The cliff overlooked the industrial district like a throne.
Montez stood at the edge, vintage shirt catching the wind, dark shades reflecting the afternoon sun and his phone pressed to his ear.
"The package Should be arriving any minute now."
"everything's proceeding exactly as planned."
"You just have to trust me," Montez smiled. "Q."
He ended the call and pocketed the phone.
Below, the Arcanum helicarrier was descending toward the rift site.
Right on schedule.
Inside the carrier, Riva stood near the cockpit with a tablet in her hand.
She was reviewing student profiles.
Her red eyes scanned the data
Xu Zhao, Neophyte 3. Symbiont type who is very intelligent with high analytical capability.
Jonas Martinez, Neophyte 2. Shard-type with decent pneuma control. Adequate.
Tamara Reed. Neophyte 2. Aeon. Unremarkable.
Willy Cross. Acolyte 1. Shard-type, decent bloodline. Worth monitoring.
Her finger hovered over the next profile.
Huegen Cross. Neophyte 1. Crestless.
She almost skipped it entirely.
What was the point? An Achusoi had no value for her purposes. No potential, no power and worth nothing.
But she paused, and stared at his photo on the screen.
Those blue eyes.
They bothered her but not in any way she could articulate.
Just a vague sense of unease, like looking at a peice that didn't quite fit.
"Worthless," she muttered, swiping past his profile.
But the feeling lingered.
Riva closed the tablet and addressed the students.
"Listen up. We've reached the drop site. Remember your protocols. If you encounter anything beyond your capability, signal immediately. As stated in the briefing, no Variants beyond Echo-class are present at this location."
She paused.
"However, some of these Echoes are on the higher end of the spectrum. Don't get careless."
The carrier touched down with a gentle thud.
Hermione moved to the hatch, preparing to open it. "Good luck out there, everyone. Stay safe."
Huey caught her eye one last time.
She gave him the smallest nod.
The hatch opened, revealing the rift site.
The industrial zone looked like something had chewed it up and spit it out.
Collapsed buildings, pavement cracked and buckled. The air shimmered with residual rift energy, that characteristic red tint coloring everything.
Riva pulled up a holographic map, marking five different coordinates.
"Pair one, northeast quadrant. Pair two, southeast. Pair three, central zone. Pair four, northwest. Pair five, southwest."
She looked at each pair in turn.
"You know what to do."
The students nodded and began moving to their assigned zones.
Riva watched them go, then raised her hand.
A spatial portal opened beside her. She could see through it to where Kenna and Tamara were heading.
Another portal. This one showed Willy and the DiMarco's
Another. Josephine and Suzie.
Her Crest allowed her to create viewing portals, maintaining some much needed surveillance on all five pairs simultaneously.
In the northeast quadrant, Willy's scanner beeped steadily as they navigated through collapsed scaffolding.
Behind him, the DiMarco twins were efficiently clearing out any remaining variants.
Except they worked in perfect silence.
The kind of silence that suggested years of practice, or a recent argument.
Willy cleared his throat, trying to break the tension. "So... you two have got some pretty good chemistry."
"Obviously" Marco answered, her tone friendly enough. "We've been in this together for as long as we can remember."
Milo said nothing, her focus intensely fixed on the task at hand.
"That's cool, kind of like with me and wheeler."
Willy gestured to his shard, who puffed up proudly. "Do you guys always work together, or do you get paired with other people sometimes?"
"Can you stop talking?" Milo cut him off without looking back. "Some of us are trying to work."
Marco's jaw tightened visibly. "Milo."
"What? I'm just saying that chattering while we're supposed to be working is unprofessional."
Wheeler chittered aggressively in Milo's directions.
She turned, raising an eyebrow. "Your rat has an opinion?"
"He's a squirrel," Willy corrected, placing a calming hand on Wheeler's head. "And yeah, he doesn't appreciate when people are rude."
"Then maybe you should learn to mind your business."
"Maybe you should—"
"Both of you, stop." Marco stepped between them with her hands raised. "Willy, Milo's just... she takes field work very seriously."
"Too seriously, apparently," Willy muttered, but loud enough to be heard.
