The alarm that woke them wasn't the steady pulse of routine deployment.

  It was the shriek of catastrophic breach, the sound that meant the dimensional barrier had torn somewhere critical, the sound Valoris had only heard in emergency drills and disaster documentation. The sound that turned her blood to ice before her conscious mind caught up to what it meant.

  The facility-wide broadcast cut through everything else: "EMERGENCY. EMERGENCY. IMMEDIATE DEPLOYMENT. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. ALL COMBAT SQUADS REPORT TO STATIONS. BARRIER BREACH IN CIVILIAN SECTOR. REPEAT: BARRIER BREACH IN POPULATED AREA. THIS IS NOT A DRILL."

  Populated area.

  This was the nightmare scenario, the theoretical worst case, the disaster so catastrophic that even Command's propaganda acknowledged it would mean mass casualties.

  She was moving before full awareness returned, neural ports weeping fluid that soaked through her sleep clothes in hot trails down her spine. Around her, Chimera Squad responded with the automation four years had built into their bones. Zee was upright and reaching for her gear before her eyes fully opened. Quinn solidified from whatever dimensional space their consciousness wandered during sleep, their form flickering once before stabilizing. Milo stumbled but caught himself, already muttering calculations under his breath.

  And Saren.

  Saren sat rigid on her bunk, hands gripping the mattress edge so hard the tendons stood out like cables. Her face had gone the color of old paper. Her eyes were wide and fixed on something no one else could see, something that existed only in memory and nightmare.

  "Saren." Valoris moved toward her, voice low and urgent. "Saren, we need to move."

  No response. Just that terrible stillness, that frozen stare, that tremor starting in her hands and spreading through her whole body.

  "Moscow sector," Zee said, reading from her tactical tablet with a voice that had gone flat and professional in the way it did when she was containing something explosive. "Initial breach point is at the eastern industrial district."

  "Moscow." Milo's voice cracked. "That's over thirty million people. If the breach expands unchecked…"

  "It won't." Valoris said it like she believed it. She had to believe it. "That's why we're deploying."

  "Current expansion rate is five kilometers per hour," Quinn reported, scanning data on their own tablet. "But expansion rates are historically unstable in the first six hours. It could accelerate. Could plateau. There’s insufficient data to project the maximum zone size yet."

  Insufficient data. Meaning they had no idea how bad this would get. The breach might stop at a few kilometers or might swallow half the city before anyone could contain it, and if entities were allowed to swarm unchecked they’d spread the corruption. There were thirty million people living their lives in a metropolitan area that had just become ground zero for dimensional catastrophe.

  "Saren." Valoris knelt in front of her, blocking out everything else, focusing entirely on her squadmate who had frozen in place. "I need you to hear me. I need you to come back."

  Saren's lips moved. No sound came out at first. Then, barely audible: "Twelve thousand."

  Kingsford. Population twelve thousand before the breach. Two thousand seventy-three survivors. Her parents among the dead, swallowed by reality collapse in the first forty-five minutes, bodies never recovered because there was nothing left to find.

  "This isn't Kingsford," Valoris said, even though the parallels screamed at her from every angle. "This is different. We're prepared now. We're pilots. We can help."

  "Eight kilometers." Saren's voice cracked on the words. "Kingsford expanded eight kilometers in forty-five minutes. I was at the community center, six kilometers out. I got away because the school bus driver didn't wait for everyone. She drove while we could still see the rift eating the horizon. I looked out the back window and watched my hometown disappear."

  "Saren." Zee had moved closer, her usual aggressive edge softened into something raw and horrified. "We don't have time for this. I'm sorry, but we don't. Either you deploy with us or you stay behind, but we need to move now."

  "She's right," Milo said quietly, his usual chaos subdued into focus. "Buddy's showing me the dimensional readings from the monitoring stations. This breach is bigger. More unstable. And it's still growing."

  Quinn spoke then, their flat voice carrying across the barracks with unsettling clarity: "Every minute of delay increases projected civilian casualties. Current estimates suggest pilot intervention could reduce fatalities by sixty percent or more. The mathematics favor immediate deployment."

  Valoris took Saren's hands, feeling the tremor that ran through them like an electrical current. "I can't order you to do this. I won't. But this is why you became a pilot. Those people need us. There are millions of people in there who might experience what you experienced, who might die the way your parents died. We can't save everyone, but we can save some of them. You can save some of them."

  For a long moment, Saren didn't respond. Her eyes remained fixed on that invisible horizon, watching a catastrophe that had happened years ago replay itself in perfect detail.

