They packed with mechanical efficiency, none of them quite processing what was happening. Leave. Rest. Time away from the academy felt impossible.

  The transport arrived on schedule, a small vehicle designed for maybe ten passengers. Chimera Squad claimed seats in back, maintaining proximity through habit.

  As the academy disappeared behind them, Valoris felt tension she hadn't known she was carrying begin to ease fractionally, like a pressure valve opened a quarter turn.

  They didn't talk during the hour-long journey. They just existed in the quiet hum of the transport, watching the landscape change from the academy's scarred grounds to gradually more normal terrain. Trees appeared. Water. Buildings that weren't military or institutional.

  The coastal town was small, maybe five thousand residents, built around a natural harbor. They disembarked at the central station, all five of them standing awkwardly in civilian space like soldiers uncertain how to function without structure.

  "Food," Zee said finally. "Real food."

  They found a small restaurant overlooking the harbor, ordered without thinking, then sat around a table that felt strange. No tactical purpose. No schedule; there were no classes to get to. They could take their time.

  The food arrived. Actual cuisine, carefully prepared, designed to taste good rather than just provide adequate nutrition. Quinn stared at their plate like they'd forgotten what real food looked like.

  "Eat," Valoris said gently.

  Quinn picked up their fork. Took a bite. Something in their hollow expression shifted. "This is good."

  "That's generally the goal of food," Zee said, but her sarcasm carried less edge than usual.

  They ate slowly, rediscovering eating as something other than obligatory fuel consumption. Quinn finished their entire plate, their first full meal in a week. Zee's posture softened. Saren's hands stopped trembling.

  After lunch, they walked along the harbor. No destination or purpose, just exploring.

  Milo stopped at a shop selling mechanical components. Nothing military-grade, civilian engineering supplies designed for repairs. He stared through the window, then tentatively entered. Emerged twenty minutes later with a small bag and something almost like a smile.

  "Found an interesting gear assembly. Thought I might build something. Just for fun." He adjusted his glasses. "Not for the academy. Just because I can."

  "That's good," Valoris said.

  They found a bookshop next. Saren disappeared inside, drawn by instinct toward familiar comfort. She emerged with a novel. Fiction, nothing educational or tactical. Something she used to love reading before the academy had transformed everything into obligation.

  "I forgot I liked reading for pleasure," she said quietly. "Forgot there were books that weren't study materials."

  "That's terrible," Milo said.

  "Yeah," Saren agreed. "It is."

  They walked more. Found a beach with sand and waves and horizon that stretched endlessly. Sat together watching water move with rhythm that had nothing to do with military schedules or dimensional theory.

  Zee lay back on the sand, staring at the sky. "I haven't stopped being angry. But sitting here, I'm remembering that anger isn't the only thing I feel. There's also this. Whatever this is."

  "Peace?" Quinn suggested.

  "Maybe. Or just absence of pressure."

  "I'll take absence of pressure," Saren said.

  They stayed until sunset, watching the sky shift through colors the academy's dimensional-scarred atmosphere never produced. Gold and pink and purple and finally deep blue that faded to black with stars appearing one by one.

  "I forgot stars existed," Quinn said softly. "Academy lights make them invisible. But they're there. Always there. We just can't see them through everything else."

  They found a small inn, checked into rooms. Thrace had authorized two rooms. They requested one. Squad stayed together.

  Back in the room, preparing for bed, Valoris caught sight of herself in the mirror. Her hair was a windblown disaster from the beach, salt-stiffened and tangled beyond recognition. She tried futilely to finger-comb it, wincing as her fingers caught in knots.

  "Here." Zee appeared behind her. "Sit."

  Valoris sat on the edge of the bed, uncertain. Zee's hands in her hair were surprisingly gentle, working through tangles with patient efficiency that seemed at odds with her usual brash physicality.

  "I used to do this for my sisters," Zee said quietly, dividing Valoris's hair into sections. "All younger. Hair everywhere, always a mess." Her fingers moved with practiced ease, braiding tight and neat. "They probably hate me for leaving. For getting out while they're still stuck in Industrial Sector Seven."