"I heard that." Milo turned back to her scanning. "And yes, I take it seriously. Because unlike some people, I actually had to work to get into Virelia"
Willy's expression darkened. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Exactly what I said, you relied on your bloodline and it could only get you as far as logistics and support."
"Just what?" Willy's voice was dangerously low now.
Marco grabbed her sister's arm, her grip tight enough to make Milo wince. "Milo. Stop. Right now."
They stared at each other, their gray eyes identical in color but completely different in emotion.
Milo looked away first. "Fine. Whatever. Let's just finish this assessment."
Marco approached Willy, her voice dropping low. "I'm sorry about her. There's been a lot of pressure. I know it's not an excuse for being rude, but—"
"She's prejudiced," Said Willy bluntly.
"No, She's scared," Marco corrected quietly.
Willy blinked. "Scared of what?"
"Of failing. Of not being good enough. Of everything." Marco glanced back at her sister, who was deliberately ignoring them.
"Our family isn't a Major House like yours. We're barely mid-tier. Every achievement, every ranking, every assessment...it all matters because we don't have the safety net that bloodlines like Cross or Veltman or Rodriguez have."
She paused, choosing her words carefully.
"One bad evaluation could mean losing our scholarship. One mistake in the field could mean getting dropped from Combat Legion. And if that happens..."
Marco's hands clenched.
"Our family can't afford the tuition without the merit-based support. It's more of means of survival than just school."
Willy's anger dimmed slightly, understanding creeping in despite his frustration.
He understood what it felt like to carry weight that shouldn't be yours.
"Still doesn't make it okay to be an asshole," he said, but the heat had left his voice.
"No," Marco agreed. "It doesn't. And I'll keep telling her that until she learns."
An Echo emerged from behind a collapsed warehouse wall..... small and cat-like.
Milo moved first, her crest activating instantly and granting her control over potential energy.
The Echo froze mid-leap, suspended in invisible force.
Marco appeared behind her twin in a blur of motion, kinetic energy coalescing around her fist into a focused point of devastating force.
The kinetic blast obliterated the Echo, and it dissolved into harmless particles.
"Damn," Willy breathed. "You guys are really good."
Marco smiled slightly, lowering her still-glowing hand.
In the Southeast quadrant,
Chirp was having the time of his life, hopping between rubble piles and lunging excitedly at every piece of broken concrete.
"He's seems happy" Brick observed.
"He likes rocks," Jonas said, scanning for sample points. "It's his whole personality."
"I can respect that, I like hitting things. That's my whole personality."
They worked in comfortable silence for a few minutes....
Brick watched Chirp try to eat a piece of broken concrete for the third time. "Does he have, like, taste buds? Or does he just eat everything?"
"He doesn't eat it exactly," Jonas explained, collecting another sample. "He absorbs the mineral composition. It's how he grows and maintains his form."
"That's actually pretty sophisticated for a shard."
"Yeah, most people just see him as a dumb rock bird. But there's complex pneuma mechanics involved." Jonas smiled proudly.
Can I ask you something?" Said Brick.
"Sure."
"Does it bother you? The whole... division thing. Combat & Logistics, Marked & unmarked. All of it."
Jonas considered the question carefully.
"Yes and no. I think the system exists because Rifts forced humanity to specialize. But people use those necessary divisions to create unnecessary hierarchies."
"Like Milo." Brick said quietly.
"Like a lot of people." Jonas adjusted his scanner. "But not you."
"Not me," Brick agreed. "My dad always said judging people by their Crest is like judging a hammer by whether it's made of steel or wood. What matters is if it gets the job done."
"Your dad sounds like a smart man"
"He was. the old man's one gone now though, went down swinging in a rift over a year ago. "
At the central zone,
Suzie's tablet was getting a workout, recording every data point.
Josephine kept watch, she was clearly ready for any threat.
But her eyes kept drifting southwest.
"You're doing it again," Suzie said without looking up from her tablet.
"Doing what?"
"Looking at Cross. You've checked his position seventeen times in the last twelve minutes."
Josephine fidgeted.
"I've been doing that for all the pairs."
"You've checked the others an average of three times each." Suzie adjusted her glasses. "Cross has been outlier in your attention distribution."
"Are you seriously analyzing my behavior patterns right now?"
"Well that's kind of my whole thing." Suzie finally looked up. " I don't think Mira is even interested in him romantically."