  Then something shifted in her expression. The rigidity didn't leave her body, but it changed quality, transforming from frozen panic into controlled tension. When she spoke, her voice carried the cold precision Valoris had learned to associate with Saren at her most functional, even when that functionality cost her something essential.

  "I can pilot," she said.

  "That's enough," Valoris said. "Let's move."

  The deployment bay was controlled chaos.

  Every combat-rated squad in the academy mobilized simultaneously, pilots rushing to their mechs while command staff shouted orders that overlapped and contradicted each other. The air smelled like connection fluid and fear-sweat and the ozone burn of transports running hot. Emergency lighting bathed everything in red that made the already strange space feel like the inside of something wounded.

  Valoris moved through it with her squad in tight formation, awareness splitting between her own body and the pull of Paragon's presence growing stronger as they approached the connection bays. The fever-bright consciousness that had become her constant companion reached toward her with something that felt almost like concern, the vast entity awareness recognizing her distress through the bond they shared.

  Instructor Davis intercepted them. He looked like he'd been pulled from sleep the same as everyone else, but his voice carried the same clipped authority it had during first-year physical conditioning, during every briefing he'd ever delivered. The dimensional exposure scars on his forearms caught the emergency lighting, old wounds that marked him as someone who had survived things most people couldn't imagine.

  "Chimera Squad," Davis said. "Transport seven."

  "Sir." Valoris stopped, squad forming up behind her automatically. "What's the tactical situation? Containment or evacuation?"

  "Both." Davis's expression suggested he knew how inadequate that answer was. "Initial breach point is centered on the industrial sector in Moscow. Corruption is expanding faster than projected models, creating zones of reality instability throughout the surrounding area. Civilian evacuation is underway, but the infrastructure is degrading. Roads are warping and our communication networks are starting to fail. We need pilots on the ground to establish corridors and hold them long enough for people to get out."

  "How far has it spread?" Zee asked.

  "Three kilometers from epicenter as of ten minutes ago. The expansion rate is accelerating." Davis paused, something grim settling into his features. "Current projections suggest the zone could reach fifteen kilometers before stabilization. That puts approximately four hundred thousand people in the immediate danger area. But if the rate continues accelerating, if we don't establish containment within the first few hours, those numbers become meaningless. The entire eastern district could be compromised."

  Four hundred thousand in immediate danger. Millions more if containment failed. The scale of it pressed against Valoris's awareness like a physical weight.

  "Entities?" Milo asked.

  "Multiple confirmed emergences within the breach zone. Classifications uncertain due to sensor interference." Davis's voice hardened. "Thrace has ordered weapons free on all entity contacts. No exceptions. Command wants that zone cleared."

  The words settled into Valoris's awareness with weight that went beyond tactical implications. Weapons free meant shoot first and kill anything that moved. Weapons free meant no distinction between threats and refugees, between attackers and beings desperately trying to survive.

  "Understood," she said, because there was nothing else to say in the middle of a deployment bay with command staff everywhere.

  "Transport departs in four minutes," Davis continued. "You'll be briefed on specific sector assignments during transit. Commander Thrace is coordinating from tactical command. She's got every squad we have running simultaneous operations across the breach perimeter." He looked at each of them, his gaze lingering on Saren for a moment longer than the others. "Deploy with honor. Come back alive."

  "Yes, sir."

  Davis moved on to the next squad, his voice already shifting to deliver the same briefing with the same terrible efficiency. Valoris watched him go and felt the weight of everything he hadn't said pressing down on her shoulders.

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  "Transport," she said to her squad. "Move."

  The transport was a converted heavy lifter, military grey and humming with dimensional stabilizers that made Valoris's port interfaces itch. Rows of jump seats lined the interior, designed to accommodate pilots in full connection gear, with harnesses that would hold them secure through turbulence that might include reality distortions.

  Chimera Squad claimed seats near the forward bulkhead. Around them, other squads filed in with the controlled urgency of people who understood exactly how bad things were about to get. Valoris counted automatically: Shimmer Squad, Crow Squad, Phalanx Squad. Good pilots. Solid records. The kind of squads that followed orders without asking uncomfortable questions.

  And Apex.

  Kaito Thorne led his squad aboard with the easy confidence that had made him the benchmark for four years of competition. Typhoon's pilot moved like someone who owned every space he entered, his presence commanding attention without demanding it. Behind him came Sable, her quiet intensity somehow louder than Kaito's natural charisma. Jace bounced aboard with barely contained energy. Corwin maintained his unsettling calm. Petra was already checking something on a tactical tablet, maybe diagnostics.

