Thalin Miro—Patch to his friends—sat in the massive, warehouse-sized medical screening room. He wore a green armband, signifying that he was most interested in the medical field in the Defense Forces. It really didn’t matter which part—fleet or ground. His parents had been doctors without borders his whole life. He had seen the aftermath of Pax operations, natural disasters, and calamities. Nothing could really shake him—or so he thought.

  “Listen up. You all have decided that you want a shot at a medical class from your trials. We are here to see if any preexisting abilities make that happen.” The cadre speaking stood on a small pedestal addressing the group. “Nothing says that you will get a medical class, even if you know about first aid and medicine now, but all of this will be used as data for the Pax—to determine if ability translates to class.”

  Unlike some of the other screenings, the medical group was kept together. There was no need to split them into smaller groups for the sake of testing. The hundred or so recruits were clumped at the near end of the space, around the instructor, listening. The rest of the room held about two hundred stations.

  Patch glanced over his shoulder, trying to see what was at each. As much as he wanted to get an advantage, he didn’t dare insult the Pax officer by ignoring his speech. As he looked back at the man speaking, more cadre members started walking into the room, splitting off so one was at each station.

  “As aspiring medical professionals, you will be tasked with patching up the recruits injured in other parts of the screening process. There will be one cadre at each of your stations to take notes and assign values to your abilities.”

  He went on to explain how the scoring system worked—zero denoting no ability, five fully trained. The thing that Patch couldn’t figure out was: where were the patients?

  “Our brethren in the combat classes are good at hurting one another—very good—and there are almost a thousand of them to every one of us medics. The cadre is there to pressure you, push you, force you to show how you handle yourself when things get to be too much. Do the best you can.”

  Someone in the crowd raised their hand and, after being acknowledged, asked, “What if we fail? What happens to the patient if we can’t provide enough aid?”

  The Pax officer’s eyes hardened. Up until that point he had been far more casual than some of the stories Patch had heard—things like cadre physically correcting recruits, screaming, shoving—all normal according to those who washed out and returned to tell tales.

  “They will likely die, just like in real-life scenarios.”

  The room fell completely silent; you could hear the breathing pick up. The simple statement changed the dynamic in the room completely. This was potentially life or death—something most of the people testing had never encountered. Sure, Patch had seen some horrible stuff in his travels with his parents, but he had never been the one to cause a death. His parents were there doing the medical work. As a child, it was his role to do logistical stuff: keep kids entertained, restock supplies, shuttle patients around. This would be the first time his skills made the difference.

  “That isn’t right. We are all still recruits,” the same kid who asked the question said.

  “You all signed release waivers in your initial application. Right or wrong, this is how it is. How are we to tell what your true abilities are without pushing you to your limits?” The question was rhetorical because the instructor didn’t give anyone a chance to answer before yelling for them to claim a station.

  Patch was on the move as soon as the words left the man’s mouth. Without even making a conscious decision, he headed toward the first vacant station he spotted. Arriving there slightly out of breath from the exertion, he looked into the face of his grader. The man standing beside him wore a Pax ground forces uniform, red cross patch boldly emblazoned on each shoulder. Great, a combat medic.

  Before he could strike up a conversation or even make introductions, the floor in front of him split open to reveal a massive glass cylinder. The whole structure started rising from the floor, showing that it was sitting atop a standard hover gurney. As soon as its wheels were flush with the floor around it, the glass split at the top and retracted back, revealing his patient.

  As soon as it cleared his line of sight, he drew in a sharp breath. Sitting on the gurney before him was a recruit who had the majority of his upper body blown away. The gore was nothing new for him, but his proximity to it was. The first thing he noticed was the smell: coppery blood mixed with the scent of other bodily fluids likely released from the incident.

  “Recruit Billings,” the grader at the table gestured to the motionless man on the gurney. “Do your best to fix him up. Time starts now.”

  Patch froze. He didn’t need his medical certification to see that his “patient” was deceased. The vast majority of the man’s head and upper body was missing, his wound cutting a jagged line from nose down to the bottom of his ribcage on his right side.

  “What the fuck are you waiting for?” the grader screamed directly into Patch’s ear, spittle flying and hitting him in the side of his head. “This man needs attention and you are just standing there with your dick in your hand.”

  His idealism warred with the reality of the situation inside of him. Any work he did would be for naught when it came to saving the man in front of him, but it would showcase his abilities. Deciding to lean into the latter, he lunged forward and started trying to adjust what was left of the man’s head to clear his airway. That was his first priority, at least in a less severe situation: clear the airway to aid the patient in breathing.

  “Good fucking job, you just made him a quadriplegic by not supporting the head as you twisted. A bone shard from that crushed C1 finished the job of severing his spinal cord.”

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  The grader was doing a bang-up job of increasing the pressure and making Patch second-guess himself. He had barely touched the patient and was questioning if he had killed the dead man. With airway taken care of, his attention turned to stopping major bleeding. His hands came away slick with blood as he turned his attention to the small supply table next to him. Tourniquets—if the man’s heart was still pumping, that would be his next move. Stop the bleeding in his injured arms.

  Before he could spot the devices he was looking for, a hand connected with his back between his shoulder blades and shoved. “Get the fuck down, cover the patient and keep a low profile in the field.” The grader screamed at the top of his lungs.

  As Patch’s body bent from the force, he knocked everything off the table. Luckily his hands closed around the tourniquets just as he did so. Getting his feet back underneath him, he twisted and prepared to work on the patient again. As he did, his eyes met the pleading ones of the patient at the station next to him. She was a smaller woman sporting a nasty gash on her leg. Based on the color—or lack thereof—in her face and the small red creek flowing down the inside of her knee, she was losing lots of blood. The grader once again shoved him down with a warning to cover the patient, causing his shirt to smear with the man’s blood.

