Chương 42: The Load-Bearing Flaw

"Ivan, find where those portals could open," Bianca said as the van moved through darkening streets. The driver stayed off the main roads, keeping to smaller passages that had fewer eyes, civilian or otherwise.

"Already on it," Ivan mumbled, his hand tapping at a handheld device he'd been carrying since he'd joined. Luca knew it was his mapping tool, his Class expression. He watched as Ivan's eyes focused on nothing while his fingers moved with the confidence he hadn't had yesterday.

"There's one about to form two blocks east. Another on the southeast end of Centro."

"Take the east one," Bianca said to the driver. She picked up her phone, tapping a short message out, then glanced back at them.

"When the monsters appear, the real show begins. You watch and record. Don't get involved."

"We won't," Luca said, like it was a promise they were going to keep. But the fear was real. It had been growing all day, and now that the System had confirmed the Scenario was here, the tightness in his chest felt like it was wrapping itself around his throat. Vanni leaned forward from the seat next to them, a heavy-looking rifle across his knees.

"Relax. If we're lucky, this is just a mop-up mission. Close a couple portals, shoot a few uglies, and home before dawn."

"Mop up?" Ivan repeated. Vanni smiled. It wasn't reassuring. The van rolled to a halt, doors opening on cue as she stepped out onto the asphalt with her rifle. Vanni and the other two followed suit, and after a moment of hesitation, Luca pushed himself into motion, pulling his pack behind him while Ivan stayed closer to him than he would have preferred. They moved toward the edge of a piazza that opened up into a wide space between buildings.

Luca could see the distortion in the air already, a faint shimmer like heat haze in the dark, but he knew it wasn't heat. His Class wasn't helping him the way Ivan's was. There were no maps in his head, no lines on a graph showing him where to step. There was just the System's text hovering at the corner of his vision, and Bianca saying, "Get ready." The shimmer broke. The portal opened, widening into a tear that looked out into an alien sky, then disgorged the creatures on the other side in a burst of movement.

A dozen at least, wings flashing in the faint city light. They scattered over the square, their screech echoing off the walls, high and sharp. Luca stumbled back a step. His mind went blank for a moment, caught in the rush of seeing them up close, no longer abstract numbers on a forum thread. Ivan was gripping his own arms like he could fold into himself and disappear. The creatures weren't like anything that should be able to fly. Too heavy. Wings like jagged glass. A mass of them, circling.

Bianca raised her rifle and fired. The sound was deafening in the small space between buildings. One of the creatures fell, wings beating spastically until it crashed onto the cobblestones and lay there, twitching. That seemed to be the signal. The others dove, their formation breaking into individual attacks, and Vanni and the others opened fire while Bianca's voice cut through the noise.

"Stay back!" Luca did, pulling Ivan with him, both of them trying to shrink against the wall of a building while the sky above filled with flapping shadows. The shots kept coming. A few more creatures fell, screeching their last, but the rest adjusted quickly, swerving into the shelter of the buildings where the guns couldn't get a clean line.

Ivan whispered something too low to hear, and Luca focused harder, forcing his brain into the mode he used in the office, when he was staring at data too chaotic to make sense, and he needed to see the shape anyway. LOAD-BEARING. His skill activated like a switch, and he felt the way the square itself seemed to compress, the layout becoming clearer in his head, the points of engagement where the fight could be decided if you controlled them.

His eyes snapped to the corner where one of the monsters was trying to flank, using the balcony of a third-story window as cover while it prepared to dive on Vanni.

"Balcony, far corner," he said, his voice sharp despite the fear in his throat. Bianca's head turned, her rifle shifting without hesitation. She fired. The creature shrieked and fell from the railing, wings spasming. Then she was already moving to the next spot. Luca held onto his calm. He forced his eyes around the entire square, mapping it. The portal itself pulsed softly at the center, a source, a thing that still needed to be closed. If they left it open, the waves would keep coming.

"Vanni, you have the east side!" Bianca called, switching positions, letting the team handle the front while she covered the left flank. The creatures circled. It looked like they were stalling. Or planning. Luca didn't like it. The longer this went on, the more chance something went wrong. Then one of them came straight for him, swooping low with claws extended, a streak of night and sound. He froze, but Ivan moved, shoving him aside, his elbow connecting with Luca's ribs and knocking the air out of him.

Luca fell hard to the ground, Ivan's shout fading behind him. He turned his head, and there was Ivan standing in front of him, hands up like he thought he could fend off the creature. Then Bianca was there. She didn't give it a chance. Her movement was so fast Luca couldn't track it. There was a blade in her hand now, and she sliced across the thing's path, not even a full swing, just a clean, sharp motion. Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

The creature shrieked and crashed to the ground, wings catching on the ground as it slid toward Luca's legs. He scrambled back on his hands and knees. Bianca stepped on its neck and pinned it there until it stopped moving. She turned to Luca and Ivan, her expression cold, not even breathing hard.

"Get up." Luca nodded, pushing himself to his feet. Ivan looked like he'd seen a ghost, his face pale. She knelt beside them, her knife still in her hand.

"The portal. Can you close it?" They looked at the pulsing tear in the middle of the square. More creatures were already swirling behind it, visible only as distortions, as if they hadn't fully committed yet to coming through.

"I can... I think so." Luca's voice felt hoarse, but he pushed through it, focusing again.

"Give me two minutes."

"Take them." He started running, Ivan at his side, both of them cutting across the space toward the portal. When they reached the center, the hum of it was loud enough that his skin tingled. The System felt like it was pressing against his brain, making it hard to think. He had to push into it, focusing on the structure of it, on how it held its shape.