  Their eyes met across the transport bay. Kaito and Valoris, squad leaders who had faced each other in competition and emerged with mutual respect that neither had expected.

  Kaito nodded once. Acknowledgment. Recognition. Something that might have been solidarity in a moment when squads that had spent years competing suddenly found themselves on the same side of something too big for rivalry.

  Valoris nodded back.

  Apex took seats across the aisle, close enough for conversation if anyone had wanted to talk. No one did. The transport's engines changed pitch as it lifted from the deployment bay, and the weight of what they were flying toward pressed everyone into silence.

  Through the small viewport near her seat, Valoris watched the academy fall away beneath them. The facility that had been her home for four years shrank to a collection of lights against the mountain darkness, and then they were banking east, heading toward a city that was tearing itself apart.

  "Buddy's picking up the dimensional readings," Milo said quietly, his voice pitched for squad only. "Val, it's bad. The breach isn't just unstable on our side. He can feel the tear from their perspective too. Their reality is ripping just as badly as ours."

  "What do you mean?"

  "The entities coming through, they're not invading. They're fleeing. Their dimension is collapsing, folding in on itself. The breach is like a, like a wound that opened in both directions. They're experiencing their own barrier breach, and the ones who make it through are dying over here because our reality burns them. It's a catastrophe on both sides of the barrier."

  Valoris let that settle into her understanding. Every entity emerging from this breach was a refugee fleeing dimensional apocalypse, dumped into a reality that was as toxic to their existence as theirs was to humans.

  And command had ordered weapons free on all of them.

  "Focus on what we can control," she said, because there was nothing else to say. "Our priority is civilian protection. That's the job."

  "And the entities?" Zee's voice carried careful neutrality.

  "We get everyone out. That's what matters right now. Everything else, we figure out as we go."

  It wasn't an answer. It wasn't even a plan, but it was the best she could offer when the rules she'd been given contradicted everything she had learned about conscience and choice.

  Sable's voice cut across the transport bay, quiet but carrying: "Chimera Lead."

  Valoris looked up. The Apex second was watching her with an expression that was hard to read.

  "Good luck in there."

  Simple words. The kind anyone might say before a deployment like this. But Sable hesitated, something unspoken hanging in the space between them.

  "Apex will watch your back."

  Then she turned away, returning her attention to her own squad, leaving Valoris to wonder exactly how much she'd meant by that.

  The transport shuddered. Reality flexed around them, dimensional interference bleeding through the stabilizers as they crossed into the affected zone. Through the viewport, the wrong light was visible now, a dome of colors that shouldn't exist hanging over the eastern horizon like a bruise on the sky.

  "Approaching operational zone," the pilot's voice came through the intercom. "All squads prepare for deployment. Touchdown in five minutes."

  Valoris looked at her squad. Zee's aggressive focus barely contained. Saren's rigid control holding together through force of will. Quinn flickering at the edges, dimensional coherence already responding to proximity to the breach. Milo talking quietly with Buddy, his face cycling through emotions that came from processing information no one else could perceive.

  They had all been changed by what they had become. All of them were about to face something worse than anything their training had prepared them for.

  "Whatever happens in there," she said, "we stay together. We protect each other."

  Neural connection to Paragon felt different this time.

  The familiar sensation of consciousness expanding into a forty-foot war machine remained, the fever-bright awareness distributing itself between biological body and dimensional substrate. But underneath the routine of interface, something else hummed through the bond, a note of tension that Valoris had never felt from Paragon before.

  We go to protect, she thought toward the vast presence that shared her awareness.

  The response came not as words but as impression, concepts translating imperfectly across the gulf between human and entity consciousness. Affirmation, readiness, and something else, something that felt almost like grief.

  Valoris let that settle into her understanding while she moved through startup sequences with automatic precision. Paragon could feel them. The entities coming through the breach, the beings that shared whatever fundamental nature connected all dimensional consciousness. Paragon could feel them dying, burning in a reality that wasn't built to hold them.

  Through enhanced sensors, she saw the first entity signatures registering near the edge of the breach zone. Confused readings, unstable forms, beings materializing into a reality that was actively hostile to their existence. Some of them were already flickering, their dimensional coherence failing before corruption could take hold and allow them to survive.

  They were dying. Just from being here. Just from existing in the wrong space.

