The meditation chamber was designed to strip away every external stimulus until nothing remained except consciousness and the infinite dark it reached toward.

  Valoris sat with forty other second-year students, legs crossed in prescribed position, breathing measured: four counts in, hold for seven, eight counts out. Around her, she felt rather than heard the presence of her peers; Quinn three positions to her left, breathing so shallow it was almost imperceptible. Milo somewhere behind her, fidgeting even now. Zee to her right, radiating focused intensity that suggested she was already pushing deeper than recommended. Saren further back, achieving technically perfect meditation form without actually connecting to anything.

  "Reach," Instructor Kael's voice floated through the chamber, barely above a whisper. "Not with your body. Not with your conscious mind. With the awareness beneath awareness. The part of you that exists between thought and sensation. Find the boundary. Don't cross it. Just... feel it."

  Valoris sank deeper into the meditation state, consciousness spreading outward and inward simultaneously. Past immediate physical sensations – the floor beneath her, her body's weight, her breath's rhythm. Past surface thoughts that wanted attention – anxiety about rankings, concern for her squad, memories of her grandmother's scarred face. Past even the structured meditation techniques they'd been taught.

  To the space beneath everything.

  And there, at the edges of her awareness, she felt it.

  Cold.

  Not temperature. Something else. Absence. The kind of emptiness that existed in gaps between stars, in moments between heartbeats, in spaces where reality thinned and something immense pressed against existence's fragile membrane.

  The dimensional boundary.

  She'd touched it before, briefly, during first-year exercises. But this was different. This was intentional. This was preparation for the moment when she wouldn't just touch the boundary but cross it. When she'd reach into that void and pull forth something living and aware and fundamentally alien.

  Reach, Kael's voice whispered. Approach the boundary. Acknowledge what waits on the other side.

  Valoris pushed her awareness forward, slowly, carefully, like extending a hand into darkness without knowing what might be waiting. The emptiness intensified. Pressure built against her consciousness, not hostile but simply present. Immense and ancient and other.

  And then she felt it: awareness.

  Something on the other side of the boundary noticed when she reached toward it. It recognized her presence with attention that felt simultaneously casual and overwhelming. Like a god glancing down at an insect, acknowledging the insect existed and was attempting something interesting.

  Valoris held her position at the boundary, maintaining contact with that infinite dark awareness. Feeling the weight of something incomprehensibly large existing just beyond the thin membrane of dimensional space. Feeling how easy it would be to push through and how seductive that emptiness was. How much her consciousness wanted to expand into it, to understand what existed on the other side.

  Don't cross, Kael's voice said, sharper now. Hold your position. Acknowledge and withdraw.

  Valoris pulled back slowly, carefully, like retracting that extended hand from darkness. The emptiness receded. The pressure eased. Her consciousness contracted back into the boundaries of her physical form, small and contained, limited, but safe.

  She opened her eyes.

  Around her, other students were surfacing at different rates. Some looked exhilarated, breathing fast with flushed faces. Some looked terrified, hands shaking and eyes too wide. Some looked peaceful, having achieved the meditation state without actually touching the dimensional boundary, safe in their isolated consciousness, never risking contact with what waited beyond.

  And some–

  "Renn!" Kael's voice cut across the chamber with sudden urgency. "Milo Renn, return to surface awareness. Now."

  Valoris twisted around to see Milo still sitting in meditation position, but something was wrong. His breathing had gone shallow and irregular. His hands clenched and unclenched spasmodically. And his expression–

  His face was utterly blank. Not peaceful. Absent. Like no one was home behind his eyes.

  Two instructors converged on him, hands on his shoulders, voices urgent. "Milo. Milo Renn. Return to your body. Follow the protocol. Conscious breath. Physical sensation. Return."

  Nothing. Milo sat there, breathing but not present, his consciousness extended too far into dimensional space to find its way back.

  Kael knelt beside him, hands on either side of his face. "Milo. You've crossed the boundary. You need to return. Follow my voice. Your name is Milo Renn. You're sixteen years old. You're sitting in meditation chamber seven at the academy. You're in your body. Return to it. Now."

  For several long seconds, nothing happened. Students watched with varying degrees of horror as Milo remained absent, his consciousness somewhere beyond the dimensional boundary where human minds weren't supposed to go without extensive preparation.

  Then his body jerked. Suddenly, violently, like a puppet whose strings had been yanked by an inexperienced hand. His head snapped back at an angle that looked wrong. His spine arched until his shoulders left the floor completely.

