One second, Ellen's hands were covered in Kade's blood as she desperately tried to put pressure on his severed femoral artery. Yasmin was yelling at her, and a golden light was all but searing her eyes, even through her eyelids.

The next, a dozen electrical burns sent waves of pain up her arms, and she was wrist-deep in the pool of blood—both Kade's and the boss's—where he'd been lying.

It took Ellen only a second to start directing Stamina to her new injuries—she'd gotten off lucky against Loram, and only had a few scrapes and bruises. But in that second, the sheer suddenness of the pain, and of whatever had happened, threatened to overwhelm her.

From the moment Loram had died, Ellen had been in panic mode. She'd been desperately trying to kill him before that, and had deliberately ignored Kade's injuries. Until the boss died, none of that had mattered.

But as soon as the timer appeared and the boss was dead, Ellen's entire focus was on Kade.

He'd said she was stuck with him. And she'd believed him. When Yasmin barked orders at her, she hadn't even bristled. She'd just dove right in, trying her best to help keep Kade alive. They couldn't evacuate the portal early, so their best bet was to—

And then, he'd vanished, and she was wrist-deep in blood and covered in burns.

"What the hell just happened?!" Jeff yelled, panic cutting through his voice. He had his sword in a two-handed grip, looking around desperately to find something to fight, or to do.

Yasmin looked just as confused as Ellen felt; she, too, glanced around, a wad of bloody bandages and gauze in her hand. Her entire front was covered in blood; she looked like she'd been in a throat-slashing accident—on the wrong side of the knife.

The others—Kurt and Alex—didn't move. They stood, frozen, where they'd been looking for the boss's loot behind the shattered pulpit.

Ellen did move. She charged the rapidly closing golden portal—an S-Ranked one—and tried to throw herself through it after Kade. But even as she leaped through the air, it winked out of existence. Instead of going to his rescue, she bounced off the stone floor hard enough to send even more waves of pain up her ankles.

"Can we get in there?" Jeff asked too late. His panic was spiking. He sprinted over, broken portal metal armor shrieking with each step. Ellen watched as he tried to figure out where the portal had gone; the man wasn't thinking.

Ellen shook her head. "No. We're too late. It happened so fast."

"I can't lose Kade," Jeff said. "I can't keep losing people. Not like this."

He was crying, Ellen noticed. The big man was sobbing. She thought back to what Kade had said about him—that he'd set out with a goal, and that the C-Rank Bottleneck wasn't an obstacle for him. That he'd gone all-in on reaching C as quickly as he could. That there was something he had to do. He'd lost teammates before—and good people. He had to have. But this one, for some reason, was hitting him hard. Unless…

Unless they all hit him this hard. Ellen blinked a blurry spot out of her own eyes. It was wet.

Was she crying, too? She was. God dammit.

Something inside of her had snapped. It had been strained for a long time; she'd first noticed it when Kade agreed to take the eggs despite his better judgment, and then again when she'd decided to trust him with her family drama—not to mention the shadow storm that had appeared the one time they'd merged skills together. It felt like there was something there. Not a goofy fated connection like in some of the books she liked, either.

It felt a lot more real than that. Simultaneously professional and deeply intimate. Like Kade had shared something with her that he hadn't shared with anyone else. He sort of had. He'd let Ellen into his life in a way even Jeff—who'd been his friend for years—hadn't been invited to. And she'd trusted him back.

Now, he was gone. The first person she'd trusted in a long time—gone. And that something had snapped.

But that wasn't why she was crying. It wasn't that Kade was almost certainly dead. He'd been likely to die before the golden, S-Ranked portal had snatched him away, and both she and Yasmin had known it. Jeff had known it, too, even if his face showed disbelief. He'd really thought they'd get through this portal unscathed.

It was that she—not Jeff, not Yasmin, but Ellen—was going to have to tell Jessie what had happened. And they didn't have a body for Kade's little sister to mourn.

Jessie was going to kill her.

Deborah Callahan was getting sick of following Kade Noelstra around and waiting.

She should have been clearing portals. Every other high-ranker in the Roadrunners was out there, taking care of business. But Carter hadn't picked up the phone when she'd texted him. He was either in that portal she'd told him to ignore out in Surprise, or he'd turned off his phone. Either way, she'd be coming for him soon. Aside from the S-Ranks, no one ignored her. Not twice.

He was also the last member of her little experiment that she could rely on—or at least, that she'd thought she could rely on. So, if he wasn't picking up, and she wanted to keep tabs on Kade, she had to sit out the portal surge.

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"Fuck," she whispered. The mustard-yellow portal she'd been watching had vanished almost an hour ago. She'd know soon whether he'd survived.

She hoped he hadn't. It'd be a shame to have to get her hands dirty in Phoenix. Delver-on-delver violence was one thing, but if word got out that she was reaching down four ranks, it'd be a disaster. Her career was already on a razor's edge—Angelo was a suspicious bastard, and the Kade Noelstra fiasco just kept on spiraling out of control.

A small part of her wanted to leave. To let Kade off the hook. She knew, deep down, that he was only her problem because she'd made him her problem. But Deborah had never been one to let something go. And Kade had become more of a problem after he'd rejected her far-too-generous offer. At this point, he needed to—

Deborah's phone rang.

Angelo Lawrence, S-Rank: Deborah, we have need of your services. There is an A-Rank portal near Sky Harbor. It will be a mixed team, so be on your best behavior. The team will be you, me, Terrance, Lara, and Terrel Young of the Portal Tyrants, plus a B-Rank from his guild. We will deploy in half an hour. Be there.