  "Chimera Squad, report status," she said over squad channel.

  "Chimera Two ready." Zee's voice carried focus channeled into discipline.

  "Chimera Five ready." Milo's response came with undertones of his conversation with Buddy bleeding through. "Jinx is stable. Buddy's processing the dimensional data. It's overwhelming. There's so much pain on both sides of this thing."

  "Chimera Four ready." Quinn's flat affect remained unchanged, but their mech's stealth systems pulsed with readiness. "Specter is optimal. Phase reconnaissance available on your order."

  Silence from Saren.

  "Chimera Three, status. Report."

  More silence. Then, barely audible: "Ready." One word. Delivered without the cold precision that usually characterized Saren's communications. Delivered like it cost her something to say.

  Valoris made a decision. "Squad deployment in standard formation with modification. Chimera Three takes overwatch position rather than precision fire. Maintain distance from breach epicenter. Focus on civilian extraction coordination rather than direct combat engagement."

  "Copy." Zee's acknowledgment carried understanding without requiring explanation.

  "Acknowledged." Quinn.

  "Got it." Milo.

  "I can fight." Saren's voice hardened with something that sounded like anger. "You don't need to protect me from my own capabilities."

  "I'm not protecting you. I'm optimizing squad deployment based on current conditions. Your precision is more valuable for coordination than direct engagement in an urban environment with a confused and panicked civilian population."

  The lie sat between them, obvious and necessary. Saren could have challenged it, insisted on standard tactical positioning. She could have pushed back against leadership she had questioned since the day they were assigned to the same squad.

  Instead, she said: "Understood."

  The transport touched down on a staging area two kilometers from the breach perimeter. Through Paragon's external sensors, Valoris saw other mechs deploying around them, squads spreading out to assigned positions, the massive coordination of an emergency response that would determine whether hundreds of thousands of people lived or died.

  And beyond the staging area, visible even through sensor interference, the dome of wrong light that marked where reality had torn itself open.

  "Chimera Squad," she said. "Deploy."

  Moscow's eastern industrial district was dying.

  Valoris processed the devastation through Paragon's enhanced sensors, her consciousness distributed between her own limited awareness and vast mech perception as they moved toward the breach zone. What had been a functional urban landscape hours ago was now a wound in reality, a spreading stain of wrongness that turned buildings into geometric impossibilities and streets into topological nightmares.

  The corruption was visible even from two kilometers out. A dome of light hung over the epicenter, colors that existed in spectrums humans didn't have names for, shifting and pulsing with rhythms that made her biological brain ache even filtered through Paragon's systems. Within that dome, reality followed different rules. Space folded incorrectly. Time moved in stutters. The boundary between dimensions had not just thinned. It had torn.

  Through her sensors, Valoris saw the evacuation in progress. Crowds of people streaming away from the breach zone on roads that still functioned, vehicles clogging highways that hadn't yet warped into impassable geometries. Emergency services running at maximum capacity. Helicopters pulling civilians from rooftops of buildings that were starting to phase between states of existence.

  And deeper in the zone, where the corruption had already established itself, she saw the people who hadn't made it out in time.

  Some of them were running. Some of them were frozen, caught in temporal distortions that held them suspended between moments. Some of them were screaming in ways that carried through dimensional interference, voices reaching frequencies that human throats shouldn't produce. Some of them were twisted out of shape, their bodies failing to maintain coherence in a reality that no longer supported human biology.

  "Command, this is Chimera Lead. We’re establishing position at sector seven perimeter," Valoris reported to command. "Requesting tactical update on civilian concentration areas."

  "Chimera Lead, confirmed." The tactical coordinator's voice carried strain even through professional training. "Primary civilian concentration at sectors seven through twelve. Evacuation corridors established but degrading. Entity activity confirmed throughout breach zone. Multiple classifications. Remember your rules of engagement: weapons free, all contacts. Clear the zone."

  "Copy that."

  Weapons free, all contacts. The order sat in her awareness like a stone.

  "Chimera Squad, form up," she said over their private channel. "Focus on civilian protection and evacuation support. Entity engagement only when necessary to defend yourself or for human safety."

  "Val." Zee's voice carried careful neutrality. "That's not what they ordered."

  "I know what they ordered. I also know what we're going to do."

  Silence on the squad channel. Then Milo: "Buddy and I are good with that."

  "Acknowledged," Quinn said.

  "Finally," Zee breathed. "Finally, we do something right."

  Saren said nothing. But she didn't object either.

  They moved into the breach zone.