Chapter 158: Chapter 158: Academy’s Entrance Phase Four [2]
Our rescue continued.
The adult was pinned at the hips under a support beam that had decided to become horizontal.
Still Conscious.
Swearing in three languages.
When he saw us, he tried to wave and only managed to cough dust.
"Why is a guy pinned here?"
"Doesn’t matter."
"Don’t move," Gianna ordered.
"Wasn’t planning a jog," he rasped.
Rei’s edge took the beam’s weaker weld.
I braced the cut with two chains so the release would not crush what it had been holding.
Gianna lifted.
The man came free with a sound that was half sob, half laugh, and the stabiliser took his signal on the second try.
[CIVILIAN EXTRACTION: CONFIRMED]
[Unit 222 — Rescue tally: 2]
[Timer: 02:51:17]
"Two," I said.
"Someone’s watching the south approach," Rei said without looking south.
Gianna’s markers did not turn that direction.
"I have it. Keep working."
We pulled a third civilian from a ground-floor shop that had become a tomb of display cases, an older woman with a shard of advertising glass still stuck through her coat and a grip on Rei’s wrist strong enough to leave marks.
The red portal in the sky kept eating the weakest pieces of the city like it had all the time in the world and we did not.
[CIVILIAN EXTRACTION: CONFIRMED]
[Unit 222 — Rescue tally: 3]
[Advisory: Rival signature proximity — south-west lane | non-committed]
"Three," Gianna said.
"And the clock is still polite."
The rescue kept moving smoothly enough that a dangerous part of my brain started wandering.
Three beacons.
No serious injuries on our side.
The red portal overhead still chewing the skyline like it had a leisurely schedule.
I found myself measuring lamp posts and shattered sky-bridge cables, wondering, half-seriously, whether the chains could take a full swing the way old Earth comics had sold it.
My favourite had always been Spider-Man.
Catch, arc, release, land.
If a real fight broke, the vertical city might reward someone willing to treat the whole street as a web instead of a floor.
I filed the thought.
Wanting and doing were different currencies under a three-hour clock.
We cut through the ground floor of a tilted commercial block, stepping over overturned chairs and a drift of menus that had never been collected.
The air inside smelled like spilled oil and cold sauce.
Behind us, the street stayed too quiet.
Ahead, something thinner than the earlier screams threaded the dark.
"I’m here..."
A voice. Small enough that only one could hear. Coming from deeper in.
Rei stopped so hard her boots scraped.
"Voice."
Gianna and I turned together.
"What is it?" Gianna asked.
"I heard someone." Rei was already moving, not waiting for a vote.
"Inside."
We followed her into what had been a restaurant.
Tables on their sides. A display case of desserts fused into a single sticky ruin. Food sprayed across the tiles in colours that did not belong next to blood or concrete.
The voice didn’t repeat.
The silence after it felt arranged.
"Are you sure?"
"I did hear it somewhere near."
I was halfway to the service counter, chains still loose at my side, when the air changed.
Swoosh.
An arrow came from nowhere, no drawn bow in sight or warning creak, straight for the side of Rei’s neck.
She saw it, but it was too late to dodge cleanly.
The arrow stopped a finger’s width from her skin.
It hung in the air as if the hall had forgotten how physics worked.
Gianna stood with one finger raised, expression flat, telekinetic markers invisible until you knew where to look.
"Boring," she said.
"I really expected a better plan."
From the washroom corridor, a blonde stepped into the ruined dining room.
A lollipop stick angled in the corner of her mouth.
Compact bow already in hand, second arrow nocked, as the first one had only been a greeting.
Her smile was bright enough to be wrong in a collapse zone.
"Oh. Lawless."
She spoke around the candy.
"Big fan."
Gianna’s eyes widened a fraction.
"Mia—"
Rei moved at the same instant a second arrow came from the opposite angle, no sound, no mercy.
This one didn’t stop.
It kissed the air along Rei’s cheek and left a thin red line that welled and dripped before her regeneration even noticed.
"You would’ve lost that one if you didn’t know us well," the newcomer said.
She stepped out from behind a toppled booth: same height, same blonde cut, same lollipop, same lazy posture.
Identical down to the way she chewed.
Lia and Mia.
The twins out of Sector 4.
I had seen the pair listed on the provisional board in the stadium, high enough to make people stop talking.
Knowing the names and having both of them inside the same restaurant with lines on Rei were different experiences.
Surprise flickered.
Fear did not.
Not yet.
Then the ceiling reminded us we were not the only ones in the building.
"Do they have support?"
A roar tore through the upper floor: raw, physical, the sound of something that did not bother with technique when mass would do.
Plaster and lighting fixtures exploded downward.
A shape followed them, huge, already committed.
The hulk from the intake hall.
He hit me like a transit car that had decided to become a fist.
BOOM!
The impact launched me clean through the restaurant’s front window.
Glass became a glittering sheet. Air became a short, violent education in momentum.
I threw a chain on pure reflex, caught a bent post at the edge of the walkway, and let the link eat the rest of the throw.
My boots found broken pavement.
The chain sang tight and then settled.
I was still standing when the dust reached me.
The big support dropped into the street after me, landing hard enough to crack a line through the asphalt.
He didn’t speak. He had not spoken in the hall either.
Up close he was even larger: shoulders like structural supports, arms mapped with old impact scars, eyes flat with the simple math of a man who had been pointed at a hard-track fulcrum and told to remove it.
"Oh," I said, breath steadying.
"It’s you, huh?"