The morning after the briefing, the air in the corridor was tight with unspoken rules.

Gabriel stepped out of his compartment, boots echoing dully on the floor. The train thrummed beneath his feet. They were still moving, toward something far less certain.

Kael passed, vest secured. “Stay in sync,” he said flatly, not slowing.

Gabriel froze, caught off guard by the tone, dismissive, clinical. Like he wasn’t a teammate, just a temporary asset.

Before he could reply, Miriana emerged from the opposite end of the hallway, carrying a slim mission tablet under one arm. Her gaze landed on Gabriel, unreadable. She gave him a short nod. Not cruel, just... neutral. Detached.

And somehow, that cut deeper.

The team moved quietly in tight groups. Conversations hushed. Gabriel tried to catch someone’s eye, anyone’s, but they slid past like ghosts, too focused to notice. Or maybe too deliberately avoiding.

The morning training began an hour later. Then came another. And another.

Days passed in a blur of drills, simulations, and precision exercises. The train never stopped. Every carriage was its own moving facility, hardened, adapted, ready to hold a mission team at full operational tempo.

Gabriel did his best to keep up, but the distance between him and the others kept growing.

The camaraderie he’d hoped for never came. Conversations died when he approached. The other Guides whispered behind half-closed doors. Kael spoke only in clipped instructions. Miriana corrected him, always politely, always publicly.

Even the mess hall felt colder now. He kept his distance, stuck to protocols, buried himself in prep work and sync calculations. The few warm moments he had, Emily’s quiet support, Lily’s rare smirks, flickered like fragile lights.

By the third day, the pressure was suffocating.

And the zone was close. By the time the alert came, the weight in his chest had already settled there. The intercom crackled overhead.

“All units, prepare for gear-up. Arrival in Zone 9-W estimated in ninety minutes.”

Gabriel rose from the bench outside the equipment bay, wiping his hands on the fabric of his pants. They were dry. He still wiped them twice.

Inside, the carriage buzzed with ordered tension. Espers and Guides moved through their assigned lockers, checking straps, adjusting harnesses, syncing comms. The smell of metal, sweat, and sterilizing foam clung to every surface.

He stepped up to his locker, its biometric lock already primed for his handprint. The doors opened with a soft click, revealing tactical armor in matte navy, his Guide tools secured in molded compartments. He exhaled and began.

Undersuit. Sensor lining. Armor plating.

He was halfway through calibrating his sync interface when his fingers slipped. The handheld scanner hit the floor with a sharp clatter, bouncing once before skidding across the room.

Before Gabriel could crouch, someone else moved first.

Leonardo knelt and picked it up, holding it out without a word.

His expression was unreadable, no smirk, no teasing. Just quiet focus.

Gabriel hesitated, then reached out. Their fingers brushed briefly in the exchange.

“Thanks.” he murmured.

Leonardo gave a faint nod, then stood and returned to his own station.

No further words.

But it landed.

Gabriel resumed his prep, jaw tight, heart loud. No one else had even looked his way.

Only him.

And somehow, that made it both better and worse.

Once the primary team was suited up and accounted for, Sasha called them into a smaller, sealed-off prep cabin near the forward hatch. The lights were dim, deliberate. A space for final recalibrations, or warnings.

The room was narrow and silent except for the quiet rustle of tactical gear and the faint vibration of the train beneath their boots. It smelled faintly of disinfectant and static charge. Gabriel stood just inside the doorway, tablet tucked against his chest, his shoulders stiff. Kael took up space like a blade sheathed too tight, arms folded across his chest, while Leonardo leaned lazily against the opposite wall, but there was something in the set of his jaw that betrayed the posture. Focused. Listening.

Sasha stood at the head of the room, no tablet, no notes, just command presence.

“Zone 9-W is unstable,” he said, voice firm but not loud. “What we’ve studied doesn’t cover the full picture. The psychic field in that region is fractured. Twisted. Don’t assume your powers will respond the way you’re used to. Don’t rely on instinct alone.”

Gabriel’s breath caught. Maybe it was the word fractured. Or the implication. He pressed the edge of the tablet tighter against his ribs.

“Do not separate unless given a direct order,” Sasha continued. “The last time a team split, only two of six returned. Don’t assume a voice you recognize means safety.”

His eyes lingered, just briefly, on Gabriel.

“Don’t trust anything that speaks in a familiar voice.”

