"You kept the Gate contained," Reyes continued. "You prevented a potential breach into civilian areas during incomplete evacuation. That's—" She stopped. Chose her next words deliberately. "That's the kind of outcome that matters. I'd like to protect it."
Jacob looked at her badge. The IHA seal. The clearance markers he could read because his father's manuals covered IHA rank structure in the first chapter.
Senior Field Agent. Pacific Northwest Division. Fifteen years minimum to reach that grade.
She was offering him something.
Cover, maybe. Or the start of something that cover was a prerequisite for.
He thought about the Administrator's warning: You are now an anomaly beyond my authority to contain.
He thought about what happened to anomalies that got flagged by the wrong people too early.
"My talent," Jacob said slowly, "has a learning curve. I'm still mapping its limitations."
"That's not an unusual situation for new Hunters."
"The awakening stone couldn't classify it accurately. That's why it registered F-Rank."
Reyes nodded once. A careful nod—the kind that acknowledged without committing.
"Misclassification happens," she said. "Rarely. But it happens."
"I'd like to verify my actual classification through the IHA's secondary assessment process before anything goes in a formal report."
Secondary assessment. Also in chapter one of his father's manual—the process for Hunters whose initial awakening results were ambiguous or contradicted by demonstrated capability. It was slower. More thorough. And it kept results out of the main database until completed.
Reyes looked at him for another long moment.
"You know your Hunter regs," she said.
"My parents were Hunters."
Something shifted in her expression. "Names?"
"Marcus and Diana Hayes. E-Rank. Gate breach Alpha-7, three years ago."
Reyes went very still.
"I know those names," she said quietly.
Jacob had expected it. Gate breach Alpha-7 had been documented in IHA records—a C-Rank Gate that destabilized suddenly, civilian area, night response. Two E-Rank Hunters had entered to buy evacuation time and hadn't come back out.
The IHA had given them a commendation. A plaque. A line in an official report.
Aunt Marie had put the plaque in a box in the closet because looking at it made things worse.
"Then you understand," Jacob said, "why I calculated the risk the way I did."
Reyes was quiet for seven seconds.
"Secondary assessment," she said finally. "I'll process the paperwork tonight. Keeps you out of the main database until it's complete."
She stood, extending a hand again—different this time. Not introduction. Agreement.
Jacob shook it.
"One more thing," Reyes said, looking toward the Gate entrance. "The Obsidian Bears. They weren't trying to reach Portland because they wanted to."
"I know. Something was pushing them toward the Gate. They were responding to pressure from deeper in the dimension."
Reyes's expression sharpened. "You assessed that during the engagement?"
"They'd been putting pressure on the Gate boundary for hours before I arrived. The concrete outside was cracked inward. Whatever's deeper in this dimension is more aggressive than A-Rank bears."
Reyes looked at the cavern behind them—the blue-lit dark where the bears had disappeared.
"That's a perceptive assessment for someone who spent the engagement running."
"I had a lot of time to think."
She almost smiled. Almost.
"Get out of this Gate, Jacob Hayes. Get your secondary assessment processed. And—" She paused. "Stay available. The IHA may want to talk to you."
"About the assessment?"
"About what you saw. What you assessed." She looked at the collapsed pillar one more time. "About what pushed four A-Rank creatures hard enough that they were willing to breach a Gate boundary."
Jacob stood. His legs nearly gave out. He caught himself on the Gate boundary and made it look intentional.
"I'll be available," he said.
He stepped back through the Gate.
Portland at 10:51 PM was cold in the specific way of Pacific Northwest November—damp cold that got into clothing and stayed there. Jacob stepped through the Gate into the Industrial District and stood in the purple light for a moment, just breathing outside air.
Then his legs actually gave out.
He caught himself on one knee, one hand flat against the cracked concrete, and stayed there for what was probably thirty seconds but felt longer.
[ENDURANCE: 0%]
[SYSTEM WARNING: HOST BIOLOGICAL FUNCTION AT CRITICAL THRESHOLD]
[MANDATORY REST PERIOD INITIATED]
[STAT RECOVERY WILL BEGIN AFTER MINIMUM 6 HOURS REST]
[CURRENT STATS DURING RECOVERY:]
[STRENGTH: 8 (REDUCED FROM 14)]
[AGILITY: 7 (REDUCED FROM 12)]
[ENDURANCE: 0 (REDUCED FROM 16)]
Zero endurance. Stats lower than when he'd started the day.
