Chương 123: 47. Duty 47-5

It was quieter outside than when I'd gone in. Not because the room was empty—because everyone had apparently made a collective, unspoken decision to give me some kind of "captain recharge time." That kind of consideration was dangerous. It made you want to be a better person, and wanting to be a better person was exhausting. Harvey looked up the moment I walked out. He'd been about to say something. Then his mouth twitched, and he swallowed it back.

"What's that look?" I asked.

"Nothing." He cleared his throat.

"Just thinking—hot water really does work as an exfoliant."

"If you want to die, you can say so directly."

"No thanks. I've seen two Jäger (Hunters) today. I'm not looking to add a third cause of death to the list." I was about to fire back when a familiar sound cut me off—a sharp, impatient intake of breath from somewhere on the floor. Jess was awake. She was still lying down, eyes just opened, blinking through a second of pure blankness. Then her expression snapped back to the setting I knew best: the entire world owes me eight million and I intend to collect.

"…Who dumped me on the floor like a corpse?"

"Everyone wanted to throw you further," I said.

"We showed restraint." She turned her head and found me. Paused—probably because I'd just come out of the shower, eyes still a little red, and I didn't look exactly like my usual baseline. Then her brow pulled together, and she loaded up into her preferred attack formation.

"Hey, which dumb—" She didn't finish. Because I looked at her. Nothing dramatic. No killing intent, no commanding aura, no protagonist halo. I was just exhausted, frayed, and had absolutely no patience left for anyone starting a firefight right now. And I'd been crying recently enough that my eyes were still pink at the edges, which apparently made me look meaner than usual. Jess stopped mid-sentence.

Mouth still open, second half of the insult stuck in her throat, wearing the expression of a cat that had reared up to hiss and discovered the cat in front of it was more unhinged than itself.

"…What," she said. Very quietly.

"If you're going to yell, do it later," I said.

"I wasn't going to yell."

"That windup looked exactly like a siege cannon loading."

"…" She actually shut up. Harvey immediately turned his face away, shoulders shaking uncontrollably. D raised an eyebrow. Even Akari glanced up at me—and for the first time, there was something in her expression that looked almost like oh? A miracle. I'd out-stared Jess into silence. The academy might want to document this. Probably rarer than this year's graduation rate. On the other side of the room, Lan was also coming out of the paralytic with Roy watching over her.

She woke up quieter than Jess—first thing she did was check where her weapon was. Professional. Standard enough that it made me think if you dropped her and Jess in the same wilderness, they'd spend three days fighting over who was more unhinged. Once all eight of us could sit up, Maki pushed the reorganized supplies into the center.

"Reality check. Everyone in." We sat in a circle. It almost looked like a peaceful camping trip. As long as you ignored the firestorm outside, the fact that we'd nearly been toyed to death by Jäger (Hunters) forty minutes ago, and that every single face looked like someone who'd recently swallowed sandpaper. Basically peaceful. The bunker's fixed supplies weren't extensive, but for us right now, they might as well have been a small shrine. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen.

Please report the violation. Eight sealed water pouches. Twenty emergency nutrition bars. Twelve packets of electrolyte powder for high-heat environments. Two basic med kits. Four units of hemostatic foam. Two strips of anti-inflammatory tablets. Six pain-relief patches. One set of replacement filter cartridges. Four thermal blankets.

And one Shelter Facility Usage Guidelines pamphlet that made me want to laugh—written in a tone of warm institutional concern, every sentence quietly communicating whether you survive is outside our warranty coverage. Harvey added our own inventory on top and ran through the combined total. Not rich. But survivable, if we stopped making suicidal decisions and walking back into the heart of the rainforest. Nobody spoke. They were waiting. Waiting for someone to go first. I was the squad leader.

So even if I wanted to play dead, I had to put myself up there first. I set my hands on my knees. When I spoke, my voice came out steadier than I expected.

"Today was my failure." No one interrupted. Which somehow made it easier to keep going.

"Not just bad luck, and not just a gear gap." I looked around at them.

"I misjudged two things. First, I overestimated how much our lure setup would affect the Jäger (Hunter). Second, I underestimated how badly I'd lose control the moment a teammate went down." Jess shifted slightly, like she was about to say something, then didn't. I kept going.

"I was the one who said don't charge in. Then I was the first one to charge in. That's shit leadership. I know. You want to run a tab, go ahead—we can settle it when we get out alive." Harvey muttered under his breath: "Installment plans on revenge. Thoughtful." I gave him a look.

