The ash tasted like copper and death.
Darian slid under the sweeping arc of a bone-scythe, his boots skidding across shattered permacrete. Above him, a flock of four-winged raptor-abominations shrieked, their metallic feathers catching the dim moonlight.
"Flank right!" Darian shouted. "Ravion, take the leader, I'll bind the—"
"Don't give me orders!" Ravion roared over the screech of tearing metal.
A blur of crimson energy rocketed past Darian's shoulder, static singeing his collar. Ravion didn't flank. He launched himself directly into the center of the flock, his spear spinning in a furious cyclone. The kinetic shockwave of his strike acted like a battering ram, launching three of the screeching raptors backward, directly down the ruined street.
Directly into Zeri's path.
Zeri wasn't looking. She tore through the rubble on a monorover, the single-wheeled gyro-board whining in protest as she carved a jagged line across the permacrete. Above her shoulders hovered three massive holographic blasters, their translucent barrels glowing with violet energy. Her eyes were wide, manic, and underlined with exhaustion.
She let out a hollow laugh that bordered on a scream. "Burn! Just burn!"
The blasters began to spin in a rapid 360-degree orbit around her. Without bothering to aim, Zeri unleashed an indiscriminate barrage of blinding plasma in every direction.
"Are you psycho?!" Ravion snarled. He abandoned his follow-up strike, dropping into an ugly roll to avoid being incinerated by his teammate's rogue blasters. Darian had to dive behind a chunk of masonry as violet fire melted the ground where he'd just been standing.
Because they were all busy dodging each other, the raptors Ravion had punted into Zeri's path recovered. One of them lunged, extending its scythes directly into Zeri's blind spot.
Darian saw it. He pushed off the ground, calculating the angles to intercept.
But there was no rhythm. No black threads pulling them into a synchronized dance. Silas wasn't there to make them a weapon.
As Darian reached the apex of his jump, Ravion vaulted off a broken pillar, aiming his spear at the exact same target in a desperate bid to fix his mistake. They collided in mid-air.
Bone cracked against armor. Ravion's spear swung wide. Tangled in a mess of clashing Essence and bruised egos, they plummeted to the ground in a heap of limbs.
Above them, the raptor shrieked in triumph and drove its scythes directly into Zeri's fluctuating personal shield. The violet glass shattered instantly.
A deafening buzzer blared.
The night sky froze. The raptors paused mid-strike, their horrifying textures glitching before dissolving entirely into cascading lines of white data. The ruined permacrete, the smoke, the ash—it all evaporated.
The holograms turned off.
Darian pushed himself off the floor, his chest heaving. He was kneeling in the center of a colossal, perfectly sterile white room. The grid lines on the floor hummed with dormant energy.
High above the training floor, behind a span of tinted, blast-proof glass, stood Captain Halden. Her silhouette was dark against the monitors behind her. She didn't press the intercom button immediately. She just looked down at them, a heavy, silent judgment radiating through the glass.
Ravion shoved Darian hard in the chest, his face flushed with fury. "Stop pretending you know how to lead us! I had it all covered!"
"You were going to impale my arm, you idiot!" Darian shot back, wiping synthetic sweat from his brow.
"I was trying to save Zeri!" Ravion yelled.
"Oh, right, save me," Zeri muttered. She kicked her monorover, sending it clattering across the white grid with a harsh metallic clang. She popped a bubble of synth-gum, her eyes dropping their manic fire to return to a dead, unfocused stare at Ravion. "From the monsters you knocked right into my face."
A sharp burst of static crackled from the overhead speakers.
"Enough," Halden's voice boomed, flat and devoid of patience. "Get up here. Now."
The walk up the spiraling metal staircase to the observation deck felt like a funeral march. Darian kept his eyes forward, feeling the suffocating, toxic silence between the three of them. A week ago, Silas would have been debriefing them on the stairs, offering gentle corrections, smoothing Ravion's fragile ego, and grounding Zeri's chaos.
Now, they were just three teenagers actively trying to get each other killed.
Halden's office smelled of stale stim-caf, ozone, and medical antiseptic. She leaned against her desk, favoring her uninjured side. The reinforced brace around her ribs clicked softly as she crossed her arms. Her left wrist was still bound in a thick bio-cast.
She looked at the three of them—bruised, panting, and radiating mutual disdain.
"Thirty-two seconds," Halden said, her voice dangerously quiet. "That is how long you would have lasted in a live zone before a mid-tier feral swarm turned all three of you into fertilizer."
