Free Web NovelChapter 258: 258 | Cracks are What I Work With [PS BONUS]
Percy and I stood outside the south entrance of Building C in Ground Beta while the ten-minute preparation clock ticked above the door in red digital numbers. Nine minutes and forty-three seconds. Somewhere on the second floor, Camille Ortega and Petra Lang were positioning a simulation dummy in a room of their choosing, setting traps, establishing lines of fire, and generally making our lives significantly harder with every passing second.
Percy had his notebook open against the wall, sketching the building’s floor plan from memory with quick strokes of his pen. The lines were clean. The proportions were accurate to within inches. The boy had walked this building’s layout in his head so many times that his hand moved on autopilot while his mouth tried to keep pace with his brain.
"Seven rooms on the first floor. Five on the second. Three on the third. Two stairwells, one on the east side and one on the west, plus a non-functional elevator shaft in the center that connects all three floors. The maintenance corridor on the ground floor runs north to south and exits near the east stairwell." Percy’s pen tapped the paper three times in rapid succession. "If they place the hostage in room 2C, which has the most defensible sightlines and only one entrance, Camille can cover the hallway approach with Rivet while Petra generates structural barricades using Conjuration. That gives them overlapping fields of coverage with the hostage behind two layers of protection."
"And if they put it somewhere else?"
Percy’s pen stopped. "There are eleven possible hostage locations. I’ve ranked them by tactical viability. Room 2C is the most likely at thirty-one percent probability. Room 2A is second at twenty-two percent because it has windows on two walls, which creates escape routes for the hostage extraction but also gives us approach vectors they’d need to defend. Room 3B on the third floor is third at—"
"Percy."
He looked up from the notebook. His navy blue hair fell across his forehead and his brown eyes carried the specific intensity of someone whose brain was producing sixteen options per second while his mouth could only vocalize one.
"I need you to breathe."
Percy breathed. The exhale came out shaky and too fast, but it was something.
"Watching from the observation deck is different from being inside," I said. "Up there, you can see everything. Down here, you see a hallway and a door and whatever’s behind it when it opens."
"I know that. I’ve accounted for the informational asymmetry in my tactical modeling." Percy’s voice wavered on the last word. His left hand twitched toward his pocket where the notebook usually lived, found it was already in his right hand, and settled against his thigh. "The problem is that accounting for it doesn’t reduce it. I can model every room in this building and calculate approach probabilities for seventeen different configurations, but the moment we enter that door, I’m operating on partial data and partial data is where I—" He stopped himself. Swallowed. "Where I freeze."
The timer read eight minutes and twelve seconds.
I leaned against the wall beside him and crossed my arms. The charcoal compression suit felt good against my skin, fitted in a way that didn’t restrict movement, and the amber accent lines caught the afternoon sunlight in the narrow space between the building’s shadow and the walkway. My half-mask sat around my neck, ready to pull up when we entered.
"You won’t freeze."
"You can’t guarantee that."
"No. But I can guarantee that Camille Ortega fires hardened nail constructs at roughly the speed of a high-caliber round with trajectory control that most people don’t develop until their third year. And I can guarantee that Petra Lang generates material constructs from nothing with a Legendary classification that the admissions board rated as the highest raw capability in either cohort." I watched the timer tick past seven minutes and thirty seconds. "So if you freeze, I need you to freeze somewhere that isn’t directly in front of either of those things."
Percy stared at me. Then something happened that I had seen exactly three times since meeting him. The corners of his mouth moved upward.
"That’s not reassuring."
"It’s honest. You told me nervous people pay attention. So pay attention and tell me where the hostage is when we get inside. I’ll handle the part where things fly at our faces."
Percy returned to his notebook. His pen moved faster now, but the lines were just as clean.
I sighed and watched the timer drop below seven minutes.
Here was the problem, and I was self-aware enough to name it without the System’s help. Camille Ortega and Petra Lang working together constituted one of the worst possible matchups for a team consisting of me and Percy. Camille’s Rivet gave her ranged suppression that covered entire hallways. Petra’s Conjuration gave her environmental control that could reshape the battlefield in real time. Together they could lock down a room, a floor, or an entire building with overlapping layers of projectile coverage and structural defense that would make any direct approach suicidal.
If they were working together.
That word sat in the front of my brain like a weight on a scale.
I’d watched Camille and Petra interact exactly four times since move-in. Once in the common room where Camille had ignored Petra entirely. Once during Steele’s assessment where Camille had gone out of her way to demonstrate after Petra, firing her rivets through the same spot on the training dummy as though establishing that precision trumped raw power. Once in the cafeteria where Petra had chosen a seat as far from Camille as the architecture allowed. And once during the lot draw, where Camille had looked at Petra’s matching V-3 disc with an expression that contained zero warmth and approximately seventeen percent murder.
These two did not like each other. Camille was Eastside Verano with a work ethic that could strip paint off walls and an opinion about excellence that left no room for people who got where they were through family connections. Petra was the recommendation track princess who had bypassed the entrance exam entirely, whose parents ran an agency and a hero-tech company, whose wardrobe cost more than most people’s apartments, and who had mistaken me for a furniture delivery person on day one without a single flicker of doubt that she’d made a mistake.
Camille had opinions about people like Petra. Loud opinions. Opinions that came with orange-glowing nail constructs and a refusal to acknowledge anyone’s superiority that hadn’t been earned in front of her.
My only path to winning this exercise was the gap between those two personalities. If Camille and Petra coordinated, Percy and I were walking into a kill box with no exit. If they didn’t coordinate, if the ten minutes of preparation time devolved into a power struggle about who got to make decisions, then the kill box had cracks.
And cracks were what I worked with.
The System chose this exact moment to remind me that it existed.
〘 SIDE QUEST GENERATED 〙
〘 Title: Tag-Team Takedown 〙
〘 Classification: Social / Combat Hybrid 〙
〘 Description: Two of the most capable women in your cohort are currently alone in a building preparing to destroy you. The Scumbag’s Path recognizes opportunity in opposition. Defeat the V-3 team AND find yourself in a compromising position with either Camille Ortega or Petra Lang during or immediately following the exercise. 〙
〘 Primary Objective: Win the H-3 vs V-3 match. 〙
〘 Secondary Objective: End up in physical proximity of a compromising nature with at least one member of the opposing team. 〙
〘 Rewards: 800 SP, Temptation Gauge progression with qualifying heroine(s), 1 Silver Gacha Token 〙