  A sound came from his throat. Something lower, deeper than a scream, a grinding noise that shouldn't come from human vocal cords. Like tectonic plates shifting beneath the earth, like glaciers calving into dark water, like the universe itself grinding its teeth.

  His eyes opened.

  They were wrong.

  Still Milo's eyes; same color, same shape. But the awareness behind them was wrong. Too large and too old. Something was looking out through his skull that didn't belong in a sixteen-year-old's body, in any human body, pressing against the too-small container of his mind with the casual pressure of an ocean pressed against a submarine hull at crushing depth.

  "Milo," Kael said, but his voice had changed. Lost authority. Gained fear. "Milo, focus on my voice. Follow the protocol–"

  Milo's mouth opened wider than it should. The grinding sound became a wail, high, keening and wrong, wrong, wrong. It climbed in pitch and volume until students clapped hands over their ears, until the sound seemed to bypass ears entirely and drill straight into their brains. Valoris felt it in her teeth, vibrating through her bones, in the space behind her thoughts where the dimensional boundary lurked.

  His hands didn't just clutch his head. His fingers dug into his scalp with enough force that blood started welling up between them. He was clawing at his own skull like he could physically pull open his head to let something out. Like the something inside was too large for the space it occupied and the only solution was to break the container.

  "Get him out," Kael ordered, but his hands shook as he grabbed Milo's wrists. "Medical intervention. Now."

  Another instructor tried to help restrain him, but Milo thrashed with strength that shouldn't have been possible from his lean frame. His head cracked backward into the instructor's nose with enough force to spray blood. The wailing continued, that inhuman, grinding, universe-ending sound that made students start crying without knowing why.

  Milo's eyes rolled back in his head, showing only whites. His body convulsed. And for just a moment – just one terrible moment – Valoris thought she saw something move beneath his skin. Not muscle spasms, movement, like something was trying to reshape him from the inside out, like his flesh was too thin a barrier between dimensional space and physical reality.

  Then they got him standing, barely. Two instructors supporting his full weight as his legs buckled repeatedly. His mouth was still open, still making that grinding wail that hurt to hear.

  They carried him from the chamber with his head lolling at angles that looked wrong, his fingers still clawing spasmodically at anything within reach. That terrible sound finally began fragmenting into raw screaming, human screaming, terror and agony and the complete psychological fracture of someone who'd seen something they couldn't unsee, become something they couldn't unbecome.

  The meditation chamber fell silent except for Milo's fading screams echoing down the corridor. Then further. Then gone.

  But not really gone. Because every student who'd witnessed it could still hear that sound in their heads. That grinding, universe-ending wail. That moment when something too large for human minds had looked out through Milo's eyes and pressed against the boundaries of his skull with casual, terrible pressure.

  Kael stood slowly, turned to face the remaining students. His expression was carefully neutral, but Valoris saw the concern beneath it. Saw the calculation; one student down, how many more would break before summoning day?

  "That," Kael said quietly, "is what happens when you cross the boundary without preparation. When you push too deep, too fast, without proper mental conditioning. Milo will recover. Probably. But he experienced dimensional contact before his mind was ready to process it. Before he had the frameworks to contain that awareness without fracturing."

  He paused, let that sink in.

  "This is why we train. Why we practice approaching the boundary hundreds of times before attempting to cross it. Why we spend nine months building the mental discipline necessary for summoning. Because the dimensional space doesn't care if you're ready. It doesn't care if you're prepared. It simply is. And if you encounter it before you can handle it, it breaks you."

  Silence. Heavy and sobering.

  "Meditation session is complete," Kael said. "Return to barracks. Reflect on what you experienced. Those who made contact with the boundary, document your sensations for medical review. Those who didn't, that's fine, not everyone progresses at the same rate. We'll continue tomorrow."

  Students began filing out, conversations subdued, the usual post-meditation energy dampened by witnessing Milo's breakdown.

  Chimera Squad moved together toward their barracks without discussion, drawn by shared instinct and concern for their squadmate.

  Nobody spoke for the first hundred meters. Valoris kept replaying what she'd seen; that moment when Milo's eyes opened and something too large looked out through them. The sound he'd made. The way his fingers had dug into his own scalp with enough force to draw blood. The movement beneath his skin.

  She glanced at her squad. Zee walked with her hands clenched into fists, jaw tight, radiating tension that had nowhere to go. Saren's usual perfect posture had cracked slightly, shoulders hunched, arms wrapped around herself like she was cold. Quinn stared straight ahead with eyes that weren't quite focused, replaying the incident with their analytical mind, trying to categorize something that defied categorization.

