Damon sighed and pushed to his feet, shutting down his system with an irritated swipe of his fingers. But before he could take more than two steps toward the dorms, a frantic stream of messages lit up his screen.

Not an official alert. A personal chat thread instead, the support group for the academy’s lowest-ranked Resonators, one he had never officially joined but had never left, either.

Rein: Guys, are you seeing this?

Lena: I’m in Sector B, basement lab. doors sealed. help

Rein: WHAT!?

Lena: Automatic lockdown. Something tripped the hazard protocol. I can’t get out.

Milo: All A-Ranks are being diverted to the main portal on floor 3. They won’t reach the basement levels.

Lena: Can you guys help me out? I’m still fairly far from the chaos. I can’t hear any fighting as well...

Lena: Guys??

Lena: Guys!??

The chat fell silent after that. The moment Lena asked for help, everyone seemed to close the app and ghost her completely.

Everyone except him, of course. It wasn’t really his choice, but that didn’t mean he was going to leave her on her own.

Just because he wasn’t the strongest didn’t automatically mean he was morally bankrupt.

Lena: Damon, you’re still seeing this, right? Can you tell a professor, your dad, or anyone to get me out of here!?

He raised his hand, quickly typing out a message.

Damon: I’ll get someone to save you. Give me a moment.

Lena: Thank you, Damon! You’re a lifesaver!

Damon didn’t waste a second. He pulled up his father’s contact and hit the call button.

Nothing.

Straight to voicemail. The automated message played in his ear, calm and detached.

"Lucas Persival is currently engaged in Resonator operations. Please leave a message or contact the Resonator Academy main office for urgent matters."

He tried again. Same result.

"Come on, Dad..."

He switched to the academy’s emergency dispatch line. The call connected immediately. The academy took every alert seriously during a Code Yellow.

"Emergency Dispatch. State your name, rank, and location."

"Damon Persival. Unassigned. I’m at the library, but I have a report, a student is trapped in Sector B’s basement lab. The hazard lockdown sealed her in. She needs immediate extraction."

A pause. The dispatcher’s keyboard clicked in the background.

"Confirmed. We have a Lena Hartwell registered in Lab B-3. However, all available extraction teams are currently committed to the third-floor portal containment. The basement level is structurally isolated from the main threat, and the lockdown doors are holding. She’s in a secure location."

"Secure? She’s trapped."

"Secure means the hazard protocol is functioning as intended. The doors are keeping whatever’s upstairs from getting downstairs. She’s safer in there than anywhere else in Sector B right now. We’ve flagged her location. Someone will get to her once the third-floor situation is stabilized."

"And how long will that take?"

Another pause. Longer this time.

"Unknown. The portal is still fluctuating. We’re looking at a minimum of forty minutes before we can spare a C-Rank for a non-critical extraction. Likely longer."

Forty minutes. Minimum.

Damon stared at the communicator, his jaw tight.

"Is there anyone else? Any other way?"

"Sir, I understand your concern, but the protocol is clear. We don’t divert resources from active portal containment for a non-combatant in a secured room. She has air, she has shelter, and the threat is contained above her. She just needs to wait."

The dispatcher’s voice wasn’t cruel. It wasn’t dismissive. It was calm, professional, and utterly certain that the system was working as designed.

"Thank you..." Damon said, and ended the call.

He looked down at Lena’s messages again.

Secure. Sheltered. Low priority.

But not safe. Not really. Because "secure" was just a word, and words didn’t stop a determined monster from finding another way down.

Words didn’t stop the ceiling from collapsing if the fight above got bad enough. Words didn’t stop someone from being alone in the dark, refreshing a chat that had gone completely silent.

The dispatcher had made a reasonable call based on the information they had. Damon couldn’t even blame them.

But he couldn’t wait forty minutes either, especially if the situation was bad enough to require his father’s help to stop it.

"Thousands of resonators, and they can’t even spare one for a rescue!?"

He closed the chat. Then he started running. Not toward the dorms. Toward Sector B.

***

The academy’s maintenance tunnels were a maze of exposed pipes and constant flickering lights. Damon had memorized the layout two semesters ago during a logistics elective he’d taken out of pure desperation to find something, anything, his system would let him do.

The tunnels connected every sector in the academy, built to allow repair crews access without disturbing the students above. They were also, critically, not covered by the automatic lockdown protocols.

The hazard system only sealed the main doors and stairwells.

A design flaw. One that Damon was now grateful for.

His footsteps echoed against the metal grates as he ran, the communicator’s map overlay guiding him through the twists and turns. Sector B’s basement level was three levels underground.

The main fighting was happening four floors above, in the simulation chambers. He could hear it now, even through the concrete. Muffled explosions, the crackle of spell discharge, the distant shouts calling out formations.

They were buying time. Fighting whatever had come through the portal. They didn’t know, or didn’t care, that one of their own was trapped below.

Damon reached a sealed maintenance hatch marked SB-B1. He spun the manual release wheel, the rusted metal groaning in protest before the hatch swung open with a hiss of pressurized air.

He dropped down into a dark corridor. Emergency lights pulsed red along the ceiling, casting long shadows across the walls. The air was cold. The kind of cold that came from the ambient effect of unstable portal energy.

"D-Damn it all!"

***

The lab door was sealed tight, a heavy blast-door designed to contain magical experiments gone wrong. The hazard lights on the frame blinked a steady, angry red.

LOCKDOWN ACTIVE.

Damon pressed his palm against the cold metal. "Lena! You in there?"

A beat of silence.

Then, muffled but unmistakable, a voice. "Damon?! What are you doing here? I thought you’d get a professor!?"

He let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. She was alive.

"Tried that. They’re all busy. You okay?"

"I’m stuck in a dark lab with a bunch of half-finished potions and a blinking hazard light. I’m fantastic."

Despite everything, Damon almost smiled. Lena’s sarcasm was legendary even among the students.

"Can you open the door from your side?"

"No. The wiring’s fried. I’d need a Resonator with at least a C-Rank strength to pry it open manually, or—"

A sudden crash echoed from the far end of the corridor. Damon spun around, his heart slamming against his ribs.

Something was moving in the darkness. Something that didn’t move like anything he’d seen before, not in textbooks, not in simulation footage. Its form flickered, half-corporeal, glitching in and out of reality like a corrupted video file.

His system flared to life, brighter and sharper than it had ever been.

"Damon, what’s going on!?"

"Lena... get to a corner and be as silent as possible, we’ve got a breach."

"What—!?"

"Hide, now!"