Chương 121: 47. Duty 47-3

My throat tightened. My eyes burned. Something hot and suffocating pressed against my chest, threatening to split me open from the inside. Not because I was afraid to die. Because I understood it with crystal clarity: They hadn't failed to finish us. They'd simply decided we weren't worth finishing right now. We hadn't survived on merit. We'd been scooped up by the firestorm the way you'd pocket loose change—incidentally, without looking down.

I bit down hard on my lip, forcing whatever was rising back into my chest. The tears didn't fall. But it was close. Jess lay on the ground, completely unresponsive. Maki was already checking her breathing and pupils. Harvey had turned back to his HUD, cross-referencing terrain data.

"Crying can wait, Captain," he said, still catching his breath.

"We don't move now, we all get baked into one big family dumpling."

"Nobody's crying!" I snapped back. My voice came out scraped raw, like someone had taken sandpaper to my vocal cords.

"Right. Must be thermal convection drawing moisture from your eyes."

"Harvey, I swear to God, if we make it out of here alive, you're the first one I'm hitting."

"Get in line. Jess is gonna want a turn when she wakes up." Maki dropped Jess's harness into my hands, her tone as warm as surgical steel.

"You can still argue, which means you can still move. Hoshino. Find the nearest usable bunker. Now." Right. The crying, the shame, the complete destruction of whatever self-respect I had left—all of that could wait in line. Survive first. I dragged a hand hard across my eyes and dropped my gaze to the HUD. The red thermal zones were expanding at a visible rate. And to our southeast, approximately 1. 7 kilometers out— A shelter marker lit up. Green. Not a glitch. Not a phantom signal. Actually green.

"Southeast, 1. 7 out," I said immediately.

"Official bunker, currently accessible."

"Can we get in?" Harvey asked.

"HUD says it's active, so yes. Move!" We didn't waste another second. This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report. Maki and I hauled Jess between us. Harvey shouldered the heaviest pack, scooping up two wire lines that hadn't completely fused. I took point, eyes split between the HUD and the ground, running frantic calculations: shortest route, fewest thermal pockets, enough margin to clear the firestorm's leading edge before it swept through.

Behind me, the occasional scrape of Jess's gear dragging across the ground set my nerves on edge. I didn't dare look back for long. We nearly died once more on the way. A patch of ground that looked like ordinary scorched earth gave way the moment I stepped on it—the whole surface layer collapsed, revealing a half-molten heat cavity underneath. If Harvey hadn't grabbed my collar and hauled back, I'd have become a very educational cautionary example.

"Watch where you're going!" he wheezed.

"I'm watching the HUD!"

"The HUD doesn't grow eyes for your feet!"

"Then shut up and pull harder!"

"You're terrifying. No wonder the Jäger didn't want to keep you."

"That's a taste problem on their end!" Maki's voice came from behind us, flat and dry.

"The fact that you two can bicker while dragging a body is genuinely moving. Well done." That was how we made it—hauling one unconscious teammate, covered in ash, running on rage and fumes and equipment held together by optimism—sprinting the firestorm's leading edge to reach the bunker. The structure was half-buried between black rock and root systems. It looked like a particularly uninviting metal coffin. The door was thick, its surface darkened by previous heat waves.

Honestly, if the HUD marker hadn't been lit, I never would have believed it could open. I threw myself at the door, slapping my hand onto the sensor pad. For one second, I stopped breathing entirely. The indicator light shifted from dead gray to green. Clack. The lock bolts retracted.

"It's open!" I shouted. Harvey and Maki practically threw Jess through the gap. I was the last one through. When I turned back at the threshold, I could already see the rolling wall of superheated smoke cresting the treeline, painting the sky into a warped, boiling red. The door closed behind us. The moment that thick metal sealed us off from the outside world, my knees buckled and I nearly went straight to the floor. We were alive. Badly. Pathetically.

In the specific way of something the world had just finished humiliating before grudgingly permitting to keep breathing. But alive. I leaned against the cold inner door panel, the pressure in my chest still refusing to lift. The sound of the door sealing was heavy enough to feel like someone had shut the entire forest's mouth at once. Clack—thud.

The thermal wind outside, the exploding wood, the constant high-pitched roar that made you wonder if your next breath would cook you from the inside—all of it hit the bunker door and blurred into a distant, muffled world. Not gone. Just... separate. Like knowing hell was right outside, but hell was taking a number for now, and your number hadn't come up yet. My back against the door, my legs gave out. I sat down. I actually sat down. Perfect.

Ten minutes ago I was out there competing with a Jäger to see who looked more pathetic, and the first thing I do inside is treat everyone to a live demonstration of structural collapse. Very commanding. Exactly what the academy's elite program brochures love to advertise.

"Count heads first." It wasn't me who said it. It was Akari. Her voice wasn't loud—it was flat in a way that was almost excessive—but that complete lack of inflection, dropped into a room full of people whose brains were half-cooked, landed like a nail: sharp enough to pin everyone back to reality. I drew a breath, crushed the mess in my chest back down, and pushed myself upright against the door.

"Sound off."

"One." I started.

"Two." Maki was already crouching over the medical kit, not looking up.

"Three." Harvey, still catching his breath.

"Four—shit, my legs feel like they belong to someone else." That wasn't Jess—Jess had come in unconscious. That was D, because he was carrying someone else.

"They do belong to someone else," Harvey said.

"You've got energy for that right now?"

"Yeah. Excellent lung capacity."

"Five." D's voice, hard as sheet metal, lowering his burden.

"Six." Akari.

"Seven." A tall, lean figure braced against the wall, face pale in a way that looked borrowed from a morgue.

"Eight." The short-haired girl didn't answer for herself—D had half-carried her in. Her right shoulder down to the upper arm was completely rigid. Eyes closed, breathing steady. Eight. All of us. I stared at the scene in front of me, and something strange moved through me. Not simple relief. More like— Holy shit, these lunatics actually all crawled in here alive.