The Briefing She Didn't Get

Her training had been minimal.

Three weeks. Half of it classroom — LV-7 biology, property classifications, legal frameworks, consent protocols. The other half, range time and basic defensive drills.

Why so short?

Because the SWAT tactical team already existed. They had their operators. Their breachers. Their marksmen. Their medics. They had years of shared history, of inside jokes, of battles fought and blood spilled together.

What they didn't have — what no one had until LV-7 — was someone like her.

Kayla wasn't meant to kick doors or clear rooms.

She was meant to sit in the van.

And feed them.

The military had tried longer programs. Six weeks. Eight. Specialized training facilities with simulated combat environments and supervised feeding rotations. But the operators complained. The commanders complained. "We don't need another shooter. We need the milk. Just get her here."

So they'd rushed her through. Basic protocols. Safety briefings. A few supervised sessions with training officers who had been as awkward about it as she was.

She'd fired a weapon exactly twice during training. Once to qualify — a barely-passing score that made the range instructor sigh. Once to prove she could — could aim, could squeeze, could hit a stationary target at twenty-five feet.

"You won't need it," her instructor had said, patting her on the shoulder with the kind of **** cheerfulness that fooled no one. "You're the asset, not the asset protector. Your job is to stay in the vehicle and stay alive."

She'd nodded.

She hadn't asked what would happen if the vehicle wasn't safe anymore.

She thought about that now, staring at the back of the driver's head through the narrow viewport. About all the things they hadn't prepared her for. About the weight of eight men's eyes on her body and the strange, unwelcome heat that pooled in her belly every time she thought about what came next.