Chapter 80: Gap
The panel came down with a sound like a gunshot and the gap it left was exactly one and a half meters wide and the first Aberrant came through it before the echo finished.
Michael had been expecting fast. He had read Dr. Kang’s briefing notes and he had watched the approach on the pulse and he had run the contact drill four days in a row and he thought he had a working understanding of what fast meant in this context.
He hadn’t truly reacted until the first one burst through the gap at its incredible speed, triggering the Skill Echo in his body before his conscious mind even registered it.
The movement reading engaged on the Aberrant’s shoulder orientation just a fraction of a second before it committed to a direction.
He instinctively went left instead of right, and the creature’s extended arm swept past where his head had been. He felt the air displacement against his face, indicating just how close it was.
He got the axe into the contact on the recovery.
The strike was functional but not perfect, resembling a less precise contact drill in training.
It caused the Aberrant to shift sideways and lose momentum, while Sera was already in position on the right side, taking advantage of the movement’s angle.
Her follow-through was smooth and efficient, thanks to six years of competitive kickboxing, with an axe-like action targeting the identified anatomical weakness, executed with targeted force.
It went down.
The second one was already through the gap.
Michael sensed it before seeing it, as the Skill Echo indicated the entry angle from the gap threshold, providing him the direction half a beat early.
He used this half-beat to position his feet correctly, knowing footwork was critical because Sera had been drilling it into him for two weeks.
Footwork in a channeled space differs from open ground, and after four days of practising the modified approach, he needed to execute it perfectly right now.
The second Aberrant was taller than the first, with a longer arm reach.
When it cleared the gap, it spread both arms wide in a movement that wasn’t a typical attack but a grab, aiming to use its extended arm to close around and compress something.
Michael recognised the grab’s intent from the shoulder position before the arms were fully extended, and he moved inside it.
He pushed all the way inside, farther than the drill had ever required, because the arm span on this move meant he was deeper than the training room’s geometry anticipated.
With the axe in hand and no space to swing properly, he was inside it, while Sera remained outside the contact and couldn’t get a clean angle without risking hitting him.
He used the axe handle instead of the blade.
Horizontal across the throat, both hands on the handle, driving forward with full body weight into the compression.
The Aberrant’s grab closed around empty air behind him, causing its balance to shift backward under the throat pressure.
Sera arrived from the side just as the backward stumble created the opening, and the finish was delivered.
The Aberrant went down, and Michael stepped back to breathe.
Two down.
The gap was still open.
He looked at Sera, who was gazing at the gap with her axe raised, her chest moving with steady breathing.
She had a recent cut on her left forearm, something she hadn’t mentioned and he hadn’t noticed before, which indicated that their first contact was closer than the outcome implied.
He looked at the gap.
The pulse revealed Aberrant signatures on the east face exterior.
The turrets cycled through the approach wave, dropping targets at maximum rate.
The engagement absorbed the front of the approach, but the wave kept coming as expected after they had calculated and committed to their plan.
How many were going to come through the gap.
He examined the Blueprint Interface, focusing on the east face’s exterior engagement, the turret’s output rate, and the Aberrant approach density at the gap location.
The turrets performed well and were effectively engaging targets. However, with fifty-one signatures present, the turret’s output rate couldn’t keep up against a sustained mass approach.
The active signatures on the east face maintained enough activity to keep the gap receiving traffic until the turrets cleared the perimeter or some other change occurred.
He looked at the gap.
He looked at Sera.
He looked at the lobby corridor and the blast wall channel and the building around them and pulled up the blueprint in his head with the particular focus of someone who had been building this place for forty days and knew every element of it.
The seventh panel.
Half seated. Seven of twelve anchor bolts engaged. It had come down under sustained exterior pressure from multiple Aberrant bodies at the base.
The anchor bolts had held longer than the load analysis had estimated which meant the panel material was rated higher than the spec suggested or the Aberrant approach load was distributed differently than he’d modeled.
Either way the panel was down and on the exterior side of the gap.
He examined the gap’s geometry, which was 1.5 meters wide. The panel measured two meters across.
It rested on the outside of the gap, secured with seven anchor bolts anchored into the floor substrate on the exterior side, indicating it remained attached to the building at its base on that side.
Still attached.
He looked at Sera. "I need sixty seconds," he said.
She looked at the gap. "Go," she said, then stepped to the center of the threshold.
He moved to the blast wall’s interior panel next to the gap and opened the Blueprint Interface to the structural repair function.
He had never used this feature before because he had never needed to perform an emergency repair on a building element.
The structural repair process needed materials, SP, and time.
He didn’t have time.
He examined his situation. The panel remained securely anchored outside. The gap was caused by the five unused anchor bolts on the inside.
If he could drive the remaining interior bolts into place from inside the gap, the panel would reseat properly.
Not perfect, but close. Instead of the full twelve-bolt engagement of a correctly installed panel, there were seven exterior bolts and five interior bolts.
Combined, that made twelve bolts total, which is the complete number needed, ensuring the panel would stay secure.
He needed the anchor bolt driver from the materials kit.
He looked at the blast wall materials that Cole’s group had abandoned in the courtyard when the alert came.
They were in the courtyard.
He looked at the courtyard entrance through the lobby.
The third variant was down at the building entrance threshold. The courtyard beyond it was empty of active threats, the turrets covering the exterior approach, the courtyard interior clear on the pulse.
Sixty feet of open courtyard between him and the materials kit.
He went.
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