  "He crossed the boundary," Quinn said finally, their voice even flatter than usual. As if forcing emotion out entirely was the only way to maintain control. "Accidentally or intentionally, he extended consciousness past the threshold into dimensional space proper. Without preparation. Without frameworks. His mind encountered something it couldn't process."

  "Will they even let us see him?" Saren asked. Her voice cracked slightly on 'see.'

  Quinn didn't answer immediately. "Medical protocol for dimensional contact incidents requires isolation for initial assessment. Forty-eight hour minimum observation period. Psychological evaluation. Neural scanning to check for dimensional residue. They might not–"

  "He's our squadmate," Zee interrupted. "They have to let us see him."

  "Unknown. Policy prioritizes medical assessment over–"

  "Zee's right," Valoris said, though she wasn't sure she believed it. "We're his squad. They can't just lock him away from us."

  But part of her wondered if they could. If they would. If Milo had crossed too far, touched something too dangerous, become too compromised to return to normal training. She'd heard stories about students who broke during meditation preparation, how some never came back from what they'd touched beyond the boundary. How some technically survived but were never really present again, consciousness still partially extended into dimensional space, unable to fully inhabit their own bodies.

  What if Milo was one of them now?

  "Is he going to be okay?" Zee asked quietly. The question they were all thinking.

  "Unknown. Depends on exposure duration, depth of contact, individual psychological resilience, medical intervention speed–"

  "Sterling," Saren interrupted. "Translation: you don't know."

  "Correct. Insufficient data."

  More silence. Heavier this time.

  "That sound he made," Zee said. "I can still hear it. In my head. That sound."

  "Same," Saren whispered.

  Valoris could hear it too. That universe-ending wail. That moment when something incomprehensibly large had pressed against the boundaries of Milo's skull and nearly broken through. The terror in his screaming afterward… the human screaming, after the inhuman sounds stopped.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  They were all going to do this eventually. Cross that boundary. Touch what Milo had touched. On purpose.

  The thought made her stomach turn.

  They reached their barracks and Valoris's hand hesitated on the door. What if he wasn't there? What if medical had already taken him somewhere else? What if he was there but worse, still making that sound, still clawing at his skull, still possessed by something too large for his body?

  She opened the door.

  Instructor Kael stood just inside, hands clasped behind his back. No Milo.

  "He's in medical," Kael said before any of them could ask. "Stable. Under observation. They're running neural scans to check for dimensional residue and conducting psychological assessment."

  "Can we see him?" Valoris asked.

  "That's why I'm here. Medical has cleared him for visitors. Squad only, limited duration. He's asking for you." Kael's expression softened slightly. "He's shaken but coherent. The incident was severe, but he pulled back before permanent damage occurred. Probably."

  "Probably?" Saren's voice came out sharper than usual.

  "Dimensional contact incidents don't always manifest immediately. Sometimes the damage shows up hours or days later; psychological fracturing, dissociation, dimensional echo. Medical will monitor him for the next forty-eight hours. If he remains stable, he'll return to training with modified meditation protocols."

  "And if he doesn't remain stable?" Zee asked.

  Kael's silence was answer enough.

  "Follow me," he said finally.

  The medical wing occupied the academy's east tower, sterile white corridors that smelled like antiseptic and something else, something sharp and wrong that made Valoris's teeth ache.

  Kael stopped at a private room near the end. "Fifteen minutes," he said. "Medical staff are monitoring. If he shows signs of distress, they'll end the visit." He opened the door and stepped aside.

  Milo sat propped up in a medical bed, wearing a thin hospital gown, monitoring leads attached to his temples and chest. Screens beside the bed displayed data Valoris didn't understand. Fresh bandages wrapped his scalp where he'd clawed himself bloody. His hands rested on the blanket, still trembling slightly. His eyes tracked toward them as they entered, and for just a moment, just a split second, they looked empty. Then recognition surfaced.

  "Hey," he said, voice hoarse from screaming. "That was... that was really embarrassing."

  The attempt at humor fell flat. Nobody laughed.

  Chimera Squad arranged themselves around his bed. Quinn moved closest, their usual careful distance abandoned. Zee positioned herself beside Quinn, within easy reach. Saren hovered near the door like she might bolt. Valoris placed herself where Milo could see her clearly.

  "How are you feeling?" Valoris asked carefully.

