Chương 116: 45. Interference 45-2

That was what sent static down my spine in this first hard contact—we didn't fall apart. D drove the shield left, taking two mag-spikes and follow-up fire head-on, the panel ringing like someone abusing cookware. Akari hugged the shield's right edge, exposing half a barrel, and her first tranquilizer round dropped a left-side gunner. The right team tried to push when our weight shifted left.

Harvey had already jammed the sensor into ash and was calling the thermal line: "Three and a half meters right-front—stay off!" I caught it instantly.

"Jess—throw a panel two o'clock right-front!" She didn't ask why. Yanked a thin metal strip from her pack, flicked it into the ash behind right-side cover. Just like I'd hoped, someone lunged after the sound. His foot went through the crust. The ash shell collapsed, trapped heat roaring out. He screamed and went down, dragging someone else's position with him.

"Nice shot," D chuckled low.

"I know," I said. For all of us, that felt good. Not luck—me, Akari, Harvey, and Jess finishing the same trap in under two seconds. The left team clearly hadn't pegged us as eight people. They tried to shift—Akari's second round tagged someone changing angles and dropped him. The right-rear group was nastier. When the thermal pocket failed, they went straight for center—clearly aiming to rip the command chain while I was injured and the formation was turning.

"Contact center!" Maki called first. By the time she spoke, I'd spotted the shadow. Male, armor grey with ash, carrying a short-handled breaching tool instead of a gun. At this range, worse than non-lethal rounds—he wasn't here to suppress, he was here to shred and loot. Target obvious: me. Of course. That stupid HUD privilege had clearly acquired a reputation. First thought: don't let Maki take this for me. Second: fuck, the wound. I went anyway. Not heroics. No time.

"Frost 01, taking contact!" I stepped forward half a pace. My left side screamed like someone was re-suturing from the inside, but backing off meant handing him the entire center. He clearly figured injured meant easy. The breaching tool came for my upper body with that Academy brand of malice—not necessarily trying to kill, definitely trying to make me a mess for three days. I didn't meet it head-on.

Dropped my right shoulder, slipped sideways, caught the tool shaft with my left arm as it cut air, and drove my weight straight into him. White flashed across my vision when the wound lit up, but he was more surprised I'd closed distance. At that range, a breaching tool was just educational scrap iron.

"Harvey!" I yelled. He didn't need the second call. Slipped in from the flank, tool handle cracking the guy's elbow joint. Crack. The tool dropped. I jammed a knee up, bending him back. Jess arrived like a blood-scented stray, arm around his neck, blade back pressed to his throat guard, grinning like a bastard.

"Hey, classmate. Still time to transfer?" He tried to fight. The short-haired girl put a low-lethality burst into his side and half of him went numb. Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit. On the left, D drove three steps up the slope with the shield, bullying the last suppressor into cover. Akari didn't waste the opening—dropped him too. Then quiet.

Just the right-side idiot half in the thermal pocket still whimpering; the left-slope team decided we weren't worth it and dragged their people out. I let go of cutter boy and stepped back, legs nearly buckling. Maki caught my arm immediately, voice cold enough to refrigerate air.

"Did you just use your wound to test tactics?"

"Results looked good."

"Hoshino."

"Fine. I'll shut up." My mouth closed; my pulse didn't. Not from fear. Because I'd been right up against the line, and sometimes you don't know if you can cross it until you hit it. Akari came back from the front, rifle hanging low. She looked at me for two seconds, then at the half-numb classmate Jess was holding.

"That was too close," she said.

"I know."

"Half a second more and Maki would be reopening you." Maki added frostily: "And I'd yell first." I looked at Akari, exhaled hot air.

"But I held." She didn't answer immediately. Just inclined her head slightly.

"Yes," she said.

"That's why I didn't call you off." That was worse than a compliment. It meant she'd been watching and decided I wasn't something to wrap in padding permanently. Good. I hated how good that felt. We dragged cutter boy and two half-sedated others into burnt root shadow, stripped anything dangerous, left minimum water and patches. Not generosity—leaving them to cook openly was too noisy, and wasteful of potential future leverage. Jess crouched beside them, poking shoulder armor with her knife hilt.

"Two teams coordinating that tight. Closer than most couples. Freshmen this motivated now?"

"Maybe not freshmen," D said. I looked up. He was looking at me.

"Meaning?" He didn't answer immediately. Akari did.

"One of them—repositioning and suppression timing was too clean. Not what you get from two weeks of first-year attrition. Looks taught. Or led." My stomach dropped. Second-years, third-years, credit shortfalls, recruiting first-years. Randomized finals. Academy silence on eight-person teams. All those threads pulled at once—not tied into a knot yet, but tight enough to chafe. Maki reached the same conclusion: "If not formal intervention, it means someone's already making early contact with first-year squads."

"Log it," I said. She nodded. Of course I'd log it. Missing that intel would be like forgetting to close the door on a Purgation Gale. As we reformed, Akari pulled me half a step aside. Not dramatic—just before slotting back in.

"What you did just now didn't read as showing off," she said. I raised a brow.

"What did it read as?" Her dead-fish eyes stayed on the twisted black ahead.

"Like you knew that was your only window to move. Late, and the whole formation cracks." I was quiet for half a second, then let my mouth twist. Not denial. Because we both knew she was right.

"Glad to hear Dead-Fish-Eyes finally admits I'm not made of glass."

"You're still fragile," she said.

"Just harder to break than I estimated." … Fine. I'd take that as her version of a compliment. When the formation moved out again, the sky was brighter than when we'd first left the bunker, but the Evaporation Forest never looked better just because it got lighter. New cracks had opened across the charred ground, some venting thin threads of heat smoke. In the distance, a few giant ferns that had barely survived the Gale were slowly unfurling again, like stomachs waking up.

We stepped over the scattered boot prints and half-dried blood left by two teams and kept cutting south. After that stretch of march, Team 144 and Akari's squad had finally moved past happened to be locked in the same bunker for three days. The provisional command chain had run once in real contact. Intel and fire support had covered each other once.

Akari and I had taken each other's measure—she wouldn't park me as furniture just because I was injured, and I wouldn't throw a sovereignty tantrum just because she'd held first command. This kind of understanding wasn't warm and it wasn't romantic. More like two blades from different manufacturers finally figuring out which way to press back-to-back so they wouldn't cut each other inside the same sheath. Before dusk, we made a final short stop behind a section of fused rock ridge.

The tall boy had just finished recalibrating the thermal sensor when he frowned.

"Large-scale movement signatures ahead."

"Wildlife?" the short-haired girl asked.

"Doesn't read that way." He passed the sensor to Akari.

"Rhythm's too regular." Akari looked at it, then passed it to me. No new shelter markers in that sector on my HUD—but several strange, intersecting heat trails that didn't belong. Like someone was sweeping the forest at fixed intervals. Not fast, not erratic. Just methodical in a way that made the back of my neck tighten degree by degree. D said quietly, almost to himself: "Here it comes."

"Here what comes?" Jess asked. Akari didn't drag it out. Dead-fish eyes as flat as always, same tone as a weather report.

"Final week's close," she said.

"The Jäger (Hunter) are moving in." For a moment, the entire eight-person formation went still. Wind moved over the scorched ground, lifting ash, heat—and something else that sat in the air worse than any Purgation Gale. I locked those too-regular heat trails into memory and slowly tightened my grip on the knife handle. Perfect. Forest School had finally decided to release something that actually hunted.