When our alliance gathered up once more, Julia was gone. She’d been nagging at me for a significant portion of the test, and her absence was quickly noted. Questions were asked. Answers weren’t forthcoming, so speculation filled in for them.

“She finished all her tasks,” someone pointed out.

“So she left to get her score in?”

“No one said that’s not allowed, I guess?”

“Feels like something that shouldn’t need to be fucking said. It’s just basic decency.”

“People work so hard to help her, and she gives nothing back. That’s so shitty.”

“What an asshole.”

“Really? She just did what a bunch of people are thinking.”

“I count forty-six people here right now. We started with fifty-one.”

“Wait, seriously?”

The camaraderie that had been slowly building in our group didn’t evaporate in an instant, but morale took a painful hit. For a lot of people here, we were nothing more than allies of convenience. Now, that fact was being underscored for those who hadn’t quite realised it.

Looks of betrayal abounded, taking many forms. From wide-eyed hurt, to jaw-clenching anger, all the way to blank-faced disbelief.

On the other end of the scale, there were more than a few looks of consideration. There’d been some who hadn’t even thought about ditching the group and going off alone. Not because they thought it was wrong, per se, but because they had assumed it too dangerous with all the talk of sabotage going around. Now that they knew five people had already taken the risk, it probably appeared a more viable course of action.

I told myself it was inevitable. Some examinees were going to prioritise their own interests, and it was unfair to blame them for that. Sooyoung wasn’t wrong about one thing, after all: I had no clue about anyone’s circumstances. For some, failure might really not be an option.

Still. It did hurt. With how she’d been talking, I’d expected Julia to see it all through to the end.

I took a moment to just breathe, purging my emotions with each exhale. Went still, letting myself feel the expansion of my chest as I breathed in, listening to the steady beat of my heart.

It wasn’t the first time someone had disappointed me. It wouldn’t be the last.

No point dwelling on it.

“Let’s get ready to move on,” I called out, cutting through the rising argument.

“You do not believe we should discuss this?” the blond boy with the vector powers asked with neither expression nor inflection, still cradling his dummy in the crook of one arm. He’d been chatting with Julia earlier, I recalled.

“We have more tasks to complete,” I replied, raising one eyebrow. “You can vent your anger about Julia to her face when we’ve finished, surely?”

The boy was quiet for a moment, looking at the tower where the finish line lay. “You’re not worried for her wellbeing?”

“Her powers should let her avoid any trouble.”

“I fear you’re overestimating her range. From my testing, I estimate she can project her senses little more than a few metres away.”

He wasn’t wrong, but, “All I can do is trust that she’ll be okay,” I said. “I don’t have time to go chasing her down when there’s still so many people here who need to complete their own tasks.”

“Pragmatic. Very well.”

It took a while to gather everyone up. By the poorly-concealed signs of guilt, I wasn’t at all surprised to count only forty-three people by the time we headed out. If anything, I’d expected more to ditch.

Unfortunately, that turned out to only be the beginning.

We tried to go on as we had before, as if nothing had changed. Our circuit around the testing zone continued, picking up every task on our path. Even with somewhat depleted numbers, the tests themselves still posed no problem.

But the more that we completed, the more of our numbers we lost.

There was no mass exodus. It was a gradual thing, a slow bleed out. Death by a thousand cuts rather than a decapitation.

In complex systems, there was a concept known as a cascading failure. When one part of a system failed, other parts had to step up to compensate. With this extra stress, those parts inevitably started to fail too, prompting yet more failure until everything fell apart and the system could no longer function as intended.

With each person who sneaked away, more members of our group started thinking about their own chances. The time it took to complete tasks started taking longer, as we had less and less people to deal with them, our roster of available powers losing its versatility. Anxiety built. Trepidation sky-rocketed. Looks of consideration or doubt increased.

It felt like every time I stopped to check, our numbers had lowered by one or two, more parts of our system failing.

They started to get more brazen about it, barely even trying to hide their departure. I caught sight of one girl hanging back from the crowd, lowering her pace until she was far enough behind to slip away down another path. Another girl told me to go on ahead while she tied her fucking shoelace, and she never once stopped smiling, as if I didn’t know exactly what she was doing, as if my opinion of her actions meant absolutely nothing.

