Alpha Caius Voss had not slept in four days.
He recognized, in the precise and clinical manner he processed most tactical data, that this was a terminal medical reality. The human and canine anatomy rapidly deteriorated past seventy-two consecutive hours of insomnia. Critical decision-making faltered. Neural reaction times lengthened. He had audited the scientific field studies himself. He had systematically applied those exact metrics to border garrison operations, to frontline guard rotations, to the grim question of precisely when a soldier transformed into a structural liability.
He had simply never applied the mathematics to his own frame. Alphas did not deteriorate. That was the foundational lie he had weaponized to preserve his sanity this week. It had been an exceptionally busy w