  "They probably miss you," Valoris said.

  "Maybe." Zee's hands kept moving, steady and sure. "Or maybe they're relieved I'm not around being angry at everything anymore."

  She finished the braid, tied it off with an elastic from her wrist. "There. You're not regulation, but you're functional."

  "Thank you," Valoris said, touching the braid. It felt secure.

  Zee shrugged, but something in her expression had softened. "Someone's got to keep the squad leader from looking like she lost a fight with the ocean."

  That night, they ended up piled on one of the beds, gravitating together like debris caught in the same orbit. Zee claimed the headboard, back against the wall. Valoris sat cross-legged at the foot. Saren tucked herself into the corner where the bed met the wall. Quinn curled up in the middle, knees drawn to their chest. Milo sat on the edge, fidgeting with the gear assembly he'd bought.

  For a while, nobody spoke. Just existed in proximity, listening to waves through the window, watching stars through glass.

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  "I'm terrified I'll fail," Valoris said finally, breaking the silence because leaders went first even when terrified. "That I'll be the Kade who wasn't good enough. Who stood in that hall of mechs with an empty space forever. Five generations of perfect summonings ending with my failure."

  "I'm terrified I'll succeed and still not be enough," Zee said. "That they'll find a reason to wash me out regardless. That my success won't matter because I'm from the wrong place with the wrong background and the wrong attitude."

  Silence for a moment. Then Saren's voice, quieter than usual.

  "I'm from Kingsford."

  The room went very still.

  "Holy shit," Zee breathed.

  Valoris felt something cold settle in her gut. "You're from a corruption zone."

  "Was from," Saren corrected, her voice taking on that flat precision she used when discussing difficult things. "Nobody’s from Kingsford anymore. The population was twelve thousand. Reality degradation is accelerating. Entity activity is increasing. Standard operational response, no one goes near the rift."

  "They evacuated it," Milo said slowly.

  "There wasn't time." Saren's hands were very still in her lap, controlled in a way that suggested she was fighting to keep them from shaking. "The rift opened at the mine. My parents worked there, processing rare earth minerals. The breach expanded to eight kilometers in forty-five minutes. Everyone near the epicenter was gone before evacuation could even begin."

  She paused. Nobody spoke.

  "I was at the community center. Six kilometers out. We got away. Two thousand and seventy-three people didn't." Her jaw was rigid. "Pilots deployed three days later to establish perimeter and prevent entity migration. Standard doctrine. But by then it was containment, not rescue. They never found bodies. Complete matter disintegration."

  Another pause, longer this time.

  "I don't know if faster deployment would have made a difference. If pilots had been there in the first hour, could they have slowed the expansion? Stabilized it before the eight-kilometer radius consumed everything? Nobody knows. But that's what haunts me. Not that they died, I can't change that. But that maybe, possibly, if the system had been faster, if response protocols had been better, if we'd had enough pilots to be stationed closer..."

  She didn't finish the sentence.

  "Saren," Valoris said, but she didn't know what else to say.

  "They told us it was necessary," Saren continued, her voice still flat, still controlled. "That the corruption was spreading too fast. That leaving entities alive would allow them to migrate to populated areas. That sacrifice of remaining personnel was unfortunate but acceptable to prevent wider catastrophe. Standard operational doctrine."

  "That's why you work so hard," Quinn said softly. "Why you never stop. Why you can't let yourself fail."

  "I earned my way here on a competitive merit scholarship." Saren's jaw was rigid. "Top one percent entrance exam. Perfect scores in every evaluation. I worked three jobs while attending preparatory academy. I studied until my eyes bled. Because I needed to prove that their deaths meant something. That I wasn't just another refugee child, another casualty statistic. That I could become something that mattered."

  "You do matter," Valoris said.

  "Do I?" Saren's control cracked slightly. "I'm terrified that working this hard still won't be enough. That the system is rigged and I never had a real chance. That scholarship students are just statistical diversity while legacy students were always going to succeed. That I'll fail summoning and prove that everything I've done, every hour I've sacrificed, every compromise I've made, was worthless."