"But I'm not handing our lives to the academy or the Jäger (Hunters) as a punchline. So from here on, we're done trying to prove we can go head-to-head with those things." D finally spoke.

"You're calling a retreat?"

"Not a retreat. More like—finally reading the exam question properly," I said.

"The academy told us from day one: survive three weeks. Not kill a Jäger (Hunter). Our objective isn't to beat them. It's to outlast them." Akari had been silent the entire time. Now she said, quietly:"Correct." Just two words. But somehow those two words landed with more finality than a paragraph would have. Like a stamp coming down. I nodded and laid out the rest.

"Three days. While this bunker door is locked, we do three things. First: rest. Sleep if you can. Get your body and your head back to functional. Second: consolidate all supplies—take everything useful, trade out anything we can't carry for what we need most. Third: plan the exit route." I raised a hand toward the simple map projected from my HUD.

"When the door opens, we don't go back into the deep rainforest. We don't pick fights. We don't grab extra gear. We don't go back for anyone out of pride. We push outward. Out of the rainforest zone. We find a rock shelter, a ravine, anything hidden and dry and defensible, and we sit in it until the clock runs out." Roy frowned.

"What if there are resupply points outside?"

"Visible doesn't mean worth it," I said.

"The best-stocked locations are exactly where the Jäger (Hunters) like to wait. No amount of food and water is worth trading a teammate for." D ran his thumb over one of the dents in his shield. Two seconds of silence. Then he nodded.

"I'm in." Lan's voice was still slightly rough, but she said: "Making it to the end is enough." Jess had been sitting with her arms around her knees. At that, she finally let out a short, dismissive sound.

"That really doesn't sound like you, Captain."

"Which part?"

"Don't go back for pride." The corner of her mouth pulled sideways.

"I figured you'd be the type to memorize the family tree of whoever hit us and work backward."

"That's the standard version of me," I said, without expression.

"This version just went through an upgrade in the bathroom." Harvey immediately jumped in: "Upgrade direction: brutal honesty with oneself?" I looked at him coldly.

"Upgrade direction: using the loudest person as outer-layer bait."

"… I suddenly find the captain's strategic thinking very mature." Someone in the circle laughed. Not a big laugh. The kind that leaks out when you're too tired to stop it—just a breath, shaped like amusement. Even D ducked his head for a second. Lan leaned against the wall, eyes closed, the faintest curve at the corner of her mouth. Roy exhaled like he'd just remembered how to breathe. Jess rolled her eyes, but held her fire.

Maki kept winding bandages, but the look she gave me had shifted into something that said finally, a conclusion worth hearing. And Akari. She was sitting under the white overhead light, and her gaze rested on my face for a moment. Not warm. Not obviously approving. Just—quiet. The look of someone recalibrating something. Then she set down the weapon she'd finished checking and said, evenly:"We go with this plan." Simple. Straightforward. But I could hear what it meant.

She was formally handing me at least half of the interim command. Enough. This was enough. I moved my eyes away from her and let out a long, slow breath. Outside, the firestorm was still hammering the walls. The bunker shuddered occasionally, like something enormous was grinding its teeth just beyond the metal. But sitting inside this circle of thoroughly wrecked people, I felt it for the first time—that things had at least found a direction that didn't look like a joke. We hadn't matured.

We hadn't suddenly become the kind of team that hugs each other and talks about feelings. Eight people, eight different flavors of broken—grab any two at random and they'd find something to fight about. But no one was talking about splitting up. And no one was suggesting we go back and fight the Jäger (Hunters) head-on. That was enough. Because for us, right now, the most significant victory wasn't taking anyone down, or seizing a supply point, or throwing the academy's rulebook back in their faces.

It was finally admitting one thing: Alive beats impressive. I slapped my hands against my knees and stood up.

"Alright. Plan's done. Now we rotate: shower, treatment, food, sleep. Anyone dies on my watch before I get to yell at them, I'm waking them up first."

"That threat lacks the dignity death usually commands," Harvey said.

"Does anyone here currently look like they have dignity?" Jess happened to look up at me right then. We held eye contact. Two seconds of silence. Then she made a short sound—somewhere between a scoff and a concession—and dropped back, closing her eyes.

"…Got it, Captain." Not loud. But I heard it. And maybe it was the crying—maybe washing out whatever had been clogging up the works in there—but for some reason, I thought: That actually sounded pretty decent.