"Move left, temp. You're blocking the sightline."
The order came from a Dark Flame scout whose name I didn't know and didn't care to learn. He shoved his shoulder into mine, hard enough to bruise if I were brittle. I wasn't brittle. I was 73.0 percent full, and every drop of that mattered more than a bruise.
I stepped left. Smooth. No resistance. Resistance got you noticed. Notice got you dead.
We crossed the threshold of the Empathic Fracture. The air didn't change temperature, but the light did. The cavern walls, rough-hewn stone veined with quartz, began to glow. A soft, rhythmic pulse. Teal. Steady teal.
"The collective baseline," Lyra Wren said. Her voice carried without effort, cutting through the low murmur of the squad. She stood ten paces ahead, checking a tablet strapped to her forearm. "Teal means calm. Focused. If the walls turn red, we have panic. Yellow is aggression. Violet is... confusion. Keep your heads clear."
She didn't look at me. Why would she? Three years ago, she'd signed the transfer paperwork that moved an E-rank healer named Vera Blackwell from one administrative limbo to another. She'd signed a name, not looked at a face. To Lyra Wren, I was a line item. A resource. "The temp battery," the scout had called me. Accurate. Batteries get used until they die, then get recycled.
The cavern expanded, opening into a chamber wide enough to lose a platoon in. Bioluminescent moss clung to the ceiling, dripping phosphorescent slime that hissed when it hit the floor. The walls pulsed. Teal. Teal. A slight flicker toward blue as the squad leader tightened his grip on his spear.
"Contact," the scout beside me hissed.
They came from the shadows of the stalagmites. Mid-tier rift creatures. Chitinous plates, too many legs, mandibles that clicked in a rhythm that matched the wall's pulse. Six of them. Maybe seven. Hard to tell in the shifting light.
"Iron Edge, forward," the squad leader barked. "Dark Flame, flank. Healer, stay central."
I moved to the center. My right hand hung loose at my side. Cold. Always cold. I watched the Iron Edge vanguard engage. They were good. Fast. But they fought with the arrogance of people who expected the healer to fix whatever they missed.
One of the creatures lunged. A spear took it in the thorax. Black ichor sprayed. The warrior stumbled back, a gash opening on his forearm where a claw had caught him. Not deep. Not lethal. But it would slow him down. In a real fight, slow meant dead.
He looked at me. Expectation written in the set of his jaw.
I walked over. Knelt. Placed my hand over the wound.
*Healing Pool: 73.0.*
I pushed energy into him. Just enough. Enough to knit the skin, stop the bleed, restore maybe eighty percent of the function. The rest? He could handle that. His body knew how to heal. It just took time. Time I wasn't giving him, but time he didn't know he was missing.
The wall behind us flared a brighter teal. Approval? Or just the relief of the squad seeing one of their own patched up?
"Good enough," the warrior grunted, flexing his arm. He didn't thank me. He didn't look at me. He turned back to the fight.
I stood. Wiped my hand on my trousers. My palm felt slick. Not with blood. With the residue of the decay I hadn't used. The rot I was holding back. It wanted out. It always wanted out. I clenched my fist, digging my thumbnail into the meat of my palm. Pain. Sharp. Clean. It grounded me.
*Don't think about the list. Don't think about Lyra's neck. Don't think about how easy it would be to reverse the flow, to turn that knit skin into rotting flesh in three days.*
The walls remained teal. For now.
We cleared the chamber in four minutes. Efficient. Brutal. The Dark Flame scouts finished the stragglers with precise strikes to the neural clusters. Lyra Wren watched from the rear, her tablet glowing against her hip. She tapped a note. Didn't look up.
"Rotation Alpha," she announced. "Ten minutes. Heal the wounded, check the supplies. Then we move to the inner ridge."
The squad collapsed into the relative safety of a alcove where the moss-light was dimmer. The walls here pulsed a slower teal. Fatigue setting in. Good. Fatigue made people sloppy. Sloppy people made mistakes. Mistakes were opportunities.