Josephine's face flushed red. "This isn't about that."
"No?"
"No." Josephine created a light arrow, firing it at an Echo that had emerged from between buildings, killing the variant instantly.
"I'm worried about him. Riva clearly doesn't like him. The other combat students are either ignoring him or actively hostile. And he's paired with someone as strong as Mira who probably resents being held back."
"Mira seems fine with the arrangement."
"For now. But what happens when things get difficult?" Josephine's jaw tightened.
"Huey's smart. Probably smarter than most of us. But intelligence doesn't stop a Variant's claws."
"You must really care about him."
It wasn't a question.
Josephine didn't answer immediately, focusing instead on their perimeter.
"He's a good person in a system designed to grind good people down. Especially people like him."
"People without Crests."
"People without power," Josephine corrected. "It's not the same thing, but society treats it like it is."
Suzie made a notation on her tablet. "You sound just like my sister used to."
Suzie averted her gaze and her voice tightened. "Before she got married that is."
"For what it's worth, I think Cross knows you care, and that it matters to him more than he shows."
Josephine looked at her. "When did you become perceptive about feelings?"
"I'm always perceptive. I just usually focus on data." Suzie's lips quirked slightly, the closest she got to smiling. "But people are data too. Just... the messier kind."
Several meters away, at the Northwest quadrant
Kenna had not stopped talking.
"So then I told him, you can't just assume every Echo is weak just because it's small, right? Because some of them are deceptively powerful, like that one time in training when...."
"Do you ever breathe?" Tamara asked, pulling out another protein bar and shoving it into Kenna's mouth.
"I try." Kenna finally mumbled as she bit through it.
"That tracks."
Despite the non-stop chatter, they were making good progress. Kenna's dual blades made quick work of any Echoes that appeared, and Tamara's with kept them on schedule.
"You know what's weird?" Kenna said, slicing through another Echo. "How off everything feels"
"Off how?"
"I don't know, nothing unusual has happened yet."
Tamara paused. "That's not ominous at all."
"Right? Anyway, I was thinking about sandwiches earlier and....."
The explosion hit without warning.
A wave of force and fire erupted from the ground between them.
Kenna reacted on instinct, tackling Tamara aside.
They hit the pavement, Kenna's shoulder taking most of the impact.
When the smoke cleared, Kenna's left arm was bleeding.
"You okay?" Tamara asked, scrambling to her feet.
"Yeah, just...." Kenna winced. "Just a scratch."
It was more than a scratch. Blood was soaking through her sleeve.
But she was already up, blades out and scanning for the source.
"Riva," Tamara said into her comm. "We've been ambushed. An explosion and We can't see where it's coming from."
Riva's voice came through in return. "Hold position and take cover, I'm signaling the other quadrants."
On the cliff, Montez stood with both hands raised, conducting an invisible orchestra.
He wore gloves now, and each gesture triggered another explosion somewhere in the rift site.
A flick of his wrist. Explosion near Willy and the DiMarco's.
A sweeping motion and three more detonations around Jonas and Brick.
A sharp downward cut. The ground erupted beneath Josephine and Suzie.
His Crest was beautiful in its simplicity.
Detonation. He could mark any surface with his pnuema and then detonate it remotely through conducting gestures.
He'd spent the last three days preparing this site, basically bathing it in his pneuma
The entire industrial zone was a land mine
And now he was playing a symphony of destruction.
"And so," he murmured, fingers dancing through the air. "It's begun."
(Dark ominous music Qeues in)
"No wait... Wait, that's not right."
(Ominous music abruptly stops)
"And so. It begins"
(Resume the Ominous music)
Another explosion.
Another.
The students scattered, trying to find cover where it didn't exist.
Because Montez had touched everything.
He smiled behind his glasses.
This was going to be fun.
The explosion hit twenty meters to their left.
Huey grabbed Mira's arm and pulled her behind a concrete barrier before it happened.
"What was that?" she asked.
"Nothing good."
His comm crackled. Multiple confused and panicked voices reporting attacks.
Through it all, Riva's calm voice. "All pairs, maintain your positions. I'm assessing the situation."
Huey's eyes narrowed.
Something was very wrong here.
And he had a feeling it was about to get worse.