Chapter 72: What rank are you, Abby Ratchford?

Rain finished the daily quest before the sun cleared the dorm roofs: a hundred push-ups, a hundred sit-ups, a hundred squats, and five kilometers around the outer track behind the C-dorms, his breathing low and even the whole way.

[Daily Quest: Complete!]

[Rewards Applied: +1 Strength, +1 Endurance]

He pulled up his status panel while he toweled off. Strength thirty one. Endurance twenty-nine. The last of the soreness from the Husk Regent was gone. He showered, pulled on his black tactical hoodie and dark cargo trousers, and spent the rest of the day checking the time on his phone more often than he needed to.

By twenty past four, he was leaning against a stone pillar by the west gate turnstiles, watching the afternoon foot traffic thin out.

Abby came through the gate ten minutes later in her dark grey coat, hands jammed in the front pockets, shoulders hiked up near her ears. She was moving fast, nearly jogging, and her eyes went over the crowd twice before they found him.

"You’re early," she said, stopping in front of him.

"You’re late. And you’re breathing like you ran here from the north block." Rain fell into step beside her as she turned for the station stairs.

"I didn’t run. I walked very fast." She tugged her collar up. "My seminar went over. Professor Daley wouldn’t let anyone pack up until four-eighteen because he had to finish his breakdown on spatial feedback loops."

They tapped their cadet passes at the barrier and pushed through the glass doors onto the Sector Two platform. The train smelled of ozone and damp rubber. At this hour it was half empty, rows of pale plastic seats humming with the mag-lev track underneath.

Abby dropped onto a bench near the center door and kept her coat buttoned. She pulled out her phone, unlocked it, stared at the home screen for three seconds, locked it, and dropped it in her lap.

Rain sat beside her, leaving two inches between their coats.

"You’re going to crack the glass if you keep doing that."

She huffed through her nose and turned to the window as the platform slid away. "I’m not doing anything."

"You’ve unlocked it four times since we sat down."

"I was checking the time."

"The display’s right above the door, Abby."

She kept her eyes on the window. A small muscle jumped near the hinge of her jaw. The train picked up speed into the tunnel, and the overhead lights smeared into a long white streak across the glass.

"Want to run through it?" Rain asked, keeping his voice under the rumble of the wheels. "Three officers plus your mother, right?"

"My mother’s chairing." Abby’s fingers curled inside her pockets. "She brought Director Halloway from tactical assignments, Director Kessler from resource logistics, and Senior Evaluator Meyer." She let out a breath. "Meyer is eighty. He’s been on the guild’s adjudication board since the founders were wearing cadet colors, and he hates non-lineage cadets so much it’s practically a medical condition."

"So what’s Meyer after? Kill counts?"

"No. Rain, it’s not..." She shook her head. "Efficiency metrics. Combat ratios, growth curves, disciplinary record. One mark on your guild file from a drill where you lost your temper, and Meyer files you under liability."

"You don’t have marks on your file."

"I have one reprimand," she muttered at her boots. "Red Dragon training camp, two summers before I enrolled. I broke a sparring partner’s collarbone in a weapons drill because he didn’t clear his zone fast enough."

"That’s a training accident. That’s not even close to a temper..."

"Tell Meyer that." She turned her head, and her grey eyes were wide and bright. "To him it’s a failure of spatial control. Everything’s a metric. Everything’s an output."

Rain let the train noise fill the gap for a few seconds.

"Speaking of spatial control," he said, "you missed Krav Maga yesterday."

Abby blinked at him. "What?"

"Tenski kept us on Stance again. Three weeks running. But yesterday he pulled Vane out of the front row and let him try a micro-channeling draw."

Abby made a sound halfway between a sigh and a laugh. "Vane? He spends half the period fixing his collar in the mirror."

"Well, he hit a clean draw. His right arm lit up for half a second, and Tenski moved him onto Channeling drills on the spot." Rain shook his head. "Meanwhile the rest of us are still standing on the mats like fence posts."

"Oh, you’re annoyed." Her shoulders came down an inch.