  Valoris wanted to say something reassuring, something that would make it better, but she couldn't. Because Saren's fear wasn't irrational. The system was rigged. Legacy students did have advantages. Scholarship students did face discrimination.

  "I'm terrified that if I fail summoning, I'll disappear," Quinn said into the silence. "Stop existing. Become nothing again. That pilot status is the only thing giving me purpose and identity, and if I lose that, I lose myself."

  "I'm terrified I'll succeed and hurt someone with what I build," Milo finished. "That my genius will always be dangerous. That my mech will be unstable or corrupted or wrong, and bonding with me will create something that threatens people. That the incident will repeat itself but worse."

  Silence. Waves audible through the windows. Stars visible through glass.

  "We're all terrified," Valoris said finally. "Different fears. Same weight."

  "But we're not alone," Zee said. "We're terrified together. That's something."

  "Is it enough?" Saren asked.

  "Don't know," Valoris admitted. "But it's what we have."

  They stayed like that for a long time, piled together on the bed, carrying their individual terrors in shared space. Eventually exhaustion claimed them. They didn't move to separate beds. Just pulled a blanket over themselves and slept in proximity, because being apart felt wrong, because Chimera Squad was family and family stayed close when everything else fell apart.

  Sunday morning arrived with light that felt different from the academy's harsh illumination. Softer. More natural.

  They woke slowly, without alarms or formation schedules. Quinn woke first, extracted themselves carefully from the tangle of limbs, used the bathroom, returned to find everyone else stirring.

  "Slept nine hours," they announced. "First time since second year began."

  "You needed it," Valoris said.

  "We all did."

  They spent the morning at a small arcade they'd found. Half the machines were broken, but Milo couldn't resist. He and Quinn spent two hours repairing a racing game that hadn't worked in months, a collaborative effort that had them both engaged and focused and almost happy.

  When they got it working, Saren challenged Zee to race. They played for thirty minutes, competitive but not hostile, laughing when crashes happened, celebrating victories without needing to diminish each other.

  Valoris watched her squad rediscovering how to be people. Not healed. But remembering that they were more than their fears and their training and their desperation to succeed.

  Late afternoon, returning to the academy, Zee said, "That didn't fix anything."

  "No," Valoris agreed. "We're still terrified. Still under enormous pressure. Still two months from summoning that will determine everything."

  "But we're less broken than we were," Saren said.

  "Still broken," Milo clarified. "Just together-broken instead of separate-broken."

  "Is that better?" Quinn asked.

  "Yes," Valoris said. "Together-broken is survivable."

  Monday morning formation found Chimera Squad standing together with their characteristic proximity, visible solidarity, silent communication happening through glances and small movements.

  Other squads noticed. The way they stood closer than regulation required. The way they checked on each other unconsciously. The way they existed as a cohesive unit despite individual struggles.

  Training resumed with familiar intensity, but something had shifted internally.

  Quinn ate properly during meals. When they started to forget, Zee reminded them. Not aggressively. Just, "Hey. Food. Remember?"

  Saren still worked intensely, but when she stayed in the library past 23:00, Valoris came to collect her. Every time. "Come back. Sleep six hours. You'll retain information better."

  Zee still had rage simmering beneath the surface, but when she needed an outlet, she found Valoris for supervised sparring instead of finding other students for unsanctioned violence.

  Milo still retreated sometimes, but his squad noticed faster now. Pulled him back with gentle persistence. "Stay here. With us. We need you present."

  Valoris still woke with panic attacks, but her squad heard her gasping and sat with her in darkness. Didn't try to fix it. Just, "We're here. Breathe. You're not alone."

  They watched each other. Maintained each other. Made sure nobody fell too far into their individual spirals.

  One month until summoning.

  Still terrified and under impossible pressure. Still breaking in slow motion. But breaking together. Carrying the weight together.

  Chimera Squad, functioning as designed. Not perfect, but present. Not healed, but holding on.

  And somehow, that was enough to keep moving forward.