THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD--

  The rotor noise drilled through her eardrums. Constant vibration traveled up from the steel bench, through her tailbone, into her spine. Her ass was numb. Her head was splitting.

  Han Seorin, nineteen, looked down at her hands resting on her knees. Silver cuffs locked around both wrists. Not prisoner transport cuffs. These had blue LEDs blinking along the band -- High-Risk Awakener Containment units. Mana suppression restraints.

  Loud.

  She scowled and raised her head. Inside the rattling fuselage, under the dim glow of emergency lighting, five more bodies sat strapped in.

  The boy across from her had his face buried between his knees. School uniform pants, wrinkled to hell. Asleep or unconscious -- impossible to tell. Cha Runa. The girl next to him was chewing her fingernails down to the blood. Yoon Serin. And the big one -- the massive guy at the end -- was staring into empty space with the blank expression of someone who hadn't figured out why he was here. Jeong Noah.

  Every single one of them looked like a broken toy.

  This was the Republic of Korea's brilliant Plan B. The replacement parts for the adults who'd just been wiped off the map. Teenagers to be used as meat shields. Seorin didn't know their names, ages, or where they were from. Didn't need to. Half of them probably weren't making it home tonight.

  "Three minutes to the site!"

  The escort agent shouted through his headset. He didn't look at the kids. Not once. Like a man herding cattle to the slaughterhouse -- his eyes bounced between his tablet and his watch, nothing else.

  "Listen up. Briefing."

  He hit a switch on the wall. Static crackled, and a monitor flickered on. The image was downtown Seoul. Or what used to be downtown Seoul.

  A two-kilometer radius, crushed. Buildings that had been standing an hour ago were bent like taffy. An eight-lane highway had been clawed open as if something enormous had dragged its nails through it. And at the center -- a black hole. The Rift. Mouth wide open.

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  "Advance team Golden Generation. Total wipe confirmed."

  The agent's voice was clerical. Not the tone of a man reporting deaths. The tone of a man logging a hardware malfunction.

  "Rift pressure currently at 88%. If it passes 95% within fifteen minutes, the entire Gangbuk district collapses. You have one job."

  The screen cut to black. The agent swept his cold gaze across the six of them.

  "Hold. Thirty minutes. Inside the zone. Until we finish reinstalling the barrier."

  Hold.

  Seorin knew what that word actually meant.

  Not win. Not kill. Just get in there, draw the attention of whatever's trying to crawl out, block it with your body, maybe lose an arm or a leg, and burn the clock until the real operation is done.

  "You've gotta be kidding me..."

  Someone muttered it from the seat beside her. A girl. The name tag on her school uniform read Kang Gayeon.

  "Hey, mister. You said you'd take these off. How are we supposed to fight in cuffs?"

  "They release on descent."

  Short answer.

  "And remember this. You're not going in there to play hero. Deserters get shot. Insubordination extends your detention."

  CLANG--

  The fuselage tilted hard. They'd entered the airspace over the site. Acrid smoke seeped in through the cracks. The smell of blood. Concrete dust. And underneath it, something metallic and wrong -- ozone with a bite to it. The smell of a Rift.

  "Prepare for drop!"

  THOOM. The rear ramp cracked open. Wind slammed in like a wall, whipping the kids' hair into chaos. The temperature inside the cabin plummeted.

  Seorin looked down.

  A sickening drop. Between the collapsed buildings, the things that had chewed through the adults -- and were still hungry -- squirmed in the wreckage below.

  Dozens of eyes glinting in the dark. Those things weren't villains. They were weather. The same way a tsunami doesn't hate you, the same way an earthquake has no malice -- those things didn't want to kill anyone. They just existed.

  Click.

  The electronic tone chimed from her cuffs. The restraints popped open. Seorin rubbed her aching wrists and stood.

  No scabbard. No shining armor. What the government had issued her: one thin protective suit and a crude iron spike clipped to her waist. That was it.

  But it was enough.

  A blade isn't steel. It's the reaction -- the terrifyingly vivid need to stay alive.

  "Number One. Han Seorin. Drop."

  The agent shoved her back. No time to hesitate. No time to write a will.

  Seorin threw herself into the void. Gravity snatched her. That sickening float -- stomach and heart separating, everything inside her lifting while the rest of her fell.

  In that brief freefall, she thought:

  Must be nice being an adult.

  She watched the helicopter shrink above her and let the corner of her mouth twist.

  At least when you die, you get to clock out.

  The ground was rushing up fast. This was her first day on the job.