"I’m deeply annoyed. I’ve been holding the same stance for three weeks because nobody’s allowed near Channeling, and then a guy whose main talent is looking good in a blue tunic glows for half a second and..."

"And gets moved up." She was smiling now, thin but real, and she leaned back against the seat. "You know my offer still stands. If I survive tonight, I’ll show you how to force the first draw down your torso without wrecking your core alignment."

"Is that right?" Rain raised an eyebrow. "Tenski makes it sound like trying that without three months of breathing exercises turns your organs into soup."

"Tenski teaches by the book because he’s got thirty people in that room and doesn’t want to fill out hospital paperwork." Her voice had evened out. "You isolate the primary spinal line and you don’t let the Mana spread into your shoulders. You’re strong enough. Your problem is you’re pushing it through your arms when it needs to drop from your core."

"My arms?"

"You load your shoulders. Every time Tenski calls guard up, your shoulders rise first and your hips stay dead." She tapped her own hip twice. "Fix your rotation and the channel opens up."

Rain looked at her, then down at his own hands. Three weeks of turning the problem over, his core, his system, his stats, and he had never once thought about his hips.

"I’ll remember that," he said. "You survive tonight, you prove it on the mats next class."

"Deal."

The train slowed, wheels squealing, and the automated voice announced Sector Two Administrative. Abby’s face went still. She was on her feet before the doors opened, coat swinging against her shins, one hand already in her pocket on her guild card.

The Red Dragon administrative tower stood forty stories over the Sector Two skyline, black glass and brushed steel, ringed by an iron fence with guards in scarlet uniforms posted along it.

They reached the outer gate at five past five. A guard in a scarlet uniform and an armored vest stepped out of the security kiosk, one hand on the grip of a short rifle slung across his chest. He looked Rain over from hood to boots, and his hand stayed on the rifle.

"Badge or permit."

"Cadet Ratchford. Five-thirty evaluation." Abby held out a gold-trimmed Red Dragon cadet card.

He scanned it at the terminal and checked the manifest on his wrist display. "Ratchford, A. You can go through." He tipped his chin at Rain. "And him? Visitors need a pre-registered clearance code. There’s no public waiting area in the atrium."

"He’s with me," Abby said, flat and hard enough that the guard straightened a little. "He’ll wait in the transit annex across the street."

The guard shrugged. "Suit yourself."

She turned to Rain. Under the street lamps her face was pale, but her eyes were steady.

"Don’t go anywhere," she said quietly.

"I’ll be right here. Take your time."

She went through the turnstile and across the granite courtyard at a fast, even pace, eyes forward the whole way. The revolving door turned once, and she was gone.

Rain walked back down the steps and crossed the street.

The transit annex was a high-ceilinged concrete hall for commuters waiting on late lines, with hard wooden benches along the walls and a big departure board that clicked over every thirty seconds. Rain took an empty bench in the back corner and pushed his hands into his hoodie pocket.

The wall clock read 5:24.

He put his attention on his breathing, counting in and out, because the alternative was picturing Abby on the third floor while Meyer and her mother read her life back to her as numbers. Every few minutes he lost count and started over.

At 6:15 the janitorial shift changed. Two men in gray coveralls pushed carts past his bench, mops slopping water across the tile.

At 7:10 a woman fed the vending machine by the exit, kicked it twice when nothing came out, and walked off. A minute later the machine dropped her can into the tray with a thud. Nobody came back for it.

His phone battery hit thirty-one percent. He put the phone away. His legs had gone stiff on the bench, so he swapped which ankle sat on which knee and kept counting.

At two minutes past eight, a man in a tailored charcoal suit came in, his long coat swinging at his knees. He had slicked-back blond hair and a small gold Red Dragon pin on his collar. He stopped in the middle of the hall, looked along the rows of benches, and stopped looking when he reached Rain.

He walked straight over and stood three feet from the bench.

Rain stayed seated, hands in his pocket, and looked up at him.

"You’re the F-Rank Phenomenon," the man said.

Rain waited.

