Nate handed out assignments like he was tossing scraps to dogs.

  The operations room buzzed with overlapping voices, screens strobing with incident markers, the whole place vibrating with manufactured urgency. Nate stood in the center of it, broad-shouldered and sure of himself—one of those men who mistook volume for leadership.

  Zach stayed on the edge of the crowd, arms folded, already tired.

  Nate thrust a single report sheet toward him. “One Asterbound sighting. Handle it.”

  Zach took it and skimmed fast. The report was thin. Too thin. No corroboration. No secondary pings. No pattern notes.

  Mino appeared at his shoulder a heartbeat later—she’d heard the word assignment and felt that familiar hook in her chest: the need to matter. She leaned in. “One?”

  Zach’s jaw tightened. “That’s what it says.”

  Roberto, hovering nearby like an opinion nobody asked for, scoffed. “Maybe don’t bring the kid, yeah? Let the adults work.”

  Mino’s ears flattened. “I’m not—”

  Zach cut her off without looking at her. “Stay here.”

  Mino’s hands clenched. “Zach—”

  “Stay,” he repeated, firmer. “We just did your first field exposure. You don’t jump into unknowns.”

  Nate waved them both away like they were background noise. “It’s one Asterbound. Go. Report back.”

  Zach didn’t like it. Every instinct in him didn’t like it. But arguing in ops would only burn time, and time was the one thing they never had.

  He left.

  Ten minutes later, he knew the report was a lie.

  First came the noise—too many feet, too much movement slipping along the edges of the street. Then the smell—sweat, cheap chems, and that faint static bite of vavic residue that clung to people who’d been using power like a club.

  Then they poured out.

  Not one.

  Dozens.

  And then more.

  A flood of rogue Asterbound spilled into the street, grinning, armed, moving with the coordination of a planned ambush. Not scavengers. Not random. A net.

  Zach’s pulse kicked hard.

  He fought anyway.

  He always did.

  Dampeners snapped onto wrists and throats. Strikes landed. Joints popped. He moved like something built for stopping chaos—efficient, ugly, relentless. For a minute, it worked. He carved space around himself. Dropped bodies. Kept breathing.

  But a hundred wasn’t a fight.

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  A hundred was a swarm.

  They began to close in, tightening like a noose with too many hands. Zach felt an old memory try to climb up his spine—the street, the blade, his brother’s blood—guilt rising like poison.

  And then—

  A blast of light detonated at the far end of the road.

  Zach’s stomach dropped. “NO—”

  Mino sprinted into view, hands already glowing, eyes wide with fear and stubborn resolve.

  She’d followed him.

  She’d disobeyed.

  She’d come anyway.

  Zach hit harder, moving toward her, trying to break through the press and put himself between her and the swarm—

  Too late.

  They saw her.

  They rushed her.

  And the pressure of being surrounded—of being hunted—of being looked at like a tool instead of a person—

  Cracked her.

  Mino screamed.

  And she went off.

  Not the clean beam she’d learned.

  A shockwave.

  Light swallowed the street in a rolling ring of force. Bodies lifted. Asphalt split. Windows burst outward in glittering sheets. The air itself seemed to tear, then snap back.

  When the glare faded, smoke curled up from scorched pavement.

  The survivors—few, stunned, crawling—tried to run.

  They didn’t get far.

  Zane and Christine arrived like the last step of a bad decision—efficient, silent, ending what the blast had started. No speeches. No hesitation. Just the cold finality of people who’d stopped expecting mercy to work.

  When it was over, the street looked like a war zone.

  Zach found Mino on her knees in the wreckage, shaking, hands still faintly lit, staring at the damage like she couldn’t believe it belonged to her.

  He grabbed her shoulders. “Are you hurt?”

  Mino’s voice fractured. “I— I didn’t mean—”

  Zach’s face tightened—fear and fury tangled together. “Why did you come?”

  Mino flinched. “Because you were outnumbered!”

  “And you thought exploding was the answer?” The words came out too sharp, and he hated himself the moment he heard his own panic in them.

  Mino’s eyes filled. “I thought— I thought I could help.”

  “You did help,” Zach snapped—then forced the next words through clenched teeth. “But you could’ve died.”

  Back at HQ, the aftermath was worse than the fight.

  Nate was furious—not at the bad intel, not at the obvious setup, but at the embarrassment. The kind of anger that cared more about optics than bodies.

  Roberto piled on immediately, aiming it all at Mino: disobedient, unstable, dangerous.

  Mino stood there trembling, taking it like punches, her glow long gone but the shame still burning hot.

  Until Alisa stepped forward.

  Her voice wasn’t loud.

  It didn’t need to be.

  “Enough,” Alisa said, eyes sharp. “You sent Zach out with a lie. You gave him ‘one Asterbound’ and he walked into a hundred. If Mino hadn’t come, you’d be standing here writing condolences.”

  Nate’s mouth tightened. “She disobeyed—”

  Alisa cut him off. “She saved your people from your incompetence.”

  Silence hit the room like a slap.

  Mino stared at Alisa, stunned.

  Zach stood behind Mino, unreadable—guilt, gratitude, and a hard, quiet anger warring behind his eyes.

  Later, in his room, Taco—still learning the shape of the system she’d agreed to wear—sat at a desk with a pen in her hand and a scowl sharp enough to cut paper.

  She wrote a letter.

  Not about glory. Not about commendations.

  About teaching.

  About Chad’s teaching, and how “report first” and “follow protocol” meant nothing if protocol was always late and the lessons assumed you already knew the rules of surviving monsters.

  She signed with a decisive slash, folded it, and muttered, “If I’m going to be on the good side, the good side needs to stop being stupid.”

  And somewhere far beyond HQ walls, Heroko walked under starlight with the broken pole segment of the Soul Staff, thinking about a pale sword that could return life to the dead…

  …and how beautiful it would be to take that power and decide who deserved it.