Chapter 161: Chapter 161: Academy’s Entrance Final Phase [1]
My grip on Caelus’s throat tightened another fraction.
Not enough to crush.
Enough to finish what the chains had started.
His mass had been the problem from the first exchange.
Once the angles closed and the air became a negotiation he was losing, the rest followed the simple arithmetic of oxygen and panic.
I felt the fight leave him in stages: shoulders first, then the stubborn set of his jaw, then the slack of someone whose body had decided the exam was over whether his pride agreed or not.
’Go to sleep.’
The system flickered at the edge of my vision in small, almost polite increments.
[Minor Kinetic Acquired]
[Strength +2]
[Agility +1]
[Vitality +1]
[Note: Contact yield under restraint]
His body slowed.
The last resistance in his hands went soft.
When his eyes rolled, and the weight of him settled fully into the crater we had made of the street, I released the coils and let him drop the rest of the way onto his side.
I straightened, lungs working, and shoved him clear of the lane with one boot so he would not become an obstacle for the next unit that came hunting the plus sign.
That was fucking sick.
The energy sat warm in my limbs for a second, stolen density, nothing dramatic, just enough to make the next hour feel less like I was made of paper next to people built like transit cars.
I dismissed the remaining chains and turned back toward the ruined restaurant.
Inside, the twins were already handled.
Lia sat against a booth with her wrists bound in a telekinetic hold that left no dramatic bruising and no easy leverage.
Mia was in a similar state a few paces away, blonde hair mussed, lollipop long gone, one sleeve scored where Gianna’s returned arrow had made its point.
"No fair. You three fucking cheaters."
Rei stood over them with fresh pink lines along both forearms, looking entirely too pleased with the billing.
I walked in through the broken frontage.
"What should we do?" I asked.
Gianna shook her head once, markers dimming as she confirmed the restraints would hold without active attention.
"This is still a retrieval phase on the primary board. I don’t think we get meaningful points for beating another unit into the floor. The tally is civilians and beacon stabilisation."
Rei flicked Mia’s forehead with two fingers, hard enough to make the twin flinch.
"Why did you jump us, idiot?"
Mia’s mouth twisted.
"To weaken you. Obviously. Hard-track fulcrum, elevated extraction weighting, dual registration that already looked unstable on paper. You thin the pocket before the tether window opens, you make the later steal cheaper."
"Well," Rei said, tipping her head toward the street, "your boyfriend is definitely weakened, so good luck fighting off the next people who can read a board."
Both twins’ eyes tracked past me to where Caelus lay motionless in the broken asphalt, chest rising in the slow movement of someone who would wake with a headache and a story he would not enjoy telling.
"What did you do?" Lia demanded, voice tight.
"Just took a small amount of energy," I said.
"Guy was too active. Lean doesn’t mean I have to stand there and be a training dummy for mid-thirties kinetic specialists who failed their way into the same cohort as actual students."
"He’s twenty."
"I didn’t ask."
Mia stared at me like she was rewriting a threat assessment in real time.
Gianna’s gaze flicked to my hands, then to my face.
She didn’t ask the question in front of the twins.
"We’re done here," Gianna said.
"Beacons first. Arguments later."
We left the twins where they sat.
Restraints would dissolve when the phase timer or a proctor override decided the lesson had landed.
Until then they could enjoy the view of their support face-down in a crater and consider whether the plus sign had been worth the invoice.
An hour compressed into motion.
We stopped treating the district like a museum of collapse and started treating it like a route.
Another civilian under a transit stair.
Two more in a flooded underpass where the red portal’s pressure had pushed water sideways through broken mains.
A cluster of three in a guild annex that had folded on itself like wet paper.
Each stabiliser chirp added to the tally.
Each block we cleared made the next one louder with the sound of other units doing the same math under different flags.
[CIVILIAN EXTRACTION: CONFIRMED]
[Unit 222 — Rescue tally: 8]
[Timer: 01:42:09]
[CIVILIAN EXTRACTION: CONFIRMED]
[Unit 222 — Rescue tally: 11]
[Local advisory: Rival traffic increasing near central rupture]
[CIVILIAN EXTRACTION: CONFIRMED]
[Unit 222 — Rescue tally: 15]
[PRIMARY DIRECTIVE — WINDOW 1: COMPLETE]
[Rescue threshold met]
[Provisional score adjustment: +18]
[Phase transition in 00:00:30]
Fifteen.
The system closed the first window and opened the next with the indifference of a machine that had always known the polite part of the exam was temporary.
We stood on the roof of a relatively intact transit node while the timer in the corner of my vision bled down the last half-minute of Phase One.
The red portal above the mid-district had grown meaner while we worked: edges sharper, pull stronger, the lazy consumption of weak rubble replaced by a stronger pressure.
Rei’s smile had been present for the last three extractions.
Now it hardened into something that belonged on a different kind of scoreboard.
"Here it comes," she said.
Gianna’s arms folded.
"Board’s about to stop caring how many children we pulled out of the furniture."
[PHASE TWO — FULCRUM AND FURY]
[DIRECTIVE: Disrupt opposing core links]
[Accepted methods include, but are not limited to:]
— Sever and extract rival support (fulcrum capture under open-tether rules)
— Force sustained separation beyond threshold (gridlock / temporary capture)
— Collapse dual or multi-anchor stability through targeted pressure
[Scoring: Link breaks logged. Duration and cleanliness weighted.]
[Warning: Extraction attempts against your unit remain active and elevated]
[Timer: 02:00:00]
The options sat in the air between us like a menu written by someone who enjoyed watching preference become a liability.
Steal their support.
Or break the structure that made the support matter.
Rei’s smile widened until it showed teeth.
"Finally."
Above us, the red portal’s pressure increased in a single dramatic step.
The tsunami-curl tightened.
Wind that hadn’t existed a moment before shoved dust and loose signage sideways along the empty avenues.
Multiple footsteps echoed above us in the building.