Chapter 17: Boring Survivors
Back at staging, Team Twelve was praised for the wrong reason.
Officials hustled teams into lines, checking tags, scanning injuries, barking questions that sounded like safety and felt like control.
Brant walked tall, wiping invisible dust off his jacket like he'd done something heroic.
"We made a beast back off," he bragged to anyone who looked in his direction. "Found a pocket too. Unstable. We got out clean."
An inspector in a clean suit glanced at him with mild interest, then looked past him, already bored. "Report filed?"
Brant hesitated. "Uh… not yet."
The inspector's eyes narrowed. "Then you found nothing."
Brant swallowed and nodded quickly. "Nothing. Right."
Kairo stood slightly behind, silent, plain, forgettable.
Selene stood beside him like a shadow that chose elegance.
Boring.
It worked.
But Kairo could feel the fragment against his sternum like a second heartbeat, cold and heavy. The Astral pull had quieted, but it wasn't gone. It felt contained, like a lantern with the glass covered.
The tech whispered to Kairo, nervous. "That thing down there… you think we should've taken something?"
Kairo kept his face blank. "We did the job. We left."
The medic exhaled, relieved. "Thank God."
Selene's eyes flicked to Kairo's jacket once, just once, checking the bulge that didn't exist.
Still Seal wasn't on now. She couldn't afford to keep it running. But she stayed close enough that if Kairo started leaking, she'd feel it.
Brant stepped up to the debrief desk, where an official typed without looking at faces.
"Team Twelve," the official said. "Auxiliary completion. No casualties. Standard bonus."
A small chip was slid across the counter.
Brant grinned. "That's it?"
The official's eyes lifted, cold. "You want more, get Etched rank and stop being a tourist."
Brant's grin tightened. "Right."
He snatched the chip and turned back to his team. "See? Easy."
The loud fighter laughed. "We should go back in. While everyone's busy."
Kairo's thread tightened sharply.
Selene's gaze sharpened too.
Brant hesitated. Greed pulled him one way, fear the other. "No. Officials are heated right now. We lay low."
Kairo almost sighed in relief.
Good.
Stay clueless.
They were dismissed, pushed back into the city-side corridor, and loaded into vans like delivery packages.
Kairo sat in the back, head leaned against the tinted glass, watching his own reflection.
Short black hair still damp from the clinic's rushed wash. Black eyes that wanted to go blue if he let his thread rise. A skinny build that didn't look like power.
Handsome, maybe, when clean.
Not intimidating.
Perfect.
Selene sat across from him, posture composed, eyes half-lidded like she was bored. If someone didn't know better, they'd think she was just tired.
But Kairo had seen the way her presence became a blind spot.
He knew what she was.
The van jolted.
Kairo's jacket shifted slightly.
The fragment pressed into his sternum.
For a second, the Astral pull spiked so hard his breath caught.
Selene's eyes snapped open instantly.
"What," she mouthed.
Kairo didn't answer with words.
He closed his eyes and felt it.
A direction.
Not back to the Reaches.
Not forward.
Sideways.
Like something had noticed the missing star and was searching.
Not a beast.
Not a person.
A system.
A corridor's hunger.
His thread trembled.
If he flared now, someone in the van could feel it. A sniffer. A hidden badge. A quiet official riding along.
So Kairo did the only thing a Pathmaker could do when he couldn't run.
He made himself smaller.
He breathed slow.
He let the fragment's pull settle into his chest without answering it.
The spike eased.
Selene exhaled silently, then leaned forward a fraction, her voice barely a whisper.
"Can you keep it quiet," she asked, not looking at his jacket.
Kairo's lips barely moved. "For now."
Selene nodded once. "Then we act normal."
Kairo stared out the window again.
Normal.
Like a man who hadn't stolen a star out of a corridor pocket.
Like a guide who hadn't just turned off the hunger that drew beasts.
Like someone who didn't have a target painted on the inside of his ribs.
The van rolled into the city.
Above ground, the sun was out.
People walked to work, bought coffee, complained about traffic, argued about sports.
Miracle medicine ads played on screens and promised longer lives for those who could pay.
No one looked at the vans.
No one knew that beneath their feet, a corridor had opened.
No one knew that two "boring" kids had taken the reason it stayed open.
Kairo's fingers tightened around his baton under his sleeve.
He didn't feel triumphant.
He felt the first real weight of progression.
This wasn't loot.
This was leverage.
And leverage always came with hands trying to take it.
Selene watched him without turning her head.
Quiet.
Elegant.
Dangerous.
A companion, yes.
But also a warning.
If they were going to keep this clean, they needed one thing next.
A place to hide a star.
And someone who wouldn't sell it.
Astral Pathmaker.