The tall boy with wild green hair even looked me right in the eyes as he strode away from the group, utterly shameless. He hadn’t even completed all his tasks.

Honestly, I preferred it that way. At least he owned how little he gave a shit about any of the people here, rather than slinking away like a coward.

By the time we’d completed our second, smaller circuit of the testing zone, we were down to half the number we’d started with, and barely anyone was speaking a word. A bleak atmosphere followed us like the reaper, draining our morale.

Eventually, I was the only one talking at all, calling out orders to the people still with us. The tests were still mostly trivial, but our pace had slowed to the point where we didn’t need to run anymore.

Then things got worse.

It started out as it always did: innocuous. Easy to dismiss as an accident or bad luck. A trip here, a slip there. Someone dropped their token at just the wrong angle to leave it damaged, costing them points later. One more mistimed a jump between two platforms, leaving their ‘hostage’ to plunge into a shallow pit of stagnant water. Retrieving it was the work of a few foul minutes, but there were clear marks on the hostage dummy that couldn’t be wiped off. More points lost.

Unease churned in my gut. I knew it wouldn’t stay this way.

At the start, we’d been too strong. Our numbers were too great, our range of powers too broad. We’d gone utterly unchallenged because challenging us hadn’t been worth the risk.

Now our numbers were dwindling by the minute, and the more ruthless sorts out there were starting to like their chances. The sharks were circling.

If they just kept it to that level, it would’ve been manageable. A problem, but not a detrimental one.

But those kinds of people never contented themselves with being petty nuisances.

Matters escalated.

I was in the middle of counting up the tests remaining when a blood-curdling scream tore through the air. The kind of scream that gripped my heart in vice-like talons and squeezed until it was little more than mushy pulp dribbling down my ribcage. It was long and desperate, drawn out until they had no more breath to give. Then the second scream came, the same voice as the first, a choking quality to it like they’d only taken a moment to fill their lungs before casting out their distress cry once more. A third followed soon after, then a fourth, and a fifth, each getting more frantic than the last.

Then a cacophony of noise drowned it out. It started with a deep crack, like the earth had been torn in two. Rumbling came on its heels, which soon devolved into a roar of crashing stone. The sound was deafening. The air trembled. Even the ground shook in its wake.

And just as soon as it had started, it was gone.

But the scream never stopped.

Everyone had frozen in place, staring wide-eyed at the source of the unimaginable noise. I was no exception, and I cursed the lost seconds as I threw myself into a sprint. Down the street, around the corner, and the catastrophe came into view.

Rubble was strewn across the road. A cloud of dust drifted ponderously from a shuddering pile of debris thrice my height, sandwiched between two perfectly intact four-story terraced houses. Examinees stood around nearby, shell-shocked, dust-covered, wide-eyed.

My mind went blank. My body moved of its own volition, and I watched as if from over my own shoulder as I charged towards the disaster. I leapt onto the pile, climbing towards the sound of a frenzied scream. Stone shifted and fell away beneath my feet in mini-avalanches, but I pressed on. It drew me up to the apex of the mound, then down the other side. A little further, and the scream was at its loudest.

“Hold on,” my voice shouted. “I’m going to get you out!”

There was no reply. Nothing coherent, anyway. Just wails of pure terror, all rational thought lost.

I started scooping up handfuls of stone, throwing them behind me with reckless abandon, ignoring the cracks and crashes. Soon, more hands joined mine, digging frantically to a soundtrack of screams.

We’d barely burrowed a divot into the debris when the entire mound shuddered. My heart leaped to my throat and I tried to up my speed, but the stone shifted beneath me, throwing me to my hands and knees. Pain fired. I bit back a cry.

“Stand clear!” a voice boomed from above, and I moved on instinct, scrambling away.

A slab of rock in the approximate shape of a human silhouette hovered in the air, looking down on the scene. I recognised him. Tectonic. Geokinesis; control over ‘rock’, with a loose definition of such.

All the strength went out of my limbs and I collapsed onto my stomach, cheek resting against cold, dusty stone. My heartbeat pulsed in my head, and I gulped in desperate, drowning breaths.

Right. Testing zone. Teachers. Armband. Distress call.

