Chapter 157: Chapter 157: Academy’s Entrance Phase Four [1]
I had expected the threshold to spit us into damp stone and the narrow choke of a training cavern, the same kind of closed box from the first simulation with Rei, Saber, and Ruby.
Something with a ceiling I could measure.
Instead, the portal released us onto broken asphalt under an open sky that didn’t belong to any academy hall.
Sector 5 stretched out in every direction, or a perfect recreation of it after a break: high-rises with their upper floors sheared open, transit rails twisted into abstract sculpture, storefront glass glittering in dunes along the gutters.
The facilities were intact enough to recognize: guild annex markings, a commercial sky-bridge still hanging by one support, holographic ads frozen mid-cycle on cracked panels.
No pedestrians or traffic that indicates a living district.
Just the architecture of a city that had been paused at the worst possible second and then handed to us as a problem.
[ENVIRONMENT LOCK: FULCRUM & FURY — PHASE ONE]
[INSTANCE TYPE: Full-sector reconstruction | Sector 5 post-break template]
[CIVILIAN DENSITY: Simulated / Non-lethal scoring]
[HOSTILE DENSITY: Active — Rival units + Constructs]
[PRIMARY DIRECTIVE — WINDOW 1]
>Rescue civilians trapped under structural collapse following dungeon rupture.
>Extraction confirmed by beacon stabilisation.
[SECONDARY DIRECTIVE]
>Maintain unit integrity under open-tether conditions.
[TIMER: 03:00:00]
[NOTE: Terrain is not decorative.]
"Holy shit," Rei said.
She turned a slow circle, braid swinging, eyes bright with the particular hunger she reserved for expensive problems.
"They really went all out with this test."
"How was it last time?" I asked.
"My mother said it used to be a single narrow space. One corridor, one objective, maybe a boss room if the board felt generous. Never the whole city."
She tipped her head at a collapsed transit pylon.
"Guess we’re getting the first-hand upgrade."
Gianna stood still longer than either of us.
Her gaze tracked the skyline the way it tracked threat vectors: mapping lines, distances, places a body could fall or be dragged.
"This is Sector 5’s commercial spine," she said.
"Or close enough. Mom ran a joint clearance near the real one two years ago."
The center of the instance made the rest of the set dressing look polite.
A dungeon rupture hung above the mid-district like a red tsunami frozen mid-curl, an open portal wound the colour of arterial warning lights, slowly drinking the weakest rubble from the nearest roofs.
Crumbles of concrete and rebar lifted in lazy spirals and vanished into the red.
The air around it shimmered with pressure that made my teeth ache if I looked too long.
[03:00:00]
Three hours.
We didn’t waste the first thirty seconds on awe.
"Move," I said.
"Rescue first. We learn the ground while the timer still has manners."
I didn’t form the chains yet.
Not out of caution alone.
If we were going to hold a pocket under elevated extraction weight, I needed to see what each of them did when the first problem was not a rival team but a civilian under stone.
Individual reads before the triad rhythm.
Doctrine held better when it was not the only tool in the hand.
We took the edge of a half-collapsed parking structure for height.
I dropped first, using a short kinetic brace against the outer pillar to control the fall rather than a full chain display.
Gianna followed on a controlled telekinetic step that made the descent look almost casual.
Rei simply jumped, landed in a roll, and came up already scanning alleys.
The road below was empty in the wrong way.
Only the low grind of the red portal eating the skyline and, underneath it, something thinner.
Screams.
The kind that got trapped in pockets of ruined air and only escaped when the rubble shifted.
"We have to be alert," Rei said.
"I know."
Gianna’s eyes were already on the side streets, the elevated rail, the dark mouths of underground access.
"I’ll keep watch. Rescue is the objective. Elimination is what other units will try while we’re busy being good people."
"Copy."
We moved toward the densest cluster of sound, a mid-rise that had folded at the third floor, the upper levels pancaked into a wedge of concrete and glass.
Dust still hung in the air in slow curtains.
"Help..."
A child’s voice cut through once, high and raw, then vanished under a grind of settling weight.
"There," Gianna said.
Rei was already at the rubble line.
"I can cut. If I open too wide, the whole face slides."
"Don’t open wide."
I stepped in, finally letting a single chain uncoil from my palm, technique-level, more probe than weapon.
"I brace. You lift. Rei, edges only. We pull one lane at a time."
Gianna’s markers lit along the largest stable slab.
The concrete shivered, then rose a hand-span with a protest that made the child’s voice spike again.
"Alive," Rei muttered.
"Good."
I fed the chain into the gap, felt it catch on something soft, then a wrist.
A living hold.
"Got a civilian. Small. Left side of the wedge."
"I see the heat," Gianna said.
Her telekinesis adjusted, peeling a second layer without dumping the first.
"Rei—now."
Rei scored a precise blood-edge along a rebar tangle, a surgical line that let the metal remember it could bend.
The wedge loosened.
I pulled.
A girl came free in a slide of dust and broken plaster, maybe ten, face grey with powder, one leg bent wrong.
She clung to the chain like it was the only solid object left in the world.
"Hey," I said, keeping my voice flat and ordinary.
"You’re out. Don’t look up at the red thing. Look at me."
She looked at me.
Her mouth opened on another scream and produced only a dry click.
Gianna was already stabilising the leg with a field tight enough to act like a temporary splint.
"Beacon."
I pressed the academy-issue stabiliser against the girl’s shoulder. It chirped once, clean.
[CIVILIAN EXTRACTION: CONFIRMED]
[Unit 222 — Rescue tally: 1]
[Provisional score adjustment: +2]
[Structural instability increasing — 40-second window]
"Move her," Rei said.
"This face is going to finish what it started."
We got the girl clear of the collapse radius just before the wedge settled with a sound like a giant exhaling dirt.
Gianna set her in the lee of an intact transit kiosk.
"One," Gianna said.
"More under the east wing," Rei added, head tilted toward a secondary groan of concrete.
"Adult. Two, maybe. And something else on the wind."
I felt it too.
The wrong quiet of people trying not to be heard while they watched.
"Other units," I said.
"Or constructs," Gianna replied.
"Either way, we don’t cluster on the next pull."
"Should we split up?"
"Not a good idea."
We split the approach without needing a longer plan.
Gianna took a high angle on the east rubble.
Rei cut a side access through a service door that had been half-buried.
I kept the street, chains still mostly sheathed, eyes on the lanes that a hook team would use if they wanted a hard-track fulcrum busy with civilians.