippled for life. The most rational solution was to hand complete control of my motor functions over to my autonomous subconscious.

The timer reached zero. Subjective time instantly snapped back into sync with objective time, and the world around me exploded into motion.

My body moved on pure reflex, looking from the outside like a combat machine coming to life. In one sharp, fluid motion, I slipped sideways off the mattress, and the heavy steel pipe swung by the cigar-chomping ringleader sliced through the air with a dull whoosh, missing my pillow by an inch. My fingers moved on their own, with the surgical precision of a robotic manipulator, striking key nerve clusters and pressure points, twisting and locking the attackers' joints at unnatural angles. Roars of primal terror and pain tore through the barracks' sleepy silence, but I kept moving along the most efficient paths of destruction, an unstoppable machine deaf to their pleas.

Exactly sixty seconds later, the autonomous protocol completed its task and shut down. Six grown, solidly built men lay sprawled across the passage between the bunks at my feet. They were practically choking on their own tears as they writhed on the filthy floor.

Someone by the door flipped a switch, and the barracks flooded with harsh fluorescent light that stabbed at the eyes. The rest of the personnel, more than forty men in all, sat frozen on their mattresses with their mouths hanging open. Still half asleep, their sluggish adolescent brains simply could not process and make sense of what they were seeing. Pipes lay scattered across the floor, veterans groaned in agony, and I stood in the middle of it all without even being out of breath.

“If any of you tries to get within arm's reach of my bunk during off-duty hours again, this round is going to seem like a warm-up for your trip to the cemetery.” I looked down at Corporal Lee's crimson, tear-streaked face as he desperately clutched his dislocated wrist against his stomach. “Now get up and crawl to the infirmary.”

The six self-proclaimed “tough guys,” whimpering pathetically, limping on injured knees and cradling broken fingers, slowly shuffled out of the barracks under the stunned, deathly silence of everyone inside.

“Holy shit... Tom, you really took down six guys by yourself?!” Ted was practically hanging halfway off his top bunk, staring at me with eyes blazing with a fanatical mixture of awe and sheer vindictiveness. “Damn, man! Why didn't you wake me up?! We would've wiped the floor with those assholes together! I would've shown them!”

At last, the shock wore off, the barracks fully woke up, and an avalanche of frightened whispers and gossip instantly swept through the rows.

“Holy shit... The new guy dropped six veterans in under a minute? What is he, a SEAL or Delta?”

“What the hell are you idiots talking about? I cleared a training Portal with him. He's just a regular accountant!”

“An accountant, my ass! Did you see his hands?! The only way he's an accountant is if he was balancing the books in some secret CIA basement!”

“QUIET!” I cranked my voice up to full volume, mimicking the senior instructor from boot camp. “From this moment on, all activities will be conducted strictly according to regulations. With Corporal Lee temporarily out of commission, I am taking over as instructor for combat and physical training. Everyone get back in your bunks. Anyone who sleeps through an alarm, screws with the schedule, or shows up late for morning formation will be dealt with harshly. And one last thing...”

The entire barracks froze, not even daring to breathe. The air felt thick enough to cut with a knife.

“Any trace of street-gang culture or prison rules in my sector is officially eliminated.” I clasped my hands behind my back and surveyed the silent rows of bunks. “This is a Corps base, and you are United States soldiers, not convicts in a Virginia correctional facility. No nicknames, street names, or animal names. Address each other according to regulations only: rank, first name, last name. Is that clear?”

“YES, SIR!” More than forty voices answered in one thunderous, perfectly synchronized blast. Judging by the rattle of the windowpanes, even the women's barracks next door must have heard it.

“Lights out.” I calmly flipped the switch, plunging the room into darkness.

Naturally, after such a radical change in routine, half the platoon stayed awake until dawn. But my authority was firmly established: not a single smartphone screen lit up in the darkness, nobody whispered in the corners, and no one dared break out a deck of cards.

I fell asleep in a record forty seconds without even activating [Special Command]. The quality of my sleep was perfect. Despite the nighttime incident and the calories I had burned, I was fully recovered and opened my eyes at 4:45 a.m.

I took a shower completely alone. The local washroom was one large, open space with no stalls. The complete lack of privacy was deeply unpleasant.

By the barracks entrance, a weekly duty roster was posted on a plywood board. It had been drawn up by Corporal Lee, whose professional competence was now a matter of history. I skimmed through the names: Bumblebee, Dude, Crocodile, Asshole... This circus of nicknames had turned a secure military installation into a gathering place for thugs. Correcting the roster and switching the duty assignments to the soldiers' actual names became my top priority.