  Milo's attempted smile didn't reach his eyes. "Weird. Really, really weird. I touched... I went past..." He trailed off, unable to articulate what he'd experienced. His gaze drifted to his hands like he wasn't sure they belonged to him. "There was something there. Not hostile. Just... present. It looked at me. Actually looked at me. Saw me. Saw through me. Saw everything I am and everything I'm not and everything I could be and–"

  His breath hitched. One of the monitors beeped, a warning tone that made everyone tense. A medical officer appeared in the doorway, checking the screens, then nodded and stepped back.

  "I wanted to stay there," Milo continued, quieter now. "I wanted to expand into that... into it and just exist. Forever. Eternal. Infinite. Part of something so much larger than this–" He gestured vaguely at his body, at the medical bed, at physical reality. "And that's the scary part. I wanted to stay. Had to be pulled back. If the instructors hadn't intervened, I would have just kept going deeper until there was nothing left of me to return."

  "But you did return," Valoris said. "You're here. You're you."

  "Am I?" Milo looked at his hands again, turned them over slowly like examining artifacts from another life. "I remember being me. But I also remember being... something else. Something enormous. And I can't tell which one is real anymore."

  Quinn moved closer, their hand lifting slightly, an aborted gesture toward contact they couldn't quite complete. They stopped, fingers hovering.

  Zee stepped forward instead, placing her hand firmly over Milo's. Solid. Grounding. "You're Milo Renn," she said, and Quinn picked up the thread immediately.

  "Sixteen years old. Genius engineer. Member of Chimera Squad." Quinn's voice was flat as always, but they leaned in close enough that Milo could feel their presence even without touch. "You build things that shouldn't work but do. You make terrible jokes during combat simulations. You fidget constantly because your mind moves faster than your body can keep up with. Those things are real. What you touched beyond the boundary… that's real too. But you are here. This version. The human version."

  Milo's fingers curled around Zee's hand, holding on like an anchor. "The human version feels really small right now."

  "We're all small," Saren said from near the door, surprisingly gentle. "Compared to what exists beyond the dimensional boundary, every human is infinitesimally small. That's not weakness. That's just scale."

  "And we're going to cross that boundary," Zee added. "All of us. During summoning. We'll reach into that space and pull something forth. On purpose. Knowing what's there."

  "Why?" Milo asked, and his voice cracked. "Why would we do that to ourselves? Why would anyone voluntarily touch something that immense and alien and fundamentally incomprehensible?"

  Silence settled over the medical room. Because he was asking the question none of them wanted to examine too closely.

  Why do this at all?

  Milo closed his eyes, breathing slowly. The monitors beside his bed showed his heart rate spiking, then gradually settling. "I hope you're right. Because that thing I touched.. it's still there. I can feel it at the edges of my awareness. Like it's waiting for me to reach toward it again. And part of me wants to. That's what's terrifying. Part of me wants to go back."

  "That's normal," Valoris said, though she wasn't sure it was. "The dimensional space is seductive. It's enormous and incomprehensible and fundamentally other. Of course part of you wants to understand it. But we're training for controlled contact. For maintaining coherence during exposure, crossing the boundary and returning intact."

  "Nine months," Milo said. "Nine months of preparation. And then we do this on purpose."

  "Then we do this on purpose," Valoris agreed.

  The medical officer reappeared in the doorway. "Time's up. He needs rest, and you all have evening training in forty minutes."

  Chimera Squad hesitated; nobody wanting to leave, nobody wanting to abandon Milo to this sterile room with its monitoring equipment and dimensional cleansing agents.

  "I'll be okay," Milo said, though his voice was uncertain. "Medical says I can probably return to barracks tomorrow if my scans stay stable. I'll see you then."

  Zee squeezed his hand once before letting go. "We'll visit again. As soon as they allow it."

  "Bring better jokes next time," Milo said, attempting humor again. "This place is depressing."

  They filed out one by one, Zee last, casting a final look back at Milo surrounded by machines that measured how badly he'd fractured from touching something humans weren't designed to comprehend.

  The walk back to barracks was quiet. But something had shifted. They'd all witnessed what dimensional contact could do. What it would do to them eventually. And they were still here. Still training. Still moving forward.

  Because that's what pilots did. Whatever was necessary.

  Training intensified over the following weeks with the kind of relentless pressure that made first year look gentle by comparison.