I sat on a rock, my back to the wall. The stone was cool against my spine. Across the alcove, Lyra Wren sat on a crate, her tablet resting on her knee. She was reviewing a manifest. Her left hand tapped a rhythm on the edge of the device. *Tap. Tap. Pause. Tap.*
I pulled my canteen from my belt. Took a sip. Water tasted metallic. Standard rift water. I watched her.
She adjusted the tablet. Shifted it to her left hip, clipping it to her belt loop. A habit. She did it without looking. Muscle memory. When she stood up, the tablet would be there. When she fought, it would be there. A hard object against soft tissue. A distraction. A weakness.
I cataloged it. *Tablet on left hip. Clip looks cheap. Plastic housing.*
"Hey, battery."
The scout from earlier dropped down next to me. He reeked of sweat and ozone. He held out his arm. A scratch this time. Barely breaking the skin.
"Patch this," he said. Not a request. An order.
I looked at the scratch. Then at him. His eyes were dark, dismissive. He expected me to jump. To scramble. To prove my worth as an E-rank temp.
I didn't move immediately. I let the silence sit for two seconds. Just two. Long enough to be noticeable, short enough to be deniable as hesitation.
"Right," I said. My voice was flat.
I reached out. Touched the scratch. Pushed a tiny wisp of healing energy. Less than before. Maybe fifty percent efficiency. The skin sealed, but the redness remained. It would itch for a week.
"Done," I said.
He frowned. Rubbed the spot. "Feels tight."
"It's healing," I said. "Don't pick at it."
He snorted. Stood up. Walked away. "Useless," he muttered. Loud enough for me to hear. Loud enough for the others to hear.
The walls flickered. A hint of yellow. Aggression. Or maybe just irritation.
Lyra Wren looked up. Her eyes swept the room. They passed over me. No recognition. No suspicion. Just a logistical assessment. *Healer is working. Squad is annoyed. Morale is stable.*
She stood up. Clipped the tablet to her left hip. Exactly where I'd seen her put it before.
"Two minutes," she called out. "We move on the ridge. Intel suggests a nest in the upper cavern. Stay sharp."
I capped my canteen. Stood. My legs felt heavy. Not from the healing. From the weight of the lie. I was playing the part of the incompetent temp, the burnt-out E-rank who couldn't quite get the job done. It was exhausting. More exhausting than the decay itself.
Lucian had warned me about this. *"The mask has to fit perfectly, Vera. If it slips, even for a second, they'll see the rot underneath."*
Lucian. Where was he now? Probably watching from a distance. Silver Peak didn't run joint ops with Dark Flame often, but Lucian had his ways. He had access. He had eyes everywhere.
I checked my pool again. *72.8.* Two tenths of a percent. Gone on a scratch and a gash. Waste. Inefficient. But necessary. If I healed too well, they'd wonder. If I healed too poorly, they'd replace me. The balance was a razor's edge.
The squad mobilized. Boots crunching on the loose scree. The walls shifted color again. A deeper teal. Anticipation. They wanted a fight. They wanted to prove they were better than the rift.
I fell in line at the back. Behind the Dark Flame scouts. Behind Lyra.
The tunnel narrowed. The ceiling dropped. The bioluminescence intensified, casting long, dancing shadows. The air grew thicker. Humid. Smelling of wet stone and something else. Something sweet. Like rotting fruit.
"Hold," Lyra whispered.
The squad froze.
Ahead, the tunnel opened into a vast vertical shaft. A bridge of natural stone spanned the gap, narrow and treacherous. Below, darkness. Above, the faint glow of the surface, miles away.
And on the bridge, waiting for us, was something large.
It wasn't a creature. Not exactly. It was a construct. Made of the same chitinous material as the others, but fused together. A amalgamation of limbs and eyes. It blocked the entire width of the bridge.
The walls around us exploded into color. Not teal. Not yellow.
Red.
Deep, pulsing crimson. Panic. Fear. Terror. The emotions of the squad washed into the stone, painting our fear in bright, undeniable strokes.
"Contact front!" the squad leader screamed. His voice cracked.
The construct moved. Fast. Too fast for something that size. It lunged, slamming into the vanguard. Two warriors went down instantly. Crushed.