Ravion stiffened, his chin tilting up in defiance. "Captain, the simulation was rigged—"
"The parameters were set to standard threat!" Halden barked, slamming her good hand against the desk. The metal rattled. "You aren't a squad. You are a suicide pact! Ravion, you have zero situational awareness. Zeri, you're shooting like a terrified civilian with their eyes closed."
She turned her gaze to Darian. It was piercing.
"And you're trying to play commander, but you don't have the processing speed to call the shots. You're hesitating because you care more about looking good than striking true. In a real firefight, hesitation means somebody comes home in a bag."
Darian swallowed hard, fixing his eyes on the floor. "Yes, Captain."
"You are broken," Halden stated, pushing herself off the desk. "You are a total liability to yourselves and to any POND operatives caught in your crossfire. So, you're grounded."
Ravion's eyes widened in sheer outrage. "Grounded? Captain, we just put Kerro Vance in jail! The city is looking to us—"
"The city is looking at a billboard!" Halden snapped, stepping into Ravion's personal space. "Vance is sitting in a holding cell because gravity worked, not because you functioned as a unit. Until you figure out how to stop stepping on each other's throats, you are pulled from the primary rotation."
She picked up a cheap, battered data-slate from her desk and tossed it into Ravion's chest. He caught it on reflex.
"Your new assignment," Halden said, walking back to her chair. "An off-the-books milk run deep in the undercity."
Zeri leaned over Ravion's shoulder, her eyes scanning the slate. She let out a dry, humorless laugh. "You're joking. A missing pet?"
"A genetically modified, bio-luminescent Hound, belonging to the daughter of an undercity block warden," Halden corrected dryly. "He called in a favor. It slipped its leash down in the lower strata. You are going to go down into the muck, find the glowing dog, and bring it back without blowing up a city block. Understood?"
Ravion's hands shook with barely contained rage. "We are POND hunters, not pest control."
"Then show me you can control yourselves," Halden said, pointing toward the door. "Dismissed."
Ravion turned on his heel and stormed out of the office. Zeri lingered for a second, her hollow eyes drifting toward Darian with total apathy, before she blew another bubble and drifted out after him.
Darian turned to follow, eager to escape.
"Darian. Stay."
Darian froze, slowly turning back around and pulling up his practiced, stoic facade. "Captain?"
Halden sighed. As the heavy metal door clicked shut, sealing them in, the commanding captain seemed to melt away. She rubbed her eyes with her good hand, suddenly looking like an exhausted older sister trying to keep a reckless little brother from playing in traffic.
"You looked good up on that stage yesterday," Halden said quietly.
"Thank you, Captain," Darian said automatically. "I just wanted to honor—"
"Stop. Just stop," Halden interrupted softly, shaking her head. "I'm not the director. Drop the act."
Darian's jaw clicked shut. A prickle of genuine anxiety touched the back of his neck. Does she know?
Halden leaned forward, resting her elbows on the desk, studying him with a deep, weary sadness.
"I don't know what happened down in the dark, Darian. And frankly, I don't care," she said, her voice dropping into a low, protective register. "But I know how the Institute works. They saw a survivor, and they needed a savior. So they painted you gold."
She pointed a scarred finger at him.
"You aren't a leader, Darian," she said bluntly. "You're a survivor. The Institute is trying to make you the head of the spear, but you don't have the instincts for it."
Darian stared at her, the polished, confident words he had memorized dying in his throat.
"That mask they put on you? The 'Hero of New Aether'?" Halden sighed, looking at her own cast-covered arm. "It is suffocating. I've seen them do it before. They build a pedestal so high that you can't even move without risking a fall. They make you a symbol."
She looked back up at him, her eyes boring into his.
"Symbols don't bleed, Darian. Symbols don't hesitate. Symbols don't mourn," Halden said. "But kids do. And the second you act like a human—the second you fail, or break, or freeze—this city won't just be disappointed. They will tear you apart."
She leaned back, wincing slightly as her ribs shifted.
"You're playing a very dangerous game," she warned, her tone softening into genuine concern. "You are acting like a god to a city that is starving for one. But out there? In the undercity? The monsters don't care about your PR ratings. They only care about meat."
She nodded toward the door.
"Go find the dog, Darian. And while you're down there in the dark, without the cameras... try to remember who you actually are. Before you forget entirely."
Darian couldn't speak. He offered a stiff, jerky nod, turned, and hit the door release.
As he stepped out into the chaotic, buzzing hallway of the Institute, the cold realization settled deep in his chest. Halden was right. He wasn't afraid of the monsters in the dark anymore.