And I know exactly what that means for Kimberly.
She is no longer collateral.
She is no longer leverage-adjacent.
She is the door handle on a locked room full of god-level infrastructure.
So training stops being theoretical.
The safehouse gym smells like rubber matting, gun oil, blood, and stale adrenaline.
I take the suppressor off the pistol.
Kimberly notices immediately.
Her jaw tightens.
“Is that live fire,” she asks.
“Yes.”
“You’re escalating.”
“Yes.”
She doesn’t argue.
She just pulls her hair back into a tight knot and steps into the marked corridor lane, her shoulders squaring the way they always do when she decides she’s done being scared and is switching to stubborn competence instead.
“Rules,” she says.
I load the magazine.
“You don’t freeze. You don’t close your eyes. You don’t move until I say move.”
“And if I fuck up.”
“You will bleed,” I reply evenly. “And you will still get up.”
She nods once.
“Do it.”
The first round cracks past her ear and buries itself in the ballistic gel target behind her.
She flinches.
Barely.
Good.
“Again,” she says.
I fire.
Closer.
She exhales hard and forces her hands not to curl into fists.
