Re-Awakened :I Ascend as an SSS-Ranked Dragon Summoner

Chapter 745: Blast from the past

The hostage situation on the inside, for one, was real.

As Lila entered, she made a quick head count of the hostages and took note of the men standing guard over them. All in masks it appeared. With weapons and some no weapons, which she assumed meant they had abilities.

Twenty four people on the floor along the far wall. Settlement coordinators from the insignia on their jackets, their staff, two security personnel who no longer had their weapons. Most of them frightened and still. Some of them had been crying and had stopped. The kind of stillness that came after a long time of not knowing what was going to happen next.

Dara moved immediately toward the wounded coordinator without being told to. Lila watched her go and then looked at the room properly.

Twelve guards that she could count. Three at the main entrance, two at the side corridor, two moving on a loose rotation around the hostages, and five positioned at intervals that covered every obvious exit. The ones without visible weapons stood differently from the ones carrying. Weight forward. Hands loose at their sides. The readiness of people who knew they didn’t need to hold anything to be dangerous.

’Seven with abilities,’ she thought. ’Maybe more. Hard to tell from here.’

A man came toward her from the far side of the room.

Prosthetic leg, right side, below the knee. Older model, the joint visible. He moved well on it, so well you knew that it came from years of adjustment rather than recent fitting. He was maybe forty, broad through the shoulders, his mask pulled down around his neck now that she was inside and the door was sealed.

His eyes went to the bags she was carrying. Then to Dara already crouched beside the coordinator. Then to Lila.

"You’re not a healer," he said.

"Support," Lila said. "She doesn’t carry alone."

He looked at her for another moment. Measuring. Then he nodded once and moved away and Lila understood she had passed the first check.

She set the food bags down and started distributing, moving through the hostages slowly, giving each person something to hold, making eye contact where she could. Not speaking much. Just present. The kind of presence that said somebody knows you’re in here and somebody is working on getting you out.

While she moved she read the room.

The guards on rotation had a pattern. Thirty seconds east, thirty seconds west, brief pause at the south wall. Predictable enough that she could map it without appearing to watch. The ones at the entrance stayed fixed, eyes on the door, not the room. The ones at the side corridor were bored, which was its own kind of useful information.

Voss stood near the coordination hall’s main table, not sitting, not pacing. Just present. Watching Lila the way someone watched something they hadn’t fully categorized yet.

She watched him back without watching him.

’He’s not comfortable,’ she thought. ’And it’s not the discomfort of someone whose plan is going wrong. The discomfort of someone whose plan is going exactly right and is starting to understand what exactly right actually costs.’

She reached the wounded coordinator. Dara was already working, her hands moving with the focused efficiency of someone who had pushed past her nerves and found the thing she knew how to do on the other side of them. The wound was deep, arterial involvement likely from the blood volume, and the improvised tourniquet had been doing its job but only barely.

Lila crouched beside her. "How bad," she said quietly.

"Bad enough," Dara said, not looking up. "I need ten minutes without interruption."

"You’ll have it," Lila said.

She stood and looked at Voss across the room. "She needs ten minutes. Nobody moves near this man for ten minutes."

Voss looked at her.

"Your terms included a healer treating the wound," Lila said. "Let her treat the wound."

A beat. Then Voss nodded once at the nearest guard and the guard moved two steps further back.

Lila returned to distributing food while she thought of a way out of all this.

She was three hostages from the end of the row when she found the problem.

It wasn’t a device. It wasn’t a position the guards were holding. It was one of the hostages.

A woman, mid-fifties, settlement coordinator from the western territory based on the insignia. She was sitting with her hands in her lap and her eyes on the floor and she was absolutely still in a way that was different from the stillness of everyone around her. Not frightened still. Controlled still. The stillness of someone maintaining something.

Lila crouched to hand her food and looked at her hands.

The faintest luminescence. Just at the fingertips. Blue-white, barely visible, the kind of output that looked like nothing if you weren’t looking for it.

’She’s running an ability,’ Lila thought. ’Something passive. Something she’s been maintaining since before we came in.’

