"He's cooked, he's actually cooked." Marcus kept his voice barely above a whisper, sweat already beading at his temples. "He's still not here and roll call's almost done. When they catch him he's going to be the example. Running laps would be getting off easy."
Derek looked genuinely pained. "I should've grabbed him by the ankle and pulled him off the bunk when we left. That's my fault. That's entirely my fault."
Kevin had the expression of someone trying very hard to look concerned and not quite getting there. "I mean, I'm not going to lie — I'm a little curious what he's going to say when they drag him in front of the officer. Like what's the play at that point?"
But then the unexpected happened.
The officer's voice rang out strong and even, working through the roster from the very first student number all the way to the last.
He finished the list.
Ethan's name never came up.
Marcus blinked. "Wait. Did he just — did the officer actually skip him?"
Kevin frowned. "That can't be right. I know Ethan's student number — it comes right after mine. He definitely jumped over it." He shifted his weight forward. "I'll just go ask—"
Marcus seized his arm. "Absolutely not. If they genuinely missed it and you walk up there and flag it, you have personally handed Ethan to the firing squad. And then you and I are going to have a serious problem."
Kevin stood down, visibly annoyed.
Derek just shook his head. "How does that even happen to a person."
Marcus muttered something quiet and bitter about the universe playing favorites.
The first session was standing drill.
Open field, open sky, no shade anywhere near the formation. Heat radiated up from the track surface in slow, visible waves.
Officer Davis moved along the front row with his hands locked behind his back, voice sharp and carrying. "Heels together. Toes out at sixty degrees. Legs straight. Core in. Chest up — naturally, not forced. Head straight. Chin tucked slightly. Eyes forward. Mouths closed."
Within fifteen minutes the backs of their uniforms were soaked through. Sweat tracked down temples and jaw lines and dripped off chins. Eyes stung. Not one person raised a hand to wipe anything.
Time does a specific thing in that kind of heat. It thickens. It slows down. Each minute comes in heavier than the last and refuses to move on.
After a full hour, Officer Davis finally called a rest — and the formation came apart like it had been holding itself together by sheer collective willpower. People dropped straight down where they were standing. Some sat, some lay flat, some just bent over and put their hands on their knees. Groaning and muttering spread out across the field like a slow exhale.
Nora had gone completely pale. Her lips carried a faint bluish tinge. She was leaning against the person next to her with her eyes at half-mast, her chest rising and falling in long, effortful pulls. She'd shown up already running close to empty, and an hour of standing at rigid attention under a September sun had burned through almost everything she had.
If it hadn't been for last night the actual protein and calories, something real in her stomach for once — she would have been on the ground long before the rest break.
Ethan woke up at close to ten.
He lay there for another minute after the alarm, stretched properly, then got up and washed his face. He put on something light and comfortable and headed downstairs without any particular urgency.
He stopped at the campus convenience store. "Three cases of water — the coldest ones you've got back there." He looked over at the cooler. "And three of the biggest watermelons. Sweetest ones. Can I get a knife with that?"
He paid. The woman behind the counter helped him load everything onto a small hand cart she pulled out from behind the register without being asked. Ethan stacked the water cases and the foam cooler box onto it, got a grip on the handle, and started toward the training field.
His phone buzzed before he got there.
He glanced at the screen.
Dean Wilson.
"Hello, Dean Wilson." His voice was relaxed, completely unhurried.
The dean's tone came through warm and deliberate. The ask was clear: he wanted Ethan — as the highest-scoring incoming freshman — to represent the class at the university-wide opening ceremony in a few days. A short speech. A few minutes at the podium.
Ethan's first reaction was immediate and uncomplicated — no. Too exposed. Too much attention directed at him all at once, from too many people, too early.
But he held that back for a second and actually thought about it.
Dean Wilson had already been good to him. And there were things coming down the road — with the company, with various situations that would need room to breathe inside a university environment — where having the dean firmly in his corner was worth something real.
The refusal rerouted on its way out of his mouth.
"Of course, Dean Wilson — it would be my honor. I'll make sure I prepare properly."
He said it smoothly, with exactly the right weight of sincerity.
He hung up, allowed himself a small private smile, tightened his grip on the cart handle, and kept moving.
Out on the training field, the second standing drill session was underway.
Officer Davis was pacing the front of the formation with his hands behind his back, eyes tracking steadily along each row.
Then he caught the eye of another officer standing under the trees across the field, who appeared to be signaling him over. He said something brief to the formation, adjusted his cap, and walked over. The two fell into a low, private conversation.
The effect on the formation was immediate and invisible — nobody broke posture, nobody moved significantly — but the collective tension dropped several degrees and a quiet current of complaints started threading its way through the rows:
"I feel like a piece of chicken on a flat-top grill right now. I can literally feel myself getting crispy—"
"Who told me September would be cool? Who said that to me? I want a name—"
"My legs went numb like thirty minutes ago. I genuinely don't know if I'm standing or if the ground is just deciding to hold me up—"
"My sunscreen melted completely off my face, ran into my eyes, and now I can't see and I can't wipe it and everything is burning—"
Summer took the opening to drag the back of her hand quickly across her forehead, then turned to Marcus with her voice dropped low. "Hey — where is Ethan? Did he actually call in sick or something?"
Marcus made a sound that landed somewhere between a groan and a laugh, carefully rotating his locked-up ankle. "Sick? That man was in bed sleeping like a newborn when I left this morning. I could still hear him breathing when I was tying my shoes at the door."
"So he just... didn't come?"
Derek leaned in from the other side, equally aggrieved. "He said he'd be here soon. That was two hours ago. Zero sightings since."
And then, while they were talking, something appeared at the far edge of the field.
Ethan — pushing his hand cart, moving at a pace that could only be described as a leisurely stroll — appeared in the shaded strip behind the formation. He pulled the cart up against the fence like he was parking it somewhere comfortable and had all the time in the world.
He reached into the cooler, pulled out a watermelon, and set it on the edge of the cart.
Round, cold, still holding a faint chill from the refrigerator. He picked up the knife and split it clean with one stroke — a single sharp crack that cut straight through the ambient noise of the field. Bright red flesh opened up in the sunlight.
Ethan picked up the first slice, settled back against the fence in the full shade, and started eating it with the deep, unhurried satisfaction of a man who had nowhere to be and no complaints whatsoever about his current situation.
The entire formation went rigid.
Every pair of eyes that could move without technically breaking posture had moved. The students standing in full camouflage under direct sun, soaked through, legs locked, faces burning, were staring at a classmate standing in complete shade eating cold watermelon like he was at a summer picnic.
The silence held for about two full seconds.
Then it broke all at once:
"He is not—"
"Is that — is he seriously eating right now—"
"What in the entire—"
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