Kid.
Three years, and the word still sits between my ribs like a splinter I can't reach.
Every brother uses it.
Maddox, who claps me on the shoulder and means it with affection.
Ounce, who drops it with a half-smirk like he knows something I don't.
Bracken, who forgets I exist until he needs something carried.
Bloodhound, who says it like a rank instead of an insult.
I don't correct them. Correcting a patched member is a fast way to stay a prospect forever.
So I swallow it and keep moving. Not much else a prospect can do.
The coffee pot's full by the time I make it back to the kitchen. Brothers filter in over the next hour.
Maddox first, filling a mug the size of a soup bowl.
Coin next, dark hair still damp, blue-gray eyes already alert.
He nods at me. A real nod.
Not the chin-lift the other brothers throw at me on their way past. Coin stops, looks at me, nods once. Like I'm a person in the room and not part of the furniture.
Porter and Bracken come in together, mid-conversation about a parts shipment.
Daemon grabs coffee without looking at me, which I've learned is his version of friendliness.
By a quarter past seven, every officer who sleeps on-site has been caffeinated and the kitchen is clean.
Eggs at the counter. Standing, because I made the mistake of sitting down once during my first week and Daemon looked at me like I'd shit on the table.
My phone alarm buzzes in my pocket. 7:20. Twenty minutes to get to campus for my 8 a.m.
This is the part of my day nobody here talks about.
The brothers know I'm at WVU.
Ruger approved it when I transferred from Chicago a few years ago, with the understanding my class schedule would never interfere with club business.
Some of them think it's a waste of time. Daemon told me once, flat out, theonlyeducation a brother needs is the one he gets at the table.
Maddox asked what cybersecurity even means and then forgot the answer before I finished explaining.
Coin didn't say anything when he found out. He looked at me for a long second, then went back to his ledger. Coming from Coin, silence is a form of approval.
I ride to campus because a Morgantown February doesn't scare a kid who learned to ride in Chicago.
This isn't cold. This is a mild inconvenience.
I don't mind the looks. On campus, a motorcycle is interesting. At the compound, a motorcycle is everyday life.
Dr. Hasan's cybersecurity lecture starts at eight sharp. I take the same seat every class, fourth row, left side, close enough to hear without being in the professor's direct line of sight.
The material today is network intrusion detection. Access logs, anomaly identification, packet analysis.