“Captain Hayes has been with our program for six weeks now,” Lang announces, his voice dripping with a kind of false patience. He’s performing for the thirty candidates, teaching them a lesson that has nothing to do with tactics. “Six weeks of… excuses. An old injury here, a scheduling conflict there. Six weeks of barely scraping by the minimum qualification standards.”

He pauses, letting the poison in his words seep into the air, into the ears of every man standing there. “Six weeks of proving that some people are here because of diversity requirements, not actual capability.”

Emma doesn’t flinch. She just shifts her weight, a tiny, almost imperceptible movement, settling into a perfectly balanced stance, fifty-fifty on the balls of her feet. Her hands are loose at her sides, not clenched in anger, not rigid with fear. They’re just… ready.

“Today,” Lang continues, his voice hardening, “we address that disconnect. The one between the paperwork and the performance. Today, we run a real resilience assessment.”