Fucking idiot. The hell were you doing?

The stone parted before us like the aperture on a camera, a circular tunnel swirling into existence. The screaming doubled in volume, and soon scrabbling echoed up from within the tunnel. Stone scraped and groaned. There was a yelp of surprise, and a platform of stone lifted out from the hole, bearing a dishevelled girl up and out. The hole closed behind her.

It was probably bad form of me that I focused so much on the tear tracks running through the dust that covered her face, giving her an ashen, inhuman complexion, but it was the first thing I noticed. There was no way to discern her other features anyway.

She curled up into a ball, trembling like a leaf as the platform rose to hover by Tectonic’s side. He spent a second assessing her, then panned his gaze over the scene below.

When he spoke, his voice seemed to reverberate through the ground itself. “Next time, remember to use your armbands. Panicking like this helps no one.”

Then he flew away, carrying the girl with him.

~~~

Our group had gathered before the site of the accident, staring at the pile of broken stone, shattered glass, and splintered wood. Shock had set in, rooting everyone in place. Some of them murmured, others kept their grim silence. Emotions had already been strained, but this had pushed things over the edge.

No one had personally known the girl, and she apparently wasn’t much of a chatterbox. But she’d been part of teams. She’d cooperated without fuss even if she was recalcitrant, helping more than a few people here with their tasks. She was versatile, her power letting her put inorganic matter in a kind of stasis where only she could enact any kind of force on it.

Anyone else would have died just now. Crushed under a fallen building. I could think of worse ways to go, but it wasn’t a long list.

A fallen building, I thought.

“A fallen building,” I said aloud, and more than a few people flinched.

I didn’t care.

I was the only one moving, pacing back and forth with stomping footsteps before the building with my head bowed. My fingers were linked behind my back, squeezing so hard my knuckles kept cracking.

“Buildings aren’t supposed to randomly fall here,” I said, turning my gaze on the remaining members of our alliance one by one. There were just over twenty now, a few slipping away in the aftermath of the collapse. Probably wanted to get out of this test as fast as possible. I couldn’t blame them.

I had to work to unclench my jaw in order to speak. “Let me rephrase that: buildings do not fall on their own here. The UCTZ is a tool for teaching students how to fight in a town or city without destroying everything around them. It’s meant to be realistic, immersive. But they do not do training for accidents here, not like this. There’s a whole other training area for that kind of thing. Buildings here do not fall down on their own. They have people like Tectonic come in to make sure of it.” I stopped, pointing an accusing finger at the building behind me. “This is sabotage.”

My words hit the group like an avalanche, which was probably apropos. It seemed to bowl them back, sending them rocking on their heels.

“What do we do?” someone asked.

“Strength in numbers. They started messing with us as our group got smaller, and now they’re escalating. From here on out, all of you stick together. No smaller teams. It’ll take longer, but that’s how it’s got to be.”

“What about you?” another voice said.

“I’m gonna fight back,” I growled, already turning to walk away.

“Fight back? Aren’t you a Level 0? What are you gonna do against someone who can do this?” questioned another.

I looked back over my shoulder, and the boy who’d asked wilted.

To be fair, he was absolutely correct. What could I possible do against someone who could bring down a building?

Something. That was all that mattered.

“I’ll stick close by, but you guys are gonna have to coordinate tasks for yourselves for a while.” My fists clenched. “Leave these bastards to me.”

I was halfway down the street when footsteps approached from behind.

“Go back, Billy,” I said without turning.

“Like hell I will,” Billy replied, and the venom in his voice gave me pause.

“I don’t need help.”

“Who said anything about help? I want to fuck these guys up just as bad as you do.”

I sighed. I couldn’t be bothered to argue the point. If he wanted to follow me, that was his decision.

Backup couldn’t hurt, anyway.

We found Cat lounging on the roof of a car on the next street over, inspecting her claws. She turned her attention to me as we approached, but her ears were twitching in every direction.

“We have a rat infestation,” she said.

I eyed her for a moment. I remembered her speed, her strength, the sharpness of her claws.

Fuck it. If Billy was coming, why not?

“Want to join our hunt?”

Cat showed her teeth, but I couldn’t call that expression a smile.