  Combat simulations evolved to include dimensional distortion effects; reality bending in ways that violated physics, spatial relationships becoming fluid, time itself operating under rules that made consistent tactical planning nearly impossible. Chimera Squad learned to fight when up became down, when forward shifted to backward without warning, when the distance between two points changed mid-movement.

  "Corruption zones do this," Instructor Thane explained during one particularly disorienting simulation. "Dimensional energy seeps into physical reality and warps the underlying structure. If you deploy to active corruption zones, you'll encounter spatial distortions, temporal anomalies, reality breaks that make conventional combat tactics useless. You need to learn to adapt. To fight when physics itself is unreliable."

  They adapted. Gradually. Zee learned to trust her combat instincts even when her spatial awareness insisted the world was impossible. Saren developed precision techniques that worked regardless of dimensional distortion. Quinn calculated probability distributions that accounted for reality becoming fluid. Milo built equipment modifications that functioned despite physics breaking down.

  And Valoris learned to command when certainty itself was unreliable, to synthesize her squad's capabilities even when the battlefield refused to make sense.

  But the real focus, the primary, consuming, unavoidable focus, was meditation and dimensional contact practice.

  Daily sessions. Three hours minimum, often longer. Learning to reach deeper into meditative states, to approach the dimensional boundary with increasing confidence, to maintain coherence despite the emptiness that waited on the other side.

  Quinn became obsessed.

  They reached as deep as allowed during every session, then pushed deeper than recommendations. Approached the boundary and held position there, consciousness extended toward dimensional space with intensity that bordered on compulsive. After one particularly long session, instructors had to physically intervene to pull Quinn back from meditation.

  "You're pushing too hard," Kael warned. "Approaching the boundary is preparation, not the goal itself. You need to learn control, not how to throw yourself at dimensional space with maximum force."

  "I need to understand it," Quinn said, their flat voice containing unusual emotion. Desperation, maybe, or hunger. "I need to comprehend what exists beyond the boundary. The patterns. The structure. How it operates. What it is."

  "You can't comprehend it. Not fully. That's the point. Dimensional space operates under rules that human consciousness isn't designed to process. You learn to interact with it without understanding it completely."

  "That's insufficient."

  "That's reality. You want to summon successfully? Learn to accept incomprehensibility."

  But Quinn continued pushing deeper during every meditation session, consciousness extended toward the boundary with single-minded intensity, eyes glazed during sessions and afterward, breathing shallow, presence diminished as more and more of their awareness existed at the dimensional threshold.

  Saren struggled in the opposite direction.

  Her precision-focused mind, so excellent at structured learning and technical mastery, couldn't grasp something as formless as dimensional space. She achieved perfect meditation form – breathing, posture, mental state all technically correct – but couldn't actually reach toward the boundary. Couldn't extend consciousness past the limits of structured thought into the space where comprehension failed.

  "I can't understand it," she admitted after another frustrating session. "Can't categorize it. Can't analyze it systematically. Can't impose any structure on something so formless. My mind just... rejects it."

  "Maybe that's okay," Valoris suggested. "Maybe some people summon through technical precision rather than deep dimensional resonance."

  "That's not how summoning works. You need to reach into dimensional space and pull something forth. If I can't even touch the boundary, how am I supposed to cross it?"

  "You have nine months to learn."

  "What if that's not enough?" Saren's control cracked slightly, showing the fear beneath. "What if I reach summoning day and I still can't connect? What if I wash out after making it this far? After everything I've sacrificed to be here?"

  Valoris didn't have reassuring answers. Because Saren might be right. Some students simply couldn't develop dimensional resonance no matter how hard they trained. And without that resonance, summoning was impossible.

  Zee approached the boundary with characteristic pragmatism; not obsessed like Quinn, not blocked like Saren, just methodically building familiarity with something she'd eventually need to cross. She extended consciousness toward dimensional space, acknowledged the awareness beyond it, pulled back cleanly. Repeated the process hundreds of times, building muscle memory for something that had nothing to do with muscles.

  "It's terrifying," she admitted. "Every time. That emptiness. That sense that something incomprehensibly large is paying attention to you. But I'm getting used to the terror. Learning to function despite it."

  "That's not healthy," Valoris said.

  "Probably not. But it's effective."

  And Valoris... Valoris maintained careful, controlled contact with the dimensional boundary. Reached toward it, felt the awareness beyond acknowledge her presence, pulled back before the seduction of that emptiness became overwhelming. She was good at it; strong dimensional resonance, clean approach, disciplined withdrawal. Legacy genetics showing through, five generations of Kades who'd all successfully summoned displaying their influence in her natural affinity for dimensional contact.