Gabriel blinked slowly. A chill crawled down the back of his neck. The thought of hearing his family's voice, or even Leonardo’s, out there, only to realize it wasn’t them, made the back of his neck prickle.

He felt the pulse of his heartbeat in his palms.

The silence after Sasha’s words was not the kind that invited questions. It was the kind that required processing.

Then Leonardo straightened from the wall. His usual bravado was absent, replaced by a calm, steady resolve.

“We’ll be ready,” he said simply. No smirk this time, just quiet certainty.

Sasha’s gaze didn’t soften, but his tone shifted slightly. “Trust isn’t optional out there. You walk in sync, or you don’t walk back.”

Kael gave the faintest of nods.

Gabriel forced a breath through his lungs. His voice didn’t work, but his hand twitched subtly in acknowledgment. That would have to be enough.

Sasha looked at all three of them one last time. “You don’t have to win. You have to return.”

And then he turned and left the room, the door hissing closed behind him.

They stood in silence again, the hum of the train the only sound remaining. Gabriel stared at the hatch, the words looping in his head: Don’t trust anything that speaks in a familiar voice. Even after Sasha left, the warning echoed inside him, refusing to settle. The train’s rhythm had changed.

Gabriel noticed it first not in the sound, but in the sensation, like the pressure in the air had shifted. The motion beneath his boots grew less fluid, no longer the smooth glide he had grown accustomed to. It felt like the train itself was hesitating, as if every bolt and beam was straining against the will to move forward.

A low groan echoed through the metal frame. Subtle. But alive.

He paused near a corridor window, drawn in by a flicker of movement. The view was almost completely swallowed in fog, thick and clinging, more like smoke than mist. It had crept over the windows in smeared lines, veining the glass in cloudy streaks that pulsed with the train’s vibrations. When he reached out to wipe it away, his gloved fingers met dry coldness. No condensation. No moisture. Just… something else.

Leonardo appeared at his side without a word. His stance was unusually still, one hand resting on the metal frame of the window as he looked out. Gabriel didn’t need to ask if he saw it too.

Outside, the world had become a distortion.

Not grotesque, not yet, but unnatural. A highway ramp twisted up into a broken overpass that connected to nothing. Telephone poles leaned at impossible angles, wires hanging slack between them like veins in a sleeping beast. A crumbled building stood half-swallowed by the earth, as though the ground had tried to reclaim it mid-collapse.

A playground slide emerged from the dirt, no swings, no structure, just a single rusted slide poking upward like a bone through flesh.

Gabriel’s heart picked up. He adjusted his earpiece and heard a flicker of static burst through the line. Sharp, grating, then silent.

Down the corridor, others were beginning to gather.

Kael knelt to check a brace on his leg armor, glancing toward the window only once before tightening a strap. Miriana spoke softly with two junior Guides, her expression unreadable behind her visor. Lily and Emily stood side-by-side, arms folded, their usual lightness nowhere in sight. Gabriel caught Emily glancing at her sister, then toward the fog, then back again.

Across the carriage, Henry was talking to Flora. Sasha and Natalia weren’t visible yet, but he knew they would be close, finalizing something.

Leonardo didn’t speak. He simply stood there beside Gabriel, steady and grounded. The tension in the air made Gabriel want to say something, anything, but no words came. It felt like speaking aloud would wake something.

The intercom cracked once, then stabilized with a click. Sasha’s voice cut through the quiet, crisp and commanding.

A shift rippled through the carriage.

Helmets locked into place. Boots thudded against the metal floor as final positions were taken. Comms blinked green. Weapons were powered up, double-checked, then holstered with quiet precision. The sharp scent of reinforced fabric and sealed armor filled the space. It smelled like battle readiness.

Gabriel’s gloves bit into his fingers. His chest ached with pressure. Everything in him buzzed, but he flexed his fingers anyway, reminding himself that it wasn’t panic. It was anticipation. Focus.

Behind him, someone whispered a prayer.

He didn’t recognize the language. But the weight of it landed just the same.

Gabriel closed his eyes, letting the silence settle—then the lights shivered above him. The hallway lights flickered again, casting jagged shadows across the walls. Gabriel leaned against the cool metal frame of a support column, trying to slow his breathing. His gloves were already on, but his hands felt cold.

“Ready for the mission?” came a voice, low, warm, familiar.

Gabriel turned his head and saw Henry approaching. The Esper’s turquoise eyes softened when they landed on him.

“I'm not sure,” Gabriel admitted. “It’s… getting harder to push all my fears aside.”