"I watched the video. The C-rank." The man slid one hand into his coat pocket. "An F-rank registry tag walking out of a C-rank rift in one piece. Half the guild offices in the lower districts have a theory about what skill disk you smuggled past your Resonance Ceremony."

"Something I can help you with?"

The man smiled with his mouth only. "I’m with Red Dragon administrative security. We keep an eye on unattached talent in our sectors. An independent sitting across from our tower for going on three hours looks out of place. Especially when the cadet he’s waiting on is in the middle of a guild review."

"I’m waiting for a friend."

"A friend." He let the word sit there. "Cadet Ratchford is in a career-defining evaluation. Her mother doesn’t appreciate outside distractions. Least of all from..." His eyes dropped to Rain’s hoodie. "...whatever this is."

"She hasn’t complained about being distracted."

The smile thinned. He stepped half a pace closer. "Listen, kid. You got lucky once and the internet loved it. That doesn’t make you anybody in Sector Two. Get on the next train back to campus and leave the adults to their business."

Rain looked at the gold pin, then back up at the man’s face.

"My train leaves when she comes down."

The man held his eyes for three seconds. His jaw worked. Then he gave a short scoff, shook his head, and walked back out through the doors.

Rain uncrossed his legs and crossed them the other way.

At 9:45 the clock clicked over. Four hours and twenty minutes. Rain stood, rolled the stiffness out of his shoulders, and went back across the street.

Wind off the river pressed his hoodie flat against his ribs. The same guard was leaning on the kiosk, smoking a thin cigarette.

"She’s not out," the guard said, letting out a stream of smoke. "Sessions run till the board signs off. Could be another hour."

"I’ll wait here."

The guard opened his mouth to say something else, and the revolving door turned.

Abby came down the granite steps alone.

From twenty feet Rain could see what four hours had cost her. Her back was still straight, but her shoulders had dropped, and she was taking the steps one at a time with her hand near the rail. Her face was pale. The skin under her eyes had gone dark.

She reached the gate and saw him. The guard buzzed the turnstile, and she pushed through, walked straight to him, and stopped two feet away, breathing slow and deep as if she’d just finished a long run.

"You’re still here," she said. Her voice was hoarse.

"Told you I would be. How’d it go?"

She looked at him for a moment. Then a short breath left her.

"They didn’t pass me." She swallowed. "And they didn’t bench me."

Rain frowned. "So what does that..."

"Meyer wanted me in logistics tonight. He read the reprimand out loud. Twice." She laughed, one dry note. "Halloway said my tactical numbers were too high to waste behind a desk. Kessler sided with Meyer. So it came down to my mother."

"And she..."

"She said four years of guild money doesn’t get written off over one reprimand." Abby’s mouth twisted. "And it doesn’t get protected because I’m her daughter, either. Her words. So she set a condition."

"What condition?" Rain stepped in half a pace.

Abby looked down at the pavement between them, then back up at him.

"The guild won’t assign me a team, and they won’t sponsor my next clearance. If I want field priority confirmed and my contract locked before the spring auctions, I have to put together my own party." She swallowed again. "And clear a B-rank rift."

Rain went still.

His mind went straight back to the flooded basin: a flare sputtering in six inches of black water, the grey sheen of Holt’s reinforcement flaring across his arms right before the Husk Regent’s swing threw him six yards into a concrete pillar, Priya down and bleeding while Peter dragged her clear. Rain had thrown everything he had at that thing, and it had still taken Holt’s whole crew fighting beside him to bring it down.

That was a C-rank boss.

’B-rank,’ Rain thought. ’Everything I’ve fought tops out at C, and C nearly killed me. B is a whole other world.’

Then the next thought caught up with the first.

Her mother and three senior officers had gone through four years of Abby’s guild records and decided a B-rank rift was a fair test for her. They had set it as a bar she was expected to be able to reach.

So what did that make her?

He looked at her, pale and worn out, her coat buttoned to the throat against the wind, waiting for him to say something.

"Wait," Rain said. "A B-rank rift. Abby, what rank are you?"