Behind them, he heard the shots starting again, Bianca's team keeping the swarm from following, and Luca gritted his teeth, sinking into the skill he wasn't sure would work here. LOAD-BEARING came up first. He could feel the weight of the portal, the strain it was putting on this piece of the world, the way the stones beneath his feet were supporting it. The load. The force trying to break through. Then he pulled the second skill to the front.

FRAMEWORK activated like a blueprint opening in his mind, a sense of the connections around him, the way the System's mechanics fit together. The portal wasn't fixed yet. It was trying to become part of the space, to make itself stable enough to stay open. If he could make it unstable... He raised his hands, as if he could touch it. There was a feeling in the air, like the feedback you got when a circuit was misaligned, ready to overload. He focused on that feeling, pulling it tighter.

Ivan was beside him, staring into the same swirl of energy.

"What are you... I feel something." Luca didn't dare answer. He pushed harder, pouring the Framework logic into the Load-Bearing calculation, forcing the portal to buckle under its own effort to stay open. There was a moment of tension so strong his ears popped. Then it snapped back, the tear sealing itself with a sound like a thousand static pops at once. He lowered his hands, breathing in hard through his nose. Ivan exhaled loudly.

"We did it." Luca looked around and saw Bianca and her team finishing off the last few stragglers, the bodies scattered around them. No one else was hurt. They'd managed to keep it clean. Bianca stopped a few steps away. Her rifle was over her shoulder, and her expression was as blank as ever.

"You closed the portal. Good job." Luca just nodded, because his voice wasn't back yet, and he wasn't sure what would come out if he tried to use it. He'd made a decision here, in the field. A moment of trusting his class, and it had paid off, but it also felt like the edge of a much deeper hole than he was ready to fall into. They walked back to the van together.

The rest of Bianca's squad loaded the gear while Luca sat in the back seat, staring at his hands, thinking about what it had felt like to reach into the System and make it bend to the structure he had given it.

"We're moving to the next target," Bianca said from the passenger seat. The van started moving, the night street stretching out ahead.

"Do your job." Luca looked up, his eyes meeting Ivan's for a brief moment of shared uncertainty before both of them shifted into the role she'd asked them to take.

"Yes, ma'am," he said.

Bianca's squad cleaned three more zones before dawn. By the last one, Luca had stopped flinching when the creatures came out of the portals. He still didn't like them, but the fear had sharpened into something more focused. He paid attention, kept track of the patterns, the load-bearing points where the System's scenarios wanted the players to focus. Each time, he could shut the portal a little faster. Ivan had stopped looking terrified and started looking like he was going to be sick if it lasted much longer.

He did his part, but the stress was written in the way he kept touching his own wrists, the way his eyes couldn't settle. It didn't stop the Leonelli enforcers from treating them like part of the team. No one complained. No one made jokes at their expense. In the moments between operations, sitting in the van with the adrenaline fading, Luca felt the distance growing between who he'd been before the System arrived and who he was becoming now. He could map the System. He could break parts of it. The power was real.

But the cost was showing itself in the way his sleep didn't come anymore. In the way he hadn't responded to the three texts Iris had sent during the night, all versions of are you okay. When they returned to Palazzo Valperga as the sky began to lighten, he climbed out of the van with heavy legs and walked up the stairs without seeing the steps, too deep in his thoughts to notice the cold or the fatigue. Ivan trailed behind him, looking like he needed a bed for a week.

Vanni clapped him on the shoulder and said something quiet that made him give a tired, mirthless smile. In the upper hall, Cecilia was waiting for them. Dario stood next to her, a cigarette between his fingers. He didn't look like he'd been out fighting things with wings and claws. He just looked bored. Cecilia's gaze went over both of them and came to rest on Luca.

"How was the field work?" Her voice was calm. It made him feel calm just listening to her, like there wasn't chaos waiting just beyond the walls.

"Good," he said.

"The portals follow a structural logic. If you can identify the load-bearing flaw, the trigger points are predictable. I think we can speed-run the next Scenario with better preparation." Dario laughed, exhaling smoke.

"Speed-run. Nice." Cecilia didn't smile. She was considering, filing his answer away.

"Is that the whole team's opinion, or just yours?" Luca glanced at Ivan, who was leaning against the wall with his eyes half-closed, exhaustion winning.

"We have more data to review. I'll confirm it after we put everything together."

"Do that," she said, then gestured to Dario, who took over as she walked away, probably to whatever dark office she was living in now. Dario stepped closer, watching Luca with a look that was a little too interested.

"So, was it fun? Playing hero for a night." Luca felt a knot of something, embarrassment or frustration, but he didn't have the energy to fight back.

"It was… effective," he said.

"Yeah. That's the important part." Dario smiled again, softer this time, and tapped the ash from the end of his cigarette.

"You did well. Cecilia's already talking about using you on some of the more delicate work. I'd say keep your head down, but you're the one who wanted to get closer to the monsters."

"It's not about monsters." Luca forced his voice steady, even though the twitch in his eye was still there, a tiny betraying blink.

"It's about staying ahead of the information curve. And I'll do whatever it takes." Dario watched him for a few more seconds, then nodded like the answer made sense.

"Good man," he said.

"Get some sleep. I have a feeling you'll need it." Luca walked away, toward the room he was calling his now, feeling the weight of Dario's eyes on his back. There wasn't judgment there. It was more like curiosity, like he was studying a new species of animal that had just figured out it could run faster than expected. Luca didn't look back. He closed the door, sat down on the bed, and let the weight of the night crash down all at once.