Aaron's screen was doing something it hadn't done before.
Every portal that had opened in the city in the last six hours showing up on it. Not just locations. Classifications. Threat levels. Boss types. Information that had no business being on a null reading.
He stared at it walking through the Academy hallways.
*How*, he thought. *How is it knowing this.*
He put it away when he heard the noise.
The main hall was loud.
Not panic loud. Not celebration loud. The specific loud of hundreds of people who understood something serious was coming and were dealing with it the only way people knew how. Talking. Moving. Checking things that didn't need checking because checking things felt better than standing still.
Every ranked awakener who had been called in was here. Every group. Every team that had spent years going into portals and coming out with stones and cores and whatever the dungeons gave up. Old faces Aaron had only seen in documents. New faces he recognized from class. Everyone in the same room at the same time.
Marcus was near the back wall.
Arm in a sling. Face still carrying everything the ruins had left on it. Standing anyway. Talking to Lena who stood next to him with her arms crossed and her jaw set.
Aaron walked over.
Marcus saw him coming and looked at him for a second.
"You look fine," Marcus said. Flat.
"I heal fast," Aaron said.
Something moved behind Marcus's eyes that he kept to himself. He nodded once and looked back at the stage.
"Lena," Aaron said.
She looked at him. Really looked. "Aaron." A pause. "I heard about Kang. About Soo." Her voice went somewhere quiet. "I'm sorry."
Aaron looked at the floor for a second.
"Yeah," he said. "Me too."
Nobody said anything for a moment.
Then Rei hit Aaron in the shoulder from behind hard enough to make him step forward.
"BRO," Rei said. Loud. Way too loud for the situation. Multiple people looked over. "Have you SEEN the video."
"What video."
"THE video." Rei already had his phone out shoving it in Aaron's face. Shaky footage. Bad quality. A massive dark shape rising from the ground in a narrow street while two figures fought something that moved wrong. "They're calling the beast the Monkey King. Because the quality is terrible and it looked like a giant monkey to someone and now that's just what it is forever. Nobody knows who the guy is. Nobody knows anything."
Aaron looked at the video.
At himself in the video.
"Crazy," Aaron said.
"CRAZY right! In broad daylight! In a STREET! A shadow beast the size of a building just rising from the ground and this random guy just standing next to it!" Rei put his phone away shaking his head. "Who IS this person. Everyone is going insane trying to figure it out." He looked at Aaron. "Anyway. What is THAT on your hand going up your neck—"
Aaron pulled his jacket collar up fast.
"Nothing."
"That is NOT nothing that thing goes all the way up to your—"
"Rei."
"I'm just saying it goes quite far up—"
"Rei."
"Okay. Nothing. Completely normal marking on your body. Sure. Fine."
Marcus was looking at Aaron's collar now.
Aaron pulled it higher and stared at the stage.
He thought of that Zxara but she wasn't there anywhere.
The director walked into the room.
The room didn't go quiet because anyone asked it to. It just went quiet. The way rooms went quiet when something walked in that had earned that reaction a long time ago.
He stood at the front and looked at everyone for a moment before he said a single word.
Aaron watched his face.
Older than the last time. Not tired. Just the face of someone who had been carrying something enormous for eighteen years and had made peace with the weight of it.
"You know what's coming," the Director said. His voice didn't fill the room by being loud. It filled the room by being certain. "You've all been through openings. You know how it works. Teams go in. Clear the boss. Come out."
Nobody moved.
"This time the portals will be harder. The bosses inside stronger than anything a first or second opening produced." He paused. "I'm not going to stand here and tell you otherwise."
The silence in the room had weight to it.
"What I will tell you is this." He looked across every face in the hall. "Every person standing in this room survived something that tried to stop them from being here. Every single one of you." Another pause. "That's not a small thing. That's everything."
Aaron heard someone near him exhale slowly.
"We don't lose anyone this time." Quiet. Absolute. "Clear the portals. Come home. That's the only goal. Everything else is secondary."
The room stayed quiet for a second after he finished.
Then it exhaled all at once.
Moon was standing to the side. Aaron caught her eye. She looked at him the way she'd looked at him in the hospital. That thing she was still thinking about. Still not done with.
He looked away first.
The group leaders took over after that.
Which teams were assigned where. Which portals had been prioritized. The awakener groups who had been doing this for years moving through their routines with the calm of people who had learned that panic cost more than it gave. Checking gear. Confirming plans. Talking in low voices about things they'd already done a hundred times.
Rei leaned close to Aaron.
"You're not on any list," Rei said quietly.
"I know."
"They didn't assign you anywhere."
"I know."
"Because to every system in this building you're null." Rei's voice was careful now. Not teasing. "So what are you actually going to do."
Aaron looked at his screen.
At the portal classifications still updating. At information showing up on a null reading that had no reason to be there.
"I don't know yet," he said.
Rei looked at him for a long moment.
"Aaron."
"What."
"I've known you for two years."
"Rei—"
"I'm just saying I've known you for two years and I know what that face means."
Aaron said nothing.
Rei looked at him one more time. Then looked at the stage. Then back at Aaron.
"Don't die," Rei said. Quiet. Serious in a way Rei wasn't usually serious. "Whatever you're planning. Just don't die."
Aaron looked at him.
Something sat in his chest that he didn't have words for.
"I won't," he said.
Across the room the Director finished talking to Moon and three old awakeners Aaron didn't recognize. Faces that had seen every opening since the first one. Faces that knew exactly what was coming and were here anyway.
The hall was still loud. Still moving. Still the specific noise of people getting ready for something they couldn't fully prepare for.
Aaron opened his screen one more time.
Scanned the portal list.
One portal sat separate from all the others at the bottom of the list. No classification. No boss type. No threat level assigned. No team assigned.
Just a location.
And one word next to it.
[ UNKNOWN ]
Aaron stared at it.
Every other portal on the list had information. Had teams. Had everything the system could tell about it.
This one had nothing.
*Of course*, he thought.
Then he thought about the ruins. About the console reading null. About three weeks of data nobody else had been looking at. About the portal that had aimed itself at the Academy like it had a specific address.
*It's always the unknown one*, he thought.
*It's always been the unknown one.*
He closed his screen.
Looked at the room one more time. At Marcus with his arm in a sling. At Rei pretending not to watch him. At Moon standing with the Director's people. At every person in this hall getting ready to walk into something that was going to be harder than anything before it.
He thought about Kang.
About Soo.
About four people who had gone through a portal and hadn't come back out.
*Not this time*, he thought.
He put his screen away.
Straightened his jacket over the mark on his neck.
And started thinking about the unknown portal.