"Formation Delta!" Lyra shouted. She didn't flinch. Even as the walls screamed red, she stood her ground. She unclipped her tablet. Held it in her left hand. Her right hand went to the hilt of the blade at her waist.
I stayed back. My role was clear. Stay central. Wait for the wounded.
One of the Dark Flame scouts stumbled back, clutching a leg that had been sheared open. Blood poured onto the stone. He looked at me. Eyes wide. Terrified.
"Healer!" he screamed.
I moved toward him. Slowly. Deliberately. The red light from the walls reflected in his pupils, making him look demonic.
I knelt beside him. Placed my hand on the wound.
*Healing Pool: 72.8.*
I could fix this. I could knit the muscle, seal the artery, have him back on his feet in ten seconds.
Or I could do something else.
The construct roared. A sound that vibrated in my teeth. Another warrior fell. The red on the walls intensified. Almost purple now. Despair.
Lyra Wren was fighting. She was good. Better than I expected. She danced around the construct's blows, her blade finding the joints in the chitin. But she was alone. The squad was crumbling.
The scout beneath my hand was shaking. "Please," he whimpered. "Fix it. Please."
I looked at his leg. Then at Lyra. She was ten feet away. Engaged. Her left side was exposed as she pivoted for a strike. The tablet was still in her hand. A distraction.
If I healed this scout, he'd live. He'd probably fight for another minute. Maybe kill one of the creatures. Maybe die anyway.
If I didn't...
*No.* Not yet. Not here. Too many witnesses. Too much chaos. The decay had to be subtle. Untraceable. A sudden failure in a chaotic fight was suspicious. A wound that festered three days later was natural.
I pushed the energy. Full strength this time. I had to maintain the cover. If he died now, they'd question my competence. If he lived but was slow later, they'd blame his own weakness.
The light under my hand flared white. The flesh knit. The bleeding stopped. The scout gasped, the color returning to his face.
"Go," I said. My voice was steady. "Flank left."
He scrambled up. Ran into the fray.
The walls remained red. The fear hadn't subsided. If anything, it was worse. The construct was adapting. It grew new limbs from the debris of the fallen warriors.
Lyra shouted something. I couldn't hear it over the roar. She pointed at me. Then at the construct.
She wanted me to do something. What? Attack? I was an E-rank healer. My job was to patch holes, not fight monsters.
But she was pointing again. Insistent.
I stood up. My right hand tingled. The decay hummed beneath the skin, eager.
I walked forward. Toward the construct. Toward Lyra.
The scout I'd healed was down again. This time, his chest was caved in. No healing could fix that. Not quickly.
Lyra backed up, step by step, until she was beside me. Her breath came in short, sharp bursts. Sweat matted her hair to her forehead.
"Its core," she gasped. "Under the plates. We need to expose it."
"How?" I asked.
She looked at me. Really looked at me. For the first time in three years. Her eyes were dark, intelligent. Calculating.
"Distract it," she said. "Draw its fire. I'll find the opening."
"Distract it," I repeated. "With what? My healing light?"
She didn't smile. "Just stay alive, Vera."
She knew my name.
The realization hit me like a physical blow. She knew my name. Not "temp." Not "battery." Vera.
How? When?
The construct turned toward us. A massive claw raised, ready to swipe.
"Move!" Lyra shoved me.
I stumbled sideways. The claw missed me by inches, slicing through the air where my head had been. The wind of it stung my cheek.
The walls were no longer just red. They were pulsing with streaks of black. Confusion. Betrayal.
Lyra knew.
She knew who I was. Or at least, she knew I wasn't who I pretended to be.
And she hadn't said a word. Not until now. Not until we were about to die.
The construct roared again, louder this time. The bridge trembled. Cracks appeared in the stone beneath our feet.
Lyra drew her blade back. Her eyes locked on the construct's chest. She was waiting for me to make a move. To reveal whatever she thought I was hiding.
I looked at my right hand. It wasn't cold anymore. It was burning.
*Healing Pool: 72.8.*
Enough to kill. Enough to save. Enough to expose everything.
The claw came down again.
I didn't move.
*The ranking decides who sees this. Power Stones decide the ranking. Math.*