She looked at the woman’s face. The woman looked back at her. Something passed between them that wasn’t words, the specific communication of two people who both understood a situation and couldn’t say anything about it out loud.

Lila looked at the floor near the woman’s feet. The faintest distortion in the air close to the ground, barely a shimmer. The kind of thing you would miss entirely if you weren’t already looking.

’A field,’ Lila thought. ’She’s maintaining a field. Around the hostages. Around the people sitting on this floor.’

She stood up and moved to the next person and kept her face doing nothing.

’If I freeze time in this room,’ she thought, ’the field goes with it. Whatever she’s doing, whatever it’s protecting these people from, it stops the moment I stop time. And I don’t know what it’s protecting them from. I don’t know if the field going down for even a second has consequences I can’t reverse.’

She finished distributing the food and returned to the bags and started folding them.

’I can do it,’ she thought. ’That’s not the question. The question is whether doing it right now is the right call when there’s a variable in this room I don’t fully understand yet.’ She looked at Voss. ’Lucas needs to know about the field. Lucas needs to know there’s an awakened hostage running something I can’t identify and that I need more time.’

But her comms were in the pocket of the jacket she had left on the chair in the blue door building.

She looked at the ceiling.

’Figure it out on the outside,’ she thought, as if the thought could travel through walls. ’Whatever you’re doing out there, figure it out. Because in here I’m waiting on you.’

---

Outside, Lucas had been on the channel with Voss for the third time in forty minutes.

"You said everyone inside has been fed," Lucas said. "I want confirmation. Not your word. Get me a voice from inside. One of the hostages tells me directly that they’ve received food and water."

A pause. "You don’t trust me."

"I don’t know you," Lucas said. "There’s a difference. Proof of life was the first thing. Proof of condition is the second thing. Give me a voice."

A longer pause. Then the sound of movement, footsteps, the background noise of the coordination hall coming through the comms more clearly. Then a voice, male, older, the particular quality of someone who was being handed a device and was very aware of the circumstances under which they were being handed it.

"This is Coordinator Pelan of Settlement Varda. We have received food and water. The wounded man is being treated. We are." A pause. "We are unharmed."

"Thank you," Lucas said. "Put the other person back on."

More movement. Voss’s voice returned. "Satisfied."

"Getting there," Lucas said. "The wounded coordinator. Name."

"Why do you need his name."

"Because he’s a person," Lucas said. "Not a variable. His name."

A silence. Then: "Maren. First name Teo."

"Teo Maren," Lucas said, writing nothing because he was going to remember it. "How is he doing."

"Your healer is handling it."

"I want to hear that from her."

"You don’t get to make demands—"

"I sent two people into that building in good faith," Lucas said. "One of them is treating a man who was bleeding before I sent her in. I want to know she’s okay and he’s okay. That’s not a demand. That’s the baseline of this conversation continuing."

A long pause.

Then Dara’s voice, slightly breathless, focused. "Lucas. He’s stable. The bleeding is controlled. He needs proper medical attention within a few hours but he’s stable."

"Thank you Dara," Lucas said. "You’re doing well."

The channel returned to Voss. Lucas could hear the recalibration in the silence before Voss spoke again. "You’re very careful with names."

"Names matter," Lucas said. "You know that. Whatever you were before you went inside, you were someone’s name to someone."

Silence.

"The hundred thousand," Lucas said. "Transferable and untraceable. That’s not a small number but it’s also not a retirement number. Not for twelve people splitting it." He paused. "Which means the credits aren’t the point. They’re the surface. What’s underneath them."

"The surface is the point," Voss said. But it came out half a beat slower than everything else he had said.

"Voss," Lucas said. "I’ve been doing this long enough to know when someone is holding a position they were given rather than one they built themselves. The credits, Noah Eclipse, the whole architecture of what you’re asking for today. Someone handed you this plan."

No response.

"You didn’t walk out of Sector Nine eight days ago and build this in a week," Lucas said. "This was waiting for you. Which means someone was running it while you were inside. Someone who had an interest in what today looked like." He let that sit. "Who built this for you, Voss."