There wasn't any room for negotiation. Not with Angelo. Like it or not, the bastard was one of the few people in Phoenix that Deborah couldn't stand up to in terms of power. And he was her boss—for now. How dare he insinuate that she wouldn't be on her best behavior? She wanted to be guild leader someday, after she'd dealt with Angelo. A future guild leader didn't burn bridges with the other guilds—at least, not the big ones.

She checked her onboard navigation. Twenty minutes to Sky Harbor, assuming clear roads. Luckily, no one was out and about except for other delvers. She had ten minutes. Five, to be on the safe side.

"Fuck."

She stalled another minute. A minute and a half. Then she started her car's engine.

Five figures appeared next to the GC rep. A tank, a man with a massive crossbow on his chest harness, a mage, someone with two daggers, and—Deborah breathed a sigh of relief—a support. No Kade. The mage reached for her phone within seconds of exiting and started texting rapidly. Everyone else looked shell-shocked.

He was dead, then. And they hadn't been able to recover the body.

Good.

Deborah slammed her foot on the gas, and her car peeled out. She had a date with Angelo and the others—she doubted she could engineer it so that he'd die in an A-Rank portal, but if she got the opportunity, she'd take it. It was a perfect set-up for her.

Even though her off-the-books training program was pretty much dead in the water, Deborah wasn't out of ideas. Not yet.

No one said no to Deborah Callahan. No one ignored her offers. Not twice.

Not even Angelo Lawrence.

School had gotten out early.

That was fine. Jessie hadn't been spending that time learning. In fact, when Mrs. Wilkinson asked her to pay attention to her history lecture, she'd literally flipped the teacher off. Jessie had been waiting for the principal to lecture her—and obsessively checking her tablet for updates on Kade's portal—when the Governing Council's order to shut down came in.

It was too dangerous to have so many kids in one place, and none of the guilds could spare teams to protect every single school in Phoenix. There were simply too many portals to deal with, and too high a likelihood of something going wrong. So, the Governing Council had decided to protect everyone by spreading them out.

The portal surge was bad enough that everyone had a 'shelter in place' order, and a seventy-two-hour curfew for nonessential travel was in effect.

Fortunately for Jessie, her job as a GC rep meant she could ignore both of those orders.

Unfortunately for Jessie, that meant the choice between staying home alone in their apartment, going to the hospital for therapy, or taking the bus to the Peoria GC center. The first wasn't an option. She was too worried about Kade—and about the dangers a C-Rank portal held for him—to want to spend a second at home by herself. Therapy was probably the best idea. Her joints had been flaring up, and she was in her chair instead of using her cane.

But instead, she buckled down, got on the bus, and rode to the GC center. And the whole way, she checked her tablet.

If something had happened to Kade, she was going to kill him. She could do it; he'd proved he wouldn't fight back. Not against her, at least. If he resisted, she'd have Ellen do it for her. And he'd deserve it. That stupid, hard-headed…Jessie couldn't even think of a word to describe him. He'd really done it this time. Gotten in over his head.

She changed into her work suit in the locker room, then wheeled herself to the front desk. There was no one there. Not a single delver. Only one rep, who nodded and went back to poking around on his tablet.

"Where is everyone?" Jessie asked.

"Delvers are busy. No need for reps here. They deployed everyone to the portal rush. We're supposed to keep one rep at each center. The gym's rated for A-Rankers. If a break happens nearby, we're a designated evac center."

"Oh." Jessie's heart sank. "I came here to try to help."

"Yeah, good luck. There's nothing to help with. It's in the hands of the delvers." The man went quiet for a bit, stroking his patchy blonde beard. Then he stood up suddenly. "Can you cover the center? I could get out there and work at a portal if you do."

Jessie didn't want to say yes. She wanted to get out there and help, just in case there was actually something useful to do. But she couldn't. Her stupid, god damned joints wouldn't let her. If she saved her strength and relaxed here, she'd be able to get on a bus when this all blew over and head for home. And in the meantime, she had her tablet and phone. Like it or not, she was at least as connected here as anywhere else—maybe more so. So she nodded silently.

"Great. Here's my number. I'll stick within ten miles of the center. If anything goes wrong, call me." The other rep headed for the door. "Oh, and kid? Thanks."

Jessie nodded again. The lump in her throat was getting too big to say anything around. Instead, she sat back in her wheelchair, pulled up her tablet, and refreshed Kade's data. As best as anyone could tell, the portal had closed.

The wave of relaxation and relief hit Jessie like a hammer. She couldn't help it; tears started flowing down her cheeks. She'd known Kade would be alright. She'd known it. The tablet showed that the C-Rank portal they'd been assigned to had closed fifteen minutes ago. She smiled through the tears of relief, the lump in her throat suddenly gone.

For forty-five minutes, there was nothing to do but wait—wait and watch as portals cleared or broke on her list of actives, teams of delvers and GC reps updated their statuses, and the portal surge went on. Jessie only had to answer the phone once, and then only to confirm that the GC building was, in fact, open, but that the workout facility was closed for use as an evacuation center in the event of a nearby breach.

Not that she believed for a second that there'd be another breach in Peoria. Kade had cleared his C-Rank portal, and that was the most dangerous one nearby. Unless they got an instantaneous break, or something had opened deep in the sewers where no one could see, they'd be fine.

An hour had passed since Kade's portal closed. They should be out.

Jessie: Kade, you good? I saw your portal's clear.

Kade didn't respond.

But a minute later, Ellen did.

Ellen: Where are you? We need to talk.

The lump in Jessie's throat came back with a vengeance, and it was almost three minutes before she could get her hands to stop shaking long enough to respond.

Jessie: What happened? Is he okay? Why isn't he answering? I'll kill him.

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