  But that legacy weight felt heavier every time she approached the boundary. Because she couldn't help wondering: did the dimensional space remember the Kades who'd touched it before? Did that awareness recognize some family resemblance in how she reached toward it?

  Stupid thoughts, she told herself. The dimensional space isn't conscious like that. It's not judging you. It's just existing.

  But she couldn't shake the feeling that something on the other side of the boundary was waiting for her specifically. Expecting her to cross eventually. Patient and eternal and utterly inhuman.

  Dimensional sensitivity became a new training metric, measured and tracked and analyzed alongside combat performance and academic achievement.

  Monthly resonance checks: Students meditated while instructors monitored their dimensional contact depth, approach stability, withdrawal control, consciousness coherence during exposure. The results were quantified, ranked, compared.

  Quinn: Highest dimensional resonance in the entire year-two cohort. Approached the boundary deeper and held position longer than anyone else. But concerning lack of control; pushing too hard and risking accidental crossing with an obsessive intensity that suggested psychological instability.

  Milo: Erratic readings that made instructors nervous. Sometimes strong resonance, sometimes minimal contact, unpredictable variability that suggested either genius-level intuition or dangerous instability. Since the incident where he'd crossed the boundary accidentally, his readings fluctuated wildly between sessions.

  Valoris: Strong, controlled resonance. Consistent approach depth, clean withdrawal, maintained coherence well. Legacy genetics evident in natural affinity. Instructors praised her discipline but noted she might lack the intensity needed for difficult summonings.

  Zee: Moderate but focused resonance. Not the deepest contact, but exceptionally stable. Approached boundary methodically, maintained discipline, withdrew cleanly every time. Solid baseline, unlikely to break.

  Saren: Precise but limited range. Achieved technical meditation proficiency but struggled with actual dimensional contact. Weakest resonance scores in Chimera Squad. Concerning for summoning prospects.

  The rankings fluctuated based on these new metrics. Squads with high dimensional resonance climbed. Squads with weak resonance dropped. And suddenly combat performance and academic achievement mattered less than something none of them could see or touch, just feel, at the edges of consciousness, infinite and dark and waiting.

  Chimera Squad dropped from fourth to fifth place overall.

  Not because their combat performance declined or their academics suffered. But because Saren's weak dimensional resonance and Milo's erratic readings dragged down their squad average. Meanwhile, Apex Squad maintained first place through consistently high resonance across all members. Adeyemi-32 climbed to second, redeeming their final simulation performance from last year. Glacier Squad held third. Crowe-01 took fourth.

  And Chimera fell to fifth.

  "It's not fair," Milo said, staring at the posted rankings. "We're good. We work well together. Our combat scores are excellent. But because Saren can't touch the boundary and my readings are unpredictable, we're falling behind."

  "Rankings are based on summoning preparation," Saren said, her voice tight with barely controlled frustration. "And I'm failing at the one thing that matters most. I'm bringing us down."

  "You're not bringing us down," Valoris said. "Rankings fluctuate. We'll adapt."

  "How? I can't suddenly develop dimensional resonance I don't have. This isn't something I can study or practice my way through. My mind just rejects that kind of contact."

  "Then we find another approach. There has to be alternative summoning methods for people with different resonance profiles."

  "There aren't. You reach into dimensional space and pull something forth, or you don't summon. That's the only method. And I can't reach."

  The silence that followed was heavy with implications. Because Saren might be right. And if she couldn't summon, then Chimera Squad would lose a member before they even became pilots. All the work they'd done building cohesion, all the trust they'd developed, it would fracture before they had the chance to deploy together.

  "There's enough time for improvement," Quinn said quietly. "Maddox's technical proficiency is exceptional. She needs alternative approach methods, not abandonment."

  "I appreciate the vote of confidence," Saren said. "But confidence doesn't change brain chemistry or dimensional sensitivity. I'm trying. I'm trying so hard. And it's not enough."

  Zee put a hand on Saren's shoulder. "You're Chimera Squad. You're ours. We don't leave people behind because they struggle with one metric. We adapt. We find solutions. We’re going to make this work."

  "And if we can't?"

  "Then we try harder."

  It was optimistic to the point of unrealistic. But it was also exactly what they needed to hear. Because the alternative – accepting that Chimera Squad might fracture before summoning, that they might lose Saren despite everything they'd built together – was unacceptable.

  They'd made it too far to break now.