Cost is not eliminated. Only failure.
He'd learned what that meant in theory during the trial. Now he understood it physically.
He pushed himself back to his feet.
The IHA perimeter was two blocks away. He could see the lights—the portable floodlamps they used at Gate events, the blue-and-white of official vehicles.
And one other light.
A flashlight, moving fast, coming from the direction of the perimeter.
Aunt Marie's voice, still forty feet away: "Jacob Hayes, don't you dare fall over before I get there."
He almost laughed. He would've if he had the energy.
She reached him with the first aid kit open and her hospital-trained assessment eyes running over him before she'd even stopped moving.
"Sit down."
"I'm okay."
"You just came out of an A-Rank Gate and your lips are gray. Sit down."
He sat down on the cracked concrete of the Industrial District at 10:52 PM and let his aunt take his pulse and check his eyes and do all the things she'd learned in fifteen years of hospital work, and thought about everything that had happened since 4:47 PM.
Eight hours.
He'd failed his awakening, gotten dumped, trained to physical collapse, entered an A-Rank Gate alone, survived four A-Rank creatures, established a contact inside the IHA, and made a promise to his parents that was going to be expensive to keep.
Not a bad first day.
"Your heart rate is too high," Aunt Marie said. She was wrapping something around his forearm—a heat pack, he realized. "And you're dehydrated. And—" She paused. "These aren't F-Rank injuries, Jacob."
He looked at her.
In the blue-white light of the IHA floodlamps, with her hospital scrubs and her first aid kit and his father's eyes, she looked exactly like what she was: someone who'd been left to pick up the pieces once before and was absolutely not prepared to do it again.
"No," Jacob said. "They're not."
Aunt Marie sat down on the concrete beside him. Which was not a thing Aunt Marie did—concrete wasn't her territory. She was a chair person. A kitchen table person.
"Tell me," she said.
Not a question. A requirement.
Jacob looked at the Gate—still open behind the IHA perimeter, still pulsing with purple-black light. Senior Field Agent Reyes would be in there now, assessing, documenting, starting the paperwork for his secondary classification.
He thought about the Administrator. About the weighted die that landed on twenty. About forty-seven anomalies and eleven survivors.
He thought about his parents and the plaque in the box in the closet.
He thought about Derek's group chat and Emma's borrowed voice using Derek's vocabulary.
He thought about Sophia's texts—Can everyone stop?—and what that said about her.
He thought about the bears in the cavern, and what Reyes had said:
Whatever pushed them hard enough to breach a Gate boundary.
Something deeper. Something more aggressive. Something he hadn't seen yet.
Something that was still in there.
Jacob looked at his aunt.
"It's going to be a long story," he said.
"I have time." She opened the food container she'd brought—sandwiches, because Aunt Marie's response to any crisis involved food. "Start from the beginning."
Jacob took a sandwich with hands that were starting to regain feeling.
Counted the IHA vehicles visible from where he sat: seven.
Counted the Hunters moving around the perimeter: twelve.
Counted the hours until his secondary assessment would begin processing: eight minimum.
Counted the questions he still didn't have answers to: more than he could track.
"The awakening stone," Jacob said, "couldn't measure me."
Aunt Marie didn't say anything. Just listened.
"Because whatever I am, it didn't fit the standard parameters." He looked at his hands. At the status screen floating in his vision, now showing recovery timers and depleted stats and the blinking notification that his mandatory rest period had begun.
"And whatever I am—" He looked up at the Gate. "Something else knows about it."
Aunt Marie followed his gaze.
For a moment they sat together in the cold November air, two people who'd already lost the most important things they'd had and were still, improbably, here.
"Okay," Aunt Marie said finally.
Just that.
Okay.
Jacob took a bite of the sandwich.
His stats were at zero and his body was running on emergency reserves and Senior Field Agent Reyes was filing paperwork that would keep him out of the main database for now but not forever.
In sixty-eight hours, the secondary assessment would begin.
In three days, the A-Rank Gate in the Industrial District would be cleared by Guild response teams who would find four Obsidian Bear prints and a collapsed crystal pillar and one hell of a confusing evidence trail.
In the cavern, something deeper than A-Rank bears was still moving.
Jacob ate his sandwich and let his body rest and thought about what came next.
The math was complicated.
But he was good at complicated math.