At 5:00 a.m., the vibration alarms on the soldiers' wrists went off. Without making a fuss, and under my unblinking stare, the “animals” climbed out of their bunks and headed off to their assigned chores. The process had begun.

At seven in the morning, the base officially switched to daytime operations. Lee and his nighttime accomplices did not show up for breakfast. Apparently, the local infirmary was dealing with a peak workload. The women on base, however, were already fully aware of the nighttime beatdown. Rumors travel through closed systems faster than gigabit internet. The girls from the assault unit kept stealing wary, openly curious glances at me. Nobody on base quite understood how to react to the change in the chain of command yet, so the atmosphere in the mess hall felt like a wire pulled tight. Only Ted sat beside me, practically glowing with happiness as if he had just hit the jackpot at a Las Vegas casino.

I did not share his adolescent optimism. Beating up six thugs was the simple, mechanical part of the job. Cleaning up after them, restructuring the logistics, and getting this rusted-out machine to run efficiently would be a monumental undertaking. The obvious place to start was a basic food audit: the cooks on duty today had simply dumped yesterday's undercooked soup and dried-out cold cuts onto the trays. Quality control had completely collapsed.

At eight in the morning, physical training began. Dense, damp fog hung over the obstacle course. The entire male section of P-SWAT stood lined up on the wet asphalt in front of me, exactly fifty-one men. The training program's strict gender separation mirrored boot camp, which happened to work in my favor under the circumstances.

The training methodology I had observed from Corporal Lee yesterday amounted to professional malpractice. He treated everyone exactly the same, relying on blunt military standardization: he screamed at skinny guys who were genetically unsuited for building mass, demanding twelve pull-ups from them, while naturally muscular soldiers knocked out the same quota in thirty seconds and spent the rest of the hour staring at the ceiling. My database of biomechanics and sports medicine was unequivocal: to maximize platoon efficiency, each soldier needed a strict individualized target. And I was perfectly capable of providing one.

Fifty-one pairs of eyes stared at my new whistle, waiting for instructions.

“From this moment on, I am taking personal control of all training.” I clasped my hands behind my back, hardening my voice into steel. “The overall structure of the program will remain within regulations, but the methodology is changing completely. During the course, each of you will receive an individualized workload and biomechanical corrections. No discussion, arguments, or questions while in formation. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir!” the training ground answered as one.

“Private Drake, step forward. You've adapted to my training system, so you'll serve as the rear guard. Coordinate the stragglers and keep panic under control at the checkpoints.”

Ted frowned for a second as he processed the order, but then it dawned on him that I had effectively appointed him my trusted lieutenant. He puffed out his chest proudly and barked, “Yes, sir!”

[Special Command: Conduct an intensive, comprehensive training regimen for all personnel, implementing individualized adaptive workloads for each subject. Optimize the platoon's movement biomechanics.]

Once again, my consciousness shifted into the background. From deep inside my skull, I watched my body operate flawlessly and automatically in fast-forward. My vocal cords issued precise, measured commands. My body led the column, cheerfully driving the men through the fog and across the obstacle course, while my subconscious processor simultaneously scanned every soldier. I doubled some soldiers' sets on the parallel bars as we moved, noting weak shoulder girdles; I smacked others sharply on the knees, correcting dangerous landing angles after the three-meter wall; I kept others on the rope apparatus until their grip was perfect. Ted kept circulating along the panting line, acting as a buffer. “Don't slack off, man! Ross knows what he's doing! Just breathe steady and keep up this damn pace, or he'll work your ass into the ground, but he'll make sure you get it right!”

I was abruptly thrown out of hyperfocus and back into reality. I immediately raised my wrist and checked the time. A standard workout under Lee lasted exactly ninety minutes. My adaptive cycle had consumed 160 minutes of operational time. Nearly three hours of nonstop, painstaking exertion.

Still, for a first attempt, it was more than enough. The entire platoon, including the supposedly seasoned veterans, lay sprawled across the wet grass of the training grounds, desperately gulping down thin air. They were physically spent, but the morning hostility in their eyes had been replaced by the first vague stirrings of awe at what disciplined efficiency could accomplish.

I was planning to seal the achievement with a short motivational speech, but a system timer began blinking at the edge of my smartphone screen. My allotted time on base had expired. It was time to report for duty at the Corps' next department.

Terrible timing. I had only just started cleaning up this swamp and establishing a rigid chain of command when the system yanked me away from the local front. All I could do was hope that while I was gone, these prison-yard savages would not wreck the tiny scraps of discipline I had drilled into them during the night.