Base Metal (The Sword Book 2)

jokes about "Princess this" and "Princess that" and the crossed wires in his brain, but it never worked.
He'd sit down, crack open his muffin, and stare at the freeze-dried berries inside, but before he could convince himself to swallow the thing, he'd be flanked by macho assholes who called each other ludicrous names like "Scooch", "Tuber", "Dag", and the ever-confounding "Bugtuck".
There was no escape.
They ran simulations, died over and over, in new hallways and junctions, tried to save surprise hostages, cut through concealed enemies, and escape ambush "kill boxes". He wrestled with networks and attempted to dodge bullets. He cracked an AI while someone dragged him down a hallway by the 'buddy-handle' below his collar. He popped pressure doors and bulkheads while dodging the scalding dust from Hill's machinegun.
Lunch came as a relief, but right after was back into the mix. He had a scant few minutes to update his kit, prep better programs, build new defenses, and come up with spam screens against the torches. Every millisecond was critical, every line of code precious. Skip a line, alter a function, and it would shave clock cycles. Move forward to the next node, hardlink, and he'd cut transmission time. He'd learned the vicious tricks from Donegan, how to blow disused relays with physical charges to force the reroutes on enemy netsec, or close doors to alter enemy defenses. He slammed his head against the ever-increasing tempo, the creed of the netboss: alter the net from the physical, change the physical from the net. Everything hinged on everything else. It wasn't hacking, it was madness.
Donegan was better than he was. The man was an ass, his code crude and brutish, and he treated his mask like a leashed dog. But Donegan possessed a wicked toolbox and had the skills to use it. He was less a surgeon and more a butcher. He flipped between TACNET defense and offensive pressure without losing ground. He could push entire rings of counter-hackers off-balance, manipulate the battlespace, and still pop off shots between runs. It was a terrifying juggling act, keeping only the most catastrophic balls in the air, avoiding and neutralizing the maximum risks while he maneuvering the team into an advantageous position. Donegan didn't try to hold the whole system. He would give ground, sacrifice for peak moments, and physically wreck the hardware he couldn't control. He called it, 'digital triage', and it was unlike anything at university. Firenze could only watch, take notes, and imitate.
The only area where Firenze shined was countering the Phalanx AI. Donegan's dance was effective against predictable computers and fallible humans. Against a high-end limited AI, the unsubtle nature of his shortcuts and brute-force cracks became a liability, and his speed was laughably inadequate. In contrast, Firenze's expertise and mask synchronization let him outflank the Phalanx and code around textbook executables. Where Donegan had to start from the edges and race the AI to the center, Firenze could load a poison-pill and blast the admin right off the net. The problem there was that he needed to be jacked in, which meant unconscious and stationary on a battlefield. Every time he loaded up, he exposed his team to flanking, encirclement, and overrun; these were terms he'd rapidly come to understand as "death, death, and more death".
He spent his afternoons with the EWOs. They brainstormed, ran sims, consulted plans and diagrams of the Airship networks - hardware and software - and picked over every piece of the puzzle. Did the Sentro Suite have a problem with buffer flow? Was the L566 chipset particularly prone to overheating? How did the Phalanx Security Intelligence prioritize multiple threats in a particular configuration, when lacking access to three local cores?
Dinner was solitary. He'd try and alleviate his pounding headache, sit in his bunk, and fiddle with his assist box. Lauren understood, at least. She'd try and defrag his head, perk him up with comments about "Hey, you're faster than Chief Jerkface in a run against the Phalanx, right?" or "Hey, you didn't puke today! That's three in a row!" He'd agree and thank her, but then go back to staring at the security maps. They'd sit and cut up the day's sims, plan out a quicker (always quicker) route for the evening, and then agree that this time it should work.
Evening runs would expose new flaws, more deaths, and the occasional lucky break. They'd pound at a scenario until they cleared it like clockwork, then they'd run another, just to fail and get something to think about during dark hours.
Late evening was more PT, and Hill liked to drag him down to the boxing ring to pound him. The first few times he'd tried to escape, but someone always forced him back inside the ropes. It didn't matter if he had to work on protocols. It didn't matter if he could barely stand. Somewhere along the line, someone had decided that he should be a fighter. Every night, he would be thrown into the arena for Hill to pound into oblivion, and each time, he'd flail uselessly and wonder why the universe hated him. Some days, he wished he'd just chosen "Treason" and died in jail. It would have been faster.
Still, after Hill put him into the mat, he'd pick himself up. He'd stand, lean on the ropes, and try his best to smile like he wasn't broken. He pretended to endure because of pride. He'd always been the best, the smartest guy in the room. He clung to that scrap of ego and let it fuel him. He had to win. He wouldn't let Donegan, the Agency, the specist professors, or the perverse cosmos win. He'd endure, and every night when he staggered to bed, he'd promise, "Today was the worst of it."
He'd pass out before he hit the pillow. Dawn would be on him before he felt the mattress, and then he would start the hardest day of his life, all over again.

Cohesion
The punch crashed against Firenze's stomach like a freight