Chapter 353: 353 | Technically Above Random Chance [PS BONUS]
"Our side is clean," I said. "We know our positions, our rotations, our fallback routes. If their half collapses, we pull back to our formation and protect our own."
Belle’s protein bar paused halfway to her mouth. "That’s cold."
"That’s alive."
"Jace." Naomi’s voice carried the gentle firmness she used when she thought I was being a dick and wanted me to arrive at that conclusion on my own rather than having it delivered through confrontation. "We’re supposed to be one team tonight."
"We’re supposed to be a lot of things." I took another drink. "But I’m not dying because Charles Leone thinks lateral movement is beneath his station, and I’m not letting you die for the same reason. Our priority is bringing our people home. If Blair’s group can keep up, great. If they can’t, that’s on their captain and their training."
The words came out harder than I intended. Or maybe exactly as hard as I intended. Three weeks ago I’d been a dying fat kid counting hours. Now I had fourteen days of life, four bottles of emergency essence, two buffed teammates, and a stolen ability that could carve through reinforced training dummies. I had built something real with these four people, something that worked, and I refused to let that work get destroyed by a rich girl who couldn’t convince her own subordinates to walk in a straight line.
Naomi studied me for several seconds before returning to her binder without comment. She disagreed. I could read that in the set of her jaw and the particular way she refused to argue when she knew the argument would accomplish nothing. Naomi Love, who had been raised to believe in collective responsibility and team spirit and the inherent goodness of human cooperation, sat beside me and chose not to fight about my willingness to let five people fend for themselves.
That hurt more than anything Blair could have said to me.
The fifteen-minute break stretched to eighteen because Charles needed to make a phone call and Dante needed to visit the bathroom and Javier couldn’t find his glove. Misato stood at the center of the field watching the organizational catastrophe with the thousand-yard stare of a combat veteran reliving past trauma.
"Formation Three," Misato announced when everyone finally reassembled. "Mobile engagement pattern. Offense unit advances while defense unit holds the perimeter. Rotate on my signal."
We lasted twenty-two seconds before Charles broke formation to intercept a training drone that wasn’t targeting him.
The drone had been heading toward Dante, who possessed a mana-absorption ability perfectly suited for neutralizing incoming projectiles. Charles’s ability, Frame Perfect, required pre-programmed attack sequences and open space to execute properly. Intercepting a surprise projectile while standing in the wrong position accomplished nothing except putting Charles between Dante and the drone, where Dante’s ability couldn’t function without risking friendly fire.
The drone hit Charles in the shoulder. Dante’s shadows, which had been reaching for the projectile, slammed into Charles’s back instead. Charles stumbled forward into Naomi’s line of fire. Naomi’s charged staff discharged a warning burst that sailed past Charles’s head close enough to part his hair.
"Son of a bitch," Belle said.
Charles rounded on Dante. "Watch where you’re aiming!"
"I was aiming at the drone you stepped in front of!"
"You should have tracked the repositioning—"
"You shouldn’t have repositioned! That was my target!"
Misato’s clone materialized between them and shoved both backward with separate hands. The real Misato stood ten feet away, her face communicating nothing except the absolute certainty that she would destroy anyone who continued arguing.
Blair hadn’t moved during any of this. She remained in her offensive position, blue-white flames dancing around her fingertips, watching her teammates fight with the detached interest of a scientist observing rats in a maze. Her expression contained no embarrassment, no frustration, no urgency. Just assessment. Cold, clinical, unblinking assessment.
And beneath that assessment, something I recognized because I’d seen it in my own reflection at three in the morning when the death timer dropped below twenty-four hours.
Blair Davenport was afraid.
Not of the gate. Not of the monsters. Of this. Of the public, undeniable, impossible-to-spin reality that her team could not function as a team. That the squad assembled around the S-rank heiress with the billion-dollar family name and the hand-picked roster of guild-affiliated overachievers could not execute a formation that my group of lottery rejects had learned in our first week.
I could have felt sympathy. Six weeks ago, maybe I would have.
Instead I watched Charles and Dante argue while Misato’s clone held them apart, and I made a decision that I knew would define the rest of this operation. I would keep my people alive tonight. That was non-negotiable. Belle, Naomi, Jordan, and Misato would walk out of that gate on their feet, conscious, and breathing, because I had the essence reserves, the ability loadout, and the willingness to burn everything to make it happen.
Everyone else was Blair’s responsibility.
Hikaru walked onto the field at eleven-thirty with a medical clearance slip in one hand and a protein bar in the other. The nurse had apparently found her readings acceptable, or more likely Hikaru had glared at the medical equipment until it produced favorable numbers out of sheer self-preservation.
The morning had already broken me in specific ways. Three more hours of formation drills had produced marginal improvements in coordination score, climbing from thirty-seven percent to a staggering forty-four percent that Misato described as "technically above random chance." Charles stopped freelancing by the tenth iteration, though his compliance carried the reluctant energy of a man being forced to eat vegetables. Dante and Jordan discovered that their abilities complemented each other well when Jordan’s shadows created zones where Dante’s mana absorption could function without friendly fire risk, a pairing that Misato immediately catalogued and built into the formation rotation.
But the fundamental problem remained. Blair’s people fought as individuals who happened to occupy the same space. My people fought as a unit that happened to contain individuals. The difference sounded semantic until you watched the drone exercises, where my four moved like fingers on the same hand and Blair’s four moved like cats who’d been stuffed into the same bag.
Hikaru’s arrival added a variable.
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