  Patch didn’t hesitate. He turned his attention to the recruit working the station. The man was frozen in indecision—standing, mouth agape, eyes vacant—watching his patient slowly bleed out. The pressure wasn’t for everyone. Patch tried to yell to get his attention. “Tourniquet above the injury—stop the bleeding before she goes into shock.” He held up the tourniquet in his hand and waved it.

  The woman’s eyes began to drift shut as she struggled to keep them open. He could see the fear on her face. The recruit being tested didn’t even register his words; his empty eyes still stared off into the distance. He couldn’t watch the woman die—not if he could do something about it. He made the rash judgment. Standing at full height, he swung around with an elbow, catching the grader in the ribs and pushing him back.

  “This man is fucking dead—there is nothing I can do about it. She is not.” He nodded to the station next to him as he started to move. “But she will be if something doesn’t change.”

  “That is not your assigned patient, recruit.” The grader bellowed from behind him, clutching at his side where Patch’s elbow connected.

  Patch didn’t care. He could see where he could make a difference. Racing forward, he shouldered the recruit out of the way and started working. Opening the tourniquet, he reached between her legs and started feeding it under. Once it came out the other side, he wrapped it around and began tightening. Shifting it further up into her groin to prevent it from putting direct pressure on the wound. The woman let out a gurgled scream as he tightened. Tourniquets were never fun, causing almost as much pain in their application as the wound they were fixing. After two hard twists, the bleeding started to slow. Two more saw it almost come to a stop. He wasn’t strong enough to get it to completely staunch the flow. Instincts took over and before he knew it, he was applying another right above the first. As the second tightened the bleeding stopped completely.

  With the most glaring injury corrected, he moved on to checking the patient for any others.

  “Bleeding stopped—what now?” his grader demanded from behind him, having followed him over to the other station.

  Patch did his best to ignore the man. He needed to be focused, in the zone, to make sure he didn’t miss anything. Finding two smaller wounds—one on her side and one on her arm—he turned to the supply table to find pressure dressings. The equipment they had been given was old-school—very old-school—but it was cheap enough for testing purposes and forced skill to shine through technology.

  Not wanting to waste time to find shears, he reached down and put the hem of her shirt in his mouth. Biting down and pulling, he split it up the side to expose the wound. It wasn’t nearly as bad as her leg, but it was bleeding and open—a huge risk of infection. Ripping the bandage out of the packaging, he placed it atop the wound and wrapped the ties around her. After getting a few through the lever arm on the back of the gauze, he switched directions and cinched it tight. The woman let out a pained hiss, but nothing more.

  He did the same for her arm before verifying that she had no other wounds that needed tending to. After everything had been treated, he moved into making the patient comfortable. The last thing he wanted was for her to go into shock this close to being finished. He propped her up on some provided blankets before throwing one over her to keep her warm.

  “Hey, I’m Patch,” he said as he worked. “What’s your name?”

  Talking to the patient—trying to keep their mind off their wounds and reassure them that everything would be alright—was one of the best ways to keep them from shocking out. All he wanted to do was keep her comfortable and conscious until a trained medic could take a look at her. They wouldn’t just leave her like this, would they?

  “I’m Mary. Thank you,” she grunted as he tried to adjust her into a more comfortable position.

  “You’re going to be fine, Mary. Ready for the trials before you know it. What happened here?”

  Mary let out a small smile. She was still in pain, but it was the first time she didn’t look like she was on the verge of panic. “Engineering screening. Rotational adjustment shroud blew. I was standing right next to it.”

  “Damn, you’re a smart one then,” he said with a reassuring smile. “I could never understand ships enough to work on them.”

  He looked around to see how everyone else was handling the screening. The stations around him looked like they either had things under control or it didn’t matter anymore. Looking back to his old station, he saw that the gurney had retracted back into the floor. Guessing that was what happened when a patient died, he scanned the space with the new knowledge. There were only a dozen or so stations that lacked a patient, their testees in varying states of shock and grief.

  “Well, you’ll definitely live to wrench another day.” He forced out a chuckle at his own joke.

  “Time,” his grader announced from behind him, voice no longer carrying the menace it had during the screening.

  Patch could only glare at the man who stared back indifferently. Somewhere deep down, he understood why the man had acted the way he had. There was no place among the medical corps for people who couldn’t handle pressure. Everything—especially out on the line—was a life-or-death situation. He understood the reasoning, but he didn’t have to like it.

  “Son, that was a bold move—abandoning your patient to help another. Five bleeding control, four shock prevention, four general anatomy, five triage.”

  Patch didn’t waver; his eyes locked with the grader’s. The man’s visage held none of the animosity it had shown earlier, but Patch didn’t care. His priority was making sure Mary was taken care of first, then getting the hell out of the screening. He pulled up his interface.

  [Neural System Interface]

  User ID: MIRO // THALIN // R.

  Age: 19

  [Primary Vector: Unassigned—Trial Pending]

  [Available Classes: Medical General (Recommended: Observation Affinity 70%) | Ground Vector-50% | Fleet Vector-50%]

  [Hybridization Note: Locked—Pax Directive: Single Path Protocol]

  [Mote Load: Minimal—Initialization Phase Active]

  [Pre-Screening Results: Bleeding Control-5/5 | General Anatomy-4/5 | Shock Prevention-4/5 | Triage-5/5]

  “That was a bold move, kid. You just might have what it takes for a spot on the line.” The grader patted him on the shoulder before retreating out of the room.