The search that wasn't supposed to take longer than five hours took seventeen hours.
Commander Voss had promised a dawn deployment, but apparently the Void did not yield to schedules. The secondary rift that was supposed to habit the deployment was unstable; the wardens at the Citadel found themselves shifting coordinates twice before the anchor team could lock it. When the squad finally stepped through, the light on the other side was already fading.
Rourke led the raid. The Shattered Plains stretched before them. It was a cracked expanse of grey earth, the remnants of what seemed to be an ancient forest petrified into rocks. The sky looked like an open wound that hadn't healed. There were streaks of colour that weren't actually colours bleeding into nothing. In other words, nothing in the Shattered Plains looked like it could exist; it was illogical and went against all the laws of Planet Earth.
The tracker on Rourke's gauntlet beeped weakly. The signal from the students' devices was scattered, but there were clusters of them, too many for just five. It seemed the Shattered Plains was jamming their signal.
"Spread out," he ordered. "They're close."
They found the first two students within an hour. A boy and a girl from the Koinos faction, they were huddled in the trunk of a dead tree. Their uniforms were ruffled, their faces were pale and scared, but they were alive. The girl's eyes were wide; when they brought them in, she didn't speak for hours. And the boy just repeated different versions of, "The portal took us. The portal took us." He was scared and still in shock.
Rourke handed them off to the premedics, who were responsible for keeping patients alive until they left the Citadel and were transported to a health centre outside the Void. Rourke and the others kept moving.
After a couple of hours of brutal searching, they found some others. The three were together; they had found shelter in a crevice of black rock. A girl, who had apparently been near the front lines during the battle at the academy, sat with her back against the stone, her weapon flared up, probably ready to fight. Beside her, there were two others. According to them, they had found water, somehow, in a depression where the Void's colourless expanse condensed into droplets. They were weak from hunger, but they had survived.
"There were more," the spear girl said, her voice hoarse. "When the portal closed, we were landing together. But some of us were pulled apart. I saw them… that guy… Cale was it? And Valerie, they went the other way. There was a near blinding light, and they were gone."
Rourke's jaw tightened. "How many more?"
"I don't know. At least four. Or maybe five."
He counted. They had five now, so they were not being jammed by the Void. The tracker was correct, and it still showed more signals.
They found the seventh person in the ruins of what might have once been a building. The structure was something that had no place in the Void, yet its walls were smooth, its doorways too tall and too narrow. The boy was curled in a corner, his arms wrapped around his knees. He didn't respond when they called his name. He didn't even move when they lifted him. His eyes were open, but he was somewhere else. It seemed like the Void got to him.
The eighth and ninth were discovered together much faster now; they were near the edge of a canyon where the ground fell away into darkness. They had built a shelter of leaves, branches, and bone, and had rationed their Mauri to keep a small fire burning. That was good work, and Rourke was impressed. When the Wardens appeared, the boy laughed and heaved a sigh of relief, and the girl just cried.
Nine students. They were all alive, all accounted for.
Rourke stood at the edge of the canyon, staring into the dark. The tracker was silent now. No more signals. There was no sign of Caelan or Valerie.
"We need to go deeper," he said.
Commander Voss's voice came through his gauntlet, thin and distant. "Negative. The rift is destabilizing. And you have barely thirty minutes to extract."
"But there are two more."
"The readings show no signs of life in your sector. They could be anywhere. If you don't return now, you'll be stranded."
Rourke looked at the canyon, at the darkness that swallowed light. He thought of the boy who had thrown his tournament match away for reasons he could not tell anyone. He wondered what other outrageous thing he'd be out doing.
"We're coming back," he said. "But we're not done looking."
The extraction was quiet. The nine survivors were strapped into harnesses, their faces blank, their bodies limp. As the rift closed behind them, Rourke watched the Shattered Plains fade to grey, then to nothing.
The Citadel's premedical wing was a white, sterile space that seemed almost obscene after seeing the grey expanse of the Void. The nine students were laid out on medical beds; healers were moving between them, checking vital signs, administering medicine, as well as murmuring in low voices.
Rourke stood in the doorway, watching them. The girl with the spear from earlier was now awake, her eyes fixed on the ceiling, probably still in shock. The other boy was sleeping, his face slack. The two who had been found in the tree stayed still, frozen and scared. Their hands clasped together as if they feared being pulled apart again.
Mara appeared beside him. "They'll recover soon enough. The physical damage is minor. The psychological toll…" She paused. "We'll have psychological counsellors meet them outside the Void when they're stable."
"What about the other two?"
Voss's expression didn't change. "We're monitoring all rift activity. If they're alive, we'll find them."
"You don't think they are still alive."
She was quiet for a moment. "The Shattered Plains is really vast. There are things there that don't leave survivors. But your students, the ones we just recovered, said the two were together. That increases their chances. But to be honest, I don't think their chances are very great."
Rourke lit a cigarette. The smoke curled toward the ceiling, where the paint had peeled off and the white paint could only be seen faintly.
"When can we go back?"
"When we have a stable rift. It might be days. It could be weeks." She met his eyes. "I think you should prepare the academy. They'll want to know what happened to their students."
The transport back to Zōdiakos Academia was a convoy of dark black vehicles, their engines roaring, their headlights cutting through the predawn mist. Rourke sat in the lead car; the nine survivors in the vehicles behind him, mostly wrapped in blankets, stayed silent.
The gates of the academy appeared through the fog, the towers rising slowly as the fog faded away. A little crowd had formed, waiting to hear news from the Void: instructors, students, and some parents who had been summoned. The convoy slowed, and after a while, it stopped.
Rourke stepped out. The air was cold and damp; the environment reeked of rain. He looked at the faces in the crowd; he could see hope, fear, relief, and despair. He could almost feel the tension in the air.
Until the doors of the rear vehicles opened. The survivors were helped out one by one, their steps unsteady and their eyes hollow, devoid of sleep. The crowd surged forward, voices rising, and slowly the tension eased.
Rourke turned away. He walked toward the main building, his steps heavy, his cigarette burning down to ash. Behind him, he heard the cries of relief, the sobs of parents who had gotten their children back, and friends reunited in the silence between those sounds.
He stopped at the entrance, looking back at the convoy, at the empty vehicles. Somewhere in the Void, there were two students who were still out there, and he had promised to bring them home.
He lit another cigarette and waited for the dawn.