Chapter 172: Academy’s Entrance Conclusion

Chapter 172: Chapter 172: Academy’s Entrance Conclusion

Three minutes.

Gianna looked at the others and felt the arithmetic settle like cold water.

Giselle was upright again, but the earlier draw had left her pale and tight-mouthed, red chain still in hand yet trembling at the edges.

Rei was worse: blood loss, broken nose, the kind of exhaustion that made even her usual manic edge look thin.

Lain was simply gone.

Whatever the override had done to him earlier had taken him out of the usable field.

No other participants were close enough to matter.

The district around them had emptied into the final scoring scramble elsewhere.

For the next one hundred and eighty seconds, this rooftop belonged to the four of them and the thing wearing Revien’s face.

Gianna knew what it wanted.

She had known since the night it first looked at her through his eyes and tried to pull her under.

"That’s enough," she said.

The thing turned its head.

Yellow-ringed eyes regarded her with perfect indifference, as if she had commented on the weather.

"You don’t get to say enough."

Gianna scoffed, the sound rough with dust and blood.

"I mean, what do you actually plan to achieve here? You kissed Giselle in front of every feed in the sector. That alone gets you a few days in a containment cell and a very long conversation with the board. But if she reports the core drain, if she stands up in front of the Empress line and says an unregistered support reached into an Empress-line foundation and took a piece, you can kiss goodbye to whatever quiet life you thought you were building. No academy. Just a lab and a set of restraints that never come off."

The thing tilted its head, amused the way a cat is amused by a mouse that still thinks the game has rules.

"You’re forgetting one thing."

"Hmm?"

"I never wanted to hide this power."

It spread its hands, chains coiling and uncoiling around the wrists like living jewellery.

"In fact, I try to come out as often as possible and make him use it. Every time he gets soft, every time he starts believing the pretty story about anchors and choice and ’we three,’ I push. But the good-for-nothing wearing this body keeps stuffing me back in the dark. He wants secrets. I want an audience."

Its smile widened.

"How about a romantic ending to our duel?"

Gianna stared at it.

For a single, disorienting second, the yellow seemed to thin and Revien’s real expression, the one from the car, the one that had looked at her like she was the only solid thing left, tried to surface over the override’s mask.

The two faces occupied the same bones for a heartbeat, happy and hungry at once.

She made the decision before the image could break her.

"Okay," she said.

"I’m doing this of my own will. That way you won’t be prosecuted for draining me."

"Tsk. So caring..."

It walked toward her with an uneven, almost bobbing gait, as if the body and the thing inside it had not fully agreed on how legs worked.

One hand rose, touched her cheek with unexpected gentleness, then slid into her hair and tilted her face up so she had no choice but to meet the yellow directly.

"I still remember our first kiss," it murmured, and the voice was almost his.

Almost.

It opened its mouth and closed the last of the distance.

Gianna waited until the breath of it was against her lips.

Then she whispered, soft enough that only the two of them could hear:

"You’re not Revien, are you?"

The body froze.

Not because the words were a secret.

The override already knew what it was.

The freeze came from somewhere older, from the sudden, involuntary memory of a sealed hovercar, of rain against polarised glass, of a girl saying the same shape of sentence in a different tone and meaning something else entirely.

The past reached up through the override like a hand around an ankle.

For one fragile second the yellow guttered.

A blinding light detonated across the rooftop.

Gianna felt the telekinetic absence in her own core scream as something external seized her by the waist and yanked her sideways with professional, almost casual force.

She hit a stable patch of roof hard enough to knock the remaining air from her lungs and rolled up into a crouch, markers still dark, vision swimming.

A woman she had not expected to see inside the exam grid stood between her and the thing.

Warm brown skin.

Dark curls pulled loosely back, a few strands escaping around her face. Soft amber eyes that carried a permanent hint of amusement even now.

Not lean-athletic like Rei or Giselle: softer, more lived-in, comfortable in her own skin.

Freckles scattered across her nose and shoulders like someone had shaken them there on purpose.

Ruby Basilov, medic, chaos engine, and the last person Gianna had expected to stage a mid-exam intervention.

"Looks like someone’s got too possessive," Ruby said, smiling as if they were all standing in a guild corridor instead of a collapsing scoring zone.

She glanced over her shoulder at Rei, who was still trying to push herself off the buckled ventilation stack.

"Are you two still fighting?"

Rei laughed, short and bloody.

"Oh. We did more than just fight."

The thing that was not fully Revien started to move again, chains rising, yellow flaring back toward full strength.

Its body locked mid-step.

Something small and metallic had been pressed to the base of its spine while the light still dazzled.

A device no larger than a data chip, humming with a frequency that made the air around it taste like static and ozone.

Ruby winked.

"Oh, that’s a compressor. Custom work. Keeps other supports unstable when their output starts doing creative things. I made it myself."

The override percentage in the corner of Revien’s awareness began to fall.

[Succubus Override: 58%... 56%... 54%...]

The yellow in its eyes flickered, stabilised, then dimmed another fraction.

Revien’s real face tried to surface and almost managed it before the Hunger dragged it under again.

His vision visibly blurred.

He staggered once, caught himself, and looked at Ruby with an expression that was equal parts fury and something that might have been gratitude if the override had allowed it.

The exam timer hit zero with a sound like a distant bell.

[00:00:00]