The first supervised field deployment was in the ruins of a suburban district sixty kilometers south of Vega a former residential zone that had been evacuated in Year 2 and converted to a classified Revenant observation area since. The Stage density was predictable: mostly Stage 1 Hollows, occasional Stage 2 Ferals, nothing above Stage 3 recorded in this zone in the past year.
Ray's unit for the deployment was himself, Theo, Sable, and four other Cadet-level candidates. Their overwatch was Lt. Mira Kitagawa in a Phantom Suit with two experienced Vanguard sergeants.
The briefing was simple. Patrol the outer perimeter of grid section 7-C. Identify any Stage 3 or above activity. Engage Stage 1 and 2 as necessary. Do not engage Stage 3 without overwatch authorization. Do not engage Stage 4 under any circumstances. Return to extraction point by 18:00 hours.
Simple.
The Stage 5 appeared at 14:30 hours.
It came from the east, out of a collapsed parking structure that the surveillance systems had recorded as abandoned. It was moving fast that Apex-class loping speed, ground-eating and slightly wrong, like something that had figured out locomotion by watching humans but had never quite believed it should apply to itself.
The terror-frequency hit before the visual. Three of the four additional Cadets froze. Not panicked froze, the way the body freezes when the nervous system encounters something it has been biologically designed to run from since before the Aphelion Strand existed.
Sable did not freeze. She was behind cover before the first wave of the frequency registered.
Theo did not freeze. He had his hands in his pack. Ray would learn later that Theo had, during the past week, assembled a Void Storm grenade from components he had technically not been authorized to remove from the Forge lab. He pulled it out now with the specific calm of someone who has already made every decision they need to make.
Ray did not freeze.
The Genesis Suit pulsed not the steady slow pulse of rest, but fast, insistent, like something urgent and Ray felt the resonance hit in his chest like a second heartbeat waking up. The terror-frequency crashed against him and didn't land. Or it landed and something in him absorbed it. Converted it. He felt the pulse of the suit intensify in direct proportion to how hard the Apex's aura was pressing, and something cold and clear moved through his head, and he saw the Apex's charge vector and he knew where it was going to be.
He moved before it got there.
The Eclipse Blade was in his hand he'd had it on him since Harlan's Gate, the strange knife that wasn't a standard issue weapon, that had no serial number, that he'd carried because losing it felt wrong in a way he couldn't explain. The Genesis Suit's systems interfaced with it instantly, as if they recognized each other. The blade's surface lit up faint, blue-white, the same color as the suit's veining.
The Apex hit the space where Ray had been standing and pivoted with Stage 5 speed, and Ray drove the Eclipse Blade into the joint between its shoulder and its chest where the bone-plate armor didn't fully close.
The Apex screamed. Not the disoriented retreat-scream of a Striker facing a flare. Something else. Something that sounded almost like surprise.
Then the overwatch arrived.
Lt. Kitagawa in full Phantom Suit was a different order of thing from Lt. Kitagawa in a training bay. She hit the Apex at full Burst Drive 400x human baseline, twenty-meter launch from the rooftop where she'd been monitoring and the two Vanguard sergeants came in from the flanks simultaneously, and the Stage 5, already injured from Ray's blade strike, could not cover three directions at once.
Theo threw his Void Storm grenade at the twelve-second mark. The 15 second disruption field dropped across the Apex. In the disruption window no regeneration no Aphelion ability the three overwatch operators finished it.
Total engagement time forty-two seconds.
The three frozen Cadets came back online. One of them was crying quietly, which was a completely reasonable response. Another one immediately checked on the first. The third sat down on the ground and put their head between their knees.
Lt. Kitagawa landed next to Ray. She looked at his blade. At the dark fluid on it that was Apex ichor Stage 5 Revenant biological material, which meant it was mildly corrosive and would eat through standard armor in under a minute.
It was not eating through Ray's Genesis Suit. The suit had already generated a counter-field around the blade that was neutralizing it.
Lt. Kitagawa looked at Ray for a long moment.
"I told you not to engage above Stage 3."
"I didn't engage it. I moved out of its charge path and it ran into me."
"Your blade is in its shoulder."
"That happened during the moving out of the charge path."
A pause.
"That blade disrupted a Stage 5's regeneration on contact."
"Yes."
"How?"
"I don't know."
She looked at the blade. At the suit. At him.
"Get back to the extraction point. We're debriefing this at length."
"Yes, Lieutenant."
As he walked away, he heard Theo say quietly to Sable 'I told you the grenade would work.
And Sable say, equally quietly 'You told me the grenade would probably work. There is a difference.