Chapter 58: Rescue Mission

Nearly a hundred hunters packed the tiered floor of the hall—a mix of grim-faced C-ranks in full composite armor, D-rank regulars checking magazine pouches, and a cluster of pale-faced F-ranks and trainees near the rear wall. Up on the raised dais, Marcus stood beside three senior tactical coordinators in front of a massive holographic projection of the eastern sector.

Kael spotted Ethan and Daniel standing near a support pillar and made his way over.

"They pulled you two in as well?" Kael asked.

Ethan looked up, the usual easygoing grin completely absent from his broad face. He was wearing a basic padded vest over his sweatshirt, his large hands flexing nervously at his sides. "Yeah. Got the automated alert twenty minutes ago. They’re drafting every warm body in the district."

Beside him, Daniel looked even paler under the harsh fluorescent lights. "We barely learned how to read a perimeter map this morning," he muttered, staring up at the red markers blinking across the projection screen. "I thought we had a month of basic drills before we ever got near live monsters."

"Gates don’t wait for the training calendar," Kael said quietly.

Ethan shifted his weight, squinting at the screen. "The guy at the desk said the readout only showed low-tier beasts coming through the tear. Mostly F-rank scavengers and a few E-rank hounds. The veteran strike teams will chew through those before they ever reach our end of the street, right?"

Kael didn’t answer right away. In his mind’s eye, he still saw the thirty-year-old flanker from that morning—veteran gear shredded, femoral artery bleeding out on the sunlit tarmac because of a single mistake in a ’routine’ low-rank gate.

Before he could speak, Marcus’s voice boomed through the hall’s PA system, cutting off every conversation in the room.

"Eyes front and shut your mouths!"

Silence dropped over the hall like a guillotine.

Marcus tapped a pointer against the glowing map, highlighting a sprawling grid of factories, shipping depots, and adjacent worker housing near the riverfront.

"Forty minutes ago, a D-rank gate in Sector 4 of the eastern industrial yard suffered an unscheduled resonance spike and ruptured," Marcus said, his voice hard and unhurried. "Because the breach occurred during the evening shift change, roughlytwelve hundred civilian workers and nearby residents are still inside the outer cordon. With the major guilds deployed out of region or locked in high-priority raids, the burden of holding this line falls on this room."

He swept the pointer across three concentric rings drawn around the red epicenter.

"Make no mistake about your roles tonight," Marcus continued. "C-rank squads and veteran D-ranks are deploying straight to the Red and Orange zones to hunt down escaping packs and re-establish a hard kill-line around the shipping yard. If your badge says F-rank or Provisional, you are assigned strictly to the Yellow Zone—outer perimeter evacuation, route clearing, and traffic control."

A stocky F-rank hunter three rows ahead raised a hand. "Sir! What if a stray pack slips past the Orange line while we’re moving civilians?"

"You do not play hero, and you do not abandon your charges to go chasing glory down an alley," Marcus snapped. "You use your flares, you get the civilians behind hard cover, you log the contact on the tactical net, and you hold only as long as it takes for a mobile strike team to intercept."

Marcus leaned forward, planting both hands on the edge of the briefing table as he glared down at the lower-ranked rows.

"I do not care about your kill count tonight," he said coldly. "Anyone who breaks formation to hunt for monster cores while civilians are on the street will have their license stripped by morning—assuming the beasts don’t eat them first. Check your squad rosters on the board and move to the loading bays!"

As the hall erupted into motion, instructors began calling out squad numbers. Kael turned toward the roster board, only for Marcus’s voice to cut through the noise directly in front of him.

"Ashford. Front and center."

Kael wove between two departing squads and stepped up to the base of the dais.

Marcus looked him up and down, taking in his posture and the way he carried his weight. "How are the ribs from yesterday?"

"Stiff, sir, but they won’t slow me down."

"And your head?"

"Clear."

Marcus grunted and pulled a laminated deployment slip from his clipboard. "On paper, you’re an uncertified F-rank. You don’t go near the inner cordon. I’ve slotted you into Evacuation Squad 7 on the western perimeter road. You’ll be clearing the warehouse offices and guiding foot traffic toward the municipal buses."

"Understood, sir."

"If a stray beast wanders into your sector, you take your cues from your squad leader," Marcus said, holding the slip out for an extra second before letting Kael take it. "You don’t chase, you don’t wander off your grid, and you don’t try to test how hard you can hit."

