Kenna was breathing hard and pulled Tamara behind a collapsed wall.
She looked at her arm.
The "scratch" was actually a deep gash running from elbow to wrist and bleeding freely.
"Oh," she said faintly. "That's... that's not good."
"Don't look at it." Tamara was already pulling medical supplies from her pack. "Just don't look."
"But I am looking and there's—is that bone? Is that my bone?"
"Kenna. Focus on my voice."
Another explosion, this one fifty meters closer.
Then another.
Forty meters.
"They're herding us," Said Tamara, her hands steady despite the chaos as she wrapped Kenna's arm. "Each explosion is pushing us in a specific direction."
"Toward what?"
"Nothing good."
"We need to move,"
"Where? Everything's compromised!"
Another explosion erupted ten meters ahead.
They ran left.
Explosion.
Right.
Explosion.
"This is insane!" Kenna shouted over the noise.
Riva's voice crackled through their comms. "Pair four, I'm reading your position. Hold on, I'm opening an extraction portal."
A spatial tear opened beside them.
"Go!" Kenna shoved Tamara toward it.
They dove through.
And emerged directly in front of another explosion.
Kenna's reflexes saved them again, pulling Tamara back through the portal before it closed.
They hit the ground hard on the original side.
"What the hell?" Tamara coughed, dust in her lungs.
"Riva, your portal put us in a worse position!" Kenna snapped into her comm.
"The interference from the explosions must be affecting my crest."
Across the rift site, similar chaos erupted.
Willy and The DiMarcos found themselves driven into a narrow alley.
Explosions bracketed them on both sides.
Milo shielded them found the debris by holding it in place, while Marco shattered the falling rocks.
"We need to get out of here!" Willy shouted.
Wheeler had grown to twice his normal size, and was helping punch away the debris.
Milo didn't look like she wanted to retreat. "We need to find who's doing this"
"Milo, don't...."
"We can end this if we find and take out whoever's—"
Marco grabbed her sister's arm. "That's exactly what they want! We need to protect the logistics students, not go on the offensive!"
"We can protect them by eliminating the threat.!"
Willy scrambled to his feet. "Uh, guys? Maybe save the argument for when we're not being actively murdered?"
Another explosion, closer this time.
Marco pulled both of them behind a concrete barrier. "We stay defensive and keep moving."
Milo's jaw clenched, but she nodded.
Another portal opened.
"Let's go" Willy yelled.
they didn't really have a choice. The alley was collapsing.
They jumped through.
And landed in an open courtyard surrounded by three Echoes.
"You've got to...," Milo growled.
"Be fucking with me." Marco cracked her knuckles.
Jonas and Brick weren't faring much better.
Brick was blocking explosions with his body, taking hits meant for Jonas.
"Riva, what's happening?" Jonas demanded into his comm.
"I don't know! The detonations are interfering with my Crest. Every time I try to extract you, the coordinates shift."
"Then stop trying to extract us!"
Another portal opened beneath their feet, they fell through and Landed on the roof of a partially collapsed building.
An explosion went off directly below them.
"Jump!" Brick grabbed Jonas and leaped.
They crashed through a window into another building just as the roof gave way behind them.
In the central zone, Josephine's crest was working over time.
She'd manifested a light type shield around herself and Suzie, arrows firing from gaps in the barrier to take down Echoes that kept appearing.
"This doesn't make sense," Suzie said, fingers flying across her tablet. " The explosion patterns, it's almost like the attacker knows where we are.
"You think someone's giving away our location.?"
"I know someone is" She showed Josephine the map. "They're targeting our escape routes specifically."
Josephine's eyes widened. "Riva?!, but maybe"
A portal opened inside their dome.
"Get out!" Josephine grabbed Suzie and rolled them both away.
The portal deposited an Echo directly where they'd been standing.
Josephine's light arrow pierced it instantly.
"Definitely Riva," Suzie confirmed.
In the southwest Quadrant,
Huey pressed against the concrete barrier, his mind racing.
Mira crouched beside him.
