Chapter 386 — Five From Fianna II

Chapter 386: Chapter 386 — Five From Fianna II

Then Alice moved off the window.

"There’s something you should know before you agree to anything," she said.

She told them what Guild Zero had not put in the announcement. The American had not fought Wrath. He had fought an Echo of Wrath, a rebuilt copy of a fallen angel called Turiel. The whole plan depended on the Echo’s retaliation, and on controlling when it went off, not on hitting it harder than it hit back.

Fianna listened without interrupting. Mara’s eyes had gone narrow. Declan sat very still.

Ciara did not ask for everything at once. She asked one thing.

"Are you treating ten of us as one attacking group?"

"No," said James. "Ten people unloading on it together is the one thing we can’t do. Everything we put into it, it keeps, and it gives back."

Ciara looked at him for a moment and something in her face settled.

James was already putting them over what Alice had said, piece by piece.

Ciara could stop it moving. Declan could weaken it without feeding it a big hit. Darragh was another layer between it and whoever it picked. Mara could switch between holding it and burning it depending on where the cycle was. And Ren was built for exactly a few seconds of damage, almost as if somebody had designed him for it. He could keep his strongest cut in the scabbard until James said *now*, and not before.

Finn leaned over while Mara was asking Alice something about how long the gap was.

"We’d be idiots to keep looking," he said quietly, "just so we can say we looked."

"Yeah."

James sat back. 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ

"Fianna’s in," he said. "All five, as Fianna. Welcome to the expedition."

Ciara nodded once, as if that was the answer she had come for and she had not been sure of getting it. Darragh let out a breath through his nose that might have been a laugh.

There was no applause. It was not an audition. It was two guilds agreeing that the job fit.

---

Afterwards, the rest of them went downstairs with staff to sort equipment access, secure comms and a schedule.

There would be no Wrath simulation. Nobody in the building had fought the Echo, and Alice could not reproduce Turiel’s Authority. Pretending to rehearse a fight none of them had seen would only teach them the wrong things. The next session would be formation, communication, and what they actually knew.

James stayed upstairs, because there was a pile of alliance paperwork that needed his signature. Ciara stayed for the same reason on Fianna’s side. The others went off toward the lifts in a loose group, Finn already explaining something to Ren with his hands, and the door swung shut behind them.

It was quieter with two people in the room.

Ciara signed the first page and pushed it over.

"I’ll be honest," she said. "I thought you’d be harder to talk to."

"Sorry."

"No, it’s good. There are two versions of you going round." She pulled the next page toward her. "One where you’ve planned the whole floor in your head before you walk in. And one where Finn spends half his life stopping you doing something that would kill you."

She looked up at him.

"I’m curious which one’s true."

"Finn would really like everyone to believe the first one."

It caught her off guard. She laughed, properly, with her head back.

Her face changed completely. James had only seen her Guild Master face until then, the controlled one she wore to meetings and on the national board. When she laughed she looked like somebody else, younger and much less careful.

"God," she said. "Okay."

After that it was easier.

She told him it had been strange, watching him from outside. It wasn’t just the floors. It was the Blood Writ, and the guild going up out of nothing, and the international stuff. Somebody her own age had somehow become the person other countries waited on before they decided what a frontier floor meant.

"That’s not really how it went," said James.

"How did it go?"

"The stories cut out all the bits that went wrong. And the bits where somebody else worked it out. And all the bits where Finn was shouting at me."

She laughed again.

He was enjoying it, he realised. He had not expected to enjoy anything about this afternoon except getting the roster finished.

They signed the last page. She stood, and he stood, and she gathered her copies off the table. Her dark hair came forward over one shoulder as she bent. The fitted top sat close over her chest. She stood up straight with the easy, strong balance of somebody who spent every day on her feet in a fight.

This time he was aware of himself looking.

He found her very attractive. He knew it plainly, and he left it there.

At the door, Ciara turned round.

"One more thing," she said, lighter than she had said anything in the meeting. "If you get all ten of us killed because half those stories are true, I’m going to be extremely annoyed with you."

"For how long?"

"For whatever few seconds I’ve got left."

"I’ll try to keep it brief."

She shook her head at him, and almost smiled, and they went down to the others.

---

The joint statement went out at six.

*Guild Zero and Fianna confirm that open recruitment for the Floor 39 expedition has closed. Team Zero and Fianna’s core five will form the ten-Challenger expedition team.*

It was international news inside the hour. Overnight the story had been about who Guild Zero might pick. Now it was that Ireland’s first- and third-ranked guilds were joining up. Half the outlets were calling it a national superteam before the end of the evening. Both guilds put out a line saying it was not one, and nobody paid any attention to the line.

**@fianna_til_i_die:** FIANNA ON THE WORLD STAGE. FINALLY. THE LADS

**@tower_facts_daily:** ten people. scaling’s going to eat them alive watch

**@saoirse_k:** ten of the best in the country in one stream i’m not ok

**@yank_in_galway:** ireland’s answer to wrath is just "more irish people"

**@dub_zero_fan:** honestly? valid

---

James left the building at half seven.

By the time he got to the car park, his phone was full of it. The statement, the reposts, Fianna’s crest beside Guild Zero’s on somebody’s graphic, and a clip from an RTÉ studio where a man was saying *superteam* for the fourth time.

He stopped by the car and opened the roster Maeve had sent round for the final sign-off.

For the first time in two days, it was not a problem he had to solve.

*James Ganner. Finn Hale. Maeve Callahan. Ronan Cleary. Cillian Ward.*

*Ciara Keane. Declan Byrne. Mara Doyle. Ren Mori. Darragh Nolan.*

That made ten Challengers, with Alice beside them as she always was, as his Reanimated Anathema, outside the count.

His eyes stayed on Ciara’s name a fraction longer than on the others.

He noticed that they had. He locked the phone and got into the car.

Tomorrow morning all ten of them were due back at Guild Zero, to build the plan around what Alice knew.