"I’m there to clear the street, sir."

"Your team lead is Senior Hunter Robert Hale," Marcus told him. "Ten-year C-rank veteran, former municipal disaster response. He’s short-tempered, he hates babysitting rookies, and he knows how to keep a squad alive. Glue yourself to his shadow and do what he says."

"Thank you, sir."

Kael turned toward the side exit leading to the armory and transport bay, pausing when Marcus spoke one last time behind him.

"Kael."

Kael glanced back over his shoulder.

Marcus’s face was like carved granite under the amber lights. "You told me this afternoon you wanted to learn the basics. Can’t learn a damn thing in a coffin. Get home to your kid tonight. That’s an order."

Kael gave a single, solemn nod. "Yes, sir."

By the time Squad 7’s transport rumbled across the overpass into the eastern industrial district, the night sky ahead was stained a bruised, hazy orange.

Searchlights from two low-flying Association helicopters swept across the corrugated metal roofs of the warehouses below, their blades chopping loudly through the night air. Down on the main arterial road, police cruisers and heavy armored vans formed a staggered barricade, their red-and-blue light bars flashing across wet asphalt and drifting plumes of white smoke. In the distance—maybe half a mile deeper into the yard—the sharp, rhythmic crump of heavy containment charges echoed between the buildings, followed by the faint, unnatural shriek of something dying.

When the rear doors of the transport banged open, the smell hit Kael first: burnt rubber, cordite, and that same heavy, static-charged ozone he had tasted at the gate that morning, only ten times thicker.

Kael hopped down onto the gravel shoulder, his hand resting briefly on the hilt of the standard-issue steel trench dagger strapped to his right hip—the only weapon the armory clerk had been authorized to issue a provisional trainee.

Twenty yards ahead, a section of heavy chain-link perimeter fencing had been torn clean off its concrete posts, the steel mesh twisted as though a wrecking ball had plowed through it. Across the lane, a civilian sedan sat abandoned with both doors wide open and its hazard lights blinking into the dark.

"Squad 7, form a half-circle on me! Now!"

The voice belonged to Robert Hale.

He was a thick-necked man in his late thirties with iron-gray stubble, cropped black hair, and a jagged white scar that pulled at the corner of his left eye. Unlike the flashy guild hunters on television, Robert wore battered, matte-black plate armor over reinforced kevlar, with a heavy, broad-bladed cleaver sword magnetized across his back.

Six lower-ranked hunters—four D-ranks and two F-ranks, including Kael—hurriedly formed up in front of him.

"Listen up, because I’m only saying this once," Robert barked over the thrum of an overhead helicopter. "Our sector is the western access road between Depot 12 and the freight yards. The main breach is half a mile east, which means most of the pack is being funneled away from us, hopefully. Our job is to sweep the roadside offices, round up the stragglers who froze up when the sirens started, and push them south toward the bus staging zone."

His hard, scarred gaze raked across the six of them.

"You move in pairs. You keep your comms pinned to channel four. If you spot movement in the shadows that isn’t wearing clothes, you do not engage unless it is actively chewing on a civilian. You pop a red flare, you call out your grid marker, and I will come take its head off. Are we clear?"

"Yes, sir!" the group chorused.

Robert’s eyes stopped on Kael’s yellow provisional armband, narrowing slightly. "You’re Ashford?"

"Yes, sir."

"Marcus told me he was dumping a fresh trainee on my roster," Robert muttered, spitting onto the gravel. "Said you had a strange assessment readout yesterday."

A couple of the D-ranks glanced sideways at Kael with brief curiosity.

"I’m just here to help clear the road, sir," Kael replied evenly.

Robert grunted, evidently satisfied by the lack of swagger. "Good answer. Because out here, an assessment score means jack shit compared to keeping your head on a swivel. You’re paired with Lucas. Take the west side of the avenue from the machine shops down to the loading dock. Move!"

Kael fell into step beside Lucas—a wiry F-rank hunter barely out of his teens who was gripping a short iron baton so tightly his knuckles were white.

"Stay on my left," Kael told him quietly, keeping his voice calm and grounded as they jogged toward the row of lit machine-shop offices. "You watch the alley gaps between the buildings; I’ll clear the doors."