He shifted slightly, pain jolting up his spine. His stomach clenched, empty and sour. He pressed a hand to his thigh, willing the muscle to move, to be his again. For a second, he thought it might work. Then the tremor hit, uncontrolled, full body, a violent shivering that felt like his bones trying to break free. His teeth rattled. The cot creaked under him.
He should’ve felt shame. Fear. Something. But all he felt was fury. Not at the instructors. Not even at the pain. At the idea that something inside him thought it had permission to stop.
“Don’t you bloody dare,” he hissed through clenched teeth. “We’re not done.”
The words came out low, half a growl. Fisher stirred beside him. “You talkin’ to yourself again, Kavanaugh?”
He smirked without opening his eyes. “Aye. Someone’s got to keep me company.”
Fisher’s laugh was thin and hoarse, a thread in the dark. “You’re insane.”
“That so?” Cormac murmured. “Guess we’ll see who’s still mad enough to be standing at dawn.”
“God, I hate you.”
“Mutual feeling, brother.”
He meant it, every word. He wanted Fisher there with him at the end, with the sand coating them, the pain and the endurance riding through them, the ocean still trying to claim them, and both refusing to let it. If this man beside him was even a small dose of the kind of guys who made it through, who earned their Trident and joined the brotherhood, then Cormac Kavanaugh was in fucking amazing company.
Fisher’s chuckle faded into sleep, or something close to it. Cormac tried to follow. He slowed his breathing, counted the rise and fall, let the exhaustion pull him under.
But the mind was a bastard. It didn’t stop when the body begged.
He saw flashes, the surf pounding, the boat slamming against his shoulder, the instructor’s voice like gravel in his skull. You chose this, Kavanaugh. Nobody dragged you here. You wanted to be forged? Then burn.
He wanted to answer back, to laugh, to tell the bastard that fire didn’t scare him. But even in the dream, his mouth wouldn’t move.
Time became a smear. Ninety minutes stretched like a lifetime, then snapped shut without warning.
The red lights flared brighter. “Up!” The voice ripped through the tent. “Let’s go, gentlemen! You’re burning daylight you don’t have!”
Every muscle screamed. Men groaned, cursed, stumbled to their feet. Someone puked and wiped their mouth with a shaking hand. Fisher was already sitting up, eyes glassy, whispering something that might’ve been a prayer or a profanity.
Their gazes met across the dim red light, no words, no bravado, just the raw, simple truth of men who’d been to the edge and weren’t backing down. Something passed between them then, as real and solid as blood. Determination. They would finish this together, and that knowledge soared through him.
Cormac gave the faintest nod. “Let’s go get more fucked up.”
Fisher answered with one of his own, a wide grin tugging at the corner of his mouth along with a low, defiant laugh. That was enough.
Cormac swung his legs over the side of the cot. His body refused to obey, locked in spasms from the cold. He forced his booted feet to the floor. The pain was blinding, electric. He rode it out, one heartbeat, then another.
He looked around at the men who’d made it this far. Some blank-eyed, some wild. They were all ghosts now, half men, running on nothing but willpower.
His body screamed when he stood, every joint locking, muscles trembling under his weight. But that voice, steady, unrelenting, drove him.
Forty percent. That’s what they said. When you think you’re done, you’ve only burned through forty percent.
He’d thought it was bullshit once, something the instructors shouted to fill the air. But now, standing in the stink of sweat and seawater, staring at the dark outside the tent, he felt it. The wall was there, solid and cold, and he was already pushing through it.
That was the test. Not strength. Not speed. Will.
This was what the instructors were hunting for, what they’d been grinding into them all week. The ones who would still move when the body quit, when the mind screamed no. The ones who would keep fighting when the mission went sideways, hungry, freezing, bleeding, and still find a way forward.
He wanted to be one of those men. The one you could count on downrange when the world fell apart. The one who kept moving.
Fisher’s shoulder brushed his as they stepped out into the dawn, a small, unshakable reminder.
The men who finished Hell Week, the one percent, weren’t superhuman. They were the ones too stubborn, too loyal, too humble to stop.
