Chapter 144: Sector 1 Academy Transit Gate Opening Tomorrow

Chapter 144: Chapter 144: Sector 1 Academy Transit Gate Opening Tomorrow

Gianna and I turned toward each other at the same time.

Rei blinked in confusion.

Jenna’s stylus paused mid-air.

"You know him?" Rei asked.

"Hard not to," I said.

"He’s been practically kissing every woman on the feeds whenever I sit down long enough to watch the news."

Rei laughed, sharp and delighted.

"You wish it was you, didn’t you?"

"Not at all. You two are already hard to manage."

A water bottle sailed at my head.

I caught it on reflex.

Gianna’s expression said the throw had been educational, not lethal.

"So," I said, sobering, "how powerful is he really? Is it like the rumors, or is it just a build-up because he fucks really well and the cameras love him?"

Jenna’s mouth hardened in a way that made the joke die on contact.

"Whatever you think you know about Draven, assume he is more than that. No one outside his inner circle truly knows the full shape of his power. Only his closest supporters do."

I frowned.

"Huh? Then how does he live-telecast dungeon clears like a sport?"

"That’s the part."

Jenna turned fully serious, light from Giselle’s file still painting the table edge.

"His body, under mana load, is simply that strong. The spectacle is not only technique. It is durability, output density, and a network doctrine built to look inevitable on camera. The broadcasts are proof of concept as much as propaganda."

Holy fuck.

Gianna watched my face, reading the shock with annoying accuracy.

"Wanna back out on the bet we made? I can still consider giving grace."

"Nope." I set the bottle down.

"It remains."

Rei’s eyes flicked between us.

"What bet?"

"None of your business," Gianna said.

"Extremely my business if it affects the grid."

"It doesn’t," I said.

"It’s personal. And I’m not folding because Sector favorite legend has a student on intake."

Jenna closed Giselle’s photograph, but the white hair and red eyes stayed stuck behind my eyelids.

"Then hear the rest without performing bravery."

She expanded the final pages of the brief: phase timings, prohibited lethal thresholds, observation box protocols, a dry note on "signature anomalies under Empress-line presence."

"Giselle Kestava was trained under Draven," Jenna repeated, in case any of us had treated the name like flavor text.

"That doesn’t mean she is Draven. It means she has been raised inside a doctrine that treats supports as force multipliers and public proof. If she looks at you, Revien, she will not look first for your feelings. She will look for whether your output can be scaled, displayed, or taken."

Gianna’s anchor tightened once, then steadied.

"We stay boring in the halls. Violent only inside the rules."

"Yes," Jenna said.

"No corridor challenges. No pride matches. No trying to ’measure’ her because your ego got bored."

A pointed glance at me, then Rei.

"And no house politics on the grid. If Cecilia shows up in your choices tomorrow, I will pull authorization and let the board sort the embarrassment."

Rei’s jaw flexed.

"I heard you the first three times this week."

"Hearing is not the same as obeying under pressure."

Jenna shut the packet.

"Sleep on schedule. Eat real food. No ghost training. No private renegotiation of who stands first in a graph. Tomorrow you are a dual unit under Inverse Intake, not a family argument with hooks."

Mira dimmed the last schematic.

"Transport to the practical gate is 0600. Bracelet compliance checks at 0530. If your hardware complains, you come to me before you invent a workaround."

"Copy," I said.

Gianna nodded.

Rei gave a short salute that almost looked like respect and almost looked like a blade being sheathed.

Jenna dismissed us with a final line that followed us into the corridor:

"Try to remain yourselves while the board tries to turn you into scores."

Evening settled over the guild in ordinary light, which felt fraudulent.

Rei adjusted her bag strap and turned toward the Lawless-bound lifts out of pure habit.

Gianna moved first.

I moved half a second later.

We took Rei by the arms, not rough, not playful enough to be dismissed as a joke, and stopped her mid-step.

Rei stared at Gianna’s hand, then mine.

"If this is an abduction, I will start screaming."

"You’re having dinner with us," Gianna said.

Rei’s eyebrows rose.

"Us?"

"Us," I confirmed.

"Gia’s place. Not a corridor or a mat. Real food."

"I have a house."

"You have a cage with decorated beds," Gianna said evenly.

"You’re not eating Cecilia’s silence the night before a Scramble."

Rei tried to twist free without committing to a real break.

"Did you two practice this?"

"No," I said.

"We’re naturally overbearing."

"Speak for yourself." Gianna tugged once, firmly.

"You can insult us over a table. You can stare at a wall in a room that isn’t trying to turn you into first place. What you can’t do is vanish into that residence and show up tomorrow with your head still full of dinner-table arithmetic."

Rei’s mouth opened, closed.

For a moment the focused, unreadable version of her flickered, the one that sat against mirrors and calculated disasters that hadn’t happened yet.

"This is pity," she said.

"This is logistics," Gianna replied.

"I need my secondary functional. He needs his unit coherent. You need calories that aren’t pride."

"Am I secondary too?"

"Kinda. Don’t make me say more."

I squeezed Rei’s arm lightly.

"Also, if you go home, I’m going to hover all night imagining random speeches, and Gia already told me hovering doesn’t help our score."

Rei looked at me sideways.

"You’re using her lines against me."

"They’re good lines."

A long beat.

Then Rei exhaled through her nose and gave a laugh.

"Fine. One dinner. If either of you makes a speech about we three while I’m holding a fork, I’m leaving through the window."

"No speeches," Gianna said.

"Small speeches," I said.

Gianna elbowed me.

Rei muttered something uncomplimentary about axles and chew toys, but she turned with us toward the residential levels that led to Gianna’s cadet apartment instead of the Lawless artery.

On the way, the city washed the hover lanes in neon.

Rei walked between us like she couldn’t decide whether she was under arrest or under protection.

Maybe both.

Maybe that was what a dual unit felt like from the inside on the night before hooks.

"Draven," Rei said suddenly, as if the name had been riding under her tongue since the briefing.

"If his student is even half of the broadcasts, the observation boxes will eat up any spectacle you make."

"I know."

"Do you?" Rei glanced at me.

"You have a face that looks like a story. Stories get hunted."

Gianna’s voice came quietly from Rei’s other side.

"Then we make the story about extraction scores and intact fulcrums. Not about him glowing for a Sector 5 heir."

"Look at you," Rei murmured.

"Almost sounding like you trust me on a grid."

"I trust procedure," Gianna said.

"You’re part of the procedure until you prove otherwise."

"That’s... Romantic?"

"Accurate."