Henry nodded and leaned against the wall beside him, leaving just enough space not to crowd him. “It’s a lot, what we’re walking into. You’re not the only one feeling it.”

Gabriel managed a tight smile. “You don’t seem nervous.”

“I’m older than I look,” Henry said with a chuckle. “And better at pretending.”

That drew a soft laugh from Gabriel, but it faded just as quickly. “You’ve kept some distance, haven’t you? Since the mission started.”

Henry glanced sideways, thoughtful. “Yeah. Not because I didn’t want to check in. You already had Sasha and Natalia hovering, and you’ve always needed space to breathe. I didn’t want to add to the pressure.”

Gabriel lowered his gaze. “You never added pressure. You were the quiet safe spot.”

Henry smiled faintly. “Still am, if you need it.”

Silence stretched between them, not awkward, just weighted with the things unsaid. The hum of the train was louder now, more insistent, as if it too knew what was coming.

“I miss her,” Gabriel said, voice barely above a whisper. “My mother. Sometimes I wonder if she felt like this. Right before deployment. Afraid and unsure, but trying not to show it.”

Henry turned, meeting his eyes. “I knew Evelyn. She was brave, but not because she wasn’t scared. Because she did it anyway. Just like you.”

Gabriel blinked quickly. “You really think I can do this?”

Henry’s voice didn’t falter. “I know you can. And if it gets too much out there, you reach out. To Sasha. To Flora. To me. Hell, even Leonardo. You’re not alone, Gabriel. Never were.”

Gabriel took a breath that trembled in his chest. Then he nodded.

Henry clapped a gentle hand on his shoulder, reassuring. “We’ve got your back.”

The hiss of the train’s braking system echoed through the steel corridors like a long, mechanical sigh. Beneath Gabriel’s boots, the floor vibrated softly, then stilled, as if the entire machine was holding its breath. He went to stand at the main exit hatch, the hard shell of his tactical gear pressing against his spine like armor and weight both. His gloved hand hovered over the latch of his helmet, unsure.

The final approach to Zone 9-W had felt like a countdown. The flickering lights. The groaning walls. The cold. Not just physical cold, but something deeper, like the air had forgotten how to feel alive.

Behind him, the compartment was silent.

Leonardo stepped into place on his right, quiet for once, his eyes forward, jaw tight. His armor was unzipped just enough at the collar to reveal the faint shimmer of his comm link. Damp strands of dark hair clung to his temple, he’d showered, like they all had, preparing for a descent they couldn’t predict.

On Gabriel’s other side, Kael checked his gauntlet display, fingers steady. The vibrations that always seemed to hum faintly around him, barely audible, but always present, intensified for a moment, then softened again. He didn’t speak. He never did unless it mattered.

No one broke the silence.

Sasha’s voice came through the comms like a tether: firm, calm, and close to gentle.

Gabriel’s wristband pulsed once under his glove. He activated the frequency. His heads-up display blinked in response, connection stable. The faint hum of synchronization swept through his system, a familiar thrum behind the ribs.

But his hands wouldn’t stop trembling.

He closed his eyes.

A whisper curled at the back of his mind, one he couldn’t trace to a voice. What if you fail? What if they’re wrong about you? The image of his name on that list, A-Class, active field assignment, burned behind his eyelids. A mistake, maybe. A test he wasn’t ready for.

A voice surfaced, Sasha’s, but from another time.

“You’ve been chosen for a reason.”

He opened his eyes.

Leonardo shifted, sensing the hesitation. But he didn’t speak. Just stayed close enough to feel like a shield without pressing in like one.

Kael looked up. Their eyes met for a second. Gabriel expected dismissal. But there was nothing in Kael’s gaze but grim readiness, he wasn’t waiting for Gabriel to prove himself. He was simply waiting for the mission to begin.

The thought anchored him.

Gabriel nodded once. Just enough.

The hatch hissed.

The ramp groaned as it extended, metal teeth clamping against the foreign earth below. A burst of air surged in, sharp and laced with static, stinging even through the filters of their suits. The wind carried a strange scent—metallic, sour, like scorched soil and the ghost of something chemical.

Outside, the world was wrong.

Buildings slouched into themselves like half-melted candles. Soil bubbled around structures that looked halfway buried, halfway grown. The sky was a dull smear of overcast gray, and yet, the shadows beneath the train stretched in the wrong direction.

Gabriel’s pulse thudded in his ears.

He stepped forward.

Not because he felt ready.

But because he had to be.