"Something's wrong," Huey said.
"Obviously."
"No, I mean specifically wrong. Riva's portals keep putting people in worse positions."
"Interference from the explosions...."
"Five times in a row? It's Always worse, never better?" Huey shook his head. "Any sort of interference here is the intentional kind."
Mira's silver-ringed eyes narrowed. "You think she betrayed us."
"I think we need to assume she did."
An Echo lunged from the rubble.
Mira didn't even look.
Ice spikes erupted from the ground, impaling it mid-leap.
"I'm going after her," Mira said, standing.
"Wait...."
A portal opened beneath her feet.
She dropped through before Huey could grab her.
The portal closed.
"Mira!" Huey shouted into his comm. "Mira, respond!"
But she didn't come through.
It was instead Riva's voice. "I hate to admit it, but she would have been a little too much to handle."
Huey's eyes blazed blue.
"You bitch."
"Language. You're still my student."
He forced himself to calm down. Anger wouldn't help.
Think.
The explosions only triggered when someone moved into specific areas. He'd noticed it watching Kenna and Tamara's retreat.
Traps. Preset detonations activated by proximity or contact.
Which meant the person controlling them needed some way to trigger them remotely.
But from where?
Huey scanned the horizon, looking for elevated positions, vantage points.
That's when he saw them.
Josephine and Suzie, about fifty meters away, behind their light dome.
"Suzie!" he called through the comm. "I need you to verify something."
"Cross? What...."
"The explosions. They're triggered by proximity, right? Set traps across the entire zone."
A pause. Then, "Hold on, let me check the data I've gathered."
Josephine's voice cut in. "Huey, what's going on?"
"Riva's working with whoever's attacking us. She's been teleporting people into kill zones on purpose."
"That's....."
"Confirmed," Suzie interrupted. "Cross is right. The detonations follow a pattern. Someone marked these surfaces in advance."
"Relay that to everyone," Huey said.
Suzie's voice went out over the general comm. "All students, the explosions are proximity-triggered traps. Avoid moving through open areas. The attacker preset the detonations across the site."
"Great," Willy's voice came back. "So we're in a minefield. Fantastic."
Huey was still scanning the horizon.
"Whoever's controlling this needs line of sight or some kind of remote activation," he muttered. "To coordinate detonations across the entire site from a distance, they'd need...."
"Strings," Josephine said over the comm. "Like a puppet master."
"Exactly. We trace the strings, we find the puppeteer."
"How do we trace something we can't see?"
"Look for the highest point with clear sight lines to the entire zone," Suzie said. "Somewhere with tactical advantage."
Huey's eyes swept the area.
Then he saw it.
The cliff.
Northeast of the rift site. Perfect elevation and visibility.
"I've got it. Northeast cliff face. That's where...."
An explosion erupted across the zone.
Different from the others.
Bigger.
When the smoke cleared, Huey heard screaming over the comms.
"Marco! Marco"
It was Milo's voice, shattered and desperate.
"She's— oh god" muttered Willy.
The comm cut to static.
Riva's voice came through.
"Well done, Cross. I'm impressed. You managed to deduce all of that despite being..."
She paused for effect
Nothing more than a useless pig. Really, it's quite remarkable."
The smile only Riva's face could practically be heard through her voice.
"The original plan was simple," Riva continued. "A few casualties during an unfortunate ambush. The key gets taken in the chaos, I play the traumatized survivor, and everyone moves on"
"But you had to be clever. You had to figure it out. So now the plan changes."
Another portal opened atop the cliff, this time visible to everyone through their positions.
Riva stepped through.
She was no longer alone.
Montez stood beside her, his vintage shirt clearly not subject to the destruction around them.
"None of you are making it out of here alive," Said Riva, her predatory smile now fully genuine. "I can't afford witnesses, hope you understand."
Montez moved his fingers and...
Explosions erupted across the entire rift site simultaneously.
The students scattered, running, fighting, trying to survive.
On the cliff, looking down at the chaos, Montez smiled.