SSS Alpha Ranking: Limitless Soccer Cultivation After A Century-Chapter 117: THE FIRST STRIKE

The abandoned rail depot lay just beyond the southern ridge, half-swallowed by vines and rust, a forgotten skeleton of concrete and steel. At night, it felt like the world around it was holding its breath. No streetlights. No drones. Nothing but moonlight running across bent metal beams and the faint hum of the nearby power lines.

That silence didn't comfort Blaze.

It pressed on him.

He sat on the edge of one of the derailed cargo crates the Titans had turned into makeshift sleeping quarters. His elbows rested on his knees, fingers locked so tight his knuckles were white. Every few minutes his eyes drifted toward the entrance where Kenji and Zara were running perimeter checks.

He kept replaying the past twenty four hours in his head. The escape. The shadows. Jason's face as he physically blocked Aurion's officers from taking Blaze away. The way everybody ran because of him. Because he couldn't control what was happening to him anymore.

Aya dropped a steaming cup of something vaguely drinkable beside him. "You should take a break from staring into the void," she murmured.

Blaze didn't look up. "I'm fine."

"You're vibrating like a broken stabilizer coil," she said. "That's not fine."

He tried to smile but it didn't stick. "We shouldn't have dragged you all into this."

Aya crouched in front of him, forcing him to meet her eyes. "We didn't get dragged. We made a choice."

A shout echoed from across the lot.

Scarlet's voice.

"Everyone inside now!"

Blaze felt the air shift before he heard the second shout. A pressure that crawled along his spine. The same pressure he felt at the academy. The same pressure that always meant one thing.

Aurion.

The Titans converged inside the depot's largest storage bay, the one they'd turned into a central base. Scarlet locked the steel sliding doors behind everyone and pulled out the holo-tablet she'd been working on since dawn. A scrambled map flickered to life.

"Aurion didn't just track us," she said quietly. "They've deployed a strike team."

Kenji stopped pacing. "How big?"

"Three squads," Scarlet replied. "Heavy surveillance drones. Signal interceptors. Portable dampening tech."

Diego let out a low whistle. "That's not a search party. That's a capture order."

Blaze felt something cold settle under his ribs. Everything tightened.

Lionel crossed his arms. "We need to move."

Scarlet shook her head. "We won't make it far. They've blocked every exit route out of this region except the sewer tunnel beneath the northeast ridge. And that's assuming they haven't figured that out yet."

Mikhail glanced at Blaze. "They want him isolated."

Blaze swallowed hard. "They want control. They always have."

Ryuji leaned against a support beam, voice low. "Then we give them something else."

Aya frowned. "Meaning?"

"We make a stand," Ryuji said. "A real one. Off-record. Off-system. For the first time."

No one argued. They all knew it was coming. They'd crossed the line last night. There was no going back.

Before anyone could answer, Jason's encrypted message alert pinged on Scarlet's tablet. Everyone stiffened when his face appeared on the grainy projection.

Jason looked exhausted… and frantic.

"I don't have long," he said quickly. "My suspension hearing starts in ten minutes. But you need to listen: Aurion's director didn't authorize this strike team."

Scarlet frowned. "Meaning?"

Jason lowered his voice. "Someone higher. Someone off the books. Someone with enough authority to override academy protocols without leaving a trace."

The Titans exchanged uneasy looks.

Jason wasn't finished.

"And listen carefully: You have a mole."

The silence that followed hit like a dropped weight.

Blaze felt his heartbeat thud in his ears. A mole? Among them? No. It didn't make sense. They were a team. They'd bled together, trained together, fought together. Betrayal wasn't possible.

Jason's eyes shifted as if he'd heard something outside frame. "I can't tell you more yet. But Blaze—"

Blaze stepped closer to the projection.

"Don't let them take you," Jason said. "Whatever happens tonight. Whatever they promise. Don't go with them."

The feed cut out.

The team stared at the frozen black screen for several seconds as fear and adrenaline started rising like a tide.

It was Zara who broke the silence.

"So what now?" she asked quietly.

Scarlet straightened her shoulders. "We prepare for the strike."

"Everyone to positions," Lionel said. "This goes silent until we know what we're dealing with."

The Titans scattered through the depot, running to assigned defensive points they'd never actually expected to use. Blaze stayed behind a moment, staring at the inactive tablet screen.

An unknown higher authority.

A strike team.

A mole.

And Jason risking everything to send that warning.

Blaze pressed a hand against his forehead. His thoughts were spinning. Every instinct screamed that something bigger was moving behind the scenes. Something tied to him directly. Something Aurion had been preparing long before the recent accident with his abilities.

He didn't get time to think.

A shrill alarm cut through the depot. Scarlet's voice echoed over their comms.

"Contact north wall. Multiple signatures. They're here."