A long silence.

"I think we’re done talking for now," Voss said, and closed the channel.

Lucas looked at the comms unit.

Marcus was watching him from across the room. "He’s close."

"He’s not there yet," Lucas said. "But he’s thinking about it. The question is whether he thinks about it fast enough."

He opened the channel to Kelvin. "Tell me you have something."

"I have several somethings," Kelvin said. "Let me give them to you in order because order matters here." Keys in the background. "Voss’s prison network. Three confirmed associations inside Sector Nine detention. First is a low level fence, nobody interesting. Second is a former EDF supply officer caught redirecting beast core shipments, also nobody interesting." A pause. "Third one is where it starts."

"Go," Lucas said.

"Voss had a consistent visitor through the last two years of his sentence. Not family, not legal representation. Listed in the visitation records as a psychological support contact. The name on the visitor log is redacted in the standard file."

"But not in the full file," Lucas said.

"The full file," Kelvin said, "required me to have a deeply inappropriate conversation with three separate EDF security layers that I am going to pretend never happened." A brief pause. "The visitor’s name connects to a psychological assessor license registered in the northern Cardinal. Licensed two years ago. Prior military background listed in the application. Academy of training listed as Academy Twelve, Eastern Cardinal."

Lucas looked at the wall.

"Before I give you that name," Kelvin said, "I want to give you another name first. Because the second name explains the first one."

"Talk," Lucas said.

"Darius Mercer," Kelvin said.

The room went quiet.

Marcus looked at Lucas. Something shifted in Lucas’s face that Marcus couldn’t fully read.

"Who is Darius Mercer," Reyna said.

"S ranked shapeshifter," Lucas said. His voice had gone flat in the specific way it went flat when he was processing something he didn’t like. "Discharged from the EDF some years ago. He has Harbinger DNA integrated into his left arm. Partial transformation that got stuck and couldn’t be reversed." He looked at the coordination hall through the window. "He fought Storm once. Lost. Has been obsessed with Noah’s dragons since."

"That guy," Marcus said quietly.

"That guy," Lucas confirmed. He looked at the comms. "Kelvin. How does Mercer connect to Voss."

"Mercer’s biometric data shows up in security logs from three facilities in the northern Cardinal over the past eighteen months," Kelvin said. "Two of those facilities also have logged visits from individuals in Voss’s known network." A pause. "Someone introduced them. Someone with access to a discharged unstable awakened carrying a personal fixation on Noah’s dragons and a recently released felon with organizational history and a substantial grievance against authority." He paused again. "Someone who also knew enough about Eclipse’s internal situation to ask for Noah specifically. To know that asking for him by name would create a problem that couldn’t be quietly managed."

"Someone who knew Noah wasn’t here," Marcus said.

"Or suspected," Kelvin said. "The gap in Eclipse’s public presence after the alien planet operation wasn’t announced. But it was visible to anyone paying close enough attention."

Seraleth had come down from the rooftop and was standing in the doorway. She looked at Lucas and then at Marcus and read both their faces without saying anything.

"Mercer is the obsession," Lucas said. "Voss is the operator. Someone else is the architecture." He looked at the comms. "Kelvin. The assessor license. The visitor. Give me the name."

A pause.

Just long enough to have weight.

"Albright," Kelvin said. "C. Albright. Full name Callum Albright. Thirty eight years old." Another pause. "Vice Commander Albright’s younger brother. Adrian Albright’s uncle."

The room absorbed it.

Marcus looked at Lucas. Lucas looked at the coordination hall.

"Albright," Lucas said.

Just the name. Sitting in the air of a building on a street in Settlement Varda while twenty four people waited in a hall two hundred meters away and Lila sat among them knowing nothing about any of this.

Reyna looked at Marcus. Marcus looked at Lucas. Seraleth stood in the doorway and looked at all of them and understood from their faces that whatever this name was, it was old, and it was bad, and it had just walked into their afternoon through the front door.

"Kelvin," Lucas said.

"Already looking," Kelvin said.

"Find him," Lucas said.