CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Sneaking into the elite training facility required three things: timing, audacity, and a complete disregard for consequences.
Olivia had all three in abundance.
The fence was ten feet, topped with razor wire.
Olivia took a running start, grabbed the links, and used her gymnastic flexibility to wedge her foot in a gap most people couldn't reach.
She pulled herself up, inverted over the razor wire in a move that would have made Valeria Vance proud, and dropped silently to the other side.
The armoury's side door was locked, but she'd lifted a maintenance keycard from a sleeping technician. The card reader blinked green. The door clicked open.
Olivia stepped inside and almost gasped.
The armoury's interior had been transformed into something between a temple and a war room.
Weapons lined every wall—not just guns and blades, but strange implements that pulsed with inner light.
Training dummies made of materials she'd never seen.
Mats that glowed faintly when stepped on.
And in the centre, a circular combat pit where two figures sparred with wooden swords, moving too fast for normal eyes to follow.
Awakened training. Real training. The kind she'd been denied.
Olivia pressed herself against a shadowed wall, watching.
The sparring pair finished their match. One was a tall woman with silver hair and eyes that glowed faintly blue—definitely awakened. The other was Lucas.
He moved beautifully. Not the controlled restraint he'd shown at Ironhaven, but full expression, his awakened speed and reflexes unleashed. He flowed around his opponent's attacks like water, countering with precision that spoke of years—decades—of combat experience.
But he looked tired. Older. There were bruises under his eyes, cuts on his forearms that hadn't healed properly, a stiffness in his left shoulder.
The silver-haired woman said something Olivia couldn't hear. Lucas shook his head. She placed a hand on his arm—a gesture too intimate for mere colleagues—and leaned close.
Olivia felt something hot and ugly curl in her stomach.
She stepped forward before she could stop herself. "Am I interrupting?"
Both turned. Lucas's face went through seventeen emotions in two seconds—shock, fear, relief, anger, something else she couldn't name.
"Olivia?" he breathed. "What are you—how did you—"
"I sneaked in. Obviously." She crossed her arms, her eyes flicking to the silver-haired woman. "Hi. I'm the laundry girl. Also Lucas's girlfriend, apparently, though we haven't really defined the terms."
The woman raised an eyebrow. "Girlfriend? Lucas, you didn't mention a girlfriend."
"Because it's complicated, Commander Sable."
"Commander?" Olivia echoed. "Wait, you're his boss?"
"I'm his commanding officer," Sable corrected. She was striking—tall, angular, with the kind of severe beauty that belonged on ancient coins. "And you are trespassing in a restricted facility. That's punishable by imprisonment. Or exile."
"Great. I've always wanted to see the wasteland up close."
"Olivia." Lucas's voice was low, urgent. "You need to leave. Now. If they catch you here—"
"Let them catch me. At least then they'll have to acknowledge I exist." Olivia stepped into the light, her chin high, her heart hammering.
"I didn't come here to cause trouble. I came here to train.
The assessment they gave me was designed for people who look like you, not people who look like me.
They measured my reach instead of my flexibility.
They tested my linear speed instead of my angles.
They looked at my body and decided I was useless without ever seeing me fight. "
She turned to Sable. "You want to punish me? Fine. But first, watch me move. One minute. If I'm as useless as your tests say, I'll walk out quietly and never come back."
Sable studied her with those glowing blue eyes. "And if you're not useless?"
"Then maybe reconsider who you're excluding from your war."
The silence stretched. Then Sable nodded once. "One minute."
Olivia didn't waste it. She dropped her stolen jacket, rolled her shoulders, and performed the training kata Lucas had taught her—a flowing sequence that combined boxing, judo, capoeira, and gymnastics into something unique.
She moved through it at full speed, her flexibility letting her kick higher than her height suggested, her core strength letting her transition from ground to standing in a single explosive motion.
She finished with a running wall walk into a backflip, landing in a fighting stance.
Sable didn't react. But her eyes had changed—narrowed, focused, actually seeing.
"Again," she said. "Slower. I want to analyse your mechanics."
Olivia performed it again, slower. Then again. Then she demonstrated throws on a training dummy, using leverage and hip rotation rather than brute strength. She showed disarms, counters, the way her compact frame could generate power from positions that shouldn't have been possible.
By the end, she was sweating, panting, but triumphant.
"Well?" she demanded.
Sable looked at Lucas. "You trained her?"
"I did."
"She's raw. Unpolished. But the foundation..." Sable circled Olivia like a shark examining a surprising meal. "The flexibility is exceptional. The proprioception is near-awakened level. And her combat intuition—she reads angles like someone with ten years of experience."
"She has twelve," Lucas said quietly. "Of self-training. Before I ever met her."
Sable stopped in front of Olivia. Up close, her eyes were unsettling—pupil-less blue, like glacier ice.
"You broke into my facility. You lied to my guards. You demanded attention rather than waiting for permission." She paused. "I should hate you."
"Do you?"
"No." A ghost of a smile. "I was a refugee once. A nobody. Someone who had to prove herself to people who saw only her weaknesses. I see myself in you, Olivia Thornwood. And that worries me, because I know exactly how much trouble you're going to cause."
She turned to Lucas. "Train her. Officially. Bring her into the program."
Lucas's eyes widened. "Commander?"
"She's not ready for field operations. But she's ready for real training. Give her six weeks. If she progresses, I'll authorize her for the reserve roster."
"And if I progress faster?" Olivia asked.
Sable's smile grew sharper. "Then you'll be the first non-awakened female in Vanguard history to make active duty in under two months. But don't get ambitious, laundry girl. The wasteland doesn't care about your determination. It only cares if you can survive it."
She swept out of the room, her silver hair catching the light like a banner.
Olivia turned to Lucas, grinning. "Did I just get promoted by breaking and entering?"
"You just risked your life for a chance to die in the wasteland." But he was smiling, that real smile, the one that made her knees weak. "You're insane, Thornwood."
"And you're impressed."
"I'm terrified. For you. Of you. Both, probably." He crossed the distance between them and cupped her face in his hands. "I've missed you. These weeks—being unable to see you, talk to you, hold you—"
"Then don't let go."
He kissed her. It was different from the stairwell kiss—deeper, slower, charged with weeks of accumulated longing. When they broke apart, Olivia felt dizzy.
"Training starts tomorrow," Lucas said. "Five AM. Don't be late."
"Wouldn't dream of it."
"And Olivia?"
"Yeah?"
"Commander Sable is not my type. She's my boss. Nothing more."
Olivia felt her face heat. "I didn't ask."
"You were going to. I could see it in your eyes." He tapped her nose. "Jealousy doesn't suit you."
"Everything suits me. I'm very versatile."
He laughed, pulling her into a hug that felt like coming home.
"Welcome to the war, Thornwood. Try not to get killed."