Blaze ran for the second level balcony overlooking the main floor. From there he could see the night outside shift with motion. Drone lights cut across the yard in clean, surgical beams. Armored silhouettes moved in formation, gliding over the terrain like they'd rehearsed this a hundred times.

Kenji's voice came over comms. "Estimate twelve to fifteen operators."

Diego added, "Their gear is military grade. Aurion usually sends academy units, not this."

Ryuji braced the metal shutters on the east windows. "Orders?"

Lionel's voice was steady. "No direct engagement unless necessary. Disable, don't escalate."

Scarlet countered sharply, "If they breach with dampeners, Blaze loses his edge. We need to keep distance."

Blaze felt a spark of fear under his sternum. Dampeners crippled abilities. The moment they activated those fields, he'd be helpless.

Aurion's lead unit reached the depot doors.

"Stand down!" a mechanical voice boomed through external speakers. "Surrender the subject and exit with hands visible!"

Scarlet muttered, "Subject. They're not even pretending anymore."

The Titans didn't respond.

The first blast hit.

The depot doors buckled inward under the pressure of a kinetic breaching charge. Dust rained from the ceiling. Metal screamed. The second blast tore the locks clean off.

Blaze exhaled shakily. "They're coming in."

"Positions," Lionel said through clenched teeth.

The doors crashed open.

What followed was chaos. Not wild chaos. Trained chaos.

Aurion's operators entered in tight formation. Their visors glowed pale blue as they scanned for movement. Four carried electromagnetic dampener rods. Two carried energy nets. The rest carried blunt capture gear.

Scarlet hit the first countermeasure. The depot lights flickered, then plunged everything into pitch black.

The Titans moved like shadows.

Kenji dropped from the rafters and kicked one operator sideways. Diego flipped a crate to block a second squad's advance. Aya and Zara deployed flash disruptors, forcing the operators into temporary disorientation.

But the strike team was fast.

And coordinated.

They weren't here to fight.

They were here to extract.

Within seconds, dampener rods lit up like ignited pillars. Blaze felt their effect immediately. The air thickened. His chest tightened. A pressure built around his bones like invisible weights clamping into place.

"No—" Blaze staggered back, gripping the railing. "Not again. Not—"

Lionel grabbed him before he fell. "Stay with us. Don't let it take over."

Aurion's commander pointed directly at the balcony. "Target located. Upper level!"

The operators converged.

Scarlet shouted, "We need to move now!"

Ryuji leaped up the stairs and smashed one operator backward, knocking another into the railing.

But more replaced them immediately.

Diego yelled into comms, "We can't hold this position!"

Lionel gritted his teeth. "Then we fall back to the ridge tunnel."

Blaze didn't move.

He looked down at his shaking hands. The dampeners were suffocating him. His power surged under his skin, trying to surface through the suppression, making him feel like he might explode from the inside out.

"Blaze, move!" Aya shouted.

He still didn't.

Until he saw an operator aim an energy net straight at Scarlet.

Something snapped.

Not violently.

Not like before.

This time it was a cold, razor sharp clarity that cut straight through the panic.

Blaze inhaled.

The air trembled.

The dampeners flickered.

The operator closest to him stumbled as the suppression field bent under the sudden pressure wave. Blaze grabbed Lionel's arm and whispered, "Go. I'll catch up."

Lionel's expression tightened. "No you won't. We're not leaving you."

But Blaze pulled free, stepped to the edge of the balcony and let every fear, every weight, every suffocating thought collapse into a single point of focus.

He raised a hand.

Just a small motion.

The air detonated.

A concussive blast of raw kinetic force slammed through the depot. Operators were thrown into walls. The dampeners cracked, overloaded by the surge. Even the Titans braced themselves.

When the dust settled, Blaze stood alone in the settling haze, chest heaving, eyes glowing faintly with that strange unstable light he'd tried so long to suppress.

Lionel stared at him. "You said you couldn't control it."

Blaze swallowed. "I can't."

Scarlet's voice shook. "Then what was that?"

He didn't answer.

Because he didn't know.

And that terrified him more than anything.

Outside, the remaining operators regrouped, forming a tighter encirclement.

Scarlet yelled, "We need to move now or we're trapped."

Lionel nodded sharply. "Titans. Fall back to extraction route."

The team sprinted toward the storage bay's far end where a rusted service elevator led down to the hidden maintenance tunnels. Blaze hesitated one last second, looking at the chaos he'd caused, the unconscious operators, the broken dampeners.

Aya grabbed his wrist and pulled him along. "You can have your crisis later. Move."

Blaze followed.

Behind them, Aurion's commander stood among the wreckage, visor cracked, voice low and unreadable. 𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮

"Deploy secondary squad," he ordered. "And initiate containment protocol. The subject is escalating."

As the Titans disappeared into the darkness of the tunnel system, Blaze finally understood something he had spent weeks trying to ignore:

Aurion wasn't scared of him because of what he'd already done.

They were scared of what he was becoming.